Noyau (1)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

2,559 thoughts on “Noyau (1)

  1. Lizzie,

    Since we’re on the topic, I’ve noticed that you are among the people here at TSZ who sometimes find it very difficult to admit mistakes.

    Just today, you mistakenly took TristanM for an ID supporter (here and here), but instead of simply acknowledging your mistake, you tried to cover it up.

    It’s such a small thing. Why not just say “Sorry, TristanM, I mistook you for an ID supporter” and move on?

  2. Alan Fox: Three points:

    1: I can recall recently making a silly mistake over gravity and having to correct it and apologise when the error was pointed out. So I have evidence of my readily admitting a mistake.

    2. I can’t offhand recall noticing you admitting a mistake, though that of course may be because you have never made one in these threads.* However recently you accused Neil of blocking your IP and after I pointed out it would have been impossible for Neil to have done such a thing even had he felt inclined you still have not said sorry to Neil.

    3. I guess you are alluding to the time you accused me of making a mistake regarding inheritance and the germ-line in eusocial hymenopterans. I did indeed keep requesting you for your explanation of what this mistake actually was, in your opinion. I’m still waiting. Please feel free to revisit the issue.

    *I concede the point that you have recently corrected a mistake. Hope Keiths can address the other points.

  3. Elizabeth,

    Tried that line with Mrs F yesterday evening while in the car rushing to get to meet friends and discussing choice of route . Needless to say, I won’t be using it again. 🙂

  4. keiths: Suppose a brick lands on my head tomorrow and I start making false accusations, like Alan. In that case “better” would certainly not mean “more like keiths”.

    But, anyhow, until such time as a brick should land on keiths’ head (or some other horror befall him–heaven forfend!), he has certainly given us a model of how to act on internet sites. When he makes an accusation–it is true, goddamit.

    I don’t see how anybody could deny that, and I think we all owe him a debt of thanks for showing us the way to be.

  5. Alan Fox: However recently you accused Neil of blocking your IP and after I pointed out it would have been impossible for Neil to have done such a thing even had he felt inclined you still have not said sorry to Neil.

    I don’t think keiths understands that what he wrote would ordinarily be seen as an accusation and require an apology. I think he sees himself as having only asked a simple question, with no apology needed.

  6. Elizabeth: Marital argument we used to have:

    Me: You never admit you are wrong!
    Mr.Lizzie: I do when I am.

    Marital argument when you’ve really arrived (takes about 30 years):

    Me: “Do you know what I’m going to say?”

    She: “Yup.”

    “Do you know what I’m going to say?”

    Me: “Yup.”

    Both: “Well alright then.”

    It could work here.

  7. Alan,

    I see you’ve gone out of your way to grant the minimum:

    I concede the point that you have recently corrected a mistake.

    Then you have conceded too little, as usual. From the very next day, July 21st:

    keiths:

    It was a joke, hotshoe. And so was walto’s reference to the mohel with Parkinson’s, by the way. (Think about it.)

    keiths, later:

    Well, I’ll be damned. I thought walto was making a joke when he mentioned the mohel with Parkinson’s, but he wasn’t. (Tremors are not a good thing in a mohel.)

    If you’d hang on a little less tightly to your prejudices, Alan, the feeling might return to your fingers.

    Hope Keiths can address the other points.

    You certainly are a glutton for punishment. It isn’t going to end any better for you than your “quote-mining” and “never admits a mistake” accusations did.

    I’ll respond as time permits.

  8. Neil,

    I chose my words carefully:

    I find it very suspicious that my IP address appears to have been blocked the morning after Neil falsely accused me of harassing him.

    I would therefore like to ask him directly:

    Neil, did you block my IP address?

    I cannot prove that you did, but the circumstances appear quite suspicious, to say the least.

    Later, when Alan made his usual rush to judgment:

    Alan,

    So I reiterate, alleging that Neil was responsible for blocking you is stupid. And I stand by that.

    That’s because you have reacted emotionally rather than thinking things through calmly.

    First, I didn’t “allege that Neil was responsible.” I stated my strong suspicion that my IP address had been blocked, and I asked Neil directly if he had done so. I was prepared to leave it at that if he said no, but then you came in with guns blazing.

