I was just thinking about how the last time i learned any philosophy was 15+ years ago, so i wonder, what's something y'all know about philosophy? Let's talk about it!

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[–] 36 points 3 months ago (5 children)

The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Did a senior paper 20 years ago marrying the concepts of naturalistic and normative epistemology.

    The takeaway was that it doesn't matter if you can't actually prove that you know or don't know anything. You have to live and have always lived as if you can/do know things.

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    The philosopher Schopenhauer absolutely HATED noisy people. He once threw a cleaning lady down a set of stairs because she was making too much noise.

    Later he wrote a treatise where he posed that a persons tolerance towards noise is inversely related to their intelligence.

    Also, one should not remove the anal beads as if one is attempting to start a lawnmower.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Time is an illusion. Lunch-time, doubly so.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago

    I know that Ayn Rand is an charlatan posing as philosopher

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Almost everything I know I learned from existential comics. This is one of my favorites https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Wow thanks for introducing me to this comics. They are amazing!!

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I watched The Good Place like 5 times, so I know just about everything about moral philosophy. I also took computer science, so I know to always give lots of chopsticks when serving a group of philosophers.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago

    Did we watch the same show? I thought it was mostly about how Jacksonville, Florida was a weird place with weird people.

    And something about whether Good Janet had free will, and if a Judge could be an alcoholic or something

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    A philosophy major explained to me that studying philosophy isn't really as useless as it seems. That's because whenever philosophers start to understand what they're doing, they stop calling it philosophy and branch into real scientists. He said it's unfair to judge the value of philosophy by the useless proto-sciences currently under study, but to consider the whole history of philosophy which includes every other field of study one can get a PhD in.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    I always get a kick out of the overlap between philosophy and math when it comes to formal logic/ proofs. Like, the underpinnings for dissecting an argument are exactly the same regardless of whether the discussion is about number theory or what it means to have consciousness.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Cars have windows and can move.

    Houses have windows and cannot move.

    Therefore it's not the windows that make the car move, but something else entirely.

    • PJ Evans
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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Not quite. It just follows that windows are not a sufficient condition to make something move.

    Consider this:

    A person has legs and can walk. A dead body has legs and cannot walk. Therefore legs are not necessary in order to walk?

    No, legs are just not sufficient you also need to be alive and some other things.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago* (8 children)

    Moral philosophy can be broadly divided into a few categories

    Consequentialism - the idea that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. For example, utilitarianism suggests that moral actions are the ones which produce the most happiness.

    Deontology - the idea that there are moral laws, and that moral actions are those that follow the laws.

    Virtue ethics - the idea that virtuous actions help us flourish and vicious (from vices) actions hinder us. There is also the concept that virtues exist in the middle ("golden mean") of a scale between two vices, for example bravery is a virtue between the vices of cowardice and recklessness.

    Pragmatism - the idea that there can be a moral progression of society and knowledge via study and inquiry. This is not so much a category of its own, but it's compatible with the the main ones mentioned above.

    On a personal note, I do not like consequentialism as a moral theory. I lean more towards pragmatic deontology but virtue ethics is also compelling.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Wouldn't deontology and virtue ethics be same in your description? Like virtues are those moral laws? (I never took a philosophy course btw)

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Virtues are human traits, like bravery, honesty, kindness etc

    Moral laws tend to be more about specific actions, like "lying is wrong", "it is good to give to charity".

    They might arrive in the same place, but take different routes. In addition, with the golden mean aspect of virtue ethics, applying moral laws too much can be bad.

    For instance, deontology might feel is it is wrong to lie and good to tell the truth and those will be absolutely, categorically true. Golden mean would suggest that it is possible to tell the truth too much, perhaps if we are too forthcoming with it, or too blatant/tactless with it, or needlessly offensive. I'm not a scholar on this stuff, but that's my best explanation!

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I got as far as foucault, and the main thing i took away was that even with wildly differing moral philosophies, two people can always come to understand each other's position if they can talk to each other long enough, though they won't always agree in the end. There is no universal truth that is true for all of us.

    Is that post-modernist philosophy?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    You're making me remember a term exam I had in my only philo class, freshman world philosophy. The professor asked something like the following,

    My neighbor told me he thinks me feeding the birds in my backyard isn't good for the environment. What do you think? Is it right, wrong or something else? Use what you've learned this semester to answer.

    I thought this was brilliant because he got to have a room full of undergrads think and write about a real moral conflict he was having with another human, and also, good for having us use our educatuon as applied to a real question.

    I can vaguely remember my answer, but I don't really remember any of the world philosophy...

