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Is philosophy dead?

ebola?

ebola?

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It seems to me that philosophy, in modern times, has been relegated to an academic exercise.

When Quine died in 2000, who noticed? Certainly not most.
Did Derrida's passing shake the earth?
Now, I have read writings by Randists saying that contemporary philosophy is largely ignored because it runs contra fact...I dont buy this, especially considering that the Randists present a very untenable ontology.

A related question is, have we really made any progress? After thousands of years of Western philosophy, what problems have we solved. Heraclitus, a pre-socratic, presented the immediate and contradictory truth of the one-manyness of being

paraphrases:
"Listening not to me, but the logos, it is wise to say, 'one, many'"
"We both always and never step in the same stream twice"

have we come to grips with this?
we have logical positivists shouting either "many!" or "two!!"
we have german idealists and vulgar philosophers who have borrowed from the east shouting "one!!"
We have post-modernists and Nihilists shouting "nope!"

We have a ways to go and I know not where.

ebola
np: meshuggah
 
ebola! said:

A related question is, have we really made any progress? After thousands of years of Western philosophy, what problems have we solved. Heraclitus, a pre-socratic, presented the immediate and contradictory truth of the one-manyness of being

paraphrases:
"Listening not to me, but the logos, it is wise to say, 'one, many'"
"We both always and never step in the same stream twice"

have we come to grips with this?
we have logical positivists shouting either "many!" or "two!!"
we have german idealists and vulgar philosophers who have borrowed from the east shouting "one!!"
We have post-modernists and Nihilists shouting "nope!"

We have a ways to go and I know not where.

ebola
np: meshuggah
Click to expand...

As a society we have not grown with acceptance of this paradox. Many if not most are completely ignorant to it. Then again there are cultures, and groups of people that do acknowledge this paradox and apply it to their lives.

Even those that do accept this paradox as truth, as you have pointed out tend to stick to a single perspective. Perhaps all we can do is take this multi-perspective perspective, evaluate it, and assimilate it into our usually limited perspective existance. I don't think that is the case though, I think it is possible to work in a multi-perspective mindstate into everyday existance. I think it's just varying degrees, of awareness. Question is what degree are you?

Logic alone is of limited use.
 
hmmm...you spurned me out to think of something.
although vulgar interpretations of eastern philosophy side only with the one, maybe i could gain more from the real deal. I dunno. I've read some Xuang Zu, some Tich Nat Han...some of the Dao De Jing...maybe i need to get more familiar...pick up chinese or something.

>>I don't think that is the case though, I think it is possible to work in a multi-perspective mindstate into everyday existance.>>

I think this is a good way to go...but can you really embrace contradiction? I dont think its possible on logical terms.

>>I think it's just varying degrees, of awareness. Question is what degree are you?
>>

Ha! I'm not sure how seriously I'm to take this...and I dunno.

ebola
 
ebola! said:
hmmm...you spurned me out to think of something.
although vulgar interpretations of eastern philosophy side only with the one, maybe i could gain more from the real deal. I dunno. I've read some Xuang Zu, some Tich Nat Han...some of the Dao De Jing...maybe i need to get more familiar...pick up chinese or something.
Click to expand...
I find Buddhist scripture interesting. The way Buddhist scripture(and Buddhism in general) is structured appeals very much to me. It starts off with central concepts, and is presented very clearly and to the point in The 4 noble truths, and 8 fold path. Then it just sort of spreads from there in all directions.


>>I don't think that is the case though, I think it is possible to work in a multi-perspective mindstate into everyday existance.>>

I think this is a good way to go...but can you really embrace contradiction? I dont think its possible on logical terms.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but does that logically mean that contradiction is false? You've seen it, you've experienced it, can you deny it? Obviously purely logical philosophy can get you so far as you have mentioned there hasn't been much progress recently. With this being the case you have two logical choices that I can see, if you are in pursuit of knowledge/truth. Stay with being purely logical, and maybe some kind of breakthrough in science or other field will advance philosophy. Or you can dip your toes in the water, see what else is out there, and what it has to offer with logic being a foundation you can always come back to analyze with.

Circular thought can be rather insightful conceptually.
 
I dig Taoism. Also Special Relativity (I don't know much about general relativity). I think Einstein was a genius philosopher.

I say you can say one, two, three, four, whatever...I think the concept of one is very important. It eases the mind from worrying. However, if you wanna claim there are more, go ahead, I will not disagree. However, if you say there is nothing...that...I don't understand...and I disagree with you, there...

