autumn 2018

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I’ve given lots of time, the past couple of months, to commenting at news articles, especially New York Times articles and the Washington Post (and other sites, too). I keep a copy of each comment, because I carefully write my comments before posting them.

That has resulted in a large archive of comments (over 50K words, so far) that I’ll love to organize into topic areas someday (or weave into upcoming topics).

The fun continues, exemplified by today’s constitutional law posting.

capsulating a tropography

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News that Google+ is closing down caused me to post the following there (modified now for here):



If you have conceptual interest in individuation, creativity, phenomenality, tropology, literary humanism, conceptuality as such, metaphilosophy, post-logocentric philology, standard topics in theoretical humanities (e.g., value theory, philosophy of mind, cultural psychology, theory of “Truth” [in standard philosophical senses]), pragmatism, bioscience, anthropology, metascience, public policy, historiology, Heidegger, philosophy of education and health care, philosophy of law, Jürgen Habermas, evolutionary theory, political progressivity, community development, good government, planet management (sustainability), S.E.T.I., and enough writerly eccentricity that I risk losing credibility, re: views on all of the above areas, then do stay in touch.



After all, the ultimate meaning of life is to 
have fun.

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summer 2018

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If I regard the commercialism of “social networking” platforms (in the margins and in “pushed” content) in conjunction with the so common frivolity of personal content on them, I feel nausea in the fingers—and feel thankful for solitude.

Habermas as philosopher

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The editor’s introduction to Habermas’ Philosophical Introductions: five approaches to communicative reason (English 2018 / German 2009) indicates how the collection isn’t merely Habermas introducing his career of philosophical work—his career of work as being philosophical. Rather, he is doing so philosophically. 

He is doing philosophical work there, not merely discursive narrative about work that is philosophical in intent. Each part of the book advances Habermas’s especially philosophical sense of his career—a career which has also been theoretical (writing as meta-social theorist) and practical (writing as public intellectual), yet also has been especially philosophical. 

Good behavior isn’t yet worthwhile action.

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Mid-June’s update note on his home page (now regarding myself as an other—framing an attitude two weeks ago) asserted (validly) that “I’ve been doing intensive work, making good progress,...I’m very immersed in creative work.” But he didn’t want to be specific. “Saying more later would be just keeping fidelity to ...a given ‘check-in’ date,” pro forma. “I want to make updates worthwhile,” which he didn’t feel like doing.

spring 2018

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I’ve finished a short project, “astute reasoning and ‘fake news’.”

On the home page, right column, the “May 2018” dates don’t indicate major change from February; but aspects of the “astute reasoning...” project are implicitly pertinent to each Area, and that’s indicated.

The “sense of site” page has been revised (and shortened). Now, I’m returning to background development which I expect to consume most of my free time through June.

astute reasoning

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This is Section 2 of a commentary project titled “astute reasoning and ‘fake news’.” But it’s independent of that project.

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The easiest way into this is the curricular notion of “critical thinking.” But I shy away from ‘critical’ because it’s commonly (in academic humanities) associated with a negative sense of being critical, which isn’t salient in curricular notions of “thinking skills,” which have become integral for the systematic educational development of reasoning.

expecting genuineness of a communicative source and discerning fakery

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This is Section 1 of a commentary project titled “astute reasoning and ‘fake news’.” But it’s independent of that project.

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The antidote to unwanted fakery by others is persons who expect genuine action and can tell the difference.

Disappointedly calling something or someone a fake is a folkism for discerning extreme ungenuineness. But we don’t ordinarily say “it’s ungenuine” or “you’re ungenuine” (though we do say that sometimes—particularly in formal situations of evaluation). Yet being genuine with others is usually as important for a relationship as are shared values and innocent realism.

Stanley Fish’s ‘...Mother...’ article

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This is Section 4 of a project titled “astute reasoning and ‘fake news’.”

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When I decided to do a commentary on Stanley Fish’s NYTimes article “‘Transparency’ Is the Mother of Fake News,” I indicated in a “comment” there the importance of Habermas, which linked to this posting’s first version, in terms of a short description of Habermas’s career and relevant sense of communicative rationality. That couple of paragraphs follows, for persons unfamiliar with Habermas, coming to this spot via the NYTimes article. Afterward, I have a short discussion of Fish’s article, Section 2 here.

about “legitimating values between religions”

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I posted a short note to the Facebook/Habermas Page, which caused a short comment, which I responded to lengthily. Me:

I get occasional notices from Facebook indicating that people haven't heard from me lately. Let me say: I won't bother you with anything not important for Habermasian studies, and I don't have anything new to offer yet. But I'm not dead.

The comment to that which caused me to feel I had something to offer, in fidelity to Habermas, was “I would love if you would argue your case of ‘legitimating values in between religions’ a little more, because it’s very difficult to hold the point of rationality today.”

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valuing higher society

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What’s “higher” about higher education? That’s easy to answer relative to notions of academic achievement. But what makes a domain of achievement higher? Originally, in classical Greek times (The Platonic Academy), the question might well be put as: Why philosophy?

Philosophy didn’t express a love of sophistry; it sought to advance genuine sophistication: philo-sophy. We standardly equate that -sophy with wisdom, yet the Greek sense of -sophia was more holistic than our modern sense of life-orienting good sense or exemplary prudence.

Obviously, philosophy can make a Difference, i.e., advance differentiations that matter for practical thinking. Below, I’m improvising an example.

closure on an era of writing: 2004-2017

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I’ve organized 13 years of Web pages and postings into—as—a unified work,
not to have myself dwell on that integrated scaffolding. Rather, I’m performing
a transition beyond all of that (“of” The Project), as now-demonstrated appropri-ation of many years’ improvisations in light of The Project which the pointillism of years implicitly anticipated; and now implicitly warrants as cohering work, in terms of a “monographic” organization of it all.