The value of philosophy.

[propellerbeanie]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

[Kevin Solway]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

Unless you provide some reasoned argument to your proposition, whatever it is, this thread will be deleted or moved to the brothel.

[Densiny Liquelo]

I'd say the universe hasn't quite had its way with you, yet.

[sschaula]

Not an attempt to save this thread, but what do you think "love" is propeller?

[David Quinn]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

I think your constant bowing down and grovelling to women is nauseating.

You're on notice. One more piece of Oprah-speak and you're off this forum.

-

[SBN Charles]

what do you mean by peanut gallery?

[oborden]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

How is the ability to feel love (and consequently hate) our greatest virtue? I would uphold that our ability to reason is our greatest virtue.

[Dan Rowden]

Reason is only a virtue if one values consciousness and goals related to its development. Virtues are value-based notions.


Dan Rowden

[oborden]

What exactly do you mean by consciousness?

[Dan Rowden]

In this context I simply mean awareness. Consciousness = rational reflection and abstraction, as opposed to spontaneous, immediate, visceral engagement with the world.

Dan Rowden

[oborden]

Ok, now I understand. Values precede morals.

[Dan Rowden]

Reason is a skill to be nurtured, but the question is: to what end?


Dan Rowden

[Pottovski]

Reason can help you find answers for yourself. Ofcourse reason cannot provide all the answers, but helps to keep on going..
Still there is a difference en link between reason and emotion, faith and the mysterious kinds of stuff.
Some people put reason on the throne, others not... Both ends can help to sharpen the mind and find a way to help the mind, soul en inner self..

[Terry]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

For one thing, don't reduce us nuts. I am not a peanut. I am a walnut. Thank you.

Philosophy deals with hate as much as it deals with love. It embodies the questions of what it is to be a human being and what it is to live in the world. Philosophy is concerned with the ultimate. Whether such truth is within or beyond our existence (or both or neither) is something to be uncovered.

Given the proper context, it brings forth the ugliest parts of humanity as well as the best. Parmenides taught us: "thinking is being." One can learn much from contemplating that simple statement.

[Kelly Jones]

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Philosophy deals with hate as much as it deals with love. It embodies the questions of what it is to be a human being and what it is to live in the world.

I'll do the same as you did to beanie's falsehood, and redefine philosophy dualistically:

Philosophy deals with God/the world first, and examines human beings/finitude from that perspective.

Philosophy is concerned with the ultimate. Whether such truth is within or beyond our existence (or both or neither) is something to be uncovered.

Ultimate Truth is not a single truth, but true for all truths (all things), as that's what Ultimate means. So it isn't confined to any truth, or existence. It allows all existences to be what they are.

Given the proper context, it brings forth the ugliest parts of humanity as well as the best. Parmenides taught us: "thinking is being." One can learn much from contemplating that simple statement.

The only context for philosophy is truthfulness. It has no context. (See above)

Philosophy always reveals human psychology to be ugly and incapable of goodness (lacking truthfulness).

Parmenides didn't do much thinking, then, or he would have realised thinking is nothing at all.


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[Terry]

I'll do the same as you did to beanie's falsehood, and redefine philosophy dualistically:

Philosophy deals with God/the world first, and examines human beings/finitude from that perspective.

I defined philosophy in terms of existential value. At its most basic level it asks what it is to be a finite being (human being) within the totality of Being (Being in-itself). From there it asks "What is reality?" "What can I know?" and so forth. It is a constant struggle between questioning one's existence and the re-affirmation of one's existence in the threat of non-being (not existing, death, annihalation). Though this conflict we become more self-aware of ourselves and the world around us.

Define the "God" you are referring to. Philosophy has dealt with more than one kind of those.

Ultimate Truth is not a single truth, but true for all truths (all things), as that's what Ultimate means. So it isn't confined to any truth, or existence. It allows all existences to be what they are.

I referred to the potential capacity of human beings in knowing the Ultimate truth. I am not questioning the truthfulness of Ultimate Truth. Whether we can know the things in-themselves (reality) is a matter of inquiry and how much faith we place on reason in uncovering it.

Judging from your previous assertions, you believe that reason alone is sufficient in discovering Ultimate Truth.

The only context for philosophy is truthfulness. It has no context. (See above)

Philosophy always reveals human psychology to be ugly and incapable of goodness (lacking truthfulness).

So you are saying that the moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (all human beings are by nature depraved, selfish, and destructive) is the same as the moral philosophy of Socrates (One does wrong through ignorance)?

Parmenides didn't do much thinking, then, or he would have realised thinking is nothing at all.

