I agree. I was talking about conventional or pure philosophy. Although I'm not sure if these terms make actual sense.
Anyway, I'm certainly not among those who have declared the death of philosophy, either!
I would be spiritually and intellectually dead myself, too!

I mentioned it because it deals with Plato's friendship with Dion and the events in Syracuse.

Philosophy never goes wrong although there was one idea which was more of a political philosophy.

That idea was Marxism and although in itself a criticism of the aristocracy and capitalism in general went on to become an ideology hijacked by tyrants which resulted in human history taking a detour once again through the dark ages for the states that wished to practice it.

Philosophy in its simplest form is an inquiry into truth, morality and to a degree aesthetics (this latter part again being dangerous in the practice of eugenics)

On the other hand if philosophy has no practical application then it is useless, but if used incorrectly it is dangerous for the human being is not merely corrupted by ideas but by enforcing them loses his human touch and turns once more into an ape.

A main problem I feel in doing philosophy outside of academia is that it's difficult to maintain the same level of rigor and discipline. While minutiae can feel detached, so can the popular. And there are limits to pushing on people's ideas which aren't part of the traditional set of concerns. Further, keeping interest -- given that philosophy does take work, though it's worthwhile work -- is part of it too. (I include myself in here, as I really ought to be reading and tapping out notes to Marx)

What is at issue is not thinking but a thinking that is insular and self-referential. A thinking that calls itself philosophy — Fooloso4

I’m still waiting for you to name names. Who are these mysterious philosophers whose work disappoints you so? Actually, you did name one: Derrida. So were you suggesting that perhaps his thinking is a bit insular and self-referential? You left me with a quote but it would require a new thread to even begin to do it justice.

So were you suggesting that perhaps his thinking is a bit insular and self-referential? — Joshs

What I said is that philosophy has become self-referential.

You left me with a quote but it would require a new thread to even begin to do it justice. — Joshs

So you choose to say nothing? This actually points to the problem. If you cannot even begin to articulate what he means then there is something amiss.

Perhaps this explains why you are unable to recognize that there is a problem.

Oh yes. My comment was addressed to the epithet "elitist hobby", that philosophy outside the academy is (still) more than that. — 180 Proof

I agree it can be more than that, but I don't think it's inevitable, or even common.

Here’s a little secret (don’t let it get around). Learning how to think is a prerequisite for learning how to live. Pursuing ideas for their own sake is pursuing life for its own sake. — Joshs

Thinking about how to live is a prerequisite for learning how to live. Much of philosophy, and particularly academic philosophy, has little to do with that. So, I don't think the tidy little idea that pursuing ideas for their own sake is pursuing life for its own sake necessarily holds true.

Deepak Chopra — Alkis Piskas

Really?

There is a fine line between talking about QM in a serious manner, and using the same terminology for obscure and often meaningless babble.

And although most of us aren't physicists, we should, nevertheless, not encourage people to follow others who can only lead to severe misunderstanding of important topics.

I never suggested following any of the persons I mentioned. I don't like or agree with some of them myself. I just gave some names to show that there are new philosophical views on the table. This was my main point, not to promote people of these new trends. The view of whom, besides differ a lot between them.

As for Deepak Chopra especially, he is a very respected bestselling author and medical scientist, known worldwide (8 million results in Google). He participates in a lot of scientific-philosophical panels, together with other prominent personalities.
You cannot discard a person's contributions to the world by pointing out his lack of solid scientic description and use of QM theory. This is a very narrow viewpoint. And I don't consider you such a person.

He goes on with these scientists in conversations or debates because he sells a lot of books. But most scientists, with the exception of Hoffman and one philosopher, Kastrup, go to argue with him that his conclusions don't follow from his premises, in so far as one can even make sense of them.

I can't of course, judge a person who doesn't know QM well enough, I would have to include myself in the conversation, I read a bit about it, but know almost nothing. What I don't sympathize with is pretending to have profound knowledge when it is not. I think that's devious.

