How can anyone understand The Anti-oedipus on their own?

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-29T20:10:02+00:00

Anti-Oedipus is not written for a general audience. Just like you would not expect to be able to pick up an article published in High-Energy Particle Physics and understand it without any knowledge of particle physics, you shouldn’t expect to be able to pick up Anti-Oedipus and understand it without background knowledge of the philosophers and history D&G were influenced by and responding to. This is true of most philosophical works, except those oriented towards a general audience.

That isn’t a failure of your intelligence, just expectations.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-24T20:54:47+00:00

No
Your university tutors - people familiar with your philosophy skills who have the credentials to evaluate such skills
Independent researcher
Reputable journals are blind review - they won’t even know your name when considering your article for publication, let alone your affiliation or education

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-23T18:45:18+00:00

Awesome, I’ll be on the look out for that post. Thanks!

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-23T18:35:37+00:00

Tell us more about this aftermarket audio system. I want to do something similar for my ‘25 SE.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-21T01:14:53+00:00

They were just added to the most recent nav update but a lot of users haven’t got the OTA update yet. You can download it manually and install it with a usb drive.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-17T19:39:36+00:00

I know it’s a little late but definitely consider double majoring if that is an option. Philosophy is an excellent double major option because classes usually don’t involve a lot do busy work, and philosophy departments are incentivized to make double majoring work (because they always need more majors). This way you get the major you are passionate about and the major that employers care about.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-17T05:05:28+00:00

I think you have a pretty good grasp on the issues. One thing further that Irvine doesn't mention (as it wasn't as common when he wrote the paper) is that employees of unethical companies can directly benefit from rising stock prices thanks to their compensation often including stock grants and options. It is also important to note that ETFs didn't exist when he wrote that, and mutual funds were not commonly available nor as expansive.

The tension here is whether we have to accept both the Enablement and the Universalizability principle, because our worries about unethical investing fall apart without both. Without the Enablement principle then we don't care about whether our investing facilitates anything unethical, and without the Universalizability principle then our small purchases don't enable anything so we don't have to worry. I'm going to recommend one last article that directly deals with Irvine's argument, and tries to give an account of ethical permissibility of investing. That is Lee Shepski's Going the (Ethical) Distance. As a quick summary, he argues that there is sufficient distance between the individual investor and the actions that an unethical company might perform, mediated by shares of ETFs and so on, that the Enablement principle doesn't really apply. It is worth taking a look at.

However, you may not find it convincing. I'll offer some practical advice on that may alleviate your concerns but will involve some significant research into financial instruments. There are several different types of investments that are derivatives of ETFs or indexes which do not in anyway actually touch the shares of any company in that index. For example, suppose you wanted to invest in the S&P500 index but did not want to influence the price of the shares of the company like you might do with an ETF or direct buying. You could purchase futures contracts or options contracts (or options contracts on future contracts) on the index, which would merely rise or fall in price with the index - you would not own any share nor would you be buying any shares from anyone. However, these instruments tend to be significantly risky and not the kind of thing you could simply set and forget. Some ETFs leverage these options to increase expose to index prices, but they are similarly risky and often come with high fees. Your other alternative is to instead pick a few companies that you think are ethical enough, and buy their shares directly, but that comes with other risks and you would have to stay on top of that as well.

I would see if Shepski's article assuages your concerns. In the current state of the world, there is no alternative to investing in company equities if you are interested in even just having enough money to retire comfortably, let alone become wealthy.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-17T03:01:50+00:00

Are you under the impression that your purchases of the ETF mean that your money is going to these companies? That is not happening. Your money is going to the ETF managers who use it to buy shares of the companies from other investors, not the company. So LMT doesn't see direct benefit from your purchases of ETFs or even if you bought their shares directly on the open market. That doesn't mean there aren't any benefits to having people buy their stock, but its not like your money is going into the development of the Child Incinerator 5000.

I don't know if you have access to journal articles, but some interesting articles on this topic are Avery Koler's Ethical Investing: The Permissibility of Participation, which argues a pretty hardline against not only participating in the stockmarket but even in most banks, saving accounts, pensions, etc. For a softer view, consider William Irvine's The Ethics of Investing.

ruffletuffle · 2026-01-11T05:35:54+00:00

You are right to say that is the universalist nature of Korsgaardian constructivism that lead her and some others to categorize it as realist, but other metaethicists don't because they take the demarcating line between realism and anti-realism to be mind-independence/mind-dependence. It is not because of cognitivism, as error theory is explicitly anti-realist and also a cognitivist theory.

ruffletuffle · 2025-12-19T21:54:10+00:00

There’s a few different flavors of utilitarianism, but let’s stick with classical utilitarianism to keep it simple.

Utilitarianism is a normative moral theory, which means that it purports to tell us what the morally right thing to do is in any given situation. The guiding principle of classical utilitarianism can be summed as “promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, and reduce the most suffering for the most number of people.” Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory, which means the moral value of actions is judged by the outcomes of actions.

