Yes, and so does every other philosopher who ever lived. Why is that hilarious?
Typically, Socrates isn’t thought of as the marker of where western philosophy took a wrong turn----he’s the marker of where western philosophy began at all.
Yes, “philosophy has only moved deeper into Plato/Socrates”… because, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re still grappling with the same questions, and only our answers are more involved. Same questions, deeper answers. That’s all.
Just calm down. If you don’t think Socrates/Plato is “serious philosophy”, that’s fine. But then don’t talk about Socrates/Plato. Of course I will, but that’s only because I know that Socrates/Plato is serious philosophy.
Von I used to think you were being sarcastic but do you really mean the stuff in that post?
Of course Socrates started off western philosophy, by stealing ideas from people before him but that’s a whole other story. People do that all the time.
But there’s a difference between coming up with rough estimates of what epistemology might look like in plain language and the formal analytic method of going about things that philosophers do now. Because everything is language, you’ll be able to make an analogy that might reverse my argument. But it’s not all about one argument, it’s about how all the good arguments work together to inform us of things we couldn’t know with just the rudimentary survey that we get from Plato.
I remember when I was in my freshman year and I got that “footnote to plato” quote. Of course I got that from the prof who did her dissertation on that stuff.
She was shunned in the dept and left to teach the shitty classes like the one on socrates and plato while the rest of the department was focused on analytic stuff and phl of science. There’s a reason why she didn’t get to be on any of the boards or make any of the decisions or edit any of the books that were being written by the upper level faculty. It’s because she still thought that somewhere in Plato there was a good summary of what was going on in philosophy.
There’s a hugeeeeee difference between reciting philosophy books and actually understanding philosophy or doing it. I think you’re reading quotes from Plato the way a xtian does from the bible and expecting everyone to just accept it as relevant.
Nobody exists in a vacuum. But the pre-Socratics were mainly focused on the question: What is the world made of? (Earth, or air, or wind, etc). Socrates was focused on two questions: (I) How should I live? (ethics), and (II) What can I know? (epistemology). And since Socrates arrived at his answers by refuting what someone else was saying, process of elimination, it’s odd to say that he was stealing ideas. Smart people know how to actually think for themselves----they don’t need to steal ideas.
Frankly, I think you are confusing a common Academic style of writing, (i.e., the use of formal logical symbols to stand for english concepts, to show the logical connections between premises), for actual philosophy. The Academic style is just a style of writing and laying out your case----and style doesn’t mark the boundary of what philosophy is. ----But if that’s your claim, then philosophy began sometime in the 1950’s, in England----and that claim is just really hard to take seriously. Anyways, analytic philosophers use “plain language”—strict definitions and conceptual analysis. That’s what Socrates did. If that’s all you meant, then what you wrote is its own refutation.
Dude, she wasn’t “shunned” to teach Plato/Socrates-----that was probably just her AOS, Ancient Philosophy. Entire departments are focused on ancient philosophy, yours just happened to be focused on contemporary analytic. That’s unfortunate for you. Believe me, I know.
You know the difference between studying those old guys and studying the analytics?
In one case you’re studying history of philosophy.
In the other you’re studying philosophy.
It’s unfortunate if all you got was the history part they’ve been doing quite a bit since back in the day.
Most people think that analytic philosophy is the only way philosophy can survive, and so it’s not recommended that you study what you seem to be studying if you want to be taken seriously by people in the field.
This comes really hard to people who’ve been going around blabbering about Nietzsche and Socrates, but it’s one of those hard facts of life man. I don’t make the rules.
Way back when, Faust ask about language and morality. They are two separate issues.
Language is general. “I feel sad” means different things to different people.
You cannot have a specific sentence that means the same thing to all people,
every sentence means something different to every single person.
“I am sad” most people might have a context for that sentence but
It will mean different things to people because everyone feels sadness differently.
In other words, there is no “objective” language. Language by its very nature is subjective.
So we reach morality. If language is subjective, then morality due to language, is subjective.
“That action is evil” An example, murder is wrong. How do you define “murder” and “wrong”?
“abortion is murder and thus evil”. So many problems here, I am not even sure how to begin.
The act of abortion can be an medically acceptable solution to saving a mother’s life and how
can saving a person’s life be evil. The problem extends down to basic questions words like “evil”.
Evil to whom and why, why is that action called evil. God, MAN, SOCIETY, each might have a say
about the word “evil” and what it means to them. Morality is fucked up because language
is subjective. You have no justification to call any word or sentence, absolute,
because what sentence or word is outside of our subjective viewpoint?
“The universe exists” I can’t even say that sentence is absolute because it depends
on how I perceive the universe. Descartes, I think therefore I am" leads us further and
further away from any absolute because Descartes in the end, needed God to prove his point.