Philosophy should be open to all who want to participate, but it should have minimum standards of quality, otherwise the discipline will lose even more meaning as coherent field, in my opinion.

Philosophy should be open to all who want to participate, but it should have minimum standards of quality, — Manuel

What are these standards of quality?
And who is to judge if a certain philosophy satisfies such (supposedly existing) standards of quality?

:up:

I'd say intellectual honesty and coherence at a basic level.

Who judges? The community of people engaged in philosophy, especially those who make contributions to the tradition.

But it sounds as if you would be willing to allow everything in. I was trying to find an analogy to Chopra, maybe Jordan Peterson or someone like that, but I can't.

If you allow everything in, you aren't going to get minimum quality discussions. This is why journals and publishers have editors. This is why this place has mods. Imagine if these places lacked these things, they'd be a disaster.

There are a multitude of places where philosophy 'went wrong'! Many have been pointed out by later philosophers throughout history.

Here's one that has yet to have been adequately addressed and/or corrected in academia...

Philosophy went wrong, and still goes wrong whenever taking account of thought and belief, both human and non-human.

There are a multitude of places where philosophy 'went wrong'! — creativesoul

And yet that's 'what's right' with it! :up:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." ~Beckett

:grin:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." ~Beckett — 180 Proof

:up:

And yet that's 'what's right' with it! — 180 Proof

Yes. There is a wrong way and a right way to go wrong.

[Re: What are these standards of quality?]I'd say intellectual honesty and coherence at a basic level. — Manuel

This is just a personal and offhand description. So, there are no standards.

[Re: Who is to judge?] The community of people engaged in philosophy, especially those who make contributions to the tradition. — Manuel

Where is that community? Who and how many of them are there? What and where can one find what does the majority of such community say about Chopra?
Does this majority also discard Kastrup, Kafatos and other sientists-philosophers who are engaged in philosophy of the mind, and consciousness in particular?
All these questions are of course rhetorical. I just want to show that one cannot put boundaries to any philosophy that talks about these subjects. If that were the case, 80% of the known philosophers would be considered outside boundaries.

it sounds as if you would be willing to allow everything in. — Manuel

I don't remember having ever not allowed anything to come in philosophy as long as it is pertinent with philosophy. Doing such a thing, would be too arrogant and stupid.
When I was much younger, there was a very nice, old man in our neighborhood who was doing errands for people in the area. He was walking on the street almost faster than me. So, once I asked hem what he does that keeps him so healthy and strong. He replied to me "Love yousrself". I was astonished to hear such a answer from a semi-literate person. An answer that came from a honest and purely personal experience. It had inspired me more than a lot of philosophical ideas I had read at the time.
Experience: something that not only all scientists but also most philosophers lack.

Note:
1) I'm not defending Chopra or his work. Maybe I shouldn't include him among the "representatives" of the new "wave", current or trend in philosophy. I don't know. And, honestly, I don't much care.
2) No one among the persons I mentioned represents me. I only wanted to mention that there's a new current in philosophy represented by prominent personalities.

I just want to show that one cannot put boundaries to any philosophy that talks about these subjects. If that were the case, 80% of the known philosophers would be considered outside boundaries. — Alkis Piskas

That's a bit too far. The word and field lose meaning. Is Charles Manson philosophy? It could be, but it's problematic.

I'm not defending Chopra or his work. Maybe I shouldn't include him among the "representatives" of the new "wave", current or trend in philosophy. I don't know. And, honestly, I don't much care. — Alkis Piskas

I don't disagree with the gist of your thought. I have nothing against "ordinary people" saying and thinking philosophically, in fact, it is very useful.

But you should care if someone like Chopra is taken seriously. It degrades the quality of ones thought.

Other than that, it's matter of emphasis more than substance.

Is Charles Manson philosophy? — Manuel

I don't see the relevance.

