What are your top lessons you’ve learned from philosophy in your lifetime?
Here are mine:
#1 Seek out those wiser than yourself. You can only learn from higher intelligence and power, never from lower intelligence and weakness.
#2 Few are deserving of respect, do not respect those lower than yourself, because will hate you and hold you in contempt if you try.
#3 Few are deserving of honesty, the responsibility of any philosopher is his own wisdom. You are responsible for the questions you ask, and answers you receive.
#4 Fears and doubts are powerful indicators of individuals, and average minds and commoners will attempt to use these against you. Preempt them, strike first.
#5 To pursue philosophy is to pursue the rarest intellectual status and position. There are few players, and these players will soon know each other very well.
#6 Information, intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom are best kept safe and secure within Genes, not within memes, written words, and dusty books. Instead of seeking philosophy in a library, seek philosophy through people, through biology. Seek and ye shall find.
Interesting thought. I wonder what it would take to ensure genetic programming of some specific thoughts, such as your #6.
To program the genes with that thought would at very least be extremely complicated and certainly at the expense of other thoughts, perhaps ones of equal or greater value. Thus, to avoid destroying perhaps 100’s of generations trying to work out how to get done what is later discovered to be in the balance, unwanted, how can we first be certain of which wisdoms to program into genes?
Perhaps in the softerware, the non-genetic mind, one could obtain the wisdom that: #7 Indeed there really are certain thing of which a person can be absolutely certain.
And #8 A mountain of wisdom and knowledge can grow from an absolutely certain foundation. #9 One should avoid uncertainty when destroying the lives of others.
Pardon me for butting in, but what do all of you think Socrates is supposed to have said: “I know that I know nothing?”, and why do all of you think specifically this is remembered?
Butt away.
First, it is promoted so as to promote more doubt and insecurity which is being used in order to reshape mankind into a new form (NWO), not really much different than the old, although bigger and void of a lot of types of unwanted people. All famous philosophies are merely famous because they are being politically used at the time (much like religions).
And I am pretty certain that what he really meant to say (and probably really said) is that “the only thing of which I am certain is that I can’t be certain of anything else.”
In his case, that was probably true. But it isn’t true for everyone. Knowledge can be beyond the reach of doubt. One merely has to understand how.
He didn’t really say that.
Plato said he said something like that, but in Greek it says more about the wisdom of certainty, not about stupidly contradicting oneself.
But on this matter is demonstrated the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, because here we find instilled in this quote a legendary area of misinformation - made all the more ridiculous for the fact that if you know anything about Socrates the first thing is that dumb arsed quote.
Scholars of Socrates and Plato know better, as did Socrates, and are keenly aware that this was tongue in cheek. Socrates knew very well his capabilities and was wise to the fact that he knew damn well that he was skilled at unpacking assumptions and showing beliefs to be a bunch of nonsense. He would have had a field day with most of the crapola on this forum and destroy the buckets of flim-flam that masquerade of thinking here.
Well, you are both wrong. It is about him walking away from a visit to the Oracle who called him the wisest of all Athenians. Socrates did not understand it at first, since he didn’t know anything for sure, and walked away pondering this cryptic description. So, finally, he decided, it must be BECAUSE he knew that he didn’t know anything (for sure).
#10 Courage is the key to acquiring wisdom. If you don’t have courage, you will just go along with the mob, and tell yourself all the dumb things you do are actually smart. This is the courage that lets you plot an intelligent course, irregardless of what others may say.
This advice is particularly useful for women. Women are especially vulnerable to just going along with public opinion, because we fear being ostracized, more than men.
Well, I am pretty certain that we are both right, and not in contradiction to what you said. So perhaps all three right.
Why is it important that you are trying to make a distinction?
That has a lot to do with what a woman is. Remove that too much and you no longer have women, but merely short sighted men (the wet dr4eam of the socialists).
Without that willingness to be in doubt from women, the human race would literally not exist. And if not for the lack of it in men, it wouldn’t exist either.
I am asking you why it is important to know that you don’t know anything for cetain. I imagined quoting Plato quoting Socrates would click with peple, this being a philosophy forum and all. But, if it is easier for you, you can drop the part about Socrates and just answer the question:
I think that it is important to understand that being in error is easy and often hidden from ones sight. I have to disagree that it is important to believe that one cannot know anything at all.
I believe that it is important that one learns that many things can be known with absolute certainty and they build onto each other to create a mountain of certainty from which secure and stable life can thrive.
He didn’t really say that.
Plato said he said something like that, but in Greek it says more about the wisdom of certainty, not about stupidly contradicting oneself.
But on this matter is demonstrated the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, because here we find instilled in this quote a legendary area of misinformation - made all the more ridiculous for the fact that if you know anything about Socrates the first thing is that dumb arsed quote.
Scholars of Socrates and Plato know better, as did Socrates, and are keenly aware that this was tongue in cheek. Socrates knew very well his capabilities and was wise to the fact that he knew damn well that he was skilled at unpacking assumptions and showing beliefs to be a bunch of nonsense. He would have had a field day with most of the crapola on this forum and destroy the buckets of flim-flam that masquerade of thinking here.
That was his signature line. All celebrities have a signature line or an exit line. But he didn’t really believe that. He knew he knew what he knew and no amount of pretending not to know anything was empty tripe.
Fritz really puts him on the spot in Twilight I think it is. He offers a pretty good behind the scenes look into Socrates and what motivated him.
What I can agree with is that Socrates took pleasure in these argument games, his ability to beat in argument the so called noble and educated class of scholars and philosophers.
His sales pitch was always the same: excuse me sir, but I’m having trouble understanding this concept (lie number 1) and I was wondering if you could explain it to me (lie number 2).
I read somewhere that some historians have the nerve to suggest he never really existed as a person, and was only a literary character created by Plato.
Whatever the case may be, why do you think it is important to know that you cannot know anything for certain?
So, if I say, factually, that a tree is 50 meters to the left, is that always true?
It is a question, yes, since we cannot prove it independently of a tiny group of philosophers. Seperate from what his signature lines were, if he existed or not and what his real intentions were, why do you think it is so important to know that he didn’t know anything for sure?
?? I wouldn’t know it to be true in the first place, much less always true.
But I don’t see what that has to do with any of this. Are you trying to say that if something that you say isn’t always true, nothing can ever be certainly true? I don’t really see the connection.
I am trying to say that if we take anything as always true; without first considering the world/perspective from which it is looked at and if it differs from when that truth was derived, we will certainly be wrong. Holding on to facts leads to error. It is certain that ths prevents learning and correct answers.
Doubt and scepticism are your only helpers.
Which means that #1 - #9 are all the wrong lessons and, in fact, are certain to prevent anyone from actually learning.
Well, I would have to disagree with you on that point.
Do you believe that it will always be true that a perfect circle has the same radius length at all of its radius angles (forgiving any mere changes of nomenclature)?