    Second, my suspicion was quite reasonable, based on the evidence, and to call it “stupid” is itself stupid. For example, you are making a big deal out of the fact that moderators can’t modify the .htaccess file, as if I should have known that.

    How could I have known that? Was I “stupid” for not knowing information that I had no access to? Think, Alan.

    My suspicions were quite reasonable, and I will elaborate on that in a later comment.

    And later:

    It’s quite easy to see that my suspicion was warranted.

    I was evaluating two competing hypotheses:

    1. Someone blocked my IP address.

    2. A glitch of some kind prevented my IP address from accessing TSZ.

    If it had happened at no special time, then I would have regarded #2 as being more likely.

    But the prior probabilities had been updated, quite dramatically, because a) the previous evening, Neil had falsely accused me of harassment, and not long before that, he had falsely accused me of misrepresenting him; and b) he has done similarly impulsive things in the past, for example when he tried to impose a “timeout” on walto and me. Patrick had to intervene in that one.

    He had a motive, he had tried this sort of thing before, and the symptoms matched exactly with what you would expect from an IP block.

    The alternative was that for the first time ever, a glitch was preventing my particular IP address from accessing TSZ, that it matched exactly what you would expect from an IP block, and that it was purely a coincidence that this happened immediately after a hysterical accusation of “harassment” from Neil.

    Which was more likely? The first, obviously. If anyone disagrees, I would like to hear your reasoning.

    So of course I was suspicious, though I was careful to emphasize that I couldn’t prove anything. That’s why, after having registered my suspicions, I was willing to let the matter drop if Neil denied it. Then Alan made his emotional entrance, irrationally dismissing my suspicions as “stupid”.

    More on this later as time permits. It may or may not be today.

  9. keiths: I chose my words carefully:

    Most normal people would see that as an accusation.

    Later, when Alan made his usual rush to judgment:

    Alan saw what you wrote as most people would. So there was no rush to judgment.

    Here are a couple of lines of description, that seem to fit what I am seeing:

    A lack of skill in interacting with others

    Little understanding of the abstract uses of language, such as humor or give-and-take in a conversation

    I found those lines HERE

  10. Neil Rickert:.

    keiths: I chose my words carefully:.

    Most normal people would see that as an accusation.

    .

    Later, when Alan made his usual rush to judgment:.

    Alan saw what you wrote as most people would. So there was no rush to judgment.

    I assure y’all, I am as normal as anyone (boring!!) and it was obvious to me that keiths was making an accusation. The word choice was so specific that there was, and still is, no doubt in my mind that keiths was conveying an accusation.

    Now, keiths states that it was not an “accusation” but rather a “carefully worded” “strong suspicion”.

    Okay, we can take keiths at his word. He did NOT mean an accusation. He’s just incompetent at using our common language to express himself, even when he’s trying to make it “carefully worded”. He’s just incompetent at intuiting or using his empathy to realize how all the other normal people will take the natural meaning of his words.

    keiths should know that about himself. Whether he can, or wants to, do anything with that knowledge is a whole ‘nuther question.

    But then again, it’s a question we all face. I also state that I choose my words carefully. Is that all that matters? Is having “chosen carefully” the be-all and end-all when someone else is hurt by what I say? Is saying something like “that’s not what I said” or “that’s not what I meant” sufficient instead of an apology?

  11. I always try to avoid choosing my words carefully so that I can always say I could have chosen my words more carefully. Or I could have just kept my mouth shut.

  12. Bruce and KN,

    I congratulate you both on your niceness and your generously charitable readings of Gregory’s post, but I can read too and it was garbage of precisely the sort I indicated. I suppose it’s xtian to turn the other cheek, over and over again, but my non-xtian attitude is that that simpleton can go fuck himself. He’s insulted and attacked KN and me without provocation countless times. He’s also been extremely cruel to hotshoe. Furthermore, he has provided not one word of interest that I’ve yet found here.