But you should care if someone like Chopra is taken seriously. It degrades the quality of ones thought. — Manuel

Taken seriously by whom? OK, certainly not by scientists. But certainly yes, by his colleagues. And also by thousands of people, who have benefitted from his talks, books and medicine.
Why should I care or be against him? Only those who are jealous of and hate successful people can be. And people whose ego is inflated. And people who are prisonners of their own beliefs and cannot accept something different.

100% agree. I saw a call for papers recently on "The Limits of Philosophy." The prompt itself was filled with technical jargon that even I, a pretty avid reader of contemporary philosophy, found somewhat hard to parse. I considered sending in a paper about one of the limits being "getting people to read philosophy," or "having philosophy written in the last 50 years on the shelf in Barnes and Noble."

This isn't for lack of appetite for things philosophical. Eckhart Tolle sells plenty of books with a brand of semi-philosophical mysticism. Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar seems to be selling plenty of books in the West. America's churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues still draw more people on any given week of the year than watch the NBA Playoffs or World Series combined, and while religion is distinct from philosophy, this is certainly in part due to people seeking out the philosophical aspects of religion.

Plenty of "popular science," books deal with philosophical issues; oftentimes they make up the main subject matter of the book. In popular science we get plenty of appeals for other scientists to take philosophy more seriously, scientists discussing contemporary philosophers, etc. (David Deutsch did his big Born Rule derivation with a philosopher).

Yet, it does not seem like philosophy departments have jumped on this opening, perhaps because philosophy of science is somewhat niche as people interested in it gets degrees in the sciences instead. But you could see a world where all science majors get an introductory epistemology/ontology course on the sciences, and maybe on specialized course in the philosophy of their field (e.g. philosophy of biology). Certainly this would help prevent a lot of bad science and further students' understanding of their subject.

However, I generally don't see courses with that sort of focus outside of graduate programs. Philosophy as most people are exposed to it is the study of "the great thinkers," a sort of historical humanities project. Basically, you're going to read Kant and Plato, not anything from the Springer Frontiers Collection.

This seems to me like the discipline doing a bad job branding itself. In the same way English programs have switched to focusing more on critical thinking, persuasive writing, technical writing, etc., there is certainly room for philosophy to put more emphasis on how philosophy has practical implications for the sciences, how philosophy helps with interdisciplinary programs, the ethics of contemporary public policy, etc.

More disturbingly, divisive, racist, sexist garbage like Bronze Age Mindset and the various works of the "Manosphere" can become best sellers because there is a total void in contemporary areligious philosophy written for young men. It's lamentable that there isn't a Will Durant for our day to walk budding "Western chauvinists," through the actual evolution of Western thought. At the very least, it would head of online questions to the effect of: "this Aristotle guy is boring and seems like a lib, where are the great Spartan philosophers?"

I was re-reading Walter Stace's "Man Against the Darkness," the other day and was astounded by quite how much he takes for granted about the nature of reality, much of which is grounded in 19th century science-informed philosophy. For the most part, "the world is purposeless, a brute fact, and all things are determined by and reducible to little billiard balls bouncing around in space and this necessarily reduces ethics, aesthetics, and even logic to illusions," is still the dominant viewpoint taught in schools. I certainly never got a whiff of Platonism or the inherit beauty of mathematics in school. Math was, at worst, an arbitrary system for completing tests questions, at best a useful skill for predicting events in our billiard ball world, which could let me make money so that I could purchase ultimately meaningless positive sensations.

My argument isn't even that the above line has been definitively refuted in all respects, but there are good refutations worth teaching. Particularly, reductionism and the impossibility of free will (and thus meaningful ethics) due to the fact that "everything happens for some (natural) reason," seem to be particularly weak areas of the prevailing view. After all, Leibnitz came up with the Principal of Sufficient Reason as a prerequisite for free will, not an argument against it, and reduction has not fared well as a program as of late. But the only philosophy I got before college came through English class, and it was all "we can take the meaninglessness of life as a self-evident given," existentialism.

