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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I’m rather surprised at that, FC. You don’t generally strike me as the type of person who is influenced in such a way by the actions of others (your perception of those actions) that you would emulate them and then blame your actions/behavior on others. I thought that you were more noble than that.
What’s the expression, Fixed Cross - “If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem.”
Of course, you are entitled to your “opinion” your 'perception" - but if indeed that is your perception, that ILP is THAT, “just a place of shit”, in what way does dropping your own verbal diarrhea clean ILP up?
If we are treating people in a bad way, it is OUR VERY OWN DECISION to do that. Are we THAT helpless?
Are we so swayed by public opinion and example? Are we sheep or are we Eagles?
I don’t think poor reasoning is the main problem with the site. Hopefully we all examine our reasoning and improve it at times. The thread I linked probably had it’s share of poor reasoning in some of the posts, but everyone was more concerned with the project of understanding the subject/object distinction than “winning the argument.”
Pretty much.
At one point in time, the environment here was a lot more friendly and collegial.
I suppose circa 2004-2006, when I was getting involved, there was still some novelty in participating on a philosophy discussion board with people all over the world. It felt a bit more special and I think this carried over into how people treated each other.
One of the first threads I ever made here was about whether you wanted to win or to find the best possible answer. It’s probably buried under 100000 pages of people bashing women and people of other races.