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's an interesting one! I haven't taken any classes but would love to do at least an introductory one. The Great Courses has a good series on moral philosophy and I enjoyed the book How to be Perfect by Michael Schur (creator of The Good Place tv show).

    That question in particular would be difficult for me to answer in a purely philosophical sense. I suppose we'd need to define what good/bad for the environment mean etc.

    The birds are fed, is that good for the environment? The birds are part of the environment, so yes I guess so.

    Are the birds being fed appropriate food? We'd have to ask the professor.

    Are at least some of the birds invasive or causing some other trouble in the environment? Have to gather more information.

    Perhaps by feeding the birds, they are not eating as much other food like insects, which can cause pest issues?

    I like to think your professor would grade on both your questions and your answers. Do you remember many of the specifics in your answer or any feedback you got?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago*

    Kind of a sore memory. This might have been the exam that for years afterwards whenever I saw this professor at social gatherings. He would say, hey sem, I still have an exam to get back to you. And I'd say, okay, I'll come by your office, but I never did. We were a fairly tight knit small program, and he prof had a tradition of inviting people to his house on friday evenings for discussion or special guests, just to show you what the vibe was.

    He knew i struggled with procrastination, which he didn't hold against me. He would tell me how he once turned in a paper a year past the deadline.

    I might be mixing up memories. I do remember him sharing by name his favorite answer and which student wrote it, which I disagreed with. That kid was very religious and studious, and had a scripture-informed answer, but he supported with other techniques from the class, that much I remember.

    How you answer the question depends on you you frame right and wrong, moral and immoral, and thinking through those decisions and questions like you were doing is what he was looking for.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    The philosophy of Antinatalism makes a lot of logical sense to me. I find it difficult to argue against without appealing to nature, traditions, emotions, etc.

    People really, really, really hate AN, though. It's not something I enjoy engaging about. I don't really care if other people subscribe to it or not. I'm not an AN evangelist.

    Unfortunately, AN attracts a lot of weirdos, childfree types, and suicidal people. There are some brilliant folks who subscribe to it, too. But the signal to noise ratio is awful.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    What is anti natalism? Not judging people if they aren't born here?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    It means that you think procreation is unethical.

    Most antinatalists take issue with the concept of consent. The logic goes: the person you're forcing to be in this world by procreating didn't ask to be here; there is no way to obtain their consent; therefore, it would be unethical to procreate.

    Most antinatalists are also negative utilitarians, which is a philosophy that says minimizing harm is more important than maximizing pleasure. This explains why they reject the 'gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet' logic most people use where procreation is fine since most people want to be here.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Absurdism. Life, the universe, existence, is absurd and irrational.

    It's comforting and liberating to accept.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    Absurd, sure. Irrational? Good luck living according to that for any length of time.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    It doesn't matter if you try or not, you will anyway. It's unavoidable. The canvas has a colour, no matter what paint you put on top

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    So what, you mean that in just a relative way, compared to some kind of platonic, maximally-ordered alternate possibility? If the world was actually irrational, as in defying logic, basic planning, like walking in the direction you want to go, would not work.

    Instead, it's extremely orderly if you look closely at any given thing, only becoming unpredictable with scale and influence by unknown-to-you parts. Even quantum mechanics has utterly predictable probabilities. And interpretations where the randomness is, itself, an illusion.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    @CanadaPlus @asklemmy We assume that “rational” is a platonic ideal. I would argue that what we consider “rational” is a product of the environment we evolved in. Had we evolved in a different environment (eg: a binary star system with unpredictable seasons or even day/night cycles) we would likely have a very different definition for “rational”.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I mean, you can bring up hypothetical "other logics", although it's hard to go much further than that. By definition, we can't reason about them.

    On your Three Body Problem binary star world, we'd still be dealing with the same kind of energy scales, in the same universe; every mathematical theorem that's ever existed, and all known physics, would still work. What might be different, though, is which tasks the aliens find easy or hard.

    When we invented computers, nobody was expecting them to be great at chess but poor at detecting if an image is of a bird. For humans, chess is hard, but seeing a bird is easy, and we assumed that was fundamental. In the 50's, the first chess algorithms were developed, and it led to the first wave of predictions the singularity was nigh. Obviously, that didn't happen.

