What are some good philosophical questions for beginners??

I volunteer at an old folks social club and read a different philosopher bio each month for a Philosophy Club.

So far we’ve done Nietszche, Descartes, Aquinas, Pascal, Marx, Ayn Rand, Aristotle, Socrates, John Locke and Voltaire.

I’m doing David Hume next week. After, I’d like to ask some basic philosophical questions to the group to discuss.

Here are some I’ll ask:

1.) What is happiness?

2.) Is it better to achieve a main life goal with a false belief or to not achieve that main life goal at all?

Can anyone give me some other suggestions?

Thanks!

Well, philosophically, the question I always come back to here is this:

“How ought one to live in a world awash in both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change”?

And the beauty of this question is that often leads to speculation about answers given either a God world or a No God World.

Could you change the question to make it simpler for elderly people with no philosophical background?

I’ll go for this.

Happiness is knowing everything is perfect for everyone forever in the way they want it. In a reality like this… nobody is truly happy. They are lying.

We live forever NATURALLY!!! Our most important job with bodies and minds in the earth realm is to figure out our best possible forever.

I lie constantly to have a better life or make it better for others - on the big things though, I never lie.

That’s so I don’t live with cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance makes you angry at yourself, and that is a bad forever plan.

You’re talked to them.

Have they expressed an interest in some particular area?

Okay, you explain to them that, as with everyone else, in the course of living their lives, they can arrive at situations where others disagree with their moral values. And that ethical philosophers exist to grapple with the question, “is there a way to know for sure how all rational men and women are obligated to behave when moral values come into conflict?” by using the tools of philosophy.

These basic, essential tools can then be introduced into the discussion.

Then you point out that, given new experiences, relationships and access to knowledge, something might happen to change their minds. Why? Because the world we live in is bursting at the seams contingency, chance and change.

Then [especially among the elderly] it is likely that someone will note that of course there’s a way to know how to behave. Through God and religion.

And, here, perhaps, there may be those who believe in a God of the Jewish faith or the Moslem faith or the Hindu faith. Or one of them might be an Evangelist or a Buddhist or a Calvinist or a Mormon or Paganist or one of hundreds of other denominations.

The implications of that can then be discussed.

You can note the opinions of someone like me and invite those who are interested to join the discussions at ILP.

No.

Free Spirit,

As far as your response above - “no” that begs the question for me.

At first glance, the question I might ask you is this: Are you sure that these people are that interested in learning about philosophy and the philosophers that you are touching base on?

Was it your idea, or their idea, to discuss philosophy? Have you, at some point, asked them if they are truly interested in what you are giving them?

Your presence there showing them your caring is a really good thing. Many elderly people feel alone and abandoned.

Free Spirit,

Where in time is this question being asked? Has the goal already been achieved and one is just looking back on it and asking this question?

Personally, I would think that it is pure ego to worry about how one achieved his life goal (unless others were harmed along the way because of it) after the fact.

The goal WAS achieved and after all it was the individual who put his energy, sweat and tears into it. How can we even know just how much “belief” itself played in this?

Of course, afterwards, one can examine and take apart by questioning and pondering this belief they believe got them there…just for the sake of learning and enlightenment.
lol

FreeSpirit:

Any updates to report here:

Why is there something rather than nothing (Include God in something).

Is morality objective or subjective?

Bring up quotes to discuss from folks like Marcus Aurelius, Oscar Wilde. They lead to interesting discussions and the quotes are usually easy to understand.

Tell them that it is a fact that color exists only in their mind and every color they see is not a product of reality, but their brain and eyes… (scientific fact). See where it goes from there… ask if we can know if we truly know what anything looks like with our senses… and how a snake who sees in infrared by detecting heat is any more correct than what we see.

on 2) I think the answer to this would depend wholly on the depth of the lie , the degree of personal deception and the details and content of the goal.
My view is that a gaol based on a lie is a completely empty achievement but would depend om the details.

Haven’t all of the questions been answered? Aren’t philosophers merely arguing to be arguing - maintaining the confusion? Is there a question that isn’t already at least 1000 years old?

Very fuckin close dude and yer on the right track.

‘all the questions’ actually haven’t been answered because… well, three quarters of them aren’t real questions. Most of philosophy is ‘language on vacation’ and ‘skating on frictionless ice’, as Vitkenshtein once put it.

So to have an answer, you have to be presented with a real question. So for instance when Berkeley axes us if we think ‘the existence of the material universe depends on god perceiving it’, we aren’t quite sure what ‘god’ and ‘perceiving it’ means.

Once a discussion on these things occurs in order to try and make sense of the original question, it could go any number of ways, each way being chock full of interdependent pseudo-propositions that masquerade as empirical propositions.

Here’s an essay from the holy grail of internet analytical Marxism that’ll explain everything about typical philosophy. This is where I shamelessly stole that comment about pseudo propositions masquerading as empirical propositions.

anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_a … nsical.htm