The Glade 4.0

"Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular" sounds pretty fitting.

Meh. I know where DE is coming from, and in substance agree with him, except where he said "it has no power at all." Ideas have power, especially when coming from charismatic individuals.

Where I agree with him in substance, however, is that philosophy, except at it's most basic, simple level, is overcomplicating existence in unnecessary and ultimately useless ways. We do not need it. Not for our intelligence, not for our social aspects, and not for our existence as a species. We are animals. We are no different than wolves or lions or apes or dolphins, and you haven't read the great philosophical works of those species. Why do we have it? It's a side effect of our evolved thinking capacity, right there with visual arts, music, poetry, prose. It has an entertainment value, it occupies our minds in debate and in thought. Like these other elements, they don't have any practical or empirical value in our lives, but that doesn't mean they don't have some other values that are harder to define. I do not think, however, that they have any more value than the arts I listed. They are simply a mental and emotional excersize. They have no value in everyday life when it comes to survival and advancement. We lend an almost religious-like credence to philosophical thought, and like religion, most of it is practically pointless, and in my subjective opinion, utter drivel.

It does, though, have power in human societies. Great power. We give it the power it has, true, but it is power nonetheless.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Unfortunately, ignorance generally isn't self-aware. Therein lies the problem.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

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Yeah. That's the whole reason for science.

That said, there's a certain irony in holding up as sources of wisdom people who claim to know nothing. I, for instance, know that I know nothing about engineering a bridge. Feel free to come to me for sage advice about designing one.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Your sage advice is to ask someone else - that's far better than a person who possesses your level of expertise, and doesn't recognize their ignorance.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

♫ London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down.... ♫

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Philosophy, or ideas, might have power in terms of motivating individuals, but in that respect so do hunger, thirst, greed, altruism, hate, love, and a thousand other things.

What philosophy lacks is any inherent power. It is not like physics or mathematics that attempt to model actual forces at work in the universe. It is not even like religion in claiming to describe extra-universal forces that allegedly can exercise actual power over the universe. Philosophy, epistemology, and the host of other terms used to describe what is essentially thinking about thinking, thinking about existence, and includes morality, ethics, the nature of existence, the nature of objectivity and so forth has no power whatsoever except insofar as it motivates a person to act or not act.

Even then, there are so many writers, philosophies, schools, methodologies, and so forth that it is quite easy to simply pick those one likes best, quote their favorite passages, and arrive at whatever conclusions one finds most pleasing. Philosophy and philosophers thrive on this state of affairs; we are no closer now to resolving silly questions like "Am I the only person that really exists and the rest of you just an elaborate virtual reality created for my benefit/detriment by some unknown, unknowable, and unobservable force for absolutely no apparent reason at all?" or any of a thousand other such questions which can't and won't be answered.

While these things may be interesting topics in and of themselves, they seem to find their way into discussions of narrow, concrete issues like "How did Zimmerman end up shooting Martin" before we know it, and once inserted, they do absolutely nothing to assist in productive discussion. The only purpose they serve is to obfuscate any other issue with endless "But what is X? What is the nature of Y? How do you know? You're being inconsistent! You haven't read <favorite pompous blowhard>! You won't answer my questions! DAMN IT, HOW DARE YOU THINK ANYTHING WITHOUT SATISFYING ME AS TO THE NATURE OF THOUGHT, LANGUAGE, AND KNOWLEDGE BEFOREHAND!"

There's thousands of years of writing, talking, and generally pontificating on this crap and we're hardly any closer to resolving anything than when Socrates was chugging poison. It's all too easy to simply quote a few preferred lines and pretend all of academia supports one's 3-sentence summation of the nature of knowledge or whatever is the weighty issue being introduced. Philosophy is a scorched-earth tactic.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You keep thinking that ...

And I'll keeping making accurate economic predictions you can't figure out.

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Philosophy and new schools of thought have been the driving force of change for our entire species. Without it we would still be living in caves and fighting eachother to the death over the best mammaries. Its importance can't be overstated and shouldn't be underestimated. You take these things for granted and say that nothing has changed since Socrates, but here we are debating over rights, the importance of life, and many other things on a daily basis. The topics themselves are not new but the fact that they're being discussed by a large majority (and still changing the world that we live in) is.

One of the things that has changed, since Socrates, is the realization that Philosophy has no place in scientific endeavor. To the ancient greeks, a philosopher and a scientist were the same thing. Hence, people like Aristotle and Plato are still frequently quoted when discussing the history of any scientific field.

However, at a certain point, there was at least a subconscious realization that philosophy had nothing directly to do with the advancement of human knowledge and technology, except insofar as certain philosophies may have promoted or hindered the human search for such knowledge itself.

