[HN Gopher] Philosophy as a public service
___________________________________________________________________
Philosophy as a public service
Author : dnetesn
Score : 136 points
Date : 2020-01-02 11:07 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| acephal wrote:
| The article is more about the hoped-for value of mimicking
| survival mechanisms found in nature in order to endure climate
| change rather than explaining "Philosophy as a public service".
|
| I actually think that once you're in the realm of implementation
| you're no longer in the realm of philosophy, which _should_ ,
| IMO, remain abstract. A book like "A Thousand Plateaus", "Being
| and Time", "The Critique of Pure Reason" are philosophical works
| of art but I wouldn't consider the pinecone clock a philosophical
| work of art but rather inspired, and clever, engineering.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| _Sigh_ Why do people here like Deleuze and Guattari? They 're
| intellectual charlatans of the highest caliber.
| rhizome wrote:
| Thanks for the thought-image, bub.
| dean177 wrote:
| Care to explain why you think that?
| ukj wrote:
| Once you are in the realm of implementation
| Philosophical/theoretical idealism goes out the window.
|
| No story survives contact with reality, and that is all
| Philosophy gives us - stories. A.k.a theories.
|
| Risk management requires counter-factual reasoning.
| Thorentis wrote:
| I wanted more exploration of the Bristlecone time thought
| experiment. How did you anticipate people's actions changing
| based on adherence to this new time? If a tree year is now 2
| earth years (for example) , how does that change our behaviour,
| and how does this have a positive/negative effect on the
| environment (which is presumably the aim of this thought
| experiment?) How does one properly adhere to this new time in
| order to have the desired positive effect?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| If you want to really understand philosophy, start with
| Pythagoras, the man coined the term Philosophy and Cosmos -- and
| conducted the first attested scientific experiment in history.
|
| His legacy, through Plato, was resurrected as a key element of
| the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
|
| It makes modern philosophy look like a sad farce since this
| legacy of modern thought probably isn't taught in a single modern
| philosophy course (happy to be proven wrong).
| mod50ack wrote:
| If my "modern philosophy course" you mean a course dealing with
| only modern philosophy, then of course not: they're not seeking
| to delve into the ancient history, but deal with whatever era
| is on the docket. That's not the point of the course. But
| philosophy majors at many universities do have to deal with
| that as well. It just isn't the focus of a course in modern or
| contemporary phil.
|
| But as for courses dealing with presocratic philosophy, history
| of ancient Greek philosophy, mathematic and science ... They
| most certainly do exist and deal with exactly this legacy.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| But the point of learning about Pythagoreanism isn't to learn
| ancient history. It is to learn philosophy. And if
| pythagoreanism-platonism is the most influential thread of
| philosophy of all time, then modern philosophy would need to
| obviate that legacy (like modern chemistry obviates ancient
| chemistry), integrate it, or simply remain ignorant of it.
| fatbird wrote:
| In my program, we had a saying that lowbrow philosophers
| end every argument with "Plato said it first"; middlebrows
| say "Kant said it first"; highbrows say "Wittgenstein said
| it first."
|
| Modern philosophy hasn't "obviated" Plato, per se, but any
| competent philosopher today can discuss what Plato thought
| generally and how/why we think differently today. The
| philosophical method of analysis and argument remains, but
| no one talks seriously about Platonic forms except as part
| of the history.
| mod50ack wrote:
| With some exceptions. Mathematical Platonism is still
| taken quite seriously, though it's evolved a bit since
| the Meno.
| fatbird wrote:
| Interesting. How's Intuitionism doing?
| ukj wrote:
| Intuitionism/constructivism has gained much momentum in
| recent years.
|
| It is the foundation for Hawking's model-dependent
| realism [1]; or more radically Dummett's anti-realism
| [2].
|
| Speaking purely about Mathematics - there have been great
| strides in constructive mathematics in the last 3-4
| decades, and great overlaps with computer science (Curry-
| Howard-Lambek correspondence). A formalist might even say
| that the fields of logic, mathematics and computer
| science are identical.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You wouldn't start a Tudor England history course with the
| Roman Empire just because they had historical influence.
