3

since this blog is supposed to help me improve my writing, i thought i'd rest that cryptic style i'd been hiding behind for the last few posts and really settle in ...

its 3'am and my situation is really terrible. i have sooo many things to do and time is beginning to run out. the biggest indication of this is that it is sunday, the work day for the slacker. and i have a head start at 3'am (or a lagging finish, since i started all my work last friday!).

the most challenging item on my to-do list currently is to write a paper juxtaposing Ayer and Mackie and their views on ethical (non-)cognitivism. i like Ayer but find that Mackie's style of arguing isn't as straightforward. what's difficult is that the two articles (one from each) i have to read are defending different points.

see:

my excerpt from Ayer has a thesis of ethical concepts are pseudo concepts, because making value judgements in ethics is the equivalent of expressing non-cognitive emotion.

my excerpt from Mackie has a thesis that objective moral values do not exist, but society has a deeply ingrained belief that they do.

my excerpt from Ayer matches the subject of my paper, but as you can see, i'm going to have to do a lot of twisting (use a lot of mind energy to stretch the relevance) for Mackie's arguments to fit the subject. As far as i can tell, Mackie's viewpoint on (non-)cognitivism is that moral judgements have cognitive meaning, but are false. why does he believe they have meaning? because they have more than communicative function (as opposed to Ayer's 'evincing emotions' fxn)? because they are full-bodied, fully developed concepts with only the flaw of being false (like unicorns)?

oh i forgot to mention the most prevalent thing in light of all this.

i have a pounding headache!!

going to refresh my tea with hot water, cook up some toast, and start anew.

p.s. since i got into UCLA, thought i'd treat myself to a super gorgeously luxuriously utterly impractical bag. (get to know me and you'll soon learn this is the type of thing i love the most. super gorgeously luxuriously utterly impractical things, i.e. cream lambskin leather. i should come up with a more succinct title for this category, or an acronym or something, but i can't be bothered at the moment. hello didn't i just tell you i'm a v. serious philosophy student who juxtaposes viewpoints on non-cognitivism?) what should i get? currently in contention are balenciaga work (maybe city if i'm too poor), vintage chanel (less ostentatious than current styles), some chloe or tod's...

p.p.s. oh god just realized excessive usage of parentheses. do i speak in footnotes? how do i ever get to any of my points? also, i'm enjoying the way i managed to discuss both something very scholarly and very materialistic in the same post. go me!

before and after

that was the before; here's the after

when a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. (jonathan swift, "thoughts on various subjects, moral and diverting")

i'm not in any way asserting that i am a genius, nor on the track to become one. i engage in all sorts of dumb practices like forgetting to take my keys and arriving home after 3am, or exiting a parking lot through the path that takes me the longest (and only realizing i've done so once i'm too far gone -- ah, well. next time i'll remember to go out the other way.)

i just wanted to reference this quote (from the beginning page of my A Confederacy of Dunces) because lately, my major has been eliciting the most disapproving, condescending, and dismissive reactions. as soon as (ignorant) people hear me say "philosophy," i can visually observe a multitude of connotations, generalizations, and assumptions start clamoring inside their heads...

anyway, this is me in poses with lots of leg creativity. hahaha. thats the effect black leggings have on you. i really live in these heel-out leggings, because i have this funny idea that the way they make my legs look thinner + are black makes me look like a spider. and i weirdly really like that, so i have like 8 pairs. hahaha.

btw i'm a UCLA bruin now. see photos. the first three are me as an arachnid without an identity. the second two are those in which i, now blessed with a UCLA permanent ID, am representin'.