every thing concept idea thought person is a part of eternity. every molecule and cell is relative to each other and therefore we are all relative to one another and every element and even time is relative. everything going up must come down, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and thus it all cancels out and we are left- no we are not left-nothing is left. everything just “is”. there are no parallels because they would simply be part of something larger. our definitions vary, out outlook varies and our perception is completely individual.we know that we will never know anything for sure, even with factual evidence. why dont we ever give up on philosophy?
Ah, yes… The king is proven to be naked by the crystalin voice of innocence…
can you rephrase that? as in, elaborate, because youre being a bit-er-vague. what part of my little written frustration are you speaking of?
He’s saying that he doesn’t think you are qualified to comment.
It’s one of those sweet nothings like “Any fool can ask a question that the wise can’t answer.”
The naked king and the answerless wise are both just soothing couplets to reassure those that proclaim themselves smart that they remain such in the face of the unknowable. It is a reflection on the rebuker rather than the ‘rebuked’.
I agree with Embrace, though our way of getting there is different, our conclusions remain simular.
Tab.
Hahah. 
Yea, me too.
[/quote]
why dont we ever give up on philosophy?
[/quote]
Why is the importance of philosphy so hard to understand??
Philosophy studies the nature of existence, of man, and of man’s relationship to existence. As against all sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible
As a human being you have no choice about the fact that you need philosophy. your only choice is whether you define your your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and logical deliberation-or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarrented conclusions, false generalizations, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into some kind of of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.
Mankind needs metaphysics, epistemology and ethics; i.e, we need philosohy. We need it by our essential nature and for a practical purpose:in order to be able to think, to act, to live.
Our choice is not whether or not to have a philosophy, but which one to have. the choice is conscious, explicit,logical and therefore practical-or random,unidentified,contradictory, and therefore lethal.
There is a major line one must draw: that of between philosophy, the academic subject, and philosophy, the way of understanding life. Certainly, I have not given up the former - I was never interested in the first place. Certainly, I could not give up the latter.
Dude, what ever happened to a little punctuation? Your post was rather difficult for simple-minded types (such as myself) to decipher.
In my humble opinion, you begin your argument by assuming a bit to much. For instance, what if someone in this thread disagrees with the theory that we will “never know anything for sure”.
Perhaps people who believe that it is, in fact, possible to know some things for sure…perhaps these people are those who keep philosophy alive and interesting. In this case, there would not be any desire to give up on philosophy.
I for one, believe that I can understand certain things for certain. At the very least, I believe I can know with absolute certainty that I do not know everything…
just my humble thoughts, anyways… 
Scevola is refering to the “Emperor’s Clothing” I believe.
…and BMWGuy, you are quoting me in your signature box, although you have substituted “Damn shame” for “Its a shame.”
I am not politically correct, so please, include my cursing or don’t quote me at all.
Thank you, Christian Platonist.
Well to answer embracetrees’ question, i believe philosophy to be a concept or idea which is an umbrella for all the things that fall beneath it. I take it as how you take such ideas as perfection, justice, the ultimate truth. These things to me are not attainable by any human but that doens’t me we give up on it. It’s the path of life that we walk and although the destination is important it’s the journey that counts. That’s why we should never give up on these goals that are propably impossible because it’s the contant struggle that is, life.
thanks tab. honestly though,Scevola, i am not asking a question that nobody can answer (was that plato who said that quote, btw?) i am not trying to stump anyone, its just what i think. i want to know what you think.
bitch.
i am not assuming anything. philosophy is a theory or claim, in fact anything you can think of is theoretical. for if you are discussing colour with a colorblind person, wouldnt you just be putting a definition to someting that you arent sure exists?
like you know how you see the color red, and you call it “red”, but what if other people who see this “red” are really seeing what you see as your perception of “green”? isnt it all just in definition?
and there is nothing that we know for sure. how do we know that even we exist? how do we know that we “are”? so the thing is (in theory, if thats the way you want it) if we do not know our own existance, it is impossible to determine that the things we come in caontact with and thoughts we experience are either.
this umbrella, what is above it?
and the sentence that is in red+italicized:
how_you_take_such_ideas, so, how you personally perceive the ideas? implying that you might have a different take on philosophy as another? so how do we know what philosophy we are speaking of? how do we even know it exists? please clarify.
