Jakob Ohlhorst

Image of a baseball bat

Running a seminar on panpsychism today (i.e. what is it like to be a bat?)

Engel’s dilemma and the epistemic significance of logical disagreement - Synthese Hinge propositions—or simply “hinges”—are primitive certainties that we (must) presuppose to enable our entire belief systems. Recently there has been a lot of interest in hinge epistemology, which is a kind of epistemology that sets the notion of hinge at the center stage. This paper puts forward a dilemma levelled against hinge epistemologists. The dilemma is based on work by Pascal Engel (International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6:228–247, 2016) and states that, given the assumption that hinge propositions are normative at all, they are either non-epistemic grammatical norms or epistemic norms. If the former is the case, hinges would appear to be irrelevant to epistemology as it is ordinarily conceived, while if the latter holds, the result would be an incomprehensible hinge epistemology altogether. After presenting Engel’s dilemma (§§ 1–2), it is utilized to tease out certain puzzling insights about the epistemic significance of logical disagreement (§§ 3–4).

Second, disagreement about logic as an important challenge for hinge epistemology by Fredrik Andersen!

Conceptual and epistemic bootstrapping of hinge commitments - Synthese Synthese - Some hinge epistemologists have identified the constraints of innate and hardwired cognitive capacities with hinge propositions. My point in this paper is that they have focused only on...

I've tarried with banging the drum for hinge epistemology for a bit:
The TC in Synthese has a bunch of forthcoming papers!

First, close to my heart, more baby logic, maybe rather toddler logic! (Sorry Pawel)
How we can bootstrap hinge commitments:

Genauso wie man den deutschen (deutschsprachigen) Sonderweg der Habilitation endlich aufgeben sollte, sollte man die Ausbeutung der Privatdozent*innen durch unentgeltliche Titellehre sein lassen. Sie ist ein Instrument der sozialen Auslese.
Ich habe unterschrieben. Unterschreib Du auch!

It’s only called Cheapest if it is from the Chipes region in Chile, otherwise it’s just sour grape juice

I’d guess that’s what’s going on with fine wines? Once you’re addicted (properly) you wouldn’t mind, but it may expose non-addicted users to the risk of addiction

If then „designed to be addictive“ would mean „designed to maximise use“, right? notably including unethical mechanisms

social media and video games do have slot machine mechanics making them at least a bit like gambling
I have never looked into clinical descriptions of sex addiction

choosing „no“ means the viva will be held in the realm of ideas

*Officially* out today: Susan Stebbing: Analysis, Common Sense, and Public Philosophy. I’m grateful to my co-editor, Annalisa Coliva, and all our excellent contributors! Link in bio. (Find the volume’s introduction on my website 😈.)

Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.

1/n A few days ago, an article appeared in The Atlantic with a bold headline “Left-wing terrorism is on the rise.”

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Oh I’d say it takes intelligence to be foolish, shows how vague the concept is, but I take your point

Wait, wasn’t the heuristic that linguistic competence was sufficient for (not equivalent to) intelligence?
Like plenty of non-linguistic animals in addition to non-verbal have been discussed as intelligent

Join us - physically or online - on the 1st of October, 10 a.m. CET for this fascinating lecture by Quassim Cassam at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He will explore whether there are cases of benign extremism. Register via the link:

extremebeliefs.com/event/lectur...

Some might be interested!

Depressing, but also plausible that you can induce nihilism like that

(bracket the "plausible" out of the scope of "especially given")

In the sense of the nihilism at the heart of the politics of a Stalin?
That's interesting and plausible, especially given the fact that many of his followers probably were true believers, i.e. not nihilists.

Ok, I guess, reflective suicides would be the closest approximation to nihilism as the absolute negation of value!
Caring about status, I would suspect, could be nihilistic in the sense that it is considered amorally. So Nietzsche's gloss of nihilism: "nothing is true, everything is permitted"

Maybe we need to distinguish the ideal type of the nihilist (as you described) from its real manifestations.
I guess a lazy philosopher smoking opium and not caring about anything would be peak performance nihilism.
19th Century nihilist terrorists were mostly anti-monarchist anarchists.

I'd say that makes nihilism vacuous and not even Stirner would count as one. I'd say a useful concept of nihilism is that there are no shared or shareable values, only individual interests. Nihilism isn't a call to lethargy but a rejection of sociality.

I take it that the general atmosphere on the platforms is nihilistic. So there's a cultural nihilism that permits the violence. Additionally, I do think that there is an affective nihilism in the sense that they do not feel attached or bound by any values or norms which are perceived as hypocritical

The ICE Shooter’s Motive Joshua Jahn's friends speak

www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-ice-sh...

zeitung.faz.net/data/462/rea...

Gestern hatte ich einen Artikel in der digitalen FAZ darüber, dass diese Attentate aus einem emotionalen memeifizierten Nihilismus entspringen. Mir wäre weniger so unmittelbar bestätigende Evidenz lieber gewesen.

Ha! I was alway already worrying about text lacking tone
Well, enjoy Hagen

No it was more of a joke, Hagen is the most famous station you’ve never heard of because trains are splitting or uniting there and many trains in north Germany do that

No worries, EVERY train in Germany at some point will have a layover in Hagen to separate the trains.

Search engines have also gotten worse, so don’t be too hard on yourself

go outside at noon, whatever it takes!
(leaving the house and returning in darkness is the worst)

Also: sauna? (at least it’s warm)