Much of the time in writing"philosophy" I don’t believe anything I write. I write either polemically, devil’s advocate or satirically. So, if I write as devil’s advocate I wait for someone to knock it down - only then will I come clean.
Much of the time I take a few dodgy premises as true just to see where they lead us. I try to take them as far as they can go. For example, the premise I argued about - that beauty is a brain state - I don’t have any time for. I just want to see where arguing for it takes us. And where it takes us can be quite interesting and reveal more weaknesses, as it did this time.
Something else I used to do was play chess with myself. It’s really possible. Much of the time I lost. See? I did it again. - it’s true that you can play chess with yourself and have a good game, but “losing”? yes, but I misled my reader by offering it as a poor joke.
So that’s how I like to do philosophy. Gotta av a larf encha.
Crikey man. I don’t think that beauty is a neuron state, or that the universe is rubble. But I do think that an apple in the hand isn’t one apple in the hand.
Does it matter that I argue for them whether or not I believe in them?
Yes, because these ideas are solid philosophical challenges - the sort of philosophical challenges I regularly make to MYSELF! It’s got to be good, for me, for you. It’s freedom. We can fly.
It passes the time. But if you’re only joking (and larfing) then I wonder why Mony is always trying to get us to take you seriously. You’ve made a fool of him. That’s more important than any of this “philosophy”.
No, no, please let it be clear that Monooq makes a fool of himself. An ounce of humility might have made his additions somewhat thought provoking, or mildly interesting […maybe]. As it is, he chooses to play the fool – and with gusto.
Not really. I’m always the one telling you that he’s writing satirically, indirectly, underhandedly, and not-straightfowardly-literally. And that you need to read differently.
And the reason people always squawk, is just because he’s writing that way.
So, what we have here is JJ spouting nonsense - “dodgy premises”, as he calls them - and Mony lobbying heavily for sanctions against other members who have said precisely that JJ is spouting nonsense.
And JJ is disingenuous at best, here:
Because he does not come clean at all. Together, you two are the worst trolls I have seen here, in many years.
Mony - you are either a fool or an entirely unethical person.
I have a tough time thinking that your purpose in writing is anything other than to insult and degrade…
Some of the best writers in the history of philosophy use the technique of indirection, and don’t write literally. And when you write that way, what you say is literally false—which means you don’t believe the truth of it. That is what JJ is referring to. That’s what he often does. That’s why many of you squawk and complain. It’s what I notice about JJ—and then I point it out for everyone. —And that’s also what writers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Plato often do. (And I think you might even notice that, but are using this thread as a way to harm and insult).
It’s a massive hypocrisy to call me a troll after writing what you have in this thread. I don’t expect you to apollogize. But I expect you to realize how you’ve been seeming to lurk in the shadows just waiting for an opportunity to step out, and spit at me.
Unkind regards,
Btw, because of what you’ve said here and elsewhere: I do not respect you.
I avoid gloomy indignation, and if I do get an attack of the glooms I always try to spice things up by fervently arguing for a ridiculous premise, and there are quite a few.
Welcome to the colourful chamaeleonic world of philosophising. This is what it is about.
My favorite philosohophers are the great mind-fuckers and trolls. If Socrates is seen as the archetype of THE philosopher, than philosphy IS trolling, because that ugly hobo was trolling all of Athens. So calling someone a troll on a philosophy themed message board isn’t exactly an insult.
btw, I like the way you think JohnJones. You’re a much needed breath of fresh air around here.
I passed you the ball a couple of times. Why didn’t you run with it?
For example, I gave you an easy setup for your underpants thread - AI perceiving its environment and maximizing its success. You could have developed that into something quite amusing and clever. Perhaps explaining how Donald Trump’s success rubbed off on his underpants.
There is a lot more potential in your threads.
Most of what JohnJones says isn’t nonsense at all. However, most of it is written indirectly, and is hidden with all kinds of different masks. If you want my opinion, he acts like someone who wants to do philosophy and has all kinds of ideas and questions—but hides and masks them in a bunch of different ways. And the reason he does this is because of people like Faust and Humpty. What’s going on is a basic psychology of the bully and the bullied. If you approach JohnJones with some amount of respect and charitability, you get him to step out more—become clearer, more straightforward. At least, that’s what I’ve noticed. To the extent that you behave like people like Faust and Humpty do, in almost all of JJ’s threads, he runs away into his self-defence mechanisms of abstraction, masks, underhandedness, indirection (and everything else). And if you want more of my opinion, the reason JohnJones is writing an OP like this, is because he’s trying to step out, and be more straightforward. Unfortunately, that’s going to require a lot of courage of him, because there are people like Faust saying what they’ve said here. Ultimately, we’re all going to have to do what everyone has to do when faced with a bully: tune them out, somehow.