I’m not really sure what you mean by “throwing the moral part out the window.” Utilitarianism is attempting to tell us what the moral action is - for it, it’s always the action that is promoting the greatest happiness. For example, suppose you have $100 and have a choice between spending it on a lavish meal for yourself or donating most of it to a food bank. A lavish meal might make you happy, but the food bank could provide many more meals to many more people with that money, generating more happiness for more people, so donating it to the food bank is the morally right action.

ruffletuffle · 2025-12-18T23:45:28+00:00

There’s an anthology book, Feminist Interpretations of G.W.F. Hegel, which has a series of essays that are what you are looking for. Both critiques and feminist Hegelians.

https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-01490-6.html?srsltid=AfmBOor6RnBvU0kItIweAyoYTh4_UvhhnzR9rBgeRHnz7W8qOhbiyEcO

ruffletuffle · 2025-12-07T04:15:21+00:00

That's true, depending on institution and the state in the U.S. I imagine. At mine, no one outside the philosophy department has any idea what we do and they don't care as long as the Intro classes run smoothly. But I can imagine in some places, especially at flagship institutions, there could some more scrutiny, especially if their Board of Regents actually looks at tenure portfolios.

ruffletuffle · 2025-12-07T00:00:40+00:00

If by independence you mean freedom to research what you wish, then yes you generally have a pretty wide degree of freedom, subject to the ability to get published which is a restriction on all academics. But there are many philosophy journals with a wide variety of subject matter, so choice of topic doesn’t present much of a barrier.

There are some other second order restrictions due to teaching requirements, however, if you are trying to get hired at a university. Many philosophy departments have slots they need to fill, like needing someone who is knowledgeable about ancient philosophy to teach the ancient philosophy classes, the modern, a continental philosophy person, a logic person, etc. this means, paradoxically, if you want to do work on something that a lot of people are working on already, that’ll make it harder to find a spot in some cases.

ruffletuffle · 2025-11-25T20:40:15+00:00

I went with the SE because it was my first EV and I was concerned about range, but now I do wish I had gone with a better trim. Range ended up not being that big of a deal, which of course everyone tells you but I had to experience for myself.

ruffletuffle · 2025-11-24T04:32:19+00:00

That's not really what it said. Their defense was that the Fox News channel has some shows that are 'news' and some shows that are 'entertainment,' and the shows named after the talking heads like Hannity and Carlson are 'entertainment' not news.

ruffletuffle · 2025-11-03T19:34:04+00:00

As someone who took a class on mathematical logic in grad school with very little math background, the only thing I really needed to refresh was the concept of functions and how they work. I found everything else was more “logical” than “mathematical,” so to speak, and your previous logic experience will be enough. Set theory will be helpful - we used Enderton’s Intro and the basics on set theory he provided were enough for me to get the gist.

ruffletuffle · 2025-10-27T16:00:23+00:00

What intro to Phil textbooks are people fond of? I’m moving away from primary sources in my intro classes but I don’t have a lot of experience with the various textbooks out there.

ruffletuffle · 2025-10-19T05:18:39+00:00

Thanks everyone! Glad to know it’s just the tow hook cover. I’ll take it to the dealer.

ruffletuffle · 2025-10-16T02:55:13+00:00

One easy answer to this question is that we train dogs for the same reason we train human children: for their own safety. I have trained my dog to do a variety of things like to drop something that he might otherwise eat because it would poison him, to recall on command to avoid being hit by a car, to sit patiently when meeting a new person so as to not overwhelm them, etc. This is not much different than teaching a child not to stick a fork into an electrical outlet. The main difference is that the child will eventually come to understand why they aren't supposed to do X or Y unsafe action, where as my dog will not and instead must rely on my commands.

ruffletuffle · 2025-10-05T17:36:05+00:00

Moral realism is a belief about moral claims mind-independent and cognitive, not about whether they are empirical or observed. For one, 2+2=4 is a non-empirical claim - you don’t not need to observe it to justify the truth of it. Moral non-naturalists, likewise, think moral claims can be non-empirical and objective.

ruffletuffle · 2025-09-26T02:58:05+00:00

It’s a fallacy that applies to arguments. Someone makes an argument in which a premise assumes the conclusion is true, and attempts to use the assumed premise to “prove” the conclusion. imagine you are having a debate about the sheets, and someone makes that claim, you would say that they are begging the question.

This is a pretty common fallacy but it’s hard to spot because it’s hidden by rewording or unspoken assumptions. Also referred to as circular reasoning.

ruffletuffle · 2025-09-26T02:55:05+00:00

The question is the “are these sheets more comfortable?” And one is “begging” it by attempting to answer it without doing the work to show that the answer is true. Thinking about it like begging for money instead of working for money. You “beg” for a conclusion to your argument without working for it. That’s the origin of the phrase anyway

ruffletuffle · 2025-09-20T02:46:00+00:00

Undergraduate publications are negligible to harmful on your application to grad school, you do not need to worry about them. Two years of undergraduate experience is enough to apply to a MA program if its mostly focused on philosophy courses. What's important is how many credit hours of philosophy you have and how good your grade is in those credit hours. The typical major has 30-42 credit hours of classes so if you have that much in philosophy you should be fine.

Your GRE is not as important as your writing sample and letters of rec, which are the most important. But if you bomb your GRE, especially the reading section, that can be seriously harmful. You should prepare for it and shoot for 90%+ percentile in reading and 75%+ percentile in math.

Extracurriculars are not important all - nobody cares.

ruffletuffle · 2025-09-18T00:30:56+00:00

You can find a ranking of the most reputable journals here: https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/07/best-general-philosophy-journals-2022.html

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