What is the value of ILP posts?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I’ve been an on-and-off ILPer for about 6 years now. I joined because I do, in fact, love philosophy – it was one of my majors as an undergrad, and although after undergrad I became a mathematician, I spend a fair chunk of my time working with mathematical philosophy and mathematical metaphysics because I find it fascinating and appealing. It’s this fascination that brings me back to ILP again and again.

But it’s the posts that always remind me why I leave.

Philosophy is a dangerous field, because on one hand it poses interesting, complicated questions that delight the minds of those with innate curiosity. On the other hand, the questions are often vaguely formed, and the arguments imprecise. Professional philosophers recognize this as a recurring problem, and there is a growing emphasis on precise definitions, and carefully worded or mathematical arguments, to avoid this. But because of these two facets of philosophy, the field attracts both those who are genuinely interested in solving problems and advancing knowledge, and those who are more interested in promoting their own worldview and coming off as intelligent. Although the latter is most often accomplished without trolling in the inflammatory sense, such people are quite literally philosophical trolls. I have seen more of these people, and these posts, on ILP than I have the former. People more interested in saying something in an aesthetic or compelling way, than in actually trying to say something true. People more interested in coming off as intelligent than in being precise, formulating an argument, or risking being proven wrong.

So here’s my question, ILPers. Why are we here? Why is it that ILP so obviously attracts so few academic professionals? Is this a forum for those who lack professional training, but have some armchair interest nonetheless? Or do we hold ourselves to be better than the professionals for some vague reason?

If the former, should we not all aspire to precision, care, and truth? Should we not all look for the ways in which we are wrong at least as fervently as we look for the ways in which we are right?

And if the latter, why? In all honesty and humility, why?

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There are plenty of different kinds of posts, from the more formal to the bizarre. If you kept it to what ‘real philosophers’ learn at collage, then essentially you would all be talking about the same stuff, and it would be quite boring after a while.

If you don’t like certain kinds of posts/threads, then don’t post in them! If you want more formal philosophy then make threads about it.

Who says what philosophy actually is? And what a philosopher is. If the ancients applied that kind of logic and banned all kinds of thought which didn’t go with the current philosophical status quo, then there wouldn’t be much to philosophy at all.

Stop being so emotional :slight_smile: .

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I was an academic professional philosopher for a few years (TAs get paid, so, ya, technically)… and then made a career move (or, well, ok, I hit a wall or something) and though I acknowledge the relevance of your concern, I also question the rationale of the assumption that precision is a sufficient requisite of wisdom. Might there be competing others?

EDIT: crap I’m adding edits today like they were free!! Anyhow, “truth and care”, to me, can be very imprecise, and of no less value. Sort of that, “if the truth’s against life then lie”, in which, indeed one might need to be very precise, but at the ambugation of truth. Carefulness indeed?

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Although I strongly sympathize with your concern, “We do because of the tiny, minuscule hint of hope”.

But don’t take it all too much to heart. Sometimes you don’t get the answer to your questions merely because you haven’t asked the right questions. It was truthfully stated, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

A part of being ready, is realizing, through inquiry, to whom you are asking (speak their language of mind, not merely yours, else what would be Your point in speaking at all?).

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I think that makes it pretty clear.

But as stated by others, not everyone on an open forum agrees with such a thought nor cares.

One has to learn with whom to engage and with whom to disengage.

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yeah-ummmm…there are message board sites for all manner of activities that people undertake as amateurs but could also do professionally. On a birdwatching board site, you could run into an amateur ornithologist who knows just about everything there is to know about cedar waxwings, and on that same site read someone who does nothing but post bird jokes.

So what?

Sites like that don’t attract too many professional ornithologists.

I bet RV conversion sites don’t attract a lot of professional RV converters.

Not to many people do for a hobby what they do for a job. Lotta times hobbies are a diversion from work.

There are exceptions, of course.

