2046

What's teleology

Right, well the difference between a natural substance and an artifact is that some things have substantial forms and some have accidental forms. Non living things like rocks still have functions as a result of having a substantial form. A rock or mineral substance's final cause is to, sit there and be rocklike, participate in the rock cycle, undergo lithification, stuff like that. (As was explained to me.) There is always final causation when there are the other 3 causes, or any causal power at all (you need finality to explain why effects are necessarily attached to their causes.) But a living thing is just capable of a certain kind of immanent causation (specifically that it furthers its own good) in ways that non living things don't have. The artifact's final cause is just imposed on it from the outside. But everything that has being in actuality has a form of some kind.

There is much more integration (not just coherence, but mutual reinforcement and support) between modern conservatism and Marxism and postmodernism, than there is between Marxism and postmodernism. For just one of many examples, one of the current leading and most influential conservative philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre continues to argue, using Aristotelian and Thomistic methods that Bernstein blathering on about in peak Objectivist mode, that modernism (aka the Enlightenment) is a failed project precisely because of its liberal capitalism, scientific rationalism, and individualism, and to invoke Catholic social teaching (here and now, not 12 century) for a substantial collectivist vision that engages with key Marxist and Thomist concepts. Macintyre further argues that Marxism "achieved its unique position by adopting the content and function of Christianity." Again, this is one of the top living conservative philosophers (although I'm sure someone will spew some banality in order to avoid the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.) Jordan Peterson taught them to say "postmodern neo-Marxism" in the same way the left was trained to use "white supremacists Nazi": it's a contentless stand in for "thing I don't like." In the same way, Randians programmed each other to say "Thomas Aquinas" and "Enlightenment" and "rediscovery of Aristotle" as a filler for a wider manichean drama of the forces of light historically prevailing over the bad philosophers without ever having actually read anything about it.

Lol

There are two main arguments for hylemorphism: the argument from change and the argument from limitation. (And a whole bunch of secondary arguments around these.) The argument from change follows this basic form: If change is real, then matter and form are real. Change is real. Thus matter and form are real. The argument from limitation is much more complicated, but is more similar to what Peikoff describes in that passage. It follows from the more general act-potency distinction applied to unity and multiplicity. Any universal pattern like roundness is only made actual by being limited in a specific way, and that by virtue of which a circle is limited and remains in potency is its matter, and that by which the potency is made actual is its form. Peikoff provides a good description of how we can come to know the matter and form as limitation by contemplating and separating out the unity in the structure. Thus the grasping of concept is the grasping of form, and the formal cause relates specifically to its nature and actives, especially those internal to the kind of thing it is. The form-matter distinction is necessary for a lot of other positions Rand wants to hold dear. For example, formal cause determines final cause. To conceive of a final cause in ethics that relates to a things nature, one needs form and matter.

No one respects this kind of rhetorical strategy, and it isn't making the point you think it is

Many such cases

This is a common gambit you see, but not a good one. The purpose of the political spectrum is not to track what people ought to believe but what people do tend to believe. The binary mind cannot handle this, so they use "argument by redefinition" and then commit fallacies of equivocation when applying. That is what Biddle is doing.

Contrary to boomercon mythos, that's not "bias." There's a difference between having bias and having an agenda. They systematically misunderstand the nature and function of the media and are thus confused, every five minutes, why so much "bias" exists.

I'm interested in what you take to be the paradigmatic representatives of each of your circles.

The US banned criticism of government in 1789, calling it sedition, literally fining, imprisoning, and deporting critics. In the election of 1800, a journalist loyal to Jefferson said that Adams was a hermaphrodite.

It is impossible to overemphasize that this is what conservatives actually believe. The mythos is that it always used to be better just a short while ago.

Correct. Which is why it's not, strictly speaking, hypocrisy. Their principle isn't "rioting is bad." Their principle is "what do we have to do to get what we want."

