Nah. It was just a very naive talk. Highly intelligent people without a philosophical education are prone to going off on these tangents where they independently rediscover ancient concepts through modern analogies in a roundabout half-baked way, and start thinking of themselves as gurus.

What a proper study of philosophy teaches you is that you cannot, and will not ever, have a truly novel thought. It's all been said. And if you do happen to have one, it will be the result of an incredible dedicated effort and take a lifetime of work to prove it, building on the work of others. Not an hour long TED talk.

Bertrand Russel had a definition of Philosophy that fits your suspicion - in that he said that Philosophy is the contested no-mans land between Theology and Science.

Hence - you're probably not going to find absolutes.

That's all right as far as it goes, but you need to consistently remember that what you're doing is not science, it's philosophy.

not very much, that is to say I'm skeptical of metaphysics altogether. I'm partial to Wittgenstein's attitude, that is to say I think projects like pantheism deflate if you scrutinize them and inquire to what degree they say anything meaningful or well-defined about the world, or if they're really expressions of psychology or linguistics or desire.

I do agree with you that all kinds of belief systems may fulfill legitimate needs, but I think they're just that, personal, subjective and private expressions of the individual's attitude towards the world, not meaningful claims about the world as such.

Then it's not a rational worldview.

I value knowledge based on data and where that is not available, philosophical reasoning. I see 'philosophical knowledge' as somewhat of a contradiction in terms. However I don't see how there can be a point in trying to demonstrate that something is 'dehumanizing' without even properly defining what the term means. It seems to be a recipe for pages of word games rather than any useful philosophical reasoning.

> to that end I won't endeavor to persuade you of it's merit. I would advise you to read his work before you criticize it.

Could you at least provide the name of work that the quote comes from? Despite my pessimism I'm prepared to at least look at some of his work.

Just because scientific findings disagree with the conceptual framework taught in philosophy degrees doesn't make them wrong.

Hard disagree. You cannot truly understand a person’s thought without understanding the person’s life.

Even a hardcore logician like Russell, you know he was an academic during such and such a period of history which influenced his worldview and that which he found important.

Maybe I’m just outing myself as a PoMo, but thought is life and living begets thought. Philosophers are interpreters of the grand drama in which they have a part.

You should look up the meaning of that quote.

Ah, yes, I'm somewhat of a philosopher, psychologist and social scientist too.

That's entirely possible. It's even possible that my assessment is based on ignorance. I am certainly not an expert in the philosophical literature, and even more certainly not an expert in it recently. The last time I looked seriously at the philosophical literature at all was decades ago and maybe things have changed. But I am an expert in science, and computer science in particular (I have a Ph.D.) and so I can say with some authority that the philosophy literature that I looked at back in the day exhibited a profound ignorance of basic results in CS and math, and also a pretty profound lack of common sense. I found a lot of papers that were tackling non-problems that were based on false assumptions, the moral equivalent of fake proofs that 1=0 where the object of the game is to spot the flaw in the reasoning. And spotting the flaw in the reasoning wasn't even challenging. It was just obvious.

It also seems to me that a lot of what is nowadays called philosophy is just pretty transparent cover for religious apologetics.

Now, as you say, I could be wrong. I'm not an expert. If I'm wrong, I welcome being enlightened. But if you want to take that on I think you will find that I am not completely clueless. I suggest you start with citing an example other than Dennett or Maudlin of someone you think is doing good work in philosophy nowadays.

Not at all, at least not on my part. I think psychology is important. I am not convinced by the methodology though.

As someone who regularly rereads about the Sokal Hoax for laughs, I had to stop myself breaking down here.

You're going to have to explain which part of philosophy you mean, because what came after this doesn't follow from that premise at all. It's like saying a Chinese Room is fundamentally different from a "real" solution even though nobody can tell the difference. That's not a "belief in philosophy", that's human exceptionalism and perhaps a belief in the soul.

This sentiment saddens me. The thought that philosophy - which begins with the examination of our beliefs and personal opinions through the lens of reason - could be considered impossible to talk about with nuance seems deeply wrong to me.

