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Don said: Quetzal knew Pas, the same as any other augur in the Whorl. And given Typhon's preoccupation with his face, it is assumed that he would *not* have given Pas a differen…
23 Jun 2005, 10:39
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Crush said: It depends on what state Pas was in, I suppose. I don't think there was enough left of him to form a coherent person, and what is left is bound up into the persona u…
22 Jun 2005, 23:27
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Crush replied: I was thinking of Silver Silk as the combination of uploaded Silk with the remaining fragments of Pas, but browsing through the archives seems to indicate my memo…
22 Jun 2005, 13:51
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I can think of another way to read this than an implication that the Rajan should go back and meet Typhon. Basically Pas was Typhon, but became something a little different (and …
20 Jun 2005, 15:34
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Most sentimental, perhaps, although it's hard to get a handle on Five's sentimentality with the way he writes; such things may be systematically omitted, from embarrassment or wh…
16 Jun 2005, 10:55
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Klamm could best be described as a priest (perhaps the high priest) of Cybele/Rhea. The same could be said to be true of Green, but Green is also supposedly Attis/Dionysus. Since…
10 Jun 2005, 13:44
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I take that "rise in the last days to take the world" bit with a grain of salt; it seems more like a bit of standard mythology crusted on to whatever the original story was. The …
03 Jun 2005, 10:29
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He also dished out a big juicy quote on the virtues of the writing of Frankowski, which ended up attached as a blurb to one of the worst excuses for a pulp novel I have ever seen…
16 Apr 2005, 01:44
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Maru said: Well, yes, more or less. I think you have the idea here - 'don't even bother trying' being normative, not descriptive. To put it in context, the whole reason Aquinas …
10 Apr 2005, 02:08
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I generally agree with Crush that we have somewhat overdiscussed the Watchmen, but I dug up something interesting from the archives so I thought I'd revisit the topic one more ti…
10 Apr 2005, 01:20
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The error I think you make in the above is that you are thinking of duty in a consequentialist framework - that duty is somehow objectively fulfilled by a set of consequences tha…
09 Apr 2005, 15:25
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Measuring by worlds is at best one step removed from what you're really trying to get at. There are hidden premises required which can at best be contingently true, if that. For …
09 Apr 2005, 00:14
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Maru said: This point has already been discussed a few times in this thread, and what you seem to be implying here seems to be ignoring that. Also, that sentence is... well, jus…
07 Apr 2005, 15:30
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Hold up a second. This interpretation of the Hierodules/Hierogrammates is something that I find to be surprising, which is not to say it's incorrect necessarily, but this was not…
06 Apr 2005, 00:06
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That's actually not a difficult question at all; in fact it *seems* so obvious how he "can say" it that I won't bother to try to answer it. Instead I'll ask a more productive que…
05 Apr 2005, 17:53
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Kieran said: By my reckoning neither is the "true future"; in reality we have no such conveniences to fall back on. If that's the case then you are left with the immediate effec…
02 Apr 2005, 23:35
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Maru said: Well isn't that just it? In any moral system where you're supposed to be guided by consequences (which you can't know in advance) you *always* be wrong. And since res…
02 Apr 2005, 20:46
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To summarize before trying to answer, what I take it you're asking is (shifting the focus from Severian to the Hieros, since on this view Severian is just a tool of the Hieros) w…
02 Apr 2005, 17:08
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You're right, that was a grievous error on my part. The use of "Briah" is confusing no matter which way you look at it. "Briah" is one of a few fairly common spellings for the wo…
28 Mar 2005, 10:27
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There is an implication that this role is only perceived to be with the Hierogrammates/Hierodules because of the particular stage of the cycle that humanity was on at the time. T…
26 Mar 2005, 01:35
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nastler said: Comparisons with passages about Urth in BotSS can only go so far. But here's a comparison for you: People who get sucked into the sort of astral travel that Silkho…
26 Mar 2005, 00:31
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An exchange: In short, YES. It has always seemed surreal to me, from the first time I layed eyes on it. And the more I learned, the stranger its elements became. I have always a…
25 Mar 2005, 23:48
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Maru said: I wasn't trying to imply that this somehow made objective worse than subjective/relative; I tend to think the opposite is true. But both have their own characteristic…
24 Mar 2005, 23:37
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I too thought that was a great reference, and brings into even sharper contrast Severian's choice. And I think Crush's words here are revealing of something, though I am hesitant…
23 Mar 2005, 22:08
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The defenses other people here have made as far as the theme of the Watchmen go are, I think, adequate; but I think that part of the difficulty here is that you take a very diffe…
