真理衰变。聪明。替代现实?这和分离现实是一回事吗?在我看来，我们从根本上背离了民主政府和支撑这一理念的原则。
没完没了的争吵已经把这个共和国侵蚀得面目全非了。在我看来，这一切中最令人不安的方面是我们的立法者对其行为后果的漠视。
They appear not to care, so long as they can prevail. We the people do not know what to make of it.
If there is no improvement, sadly, our democracy is finished. Rome, it is said, was not built in a day.
It did not fall in a day either. The parallels are telling.

那么，卢比孔河的跨越是什么意思呢?凯撒自己也不想要。他的将军们。他没有带领军队过河;他被推。我们可能会在最近几位国家首席执行官的行为中观察到类似的情况吗?企业的力量是否在推动我们的民选代表超越民主规范?

Good questions all. I think me unqualified to answer them. But there is something else which has been nagging at my consciousness for maybe twenty five years. I have noticed an erosion of sorts: the steady replacement of matters of substance with matters of form. I contend this is largely to blame for the increasing divisions we witness. Form is mostly about compliance with insructions, edicts, proclamations and the like. It tends to diminish substantial importance, in favor of conformity. I suspect others have seen this. We cannot all have blinders on, can we? Yes, I am a remnant of counter-cultural upheaval. I also remember more free-thinking times, when some of us had the audacity to look for what really mattered.

Move my last comments anywhere you wish. Tell me what you find.

Have had some recent email exchanges with my brother in another country. He is the only surviving blood relative whom I have contact with. We talk about how we grew up, how those,years formed our world views about things; and how different the world is now. We are mostly agreed on notions of democracy: it is just about of bullets. After shooting itself, repeatedly, in the feet. Conflicting ideologies, all espousing the heart and soul of we the people, stumble and fumble;bicker and banter, a lot like religious fanatics, pontificating the 'one true path'. Older brother and I are pretty comfortable in our own skins, so we don't,spend too much time agonizing over others who may not be as well-situated. Seems to me (and, I think to him) that the origins of democracy have been misplaced. This has been an emergent phenomenon. PACs and SPIGs (special interest groups) are partly at fault here, but their influences come not from the people-at-large. I'm pretty sure that, had those people been more attentive; more vigilant; the PACs and SPIGs would have not gained their respective followings.(please note that vigilant is not the same as vigilante---they just look alike.)

It is, of course, more complex that what has been suggested above. I can't write a book here and you would not want to read one. Key phrases are representative democracy and participatory democracy. One must have both---not just one in lieu of the other. The PT blog discusses most of the other errors that have been committed and repeated,over a comparatively short time. I think their repetitive format is intended to track those commissions (and omissions).: we are not, it appears, learning from our mistakes. Dan Dennett must be tearing his hair out. Or else, like me, it is male pattern baldness.

当然，代议制民主也是参与式的，只要代表是投票产生的。在我看来，你似乎触及了代议制和直接民主之间更基本的区别，即公元前五世纪雅典人所拥有的那种民主。然而，我目前对你的评论感兴趣的是4月3日上午8点48分发表的评论，它以“无畏地寻找重要的东西”结束。因为与之相伴的是，一旦你找到了你想要的东西，你必须大胆地表达出对什么才是真正重要的关心。因为这有时会带来报复，就像在《伊利亚特》(II.211-242，可以说是西方文学传统中第一个连续的反对者和反战活动家)早期，特赛斯反对阿伽门农的运动，遭到了奥德修斯的严厉打击(II.265-269);或者一家全国性的电视网络取消了“多纳休”脱口秀节目，因为在2003年3月入侵伊拉克之前，在众多支持战争的观点中，仅仅邀请了一个反战的声音。事实上，即使摘掉国家、教育系统、电视广告或其他无数引导大众思想远离审视社会中最强大因素的行为及其影响的方式所设置的“眼罩”，也会有其代价，有些人会这样做;在这样做的过程中，分享一个更好的信息世界的荣誉，赞扬个人的诚实和智力上的责任。

It is however the main part of your comment which to my mind carries the heaviest burden of philosophical analysis: The ancient distinction between form and substance which you apply in explanation of apparent social and political divisiveness, and goes back at least to Aristotle. For Aristotle substance (ousia) is primarily the bearer of diverse predicates which can not itself be a predicate of anything else; to wit: "this man" (e.g. Socrates); "that horse" (e.g. Bucephallus). (As a technical point, the form or "species" is itself described as a kind of "secondary" substance, since it can be seen as a particular under a larger class or "genus", but I think this can here be put aside.) The form however can also denote serviceability (cf. Metaphysics; books V-VI). An ax's form, for example, is defined primarily by its function (ergon), as one which chops wood. A cardboard ax has an ax's shape (morphe), but not its form.

