Philosophy

[Giest4life]

I need to know if there is still hope in this world, if there are still people out there questioning truth, i want you to put up your favorite Philosophical idea, that you thought up yourself, here is mine to get started

"Love, or what we call Love, is not something that just one word can encompass, it is what we live, it is ourselves, our neighbors and the very air we breath, Love is more than just what we feel when we like a girl or a boy, it is everything." -Eric Lambert (2010)

Philosophy is "Regina Sicantarium." Queen of the Sciences.

"Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

"'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'" Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

And, of course, Nietzsche on concerning those people who believe in silliness "God." "What have I to give you? But I should leave lest I take something from you."

 

[Giest4life]

religion has it's good sides and bad, i don't like blindly believing, i'm a logical mind, but the foundation it sets down for the young to grow on is overall a good platform, teaching what is right and wrong, even if i disagree on what they think is right sometimes (gay marriage, etc.) but, religion is necessary for logical minds to work, it's like light without dark, fire without ice, we need something to base things on, and religion is a good jumping board (btw, yes, i'm athiest, and bi, so thats why i'm a little pissed about the whole opposition to gay marriage cause one day i'd actually like to be happy with my boyfriend)

Small history lesson here.

Contrary to popular belief, Christianity does NOT condemn homosexuality.

I'll let that sink in for a minute...




Okay, what it DOES condemn is the practice of anal sex between men. By the same token, it condemns EVERY sexual practice which cannot result in reproduction. Now, the Church's idiotic focus on sex as pure baby-making has resulted in some of the all time greatest hits in the history of retardedness, such as Aquinas declaring that masturbation or fellatio was a worse sin than incest or even rape, since the latter could result in babies. I think a tactical facepalm is in order here.
Let's remember that Christian sexual morals originated with the Israelites, who were a small people surrounded by larger and more powerful enemies. So logically, the order of the day was to make as many babies as possible and raise them according to the Hebrew Bible - and if you were off masturbating or fucking men in the arse, then, to paraphrase Monty Python, you were wasting sperm, and God was bound to get quite irate.

So now, why is it that many people (Christians included) think that Christians "hate fags", as the Phelpses so succinctly put it?

Well, one has to differentiate between what one "does" and what one "is" and when those two were the same.

Look at your last name. If you come from a European background, odds are, you'll be called Smith, or Miller, or Farmer (or Fabbri, Meunier, or Bauer). That is because until relatively recently, you literally were what you did. There were no notions of individual innate leanings or such things as "personality" and "character" - the predecessors of psychology only starting shaping our consciousness since, oh, the late 1600s, and those didn't really take hold until the late 19th century. §211 of the German penal code still says "who does this and that is a murderer".

Christianity cannot condemn someone for what he is. That runs counter to everything it stands for. And therein lies the crux; the Church, ponderous thing as it is, still has not been able to adapt to the paradigm of people "being" something. So to the Church's way of thinking, everybody is born the same, it's just that some men like fucking women in their vaginas (good) and some others like fucking men in the tradesman's (bad). It still has to come to grips with the notion that bisexuals and homosexuals are born that way, that they cannot help being who they are, and that therefore, condemning them is literally THE LEAST CHRISTIAN THING that a person can do.

What does these words mean to you: "Old Testament." "Leviticus."

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

First, I'd like the echo the sentiment that most of these could hardly qualify as philosophy. They're just inane rambling that sounds cool.

Incidentally, the philosophical point I wanted to bring up (my favourite, not my own), is how much of philosophy is essentially inane rambling that sounds cool. I don't mean that in an entirely pejorative way, since I think it's an easier trap to fall into than most philosophers (even well-established, renowned philosophers) realize.