    Why y’all suck up to him is beyond me (and I’m thinking of you too here, mung). But, as I say, I can read, and what he was saying was that KN would get killed by Kripke in any argument (which is nothing to be embarrassed about btw), because while Kripke has stuck to the yarmulke of his youth, KN has left his religion behind. It’s complete nonsense and I’m kind of tired of hearing apologies for that asshole.

  13. walto: But, as I say, I can read, and what he was saying was that KN would get killed by Kripke in any argument (which is nothing to be embarrassed about btw), because while Kripke has stuck to the yarmulke of his youth, KN has left his religion behind.

    I took Gregory to be clearly saying:

    (1) “Person X is orders of magnitude more intelligent than you are, and he believes in God, so why don’t you?”

    and not:

    (2) “Person X is orders of magnitude more intelligent than you are because he believes in God”

    In this case, my charity is not Christian but Davidsonian — since (2) is obviously insane, I prefer to interpret Gregory as saying (1).

    walto: He’s insulted and attacked KN and me without provocation countless times. He’s also been extremely cruel to hotshoe. Furthermore, he has provided not one word of interest that I’ve yet found here.

    Yes, his behavior towards hotshoe was completely repulsive. And he legitimized his conduct in terms of “an eye for an eye” rather than “turn the other cheek,” which inclines me to doubt that Gregory is a Christian in any practically meaningful sense. (He also conveniently ignored that hotshoe restricts his/her personal attacks to public figures, such as the Popes.)

  14. Mung: I always try to avoid choosing my words carefully so that I can always say I could have chosen my words more carefully. Or I could have just kept my mouth

    🙂 🙂

  15. walto:
    Bruce and KN,

    I congratulate you both on your niceness

    Why y’all suck up to him is beyond me

    “Be the change you want to see” — attributed to Gandhi.

    According to the all-knowing, all seeing Internets, he really said something like:
    “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

    Which is even better. Of course, whether it is true, rather than just sounding good, is something else entirely.

    I have said it already, but I will repeat it: I personally find things that Gregory says about KN distasteful and uncalled for, and, although I appreciate Gregory’s reply to me, his motivations for using that style in his posts to KN remain a mystery to me.

  16. Kantian Naturalist,

    What’s your Davidsonian reading of

    Yet he seems to understand absolutely nothing about ideology.

    And what do you think Gregory has to teach you (or indeed anyone) about ideology?

  17. BruceS: Ghandi.

    I think it’s Gandhi.

    ETA: He was a very good man, certainly, but, FWIW, I’m much more of a Tagore guy myself. That spinning/anti-trade stuff was awfully tough on his constituents. Of course, Tagore wasn’t nearly the politician that Gandhi was, just as Chernov (the head of the PSR in Russia at the time of the Revolution) was, on that front, no match for Lenin or Trotsky. It takes great politicians to move zillions–and sometimes this movement takes place whether those zillions want to be moved or not. Or indeed whether it’s good for them.

    That, of course, has nothing to do with anything, except that I happen to be reading a lot about the Russian Revolution lately. And I’ve long been a big fan of Tagore, who didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Gandhi.

  18. walto:

    What’s your Davidsonian reading of
    Yet he seems to understand absolutely nothing about ideology.

    My Davidsonian reading of that assertion is that my understanding of ideology is framed by Marx and Western Marxism, including the Frankfurt School tradition of Ideologiekritik, whereas his understanding of ideology comes out of Karl Mannheim. (He and I discussed this briefly sometime last year — that’s how I know where he’s coming from.)

    The Frankfurters thought that “ideology” was a specific kind of “false consciousness” that led people to act against their real interests, but it was possible to overcome ideology and arrive at a correct understanding of one’s real interests. By contrast, Mannheim thought that ideology is something that everyone has, whether they realize it or not. That’s why Gregory uses “ideology” and “worldview” as synonyms, whereas I don’t.

    I’m also not crazy about the concept of a “worldview,” because I don’t think that human beings have a map in their heads of how everything hangs together. I think that most of us have complicated views that are messy and inconsistent, because we have good partial maps of different domains and don’t need to unify everything within a single all-embracing picture. The quest for such a picture is no doubt a philosopher’s vision — “to understand how things, in the broadest sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term” — but I see no reason to assume that every rational agent implicitly already has the sort of understanding that philosophers strive to attain.

