The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity. — lambda
Why does anyone still continue to study this nonsense? — lambda
- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.
- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world. — lambda
Um... those five items are of vital importance. — lambda
If you don't know ... then you are in a state of total intellectual paralysis. — lambda
- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.
- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world. — lambda
Yes they are, because they do know the origin of "to dream" and thus know its meaning. We get the meaning of dreaming from the experience of going to sleep, meeting with events and happenings which are somewhat disconnected from our daily life, and then waking up again to daily life. Hence, the meaning of "to dream" is tied to the context of daily life. Dreaming only exists IN RELATION to daily life. But if you cut this relation by saying that daily life is itself a dream, then dreaming itself doesn't make sense anymore - you have emptied it of meaning. If life is a dream, then you are also only dreaming that life is a dream - and thus your assertion is meaningless. As meaningless as dreaming that it is raining, while it is in fact raining - if you wake up at that point, you won't say "Oh I knew it was raining!", you'll say "I dreamed it is raining!"- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not. — lambda
And can any reasons be offered for NOT believing in other minds? Is the mere logical possibility of something a reason to believe it? Absolutely not. Thus AT BEST for the Skeptic we ignore the question - we suspend judgement. At worst, we conclude it is more probable that there are other minds given the behaviour of all these other people which we don't control, and are not aware of at a distance. A priori you would expect, if there was only one mind - your mind - that you would be able to control a lot more aspects of reality than you currently do. Just like your mind can clearly control your body, so too you'd expect it to be able to control other people's behaviour as well. But it doesn't. Therefore, the scenario is unlikely. The behaviour shown indicates that other people are capable of intelligence - hence mind.- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds. — lambda
So? What's the big deal? You still feel yourself to be free no? That's what matters.- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will. — lambda
Well what kind of justification would you expect? All justifications are within the framework created by the cognitive faculties. In fact, even the concept of reliability and unreliability comes from within this framework. Remove the framework, and you have removed the possibility for reliability or its opposite. For example - I only say that my eyes are unreliable, in relation to an experience when they were reliable. Truth is the standard for itself. For example, in normal conditions I see a stick as being straight. If I put it in water, I see it being Crooked - like Hillary. Therefore I conclude that in that particular situation - when the stick is in water - my eyes are deceiving me. But in relation to what are they deceiving me? In relation to me seeing the stick as straight when it's not in water. I take that experience as the standard of truth. Thus if I, like you, turn against my own cognitive framework, and start doubting it, then certainly I am also rendering the very act of doubting impossible - because the very act of doubt arises and exists only within and relative to that framework.- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.) — lambda
If the world wasn't "mind-independent" what difference would it make? I guess we'd expect to be able to control a lot more things - like when the sun rises, when it rains, etc. with the mere power of our thought. So the fact we can't control such things - that's all we mean when we say the world is mind-independent.- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world. — lambda
Yeah, too bad that most of you don't ever tell anyone and explain why it is easy... :-}All of your statements are arguably false. I'm not sure whether the weakest one is the one about dreaming or the one about other minds. I think that both are false. Not only are philosophers, like virtually everyone else, able to determine whether or not they're dreaming, it's actually easy. — Sapientia
In my view the point of philosophy isn't to come to conclusions so much as it's the process of looking at things philosophically, or "doing philosophy." — Terrapin Station
I find this despicable. — Agustino
He's bringing a fairly reasonable quandary with philosophy - and he's seeking for answers. So give him the answers. The problem philosophy has is that it hasn't collected all those answers against skepticism in the same place. So you have some in Kierkegaard, some in Spinoza, some in Wittgenstein, some in Schopenhauer/Kant, some in Plato/Aristotle - they're all over the place. And most philosophers don't even know the fucking answers themselves, that's what's really shameful. — Agustino
I say it's both. It's a means to an end, and both the means and the end are important. The end, for me, is knowledge of the truth, or greater clarity or understanding, or wisdom, or even just entertainment. And the means or method of philosophy could be compared or contrasted, favourably or unfavourably, with religion or science, for example. There's a reason why I "do" philosophy rather than religion or science or something else. — Sapientia
Yeah, I can see that--I meant more with respect to the discipline as a whole. I wouldn't say that it's not important to come to conclusions personally. It's just that the nature of the enterprise on a broader scale means that conclusions aren't going to wind up being cemented in the same way that many, say, scientific and mathematical "conclusions" are. The gist of philosophy as a discipline is to critically examine assumptions, to skeptically challenge views, etc. If we reach a conclusion that we all agree on and say, "well, that's that--we're done with that bit now," we're not really doing philosophy (collectively). — Terrapin Station
I say that because I, for one, haven't come across such a text. Or if I have, the text excluded exactly the most important pieces of the puzzle - as if the writers of it haven't even read the philosophers themselves. So sure, it might exist, I just haven't come across it, and I've been interested in these problems for quite some time.And how do you know that the responses of some of the big names in philosophy haven't been collected in one place? There's a vast amount of philosophical literature out there, and this may well have already been done. — Sapientia
How do you know that you're not dreaming? And most people don't know they're not dreaming, the question doesn't pop up into their heads in the first place.Most people know when they're not dreaming. I ain't dreaming right now. — Sapientia
I mean some guy just said we're all a monumental waste of time and all he could elicit was a "Yeah? Prove it." — Hanover
I don't see that here, to this guy. You may have covered it some other place, but not here. — Agustino
I've covered it many times, pretty much rehashing what I've said in this thread, but that doesn't mean I'm an ass towards someone who brings a fair complaint. — Agustino
It is true, these answers are hard to find in philosophy, because they're all so scattered, as I have said, and not given the importance they deserve, so very few people know about their existence. — Agustino
But instead of using this thread to laugh at someone else's expense, why not pile it with arguments to the contrary? Maybe some of them will resonate with him/her. — Agustino
Really some people, take Banno's comment, and even want to give it thumbs up. Is this for real? Like why should that deserve thumbs up? — Agustino
Scoffing at those who disagree won't convince them otherwise. Neither will one-liners. — Agustino
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