In the end, we are left with nothing. We can’t take anything for granted, not language,
not morality, not truth, justice and the American way. Nothing. (PS, that is why Plato
is wrong, he ASSUMED there were two worlds, one permanent and one transitory and we live
in the transitory. But the fact is there is only one world and I cannot even guarantee that is true.
If you’re going to ask me any questions like this, about any area of philosophy, I think it’s safe for you to assume that I know a great deal more than you.
You know the difference between conceptual analysis and philosophy?
You have no idea what you mean by “analytic philosophy”. It’s obvious.
Wow, von Rivers, you actually have an education in philosophy? I was drinking the river of piss that is reading these forums lately, and when I got to your posts in this thread, the piss turned to delicious root beer for a moment. Anyway, Smears seems to think that how his university works is how the universe works, I guess. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are extremely relevant for schools that have an emphasis on political philosophy, ethics, or even pheneomonology (in my school, pheneomenology was introduced through the [i]Poetics[/i]. On the other hand, I went to a school where analytic mattered not at all. There was ONE class on formal logic, and I think the ancient philosophy course briefly talked about what a syllogism was, and everything else was Rousseau and Rawls and Foucault and Kant. I went into my schooling hoping there would be a focus on analytic stuff, but by the time I was done, I was glad it wasn't.
It seems that moral confusion is an issue people have brought up in this thread.
I think step one is to decide consciously whether or not you want to be moral.
Being moral doesn’t mean you fit into what humanity considers morally right in general.
Being moral means you do what you consider the best things, and want them to be the best things.
Morality is an expression of will and desire. Morality is at conflict, just like will is at conflict.
Just because it’s at conflict, doesn’t mean both sides are always wrong, or one side is wrong.
Reality contains plenty of illogical things, so logic shouldn’t be the basis for if something is real or not.
True enough - but for most people, that’s a decision made while you’re already moral. We are, most of us, taught morality long before we can decide to be moral.
Reality not only contains the illogical, it also contains people who assume that all their thoughts and actions are rational, ignoring the simple fact that irrationality is also part of being human. There also seems to be confusion about being a philosopher and just being a philosophy historian - not that you haven’t run into that before…
Plato thought he was noble and virtueous when he tried to moralize truth itself more than it already had been. It was political and religious in that it was juggling authority and imperatives. Imperatives are basically owned by religion and politics.
Especially at ILP I think people are going to disagree about what a philosopher is.
For me it’s a person that loves concepts, but through their love of good concepts, it is allot like a love for wisdom, or the best of concepts and their structures. Not everyone would agree with that either, but I’m not claiming it’s true, it’s just how I see it.
I don’t know who first thought that reality is all logical, containing no contradiction and no irrational force, but I see plenty of conflict in reality, and conflict is allot like contradiction.
Because of the power there is over others within morality, religion and politics claimed morality almost completely.
Most would probably disagree, but I think morality itself, at its essence, is basically a man or woman trying their best in life.
That’s all it is, in pure form. On the other hand, morality has become law, which is a code. This is when morality is codified and usually made into some sort of monism which is meant for everyone to follow.
What faust said is true, that we are moralized before we even understand morality, but later in life, if we are a good enough philosopher, we get to choose if we are moral, and if so, how so.
Value is the additive when we use our will and thoughts. It is part of being human and living.
One problem humanity has is that they often use something without fully understanding it.
Now, that does mean ignorance causes problems, but just because ignorance causes problems, doesn’t mean it’s the true one and only root of all evil.
My reply is for MO’s recent thread too, but also for what we are already talking about.
I pretty much agree with this.
You said that we have to consciously decide whether or not to be moral.
Personally, I think we have to consciously decide what we think is moral.
And then, depending on how you understand the concept ‘moral’, the decision to follow it is already made.
Yes, our will is in constant conflict, and thus so is our ability to think about moral matters.
That’s why the history of philosophy goes on, and it’s not just Plato being like, “I got this one guys…”
When do you think about morality? When you want something, that’s when. Choosiness is there between the opposites good and bad. It always swings between them when you question your actions. Even after you have acted the questioning is there. Is this something hardwired into us or acquired?
I would say philosophy is 90% deductive (understanding language as you put it) and 10% inductive (which is not exactly being aware of your assumptions). When we debate philosophy we argue about what words mean and whether or not if A is B C D and if F is G H and I, then it really is the case that B is A and F. That’s deduction.
The second task of philosophy is to figure out if A exists at all. Science gives us facts P Q R and from those facts we have to use induction or inference to determine whether or not A exists. After we have given our reasons for believing in A we can then determine how A relates to the other entities in our ontology.