The philosophy thread!!!!

[Alan]

Originally Posted by BlacKat

Nitpick: It's actually possible to draw some conclusions about Socrates's views versus Plato's views based on differences between Plato's early and later writings.

No one who would say "Plato was better than Socrates" or a similar sentence will know enough about them to distinguish which books are mainly Socrates and which books are mainly Plato. Believe me, just wait a couple of years and you'll find enough people trying to impress you by nameplacing Plato that you'll not only understand my anger, but be in the exact same position of hate.

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Alan

No one who would say "Plato was better than Socrates" or a similar sentence will know enough about them to distinguish which books are mainly Socrates and which books are mainly Plato. Believe me, just wait a couple of years and you'll find enough people trying to impress you by nameplacing Plato that you'll not only understand my anger, but be in the exact same position of hate.

That reminds me of the Benezet test they give to see if people can tell Shakespeare's work from Edward de Vere(who is suspected of being the real Shakespeare).

[BlacKat]

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

We see what we want to see when it suits our purposes.

If someone intimidates us, we naturally feel threatened by the things they may say and look for things to dislike about them. We may even relate two things that have nothing to do with each other to make them look bad.

A real correlation would be more like cause/effect.

Ah, but you are aware that correlation does not equal causation? We draw a lot of cause/effect conclusions from single instances. What's the difference between "I shot my neighbor and then my dog got ran over, therefore karma was trying to get me" and "I was out in the heat all day and then I felt sick the next day, therefore I got sick from the heat"?

Originally Posted by Alan

No one who would say "Plato was better than Socrates" or a similar sentence will know enough about them to distinguish which books are mainly Socrates and which books are mainly Plato. Believe me, just wait a couple of years and you'll find enough people trying to impress you by nameplacing Plato that you'll not only understand my anger, but be in the exact same position of hate.

Somehow I'm not all that surprised. Mostly I'm not in a position where many people are trying to impress me.

[Grausamkeit]

The difference is that the sun or heat can give you heatstroke, which is a direct correlation. It has been proven by science that being out in the heat without the proper precautions is bad for people and can hurt or even kill us in extreme cases.

The karma one is just because people are raised to believe that if they do something bad 'god/s' will punish them. It's kind of like those orb pictures that people swear are ghosts in there photos, but they're actually dust on the film negatives. When they get printed people see these tiny specks of dust that are blown up and look weird in their photos and think 'ghost'. Because ghosts trying to get into people pictures is perfectly logical.... I worked in a photo lab for a couple of years.

[BlacKat]

Except most of us also aren't capable of following the science behind what we believe - we believe in science because it's what we're taught. Can we really explain the difference between science and pseudoscience? For that matter, can we explain why we expect that just because the sun has risen every day for the past few centuries, it will rise tomorrow?

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

The difference is that the sun or heat can give you heatstroke, which is a direct correlation. It has been proven by science that being out in the heat without the proper precautions is bad for people and can hurt or even kill us in extreme cases.

The karma one is just because people are raised to believe that if they do something bad 'god/s' will punish them. It's kind of like those orb pictures that people swear are ghosts in there photos, but they're actually dust on the film negatives. When they get printed people see these tiny specks of dust that are blown up and look weird in their photos and think 'ghost'. Because ghosts trying to get into people pictures is perfectly logical.... I worked in a photo lab for a couple of years.

Just to nitpick, even in Hinduism karma isn't punishment from the gods, at least not in all theories. In their mythology, gods can be subject to karma as well. Karma simply is often just cause and effect but has a moral dimension; if I punched you I could predict you would punish me, probably by punching me back, and that would be the result of my karma. There is free will, though, if you chose to turn the other cheek, you've broken the bad karma between us.

Then the spiritual element comes into it, and its less logical. "I have this misfortune or I was born into this caste, I must have created bad karma in my past life."

[Alan]

Originally Posted by BlacKat

Except most of us also aren't capable of following the science behind what we believe - we believe in science because it's what we're taught. Can we really explain the difference between science and pseudoscience? For that matter, can we explain why we expect that just because the sun has risen every day for the past few centuries, it will rise tomorrow?

Hah, you're sounded very postmodernist, I was expecting you to be on the other side of the science wars.

[Grausamkeit]

How can people not be capable of following the science behind what they believe? If you're talking about literal science(gravity, astronomy, e=mc2) it would be illogical not to believe it. Science can be proven, beliefs cannot.

[Alan]

Science cannot be entirely proven, that's a part intrinsic in modern science, remember.
But beside the point of falsifiability, I believe her point is that science and scientific findings cannot be proven because causality and inference themselves cannot be proven, as demonstrated by David Hume.

[vindicatedxjin]

Post modernizzmmmm

[Saya]

Originally Posted by vindicatedxjin

Post modernizzmmmm

Late modernity!

[vindicatedxjin]

Delayed neoteric!!!!!!!