| You'd probably be aware of the linking via the introductory
| courses.
|
| Not every course needs to discuss every facet of a topic,
| foundational or not.
| [deleted]
| mod50ack wrote:
| The legacy isn't avoided in upper level classes. And an
| intro survey in philosophy will cover it. But if I am in an
| upper level course on contemporary philosophy, I don't need
| to rehash Platonism. I know philosophy is said to be a
| series of footnotes to Plato, but this isn't literally the
| case.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >But the point of learning about Pythagoreanism isn't to
| learn ancient history. It is to learn philosophy.
|
| The two, at least according to Hegel, are not so easily
| separable.
|
| "The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between
| true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to
| expect either agreement or contradiction with a given
| philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or
| the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a
| system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical
| systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it
| sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears
| when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the
| former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the
| fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false
| form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its
| true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not
| merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being
| incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity
| of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time
| moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not
| contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as
| the other; and this equal necessity of all moments
| constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole."
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The core ideas of Pythagoreanism are:
|
| 1. Oneness 2. "all is number" 3. There are fundamental
| harmonies in the cosmos and the soul 4. Integration of the
| rational and the spiritual
|
| It's philosophy as a scientific religious pursuit. I don't
| think that comes up much in philosophy 101
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I have never understood this thing about being asked to study
| old texts in Philosophy. In no other field that I have studied
| have people suggested that my first introduction to the field
| must be a book written decades ago, forget two millennia ago.
| If I want to study physics, nobody tells me to read Newton or
| Einstein's paper. Instead I should read an introductory
| textbook, whose contents and presentation are much better than
| the original texts.
|
| If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has
| taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a
| better way, with modern exposition and examples and graphics
| and what not, I fail to believe you. Because that would mean
| philosophy as a discipline is not improving by building upon
| the works of those past, unlike every other intellectual
| discipline. I know this is not true, so stop suggesting old
| texts to beginners and start suggesting books written in the
| last twenty years.
| Reedx wrote:
| That seems like a good idea on the surface, but there is
| value in things like philosophy that have lasted the test of
| time[1]. They've proven a level of robustness. Also if you
| just take a sample from a relatively short period, like 2
| decades, there's danger of it reflecting current fashions[2].
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
|
| 2. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I'd recommend looking at "the quadrivium" by little wooden
| books. It is one of the most beautiful books ever made.
|
| Since Pythagoras never wrote and was an empiricist,
| Pythagoreanism needs continual interpretation. But the core
| ideas, of Oneness, of "all is number" and that of fundamental
| harmonies in the Cosmos and psyche/soul -- those are are
| perennial ideas of great value.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >In no other field that I have studied have people suggested
| that my first introduction to the field must be a book
| written decades ago, forget two millennia ago.
|
| No other field is philosophy. Philosophy, in some respects,
| is special - at least according to Socrates as relayed by
| Plato. As Socrates says, each science (or even activity) has
| its object, but what of the science which has science as its
| object? The trouble with many future reformulations of key
| ideas is that they can miss the intricacies and highly
| abstract arguments of the original texts. For that reason, it
| may be more appropriate to read Newton than it is to read
| Einstein, because Newton used much more natural language than
| equations. I would very heavily disagree with the idea that
| introductory textbooks necessarily have better contents and
| presentation than original texts, and any serious philosopher
| will tell you that too.
|
| >If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one
| has taken what Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in
| a better way, with modern exposition and examples and
| graphics and what not, I fail to believe you.
|
| What do you mean by "a better way"? Is Plato really so
| difficult or obtuse or obscure that one needs to express
| Socrates' ideas in "a better way"? The text is perfectly
| readable to a modern audience, which is precisely _why_
| starting with Plato 's actual dialogues is the hallmark of
| any good university philosophy programme.