Diamondeye is being dismissive of higher philosophy for good reason. We would not be "living in caves" without it. (And you're still fighting each other to the death over mammaries.) It is at best a mental excersize. Do not confuse social dynamics with philosophy. Philosophy is sometimes an attempt to explain human social dynamics, it does not create them. I believe you are confusing cause and effect. What we do, how we think, how we live, we do by instinct, because it is the human way. Then we create a dozen different explanations as to why. Evolution is a social thing as much as it is a physical thing.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

A little further: Philosophy tends to fill the same function as religion. It attempts to answer the question of "why."

Philosophy doesn't tell people whether they want to be free. It doesn't even tell them what freedom is. It tells them why they should be free (or should not be.) Hows and whats are questions for science. The domain of why is left for religion and philosophy.

This is the underlying reason I have no use for either:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "WHY."

Ultimately, things just ARE. There is no inherent value, no inherent purpose, no 'First cause.' There is no why, ultimately the final answer to a string of "why's" is entirely arbitrary. It's a meaningless question that has been misleading humanity since the concept was first coined.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

How nihilistic of you.

Edit - But seriously, I think you and I are on the same page, really. The human race's search for knowledge has been the driving force in our evolution. I used the terms philosophy and 'schools of thought' but I think we agree. The search for knowledge and drive to improve ourselves is our best trait and should should be treated as such. When you close your mind off to new ideas, you hinder our future. I realize that ideas or philosophies themselves cannot create anything, but they drive us to do so.

Yes. Inherently, i believe the universe itself supports nihilism. Humans, however, are not nihilistic. Purpose and value are subjective, yes, but they exist, because we will them to exist. We make our own purpose. This is hinted at by Publilius Syrus 2100 years agowhen he said "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." Value is personal, so is purpose. We make it ourselves. This doesn't make the value any less valid, or the purpose any less real. It's just not inherent, not self-evident, and doesn't exist the same way for anybody else. Nihilism, Moral Relativism, and Moral Subjectivism are often all confused for Nihilism, because none of them have objective value or purpose. They are different though. I'd say I believe in Subjectivism, but "a person should not believe in an -ism, she should believe in herself." Which is a rather subjectivist opinion.

(Ack. That's way too meta.)



Yeah, we're not that far off.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

You forgot Moral Realism.

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Intentionally. Moral Realism holds that there are objective values and purpose. It's not often mistaken for nihilism.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So in other words, nothing has changed since Socrates. Thanks for the concession. The fact that a lot more people are talking about them may be new, but it has little, if anything, to do with philosophy. It has to do with people interested in advancement in far more concrete matters.

Philosophy didn't get us out of the caves, a combination of intelligence and the desire to not be cold and wet and hungry did. We've advanced enormously in terms of our physical ability to carry out conversation about various metaphyisical matters, but the conversation has not advanced. It's broadened, and added new ideas, but those ideas came from viewing the practical effects of what came before, not because a bunch of philosophers thought it up out of the blue. If, for example, you keep the peasants miserable enough for long enough, eventually they'll rise up and get rid of you and come up with a new way to run things, philosophy of rights or not.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, by all means let's pretend that the "pompous blowhards in Greece" had nothing to do with the development of Greek republics, the emergence of the Roman Empire, and its many advancements in technology and human governance. Let's pretend that rediscovery and renewed interest in their work didn't also drive massive reforms in Europe during the Renaissance, dragging it out of nearly 1000 years of cultural, technological, and economic decay. Let's further pretend that the intellectual revival of the Enlightenment with its political theories of Locke, Voltaire, Montesqueieu, ... had nothing whatsoever to do with the fall of European monarchy, the rise of republicanism, and the industrial revolution. Let's instead pretend that a bunch of peasants in the middle ages rose up and overthrew the aristocracy because -- you know -- that actually happened.

Most of all, let's keep ignoring that "science" as you know it is precisely a philosophy which owes its very existence to those greek assholes you so deride. You can't dismiss their contribution to human progress while simultaneously lauding western science. Well, you can, but it just makes you sound like an historically ignorant, anti-intellectual troglodyte.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Science is not a philosophy. I refer to that here.


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Aristotle and Plato and others like them held themselves back by mixing philosophy with science. I talked about that a bit, here.




It's also important to note that Economics, Political "Science," etc. -- none of those things are the domain of philosophy. Philosophies occasionally help motivate them, but philosophy specifically deals with the question why, not how or what. And once one realizes that "Why" is both unanswerable and irrelevant, and probably nonsensical, one can spend more time on How and What. Attempting to mix these questions is as much folly as would be asking the 15th century church questions on the path and position of celestial bodies.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'll simply quote the guy who taught my Philosophy 101 Class ...

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With that kind of density I think DE might be the singularity we've been looking for.

China, next.

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Khross:

On a long enough timeline anything that can happen, will happen. So DE is still right, you see.

Funny thing about that ... China and India have over billion people each, and the only thing they've ever done is throw off foreign yokes. And the peasants are still peasants ... ask midnight's children.

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Hooray for So-Crates

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Holy shitsnacks!