philosophy
typhoid she: maybe if we know something, we then really dont know it.
he: can i quote you on that?
000422
...
Uqbar true philosophy
makes a mockery of philosophy
000504
...
MollyGoLightly Read Albert Camus--it's very reassuring. 000504
...
Brad Often happens on long drives or during periods of insomnia, whether you want it to or not. What's worse, it's rarely of Camus proportions. 000505
...
silentbob Won't you look up at the skylineAt the mortar, block, and glassAnd check out the reflections in my eyesYou see they always used to be thereEven when this was all was grassAnd I sang and danced about a high-riseAnd you were laughing at my helmet hatLaughing at my torchGo ahead you can laugh all you wantI got my philosophy (keeps my feet on the ground)And I trust it like the groundThat's why my philosophy (what I feel)It keeps me walking when I'm falling down (phi-los-o-phy)I see that there is evilAnd I know that there is goodAnd the in-betweens I never understoodWould you look at me I'm crazyBut I get the job doneAnd I'm crazy but I get the job doneAnd I sayGo ahead you can laugh all you wantBut I got my philosophy (keeps my feet on the ground)And I trust it like the groundThat's why my philosophy (what I feel)It keeps me walking when I'm falling down (phi-los-o-phy)I push you cause I loved you guysI didn't realizeThat you weren't having funAnd I dragged you up the stairsAnd I told you to flyYou were flapping your armsThen you started to cry, you were too highNo, too highNow you take this all for grantedYou take the mortar, block, and glassAnd you forget the speech and move the stoneBut it's really not that you can't seeThe forest from the treesYou never been out in the woods aloneSo you can laugh all you want toBut I got my philosophy (keeps my feet on the ground)And I love you you're my friendBut you got no philosophy (what I feel)And now it's time for this song to end (phi-los-o-phy) 000616
...
nocturnal ben folds five was pretty cool. good song, and right now I need inspiration on the subject seein as how my philosophy paper's due in two and a half hours. shit shit shit shit shit. 010404
...
.sunshine. silentbob is everywhere. 010505
...
kx21 Philosophy of mind:-

Common-sense, Self-knowledge, Creativity, Ignorance, Wisdom...
010717
...
kx21 Of Language:-

"Whatever we may want to say, we won’t probably say exactly that"

Marvin Minski

"It is…easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague."

Charles S. Peirce

"Subjectivity is the truth. By virtue of the relationship subsisting between
the external truth and the existing individual, the paradox came into being."

Soren Kierkegaard


Vagueness, Truth, Logic, Intuition, METAPHYSICS OF WORDS...
010717
...
phil philosophy is a stain 010719
...
phil osophy 010719
...
Sol (at school) is an eye still an eye if it cannot see? 010719
...
Dafremen Certainly Sol, in so much as a car is still a car even if it's broken down.

A twist on the old(and tedious)
"Does anything REALLY exist?"
exercise is this:

Assuming that everything outside of you DOES exist:

Do the images that I see begin at my EYES? Outside of me? Or inside my brain?

Until the light enters my field of vision it cannot be focused OR processed
and so you simply have patterns of light bouncing all over the place.

Once the light enters my field of vision and goes into my eyes it is FOCUSED there, but until it is processed by my brain..is it REALLY the image that I perceive yet? What if I have autism? Would the image I see in my mind and the image focused on the back of my eye be the same..simply reversed?
Once it enters my brain and is processed, is THAT where the image begins? What if I could pop my eye lens in and out? Wouldn't the image in my brain change accordingly?

Where exactly DO the images we see begin?
010719
...
The Truth philosophy seeks to tread where no other school of thought will go. Philosophy ponders the deeper existential questions about life, God, the Universe and time. Sure, it's risky talking about the unknown and mysterious, you may be safer dealing only with what you know, and what you can prove, but without taking risks in life, you'll pretty much live in that rut you've carved out for yourself indefinitely. 010719
...
Kat "...I found myself saddled with so many doubts and errors that I seemed to have gained nothing in trying to educate myself unless it was to discover more and more fully how ignorant I was."
-Descartes, Discourse on Method
011106
...
Kat "...When one spends too much time traveling, one becomes at last a stranger at home; and those who are too interested in things which occurred in past centuries are often remarkably ignorant of what is going on today...

...I thought that to succeed in [philosophical] examination it would be necessary to have some extraordinary assistance from heaven, and to be more than a man...

...But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I, who thought so, was something...

...But this undertaking is arduous, and a certain laziness leads me insensibly into the normal paths of ordinary life. I am like a slave who, enjoying an imaginary liberty during sleep, begins to suspect that his liberty is only a dream; he fears to wake up and conspires with his pleasant illusions to retain them longer...."

