the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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While the general rule of thumb is that you should never take professional philosophers very seriously, as their income always is derivative entirely from their closeness to powerful patrons (with exceptions like Socrates who was supposedly a stone mason when not being annoying in public, see the existential comics bit about professional philosophers being less serious about their craft than professional bodybuilders), Peter Singer is someone who you should absolutely not take seriously because all of his work is deeply tied into both the Gates Foundation and Clinton Foundation.
Especially if you actually (unlike most people who skim the cliff's notes, hear it second-hand or just read the title) read his works, particularly his seminal piece in famines, you will realize that all that he ever argues for is utilitarianism, but he has no real qualms around how that maximum utility is achieved (though heaven forbid you mention the achievements of communism), with his personal belief in maximum utility being achieved not by actual wealth redistribution (though he spends the majority of his paper talking about it), but instead (as he slips in right at the end) population control.
That's right. The liberal academic darling of why it is good to give away your money specifically believes that that money shouldn't be re-distributed or that maybe the real value is being exploited, no it's that in order for less poor people to starve, there needs to be less poor people. Liberal academics everyone! Spending 25 pages to only say one sentence!
Truly his nonsense about efficient utilitarianism was made in a Bill Gates lab. I dont even need a direct connection to Gates to believe it because it is tailor made for philanthropic colonialism, developmentalism, white saviorism, and rejecting any kind of orientation toward, or responsibility for, your own immediate community (if you live in the global north).
I think that the story here was that he came from a family of sculptors (see Euthyphro) but that by the time he took up being a gadfly, he was an ascetic who relied on savings and alms. He is usually called a stonemason because we usually think of sculptors, especially Greek sculptors, as working with stone, but this is in large part because the wood sculptures didn't survive.
On the other hand I might be mistaken. Apparently his father helped to build the Parthenon (which is indeed stone). Now I'm trying to figure out where I got the idea of Socrates working with wood. Maybe I'm inverting the "Jesus was a carpenter" (he was actually a stonemason) thing in my head, but I think I read it in the footnotes of a Euthyphro translation or something.
I do not ever recall anyone ever claiming that he worked with wood, though it has been awhile since I read any dialogues (particularly in Greek, I don't mias that). I think there is a small portion of one of the Xenophon dialogues that goes into it abit (as Xenophon generally speaking was less interested in just using Socrates as an ideas mouthpiece than Plato).
I agree whatever his previous profession, by the time he was a public philosopher, he pretty much survived by dinners with patrons and his personal savings, but critically, and probably why he was executed, he eschewed teaching the elite's children for money (which is what Plato would end up doing) preferring to do all of his teaching either outside the city, in the forum, or while drunk at private residences for a pittance.
Edit: Most of the most famous platonic dialogues are him 'in debate' (though if he was actually having these discussions is obviously apocryphal) with the leading 'virtue' teachers who were the premier teachers of the children of Athenian elites, with Plato basically using these dialogues as a method of advertisement to the elites as why his academic style curriculum was better, basically using Socrates as a mouthpiece to point out how full of shit they were.
Okay, the one thing that I do remember with confidence is that he taught anyone but refused payment* [and therefore refused the "teaching" characterization in favor of merely having some discourse and being joined in investigations], and at least in legend he rarely ever so much as set foot outside the city (there is one dialogue, Phaedrus, where he actually does go to outside the city walls and much ado is made of that fact). I think the elite were pissed at him for teaching their children (in public lecturing, etc.), thus "corrupting the youth".
*He probably did accept food, as you suggest
Ah yes! That was it. If I remember correctly, there was also much ado about how he would also teach slaves. I was remembering the Phaedrus dialogue (who could forget the classic, 'Yeah your gay love for that beautiful boy is cool and all, but it will never be as cool as my love for knowledge, also writing is obviously corrupting the youth') but I was forgetting that it was a big deal he was outside the city.
You're right, especially since one of the big ones is Meno, in which Socrates argues for the Reminiscence theory of knowledge (i.e. that knowledge is remembered rather than learned) by educating a slave on math by basically asking the slave leading questions allowing him to come to the answer using his own ability for inference.
I disagree with Socrates-via-Plato on most things, but the dialogues are still very interesting and it reminds me of why I got into philosophy to start with.
Yeah, that was it!
Though, based on the little bit we hear from Xenophon, my personal belief is that actual Socrates would disagree with most of what Socrates-via-Plato would theorize. He seemed far more interested in a theory of criticism than a theory of construction, but that is probably my personal bias talking.
Yeah, I definitely got into philosophy for the history of ideas more than anything else. It is absolutely incredible how long some of these ideological dialogues have historically been going on, and yet somehow people still treat them as if they are novel.
Socrates made his cheddar sculpting stone dicks. no joke he carved the hermae that marked intersections and milestones.
Just because you’re articulate doesn’t mean you’re right, it just makes you a sophist.
Laughs in Sam Harris
The entire excerpt could have been written by him, and yet he’s not vegan (he’s “tried”)
Yeah, always saw him as a sophist. Glad to be validated by someone o7
Singer, in particular, pisses me off for two reasons. The first reason is that people in liberal academia, particularly the humanities, reference him constantly as an example of a 'good honest utilitarian who maybe takes his conclusions abit to far' (as in he advocated for people to only make about 60,000 a year per person circa 2003). This was annoying because being lectured by tenured professors on how much I should be donating when I become a professor is a joke and most people in the world don't make 60,000 a year period, so this 'advice' is practically useless.
And the second reason is what I mentioned before, despite loudly and vocally advocating for him as a 'good person' (and liberal alternative to Marxism), they haven't actually read anything he has written, or if they have they didn't actually read it very closely. What Singer always, inevitably, advocates for is non-profit foundation work as the maximum utility (because then no one is unhappy about losing their money), which maximum ulitility conveniently always centers around whatever projects the billionaires whose tables he is eating from are funding. He isn't even a naive liberal's idea of a liberal, he's a libertarian in liberal's clothing.
When I was younger and more energetic doing my bachelors, I would literally get into shouting matches with 'know-it-all' liberal grad students who would tell me I was naive for advocating for even moderate redistribution (I have since radicalized even further much to my own chagrin), when I would tell them what they were essentially backing full-throated libertarianism with no understanding of even basic LTV by advocating for the Singer approach.
These kinds of discussions (and the potential loan debt) were what convinced me not to pursue a doctorate. If that is the level of academic honesty that is required for success, I didn't want any part of it. The sacrifice just wasn't worth it.
Canada must love him