"Nothing" as in emptiness/sunyata?

Don't circumvent the issue by dismissing other thinkers in simple jest. If you want a serious philosophical discussion, give good reasons for supporting your assertions. I'm putting *my* time into understanding you and forming my thoughts in response. If you want name-calling, I can resort to that with less time wasted on my part.

[Kelly Jones]

I defined philosophy in terms of existential value. At its most basic level it asks what it is to be a finite being (human being) within the totality of Being (Being in-itself). From there it asks "What is reality?" "What can I know?" and so forth. It is a constant struggle between questioning one's existence and the re-affirmation of one's existence in the threat of non-being (not existing,death, annihalation). Though this conflict we become more self-aware of ourselves and the world around us.

This is how ego is "born". The thread "A=A represents making distinctions" indicates why. Namely, the finite being is an illusion.

Define the "God" you are referring to. Philosophy has dealt with more than one kind of those.

I did with "God/world" and by then contrasting it with "human/finitude". Further:

World=everything, finitude=parts of everything.

Judging from your previous assertions, you believe that reason alone is sufficient to discovering Ultimate Truth.

No, I don't believe that, since I have reasoned that reason is sufficient to discover Ultimate Truth.

reasons = logical causes
--> basis of logic = (A=A)
--> (A=A) = absolutely true for every thing
--> There cannot be two everythings, so Everything is not a thing (God is not finite)
--> Things are illusions = there is only Infinite

So you are saying that the moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (all human beings are by nature depraved, selfish, and destructive) is the same as the moral philosophy of Socrates (One does wrong through ignorance)?

Human beings aren't intrinsically ignorant; their causes (basically, fear of reasoning about the Infinite) tend to push them that way.

Kelly: Parmenides didn't do much thinking, then, or he would have realised thinking is nothing at all.

Terry: "Nothing" as in emptiness/sunyata?

Yes. Can you give your usage of emptiness/sunyata?

Don't circumvent the issue by dismissing other thinkers in simple jest. If you want a serious philosophical discussion, give good reasons for supporting your assertions. I'm putting *my* time into understanding you and forming my thoughts in response. If you want name-calling, I can resort to that with less time wasted on my part.

Do you own time, and form your own thoughts?

I was serious, just a bit on the sparse side. I'm experimenting with "Occam's razor", also trying not to leave bits out.


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[Terry]

This is how ego is "born". The thread "A=A represents making distinctions" indicates why. Namely, the finite being is an illusion.

Sure it is an illusion. Parmenides said exactly that. Every finite thing is an illusion; it is all part of one Being. Even the thought of a finite being is Being itself.

Nonetheless, it is an illusion more real than any illusion you've experienced. For how can there be truth without an illusion to contrast it? Truth has to posit itself, but without something other than itself, there is no way it can know itself.

I did with "God/world" and by then contrasting it with "human/finitude". Further:

World=everything, finitude=parts of everything.

Oh. Gotcha. Time to narrow it down. Do you mean the finite (the parts) comprising the whole (the World) or the whole arising through and transcending the finite?

No, I don't believe that, since I have reasoned that reason is sufficient to discover Ultimate Truth.

reasons = logical causes
--> basis of logic = (A=A)
--> (A=A) = absolutely true for every thing
--> There cannot be two everythings, so Everything is not a thing (God is not finite)
--> Things are illusions = there is only Infinite

I never said your belief was unfounded. You reasoned, but the end result becomes a belief that integrates itself into your worldview. Even when you begin at A=A or A=not A, you have decided what the first principles are. You are saying existence is identical with itself. And then reduced it to absurdity.

There are other systems of logic. Contrast your proof with the following example. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna began with the foundation of A=not A. Namely, A is existence; existence is equal to non-existence. Independent existence is not metaphysically possible because nothing is causally independent of other things. If it were so, things would pop into being with no order and connection to each other. Observations of the world we live in show us otherwise: there are causal chains and connections between one thing and the next. Therefore, A is not A. Identity is an illusion; existence is empty.

Many roads lead to Rome and there's more than one way to reason the skin off a cat.

However, if I recall correctly, Aristotle argues that it is fallacious to apply characteristics of the parts to the whole. And vice versa. If you accept his logical principles, then you have commited a logical fallacy.

The universal of "everything" does not necessarily have to have the essential properties of individual things in order to be true. The essential property of "everything" includes "all things." Therefore, it can contain contradictory things that identify themselves (Day = Day and Night = Night) as well as congruent things (Night = Night and Darkness = Darkness) without contradicting the idea of "everything."