When i said “umbrella” i meant in a different context then your taking it. I meant as just a group or envelope to bring all these other ideas toghether. On the “how you take such ideas” concern i meant what people’s beliefs and opinions on the specific subjects: justice, truth, wisdom etc. And i think we’re getting beside the point here, with my post i meant to show why i believe we continue to strive for all these things in life that we can’t obtain, and although we may never have factual evidence, we continue our philosophy as a struggle and means to find the truth about life, the universe and everything else.
I’m with detrop on this one. I think that Mucius was referring the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes (not Plato but Hans Christian Andersen) where at the end the child, through its innocent, declares that the emperor is in fact naked. By analogy, embrace, you are the child and you have supposedly seen through the fake that is philosophy and declared it to be naked.
Whether you agree with that or not is another matter!
Regards,
James
Great. Now I’m confussed (Thanks a lot, ben. 
).
Straighten me out here, guys: 
So, is Mucius saying that he thinks that embrace is not qualified to give such a position as she did,
Or
Is Mucius merely agreeing with embrace by saying (in such an esoteric fashion) that she is correct about her ideas of philosophy being a big “facade”?
but james, how do you go about describing something without showing the basis of your assumptions? i have written my train of thought; i did not spend time on formattiong or rethinking, i just poured. this is unprofessional, i know. and those “empty” formulations you speak of cease being empty by the time you finish reading (i hope, because they do for me). i am superficial about it, or at least i am being right now because i do not find reason for digging deep into it.
i do not understand what you mean by “certain knowledge”
and i take everything in philosophy as a theory- it is all just playing around with concepts or ideas until they seem to fit- once again, i must say that even my reasoning is a theory. i do not consider my reasoning a fact.
i also dislike it when people attack the format (i.e. “why do you write those self-evident statements in the begginning?”) rather than argue with the message being expressed. please do not do that in the future; it takes focus away from the point.
when did you ever think that i am modest? i am not. i over-estimate myself and i do it on purpose too. that, however, is besides the point.
you are arguing with my psychology on that statement. okay. i honestly beleive in what i said. why dont you assume that right away? are you judging the speaker or the words?
tell me what you find false within that statement.
i now that i think that i know nothing but i really dont know it. but i am making an assumption/hypothesis so that i can test it. you are not helping me test it at the moment.
i wish you would.
everything is relative to each other, but in the end it just “is” because if everything is relative of each other than in the end you cannot tell anything apart soit just becomes everything.
tell me if you dont understand- im having trouble phrasing that but i could attempt once more…
no, i think you misunderstood. i was saying that if there were parrallels then what would surround them? and that they would be just part or everything and everything part of them.
if we do not have proof that we exist, or that this planet exists, or that time and space exist, then we cannot know if we perceive parts of the world identical to how others do.
how do you know? how do you know that philosophy is deeper? how do you know it is not like a math problem that is so simple that you cant help but try more difficult methods of interpreting and solving it?
magical grassy ‘other side’? why are you grouping things and dividing them? how do you know its not as simple as “everything just is”?
i do not beleive that you are mistaken and in order to forgive you must be offended first which is not the case since you were expressing your opinion. do you always apoligize for your opinions?
wow, now i’m more lost then at the beginning but i think that your going aroudn to where Descartes was, until he finally said “I think, therefore i am”, well at least that you cannot doubt and u KNOW. Also if you don’t mind, could you restate in a manner what your main point was because i’m kinda lost now, is it more epistomological or methaphysical?
Metaphysics is baseless and paradoxal? Metaphysics is the base of our understanding of conscious existence, thus our existence is essentially unfounded and paradoxal? I agree.
I don't, however, see that as a stumbling block. I see it as an abstraction - that whether or not we can ever be objective or understand the implications of our actions doesn't even matter because it has no effect on our lives, being wholly subjective. If one was answerable to an entity that knew objective truth, on would have cause to be concerned with it, but as long as our [i]entire[/i] experience is subjective, consistant subjectivity does just fine.
