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I'm intrigued by that phrase you just mentioned. Never heard it before... "Night in which all cows are black"?
by greatquux 8y ago
I'm intrigued by that phrase you just mentioned. Never heard it before... "Night in which all cows are black"?
- rrampage 8y agoThe closest equivalent I have heard of is "At night all cats are grey". [0] [0] - https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/all+cats+are+grey+at+night https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/all+cats+are+grey+at+ni...
- dang 8y agoIt's a phrase of Hegel's that comes from his criticism of romantic idealism. https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hegel-s-preface-to-the-phenomenology-of-spirit/ https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hegel-s-preface-to-the-phenomenolog...
- brownbat 8y agoPossibly a critique of deriving truth from intuition, which leaves no way to critically distinguish between two conflicting ideas, much as you can't distinguish between cows by color at night. Hegel wasn't exactly from the Strunk & White branch of philosophical writing though, so I could easily be wrong. :)
- dang 8y agoBased on refreshing my memory by a couple of cheap web searches, I think that's at least in the ballpark.
- woodandsteel 8y agodang, you say we should avoid those two topics, but don't say what you think it would be productive to discuss instead, much less give any examples yourself. I could be wrong, but perhaps this is because you would rather that modern China simply not be discussed at all.
- dang 8y agoNo, it's that we want to avoid discussions that turn out always the same and always get increasingly vicious.