|
| >Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not
| improving by building upon the works of those past
|
| No; you have it backwards. Many philosophers have agreed with
| or disagreed with Plato, but the point of a text _on Plato 's
| ideas_ should represent what he wanted to represent in those
| ideas, not say "well, that's what Plato said, here's my idea
| now!". Philosophy (according to some accounts, at least) does
| progress, but it's dubious that rewriting and "simplifying"
| texts is the hallmark of progress.
|
| You end with the assumption that books written since 2000 are
| necessarily better than Plato. I fail to see why this is the
| case. If you want an overview of philosophy _since_ Plato,
| then by all means, only the most up-to-date book will do. If
| you want to know Plato 's (or Socrates') ideas yourself,
| there is no better source than Plato himself.
|
| Philosophy explanations and short introductions (Peter
| Singer's one on Marx comes to mind) are riddled with errors,
| and for any such text you will find at least ten philosophers
| ready to lambast an "introductory" interpretation because it
| misses out on the intricacies of that thought. I'm not
| joking. Look at any intro book on Hegel, Kant, Marx,
| Pythagoras. Then look at the reviews published in philosophy
| journals.
|
| "Progress" in philosophy does not and cannot mean shortening,
| rewriting and "simplifying" ideas.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > What do you mean by "a better way"?
|
| Einstein was the first person to discover relativity, and
| how he stated those ideas is merely one way of countless
| different ways of expressing them. People learned what
| Einstein said, taught it to others and used those ideas in
| further development of physics. In the process they learned
| ways of expressing these ideas that are much more conducive
| to teaching novice physicists, and/or elegant to build
| upon. This is what I mean by better: faster learning,
| deeper understanding, mathematical and conceptual elegance.
|
| This process is not unique to physics or Einstein. In most
| intellectual fields, people digest and reformulate the
| ideas of past intellectuals to make them better, at which
| point people stop reading the works of those past
| intellectuals (except historians or the super-experts), and
| start referring to the newer texts. In fact, if any field
| does not do this, I would dare call it an anti-intellectual
| field.
|
| A field has certain goals, certain questions it tries to
| answer. In most intellectual fields, newcomers start by
| learning the best possible answers to those questions found
| till now, and then get to the research stage, where they
| start trying to do better. If they do find better answers,
| they teach the next generation those better answers.
|
| If you are telling me that what Plato said is among the
| best answers to the questions that Philosophy asks, then
| that means the field has not progressed. You say that
| "short introductions ... misses out on the intricacies of
| that thought", but this indicates a deep problem with
| Philosophy. In every other field, experts of today express
| the ideas of those in the past with mistakes corrected,
| oversights fixed, and exposition improved. You also
| misunderstand me when you say 'rewriting and "simplifying"
| texts is the hallmark of progress.' Modern textbooks of
| General Relativity are far more intricate, and complex than
| what Einstein ever wrote, yet more understandable to the
| physics undergrad. Our answers today are far far better
| than Einstein's, so I won't waste an undergrad's time with
| Einstein's writings.
|
| Where are the best answers that the field of Philosophy has
| come up with, and why were they not written in the past few
| decades?
| DrNuke wrote:
| The problem with philosophy that irks so many over here mainly
| stays in the anglophone curricula these days, which prepare
| pupils analytically aka to function (get a job, be independent,
| start a family, pay taxes, buy goods) instead of continentally
| aka to live (grow a conscience, ask who you are, live for
| experience, avoid authority, exchange and reuse goods). Another
| point is that competitive societies do not rate aggregative
| unfruitful manners, which also shows in the borderly sociopathic
| attitude towards any kind of regulation.
| pdonis wrote:
| This article isn't about philosophy, it's about science. The
| author is making scientific claims and advocating scientific
| methods of measurement. If the scientific claims the author is
| making are false, or even if the error involved in the
| measurements is significantly larger than he believes it is, his
| entire scheme falls apart.
| yipbub wrote:
| I like this, but wonder if this kind of art is at all accessible
| to the people who need to hear its message.
