Philosophy For Us Dummies

The philosophical angle: Is it an appropriate or meaningful question “how did matter and energy come about”; what sort of a question is it; what would be needed to answer it, or to know if it is a valid question.
2. Same questions.
3. Fucking is what answers 2.

Are “is” and “it”?

  1. Appropriate or
  2. Meaningful

And God said, “Let there be light”. It was a big bang; and we and it have been banging ever since.

good questions-----------what do you think

:laughing: Oh, little reptile, I can somehow see you standing in front of the class.
And what do You think, little reptile? :evilfun:

since you are my teacher(remember) i need to know your thoughts…

…and doesn’t that work both ways? The student also needs to know the thoughts of the teacher.
I am much more the student than the teacher! I love to learn.

BUT…I might say that “is” and 'it" are appropriate and meaningful only insofar as what comes before and after those two words.

Love both requires and IS discipline! (appropriate and meaningful) AND

The moon IS beyond brilliant in the night sky ~ IT resides in perfect silent harmony with the stars! (appropriate and meaningful)
…subjectively speaking of course. :evilfun:

In the classroom : Arcturus Descending, proud teacher, stands to one side while the star pupil, Turtle, reads his homework in front of the class. Peterpan observes, puzzled, from under the cone of his dunce’s cap in his usual corner. #-o

:laughing: What is it that is puzzling him and why is it that he is in a corner with a dunce’s cap?
I have often myself worn that dunce’s cap.

Probably puzzled as to why he is in the corner with the hat on.
Being a mischievous faun, he has most likely misbehaved due to scents of spring in the air.
Aside from that, interesting little read on origin of Dunce’s Hat in wiki p d a.

I wonder in what way he had misbehaved to warrant the dunce’s hat.
Maybe he was simply not paying attention to the teacher - couldn’t take his eyes away from looking out of that window and that robin sitting on the magnolia branch and chirping away.
Too bad the teacher didn’t take all of the little fauns outside to sit under the magnolia tree for their lessons.
First lesson to learn: the scent of the magnolia.
Second lesson to learn: what a tree feels like hugging it.
Third lesson to learn: What it feels like rolling around in the grass.
Fourth lesson to learn: what a magnolia tastes like.
Fifth lesson to learn: how many birds and squirrels can live in and around one magnolia tree.
The only question on the test would be: Now what does it feel like to be a faun in the Spring?

Thank goodness we’ve come a long way from the shame and embarrassment of the dunce’s hat.

Western philosophy began when Thales of Miletus claimed that water was the common denominator of all phenomena.

Obviously philosophy in one form or another has existed for tens of thousands of years before this time.

Sometimes I think that precious little exists on some Forums…

You are correct, but how do we know, except by seeing ancient beliefs through modern eyes, which may be an imposition of our beliefs on theirs, what existed before recorded philosophy?

My handy, dandy scheme for zeitgeists:
Mythology–>Religion–>Philosophy–>Science–>?
All are still extant.
Philosophy is the middle ground.
Philosophy, at its best, is the moderator for conflicting ideas.

Where does art come in?

The problem of history is always seen through a lens of the present, and with each new generation of historians new histories are written about the same times in the past. That’s always been the challenge; not to try to avoid our own bias, as that is exactly the tool we need to write history, but to write history anew with each investigation.
Without that bias we are struck dumb and having nothing to say at all.
But we can no more travel back to the past to offer “what really happened”, nor can we ever offer such a thing as an ‘objective account’, such a thing is risible, and is no more possible than writing an objective account of what is happening now. Ask ant one about anything, few accounts agree exactly; all is opinion based on personal reflexions of our understanding of reality. How could it be any other way.

Obviously there are some fields of human activity that need to maintain the myth of objectivity; such as the Law and Religion. But what they actually are is a series of agreements on the current state of their professional requirements; a collective subjection of views; a sort of inter-subjective account by which they can all agree through precedent.

All the best historians make obvious their personal self reflexive, and critical self awareness, and continue to maintain a dialogue with the “object” of their study. In this way a reader can make up their own mind whilst agreeing or not with the historians account.

what do you dummies know about pantheism…

I understand it to be the belief that everything is a part of god and that god is everything.

Any dummy can look it up. Pretending to knowing more than that would be to validate that which is invalidable.