I understand what you are saying (I think) but I would still ask you to pay attention to things like sentences structure and word choice, in the interest of clarity. The internet presents communication challenges that will greatly hinder any productive discussion if you're not crystal clear about things.
I would respond to your statement by pointing out that relativity only has to do with our identification of objects. Regardless of whether we can say this proton or that proton, or this apple or that apple, they will exist in two ways: one way that is functionally relevant to our experience, and one way that is objective (even if the objective experience of these apples and protons is only as a figment of our neurochemistry.)
Relativity is not even applicable to existence qua existence, just existence qua perception (or knowledge.)
embracetrees
You fail to show the basis of your assumptions anyway. That is my intuition.
No no… I am not admonishing you for being ‘unprofessional’. Come now… I just feel that you have the potential for more than this. Sometimes dialogue has the logical form of ‘I am waiting for you here, where I want to bring you, and I am calling. Can you hear me?’ It does not have ‘justification’ - i.e. it is a kind of presumptiveness, I suppose. Yet sometimes you need to take the first step off the ledge, before you know the answer whether you can fly. Does it help more if I say it like this, or do you want it cold and logical?
The second point, in any case, is on a different level. How do these conceptions cease to be empty - i.e. how do you close the loop, so to speak, given that your idea of closing the loop is to stand with a kind of pride in the knowledge that it can never be closed? What I say is that you need to take the leap with a kind of faith, not a kind of warrant, in order to arrive at your conclusions. That you place them at the beginning then, glosses over or obfuscates the fact that such a leap has been taken, and that you cannot account for the necessity of such a leap from within the horizon of your philosophical (self-)understanding.
Yes but your think with this concept regardless.
Everything is a theory. Nothing is a theory. You are theory. I am a theory. SAITD is a theory. It is a theory that everything is a theory. I know you, and if I am not mistaken, I have figured you out. Or else you have figured me out, and I need to confront this. Either way, the two alternatives are ‘close’ enough to one another in logical space, that the same single approach can deal with them both simultaneously. You have simply sublimed the eternal ‘why’ into a kind of skeptical regression that hides its own blind spot. This is another failed sublation that aggrandizes its own helpless predicament in a kind of philosophical Custer’s last stand, beyond hope and, finally, beyond reality itself.
What happens when you ask ‘why’ forever? You arrive back at the beginning, awaken from the dream as it were, and realize that you had never left your bed. There is no endless ‘why?’, because being a skeptic and asking ‘why?’ forever are not the same thing. Asking a question is not achieved in anything but a superficial grammatical sense in the latter case. Everything is a theory. Nothing is a theory. The distinction between the two is theoretical. The concept of ‘distinction’ is itself theoretical. Put down your weapons, the war is over. In fact some might say that it never begun.
You already presuppose this distinction between format and message. I am not taking focus away from the point; you are. The point is whether your articulation of your own position is warped by a misunderstanding of this very position, mediated through language which you have underappropriated and which controls you more than you it. I am sorry that I cannot express this clearer - not because I presume that you are offended, but because I presume that I am failing you, here. Do not confuse the two, or you will loose some of whatever amount of respect you may have for me. I promise.
No it certainly is not besides the point. I do not care how ‘modest’ or ‘arrogant’ you imagine yourself to be - if you want to be arrogant, than I will show you a better way to be arrogant. Or else I will fail, and you will have shown me something. A teacher is a student, and a student a teacher. The learning takes place between us.
I am simply saying that you can play more complex games than you seem to be playing.
Ack. Do you mean that you don’t know it? I want to say that you don’t know what it means to know nothing; i.e. that you are incapable of it. But perhaps I am not entirely entitled to this. In any case, I used to say the same thing to myself that you say above. But I understand the meaning of that statement (somewhat) differently now, even though there is a certain validity in the previous understanding, as well as a connection to the new one. Yet I feel that the change has been a progression. Perhaps the difference is in the experience of the progression itself. Perhaps my understanding is just more comprehensive than yours. In just the same way that, whilst Foucault calls some practices critique, others call them mere ‘description’. Do you understand the difference - how the perspective can recast the the ‘same’ practice into something entirely different?