The principle of A=A does apply to "everything" but not in the sense that you use for premise 2 [(A=A) = absolutely true for every thing]. It is true in the sense that "everything" is identical with "everything." You later use the meaning of "everything" for "each of every individual things" in premise 2 to mean "every single thing as a whole" in premise 3. You have also commited an equivocation within the same argument. That is where the main difficulty lies in your argument.

Human beings aren't intrinsically ignorant; their causes (basically, fear of reasoning about the Infinite) tend to push them that way.

How can human beings not be intrinsically ignorant of the Infinite? Are they born with this knowledge? Do they remember this through experience? Does an angel hit them over the head with a frying pan?

Yes. Can you give your usage of emptiness/sunyata?

Emptiness is the transcending of all dualisms. It is the absolute and beyond all words. It is the interpenetration of everything to everything else such that all things exist contingently upon each other. It is unattachment to any one thing including your independently existing identity (the A=A).

Do you own time, and form your own thoughts?

I value my time and can find better things to do with it. If I owned time, then I'd certainly make more of it to offset the time wasted in exercises of idle talk and futile argumentation.

I believe I do form my thoughts. Nonetheless, I know fully that they are ultimately causally influenced. It's part of the fun thinking I do make them up myself though! I prefer to live the illusion to the fullest while knowing what it is for what it is. I want to embrace the darkest and the most opaque of illusions. Nothing is worse than to whither away and die looking for perfect purity when there is none in this ever-changing conventional world.

Nietzsche gave us hope: people who only look forward to the next world have no incentive to make this world better. Why sink in mediocrity in despairing over that it's an illusion? By affirming the illusion of your being (your self), you are affirming the Absolute through the opposition of your finitude to the Infinite. You are a finite being in the face of the Infinite, and yet you are part of the Infinite as well. Without you, the Infinite can not posit itself through the cosmic dialectic---the constant movement of chaos and order or fragmentation and unity. That's why Nietzsche believed in a God who knows how to dance.

And good lord, how boring a nagging theist God is. Wah Wah Wah I'm omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good. Worship me. I'm your big daddy in the sky.

You never feel more alive when you're tip-toeing the tightrope over the bottomless pit. Or when you feel like your heart is about to burst in joy that your house didn't slide away in a mudslide. Emotions are there for a reason. They are there to wake us up from our logic chopping. Reason is of great use, but without life experience, it is merely bare scaffolding. No question more people should think and think critically nonetheless. But when you do, don't forget the tiny thread holding the "I" between the "think" in "I think."

You never realize how dear your precious beliefs are when they're threatened. Those who hold tightest to their ideas are the ones who suffer the most. They're the ones who think everyone else is out to take what they have. If you keep critically questioning and constantly find yourself with nothing to hold on to, then you have nothing to lose. If you have nothing, then you can create something from it because you overcame your fear once more. It is the fear of change, the fear of uncertainty, the fear of loneliness, the fear of rejection, the fear of failing... Such things only come from struggle within oneself and the world.

And again we find ourselves returning to Socrates and his "I know nothing." I keep finding the history of philosophy as a constant re-affirming of itself because it continues to question itself and continues to lose its identity. What becomes Heraclitus becomes Hume becomes Seneca becomes Hegel becomes Aristotle becomes Aquinas becomes Whitehead becomes Schleiermacher becomes Leibniz, and so on... It runs forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally and in every direction you can think of. Truth is absolute then it's relative then it's static then it's movement then it's spirit then it's material then it's this and then it's that... And we've returned again to Fa-tsang becomes Nagarjuna becomes Chandrakirti becomes Sun Tzu becomes Lao Tzu becomes Husserl becomes Levinas becomes Eckhart...

Over and over---it's all the same content, yet the words keep changing. There's nothing new under the sun so says Heraclitus. I'm starting to believe him.

Accept that everything in this world will fail you. Your knowledge, your mind, your friends, your body...everything. All that is left is your finitude, your existence. And nothing more. The existential theologian Paul Tillich put it best:

"Many great concerns of the past have vanished and more will come to an end, sooner or later. The melancholy law of transitories governs even our most passionate concerns. The anxiety of the end dwells in the happiness they give. Both of these things about which we are concerned and we ourselves come to an end. There will be a moment---and perhaps not far away---when we shall no longer be concerned about any of these concerns, when their finitude will be revealed in the experience of our own finitude---of our own end." --- The New Being "Our Ultimate Concern" pg 155

This is nothing new folks; Tillich took Kierkegaard to heart. Are you brave enough to let Kierkegaard show you the deepest fathoms of the dark sea too? Make the ultimate sacrifice; the ultimate act of faith? Will you accept your fate with the greatest sincerity?