My favourite point:
All of our investigation into reality is framed in language. It may be the case that all of our thinking itself is done in language (I'm not arguing one way or the other on this since it remains a contentious issue in the cognitive sciences). At the very least, we frame our questions in language. What this means is that sometimes you are not asking the questions that you think you're asking. When you ask "What is the meaning of life?", for instance, you probably don't actually realize what it is that you're asking. Because what this question really asks is "what is the meaning of 'meaning'" and "what is the meaning of 'life'" and how do they correspond? But these questions presuppose the existence of some vaguely Platonic concept of "meaning" and "life". Once we realize that the most meaningful way we can characterize the meaning of a word is by the contexts in which it is used, and acknowledge that its "meaning" in a particular context is therefore a function of that context, it becomes clear that what the question is REALLY asking is completely incoherent. "What is the meaning of life?" isn't a HARD question, it's just a BAD question: you've taken two terms completely out of any identifiable context by asking the question and it is, for that very reason, meaningless. When you bring this up, people typically say "oh you're arguing semantics", but that's precisely the point. All of our questions, all of our answers, are in language. You CAN'T ignore the semanitcs because your question might not be the question you think it is. (See Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations for what is probably to most coherent discussion of these ideas, among others.)

One more example from a discussion with a friend (I guess this counts as my own contribution):
The question - "What is consciousness?". Now, if we found a field around the head that such that people that had it appeared to be "conscious" and people without it appeared not to be, would that field be "consciousness"? My immediate response was "No. Not in the way you think it would." He rejected this immediately. The central question is this: when I said that someone was "conscious", did I mean that they had that field around their head? His argument is that I didn't realize that I meant it because I was ignorant of the discovery of that field, but I did mean it. But how can I mean something that I don't know of? Furthermore, how could I possibly have meant the field if it takes special instruments to detect. How could I have known whether to use the word? The answer is that what was discovered was not "consciousness" because "consciousness" is merely a word (or a concept if you prefer), it is simply defined by the contexts in which it is used. Now when things are DISCOVERED, this mistake isn't a huge problem: the situations in which we refer to this new field would be mostly identical to the situations in which we use the word "consciousness" - the words would be synonymous. But when you frame a QUESTION in this way, you're assuming that there IS some, say, field that exists in the same contexts in which the word is used. You may be looking for something that doesn't exist, but that this trick of language makes you think MUST exist. The folk theory of cognition is especially problematic as it is almost certainly wrong in many respects and it has words used in extremely complex and varied contexts. Thus when we look for "thoughts" or "consciousness", we need to be aware that these things might not exist, that we are being tricked into thinking that these are good questions.

OH GOD WALL OF TEXT
Ugh, so, basically, are you trying to say that I can't state that something doesn't exists, because then I've already said it does? Then sorry, but Protagoras beat ya to it.

No. I'm saying that a lot of questions that philosophy dwells on are simply bad questions. While questions like "What is the meaning of life?" SOUND like good questions, if you really understand what they're asking, they make no sense. In a similar manner, a lot of questions that the sciences pose based on folk theories will probably turn out to be bad questions in much the same way.

In fact, I would say that "You can't state that something doesn't exist because then you've already suggested that it does." is completely indicative of the problem. An empty, useless statement that is incoherent upon closer inspection, but sounds kind of cool.

 

[Uzigawa]

dude, no f'n way this is still alive?

 

[Chameliondude]

I did philosophy for a year, was pretty rubbish as you tend to loop the same problem for ages without actually solving it, mostly because you can never prove the argument wrong, however stupid it is.

eg. If i believe the universe was created a second ago exactly how it is and will be destoyed in the next second, i cant be proved wrong as long as i constantly believe this as we are stuck in the present and cannot prove the past or future, stupid eh..

There was one good argument i heard though, First imagine a perfect batman so you can conclude this Batman is the greatest possible human, it is greater for a being to exist in reality as well as the understanding, therefore batman exists in reality... you can use this to prove anything.. yay

i...wh....what...i..can't.....*brain explode* no idea what that means, mind explaining it without batman and a little more detail?

Sorry about that, thats 2-oclock in the morning talk, Pretty much, Descartes tried to prove god logically by saying that
if you can imagine the greatest possible being (God) then it must exist in the mind,
he then concluded that it is greater to exist both in reality and the mind rather than just in the mind...
and as IT (God) is the greatest possible being, then he must exist in reality,
if he exists in your, or anyone elses mind...


But if you replace the word being with say... island, then you can prove that this fictional island exists just because it is the greatest possible one,


So if you affix the phrase "greatest possible" to anything, like i did saying batman is the greatest possible human, he must exist in reality if you can imagine him being so.