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ironick.bsky.social
Contingently i-RON-ick
@ironick.bsky.social
160 followers 390 following 120 posts
I am an Ironist: http://wikiwand.com/en/Ironism
I am a Rorty stan.
I am an Entropy stan.
Blog: ironick.medium.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ironick
Mastodon: http://mastodon.online/@ironick17
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ironick.bsky.social
TIL A Rorty seminar on 'The Linguistic Turn' was instrumental in the emergence of metaphilosophy as an area of focus in analytic philosophy in the 1960s!
#philosophy
#pragmatism
#metaphilosophy
#PragmatismWeek Day 3
September 26, 2025 at 5:44 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Happy first day of #PragmatismWeek! The last seven days of September have been designated as a week to celebrate the philosophy of pragmatism and pragmatic philosophers of the past and present everywhere.
"Pragmatism Week" refers to an informal, annual event, usually held the last week of September, that involves sharing accessible and non-technical content related to the philosophy of pragmatism, often through a series of tweets on daily themes. The term is most prominently associated with an online campaign led by the user "sluffflux" to promote interest in the philosophical tradition of pragmatism. What is Pragmatism? A philosophical tradition: Pragmatism is a school of philosophy that emphasizes the practical consequences of concepts and ideas, viewing thought as a tool for problem-solving and action. Key concepts: It focuses on practical results, experience, and the effectiveness of ideas in achieving goals. Educational applications: In education, pragmatism is a philosophy focused on practical learning, emphasizing experience and making education relevant to students' lives and future growth. What is "Pragmatism Week"? An online initiative: It is a loosely organized, online initiative rather than a formal, official event. Promotional goal: The aim is to raise awareness and encourage engagement with the philosophical concept of pragmatism. Content focus: Contributions are typically accessible, non-technical pieces designed to inform a small audience about the core ideas of pragmatism. Timing: The event is usually held during the last week of September.
September 25, 2025 at 2:45 AM
ironick.bsky.social
New SEP entry on #Hegel dropped last week! Delighted to see #pragmatism's role (esp #Rorty's!) in the emergence of a post-Kantian (non-metaphysical) view of Hegel:

'[a linking of] Hegel to the pragmatist turn in philosophy, would be made by Richard Rorty'.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
September 23, 2025 at 3:17 PM
ironick.bsky.social
With Grok's assistance, I developed an interesting perspective on the relationship between the Buddhist concepts of Arthakriyā (causal efficacy) and Upāya (skillful means).

tl;dr: From the perspective of Tiantai Buddhism, the two concepts are basically indistinguishable.
#Buddhism
#Tiantai
September 18, 2025 at 2:19 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Deutsch's BoI sparked an epiphany that the philosophy of problem assessment should be as rich as the philosophy of theory assessment (eg Kuhn, McMullin). So I asked ChatGPT to compare the development of the two concepts (see image), and it led me to Laudan's work.
#philosophy
#philosophyofscience
August 28, 2025 at 11:30 PM
ironick.bsky.social
I can't believe I only just stumbled across 'Progress and its problems: Towards a theory of scientific growth' by Larry Laudan. The cover made my jaw drop. It's a near perfect image for my ramifying philosophy of Fruitionism: a co-evolutionary dynamic of problems and solutions.
#philosophy
August 28, 2025 at 11:19 PM
ironick.bsky.social
A converging dialogue* between Peirce and Rorty: "Redescription and the Growth of Meaning: A Dialogue between Peirce and Rorty"
😉
*with help from ChatGPT
Title: Redescription and the Growth of Meaning: A Dialogue between Peirce and Rorty [Scene: A quiet study, shelves lined with books. A globe sits in one corner. Peirce is seated at a writing desk, revising a draft of his manuscript. Rorty enters, notebook in hand.] RORTY: Charles, I’ve long admired your work, but I have to confess, I think we part ways quite sharply. You seem to believe in a final opinion, a convergence on truth, while I think of truth as just the honorific we give to the beliefs we find ourselves unable to give up. PEIRCE: Ah, Mr. Rorty. I’ve read some of your writings with interest—and some dismay. You strike me as too quick to give up on objectivity. If truth is just a compliment we pay to beliefs, what becomes of inquiry? RORTY: I don’t mean to abandon inquiry. I just think it’s time to give up the correspondence theory of truth. We don’t need to think of inquiry as moving toward some metaphysical finality. Instead, inquiry is a process of making ourselves more comfortable with each other—of redescribing our world in ways that reduce cruelty and increase solidarity. PEIRCE: Hm. You place a great deal of weight on solidarity, I see. But tell me, where do your redescriptions come from? Is there no constraint from the world itself? RORTY: Of course the world pushes back. I don’t deny that. But the way we talk about the world, the vocabularies we use, are human creations. We’re not discovering the structure of reality; we’re inventing ways of coping with it—linguistically, socially, politically. PEIRCE: I don’t entirely disagree. In fact, your notion of redescription reminds me of something I once called "überous musement"—a free, playful form of speculation not governed by utility. It is in such musement that new concepts emerge, which may later find their place in logical inquiry. RORTY: That’s fascinating. It sounds quite close to what I call irony: the continual readiness to redescribe oneself and one’s beliefs. But then, don’t you ultim…
August 5, 2025 at 2:32 PM
ironick.bsky.social
I'm flabbergasted to find no discussion of what is arguably one of Rorty's most powerful & revealing admissions:
"I have been trying to show how Darwinism, utilitarianism and pragmatism conspired to exalt plurality over unity."

