Wet your Willi

Then you're right, I do have a beef, since I think of my positions as particularly cultural, in no way representative, and therefore don't experience my esthetic judgments as universal. Seeking the company of a few here who might share an outlook is no confirmation that we all experience our subjectivities as objective.
 
Why do you seek out such company? Is it really a form of self-indulgence or don't you think you are mixing with a group who are like-minded as a result of a certain level of intelligence? If the former, why are you ever surprised when like-mindedness fails to cover some detail (how good one movie is)? And finally, why do you adduce reasons for your positions rather than merely offer them for the expected agreement of your in-group, which should be pre-ordained by the fact that that in-group will already share your beliefs.

By the way, Kant doesn't think we experience all, or even most of our subjective experiences as ones that should be universally shared. As I have said before, he specifically doesn't think we think other people will always share our taste in wine (he turns out to be wrong, of course, but for other reasons). He thinks this a special feature of the phenomenology of experiencing beauty in nature and art, one of the traits by which one can recognize that that is the kind of experience we are having.
 
Reading the posts on this board has become more work than reading the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury regulations - and I get paid for that!
 
originally posted by maureen: Reading the posts on this board has become more work than reading the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury regulations
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Maureen, I agree...and one of the main problems for me is how often abbreviations are used here.

. . . . . Pete
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Why do you seek out such company? Is it really a form of self-indulgence or don't you think you are mixing with a group who are like-minded as a result of a certain level of intelligence? If the former, why are you ever surprised when like-mindedness fails to cover some detail (how good one movie is)? And finally, why do you adduce reasons for your positions rather than merely offer them for the expected agreement of your in-group, which should be pre-ordained by the fact that that in-group will already share your beliefs.

By the way, Kant doesn't think we experience all, or even most of our subjective experiences as ones that should be universally shared. As I have said before, he specifically doesn't think we think other people will always share our taste in wine (he turns out to be wrong, of course, but for other reasons). He thinks this a special feature of the phenomenology of experiencing beauty in nature and art, one of the traits by which one can recognize that that is the kind of experience we are having.
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Alas, it's a time-honored tradition here to never desist, even when discussions have become exhausting to bystanders who are not paid to read them.

To answer your question, maybe it's a sign that I don't get around enough, but this is my only group that I consider P2P. Not so much because of a certain level of intelligence, since that comes in many forms, but out of a broad compatibility of cultural outlook. A kind of family resemblance. But that doesn't preclude me from adducing reasons when I find that my position isn't shared.

This kind of formulation - "agreement should be preordained by the fact that the group will share your beliefs" - is reductio ad absurdo and borderline insulting; have you found this line of argument to work with anyone beyond tenth grade?

As for what Kant thought, aside from defending myself from misrepresentations of my positions, I really could care less. I am, however, interested in what you think, in what most others here think. While everyone's thoughts are influenced by others', I only care about what you have distilled, not in name dropping or invoking of authorities as an intimidation technique.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Why do you seek out such company? Is it really a form of self-indulgence or don't you think you are mixing with a group who are like-minded as a result of a certain level of intelligence? If the former, why are you ever surprised when like-mindedness fails to cover some detail (how good one movie is)? And finally, why do you adduce reasons for your positions rather than merely offer them for the expected agreement of your in-group, which should be pre-ordained by the fact that that in-group will already share your beliefs.

By the way, Kant doesn't think we experience all, or even most of our subjective experiences as ones that should be universally shared. As I have said before, he specifically doesn't think we think other people will always share our taste in wine (he turns out to be wrong, of course, but for other reasons). He thinks this a special feature of the phenomenology of experiencing beauty in nature and art, one of the traits by which one can recognize that that is the kind of experience we are having.
Click to expand...

Alas, it's a time-honored tradition here to never desist, even when discussions have become exhausting to bystanders who are not paid to read them.

To answer your question, maybe it's a sign that I don't get around enough, but this is my only group that I consider P2P. Not so much because of a certain level of intelligence, since that comes in many forms, but out of a broad compatibility of cultural outlook. A kind of family resemblance. But that doesn't preclude me from adducing reasons when I find that my position isn't shared.

This kind of formulation - "agreement should be preordained by the fact that the group will share your beliefs" - is reductio ad absurdo and borderline insulting; have you found this line of argument to work with anyone beyond tenth grade?

As for what Kant thought, aside from defending myself from misrepresentations of my positions, I really could care less. I am, however, interested in what you think, in what most others here think. While everyone's thoughts are influenced by others', I only care about what you have distilled, not in name dropping or invoking of authorities as an intimidation technique.
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Can't get behind Kant.
 
You are quite right that this claim--This kind of formulation - "agreement should be preordained by the fact that the group will share your beliefs" - is reductio ad absurdo --is a reductio ad absurdum. I have never found the evasion that we experience our subjectivity as objective because we exist within self-confirming groups or Stanley Fish like interpretive communities, remotely persuasive. And reducing their claims to their bases is part of the way to show why they do not hold. Either you think you are persuading somebody or you don't and if you think you are, you don't think it's because they belong to a like-minded group.

For the record, it should be clear by the energy I use to explicate Kant, that I hold much of his position. I think it follows logically from his attempt to solve the basic question Plato asks about art, which is what it is good for? But that goes far beyond the discussion here, which started, let's remember with my defense of Oswaldo's surprise that people on this board disagreed with his assessment of the Death of Stalin.
 
I think we can all agree that the professor needs to go back to professing. Let him exhaust students instead!
 
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