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No one individual knows what is the right to the extent that it should be relevant to everyone. But there’s nothing wrong with one knowing what is right for oneself. For if one were to be caught up in what is right or wrong from your perspective, there is the possibility that he would never be right.

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what philosophers do is supposed to be aesthetic and compelling, and not always precise or proven.

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Speaking more precisely to the title of this thread, “What is the value of ILP posts?”;

For myself, it helps me accept the cognitively recognized reality that I really DO live on the Planet of the Apes. Which then begs the philosophical and practical question, “Now what are you going to do about it?”.

Not likely anything could be done about it without first engaging in it enough to see what is or isn’t available to do about it. Even Jesus scoped out society before he tried to preach of what needs to be done. We certainly don’t all have such talent, but it has to begin with discovery of what works in communication and what doesn’t regardless of anyone being actually right/correct/precise, rather than living in the fantasy that everyone would naturally agree with anything you thought to be rational.

ILP is a place to get into the reality of a population and discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Such an adventure can only relate to some entertaining thought that it would hold some prospect.

Frankly, the elites are really too easily defeated in a rational debate. Although, as on the Science forum, I would really prefer that politics and self defense not be the primary incentive for responses to posts.

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Hmm, I don’t think most of you really took my meaning.

Let’s try another tack. It’s a redirected question, so I started (yet) another thread.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175380

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How eery, I was going to post pretty much exactly the same thread, though you adressed it better than I would have probably.

I’ve always thought the reason for this is simple; this is a forum not a university class. Those who are writers or teachers usually have better things to do. This isn’t a think-tank of philosophical academics - it is a bunch of intelligent people, a few absolute morons, and a few genuinely insightful individuals. I’d put myself in the first category, as I know and love a lot of philosophy, but probably don’t have that much new ideas to offer, if any.

I just like discussing philosophy. Haven’t been round too much recently as I have better things to do!

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Have you considered why truth appeals to you? - what value there is in truth?

It is a mark of proficient philosophising to consider and understand many versions of truth - there is a greater wisdom in such a breadth of all kinds of depths. Somewhere along this process you are going to realise that each interpretation, or truth, has its own value - each no more objectively fundamental than the next.

This is when you realise that truth is just another “aesthetic or compelling way” of saying something of interest.

So ironically, your particular qualm is hypocritical.

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I completely disagree with this, but since our views are so profoundly different, it probably isn’t worth discussing. I will simply say that, if this is truly what you believe,

  1. The implied claim that “it is absolutely true that truth is relative” is inherently contradictory, and

  2. Anything someone says is presumably of interest, to them if to no one else. From this it follows that everything is true, so that you have no basis to criticize anything whatsoever. This implies that the criticism

is – much more ironically – hypocritical.

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I’ve said the same things you have, twiffy, and have come to the conclusion that I post here because I want to learn and, while I may not always learn philosophy, I am learning human nature–including my own.

But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask people to use plain English to express their thoughts for a couple of reasons: First, because not all people here are completely familiar with all the ‘technical’ terminology used here and, second, we have a hard enough time communicating our thoughts (particularly in writing) to begin with, why make it any harder?

On the other hand, if I went to a board populated by mathematicians, wouldn’t I find that most of you would use language ‘shortcuts’ with meanings that are accepted in your field? As part of my learning process, I spend a lot of time googling things I’d never have googled, otherwise, in an attempt to better understand the people who post here and what it is they’re trying to say. I taught English 100/101 for two years as a TA–ILP is kind of an extension of that experience.

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I came here one time because I love philosophy. But instead I learned that pride and ignorance are the same thing. Some men need to die in order to learn the hard way. So I will help these types of men to their fate. Again, it’s all about ignorance and pride. Now I’m so fucking smart that it’s unbelievable. This website is a joke, and a real piece of shit. The censorship here is overwhelming, due to the pride and ignorance I’m talking about. The troll moderators basically protect trolls and morons from hard truths. So I’ve found other venues for myself, ones less constricted by pride and trolling.