The *exaltation* of pluralism over unity. WOW!
#Rorty
#Pluralism
So far I have been trying to show how Darwinism, utilitarianism and pragmatism conspired to exalt plurality over unity - how the dissolution of the traditional theologicometaphysical world picture helped the European intellectuals drop the idea of the One True Account of Row Things Really Are. The new social hopes which filled the nineteenth century helped them accomplish this transvaluation of traditional philosophical values, and the resulting philosophical pluralism reinforced the sense that a perfected society would make possible ever-proliferating human diversity.
June 24, 2025 at 10:54 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Seng Zhao: Buddha’s omniscience is "identical to his non-knowing...in not regarding anything as right or true, there is nothing regarded as wrong or false. The Buddha, unlike God, makes no final “judgments,” either in the cognitive or...moral sense ([or] eschatological sense)."
#Buddhism
#Religion
The upshot for Seng Zhao is simply all possible being is nondichotomous with nondichotomous awareness, and, when stripped of the dichotomization falsely attributed to it by so-called “knowing,” all of it is the allowing of both every proposition and its contrary to be true. Reality is ambiguously ambiguous awareness. Ambiguous awareness is ambiguously all reality. All reality is the ambiguity of the sage’s non-knowing, which is his omniscience. As he says, “Because there are no knowables to the sage, there is nothing unknown to him”: there simply are no bivalent truths, no facts of the matter about things, no “judgments” are to be had about things. This not only doesn’t obstruct all judgments from appearing, it is also what allows any judgment to appear and also for its contrary to appear: this is the increased sensitivity of awareness that goes with perceiving all appearances simply as appearances, without any judgment about their truth or falsity: allowing all and any to appear just as they appear. This is what Seng Zhao means by the Buddha’s omniscience being identical to his nonknowing, which is just his non-clinging, conceived as an increased capacity of awareness. Hence in not regarding anything as right or true, there is nothing regarded as wrong or false. The Buddha, unlike God, makes no final “judgments,” either in the cognitive or in the moral sense (let alone the eschatological sense).
April 14, 2025 at 3:52 PM
ironick.bsky.social
It struck me reading this that the supposedly miserable exclamation "it doesn't get worse than this" can be an expression of hope, and the supposedly joyous "it doesn't get any better than this" can be an expression of despair.
#hope
#despair
#philosophy
Both despair and presumption pretend to possess a kind of certainty that is metaphysically incompatible with creaturely being as being in statu viatoris—whether it is the certainty of “this cannot get any better!” or the certainty of “this cannot get any worse!”
April 9, 2025 at 4:19 PM
ironick.bsky.social
(Fruitless) Conversation stopper: X is (not) true.
(Fruitful) Conversation starter / catalyst: In what senses / contexts / ways is X true and in what not true?
'What Does the LNC Tell Us, If Anything? Paradox, Parameterization, and Truth in Tiantai Buddhism'
- Brook Ziporyn
#Buddhism
#Philosophy
January 28, 2025 at 6:32 PM
ironick.bsky.social
I agree it's odd. I reduce the oddness by interpreting the phrase as "[Greatly] hoping against [little] hope". Similarly, I interpret another oddity, "hoping without hope" as "hoping [a little] without [great] hope". See 'How to theorize about Hope'.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
January 27, 2025 at 3:43 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Wait. What?

