Why are debunking/generalising explanations of status signals so withering? Reasons/causes. Withering putdowns lists for egs. Evil and irrationality are both impossible (to understand)
Related to the difference between the Strawsonian participatory stance vs. the objective stance Trust Essay notes This is probably the basic distinction I’m trying to get at in many ways. The objective and participant stances
Brandom on Hegel on niedertraechtig vs edelmeutig is the answer. search: Brandom “Niederträchtigkeit” “Edelmütigkeit”. See spirit of trust ch. 15
- Brandom tends to use Hegel’s German terms ‘Niederträchtigkeit’ (baseness or ignobility) and ‘Edelmütigkeit’ (nobility, magnanimity). It seems to me that Brandom equivocates on Niederträchtigkeit. Sometimes, being niederträchtig means operating solely on self-serving motives, without regard for ‘higher’ moral or sittlich motives, and attributing solely such motives to others. But sometimes he describes the niederträchtig person as someone who takes our actions to be caused, to arise out of mechanisms and/or drives that are not, in fact, in the ball park of the normative at all. I cannot investigate the significance of this equivocation here.
- The ultimate secret of political punditry is just to toggle whose behavior is treated as a fixed point and whose is a matter of choice in the analysis, and also toggle whose opinions are given rationalizing explanations and whose are given arational explanations (tweet)
- The first part of this can be a frame for the first phil paper i did
Is there a connection between all debates are bravery debates and the rhetorical effectiveness of calling positions phobic, e.g. Lovecraft on race, homophobia. If there is, how does it explain the worth of other freudian moves like saying you just like the thing you say you hate?
Mentioning or uncovering people’s childhood, but even more so, their adolescence (which is closer to them), has such a debunking effect.