-DESCARTES
011106
...
Kat philosophy? oh that's easy. it's just a secret of time. 011106
...
birdmad (look me dead in the eyes and tell me to g the_addiction 011106
...
Dafremen See also: CLAPTRAP 011106
...
Torus I've always liked Chowder... those chunky bits of fish and Clam... Yummers. Is'nt raw experience the beggining and end? 011106
...
zenfishsticks i would a philosophy major...

if it weren't for that length of rope my mum keeps in her closet.
020110
...
screwing for virginity durring bio2 today (an AP/duel credit/honors class filled with the dumbest "smart" people i have ever seen) there was a conversation going on about philosophy. one girl said she was an exestincalist (i know i cant spell), another a functionalist, and a third was exited because she was an excestencalist as well.
this pissed me off because they were talking about it like it was a game, and you were cool if you had the philosophy, or at least said you followed the same principles, as the most people.

philosophy shouldnt be classified into seperate groups and classifications. all that leads to is seperation, arguing, and debate over not the issues themselfs, but which faction you subscribe to.

and as a side note: here is more proof for a theory i have on the workings of the universe and how nothing is an isolated event: during aqua science the pothead who sits infront of me said i should be a philosopher.

ps. sorry about the typos, but i have an injured hand right now.
030227
...
LucianNailo Life is not about who you are, where you work, how old you are, or even how many friends you have. It is not important to make lots of money, become famous, or be popular. Life is about living. Live your life as you would like to live it and do not subject yourself to the tyrannical rule of religion, government, or social acceptance. Free yourself from the chains that bind you to a dull existence and find the courage to truly live. 030401
...
niska i've heard, in what i've chosen to do, everything will come back to haunt me.

i philosophize about life, yet without you, i fear i'm not living it to its fullest potential.

haunt me or not, someday - you're alive right now. i can't justify thinking you'll be a mistake i'll somday regret.
030401
...
shorlove WHAT SHOULD A PROF.OF POLITICAL SCI.SAY TO THE MOCKER OF PHILOSOPHY & A DEIST? 030420
...
User24 Is this a question? 030425
...
User24 Ok, I've always wanted to do this, so here I go:

----------------------------
Is this a question?

Ignoring the line above, My essay covers existence and time.

As was said many years ago;

I think, therefore I am.

I once saw a cartoon that suffixed this line, comically producing;

I think, therefore I am.
And you are not.

However humbly intended, This serves well as a metaphor for existence; the only thing I can prove exists is myself (in whatever form) because I can think. I cannot prove to you that I am thinking, and you cannot to me, therefore, the only thing that can concievably exist is my mind. That is not to say that you do not exist - even if not in the same form as I, I can still perceive you as a force affecting my existence, whether you are a human as we understand them to be, or whether you are a figment of my imagination.

So, stripping reality down to it's most basic, logical form, that is, the lowest common denomintor of reality, that nothing exists beyond my mind, that 'we' inhabit a zero-dimensional universe, of infintely small proportions, we come back to our 'statement'. Ignoring the technicalities of langauge, the childish arguments such as 'yes, it is a question because it has a question mark', we can say that anything is only a thing because we perceive it to be so; when a child is afraid of the dark, it is because the child percieves darkness as scary, change the child's perception, and you change his/her reality.

Therefore, using the reality model posed above, the '?' statement is a question if I choose to answer, and is a statement if not.

However, I do not think it is possible for anyone who sees the statement to not consider an answer, therefore the default state is that of a question.
030428
...
Rene D. Actually, what I said was, "I think, I am." no therefore. that would imply logic, one of the things which I question. 030428
...
User24 what does everyone think of plato?

as you can see by going to the ' plato ' blathe, I'm not too convinced..

Is plato recognised as a great philosopher because of the questions he asked, or the answers he gave, or, excuse the pun, the ideas he had?

If it's the questions, or the ideas, I can accept his status, but his answers provide nothing to dwell upon, they are perfect and imperfect; if they are correct, then life's purpose is lost - we are living in a pseudo reality, something that is broken by default.

anyway.. what do you guys think?
030521
...
point of clarification socrates asked the questions, plato just wrote his dialogues down b/c socrates never wrote anything. this is also why in several of his works we cannot be sure if he is expressing his own opinion through socrates or if he truly is giving an accurate account of socrates's view (obviously their ideas match in many cases, but in others the possessor of the opinion is unclear). 030522
...
jane being_and_nothingness 030522
...
User24 point: true, but I think socrates didn't write his ideas down because he didn't really have any ideas, he simply questioned everything. 030523
...
shorlove i think/write therefore i am?
whoooaaahhahahahhaaaaaaaaaa!
030703
...
ferret everything is stupid... unless it's not.

-me

do you realize how easy it would really be to get world peace?
030703
...
gad metaphysics is bullshit
therefore particle physics is too
don't get me started on superstring multidimensional crap
031109
...
O Captain. When asked who will you die for, just freeze. freeze all those little nuron reaction goin down in the madula.