考虑到这一点，我理解你提到的“实质问题”和“形式问题”是既翔实又模棱两可的:翔实的意思是“问题”=问题及其解决方案;模棱两可，因为“实质与形式”可以被视为不同种类的事项:“实质事项”表示对问题本身的观察和分析;而“形式问题”则是指在现有解决方案中预先设定的路径。因此，人们可以将这种区别解释为“对(实质性)问题的意识”(与感知和诊断有关)和“解决方案的战术形式”(与预期和预后有关);或者说，一方面是问题刺激，另一方面是解决方案形式。

因此，我理解你提到的“侵蚀”是指传统解决方案的自动化对问题知识的侵蚀;通过反应而意识到，通过反应而刺激;通过做而存在;由行动决定思想。在这一点上我完全同意。作为自由的人，所有人都要为自己行为的后果负责。但这些影响可能缺乏足够的事先考虑，因此不能被称为有意为之。我记得最近美国政府的一位首席执行官就被意外提名为该职位的人选，但他所在政党的人仍然对此负有责任。个人被迫不经思考地做出选择，被责任要求(由对她或他自身自由的无条件理解)逼入习惯的群体行为和陈旧的、过时的解决方案的狭隘范围，这些问题的复杂性远远低于我们自己的问题。

The best solution to the problem of erosion of problem-awareness by solution-reaction is therefore to retreat to the problems themselves-- to thought (attempt to understand on one's own account); and to being (accommodating one's understanding to the source of its contents).

In this relation and in deference to the forum, there might emerge from such considerations a justifiable advocacy for the Philosophy Department's return to some form of the position it obtained in earlier periods, whereby one might hear G.T.F.'s themselves beckoning to the heights of their advisors: "thallassa!", "to the sea!".

接下来是我们上一任总统和那个大型社交媒体供应商的传奇故事。我知道我不应该感到惊讶，但是，唉，我真的很惊讶。这个时代的整个片段令人失望和尴尬。但它教会我们把零视为理所当然。看来在可预见的未来，真相会随我们而去。

Hi Philosophy Talk,

I would like to suggest your audience read Glen Greenwald’s most recent post on substack.com (5-9-21) about U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as it directly relates to your last radio broadcast. We hear so much about fake news these days, but it’s almost always in reference to Trump and right wing institutions. Lost in the process have been the blatant attacks on press freedoms by recent Democratic administrations. Our political framing seems strictly confined to discussions about Trump’s over-the-top bad behavior, meanwhile Tartuffe-like characters on the Democratic side are given a pass. It’s easy to appear good next to someone like Trump, but often hiding behind the hair-shirt displays of piety and political correctness of many prominent Democratic politicians you find an ethically compromised, profiteering, self-serving hypocrite (Senator Feinstein comes immediately to mind).

企业民主党人的这种惊人的虚伪，以及他们所代表的精英群体，助长了工人阶级的愤怒。让我们面对现实吧，特朗普可以扮演或扮演一个优秀的领导者——他是一个出色的表演者——但他故意选择无视与社会精英有关的传统道德美德。他的行为就像一头典型的资本主义猪，让民主党的Tartuffes显得“两害相权取其轻”。但这并不是在任何事物的程度或大或小之间的选择，而是在两个不同的、相反的想法之间的选择:善的想法(以塔尔图夫(Tartuffes)为代表)和恶的想法(以特朗普等滑稽的沙文主义人物为代表)。换句话说，我们的两党制使政治选举沦为荒谬的公众诉求;一种面向多数人或暴民(特朗普愤世嫉俗的右翼“民粹主义”)，另一种面向少数人或社会精英(企业专业阶层，在新冠危机期间，他们实际上一直在积极地从社会混乱的条件中获益，即必要的政治指导或领导的缺失)。

