So you don’t need to know what happened 100 billion years ago in order to have an answer?
Humans are huge compared to an ant, therefore you’re saying they have the answers to huge problems?
So all good arguments are on the news and anything not on the news is crap? What makes you think the news is the truth?
What about a problem that has been discussed for 1 minute without reaching an answer, and then someone comes along with an answer. That answer can’t be right because it has been discussed for 1 minute? Where is the line?
What if you’re not convinced because you don’t want to be convinced. How would we know?
Why is that?
…and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if they don’t accept the answer?
If answers are proposed in chronological order, the first answer is one answer. So that is right?
philosophy at ilp is like kids trying to cook dinner. we end up eating it because it’s here, but it’s usually egregiously incorrect about some really basic stuff.
“Wise” is a term used to describe someone that has wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. If you know nothing then you have no knowledge, which means no wisdom, and therefore are not wise.
Just for the record, he is not talking about philosophy in general here at ILP. Instead, he is talking about his utterly twisted rendition of my own alleged approach to philosophy here.
Let’s focus just on the first one:
“You have to know everything about everything since the Big Bang in order to have any answers in philosophy.”
No, in regard to any number of conclusions that logicians and epistemologists have come to in regard the rules of language and what it means to know something, we have come about as close to objective answers as we may well ever be likely to.
And then there is all that we know about interactions [human or otherwise] in the either/or world. I’m not likely to invoke “the gap” here. Only to invoke the mysteries of all that we don’t know about the human condition and nature going back to what we don’t know about the existence of existence itself. Think the very, very small and the very, very large here.
Why on earth do you suppose films like The Matrix are so popular? It’s because they explore all of the possible gaps between what we think we know about our reality and all that we may well not know about it at all. Same with sim worlds and dream worlds and arguments for solipsism.
Instead, the distinction I make here is between [u]I[/u] in the either/or world and “I” in the is/ought world. The gap between what we think we know about morality and political issues and the really big questions like determinism and all that we don’t know about the nature of existence itself. How much more profoundly problematic philosophical discussions can become then given the points I raise in my signature threads here.
In an existence where freewill is IMPOSSIBLE- you cannot ruminate about freewill.
That is a context.
Let’s take water for example. A mirage in the heat that looks like an oasis (which is water evaporating)… just because you’re tricked by the mirage and there is no oasis where you walk, doesn’t mean oasises or water doesn’t exist.
Freewill exists. If it’s impossible, it can’t even be a mirage that we discuss.
There is always context. You have to exist in order to do something. That doesn’t negate volition, will or consent.
phylo does have a point. though, generally speaking, it’s hard to nail down what exactly consists. of ILP , even philosophy per se, but his non specificity is where he slides down toward a reductio absurdum.
We’ll need a context of course. One that allows us to encompass what we think we do know more specifically about the answers we give, given the points I raised above in reaction to Phyllo’s first point.
More to the point, when you actually permit yourself to respond more substantively to the points I raised above, you give yourself the opportunity to score lots of points.