If there is nothing...then...what...is this forum? Uh? A construct of my imagination? What is my imagination, then? Eh? etc etc etc etc etc...

Can anyone help me out here, actually? I've always thought nihilism (or whatever it's called...claiming that everything is nothing or whatever...uhh...something like that) was just for depressed people who want to reject the real world as best as they can. Eh?
 
My understanding of logos is that it is the mechanism which communicates from the universe (the macrocosm) to man (the microcosm). Logos is translated as logic or word. Perhaps what the ancients meant by this is that we use logic to break down the world around us to understand in terms. “

A main thought in antiquity was that the universe was a perfect structure. The connection between cosmos and logos is much like Nietzsche’s idea of the man being a mirror to the world, for what I understand of it. Ancients felt that "gods" or whatever you want to call them, perhaps archetypes, actually put the thoughts we have into our heads.

Reading a poem by Ovid, roman poet, it said "Apollo just materialized before me". This tells a lot about what the way ancient westerners thought. Today popular ideas seem almost void of philosophy. People would simply call this materialization of Apollo an act of perception or an unimportant observation. But the poetic and philosophically inclined might have much more to say. Such as, what does it mean for an archetypal "god" to materialize itself before you? Apollo is the god of the sun and the god of poetry. In Ovid's Metamorphoses cupid forces him to fall in love with Daphne, who is then turned into a tree. But Apollo cannot help but to love her because of cupid’s arrow. Personally, this made me think about the nature of the sun and poetry quite a bit. But I'll stop ranting and move on.

I wouldn't say a person needs to reduce the universe down to one or many or 2 or more or nothing or into a numeric breakdown at all. It is not able to be simplified into simple ideas or into a single field of knowledge at all.

Nihilism is a philosophy which to me says that there is no framework for finding truth, which to me is a kind of hopeless philosophy. But at the same time it does have hope in that you don’t have to keep worrying about finding ultimate truth, because there really isn’t a way to find it or there isn’t an ultimate truth at all. This idea speaks to me, because if there is no ultimate truth it actually does leave open room for argument, which is what lets philosophy live. But to have complete faith in one field of study is to close out other views and end philosophy all together.
 
^Ah, yea...I'd agree, I guess, except I'd say that the "ultimate truth" is the fact that there is no "absolute truth" ;) the fundamental paradox

I mean, truth is just what happens to you. Yea, you cannot pin it down into one thought except the thought that you cannot pin it down into one thought ;)

heh...ah...goody :) i hope someone understands what i'm talking about...
 
Well then, what the hell is the point of questioning why someone would question the point of asking questions?

(Infinite regress, here we come.)
 
Philosophy, the love of wisdom.
I will have love for wisdom, among other things, as long as I still exist, in some sentient form.
Here's hoping that existence lasts for an infinite amount of time.

That's one of the frustrating questions really, what does happen after death? That's really the key to the question of why we exist. We're either going to find out eventually anyways, or never find out, so in either case there's no need to jump into oblivion in some nihilistic frenzy. Rather, I think wisdom is a direct result of living, by our life experiences in whatever limited amount of time we may have. Perhaps it's too broad a claim to make, but I believe as long as life and self-awareness exists, so will philosophy.
 
I don't think philosophy is dead. It's just that the revolutionary stuff happened a long time ago. The transition to modernity (and liberalism) caused an intense philosophical battle that is probably now over (for the most part).
 