| pboutros wrote:
| Good question. I'm certain it isn't, but also, you can't give
| all things for all people.
|
| These thought experiments are useful, interesting, and
| appealing to certain segments of people. There should be
| different ways to transmit the same message to others, instead
| of looking for 'one-size-fits-all'.
| shashanoid wrote:
| Philosophy is dead. Dead words nothing else -- a therapy.
| Transformation only possible through meditation.
| shard972 wrote:
| How do you know mediation is the answer to anything without
| Philosophy?
| crimsonalucard wrote:
| I call B.S. on this.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Transformation only possible through meditation.
|
| Descarte's Meditations on First Philosophy? That's quite a
| place to start.
| nathias wrote:
| I don't see how this has anything to do with philosophy, thought
| experiments as such arent't philosophical, some philosophy
| (mostly anglosphere) just uses them to draw conclusions from
| common sense intuitions. This kind of 'philosophy' has been a
| public service for as long as art exists which often draws from
| concepts of science and philosophy and presents it in a easily
| digestible form to common sense.
| jeliotj wrote:
| It begs the question of what philosophy is. If it is "love of
| wisdom", as the Ancient Greeks suggested, then it seeks to know
| all things. That is, it seeks knowledge of what is, not of what
| is most likely, which is the domain of modern science.
| finaliteration wrote:
| > begs the question
|
| I normally wouldn't be pedantic about this but because this
| is a discussion about philosophy I have to point out that it
| doesn't "beg the question". "Begging the question" is an
| informal logical fallacy where an argument's premises assume
| that its conclusion is true so it ends up being circular. I
| think you mean it "raises the question".
| jcims wrote:
| The problem is 'begs the question' is not an intuitive
| phrase to describe the formal definition, so we're going to
| be stuck with this correction forever.
|
| At this point I feel it has only survived as a form of
| shibboleth.
| philwelch wrote:
| You'd think that, but we pedants managed to rescue the
| word "ironic" at one point.
| throwlaplace wrote:
| >The problem is 'begs the question' is not an intuitive
| phrase to describe the formal definition
|
| it does if you look at the etymology; beg comes begging
| off i.e. asking for exemption from something. it's
| archaic at this point of course but still fairly
| intelligible in that use; "he begged off doing his
| chores".
| SantalBlush wrote:
| It was clear from the context that "begs the question" here
| essentially means "raises the question," as is often the
| case. If there is no confusion, there should be no need for
| clarification.
| jeliotj wrote:
| You're correct, I appreciate you noting that.
| shard972 wrote:
| Postmodernist's would disagree with you heavily that the two
| domains intersect.
|
| Philosophy goal is uncover truth where science is restricted
| mostly to the realm of facts and empirical truths.
|
| An example would be the question of the meaning of life,
| science has little ability to answer this question other that
| to claim it doesn't actually exist or it's just a complex
| expression of atoms working together where with philosophy
| there are countless ways to answer this age old question.
| gloriousduke wrote:
| This may sound absurd, but you actually need some (mostly
| settled) philosophy to determine what "facts and empirical
| truths" are.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" it seeks knowledge of what is, not of what is most likely,
| which is the domain of modern science"_
|
| Physics, arguably the bedrock and most "certain" of the
| sciences, has long struggled with what the phenomena it
| studies actually are, leading to a "shut up and calculate"
| attitude popularized by Feynman, where physicists just throw
| their hands up and focus on the mathematics and abstractions
| rather than engaging with the ultimate what and why
| questions, which they leave (rightly) to philosophy.
|
| The boundary questions (for example, what is physics, what is
| chemistry, what are their proper objects of study, and so on)
| are also philosophical questions, and not anything any amount
| of empirical study, hypothesizing, predicting, or model-
| making can solve.
|
| Questions about what humanity as a whole, any subgroup of
| humans, or any individual one of us should do are also not
| amenable to scientific inquiry. Neither are questions of what
| is right and wrong. Science can only ever be descriptive, not
| prescriptive.
