protovack said:
I don't know where you got "communist" from. There is nothing about communism in 1984. I think you mean "Oligarchical Collectivism."
oligarchical collectivism sounds a lot like the particular corruption of communism established in china and the USSR.
I have to ask if all of your philosophical knowledge has yet shed any light on the question of why people seek to control others?
marxism, neo-marxist theory, as well as many other social/political philosophies, do attempt to explain the source, rules, characteristics, and legitimacy of human power dynamics on a societal level.
What I'm saying is that philosophy is a tradition. And traditions obey their own sets of rules. They have their own history. For that reason, some people involved with the tradition become overly associated with it, and come to celebrate the tradition as having more significance than it actually does.
philosophy is not a tradition. tradition is usually tied to culture in some ways. the field of philosophy, along with the rest of academia, has gradually developed its own culture, but it's traditions are very limited. philosophy is only as much of a tradition as science or math. it's not nearly as much a tradition as say religious rituals, holiday celebrations, etc.
and what exactly do you mean by "overly associated with it?" a lot of people(philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, anyone doing research in a particular field of learning) may be very zealous in their pursuit of knowledge, but is that really a vice or a virtue? can you give a specific example of how someone might celebrate philosophy as having more significance than it actually does? i think this thread has revealed more of the fallacies in common criticisms of academic philosophy rather than actual pitfalls of academic philosophy itself. it's easy to make vague generalizations like "philosophers are too self-important," "philosophers use too much lofty and pretentious language," "philosophers are too absorbed in thoughts of the past," or even "philosophers are too engrossed in intellectual pursuit," but these criticisms are all pretty ridiculous when you actually think about it, and rarely are critics able to give concrete examples of such supposed pitfalls.
the problem with most criticisms is that they come from people who lack experience in the field they are attempting to criticize. that's why most of these criticisms seem to be based off of surface observations and don't convey much in depth knowledge of contemporary philosophy. no one's actually brought up contemporary theories to assess before making their judgements. so all you get is rather trite cheapshots that you can pretty much apply to any field of study with equal validity(or lack thereof).
Whereas you may want to talk about philosophy for 3 hours, I may want to talk about it for 5 minutes.
But it is entirely possible that I have just as good a grip on the concepts as you do. I think this is something that most academic philosophers secretly realize but never admit.
it
is possible, but it's highly unlikely considering that you have relatively little interest in philosphy compared to someone who appears to be much more engrossed by it. someone who is more interested in philosophy is going to be more motivated to study it, ruminate about it, and apply it in their life than someone who only feigns interest once in a while. you may be just as capable of understanding these concepts, but if lack the drive to pursue it, then you naturally aren't going to learn as much about it.
and once again, is it really a shortcoming for a
philosopher to be so devoted to philosophy? because this sounds more like a personal pet-peeve of someone who's disinterested in philosophical topics--which is natural, whenever someone talks about things like cars, football, or celebrity gossip i get annoyed too because i don't find those things interesting, but if someone were an automechanic, or a football players, or a hollywood reporter, then these would be considered generally good qualities for such individuals to have in their particular professions.
I'm not saying that I know near as much as a real student of philosophy. But wisdom is not measured by the number of hours you can spend dissecting philosophy.
i think you're making some inaccurate assumptions about how philosophers percieve their work. i don't think any philosopher out there believes that wisdom is measured by the number of hours you spend dissecting philosophy, but discourse
is an excellent tool for communicating, assessing, and synthesizing new knowledge. and wisdom does require you to exercise your mind, which i guess you could call "dissecting knowledge," and philosophers just tend to focus their thoughts and ruminations on philosophical matters. i mean, how else do you gain knowledge other than exercising your mind?
Philosophy is at best a device for making sense of the world. And you must realize that all people, whether informed by philosophy or not, attempt to make sense of the world.
lol, that's like saying water and oxygen are at best resources for sustaining life. and yes, everyone does try to make sense of the world, and every person out there inevitably thinks about philosophical questions in their mind even if it's not in the form of formal discourse. i think that's part of the reason why most philosophers are so intrigued by philosophy, because these are fundamental questions about life and existence which seem to have universal relevance. your argument seems to presume a lot of things about the philosophical community which don't have any groundings in reality. how much contact have you had with academic philosophers and how exposure have you had to contemporary philosophy?
I'm not sure how "generally accepted" these are, or even whether they have any application in the world. I have no idea why any thought based on them would be on a higher plane either...
platonic forms are the foundations of modern metaphysics, which is a fundamental concept in most of modern philosophy. kant's metaphysics of of morals is also one of the classic philosophical text that is considered to be rudimentary knowledge for anyone who plans on taking philosophy seriously. they aren't so much "generally accepted" as they are just common knowledge and essential vocabulary for philosophers. and i think by "higher plane of thought" phor means that these are essential concepts in a priori reasoning which deals with noumenal reasoning rather than phenomenal observatiosn--in other words, they deal with universal truths which are inherently true based on logical deduction.