    As it turns out, ancient humans spent a lot of time looking for creatures, and evolved a lot of brain anatomy devoted to it. With chess we're starting from scratch, just like the computers. It wasn't until 2010 or so we solved the bird problem with software. Maybe your aliens are really good at chess, but blind. Or maybe, because their homeworld is unpredictable, they can learn all kinds of patterns and tasks very easily, but have no attention span and a poor memory.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Modern formal logic is still considered part of philosophy, and is the basis of most programming languages. Ethics is very practical and specialized versions get taught in a lot of professional educations (medicine, law, economics, teaching, et.c.) - and it sure would be nice if people paid more attention to political philosophy.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Stoicism helps massively in a chaotic world like today

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Identifying an arguments fallacy by name usually doesn't resolve an argument

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Most of the time when you see this, the person being accused straight-up doesn't seem to know their fallacies, so it doesn't work.

    If they do know, and try to explain why they're not doing whatever fallacy, the conversation descends into a weird semantic debate, and the original point tends to be forgotten.

    Explaining the problem with the argument in plain terms has a far better track record.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Time is a river. Life is a journey. The door is ajar.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like an orange.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    My favorite is Lakoff's category theory. He notes that philosophy largely pretends that categories are defined based on rules of inclusion and exclusion, but in fact human thinking is mostly based around categories defined by a prototypical example and various relations to that example. So, e.g., a penguin and a sparrow are both birds, but a sparrow is more like the prototypical bird, since it's smaller and it flies.

    Many of the great philosophical questions over the years have been about trying to decide on precise rules of inclusion and exclusion for categories, even though the closer people look, the less it seems like there's a meaningful boundary (e.g. "life" vs "non-living," where you start to see things like viruses, prions, etc. that don't fit cleanly into either category).

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Wouldn't that be structuralism? Ie the truth (category in this case) is defined by the relations an entity (penguin or sparrow) has with some other entity (the example bird) rather than something intrinsic to that entity

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Definitely related, yeah. Lakoff was primarily making a linguistic observation, but he did think it was reflective of the way humans really think about these kinds of categories, and that seems right.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    That is a neat insight!

    There is a whole category of misunderstandings that happen when contexts collide.

    I feel like science tries to get specific so they can make predictions and explain phenomena, but using the same language the rest of us gives us things like the penguin and sparrow conflict, tomato is a fruit, strawberries aren't berries, etc.

    Meanwhile I'm over here like, not only can you call all insects "bugs", you can call spiders, small arthropods, anything that fits the general vibe of small and bug-like, so long as you're not causing misunderstandings in a scientific context.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Knowledge is power, but France is bacon.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    People get upset if you try to say they aren't real

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I know the world suffers so today because not enough people understand philosophy.

    philosophy was replaced by philanthropic endeavors by the grossly rich. recorded and streamed online for all to see how "good christans" treat the destitute and needy.

    morals are obligations only the poor are required to pay.

    the world as we know it is dying horrifically and there's nothing any one person can do to stop it.

    the call to the danger is drown out by the incessant shrill bells of subscriptions releasing hourly, 24 hours a day. nobody will hear it before it's too late.

    we are already dead.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    I majored in PHIL and took significant personal interest in it before that. I also deconstructed my faith in the 5 years prior to that. Philosophy asks all the questions, not just the ones that have immediate practical meaning or application or serve the will of those in power. Beyond that, it helps us develop better question asking and reasoning skills that are applicable to many other topics and pursuits. In some ways, philosophy is what education should be. It encourages you to discover and try to understand rather than just flip open your noggin on a hinge for someone to shovel in a bunch of junk for you to mindlessly repeat. If every school aged kid was introduced to philosophy the world would be a better place.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    The last two and a half millennia of western philosophy has been the slow realization that Epicurus and Heraclitus were closer to the truth than Plato or Aristotle.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    the modern golden rule is all about gold and rule.

    i also believe it takes strength to be kind. in the same sense that being cruel and chaotic follows the entropy of the universe.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    All philosophy is based on the two opposing views "Cogito Ergo Sum" vs. "Esse Est Percipi".

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    There are many branches in philosophy, and it's easy to mix them up. Depends on what you're into.

    • Ethics: notions of right and wrong and moral values.
    • Epistemology: questions of knowledge. How do we know what we know.
    • Metaphysics: ideas of space, time, existence.
    • Aesthetics: appreciation of art, beauty, music, literature, etc.
    • Logic: for the math-oriented. How do we reason and arrive at conclusions? If X, then Y.
    • Language: how we communicate. Meaning of words, symbols, and metaphors.
    • Phrenology: method of relieving cranial pressures.
    • Science: how to reason about the physical world.
    • Religion: Understanding the divine and how we fit in.
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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    PhD is philosophy doctor.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    I know that I know not enough, and nothing more.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Few years ago I picked up a random philosophy magazine out of curiosity. Single thing I remember is an article with a guy arguing that all inanimate objects have rights.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Some philosophers have written in intentionally hard to understand language.

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  • [+] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)
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