If that's your experience, you've been exposed to some very wrong, or very modern, philosophers. Philosophy is just talking about being, and a conversation about simulated versus 'actual' reality is the best place for it.

where on earth or from who did you learn this abject nonsense?

Based on what you said, whatever you learned is not actually philosophy.

Philosophy is not someone's thoughts or ideas. Reducing it to that makes it equivalent to some random person's random ravings and trivializes the word.

The reason why you can't understand all of philosophy is because you have learned from someone who didnt really know.

Philosophy is easily defined when you actually know.

Or perhaps you think you are expert enough of all philosophy to be able to state so boldly that all of them require some level of intellect. I hate to break it to you, but that is an immensely arrogant thing to say, aside from being obviously self-contradictory and produced by someone who speaks of his thoughts rather than what is known.

meanwhile you're attempting to rob humanity of real philosophy, which is not at all apart from science. Philosophy and science are both part of the same object - two sides of one coin. Philosophy is the study of what is in the truth. We call truth that way because it's fixed and can be confirmed through literally anything.

But whatever you learned is actually a tool to deceive people who don't know any better.

There is a phrase: "buddha's teaching is so simple that can be learned by a three year old boy, but it cannot be practiced by an 80 year old man."

> This is true for nearly all religions and especially for philosophies.

Remove the word philosophy and I'll agree with you.

> This is not true about Hinduism. It isn't one of those "take all or none" philosophies you can pick your parts without ever reading about many other parts which you still hold in high regard due to tradition.

I'm wondering if you decided to completely ignore everything I previously wrote or if you've got something controlling you to be unable to correctly understand what you read of what I wrote. Chances are you are another person who does not actually want to know the truth. The best way to remain in ignorance is to falsely convince yourself that you actually do want to know.

There is blatant evidence that Buddha's teaching is thrown away. He himself says the Lotus Sutra is the one sutra that is rejected by the majority of people, even while he's alive.

Maybe if you had a basic amount of regard for him and even perhaps yourself then you wouldn't so obviously deny how deeply in denial you are.

I will explain something for you. Buddhism is not under the umbrella of Santanadharma, however much you try to neuter Buddha's real teaching so as to stay so comfortable in your own ideas. Buddha admitted the existence of Gods because they are equivalent to aspects of nature or because they don't really exist or are metaphors and he uses them entirely as such. The mere fact that you are possessed by a god justifies Buddha's using the term - because you are a servant of a dead God , it was accurate to call you one. But Buddha was clear that there are no beings. If you knew even a little of his real teaching then you would notice how silly you sound claiming that what you know even approaches his level. Buddha used words like bodhisattva or deva even though he is later clear about the true nature of those terms. You're the one who missed the point. Buddha basically intentionally trolled you.

Besides, if you really knew the nature of a real Krishna, you would see that the truth of those concepts do not originate in "Hinduism", whatever that is.

Are you aware of the fact buddha said, "in all of heaven and earth, only I exist"?

Stop changing his words if you want to convince the future humanity you actually respect him.

The fact is, for now, you are lying to people. The Gita makes repeated claims about Buddha that he either directly contradicted or which he never made. That's a sin.

The mere fact that you place his painting in the Gita and tell innocent people that you know he's an incarnation means you lied about him.

QED.

Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy.

In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the world only kept my enthusiasm up for a while - after some time I'd still know all the things I learned, but they just wouldn't seem as important as before.

The world made sense... But I just didn't like the way it made sense. That's when I realized that the problem is me, not the world, and that the problem cannot be solved by pure knowledge - there is an animal inside me which doesn't give a rat's ass about all my theories of why and how, and requires a different approach.

An interesting point. Many of these assessments are arguably subconscious and/or inculcated.

Some philosophies aspire to as few fundamental guiding principles as possible. Such a structure tends to improve self-consistency.

Other philosophies allow a broader mix of principles, sometimes in tension, which require considerable subjective discussion to untangle. Perhaps one could say these philosophies value human discussion as a core principle from which meaning is constructed.

How did you get this from what I said?