By going out of his way to appear ignorant, brutish, and greedy by openly embracing negative stereotypes associated with working-class men of all colors, Trump appeals to those who identify themselves as commoners, our nations largest part. (Think Golden Ratio here; the whole is to the largest part, as the largest part is to the smallest.) This game being played is a mathematical one; divide the American working-class neatly in two, in order to control the whole country. The American working-class, our country’s largest part, is probably the most politically impotent demographic on earth right now (their trucks get bigger as their power diminishes, it’s so pathetic one wants to weep). As the 2014 study by Martin Gilens, a professor of politics at Princeton University, and Benjamin I. Page, a professor at Northwestern University, found, the preferences of average citizens have very little to no effect on policy-making. This is because Americans strangely permit their social elite to accumulate massive amounts of wealth, while simultaneously and irrationally still claiming to represent the interest of society as a whole.

在我们的特朗普与塔尔图夫(Tartuffe)的选举中，两个截然不同的社会阶层的利益同时受到了吸引，多数和少数。一名候选人实际上是一位绅士，但却表现出或假装是平民，另一名是平民，表现出或假装是绅士。我们只被允许看到好的和坏的，而不是不完美的——既不是好的也不是坏的，而是存在于两者之间的一种方式。再想想毕达哥拉斯的黄金比例，再想想苏格拉底是如何描述哲学家的理性和本性的，既不好也不坏，而是介于两者之间。

在我们的两党“两害相权取其轻”的政治制度中，我们所失去的是这样一个事实:不完美和坏或邪恶是截然不同的两件事。一个是物理的东西，另一个是思想的“东西”，一个完整的整体。在“好”的塔尔图夫和“坏”的特朗普之间进行选举选择，根本不是在两个实体——两个活生生的人——之间进行选择，而是在两个观念之间进行选择。但是，我们国家最大的一部分工人阶级是由普通人组成的，他们认为自己既不好也不坏，只是不完美。鉴于我们目前的社会危机状况，我们应该明智地回忆，往往是那些看起来最不完美的人，最终却被证明是最值得信赖和善良的，而恰恰是那些看起来完美的人，我们后来发现他们在私人生活中从事难以形容的犯罪和虐待行为。专业的诡辩家和真正的哲学家都很清楚，表象是会骗人的。

这个节目打动了我。由于迪安没有书要卖，我的期望很低，但他关于如何处理隔离和虚假信息的言论和想法给我留下了深刻的印象。从现在开始，我一定要听他的节目。

My brain took in the very well received John Perry, as well. He is a devil for diversion, but he makes me think. If a Stanford or UC Riverside student paints a swastika, John should call them out. Whether this is disinformation or a symbol, it threatens our Democracy. Reed College students in Portland have been painting circle A s throughout Portland, Oregon, smashing windows while co-opting the masks of CoVid to carry out their antiestablishmentarianism. They, too, threaten our Democracy.

不知怎的，比起学生和年轻人，我更关心那些自私自利的老政客和他们的支持者。我将永远是一个杜威的哲学家，一个对我们面前的任务充满知识和关心的创造性民主的信奉者。

我们不仅需要大声说出那些愿意倾听的人的论点，还需要构建思想市场，这些市场已经形成，以强化超越验证之光的信念。亚利桑那州正在发生的事情让我感到震惊——在没有证件的情况下重新计票。我对选民被剥夺选举权感到不安。不知怎的，我对我们面前的任务有信心。即使不是所有的演员。

Citizens United is the heart of the problem. That needs a fix.

我们也不要在所有这些词中忽略气候。不管是不是假消息，如果我们不开始认真而协调一致的努力，让自己摆脱最近半个世纪执行非常糟糕的局面，一些事实将会自食其果。

Thanks for this show and most all the comments here. I am listening and thinking about your words.

唷!真空袋为HOT。在这件事上我不会偏袒任何一方。我只能说，政治是一种古老的游戏，甚至比民主本身还要古老。总有一些‘锅’说‘水壶’是黑的。这不是种族主义言论。我希望我的观点在过去的六年中已经得到了很好的说明。我今天向山姆·哈里斯组织提到，我听说美国国债达到了270万亿美元。注意这些是很多0。作为一个实际问题，现在谁在白宫并不重要。 Government ( not the CEO) is what government does. Partisanship appears to have gotten worse. But,I don't know if that is right. It may simply be that in the lights of transparency, it is just more obvious.