22 Mar 2005, 11:14
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Well this is another piece that plays into the scheme. Severian was raised with a duty/job, like that of a soldier, which did involve harming people. And this background is an im…
21 Mar 2005, 18:27
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Well, briefly, Iorwerth was astute in bringing up Kierkegaard, and there's another aspect of the case that should be kept in mind for the kind of defenses we are likely to make f…
21 Mar 2005, 12:52
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Before getting to the potentially on-topic part of things, a couple points I feel need to be made: This is a mischaracterization of what "duty" means in a duty-based ethical sys…
20 Mar 2005, 17:13
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I don't even remember the original message being quoted here. Quoting Iorwerth I don't recally Kant having anything to say about how or why anyone *does* follow the categorical …
20 Mar 2005, 02:41
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Maru said: This amounts to an objective test of a subjective goal. Another way of putting the matter is this: There are disconnections at a couple of levels that require certain …
20 Mar 2005, 02:09
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Maru said: No, you misunderstand the problem with the demon. The demon is not "practically impossible", it is logically impossible - any solution to it would require the breakin…
20 Mar 2005, 01:46
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Abaia, Erebus & co. were described as aliens, if you believe the origin story of where they came from. I am not 100% sure it is accurate to call them "cacogens", because "cacogen…
14 Mar 2005, 15:21
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The rest of us have sort of gotten by on reading a couple pages at a time from Amazon's inside the book search, and we share screenshots to paste the thing together. It takes a l…
22 Feb 2005, 23:37
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This isn't as good as a reasoned argument for the subject, but for what it's worth I got the same impression fairly directly - that is, the scenario with Horn/Marrow/Nettle had t…
21 Feb 2005, 15:47
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I mean that you unwittingly included factors (demon outside the universe with ability to interact with things inside the universe) that may not *say* in so many words that "the u…
21 Feb 2005, 11:45
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You also have to watch out for time-traveling Nigerian con-artists. "Your future self says that if you get a letter from the daughter of the Minister of Finance on a certain day,…
18 Feb 2005, 11:05
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Even if you carefully specify that it's completely deterministic, the "careless" aspect stipulates just as firmly that it can't be deterministic. Because the demon is outside the…
15 Feb 2005, 17:30
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Have you ever heard of a particular type of monkey trap? I have never heard anything but anecdotal evidence as to whether it really works.…
14 Feb 2005, 22:53
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There is a problem with any example that drags in Laplace's demon (well, granted, he's meant to be problematic). Probably more than one. But working with what you've hinted at, s…
14 Feb 2005, 22:51
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Hume was actually a compatibilist, and believed in both free will and determinism. You really do choose whether or not to cheat on your spouse (and are thus responsible for that …
07 Feb 2005, 10:47
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I have to agree with Crush, and I'd also point out that even this much is using a very loose (and possibly just wrong) definition of "posing an argument for". In my mind this ent…
05 Feb 2005, 11:44
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I am not sure where Hume's fork comes into play here. The fork, as I understand it, isn't about determinism or randomness. It's a division of types of statements as either analyt…
04 Feb 2005, 18:56
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The one and only argument that might be considered pro-slavery that I can recall from Wolfe offhand is the reminder that *for the ancients* a certain amount slavery was actually …
04 Feb 2005, 17:02
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The information "in" 5HoC is not at all limited to the explicit data (the words written on the page); the vast majority is implicated by the text. Which is not to say that Godel'…
04 Feb 2005, 15:41
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At the risk of terrible boredom, this is a reasonable reference: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/ Analytical behaviorism seems to go just as far back as the other k…
03 Feb 2005, 11:21
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Maru said: You've stipulated they don't have "real consciousness", but the important unknown is: do the aliens have the ability to tell the difference, or if they are uncertain,…
01 Feb 2005, 23:09
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Dan'l said: Well, hold up for a second. Empirical tests aren't necessary, because this is a thought problem, and in thought problems you can actually *stipulate* such things; of…
01 Feb 2005, 17:33
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Well, kinda. If you did make an argument that all language users 'merely' know how to manipulate symbols, then you would need a matching conception of "meaning". (Such theories e…
01 Feb 2005, 16:42
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I don't see the correlation with the price fluctuations of tea in Chinese markets.…
31 Jan 2005, 22:57
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Whoa whoa hold up. I am definitely not Turin. Civet or Chris will do. I'll grant that there are a priori assumptions, although these need not be as extensive as you suggest. In t…
30 Jan 2005, 22:08
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