You don't know who you would die for. You think that if you were walking down the street and saw a blind hobo crossing the street that was on a collision course with a trendy new Hummer that you'd be the hero.
You have no idea.

Sure you will die for your family, friends, large groups, sure, why not? No one is that vain. You think.
031118
...
oldephebe as someone who knows diddly about superstring theory and cross/multi-dimensional flux..i'd really be interested in what you have to say, either in the way of elucidation or deconstruction/refutation..seriously
...
031118
...
oE er that was addressed to gad.. 031118
...
girl_jane I added a philosophy minor to my Theatre major and my English Lit. major. My advisor told me I was crazy...but I'm doing it anyway. 031118
...
Philosophistry is whack 040307
...
kaibutsu "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnamity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."

-Thoreau, 'Walden'

There's a book that sucks me in every time I open it again...
040307
...
constance what is yours? 040628
...
villain daydream perhaps I should take the last class and finally finish my minor ... 041119
...
jane philosophy has a tedious way of statin the obvious while simultaneously changing the truth into self-alienating confusing blunder 050717
...
witchesrequiem If we do not think that which we speak, our words will be empty talk. He who thinks many things, disperses his power in many directions. He who thinks only one thing is powerful.


That in which we have faith requires no proofs. He who asks for proofs departs from faith.

DeLawrence.
050718
...
TROUBLESUM give me some knowlege...


open up my mind
051123
...
zeke philosophy is it's own reward 051123
...
Wasandru When I am feeling passively contemplative, philosophy can be a curiosity. But when my mental state is anything other than one of passive contemplation, philosophy proves utterly useless. And in a state of passive contemplation there are usually many other things to which I am drawn.

Sometimes it seems like philosophy has nothing to do with loving wisdom.

Don't get me wrong: Plato's cave, Leibniz's monads, and Schopenhauer's will are interesting ways of looking at things. But generally I am unimpressed with the constant attempt by some philosophers to precisely render life's fluidity in a solid terminology. For starters, I doubt this can be done, and even if it can, I'm not sure it really assists us that much.

Granted, if you like philosophy, have at. What do I care. However, the expectation that one be well versed in philosophy in order to qualify as enlightened is probably an errant one. Someone can be thoroughly moved by a piece of music without knowing the composer or how a zither works or what a double-sharp is; what is more important, the experience or the theory behind it? Subjectivism vs. objectivism, blah blah blah.

An acquaintence recently accosted me for having made the "hermeneutical error" of reading plays (I have read hundreds of plays though I dislike theatre), as though there could be nothing virtuous about such a pursuit. He whipped up a hasty argument about how my lack of concern for personal "epistemological reform" constituted an egregious faultline in my personal ontology. He then assured me that I needed to read Kiekergaard at once, guaranteeing that it would reveal unto me an existential crisis I didn't even know I had.

A pissing contest, to be sure.

I thought, I am already substantially saddled with my own set of existential crises, thanks.

I thought, I have reviewed my epistemology regularly throughout my life, starting long before I knew what "epistemology" was.

I thought, beauty and meaning are in the eyes of the beholder, and hermeneutics (as applied to the arts) are really a matter of taste.

Realize that I am not writing off philosophy, nor am I basing my opinion on this one lone individual, whom I actually think is alright. It's merely that if I am troubled, philosophy tends to drag me down further. I have seldom felt revitalized by philosophy. Music, art, poetry, silence, dawn and dusk, theology, bathing, wondering, caverns, tarragon, drugs, and dancing have all added great value to my little life... philosophy, not so much.

(Who knows, perhaps tomorrow I'll change.)
061113
...
() ( ...beauty and meaning are in the eyes of the beholder... ) 061114
...
Pto True. Doubtless there are many who find great beauty in philosophy. 061114
...
() ( i, for one. ) 061114
...
P the D (Are you a Frege fan?)

(What about Hume? I'd guess you don't care much for Hume.)
061114
...
() ( i admire frege for his discipline; he limited himself to formal rules and proceed in a logical manner. not being a mathematician, i can appreciate his more technical achievements as an enthusiastic lay-person. the semantic work, because it is so restrained in it's scope and reach, is very resonant to me.

hume is a giant. i only wish he had not lived in a time in which it was necessary to obscure his - likely - atheism. prevarication must have been like a mortal path along occam's razor. still, the quality and relevance of his ideas resounds loudly through time. hume was a giant. )
061115
...
Pto (What about Duns Scotius? Te gusta?) 061115
...
te gustas 061115
...
() ( ? ) 061115
...
Pto (What are your thoughts on the philosopher Duns Scotius?) 061115
...
happynesshatesme what am i in not who

if i am or what i think i am what i am therfore i can only be what i think i am and if i think i am then i thought it to be there fore i am not? wate what was the Question?
070916
...
minnesota_chris the_talk_on_a_cereal_box 180624
what's it to you?
who go
blather
from