    And what do you think Gregory has to teach you (or indeed anyone) about ideology?

    I think Gregory would have a lot to offer about the debate between Mannheim and Horkheimer, and why Mannheim is right and Horkheimer is wrong. In a different world I imagine Gregory and I would have a lot of fun co-teaching a philosophy/sociology class focused on that debate and its implications for contemporary treatments of propaganda.

    My difficulties with Gregory all stem from the fact, as I see it, that he’d much rather vent his spleen at us “low-life pathetic despairing USAmerican atheists” rather than participate in a discussion that might be of interest to many of us here. (For example, earlier today I acknowledged his point about the importance of Dreyfus, Taylor, and MacIntyre. If I were a betting man — which I’m not — I’d put money down saying that he doesn’t even comment on my acknowledgement.)

  19. Kantian Naturalist,

    Team Teach?!? Kn, Kn, Kn. You are such a nice person that I really have no idea what to do with you at all! Gregory will no doubt punch you again (in the temple, hard) , and you will, presumably, turn your other cheek to him again.

    In front of a class, yet!!

    Maybe he despises you because you show that one does not need to be a Christian to display those kinds of virtues?

    But I have to tell you that you’re making us regular folk (in my case, slightly to the south of regular folk) throw up in our mouths a little.

    I think I’ll go outside for awhile and burn up ants with my magnifying glass.

  20. walto: Maybe he despises you because you show that one does not need to be a Christian to display those kinds of virtues?

    Gregory’s deeply personal animosity towards me is completely mysterious. Usually the only people who hate me that much are people I’ve dated.

  21. Kantian Naturalist: Usually the only people who hate me that much are people I’ve dated.

    Perhaps he already knows how the date would turn out and is just practicing in advance.

  22. Mung: Perhaps he already knows how the date would turn out and is just practicing in advance.

    You’re as comforting as a glass of warm vinegar.

  23. Elizabeth:
    Moved a comment to Guano.Not happy about ugly physical threats no matter how hyperbolic.

    Not suitable for noyau. Perhaps a first for me.

  24. I long since stopped being annoyed when people online tell me what I think, or how I ‘really’ act. I think it must be the company of WJM.

  25. What is it like to be a cat?

    I have a sense that being my cat is a lot like having Alzheimer’s. The nitwit brings a mouse up from our basement, drops it in the dining room and starts chasing it around. A frenetic battle is joined with squeaking, hissing, etc. And then, suddenly, the cat seems to have no idea why he’s come into that room at all. He turns and walks calmly (if confusedly) away, as the mouse darts under a radiator–free to annoy another day.

  26. petrushka,

    Interesting! I always chalked it up to him being as dumb as it’s possible to be without forgetting to breathe.

  27. walto:
    petrushka,
    Interesting!I always chalked it up to him being as dumb as it’s possible to be without forgetting to breathe.

    Not mutually exclusive.

  28. walto: My sense is that you’re much better off continuing with KN, who has a lot more patience than I do for posts that are so redolent with pseudo-argumentation.

    I have every confidence that Erik will persist in pointing out my failure to engage with him at the level he demands: the demonstration of logical necessity for my views and of my criticisms of his.

    The fact is that I don’t think my views are logically necessary, whereas he thinks that his views are logically necessary. Given that I don’t think that my views are logically necessary, I’m sure that his low opinion of my philosophical acumen will not be revised.

  29. Kantian Naturalist: The fact is that I don’t think my views are logically necessary, whereas he thinks that his views are logically necessary. Given that I don’t think that my views are logically necessary, I’m sure that his low opinion of my philosophical acumen will not be revised.

    Dunning–Kruger in action.

  30. “I don’t think my views are logically necessary” – KN

    Really? I’d have thought you had more ‘logical’ confidence in your egoistic anti-religious atheist philosophistry than that. 😉

  31. Gregory: Really? I’d have thought you had more ‘logical’ confidence in your egoistic anti-religious atheist philosophistry than that.

    Trust Gregory to turn anything handy into a cheap shot against one or the other of his favorite targets.