| bscphil wrote:
| I have a degree in philosophy, and I agree with you. I don't
| see what this article has to do with philosophy as it's
| understood academically, and I'm also pretty unsure what the
| (rather self-aggrandizing) title (the site uses the title
| Philosophy _Is_ a Public Service) has to do with the contents,
| since there 's very little there to defend that claim or even
| talking about philosophy's role in the public sphere at all.
|
| A more apt title would be "How I Developed Several Public Art
| Projects".
| lordleft wrote:
| The greatest public service Philosophy can provide is helping us
| become better people. This is philosophy as understood in the
| Socratic tradition, and many people have since forgotten this
| once chief aim of philosophical endeavor.
| xenologist wrote:
| I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're
| experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield
| against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. In an
| information environment full of overabundant conflicting and
| clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and
| confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people
| don't understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a major
| disservice to their own capacity for mastering their intellectual
| horizons.
|
| As Chesterton said, philosophy is simply thought that has been
| thought out. We're going to work with thoughts either way, but if
| we haven't thought it out, we are sleepwalking, under the
| influence of a foreign presence we have not taken the time to
| identify and dissect.
| simmanian wrote:
| I think the crisis of meaning is happening because existing
| philosophies do not provide enough value anymore in today's
| world. I believe a non-reductionist and non-dualistic worldview
| can be the solution. We must see that the world is not a "war
| of all men against all men" as Hobbes describes in the
| Leviathan, and realize we are all interdependent beings that
| exist as expressions of relationships, which we form together.
| westoncb wrote:
| Here's an interesting new series addressing exactly the "crisis
| of meaning" issue you mention:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY
|
| I've only gotten through the first lecture--and it does take
| him ~20 minutes to lay out something like the full plan for the
| lecture series, but he also paints a pretty interesting picture
| by the time he gets to that point.
|
| David Chapman has also been writing on this subject, apparently
| from a somewhat related angle, for years:
| https://meaningness.com/
|
| The two of them try reconciling their approaches here:
| https://letter.wiki/conversation/209
| rahuldottech wrote:
| Relatedly, if anyone is looking to get started with philosophy,
| Crash Course has a fantastic video series on it:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdY...
| claudiawerner wrote:
| I hate to be a downer, but there are good reasons[0] to avoid
| getting your starting ideas from the Crash Course series of
| videos. I think a better approach would be either to (1) start
| actually reading Descartes or Plato, or (2) use the Crash
| Course video titles as to what you should be looking up on SEP.
| Similarly, a lot of introductory text on many important
| philosophers is off the mark; Peter Singer's _Marx_ in the
| "Short Introduction to" series is known to be pretty poor, for
| example.
|
| Please try and rely on _expert_ resources, and not just people
| who are experts in some other area, or even sometimes in
| another area of philosophy. Experts on philosophy are just as
| capable as anyone else skilled in an area to explain ideas
| without too much jargon (or if there is, explanations of it!)
|
| Some philosophers you can start reading primary material. For
| others it's more difficult. University textbooks should also be
| worth considering, at least. But the Crash Course videos may be
| the wrong approach. If you're looking for videos, I'd recommend
| Wireless Philosophy pretty much always.
|
| [0]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4de95h/why_d...
| brudgers wrote:
| Another approach is just listening to what philosophers are
| thinking. The _Philosophy Bites_ podcast catalog is great for
| that. https://philosophybites.com/
| lbotos wrote:
| I enjoyed http://philosophizethis.org/ for another option!
| jakobloekke wrote:
| Me too. This is one of my favourite podcasts.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Another excellent philosophy podcast is _The Partially
| Examined Life_ :
|
| https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/
| xtiansimon wrote:
| I've listened to every episode since they were recommended
| on Slate Culture Gabfest in 2014
| tieze wrote:
| If you just have ears, History of Philosophy without any gaps
| is great podcast: https://historyofphilosophy.net/. Great and
| thorough companion when I do the dishes.