Other than this, I don’t know at this point how to turn this thread back to you in a way which you would find intelligible.
So, whilst this (the Socrates thing) is a kind of ‘metaphorical’ statement, the part which is not ‘metaphorical’ says this; you need to work if you want to cast off this or that philosophical concept, or go beyond this or that position. This is not like Alexander who can simply cut the Gordian not and then wander off for his mid-afternoon anal. An argument is a kind of disposition towards an object. I suggest you think of this with the use of spatial imagery, however ‘metaphorical’ it seems. Then I ask; how do you run away from everything simultaneously? What does it mean when people say ‘the most radical thing is to be conservative’? What does the ‘Absolute Negative’ become when it becomes yet more absolute?
…
Whatever the case, I consider it potentially confusing to use for you to use the language of scientific experimentation to describe what you are doing here. Exercise your hesitancy, would be my instinctive advice.
Ughh. Perhaps you would accept this reasoning; everything can only be ‘relative’ to everything else if it is at the same time distinct, i.e. as this what is implied in the concept of ‘relation’, and the point is that the reciprocity is as important as the reciprocated (i.e. the object), but never more important, logically speaking. But then you say; ‘and so it just becomes everything.’ Why is this? Does it become at the same time ‘nothing’? Your premises and conclusion seem quite far apart and unconnected, so I cannot really follow you, and have to take stabs in the dark. In any case, are you describing relativism, or coherentism, or monism, or what? Is there some better kind of relativism which can at the same time retain its identity and not collapse into some other, less ‘radical’ hypothesis? Do you imagine that you can stop doing philosophy by simply proclaiming the contradictions of relativism to be endemic and substantive of our philosophical endeavors as a whole? I want to know; why?
This is to ignore my point that absolute individualization is a contradiction or a kind of aborted sublation which is ignored like a discarded fetus. The rest of your ‘proof’ for this conclusion is irrelevant, because subsequent to, this dilemma.
You can use descriptions such as ‘simple’ or ‘complex’, but everything is not either simple or complex, or else the meaning of whichever term becomes ubiquitous also becomes different, and so you prove nothing. Philosophy is complex because you are making mistakes, right now - or else I am. That is about as simple an answer as I can give.
[edit] Or else this: simplicity is another one of those things which must be learnt. To learn simplicity is a kind of art, I would say, quite different from stumbling in the dark whilst proclaiming (or presuming) that you are Bruce Lee.[edit]
What do you ‘group’ and ‘divide’ in order to emerge on the plateau-like conclusion of ‘everything just is’? I do not really know what you are saying with this statement, and my hypothesis is that neither do you. That is because there is no such thing as there being just this hypothesis, and nothing else which underpins and orients it. So don’t tell me about the simplicity of ‘everything just is’ - tell me about the complexity that surrounds this conclusion, or you will tell me in spite of yourself about the complexity of your errors, which you yourself are oblivious too.
Regards,
James
There’s an old seaside fortune teller that I miss. When I first came to İzmir, and took my scant lunch breaks between lessons, and if the day was sunny, I would stroll down to the promenade and sit, börek in hand.
Nine times out of ten she would be there. Wizened and greyed by the sun. Dressed in flowered purples and head-scarved, lest the sight of her greasy locks tempt a man to the unthinkable, she was unstoppable. Sighting me she would heave herself off the wall and waddle over, gabbling in a language I had yet to conquer. Her rough hands, surprisingly hard, like weathered shoe-leather would seize one of mine and, her eyes starting beadily from her skull, she would tell me what I could only presume was my future. Scary woman, full of gnomic wisdom, an ugly delphic oracle.
Always reassuring to actually have a future however.
I met her one last time a few years ago, after I had been here long enough to understand. She took my hand in hers and traced the curves and creases of my palm with one blunt finger. And then the magic broke. Inanities and platitudes spilled out and grated across my ears, a donkey braying where once there had been an operatic mystique.
She must have seen the contempt in my eyes, and let go of my hand, spitting village curses at the foreign devil who dared to judge.
I miss her, I miss not understanding, I miss her faked insights, spoken in a language so seductive and so opaque.