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.
> At some point this becomes a philosophical argument, so we can't have a very nuanced debate on it...
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.
> The difference between philosophy and science is that, to understand someone else's philosophy you need to possess similar intellect. Where as average student of science can study and understad ideas of genius like Einstein.
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.
I'm not sure the creds help you here, as undergrad philosophy graduates do not have a reputation for mature insight or depth, perhaps especially those reared in the contemporary climate where curricula are poorly structured, resembling something of a chaotic, superficial buffet that can only produce an incoherent residue of skepticism and relativism. Note that the very claim that almost all philosophers were wrong about everything is itself a truth claim, and therefore subject to the very same criteria that the claims of philosophers are. You haven't escaped the philosophical predicament.
>Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated.
No we mean the same thing. Though I do not agree with you that philosophy is more fundamental then science or logic.
>You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization.
Any random topic can be founded on arbitrary axioms to create theorems of unlimited complexity. This does not justify study imo.
> I would expect that people who dismiss philosophy do so from a position of relative ignorance.
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.
>How carefully have you examined that body of work?
Don't be ridiculous. Very few professors of philosophy would have even had enough math to read the basic expressions necessary for such understanding. I don't need to survey the literature to be confident that the significant majority of philosophers don't understand quantum mechanics, cannot explain the chemical or electrical mechanisms by which brains work, and don't understand statistics well enough to interpret experimental data.
Those things require a deal of training and experience that a philosophy education is not likely to provide. There are plenty of philosophers out there that do understand any or all of those things, obviously. Did you think I was trying to claim that there are none?
This is kind of the wrong question to ask, if I may say so.
Once you realise that everything that is not science is philosophy, philosophy doesn't only become interesting, but essential to living a worthwhile life.
A Ph.D in the comments said s/he didn't like teaching college philosophy, and I think this is partly to blame for what Philosophy (with uppercase P) has become--people interpret philosophy as that subject you take in school with archaic, primitive ideas. Every major philosopher has probably only one good idea, yet they've wasted thousands of words trying to explain it or find a solution. This is what students spend most of the time studying, so it becomes tiresome.
Philosophy is really critical thinking and understanding the various modes of logic/reasoning our brain chooses when acting consciously or subconsciously. Our lives are not one of pure deductive reasoning. However, you'd be surprised how many people (even scientists) use deductive reasoning. Once we understand that a brain holds different modes of reasoning at the same time, we learn to talk more openly, consider another point's of view more carefully, and attack our differences less so readily. In turn, this creates a better society--one which is based on understanding why and how we do things. The only real enemy of contemporary philosophy is tradition. And there are certainly many of those still around. But listen to a theistic philosopher speak and observe how he acts. Then listen to a dogmatic cult preacher in his multi-millionaire dollar celebrity church or from a celebrity religion. Tell me which one you prefer.
Philosophy teaches us to be inquisitive but not naive. It softens our emotions when considering others' differences, because most of us hold views that neither science nor philosophy can explain. Yet, just like in science, pleasure does not come from knowing the answer, rather from searching for the enigma.
> I think the problem there is that just because someone has made a name for themselves in one field does not imply that they have some sort of superhuman intellect that means they will offer useful insights on a range of subjects.
Of course there is no such implication, nor did I make this claim. But it is absolutely true that certain people are simply better at reasoning than other people. This may be because of biological traits, educational difference, difference of habit, etc., but it is certainly true. Any experience with any human will reveal this to you, I think.
> Hawking's pontificating on metaphysics are of no more interest to me than Linus Torvald's on laptop screen resolutions or Richard Dawkin's theoretical thoughts on cosmology.
I am not at all clear why you would say this. In fact, I think you are committing an argument from authority in the reverse. You refuse to listen to this guys because you assume that they are not authorities. That's just bogus and I am sure you know that. Instead, you should listen to Hawking discuss metaphysics and decide if he is worth listening to. You would, I think, do exactly that if it were philosopher speaking.
>You can try to solve this social problem by personally climbing the status hierarchy.
