"Ad Hominous ThreadS"

Interesting. Ive never actually seen a post of yours that presented any type of philosophy though - Can you point me to some. Questionark defect on this keyboard.

Lol. You are so out of touch.

About which part? I mean seriously do you see people around here who give a shit? There’s like 4 people who flood every conversation with horseshit about gender. A bunch of confused children. You can’t have a real conversation about an academic topic with a bunch of people who don’t know it. Philosophy isn’t just arguing and nit picking Nietzsche.

When I see someone with a problem with authority at my age of almost 35, I think, “this person isn’t smart enough to figure out how to do what they want”.

Do you think the ubermench complained about authority? Or throw rocks at it? Or did he make an example, himself of how to be so that he could get his rewards?

I’ll take that as a no.

You have to go back a good way to be honest. I’ve asked questions about modal logic, defining objects, randomness, constructing ontologies and I’ve done a number of threads on the old subject/object thing that so many people get stuck on. Along with all sorts of other things that relate to analytic philosophy. The problem is that no one here, on the internet philosophy board gives a shit about real philosophy. They’re all here looking for feel-good reads to validate themselves. They get all huffy when people can’t take them seriously. I swear man, after my 2nd year of college no one was talking about Nietzsche anymore. No matter how much people try and decipher more and more meaning by studying his work like it’s the bible, it just is what it is. A brilliant man’s reaction to the world. But let’s be honest…how may of his readers do you think are capable of living up to what he would want them to? How many do you think can even understand that? There isn’t a lot of philosophy aptitude out there in the world. It’s spread pretty thin. I’m not trying to bash N just to rile you up. I’m just talking about the real fact of the matter that philosophy didn’t stop 50 years ago, or 100 years ago or 1000 years ago and it just sucks that almost no one is up to speed and that they’d all rather declare victory than take a step further in the direction of knowing more.

It’s easy to sit and say, “I’ve never seen you post about real philosophy”. But you and I both know that the only way that’s true is if you’ve really not looked.

I mean I honestly think that a lot of people here are very childish. That might seem backward coming from the caricature of me that some of you may have in your minds. I don’t mean like they drink and smoke and aren’t responsible, but like they think like children. I mean really…all this chest banging, dick thrusting, racket making over jack shit. Hurt feelings. It really makes me think less of a lot of people here. I see a handful of people who are able to write. They get considered the better philosophers of the boards. But even then, the best writing you see here is like “C” work in any decent school. God save us if you guys are reading things here and finding them to be profound.

Philosophy students are usually completely aphilosophical. I talk them out of their idea that theyve thought about things within minutes. Philosophy isnt someting you can study like history. Either you are a philosopher, or not. If you are, you end up understanding all other philosophies. If you are not, you end up at best skimming through a bunch of books and thinking you know whats in them.

My philosophy is only two and a half years old. I have no idea what youre on about with your 50 years or 100 years, honestly.

I have looked. And youve still not given me a source.

Well, once you finish understanding the rest of the philosophers as you say, you’ll realize that your philosophy isn’t new. I’m not trying to upset you but how on earth do you think you’ve come up with a new philosophy?

And while it doesn’t really matter, it’s a fact that your claim about philosophy students is both a radical one, and an unsubstantiated one. I suppose you could give me a few anecdotal pieces of evidence for your claim if you want, but my criticism would still stand.

You’re welcome to search my posts. I had a thread about identifying and distinguishing objects not to long ago. I usually make threads like that once in a while to give people who are being stupid a basic example of how you have to think in order to be thinking correctly. If you don’t know how to distinguish and identify objects then you can’t define things and if you can’t define things then you’re incoherent. Most people don’t know how to define things, can’t recognize incoherence and literally just blabber nonsense and call it philosophy then pat themselves on the back for literally nothing.

I think you’re an alright guy. I don’t think you’re an asshole or anything like that, but come on man. Get some sleep and read this thread again and compare my reasoning here to your repetitive attacks on my person regarding whether or not you think I’ve talked about philosophy in 16000 posts. You and I both know you’re wrong on that one.

I think you’re an alright guy too. You talking to me a about pilosophy is like a dog telling a man to walk on two legs.

Your object/subject ponderings are fine, but you can find that stuff in a dictionary. People learn it when they are 6, usually.

Ouch. And what can philosophy teach us about the lives we live – as opposed to the limitations of philosophy in doing precisely that? For example, what has it taught us over the past, say, 3,000 years?

It can teach you how to tell whether you’'re reasoning correctly. Most people aren’t interested in that though.

I am… ??

Do you think the same after reading Humanarchy?

But my point is there is no way [objectively] in which to determine who is reasoning correctly when behaviors come into conflicts. Instead, in places like this, folks will often just assume it is that they are. And then when others don’t agree that is when the exchange can devolve into a flurry of ad hominems.

The problem [from my perspective] revolves around recognizing the limitations of philosophical language in contexts such as these.

From my own experience then what most folks are not interested in is exploring this further from the perspective of dasein and conflicting goods. Why? Because [again in my opinion] to do so might bring them to the conclusion that objectivism itself is the problem here.

…Instead you “Think” that it is impossible to think correctly, so why bother to try. I would have to put that one on the top of the list of “How to not think correctly”.

No, I situate thoughts I have about these things in particular contexts and try to show how people can think about the context from differing [conflicting] points of view that objectivists are then unable to distill down to the most rational point of view. Aside from “up there” of course.

The difference between your objectivism and the objectivism of many others I have encountered is that you refuse even to engage your theoretical constructs [your definitions] out in the world of actual conflicting behaviors. Whether with respect to the Mormon couple or John and Mary and the unborn child or any particular new context you might introduce] it always comes down to either agreeing with the internal logic of your theoretical abstractions or not.

I went through the trouble to do a search for threads where Smears (mr r) talked about the subject/object distinction and found a pretty great example of a healthier atmosphere on this forum, with Smears leading the discussion no less.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157191

We ought to step up and try to turn this forum around. I don’t get the same feeling when I come to ILP anymore, this place has a lot of negative and prohibitive energy for me and I don’t think I’m the only one. I think people of the current membership have come to be so familiar with one another that ego has taken the forefront and we can’t see past personality anymore to have a thoughtful thread. Go back to almost any random old thread, the character of the discussion is worlds different. I mean, there are still some occasional good discussions, but the general mood at ILP has grown a lot more sour and combative over the years which just feeds back on itself prohibiting thoughtfulness.

I think everyone who’s posted in this thread is in one way or another a “heavy hitter” for this site, not just as veteran members but as fairly thoughtful people. If anyone holds weight in setting a tone throughout the forum it’s some of the people in here.

What’s the barrier to setting a better tone for the site?
Don’t you all agree that it would be better to have less of the soap opera personal battles constantly exploding across the site and more threads like the one I linked above, where people feel at ease to just think freely?

Its only been in the lasy few months that ive even payed attention to wbo im talking to. I dont even know these people. I mean i just realized not long ago that james is on the RM kick. I make it a point not to know any of you. It helps me sort the bs. Lately, the site has been flooded and spammed by the same racist, sexist kts member hiding thier idebtitjes and ruining any kind of good discussion. I think that has to be addressed. Even still, its not the racism or sexism that’s the main problem. Its that the reasoning is poor. The posters are incoherent and the shit only serves as a distraction to good discourse. Anyone who doesnt see this is an idiot.

Proper moderation.

You can’t blame this on KTS members.

The old members have become nasty. The new members are more interested in dishing out subtle insults and stroking their egos than in a productive discussion.