  32. “Perhaps he already knows how the date would turn out and is just practicing in advance.”

    Nice one! 😉

    “Gregory’s deeply personal animosity towards me” … “people who hate me that much”

    You folks hold yourselves in really high & important exaggerated regard. Check.

    I don’t hate anyone here (though am accused of it often enough). There is just so much emptiness, philosophistry & despair among TAZ atheists. It’s really quite sad if you can see it. Among those few who claim to teach or who actually teach ‘philosophy’ here have demonstrated sheer cognitive vacuity tinged merely with trained ‘technical’ or ‘analytic’ intellect. Men without chests, some might call them. But they’ll now pump up their empty chests loudly in protest, yet again against the wall of nothingness into which they stare!

    You’re not actually such an analytic, long-winded stream of consciousness, egoistic, horizontal pedantic robot without a soul in person are you, KN?

    “his understanding of ideology comes out of Karl Mannheim. (He and I discussed this briefly sometime last year — that’s how I know where he’s coming from.)”

    That’s a presumptuous mechanical ballerina comment. Try hard to find some evidence for what you claim and present it if you can. But you won’t find any here. I’ve never promoted Mannheim’s vision of ‘ideology.’

    And did I mention Terry Eagleton (hint: he’s not German or Hungarian) re: ideology to you for nothing? Yet you ignore it. Typical “I Love Sellars!!!” myopia. (“My life for you!”, Sellars, adapted from Stephen King.)

    Btw, KN, had you even heard of Vladimir Solovyev before I mentioned him in the other thread? And you’ve never read Mortimer J. Adler (or even heard of the Great Books series or the Syntopicon)!?! (He’s a convert from Judaism.)

    No, sorry KN. I wouldn’t co-teach a course, even in another world, with someone who would intentionally poison his students with philosophistry when it is knowingly caused by his own disenchanted ideologies & rejection of ‘reformed Judaism’. You can name drop & waffle to your hearts content. It doesn’t earn vertical respect.

    Oh, and btw, no doubt I’ve made Mung (and a few others) laugh out loud several times here, while atheists here personally fumed at what I wrote. C’est la vie! Noyau.

  33. hotshoe_: Trust Gregory to turn anything handy into a cheap shot against one or the other of his favorite targets.

    No turning before death. Into the abyss. Hounds of hell, send the bitches!

  34. petrushka: Dunning–Kruger in action.

    I don’t think that’s fair. I’m sure that Erik is much more intelligent than I am. In case you haven’t noticed, he is running circles around me in our little dialogue.

    Rather, it’s that he has a very different idea about what philosophy is all about than I do — he thinks that philosophy essentially deals with logical and ontological necessity, and I don’t.

    I don’t think that “ontological necessity” is an idea that makes any sense, and I think that logical necessity is much more narrow and much less interesting and important than he does.

    So in my way of doing philosophy, I am interested in conceptual explications (which fail as complete specifications of necessary and sufficient conditions, since an explication is context-dependent and a provisional sketch of a term-as-used) and causal explanations (which fail as logical demonstrations, for well-known reasons). The former specify the constitutive conditions of agent-level phenomena (e.g. meaning, intentionality, reasoning, valuing) and the latter specify the enabling conditions at the subagent-level correlated with the agent-level phenomena.

    It’s a completely different way of doing philosophy than what Erik does, so it’s not surprising that he finds my views seriously deficient by his standards. By my lights, on the other hand, his view is a combination of the Quest for Certainty and the Myth of the Given that Dewey and Sellars (respectively) warned us against. That doesn’t make him stupid or foolish — just wrong. There are lots of intelligent people who think I’m wrong, and many of them — like Erik — are much more intelligent than I am.

  35. “I’m sure that Erik is much more intelligent than I am.”

    Well, a joke or not, you said it.

    It’s not a matter of intelligence. It’s a matter of priority, faith and discipline.

    You stand on nothing, KN. Voluntarily. Erik otoh knows where he stands.

    He has exposed your mere ‘assertionism’ at TAZ.

    “my way of doing philosophy” – KN

    What if it’s really just bullshit self-deception masquerading as “doing philosophy” all of these years?