[BlacKat]

Yes, Alan has it right in the primary point. Causality itself is unprovable. For that matter, there are a lot of other parts of the methodology of science that tend to rely on unproven assumptions - a good example being what are considered relevant variables in an experiment.

I'm a bit of an oddity when it comes to science - I accept it as generally valid, but I also see it as intrinsically limited by our preconceived notions. Hence much of modern psychology.

[HumanePain]

OK, I'll bite:

Plato had it backwards: things are not copies of forms, and we do not hold objects we view in comparison to some "ideal" form.

He mistook language for forms. Here is my theory of why he is mistaken and how the "shared ideal" really works:

Plato sees and says "beautiful flower".
Humane sees a different flower and says "beautiful flower".

Now according to Plato, we both are comparing the flowers we see with an ideal form of flower. But he was tricked by the fact that we both simply say "beautiful flower" as an abbreviated communication so we can express something efficiently.

Plato was looking at a dandelion, and Humane was looking at a sunflower.
Two completely looking flowers, but carelessly lumped together by an abbreviated communication. Because we both agree that there are "beautiful flowers" it should not be assumed that we are both using the same form as a standard for beautiful because if we do not abbreviate communication, then we discover that we are looking at two completely different things. Now watch the conversation:

Plato says "a somewhat flat plant with green leaves parallel to the ground with a thin 2 inch tall stem supporting a flower with yellow petals and yellow inside".

Humane says "a very tall 5 foot vertical plant with a thick stem supporting leaves and a flower at top with yellow petals and a black-brown center".

Now, thanks to the use of detailed and non-abbreviated communication we see that we are using what Plato would call different forms, when actually we are now using sufficient detail such that we see they are not copies of a common pure form of beautiful flower.

The words follow the actual objects, not the other way around as Plato describes (objects as copies of forms).

The same may be said of a beautiful woman etc.

Plato had it backwards.

[Angelic Dissonance2]

I find it very difficult to call someone legitimately 'ugly'. I find some attractive element in almost whomever I look at, perhaps everyone. Just because my eye is not particularly drawn to them doesn't make them unattractive, per se; but even if I was tempted to say so I would wonder if there could seriously be a world where no one at all found that person attractive. SOMEONE almost definately will, at least to some extent.

I once read a quote: "Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love." I found it to be Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and I agree with this qoute greatly. The pre-packaged taste of so-called knowledge is the frozen food of life.

[BlacKat]

What interests me though is why these different objects fall under the same abbreviation. There is some reason why a dandelion and a sunflower are both flowers and a squirrel is not. We group things into classes by commonalities - but if you look at our language, we only consider certain commonalities relevant. Same for causation and correlation, really; we have an intrinsic sense of what is and is not relevant that we act on.

[Fruitbat]

spiral dynamics - that's my 2 cents worth.

[CptSternn]

Lifted from another thread but appropriate...

Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Two: One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself
symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in
a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a cosmos of
nothingness.

[HumanePain]

For people who think being a philosophy major isn't much work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpI7-HYaX-k

[HumanePain]

...and this is for those who think that philosophy is boring. It is actually fucking batshit insane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0Uq...eature=related

[BlacKat]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

...and this is for those who think that philosophy is boring. It is actually fucking batshit insane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0Uq...eature=related

I thought "fucking batshit insane" was the philosophers?

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

...and this is for those who think that philosophy is boring. It is actually fucking batshit insane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0Uq...eature=related

Stephen Hawking is awesome. I like how they didn't leave out the fact that a lot of Aristotle's theories were completely wrong or just crazy. In Chaucer's time they actually believed that astrology and zodiac signs had something to do with what ailed you. Makes me chuckle.

Fundamentally, it's a goddamn cat, so get over it! That pretty much sums up my feelings on questioning existence, what it means to be etc. You are here because your parents fucked and the protection didn't work. Or maybe that's just me? As for the meaning of an individual's life, that is for them to decide. We don't come into the world with any prerecorded destiny. We just are and we do what we can with what we have.


Sorry, BlacKat, I'm trying to grasp the 'why do we believe the sun will rise tomorrow' thing from a philosophical standpoint. The only thing I can come up with is that gravity keeps us winging 'round the sun and until it doesn't or there's some logical reason to believe the sun will explode or simply not rise in the morning, then there's no reason to think that it won't. I have a very hard time attempting to think in the abstract. I need something solid to chisel away at to form a decent conclusion.

The Philosopher's Song!

[BlacKat]

Not to mention I threw you a 250 year old problem that doesn't really have a good solution. It's the trick of asking "why?", like a child does. And eventually you reach a point that there is no answer to that question, other than "it just does." The general question is "Why do I believe the rules of the universe will be the same tomorrow as today?" We just do, and we have to believe that to function.

[Alan]

OK I want you to try something. In as concise a way as possible, what would you say is the purpose of philosophy?

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Alan

OK I want you to try something. In as concise a way as possible, what would you say is the purpose of philosophy?

To make people ask questions!