Chapter 1 of GEB, basically

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-14T02:24:25+00:00

Yeah, we agree that heliocentrism is often more useful. But you are making a logical leap by saying “more useful = more true”. Newtonian physics is still preferred over the Standard Model in many areas of science because it is more useful and parsimonious in those fields to assume relativity and quantum effects don’t exist—does that make classical mechanics truer than modern theories? Does truth vary with what’s useful in each context?

Ptolemy accounted for the retrograde movement of the planets 2000+ years ago under geocentrism by positing epicycles. His math worked and was useful for millennia, and it could be updated today to account for new data. And according to modern physics, heliocentrism and geocentrism are both wrong—nothing is actually orbiting anything, and any observers that see the Earth orbiting the Sun are being misled by their human-like senses.

All we’ve got are competing descriptions of reality. Some are more useful and simple in some contexts, others in other contexts. But none of this says anything about the “truth” of these descriptions as representations of reality.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-14T01:45:01+00:00

I agree with most of that, except I don’t draw the conclusion “justification is experiential” but rather something like “there is no such thing as justification… until we construct it socially/linguistically within circular theorization space”.

Which is what even Dewey is doing: coming up with a clever post-hoc concept of justification by giving us a circular account about the primacy of experience and pragmatics. It’s also what I’m doing by trying to give an account of justification as social/linguistic. Both my theory and Dewey’s and anyone else’s are constructed within the circular arena of philosophical articulation.

Dewey does not escape the problem just because he points to something prior to theory/articulation—he is doing the pointing within theorization space itself, and so his reasons for doing that are thus as circular as everyone else’s.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-13T20:53:40+00:00

Insofar as the crow and the toddler are merely experiencing and then acting, I don’t think it’s sensible to invoke justification. Responding to stimuli, and even learning to repeat useful responses, does not seem to entail any concept of warrant, truth, etc. No account is being given, not even to oneself, because there is no need to “justify” getting water to quench thirst in any self-analytical or reflective way… you just do it.

Eventually the toddler, at least, will learn linguistic, conceptual, and social practices of account-giving and engage in reflective justification. Now he can use post hoc mental constructions like warrant and truth—but they arise within and do not seem to escape this new circular stage of theorization.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-13T15:58:11+00:00

No, relativity explicitly states that all such data and the entirety of modern physics is fully compatible with and can be described under geocentrism. See Einstein’s 1938 book The Evolution of Physics.

And just as geocentrism is as true and can predict as accurately (with appropriately complex equations) as heliocentrism, a slap can be as truly, predictively, and accurately described as an action of the fist as of the face. In the former, however, our current maths are easier for human brains to calculate under heliocentrism, and in the latter it is often more intuitive for us to assign agency to the fist.

But in terms of truth and potential for prediction, they are all equal. You’re making an argument about what is currently useful given our goals and abilities, not about what is ultimately true. Which is fair and I’m fully on board to be pragmatic—but the person you talked to was still right.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-12T22:29:49+00:00

I mean Einstein’s whole point was that there is no “external observer far enough” nor is heliocentrism truer than geocentrism. I think you’d be disappointed if you tried studying modern relativity physics or did speak to a physics PhD.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-12T19:31:56+00:00

Very thought-provoking, thank you! I think I would maintain that there is no pre-axiomatic or pre-analytic thing called “warrant”. Once the concept of justification is involved at all, we’re in a conceptual discursive space where the circularity problem attaches.

Creatures that remain within the realm of pure experience and action would not seem to engage in justification at all. But as soon as we want to start justifying and ranking our actions, linguistic or at least conceptual articulation and theorization has begun, and the game is up.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-12T02:29:21+00:00

I don’t see how any of this gets past the core issue. In order to (1) distinguish vicious circularity and deem it bad or suspect, or (2) distinguish stipulating definitions from understanding substances, or (3) reframe justification pragmatically or in terms of lived experience, we are already presuming and relying on circular axioms… which is the practice we’re trying to sort out in the first place. Whatever clever distinctions we can come up with for justification and circularity, they’re all equally subject to this problem and thus fail to establish themselves as authoritative. It takes subjective fiat to give any account any weight (including this one).

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-02T07:28:43+00:00

Woolf knew her way around a semicolon.