Stop denying imperfect reality just because you don't like it. Question it. Transform it. If you believe reality is in your hands, your will becomes action itself. Stop with the self-pity and finger-pointing and say, "Is that all you got? Ha!" and move forward. There's nothing I hate more than those who wallow in their words and let society maintain them while they blather.

Once you get over your specially-given entitlement, you find that relating to other people becomes less of a hassle. You can't change assholes, but at least you can humor them (and perhaps pity them). Love everyone and trust no one. Aristotle said there are three kinds of friendship: those of benefit (means for helping), those of pleasure (My, you're good company.), and the true friends. Those are the most elusive. They are the relationship among equals with a mutual appreciation of excellence. They're the good reciprocating with good. Basically, you can't be friends with everyone. And it would be silly to waste the energy and time to do so. I don't have time any more for people who'll drag me down. I can only help with a few words, but that's all. It's the "If you are an obstacle, then I will remove you out of my way" mentality.

The existentialist philosophers expressed rightly: it may not be your fault, but you are still responsible. Life is massively unfair; get over it. Apply. Rinse. Repeat. (Such is the peculiar way of the ERS.)

I was serious, just a bit on the sparse side. I'm experimenting with "Occam's razor", also trying not to leave bits out.

Occam's razor is cutting off what's not necessary to prove a point. Calling Parmenides a lazy thinker ain't Occam's razor.

God dammit, Dionysus! Look what you've made me do. I guess it's true that drunken horned blondes always have twice the fun! I've lost myself once more in my philosophizing. Oh dear. And I have some dirty laundry to do.

Don't you worry about me lingering here; I won't be here for long. If you don't grasp what I'm saying, then that's just too fucking bad. Carry on. And best of luck to all of you geniuses, sages, and writers. May your lives be interesting (to say the least *snicker*).

My life is calling me once again...

[Edit: Lots more fun stuff with less calories!]

[Avicenna]

The value of philosophy is as the embodiment of the best virtues of humanity: the ability to feel love, and the ability to think about it.
What does the peanut gallary think?

As I read philosophy particularly nietzsche and kierkegaard, the so-called virtues of humanity of mine be that emotion or reason suddenly burst... I don't know what happened, but I feel somekind of explosion..
propellerbeanie wrote 'the ability to feel love' but also the opposite is true.. 'the ability to feel hate' or the ability to feel everything that many considered inhumane.

I write this based only from my personal experience. I'm sorry if I don't express myself or my thoughts or my emotions good enough in english. For introduction, I live in Indonesia. English is not my native language. I encourage myself to start participating in this forum.

[David Quinn]

Hi Avicenna,

I don't think we've had an Indonesian on here before, so you've sparked my interest. What's it like to be a philosophical person in Indonesia? Is there much freedom to express your thought over there?

What do you mean by an explosion exactly, when you read Nietzsche and Kierkegaard? Are you referring to some kind of opening up of consciousness? What do you mean by reason and emotion "bursting"?

And don't worry, your English seems fine to me.

-

[suergaz]

Kelly wrote:

Philosophy always reveals human psychology to be ugly and incapable of goodness (lacking truthfulness).

Hi Kelly, I find this difficult to comprehend. I was wondering if you could expand a little on this?

How does the love of wisdom always reveal human psychology to be ugly and lacking truthfulness when the love of wisdom is essentially beautiful and truthful?

[Kelly Jones]

Terry/Suergaz:

Any emotion, like love, comes at the expense of clear and accurate reasoning. This appears to be the case without exception. This could change, though is unlikely.

I am taking a sabbatical to work on sorting out dental issues (then I'll get my teeth into philosophy).

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[suergaz]

Terry/Suergaz:

I have never posted under the name Terry.

Any emotion, like love, comes at the expense of clear and accurate reasoning. This appears to be the case without exception. This could change, though is unlikely.

I'd be very interested to hear about how you think this could change. Love, least of any emotion, hinders reason in my own experience, which I do not imagine to be uncommon in others, regardless of popular conceptions of the 'craziness' of love.

I am taking a sabbatical to work on sorting out dental issues (then I'll get my teeth into philosophy).

Ok.

[Jamesh]

lol.

suergaz is back and has been for 2 months and I didn't even notice.

[suergaz]

What is this? 2 months? Who do you think I am? I've only just had my ban lifted! And who are/were you? I don't remember a Jamesh.