- Joined
- Oct 15, 2011
- Messages
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I like your voiceYes, that's really me. Yes, I really talk like I post. And yes, I'm really that stop-you-in-your-tracks good-looking.
I like your voiceYes, that's really me. Yes, I really talk like I post. And yes, I'm really that stop-you-in-your-tracks good-looking.
Even here, the presupposition is that Marxism is a solid theory and that there are just a few kinks that need to be worked out, some problems/peculiarities that weren't properly addressed but which, once properly addressed, would at last result in the glorious practice promised by the theory.
I want to say at the start that this can very quickly turn into a conversation more suitable for The War Room,
Also, you probably already got the notification, but I notified you for my post in the War Room Jordan Peterson thread, too, and I specifically highlight the parts where I mention him and critique postmodernism and Marxism along similar lines.
I feel like I'd remember that, and since I don't, I'm inclined to think that you didn't. But that's funny to know. What the hell was she writing that me talking about Collateral would've been at all relevant? And, more importantly, what the hell was wrong with my brilliant framework
Are you being serious? I saw the trailer that shows a ghost watching his life or something. Seemed slow and corny. Maybe im wrong. I havent seen a 8/10 in years.A Ghost Story
8/10
a deeply reflective emotional movie
its not for everyone..so you may not like itAre you being serious? I saw the trailer that shows a ghost watching his life or something. Seemed slow and corny. Maybe im wrong. I havent seen a 8/10 in years.
As a fellow Midwesterner who often has to do public speaking and educate people who are from England and Australia, my advice would be to slow down your speech. They have a hard time handling it and like a slower pace. I know you have a lot of shit you want to cram into a lecture but just slow it down. Just my two cents.@Flemmy Stardust @Sigh GunRanger @theskza @Dragonlordxxxxx @ufcfan4 @Ricky13 @Caveat @europe1
To all of you who got this notification: I notified you because you're among the SMD posters who've known me the longest in here, who are currently the most active in here, and who I think will actually give a shit about this beyond the novelty of it, but yesterday, as part of an undergraduate class my supervisor is running called "Film and Cultural Theory," I got to do a guest lecture on skepticism and Inception.
Yes, that's really me. Yes, I really talk like I post. And yes, I'm really that stop-you-in-your-tracks good-looking.
I figured, given how many times I've discussed Inception with so many of you in here, that some of you might get a kick out of these, so do with them what you will.
@Flemmy Stardust @Sigh GunRanger @theskza @Dragonlordxxxxx @ufcfan4 @Ricky13 @Caveat @europe1
To all of you who got this notification: I notified you because you're among the SMD posters who've known me the longest in here, who are currently the most active in here, and who I think will actually give a shit about this beyond the novelty of it, but yesterday, as part of an undergraduate class my supervisor is running called "Film and Cultural Theory," I got to do a guest lecture on skepticism and Inception.
Yes, that's really me. Yes, I really talk like I post. And yes, I'm really that stop-you-in-your-tracks good-looking.
I figured, given how many times I've discussed Inception with so many of you in here, that some of you might get a kick out of these, so do with them what you will.
Here's Arrival thread:DID you see Arrival? Just watched it and still unsure how i feel. @Dragonlordxxxxx link me the thread
I like your voice
Don't worry. If I'll ever kill you then it will be over movies not politics.
That's just got a whole lot easier since I now know your name and apperance.
Personally I'm of the opinion that strong philosophical skepticism cannot be defeated. Obviously it's a bozo's game that has no place in a functional picture of reality, but insofar as it's a hack position its overpowered-ness can't be denied.
So the first point of attack on the cogito could be the baggage that comes with Descartes' identification of himself as a thinking subject. A counter could be that what Descartes takes himself to be, qua thinker, needs no further attributes other than the ability to think. Fair enough. But in that case, why add the subject at all? Why not just "there is thinking"?
The second and stronger point of attack, in my opinion, is on Descartes' confidence in the existence of a priori truths in the first place. If we accept him as a fallible thinking subject, as he seems to be encouraging us to do, then how can we accept his confidence in the absolute link between thinking and thinker? Could he not be mistaken in his perception of this as a necessary truth?
at some point, the authenticity of a given reality is, for people, a function of their investment into it.
I suspect that the extent of our grounding in that reality, vis-a-vis values and investment, should be taken into account when deciding if it's really the realest real reality there can be.
I'll watch Part II but I'm pretty historically/politically useless so maybe I'll have less to say about it.
As a fellow Midwesterner who often has to do public speaking and educate people who are from England and Australia, my advice would be to slow down your speech. They have a hard time handling it and like a slower pace. I know you have a lot of shit you want to cram into a lecture but just slow it down. Just my two cents.