The value of ILP posts are worthless. You have the nihilists, most have abandoned the website. You have the nietzschean wannabe jews. You have the trolls, who represent the majority of posters. These are the morons who will never understand what “philosophy” is. Basically these morons believe everybody is equal but it’s untrue. Some men are smarter than others. And a few men are so fucking smart that you’d never even know it. This comes back to the first point.

If you understand the connection between pride, ignorance, knowledge, and truth, then you are a true philosopher, and I mean the “big time”, the “real deal”. You’re a mother fucker. You’re an “alpha male”, alpha of alphas. Power. Will to power shit. Real nietzsche shit. I’m not talking about wannabe Nietzsche Jews like Sauwelios. I’m talking about REAL NIETZSCHEAN stuff. But it’s a rather sad sate of affairs that this website has come to this, and cannot surpass nietzsche. Think early Christianity and what Christ has become in history. This is the beginning of Nietzsche’s age. It’s a new era. And nobody is smart enough to see it, yet.

So basically this website is shit, the posters are shit, the moderators are shit, and it won’t last long. Some other site will come along with REAL philosophers and everybody will vacate this one. This one is stifled by moron troll moderators, who value trolling more than philosophy. In fact I doubt anybody even knows the difference anyway. But who cares?

It is as I say it is. You can’t argue with me, ever.

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Analytic types like the OP circumscribe only a portion of what philosophy encompasses. It’s just kind of amazing to think that they can call what they do as Philosophy and deem everything else as being vague mindless emotional musing that has nothing to do with philosophy at all. I think they cut out most of what seems to be essential to philosophy. They are doing critical analysis, trying to imitate the mathematicians and scientists, but not much else. Invention of concepts is foreign to them. Inventing ways of life and whole cultures is foreign to them. They simply have no philosophical taste for sophia. They inhabit a very narrow space and don’t even know it. The essence of Truth - they do not touch. They are not sufficiently rhizomatic. They chose to put themselves in concentration camps. They are sick. Yes, analytic types are completely sick. Rambling on too has its pleasures that they will never know. Sleep begins.

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Personally, I look forward to it.

Meanwhile, I can tell the difference between trolling and philosophy. Warning issued.

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Why don’t football forums attract professional footballers? If you do something 8+ hours a day, amongst people at the top of the game, why join an online forum with unrestricted membership of varying quality to carry on your job in your free time?

I would say there’s a mix.

I think this is true of anyone; more fervently, I’d say.

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I think it’s worth at least trying to discuss this. Give it a try.

  1. I never claimed this. I do, however, claim that “absolute truth” is merely the denial or dismissal of other truths.
    It is not contradictory to say either:
    (a) it is a truth that there are multiple truths and that some of them claim there is only one truth, or
    (b) it is a truth that there is no absolute truth in anything but name.

  2. It does follow that everything is a truth. You DO have a basis to to criticise every truth from the start point of any particular truth, or set of truths. You don’t need an absolute truth to be your basis, and you can’t have one without ignoring other valid truths anyway. None are fundamentally valid, but that does not mean they are invalid.

Even everything I just posted starts from a particular truth in order to validate it, yet it is still valid.

I presume you operate on the premise that there does exist either absolute truth, or better truths than others.
But consider this: all the evidence we start from can be presumed to be from the same source. Some interpret this primary evidence in different ways to others, each to satisfy different things. The most common religion in this regard is utility.

It is usually presumed that the best truth is that which is deemed to be most useful. For example, scientific truths are often deemed absolute truths because their interpretations are compatible with what seems to affect people - such as gravity and the fact that people don’t tend to walk through doors etc. Yet this isn’t actually truth, it’s just a kind of useful interpretation.

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Do you mean the steady but unrelenting flow of posts debating ‘the value of the board’, the posters and thier reasons for posting?