I have not recieved formal trainings of philosopy since I was majoring in history. I think philosopy is the pathway to the truth, the ultimate truth behind our world. For instance, it covers the question of the existence of the Gods. Such debates are much easier to get start in philosophy insteads of science. Science can be a tool to help proving the validity of an assumption in philosophy. Hence, science and philosophy have never been seperated. “Philosophy is the science which considers truth” Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) I think I am getting close to the truth by pointing out there is a god manipulating our world. However, I have no ideas if this manipulator - the god - created our universe. He / she may be different people. The one who created our world is different from the one who manipulated our world.
Meanwhile, religions concern too much on “beliefs / believe”. It is an authority which is hard to argue with. Philosophy provide a good channel for the debates of the God, so I began to be interested in philosophy. Online philosophical forums are good place to deepen ideas and re-organize our ideas into words. Philosophy allows me to continue my quest in the God. I have developed a new cosmology. That is " Lives in different Levels". I put forward that the physical presence of the God is the Earth. It really sounds weird, but I have explanations for the claims in my websites. I am excited that the truth (that I have expected) can be found through the search engines.
Philosophy is about reasoning and is thus the target for those wishing to prevent thinking. As such philosophy has become the effort to prevent reasoning through obfuscation, mind games, and semantics.
The post you quoted is written really badly - it could be taken to mean two opposite things.
The first sentence would make more sense worded as “Philosophy is about reasoning and is thus targetted by those who wish to prevent thinking”. Otherwise it sounds like people target philosophy, as something to take up, in order to prevent thinking… which would conjure up the interesting contradiction of reasoning in order to prevent thinking, two concepts which are practically synonymous - by derivation at least.
The second sentence nearly reads as though philosophy is there to prevent thinking, and it uses obfuscation, mind games and semantics in order to do so…
For all I know, the author was making some kind of outlandish point, which I have come to expect from him anyway. So maybe he did mean to attack philosophy… you can never really tell.
hey sil----when I see truth anywhere I like it…and that can come from james…you don’t have to teach me about epistemology…I was referring to the part of philosophy that james is talking about…I see a lot of bullshit from some of the very highly regarded philosophers…
I tend to agree with James. It helps to contrast philosophy with science but perhaps also with mathematical, religious and even artistic, if you will, methodologies. Philosophy = developing rational theories, Science = developing rational methods for empirically falsifying theories + executing them. I would just add philosophy frequently deals with unempirical and perhaps unfalsifiable phenomena, such as cognition, consciousness, language, logic, epistemology, some metaphysics (think the paranormal, the supernatural and theology, science won’t even go there), morals, values, etcetera. Here, the idea is to come up with a reasonable theory, even if there’s little or no means to empirically falsify it.
Thanks for that, and I would imagine it's the list eyes presented. But can you be explicit, which one arches which three? Philosophy? Art? Science? Religion? Or do arches vary, with usage or application?
Obe, I think there should be more differentiation of disciplines, not less, but that’s just my subjective preference. I like differentiation. In that list of epistemic criteria, I’d like to see individuals and institutions adopt intuition as their sole, or primary criteria for assessing reality, and others revelation, and others tradition. This division between science, philosophy and religion is fairly arbitrary. You could combine various elements of one with the other to form something new, or you could adopt elements outside of them. Neither harness intuition as a criteria for assessing reality. However, perhaps one of these institutions could be more generalized, utilizing all or most of the various epistemic criteria to assess reality.
Above ALL the archangels is that of Rationality (not to be confused with “rationalists”; people who make excuses for their passions).
The “three kings” that eternally rule beneath that one have been known for thousands of years and despite the many attempts at destroying all knowledge, they keep reappearing and rising to the top… for a reason. If I were to name them, regardless of, and largely due to, the many names they have had, argument would no doubt ensue. There are but three, although of course anything can be broken down further and further and further infinitely.