Philosophy: mind masturbation?

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after a discussion last night im more inclined to say that although philosocphy appears to be thinking for thinking sake, the concepts once appreciated and taken as a whole make it applicable to how you approach anything really

And idealists are not complete nutters
Fushara
thush-ara Wrote:Chin was thinking about joining a weekly discussion group just to see what happens......


do eeet Xyxthumbs
cram Wrote:voltaire's candide is highly recommended Xyxthumbs

some good advice here. Yes
it's also comedy gold.
Stop touching yoursleves you lot!!!

Smile
cram Wrote:for those who like their philosophy given in a more accessible way (ie not a treatise or something similarly formal) voltaire's candide is highly recommended Xyxthumbs

yes, but that's a debunking of all philosophy
that it's all pretty much worthless bollocks
and now we must go and work in the garden
now reading Simon Blackburn "Think" harder reading than the other general text goes into it all in a bit more depth.

On the concept of God being a necessary being i.e a thing that has its own cause....Hume regarded a deity as something that is impossible for us to conceive as not existing...like us imagining it is impossible for twice two to not be four.

But as humans we don't have ability comprehend a necessary being because we only comprehend cause and effect..God as a necessary being had his own cause soooo......

Because God never existed we can't imagine "him" not existing so therefore God never existed.

Which leads on to assume that we are lacking higher senses that would probably allow us to understand the world, we can never have a concept of what God is..

That is my interpretation of what was written Lol Have i got that right or completely missed the point?
Fushara
thush-ara Wrote:Wwe can't imagine "him" not existing
I think this is entirely possible.

Anyways, philosophy is fun and all... but isn't it only really useful when you can check your 'truths' in the real world?

I mean.. philosophy is the same as theorizing, but a theory is just a theory if you can't check it.
star trek explored this in the episodes with parallel universes


[Image: tas_anim_salute_vulcan.gif]
[Image: TNG.gif]
Theeboon Wrote:
thush-ara Wrote:Wwe can't imagine "him" not existing
I think this is entirely possible.

Anyways, philosophy is fun and all... but isn't it only really useful when you can check your 'truths' in the real world?

I mean.. philosophy is the same as theorizing, but a theory is just a theory if you can't check it.

oh definately, its pretty hard to check theories about religion and real world...But then on the topic of the real world there is whole load of debate about what the "real world" is.....im enjoying just thinking about possibilities...its a bit much to all take seriously. I mean there are stories about philosophers locking themselves away for ridiculous amounts of time to think and then going a bit insane...

I haven't seen much of Star Trek... Icon_sad I never got into it....
Fushara
thush-ara Wrote:On the concept of God being a necessary being i.e a thing that has its own cause....Hume regarded a deity as something that is impossible for us to conceive as not existing...like us imagining it is impossible for twice two to not be four.

But as humans we don't have ability comprehend a necessary being because we only comprehend cause and effect..God as a necessary being had his own cause soooo......

Because God never existed we can't imagine "him" not existing so therefore God never existed.

Which leads on to assume that we are lacking higher senses that would probably allow us to understand the world, we can never have a concept of what God is..

That is my interpretation of what was written Lol Have i got that right or completely missed the point?

no i think that's pretty much kantian with a tendency to assume god doesn't exist Smile

the framework of your mind allows you to think about things only in a certain manner (cause and effect is only one of a few categories you're able to think in). hence thinking about a certain thing never reaches the thing-in-itself but some pre-shaped version for your mind's pleasure Smile. plus: everything you're thinking of needs its object of intuition, be it a empirical affection of your senses or just something your mind invented by itself. thinking's the function, intuition is the object this function can work on.

now the general problem with god, world or soul is, that they obviously don't exist empirically (not even the world as you're not able to grasp it as a whole!), so they're also not able to affect your senses - which leads to the fact that you have to assume they exist (you'd have to invent them to think about them). however, inventing them works only through the system of thinking - you can only make them up in a way that your thinking allows you to - according to categories like c&e etc.
hence everything you're saying about "what" and "how" god is, must be wrong in a way that you assume him to be radically retracted on the one hand (b/c you can't grasp him in his very own meaning, see the thing-in-itself problem) and you're trying to describe him on the other hand in a way he can't be described (through categorial thinking).
however, there's no reason to prefer his non-existence to his existence as a description in a thinking-related way doesn't even come close to the idea.

...i am cumming now...
martsman Wrote:now the general problem with god, world or soul is, that they obviously don't exist empirically
How about this: soul is a metaphor for the blood in your veins, carrying the hormones and oxygen (and whatever else is in there) from and to your brain causing you to... live on and achieve something, like babies or great art. Soul.
Theeboon Wrote:
martsman Wrote:now the general problem with god, world or soul is, that they obviously don't exist empirically
How about this: soul is a metaphor for the blood in your veins, carrying the hormones and oxygen (and whatever else is in there) from and to your brain causing you to... live on and achieve something, like babies or great art. Soul.

well, in the history of philosophy, soul is understood as the immaterial, (somehow) eternal counterpart to your substantial and finite body.
i guess it derives from the general way of metaphysical thinking we are bound to through the the disposition of our mind and/or cultural history - the fact that we generally tend to suspect "something behind" the mere empirical/physical world.

if you think "soul" explains itself by binding it to physical phaenomena, fair enough - but then what you do is fortifying the general difference between physis and metaphysis, even if you neglect the latter - to be precise: you do that just because you're saying that "the meaning" of the term "soul" is this and that, which still happens in a scheme of "what you can see" and "what the [edit: TRUE] meaning of that which you see" is.

personally i'd say that the main problem lies in the way of thinking we can't avoid, even though phenomenology points out a way out of it.
even freud said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. the human mind has the freedom to rationalize anything.
martsman Wrote:if you think "soul" explains itself by binding it to physical phaenomena, fair enough - but then what you do is fortifying the general difference between physis and metaphysis, even if you neglect the latter - to be precise: you do that just because you're saying that "the meaning" of the term "soul" is this and that, which still happens in a scheme of "what you can see" and "what the [edit: TRUE] meaning of that which you see" is.
I think I'm underlining not the difference but the similarity. Because we already ARE completely physical (that's how I see it anyway) the only way (actually one of the ways) to express ourselves is by communicating METAphysically. I just think that everything stems from one and the same physical world and physics is trying to touch that physicality, cutting through the 'bullshit' so to speak, through mathematics. Poetry is the opposite: trying to reach truths about everyday life by talking about it in metaphysical terms. I like cutting through bullshit by thinking about things mathematically, others do the same but use a different tactic, a different set of tools (namely verbal/written language).

The tools are inherently the same I think, but I like mathematics better because it feels less complex (to me) and seems to cut deeper than what can be achieved with written or spoken language. But that is of course entirely my opinion. To others language comes more naturally.

You either live in a physical world or a social world, or (usually) somewhere in between (and I see that in the balancing game of the two important growth hormones: testosterone and estrogen, two sides of the same coin: the human being). My hormone balance is lots testosterone and less estrogen, so I gravitate towards the physical, mathematical.
I sometimes hear other peoples thoughts.

Does that justify any concept of outer reality?
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http://www.hardscore.com/articles/lazerdrome/
could mean you have schizophrenia
Fushara
damn, maybe i should got to the doctors Icon_sad
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