That's something I don't agree. It's not a social problem. It's a problem with your own intellectual effort. The problem is not coherence, its relevance and completeness. If you make an argument that shows that you are familiar with the problem setting in deep level, you have an audience among domain experts in philosophy.
The problem with amateur philosophers like you an me is that we want to talk more than listen.
> The point of philosophy is to teach you how to think so you can formulate your own answer.
This canard has been raised several times in this thread. Yes, who will teach the physicists how to think? Who will teach the engineers how to put two and two together?
> Apparently you expect everything to be 1+1=2, which really is kind of sad.
If by this you mean I reject irrational thought, then yes, guilty as charged. This has nothing to do with my views on philosophy, though. Philosophy is a type of rational inquiry.
> Science seems to have ruined you.
Or perhaps math has ruined me, expecting everything to be 1+1=2? But isn't math an extension of logic, and logic a part of philosophy? Maybe philosophy has ruined me.
> Aside: I’m starting to be bothered by the trend of assuming that philosophers have special insight. There’s plenty of shitty, non-useful philosophy, and there’s plenty of articles like this where someone writes in circles like they’re paid by the word. Generating text for hours without an anchor to the real world is not a productive method of generating insight about that world.
I agree somewhat, but I am more bothered by laymen who attempt to engage philosophical methods or concepts without any formal training. For example, laymen almost always use conventional, non-critical language, bandying about "existence" and making claims in what Carnap called the "metaphysical mode." Laymen like to draw arguments, as if they're novel, that have been discussed extensively in the literature for over fifty years.
> Philosophers haven't bothered to learn modern science
Incorrect.
> they do not have the expertise necessary to do anything but pontificate on vagaries
Also incorrect.
> Philosophy these days seems more about finding clever places to hide religious beliefs than it is about explaining the world as it is and answering questions in useful and productive ways.
>Having done a philosophy degree and been a programmer, in my opinion you're adding far too much weight to what is a very easy domain to understand. All the complicated bits became their own discipline (maths/physics/chemistry/social science/psychology).
That's the kind of thing somebody who doesn't understand philosophy would say.
The "complicated bits" (physical philosophy) were never much of what's important about philosophy in the first place.
> But damn, if this is at all representative to what studying philosophy is like, isn't it exhausting?
Worthless slop is worthless. To make it worth something you need to be precise. Yes, it can be, not exhausting, but sometimes tedious. But that attention to detail is necessary in any constructive endeavor be it software, hardware, mathematics, engineering, governing, why do you think philosophy should be any different?
The end results can be worth it. I used to argue a lot with someone, it's only when we agreed to be precise about what we were saying that we got anywhere (to be precise 'got anywhere' = 'started to understand each other's positions and assumptions').
Edit: trying to debate with someone who can only respond with emotionally based certainties and often descends into shouting and blank denials is a wearing and disheartening experience. Also not useful if you're arguing about important things like, I dunno, what to do about pandemics.
> I have a BA in philosophy. Rather than learning the truth, I discovered that almost all philosophers were wrong about almost everything.
Have you studied any set theory? How about epistemology, or non-binary logic?
> But in tracing the history of wrongness, wrestling with all the fashions of thinking, you learn to think with precision. That skill continues to help me.
Precision: the state or quality of being precise; exactness.
> But I wouldn’t dismiss its value in being taught how to think.
Few universities teach how to think. Most teach what to think. Critical thinking, reasoning through ideas and concepts, and research are often lacking.
> I wish there was a bigger focus in physics, math, and philosophy for those who didn’t know what to do
I don't buy that. You can't by a psychiatrist. You can't be a medical doctor or nutritionist. There are a lot of useful things in this word, that we collectively need, you can't do with those.
But, I do think teaching philosophy would be useful. That involves learning how to think things through which isn't, for the most part, taught.
> If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good.
There is an error in reasoning right here. The implication from the context is that you need to go to a college or university to be more educated. That's not true. It's also a complex question to ask, what level of education on what does who need?
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.
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