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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[–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Some philosophers have written in intentionally hard to understand language.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days 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 2 days 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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  • [–] 35 points 4 days ago (5 children)

    The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

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    Like all things, 90% of it is just idiots egotistically gazing into their own assholes insisting that every aspect of their subjective self-revelation is universal, and in between that there are some good things here and there. Treat any philosophical concept as a filter, not a sponge.

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

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

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    I know that Ayn Rand is an charlatan posing as philosopher

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  • [–] 20 points 4 days 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 4 days ago (5 children)

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

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    [–] 10 points 3 days ago* (4 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 days ago (1 child)

    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 days 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] 2 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

    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 2 days 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 2 days 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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    [–] 14 points 3 days 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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    [–] 17 points 4 days ago (2 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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    [–] 15 points 4 days 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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    [–] 9 points 3 days 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 days ago (2 children)

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

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    [–] 12 points 4 days ago (1 child)

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

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    [–] 8 points 3 days ago

    Stoicism helps massively in a chaotic world like today

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago (2 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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    [–] 9 points 4 days ago (6 children)

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

    It's comforting and liberating to accept.

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    [–] 9 points 4 days 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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    [–] 6 points 3 days ago (1 child)

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

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    [–] 8 points 4 days ago (3 children)

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

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