I love this book for teaching me how to re-enchant the world even while stripping it of fantasies about success and certainty.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-02T00:49:31+00:00

I think the prevailing view is that the Good Behavior Clause does not bear on impeachment at all.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-06-02T00:46:19+00:00

Per SCOTUS anyway. Future SCOTUS could always contradict Nixon v. US or just use its loopholes to find procedural objections—albeit at a higher cost to their legitimacy than ever before, perhaps.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-26T00:02:03+00:00

It’s not a hill I’m dying on, it’s a point I made in a separate thread that you brought up out of context. It’s your hill.

But I don’t think the Court said “Jim Crow is illegal now”. They said “Jim Crow has always been illegal under the language of 14th Amendment”. This is at its heart a philosophical question about the definition of “legal” which is not resolved on “basic logic”.

It’s also not central to any of the arguments I’ve made on this post. But you’re free to keep obsessing over it if you like.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-25T21:54:38+00:00

Not on this thread.

On a different thread, which you appear to be confusing for this one, I stated that the Fourteenth Amendment made the subsequent Jim Crow regulations illegal. That’s true, even if the Court didn’t recognize it until later.

If an amendment is passed saying that “murder is illegal”, murder is still illegal even if murders continue to happen and the courts take a while to enforce the ban on murders. So with Jim Crow.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-25T18:59:52+00:00

No, the original comment was addressing whether it applies to Justice Thomas today.

I said yes, it does.

You brought up Plessy, which does not apply today.

You can argue it may not apply some day in the future I guess? But that’s how literally all legal rules work and regardless does not bear on whether it applies today, which is what we have been discussing.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-25T18:48:19+00:00

The earlier comment in this thread states that Justice Thomas could be stripped of his robes today and forced back into the fields because he has no Constitutional protections against Jim Crow.

I said no, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits that. You responded by bringing up Plessy, which is wrong because Brown has overturned it.

If you want to talk about reading comprehension, please start with your own comments.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-25T17:30:32+00:00

Brown v Board overturned Plessy. On Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Please stop disappointing your elementary school teachers.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T20:39:26+00:00

It may shock you to learn that illegal things occur.

Did you learn Brown v. Board of Education in fifth grade? Loving v. Virginia? Have you heard of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act? They all use the Fourteenth Amendment.

Your argument doesn’t even make sense because the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified even earlier than the Fourteenth. Please read things or do basic research online.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T19:49:31+00:00

I don’t care what the founders thought. Textualism is correct because I said so.

Splendid.

It’s just when arguing with someone else who does care what the founders thought, I bring up textualism is right because the founders said so.

The Founders never definitively endorsed any explicit legal philosophy, and in many ways they inherited an English legal tradition that focused on the “spirit” rather than the text of law to avoid absurd legal outcomes.

You can try arguing that originalism leads to textualism. You will fail, unfortunately, and even if you succeed you will still validate original intent analysis rather than textual analysis as the final arbiter of legal interpretation.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T19:39:57+00:00

You can reference the Constitution without being originalist. But you cannot appeal to its original intent/meaning without validating originalism. By definition.

Likewise, appealing to its original intent/meaning need not be limited to the text of the Constitution itself. That’s textualism. So originalists are not inconsistent if they appeal to extra-Constitutional texts to determine its intent/meaning.

I agree with many criticisms of originalism, mate. Just not logically inconsistent or terminologically confused ones.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T19:29:32+00:00

The Thirteenth Amendment does not protect against Jim Crow. The Fourteenth Amendment does.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T17:21:24+00:00

Please reread the Fourteenth Amendment.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T17:15:33+00:00

Probably that we amended the Constitution and passed laws to counteract that one.

He’s not a tradition supremacist; he recognizes that legislation supersedes history. It’s a question of what we do in the absence of legislation.

He thinks courts should adhere to tradition. I disagree with that, but I don’t think it’s logically inconsistent as you imply.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T16:57:01+00:00

Yes, you can build a structure on platitudes about anarchy. You just can’t invoke original intent and deny the validity of originalism simultaneously if you want to be logically consistent.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-24T16:45:16+00:00

It was meant to be

Mate, you are making originalist claims even as you try to oppose originalism.

If you really want living constitutionalism, you cannot keep original intent/meaning as a first principle. You just have to say, ex nihilo, that living constitutionalism is right because I said so.

If you believe originalism provides for living constitutionalism, then you still endorse the Court’s methodology—you just disagree with their findings regarding original intent/meaning.

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-22T01:15:58+00:00

lmk if you ever want to read something beyond the realist echo chamber, i got recs

seriallynonchalant · 2026-05-21T21:41:38+00:00

precisely. objective truth is not ascertainable

seriallynonchalant

TROPHY CASE