I think philosophy is interesting but very limited as it is a totally mental exercise: we are not only mental creature. Philosophy is mental, that means it is centered on one "exploration tool" (logic, thinkings) but mental is only a little part of our spiritual beeing as it doesn't involve feelings and emotions (other exploration spiritual tools), and more, it is completely separated from our physical beeing (sensations, instinct) which are very efficient exploration tools (using only the mind and forgetting about the body is like staying away from the answers we are looking for).So philosophy isn't more than questions with very little and incomplete answers as it doesn't use all the tools we have (and that we need to find some truth). Mental is nothing to get answers if separated from the other tools...Which is the difference with mystical philosophies who are much less limited as they use all the tools we have: both the body tools ( instinct, sensations-the senses are our primordial exploration ways!) and the spiritual tools (the mind which is thoughts, logic & mental aptitudes but also feelings and emotions). So mystical ways of knowledge are much more logic in some way as philosophy it is not logic as it rely on only one of the tool we have, it's like looking in only one single direction when the truth is all around (& inside) us. For instance, buddhism use the body and the mind as exploration tools (meditation is both a physical and spiritual tool), same for shamanism (the sensations and instincts are primordial in shamanism).So I think philosophy is never going anywere as it does limit itself to one single little aspect of life when it is said to seek for absolute knowledge.
Philosophy is nothing unless you link it to other exploration tools (especially the physical ones which are completely left apart)...and it is extremely surprising that a discipline who claim to search for knowledge can be that much narrow minded so most exploration tools are left apart (because supposed not reliable and with no other proof that this single affirmation: "mental is great:we are great, the rest is useless")...if mental is so perfect that we don't need anything else to understand our world, then why don't we get any spiritual (I mean non scientific) answers from it and why do shamans seem to get much more answers (many scientists noticed that shamanic illness diagnostics and predictions were often very accurate even if sciences and logic can't explain how it is possible, which seems to show that they would know more about our world that our logic & sciences culture does)...this seems to confirm that mental isn't enough to find any truth, we need to use all the exploration tools we have to get real results.
That's my point. I'll add that the only deep/true & constructive (I mean "not intellectual masturabation) philosophy that ever existed is the greek philosophy, and even if it's not typically mystical (it's much more of a mental exploration) like buddhism or shamanism would be, this does still confirm my point as you have to remember that greek people were completely mystic (complexe esoteric mythology, use of psychedelic drugs, divination practices...) so even if their philosophy was essentially mental, mysticism wouldn't be left apart (they did invent the matrix story!). But all other non mystic philosophies that came on later in the occidental world were completely mental (centered onto one single exploration tool) and that's why they are never going anywhere (Descartes for instance).
 
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>>>>I don't think that is the case though, I think it is possible to work in a multi-perspective mindstate into everyday existance.>>

I think this is a good way to go...but can you really embrace contradiction? I dont think its possible on logical terms.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Perhaps, but does that logically mean that contradiction is false?>>

Of course not.

>>If there is nothing...then...what...is this forum? Uh? A construct of my imagination? What is my imagination, then? Eh? etc etc etc etc etc...>>

Yeah. Hardline post-modernism is a bit of a toughy. If there are only interpretations, what is being interpreted?

>>I don't think philosophy is dead. It's just that the revolutionary stuff happened a long time ago. The transition to modernity (and liberalism) caused an intense philosophical battle that is probably now over (for the most part).>>

But the transition to modernity failed to solve any epistemological or metaphysical problems in any serious way. Similarly, I don't think classical liberalism has pinned down the answers to any enduring social questions.

ebola
 
ebola! said:
It seems to me that philosophy, in modern times, has been relegated to an academic exercise.
Click to expand...
i think this is very true and rather tragic. philosophy should be the religion of a progressive society, but instead we have anachronistic ideological institutions dominating modern human spirituality. most schools of philosophical learning directly contradict mainstream interpretations of most religious texts so philosophy is not only seen as superfluous, but also sacrilegious.

also, most universities are becoming more and more like trade schools. people go to college to earn a degree whcih will help them get a job, or to develop skills which will help them make more money in their future careers rather than to be well-learned and well-rounded individuals. and since philosophy isn't seen as immediately applicable to most careers, and won't really make you any money directly, it isn't seen as a necessary field of knowledge to have.

personally i think learning to think like a philosopher is probably one of the most important skills to have which will make you more successful at "living." we're all philosophers to a certain extent even if we've never picked up a philosophy text. it's part of human nature to crave knowledge and to seek out truth. it's truly a tragedy that so many people are never exposed to philosophy formally. dialectic and formal logic are skills which are vital to being able to discern truth from fallacy and make sound judgements when facing life's dilemmas.

i think if instead of going to temple/church, or just sitting in front of the TV every weekend, if people just got together within their communities and discussed philosophy, and have fruitful discussions which honed their faculties of reasoning and critical thinking, our world would be a much better place. and people would not be so easily decieved or manipulated.
 
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Philosophy = Talking to yourself in your own language frames, inventing your own meaning

Philosophy- n. The term for the study of really big words which lose all meaning when spoken and understood.
 
I think you can reduce the universe to 1. Its all made of the same rules, same information, same energy and other stuff...Everything is connected...The universe is a sphere whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere.

We must invent the best possible philosophy to unify humankind through the internet and media. Unity through diversity.
 
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