    “There are lots of intelligent people who think I’m wrong, and many of them — like Erik — are much more intelligent than I am.”

    Amen. (Translate into Yiddish, Hebrew, German or whatever language reaches you most deeply, KN.) Every once in a while you display humility & self-contextualisation, KN. Not a bad thing.

    Will you ever inquire again about that ‘vertical transcendence’ you claim to have once believed in as a child? Foundation.

  36. Gregory: You’re not actually such an analytic, long-winded stream of consciousness, egoistic, horizontal pedantic robot without a soul, in person are you, KN?

    Your interest in my personal life is, I feel, slightly unnerving. I don’t know why it matters to you so much how I actually live my life. Do you have a crush on me?

    That’s a presumptuous mechanical ballerina comment. Try hard to find some evidence for what you claim and present it if you can. But you won’t find any here.

    If I’m mistaken and misremembered, then I apologize. I could have sworn we talked about Mannheim at some point, but perhaps not.

    And did I mention Terry Eagleton to you for nothing? Yet you ignore it. Typical “I Love Sellars!!!” myopia. “My life for you!”, Sellars, adapted from Stephen King.

    I didn’t see the need to mention Eagleton, since I’ve discussed him here in the past many times. I’ve had numerous discussions here defending his review of Dawkins in the London Review of Books. I haven’t read his book on ideology, but I’ve read After Theory, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, and Culture and the Death of God. I think he’s a superb cultural critic, very insightful into the errors of the New Atheists, and sophisticated non-dogmatic Marxist. (I also thought very highly of Eagleton’s review of Turner’s new book on Aquinas.)

    Btw, KN, had you even heard of Vladimir Solovyev before I mentioned him in the other thread? And you’ve never read Mortimer J. Adler (or even heard of the Great Books series or the Syntopicon)!?! (He’s a convert from Judaism.)

    True, I’d not heard of Solovyev. The only Russian philosopher I’ve read anything of is Berdyaev, though not much and that was a long time ago. I’ve picked up a lot of Vygotsky in reading developmental psychology, though I don’t know if you’d consider him a philosopher. And Kropotkin, of course — Mutual Aid is a favorite of mine.

    Mortimer Adler struck me as a popularizer of sorts. He got a lot of people excited about philosophy. For me that role was played by Walter Kauffmann and Alan Watts, so when I came across Adler much later on, I felt I didn’t need him.

    No, sorry KN. I wouldn’t co-teach a course, even in another world, with someone who would intentionally poison his students with philosophistry when it is knowingly caused by his own disenchanted ideologies & rejection of ‘reformed Judaism’.

    That’s one hell of an assumption about what and how I teach. Too bad, though — I think that co-teaching a course with you on ideology and propaganda would have been a lot of fun. I mean, of course we’d completely disagree about everything, but that’s what would make it interesting to our students!

  37. Gregory: What if it’s really just bullshit self-deception masquerading as “doing philosophy” all of these years?

    That’s a real danger for all of us! That’s why we need the back-and-forth of dialogue with people who radically disagree with us — it helps keep us honest, not to mention on our toes!

    Amen. (Translate into Yiddish, Hebrew, German or whatever language reaches you most deeply, KN.) Every once in a while you display humility & self-contextualisation, KN. Not a bad thing.

    Perhaps the tentativeness of my ideas and my journey of exploration does not come across here. The fact is, there is very little of which I am certain. I spend almost all of time talking with philosophers who are much smarter than I am, and my ideas are shot down on a daily basis.

    Will you ever inquire again about that ‘vertical transcendence’ you claim to have once believed in as a child? Foundation.

    Did I claim that I believed that as a child? I always experienced some degree of “horizontal transcendence”. I guess you could call me a “nature mystic”, if you wanted. For a while I was calling my spiritual attitude “Buberian pantheism”: to experience the cosmos as having a face looking back at you in an I-You encounter. I still think that’s a good way of expressing the disclosive/symbolic (non-discursive) dimension of my being-in-the-world.

  38. walto:

    [Kantian Naturalist said:] I’m sure that Erik is much more intelligent than I am.

    He seems to think so too. I think you’re both wrong.

    🙂

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