real intellectuals, — whollyrolling

You don't think philosophers are "real intellectuals"?

I think that "real intellect" is independent from the subjective nonsense that "philosophers" tend to haplessly toss into their pedantic sermons.

Wow. Well, if you have such a nasty opinion of philosophy and philosophers, I have no clue what you're doing here.

I do know that it means you are biased in such a way as to make it unsavory for me to further converse with you.

I just told you that "real intellect" is an exercise in unbiased thought, and you retort that I'm biased and therefore unworthy. My comments have nothing to do with my opinion of a person or their character and everything to do with the integrity of their ideas. If someone is making claims based on emotion or personal experience, then they're not using intellect. How is that a "nasty opinion"?

I stand by my conviction that you're just biased and not worth talking to--possibly just trolling this forum.

You haven't yet provided a reasonable foundation for claiming that I'm biased. My suggestion that unbiased dialogue is intellectual and biased dialogue is emotional: how is this biased? Also, it's fickle to cry "troll" whenever you don't agree with or understand something.

Also, it's fickle to cry "troll" whenever you don't agree with or understand something. — whollyrolling

It's a sign of bias to constantly tell other people they don't understand things when they simply don't like your attitude.

Attitude and soundness of reason are not interchangeable, neither is bias interchangeable with either of them. Which is it, do you think I'm biased, or do you think I have a poor attitude, or do you think my commentary lacks soundness of reason?

I don't constantly tell people they don't understand things, that's just blatantly false. Not everyone dislikes my attitude, also false. Bias is not interchangeable with criticism neither does telling people they don't understand something equate to bias.

My implication that you don't understand what I'm saying isn't based on bias but on the lack of quality of your responses and the lack of comprehension they exhibit. It's a rational conclusion based on the information available to me.

I just told you that "real intellect" is an exercise in unbiased thought, and you retort that I'm biased — whollyrolling

If you're human, you're biased. Your only sources of information are non-objective. So you put beliefs where you have no certainty. As we all do. So you're biased, as we all are.

"Real intellect" is an avoidance of this human tendency toward bias. If a person can't consider data objectively, then they have no business pretending to be philosophically or scientifically minded.

Bias is irrational and avoidable.

There's a domain of psychology concerned with the study of crackpottery, it's called 'psychoceramics'. I feel as though you can't really philosophize about crackpottery.

Clouds That Glitter

The scientific method is defective in that it should impose a final step to justify itself by coming up with the possible practical value of what it discovers. For example, if physicists had been forced to justify themselves, the neutrino might have been used as a GPS Geiger counter to map all the resources of the Earth down to its core.

Instead, philosophy from its very beginning has been just mind candy for useless theorists. So, the way philosophy has been engaged in, it excludes the necessity to connect it to desirable activity in the real world.

Also forbidden by philosophy is discovering and condemning the source of its contempt for practical value and common use by the despised plebeians. Nature is a pretty sight only to those sitting pretty; the hereditary ruling class gives its unearned prestige to such wandering and pointless mental masturbation. That taints all the higher arts of this high and mighty lowlife. Its hub, the university, is an obsolete aristocratic institution designed specifically to please spoiled and decadent teenagers who live off an allowance.

Nerdy Runaways

Science should visit its home and be told by its parent that it is doing things wrong. This is in line with the idea that "War is too important to leave to the generals" and "A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient."

Climatologists might be told by their philosopher parent that if they were real scientists they'd be doing things like how to seed clouds, propose a pipeline to bring the glacial melt down to cure droughts, even replace trees with a far more effective converter of carbon dioxide, etc., instead of negatively criticizing the aftereffects left by the inventions of creative scientists (real scientists, according to this definition).

Marine scientists wouldn't be real scientists, either, until they quit being merely descriptive scientists. The same with classifiers; it is dishonest to point out how their classifications, such as the periodic table, became tools for creative scientists, because the originators themselves should have been the ones to immediately start putting a classification to practical use instead of wallowing in its sterile neatness.

Likewise, we shouldn't trust philosophers to tell us what belongs in philosophy. For example it is congenitally joined with the university, which is work without pay for its students, but no professor would
allow philosophizing about the fact that his whole isolated world is based on class-biased indentured servitude and his own apprenticeship indicated a teenager who was afraid to grow up.

The Ivory Tower Is an Elevated Dungeon

Professors have as little to do with being intelligent as sportswriters have to do with being athletic.

Professors have as little to do with being intelligent as sportswriters have to do with being athletic. — TheSageOfMainStreet

Ah, well if YOU say so, then it must be true.

Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Can't, Teach. Those Who Can't Teach, Preach

Funny, that's what I always say about your mindless mentors.

Funny, that's what I always say about your mindless mentors. — TheSageOfMainStreet

You got a whole lotta quips and a serious lack of arguments/proof/evidence.

I dispute your claim about accuracy, because I am categorising these statements accurately in accordance with the appropriate branches of philosophy which they fall under, and doing this doesn't mean that they can't be distinguished from history or science, as they retain their own more specific identities. Philosophy is just a broader category which relates to, and subsumes, other academic subjects, such as those mentioned. — S

By “accurate” I mean that my definition describes the actual practices of those who call themselves “philosophers”.

It is useful for salvaging the already damaged reputation of philosophy as excessively focussed on stuff of little substance or bearing on the world, — S

Fair enough. I agree.

PA

Bias is irrational and avoidable. — whollyrolling

For the most part. And therein lies the semantic game of philosophy. We’re stuck with our subjective view and aware of our ‘capacity’ for misinterpretation. There is then the question of how best to avoid such misguided views, and if we cannot completely - which we cannot - then we better make the most of it.

Also, Damasio showed rather convincingly (via neuroscience) that “emotions” are required for “rational” thought.

I prefer “philology” over “philosophy”. Love of learning is my game NOT simply love of wisdom; which comes attached to a sense of universal morality I find a little self-defeating!

From one philosopher to the next you see plain language and pathologically specialized language respectively, so is it any wonder that context and concepts become lost in translation? And then there's this whole business of people deceiving themselves. And then there are deep rooted differences in comprehension for more reasons than I'll list here.

Saying that emotions are required for rational thought seems misleading. Emotions are sort of "omnipresent" in human thought. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're required for rational thought as much as that they're required in general and so happen to accompany thought, rational or irrational. In practice, it seems that emotion has a drastic impact on rational discourse. Also, much of our communication is either ingrained or rehearsed in the brain long before it's written or spoken. It seems as though we reach for previously catalogued ideas on certain emotion cues, but if I was going to entertain the notion that emotion "assists" rationalization in any way, I'd have to see the details of such a study.

Whirled Wad of Wub

I've read that pathetic and dishonest self-justification many times on this copycat medium.

I've read that pathetic and dishonest self-justification many times on this copycat medium. — TheSageOfMainStreet

What justification? I haven't offered one. You're the one making weird unsubstantiated claims.

If you can talk about it, then you can philosophize about it. It's that simple.