✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor | Slate Star Codex

slatestarcodex.com · 25,252 words · saved by 4 readers

“There is something about practical things that knocks us off our philosophical high horses. Perhaps Heraclitus really thought he couldn’t step in the same river twice. Perhaps he even received tenure for that contribution to philosophy. But suppose some other ancient had claimed to have as much right as Heraclitus did to an ox Heraclitus had bought, on the grounds that since the animal had changed, it wasn’t the same one he had bought and so was up for grabs. Heraclitus would have quickly come up with some ersatz, watered-down version of identity of practical value for dealing with property rights, oxen, lyres, vineyards, and the like. And then he might have wondered if that watered-down vulgar sense of identity might be a considerably more valuable concept than a pure and philosophical sort of identity that nothing has. Okay, but I can think of something worse than that. Imagine Heraclitus as a cattle rustler in the Old West. Every time a rancher catches him at his nefarious business

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading