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#philosophyoflanguage

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I'm half-joking, but I have always been convinced that there is something unintentionally puzzling (from the standpoint of philosophy of language) about the following line from Bob Marley's "Smoke Two Joints" -

"I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, and then I smoke two more"

Did Marley smoke four total joints, referencing the latter two twice? Or did he smoke six total joints? It turns on what point of time the "then" refers back to.

Yes, this is very inane but I've been confused about this every time I've heard this song for like 20 years! I need a linguist or philosopher of language to sort this out for me.

Moon of Enlightenment, from the series Twelve Aspects of the Moon

About 1885-92

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
Japanese, 1839–1892

Art Institute of Chicago

>>"Big Belly" or "Cloth Bag" Budai, known as Hōtei in Japan, was a tenth-century monk who wandered around Siming (modern Ningbo) in China with his walking staff, begging for alms to place in his sack. Eccentric and given to puzzling pronouncements, he was thought to be an earthly incarnation of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. Hōtei was a favorite subject in Zen ink painting. Easily recognizable, he personified the pure nature and intuitive experience necessary for enlightenment. Hōtei points at the cloud to teach us that truth cannot be rationally taught. << (NY Metropolitan Museum of Art)

As well as being struck by the composition, are you reminded of some fool that you know?

If you really want to dig deep into the philosophy here:

nhuir.nhu.edu.tw/retrieve/5534

#Art #JapaneseArt #TsukiokaYoshitosh #Hotei
#Zen #Chan #BuddhistPhilosophy #PhilosophyOfLanguage

Continued thread

In other words, translation is easier among concepts which more readily hook onto the actual world, not just the exclusively human cultural world. Entertaining a diversity of thought in this way is thus tremendously helpful in separating worldly wheat from cultural chaff.

Continued thread

Eric Mandelbaum won the #SPP2023 Stanton Prize. 🎉

Eric thought Noam Chomsky might attend. So Eric's prize talk was about #propaganda: if it’s getting worse and the (bounded) rationality of our response to it.



It was very Eric—i.e., very Fodorian and very funny.

Chaz Firestone’s introduction of Eric was immaculate (ericmandelbaum.com/talks).

Eric’s work (including recent ventures into empirical research) is on gScholar: scholar.google.com/citations?u