Great to see your career has progressed to this stage. Well done.
Really did nt think you loved inception so much to give a lecture on it
DID you see Arrival? Just watched it and still unsure how i feel.
they can understand us because we don't have an accent.As a fellow Midwesterner who often has to do public speaking and educate people who are from England and Australia, my advice would be to slow down your speech. They have a hard time handling it and like a slower pace. I know you have a lot of shit you want to cram into a lecture but just slow it down. Just my two cents.
Great to see your career has progressed to this stage. Well done.
Picked up Atom Egoyan's Exotica on a friends recommendation and found it excellent although having watched it I do actually remember catching part of it on TV back in the 90's. Very oddball story mixing a strip club the film takes it name from, world weary accountants and parrot egg smugglers that seems like a bit of a strange meeting point between Tarantino(|came out the same year as Pulp Fiction) and early Ridley Scott(a couple of years after the Blade Runner directors cut release). Indeed in some ways it actually brings more of a Blade Runner atmosphere to mind than 2049 did with a general noir vibe, the Taffy Lewis like club and the cluttered exotic pet shop plus the middle eastern touches to the soundtrack.
Yeah that was definitively an oddball picture. Great camerawork though.
Honestly, it never really resonated with me that much. I've heard a lot of people describe it as a film with a lot of pathos. That the ending reveal was a real emotional knockout for them. But I can't really say that I was enchanted by the characters or this reveal -- more intrigued by its peculiar mood. It's sort of one of those film that tries meshing the culturally high and the culturally low through its artistic lens -- presenting a lowly strip-club as some sort of traditionbound, aesthetically-cultured hangout. Mia Kirshner's "stripping" comming off more as performance art or something likewise that's an procedural exploration of her state-of-mind.
I sort of have a similar relationship to Paris, Texas, in that it's an film that's often championed for it's pathos but never really resonated with me on that front. Though I like Paris, Texas a lot more than Exotica.
Tried to watch Suicide Squad -- it didn't hold my attention at all, thus I had no idea what was going on and I stopped watching it about an hour in.
First of all, you're right that there are two different sides of the skepticism coin. The first side is what's commonly referred to as external world skepticism (how do I know I'm in reality and not in the matrix, how do I know that what appears before me is the way it really is and not just an invention of my mind, etc.) and the second side is what's commonly referred to as other minds skepticism (how do I know what that person is thinking, how do I know that they think like me, how do I even know that they're human like me, etc.). On top of which, Jim Jefferies goes so far that he actually reaches the point of solipsism, the idea that all that exists is the individual mind and its functions.
This also brings us to Ayn Rand land, but we won't go that far this time
I don't want to color your viewing of Part 2 by explicitly telling you what I was going for, but I will say that I'll be very interested to hear what you think about the way I framed the responses to this - specifically, the "solutions" that have been offered by pragmatists and ordinary language philosophers - and if it's clear to you what I was trying to convey regarding the response to skepticism evident in the work of people like Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Nolan.
Did you ever read the objections and replies to the Meditations? I have so much respect for Descartes for the way he wanted to get people's responses to his work and then include his replies rather than just publishing the Meditations in isolation. It's really cool to see how quickly people at the time were recognizing certain problems/limitations. Thomas Hobbes was a particularly incisive interlocutor. I think you'd enjoy following up on these things you've brought up and seeing how Descartes and his contemporaries tried to work through this stuff back then in the 1640s.
This is a very scary thought that connects up with Descartes' discussion in the fourth meditation of the battle between the intellect and the will. To shift from your example of The Matrix to Inception, if you know you're in limbo but you don't want to go back to reality, how can you feel "better" about yourself and your life (such as it is) compared to someone who knows they're in limbo and wants to go back to reality? Is the "whatever you makes you happy" argument really valid across the board?
That's always where my head goes when I think of stuff like this. To ramble a bit: Descartes' position was that, if you have a "clear and distinct" grasp of a situation, then the "natural light" will result in correct thought and action. However, since it's possible for us, as fallible beings, to fail to clearly and distinctly grasp a given situation, and since it's possible for us to act even in the event that we have failed to clearly and distinctly grasp a given situation, Descartes acknowledged the possibility of incorrect thought and action, acknowledged the possibility, so to speak, of the will outrunning the intellect.
On this picture, thinking is still the primary and the basic argument is that, if you know something, then, by the natural light, you can't but think and act properly. This seems sensible at the basic philosophical level, but when you move up to the psychological level and start getting into people's investments and motivations, this picture starts to get real fuzzy real fast and their seem to be shadows that even the natural light can't illuminate - or at least hasn't yet illuminated.