| dorchadas wrote:
| And, if you'd rather read, he's also got a book series to go
| along with it. Volume 5 (on philosophy in ancient India) is
| set to be published later this year.
| bananamerica wrote:
| Another approach is reading a few articles from
| https://www.iep.utm.edu/ and http://plato.stanford.edu/
|
| But IMHO the best course of action would be to acquire logic
| proficiency first. And no, I'm not talking about the logic
| programmers usually know, but rather formal and informal
| philosophical logic.
|
| Proficiency in logic is to philosophy like reading sheet music
| is to music. You can get by without it, but it will help you
| immensely.
| throwlaplace wrote:
| this the "read TAOCP to learn how to program" of philosophy.
|
| >But IMHO the best course of action would be to acquire logic
| proficiency first.
|
| there is plenty of continental thought that isn't
| straightforward syllogisms (basically everything interesting
| kant).
|
| imho the very short guides are really good for this
|
| https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-
| short-...
|
| not too expensive, written by experts. i can speak for peter
| singers intro to hegel and intro to marx.
| bordercases wrote:
| Informal logic is not necessarily syllogistic. What's more
| important is exploring distinctions and terms in a
| dialectical manner.
| rhizome wrote:
| "A few articles?" This is what discoverability looks like on
| both of those sites:
| https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html. Just start at "A"?
|
| I think non-academic people like me are served perfectly well
| by reading Spinoza's Ethics. Googling for more from there
| will cover almost all of post-dualism Western phil.
| tyre wrote:
| yeah encyclopedias don't provide any guidance.
|
| Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of this. They
| have a section on the side bar for "Influences" (who
| influenced this philosopher and "Influenced" (who this
| philosopher influenced.)
|
| Aristotle has this epic entry:
|
| Influences: Plato
|
| Influenced: Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy,
| Christian philosophy and pre-Enlightenment science (see
| List of writers influenced by Aristotle)
|
| When I was in my first Philosophy seminar, our professor
| started off by saying, "all of western philosophy is a
| footnote to Aristotle."
|
| He was a real one.
|
| You could also google for philosophy course syllabi, but
| it's not always easy to know _why_ one philosopher
| influenced another or the significance in political theory,
| ethics, etc.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| Did your professor point to Whitehead's original quote?
|
| "So far as concerns philosophy only a selected group can
| be explicitly mentioned. There is no point in
| endeavouring to force the interpretations of divergent
| philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is
| that the scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim
| for each of its main positions the express authority of
| one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought -
| Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But
| ultimately nothing rests on authority; the final court of
| appeal is intrinsic reasonableness. _The safest general
| characterization of the European philosophical tradition
| is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato._ I
| do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which
| scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I
| allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through
| them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for
| experience at a great period of civilization, his
| inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet
| stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his
| writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion."
|
| https://www.age-of-the-
| sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| When I was in college, my friends/housemates and I took out an ad
| in the yellow pages under 'Philosophers'. We were 'Murvanowski &
| Associates, Philosophers at Large'. Each of us specialized in a
| philosophy, spanning Realism, Epicureanism, Daoism and of course,
| Hedonism.
|
| Every couple of weeks, we'd get a call from a student who had
| stumbled on us when trying to reach the Pharmacy, while
| simultaneously struggling with their Philosophy course. We liked
| to think we did provide a valuable public service.
| idoubtit wrote:
| In this case, philosophy clearly is an art. Creating artistic
| sculptures, imagining a long-term future, playing with the notion
| of time, inducing debates... all of this is relevant of arts.
| From my experience, this is not specific to this philosopher:
| modern philosophy is the art of playing with words and concepts.
|
| Philosophy is indeed a public service, even if it's rather a
| niche one. People have a large access to many kind of arts and
| activities. Some will enjoy reading etiology books or discussing
| ethical themes, some will visit museums, some will watch
| Scorcese's movies, many will watch Avenger entertainments. We all
| need some kind of artistic culture around us. So philosophy is a
| public service because some part of the public enjoys it to the
| point that it is important in their life.