The science that supposedly tells us the world is inherently valueless itself presupposes that the world, or at least key aspects of it, is rational and that we can understand this rationality. Hence, physical laws, explanations and models in place of a shrug and grumble about our arbitrary world. But if this is the case, then attempts to ground values in the inherit rationality of social structures doesn't seem doomed even if we accept core premises of the "valueless" view. Certainly, solid attempts at this exist, even if they are imperfect, e.g. Hegel's "Philosophy of Right," or Honneth's "Freedom's Right."

At the very least, people understanding the difference between:

- Hobbesian freedom as freedom from external impediments, i.e., negative freedom, legal "rights from," and

-reflexive freedom, rational control over the authentic self (see in Saint Paul, Hegel, Frankfurt, etc.), the ability to make choices one understands and not be merely subject to manipulation or unfathomed drives and instincts, including the ability to take on constraining duties,


...would be good for political discourse. Particularly the acknowledgement that reflexive freedom requires development and education, but that it no way ensures that such a free individual will make choices that allow others to be similarly free, thus setting up the need for a sort of overarching social freedom that grounds freedom "as a good."

The science that supposedly tells us the world is inherently valueless itself presupposes that the world, or at least key aspects of it, is rational and that we can understand this rationality. Hence, physical laws, explanations and models in place of a shrug and grumble about our arbitrary world. But if this is the case, then attempts to ground values in the inherit rationality of social structures doesn't seem doomed even if we accept core premises of the "valueless" view. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree that sciences that claim a valueless world are themselves grounded in a value system called empirical objectivity. But settling for objective rationalism is what ultimately leads to skepticism and nihilism. The problem with ‘valueless’ science isnt the absence of value but the privileging of one value-scheme over others. It shares this weakness with rationality-based models of social structure.

For the most part, "the world is purposeless, a brute fact, and all things are determined by and reducible to little billiard balls bouncing around in space and this necessarily reduces ethics, aesthetics, and even logic to illusions," is still the dominant viewpoint taught in schools. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The positing of the world without value or meaning is a consequence of the Galilean division between the 'primary qualities' as being the sole criteria for what is considered to be real, and the relegation of the remainder to the subjective, 'secondary' domain. In other words, the implicit division of the subjective and objective domain, an inevitable consequence of the philosophy of liberal individualism and the ascendent individual ego. Read Bertrand Russell's 'A Free Man's Worship', one of his early philosophical polemics and still a canonical statement of that outlook. The reason Eastern or eastern-inspired philosophies have a following is because they put back into the world what the Enlightenment abstracted away from it.

Read Bertrand Russell's 'A Free Man's Worship', one of his early philosophical polemics and still a canonical statement of that outlook. The reason Eastern or eastern-inspired philosophies have a following is because they put back into the world what the Enlightenment abstracted away from it. — Wayfarer

Could well be the case. But this doesn't address whether or not there actually is transcendent meaning or value. It might just tell us that people have a psychological need for and perhaps demand 'fairytales' and otherworldly narratives. Perhaps a way of managing the fear of life and death. What if Russell is right and what if the push back towards idealism, New Age and Eastern thought are just a reflection that people can't handle the truth? :wink:

. But this doesn't address whether or not there actually is transcendent meaning or value — Tom Storm

And how to arbitrate that, hmmm? Peer-reviewed double-blind lab studies? Questionnaires and surveys?

This suggests that the issue is also political. Personal philosophical freedom results in pluralism, and it's maybe harder to believe in transcendence alone (or as a tiny minority.)

It was Christianity that offered salvation for all. Philosophy never made such promisses.

And how to arbitrate that, hmmm? Peer-reviewed double-blind lab studies? Questionnaires and surveys? — Wayfarer

Like many issues in philosophy, undecidable.

What if Russell is right and what if the push back towards idealism, New Age and Eastern thought are just a reflection that people can't handle the truth — Tom Storm

Indeed. And the problem is transcendence and Idealism rear their ugly heads not only when we posit an otherworldly realm as transcendent to this world, but when, with Russell, we deem the objectivity of objective truth as transcendent to contingent contexts of use.