@graeters.bsky.social's Skyline-Chili spiced ice cream?!?

OMFG! Shut up and take my money now!
www.graeters.com/skyline-ice-...
January 24, 2025 at 5:30 PM
ironick.bsky.social
'Philosophy is what is left over after one has bracketed both common sense and all the various expert cultures.'
- Ricard Rorty

(Rorty has so many bangers, I'm thinking of creating a 365 Days of Rorty Quotes Calendar.)
#Rorty
#Philosophy
#Pragmatism
January 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM
ironick.bsky.social
TIL William James regarded the non-philosophically minded as deplorables😉:
'the practical, conventionally thinking man, to whom...nothing has true seriousness but personal interests & whose dry earnestness in those is only excelled by that of the brute'
From 'Chauncey Wright'
#Pragmatism
#Philosophy
January 10, 2025 at 6:48 PM
ironick.bsky.social
I feel seen.
January 10, 2025 at 1:11 PM
ironick.bsky.social
'The nat­ural tendency of professionalization and academicization is to favor a talent for analysis and problem-solving over imagi­nation, to replace enthusiasm with dry, sardonic knowing­ness.'
- #Rorty
#Pragmatism
#Philosophy
January 6, 2025 at 10:04 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Rorty's political prescience on display again:
"Nowadays nobody even bothers to back up opposition to liberal reforms with argument."
- 'The Professor and the Prophet'
#Philosophy
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
December 9, 2024 at 11:14 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Yep.
#SpotifyWrap
open.spotify.com/wrapped/shar...
December 5, 2024 at 1:56 PM
ironick.bsky.social
'The creation and curation of all things worthy: Inspiration as vital force in persons and cultures'
By Todd Thrash

Thrash's psychological framework of inspiration is transforming my nascent philosophy of Fruitionism. (I'm almost tempted to rename it Inspirationism!)
December 5, 2024 at 4:03 AM
ironick.bsky.social
The evolution of inspiration:
Inspired by Gods.
Inspired by God.
Inspired by Reason.
Inspired by Imagination.
Inspired by Inspiration.
The Fates Gathering in the Stars, 1887 Elihu Vedder
November 28, 2024 at 9:46 PM
ironick.bsky.social
Tired: Do not block the way of inquiry.
Wired: Do not block the way of inspiration.
November 27, 2024 at 5:20 PM
ironick.bsky.social
It's important to remember that Rorty's starting point was Hegel, which led him BACK to Dewey..

"For quite a while after I read Hegel, I thought that the two greatest achievements of the species to which I belonged were The Phenomenology of Spirit and Remembrance of Things Past.."
November 26, 2024 at 5:16 PM
ironick.bsky.social
According to ediphy.org, these are the top 10 most mentioned philosophers in the ~20th century American academic philosophy journals it tracks.

Bertrand Russell seems to only one to have faded substantially.
Philosopher ID Philosopher Standard Name Gender Birth Year # Mentions P:8041 Immanuel Kant male 1724 36146 P:6972 Aristotle male -383 27132 P:6971 Plato male -427 26021 P:7066 David Hume male 1711 20968 P:664 Bertrand Russell male 1872 16518 P:7732 René Descartes male 1596 14313 P:7733 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel male 1770 14277 P:6973 Socrates male -468 11989 P:4321 Ludwig Wittgenstein male 1889 11625 P:6628 Willard Van Orman Quine male 1908 11554 Showing 1 to 10 of 10,276 entries « ‹ 1 2 3 4 5 … 1,028 › »
November 20, 2024 at 3:24 PM
ironick.bsky.social
"Only within the scaffolding of these truths [utter annihilation of heat death], only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation...be safely built."

How can unyielding despair be a foundation for unyielding inspiration?

I think I've found a way.
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” ― Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic including A Free Man's Worship
November 17, 2024 at 3:48 PM