41–50 of 192 posts
Whence and wherefore, for that matter.
But for anyone unsure of the meanings:
whence - from where (similar to Ger. 'woher')
whither - to where (similar to Ger. 'wohin')
wherefore - why, for what reason
I have a BA in philosophy. Rather than learning the truth, I discovered that almost all philosophers were wrong about almost everything. But in tracing the history of wrongness, wrestling with all the fashions of thinking, you learn to think with precision. That skill continues to help me.
> I have a BA in philosophy. I'm not sure the creds help you here, as undergrad philosophy graduates do not have a reputation for mature insight or depth, perhaps especially those reared in the contemporary climate where curricula are poorly structured, resembling something of a chaotic, superficial buffet that can only produce an incoherent residue of skepticism and relativism. Note that the very claim that almost a…
But besides, it's easy to demonstrate that large numbers of professional philosophers are wrong by looking at the PhilPapers surveys. Mutually incompatible beliefs are held in high numbers, across the board, by many professional philosophers. Both as a group and, to a lesser extent, individuals. They can't all be right, obviously. Is a philosophy BA in a better position to make this observation than the layman? I'd say so.
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The idea that Ayn Rand is a philosopher in any meaningful sense is very debatable. She was an author of fiction, like Terry Pratchett. Lots of people draw philosophical inspiration from Pratchett, but that doesn't make him a philosopher. Sorry to burst some bubble here, but most of the philosophical content of her writings is just rehashed Nietzsche, sometimes near-verbatim. All the while she claimed, she never read…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ummm… have you actually read any other philosophy? Ayn Rands ideas are mostly just watered down and simplified ripoffs of Nietzsche. His ideas were both deeper, and more useful and practical in real life, but, to be blunt, I don’t think she was intelligent enough to fully grasp them. In terms of Ayn Rands own stated goals of affirming life, and taking responsibility, the ancient Stoics had more effective methods to a…
> Ayn Rands ideas are mostly just watered down and simplified ripoffs of Nietzsche. Name one epistemological idea she ripped off from Nietzche.
The only "new" thing she adds is an obsession with thinking rationally, but in a sloppy way that ends up just being nonsense. For someone obsessed with rationality, she never took any time to understand it, e.g. things like Bayesian inference, and reasoning in real life with messy uncertainty and incomplete information. Her type of rationality only works in carefully constructed fake scenarios in books, and ignores both the value of emotions, and the fact that cognitive biases make it a challenge for us to tell apart emotional reasoning from rationality, without practice and specific techniques. She boils it down to a moral choice, when it's actually a skill - a skill she didn't respect or develop in herself. Without these things, "rationality" is usually just a strategy for emotionally manipulating others by making up your own "objective" authority.
Carl Jung is a better example of someone who really understood Nietzsche, and (intentionally and correctly) "ripped off," e.g. borrowed and built upon some of his ideas. He also (unlike Rand) understood that much of our intelligence is connected to our unconscious, and is communicated through emotion... to deny that it to deny most of yourself.
OK, OK, perhaps that’s unfair, but it’s surprising how male the discipline of philosophy is, and how many of the big names had no kids.
The argument is sometimes made that philosophy is the mother of all other academic traditions - once a philosophical idea reaches a sufficient level of promise or maturity, it spins off into its own discipline, as in the speciation of "natural philosophy" into specialized hard sciences. One might even point to psychology (or even more contentiously and partially, computer science) as a 20th century offshoots of philo…
Why should metaphysics be a dead end? Given the facts of observation, what must be true of reality so that such facts can obtain? Metaphysics is tacit within the facts, and a metaphysical stance is tacit in one's claims. Everyone here would agree (except in some artificial, dishonest, rarefied moment of academic detachment from reality) that something cannot both be and not be the case. We could not possibly reason about reality otherwise. But why should logic take this position? Logic is concerned with correct reasoning, but reasoning is about reality. So the justification for the logical principle of contradiction can only be found in the metaphysical, that is, in the reality (or being) that we are reasoning about. It must be that reality (being) is such that it cannot both be and not be. It is the only way to maintain the faithfulness of reason to the real. Any attempt to undermine this correspondence undermines the very attempt to undermine this correspondence, as you would would no doubt be reasoning to such a conclusion. Thus we have the first methodological principle of first philosophy, that our conclusions cannot undermine the very means by which we reason to those conclusions. We are condemned to reason, so we better do it well as there is no other alternative, other than doing it poorly. This rules out skepticism and relativism off the bat (and incidentally, this is why even academic philosophers generally do not take these positions seriously). And ethics, of course, entails metaphysical propositions like anything else.
That these are difficult subjects often executed poorly does not mean they are bullshit as such.
There are many reasons for philosophy’s stagnation, though the dual influences of specialisation and commercialisation, in particular, have turned philosophy into something that scarcely resembles the discipline as it was practised by the likes of Aristotle, Spinoza or Nietzsche. A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and sp…
The argument is sometimes made that philosophy is the mother of all other academic traditions - once a philosophical idea reaches a sufficient level of promise or maturity, it spins off into its own discipline, as in the speciation of "natural philosophy" into specialized hard sciences. One might even point to psychology (or even more contentiously and partially, computer science) as a 20th century offshoots of philo…
I think this is what is missing from most modern philosophy, that makes it so easy to dismiss as useless. In Ancient Greece most of the philosophers were strong people, that had personally done great things, or endured incredible hardships with the aid of their philosophy, and these real world tests stood as evidence of its value.
People strove to become a Stoic because the people they admired most in life had been guided by it.
I think philosophy ideas can and do have the ability to prove their own utility in the real world. To the extent that modern philosophy has mostly failed to do so, is probably because it is either wrong and/or useless, OR is just not developed far enough to get to that point.
There are many reasons for philosophy’s stagnation, though the dual influences of specialisation and commercialisation, in particular, have turned philosophy into something that scarcely resembles the discipline as it was practised by the likes of Aristotle, Spinoza or Nietzsche. A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and sp…
Just curious—why do you lump Jordan Peterson in with Sam Harris, other than that they both write popular nonfiction?
The argument is sometimes made that philosophy is the mother of all other academic traditions - once a philosophical idea reaches a sufficient level of promise or maturity, it spins off into its own discipline, as in the speciation of "natural philosophy" into specialized hard sciences. One might even point to psychology (or even more contentiously and partially, computer science) as a 20th century offshoots of philo…
Sociology is still heavily laden with philosophy. Right now artificial intelligence is informed by things that were called "cognitive science" when they were in the philosophy department.
It may be that one day philosophy is reduced to re-treading metaphysics and ethics as insoluble problems. But we're not there yet, so I don't think it can be rightly called pessimistic just now.