|
| This "public service" status is not restricted to arts and
| entertainment. For instance, the science on the human evolution
| has no practical goal -- extending knowledge has no direct impact
| on us. Just like philosophy, it will not really influence the way
| we live. Yet many people want to know more about human origins,
| which is a excellent reason for continuing research.
| tyri_kai_psomi wrote:
| Everything is an art. Science is an art. Even "pure
| mathematics" can be artful and beautiful. There is beauty in
| all the miracle of the application of human creation, thought,
| and skill. There is beauty in process, in discovery, of
| discovery, etc.
|
| And this is all so beautifully meta as well, because this too,
| is a philosophical statement.
| crimsonalucard wrote:
| Yes it's beautifully meta. This happens because everything
| that exists and doesn't exist including philosophy itself
| falls under the purview of philosophy. It's the ultimate
| definition given to a word.
|
| Now imagine this brain twisting concept: The Philosophy of
| "The Philosophy of philosophy." Yes discussions about
| philosophy are in itself philosophy and that by induction
| causes an infinite chain to form where you can talk about the
| the philosophy of philosophy of philosophy ...
|
| Let's get even more meta. What do we call discussions and
| debates about this infinite long chain of philosophy? Imagine
| a higher order description, a word that describes the nature
| of the infinite chain but is in itself above it.
|
| Some people call this word "philosophy" as well but that will
| simply create another infinite long chain of meta definitions
| that never ends. Yes you can do this, and you can keep doing
| this, but let's again go a level higher above it all. What is
| the word that describes every possible usage of philosophy,
| every possible infinite chain of meta descriptions that could
| exist?
|
| Believe it or not a word for it does exist that sits above
| all possible usages of philosophy, but the word and concept
| itself is so mind blowing that I can only give you the
| acronym for it and leave it up to you to deduce what it
| stands for.
|
| The acronym is B. S.
|
| Think on that.
|
| Side note: If you have trouble figuring it out: I have found
| that some of my most novel ideas pop out when I'm sitting on
| the toilet. It's a quiet and safe area and thus a good place
| to think and find the answer.
| crimsonalucard wrote:
| If you haven't figured it out yet. B.S. stands for
| bachelors degree. Basically if you want to know you need a
| B.S. degree in philosophy. That's what it takes to know
| this stuff.
| xamuel wrote:
| Not sure what happened in the 2nd half of your post, it
| kind of went off the rails. But the in the 1st half, you're
| basically getting at the ordinal numbers. Now just drop the
| "philosophy" from it (which is just a placeholder, since
| you could replace it with anything else whatsoever and
| still get the same chains) and focus on the underlying
| structure---infinite chains of infinite chains, etc.---and
| you're actually standing on the threshold of some very
| interesting material.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number
| crimsonalucard wrote:
| I think philosophical conjectures are ultimately useless.
| You can talk about abstract concepts all you want but you
| don't get anywhere unless you have rigor or formalism.
| This is why philosophy can do things like talk about
| logic and ethics and science and religion.
|
| The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a
| simplistic but semi-mind-bending concept but then when
| you get to the end you realize my true thoughts about
| philosophy. It's for all the philosophers out there who
| always tell me that even though I don't know it I'm
| actually talking about philosophy. Well it's kind of hard
| _not_ to talk about it given the fact that the word is
| defined to encompass everything.
|
| I think your post hits the nail on the head. If you want
| to learn about these concepts formal math is the way to
| go. The layman description I wrote is really not that
| deep though, it's all pedantic.
| xamuel wrote:
| Everything seems useless if you don't understand it. Open
| a giant page of mathematical number crunching (with
| integrals and infinite series and everything) and it'll
| seem totally useless if you don't have the prerequisites
| for it.
|
| The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full
| of integrals and infinite series, it's all just words,
| many of which look familiar to you, so you don't even
| realize that you don't have the prerequisites for it.
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