Valid: You're complaining about bad thing X, but you're also doing bad thing X. You should stop that, it's bad. Not valid: You're complaining about bad thing X, but those people also doing it, so we're going to do it too.

Tu quoque isn't about who has a right to denounce something. It's about whether something is denounce-worthy or not. And often times, the conclusion being repeated is not even merely "you have no right to complain about this bad thing because you also do this bad thing," it's "therefore were going to do this bad thing too." They cannot tell the difference between these things because there literally is no mind there. They repeat what their respective source tells them.

Nope. She never said it.

By "you" you mean you and fellow right wingers. What's the downside?

Let's rally in January and really show our strength! That wasn't us maybe antifa Okay that was us but antifa made us look bad But I still support it But actually we should've done more

It's a bad argument. In the first place, Rand never used "the NAP." You won't find the words in her corpus. And libertarians themselves don't even agree on what is entailed in, or if there even is, a NAP. Suffice it to say, there is no "the" NAP. So it is quite open to Rand to say, "So what? I am not committed to 'the NAP' so I am not bothered if you think I'm breaking it." But more importantly, it begs the question. What counts as initiation of force depends, partly, on what rights people have. Assuming people have the right to exercise their own extrajudicial force is the very question at issue. This style of argumentation was first employed by Childs (1969), back when hope was to convince followers of Rand to join the anarchist wing of the US libertarian movement, by showing that principles that Rand commit herself to lead to anarchism. If only we could find a way, just from the armchair, to show there's a contradiction, without having to get into the muddy waters of legal philosophy and epistemic standards. It influenced Nozick (1974) to create an argument showing how by premises acceptable to the anarchists themselves, one would end up with a government. And so on, with each accusing the other of contradiction. One can't really solve the issue by trying such a simple maneuver. But there is such temptation for easy answers.

Actual train of thought: Premise 1: Anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes rulers and States. Premise 2: Those who stormed the Capitol did so with the explicit goal of keeping Donald Trump as the ruling head of state. Conclusion: Those who stormed the Capitol are defined by anarchy.

Extremely uninterested in being helpful to you or them

I think it's more imaginative possibility. If something is conceivable, where conceivable is taken to be its imagination doesn't entail a logical contradiction, then it's possible. So on this view, it's equally as possible that I had coffee this morning as I didn't have coffee, as it is possible I have 3 eyes, or am immortal. But squared circles aren't possible. I think necro is shifting the goalposts. He's actually changed what he said. He's said at first, "probably," and his hunch is based on something else that happened in the past. That's just a basic logical fallacy. And I think it's Humean in the sense that the only way to get "possibility" out of that is to widen the sense of possibility such that every matter of fact, and its contrary, is possible, because it can never imply a contradiction. Now he's saying no, I'm only saying there's some elements are present and that's lending itself to support possibility, but nothing more. That's fine but "there are elements here" is redundant with "there is evidence here." It's a mere repetition. What are the elements here? It's not clear what he regards those to be. I think it's "the way the media is treating the situation" or "Biden could gain from this." But those are just non sequiturs. Sloppy logic. Keep in mind that what we ought to do, and are permitted to do, depends on the facts of the situation, and what it is reasonably for us to believe the facts of the situation are. If the people that stormed the Capitol believed certain things because of not just sloppy logic but epistemic vice, their cause is unjust. That is, had the election been stolen, or had they reasonable grounds to believe so, (or if they were objecting democracy itself), then they might have justification to storm the Capitol and prevent the certification. But they don't. They make basic logical fallacies at every step. "Trump won" or "stop the steal" isn't a even commitment to a battery of evidence that Trump won. They can't even present it in an unambiguous way where you could even tell what it is they're saying. It's muddled. It's more like the equivalent of the folks in the Black Hole at a Raiders game with their costumes and face-paint. It's more just hooliganistic performance for the feelsgood team against the feelsbad team.

Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details. So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.