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Is philosophy always like this?

BillyJoe:

For me it's to try to understand points of view different from my own. But usually the language they use is so confused that I can never figure out where they have gone wrong. I suppose my views could change one day but it is unlikely because none of them are actually wrong and it would be silly to go downhill from my position on top of the mountain.
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Your erstwhile position on the question of identity notwithstanding. :p
 
Win,

Long time no see.

Yeah, my post was not serious as you have probably gathered.
I have often referred back to that revelation about identity and given you credit for that.
You made of me a better materialist. :D Ironic hey?
Seriously, it really has been a highlight of my time here and I thank you again for that. :)

BillyJoe
 
calladus,

We are not alone. I know a lot of other people that feel the same... Some even are guys who dug deep into philosophy.

Andonyx,

Been there, done that, and I know what you meant regarding the "OH YEAH!" feeling... But the annotated -specially the reviews or concise- versions have a problem, they are usually also interpreted (at least untill a certain point, and OK, some are more, some are less).

The problem is that after I got the "OH YEAH!" feeling, I almost always get the "do you really needed all those pages to say that?" feeling...

Surely- technical/scientific literature of every fields have specific languages that give an impression of isolation from the common peasant. But in phylosphy texts, even in the texts from current run-of-the-mill phylosophers, this effect seems to me to be greater. Quite often it seems to me that they want to prove each others how smart they are just by filling pages after pages with (usually meaningless) word games.

Note that I used the "to me" expression a lot of times. I admit that there may be a geat component of not being used to the philosophy jargon in my impression.
 
Correa Neto said:
Quite often it seems to me that they want to prove each others how smart they are just by filling pages after pages with (usually meaningless) word games.
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And yet, you hang out here.


I kid! I kid!
 
You've probably heard the joke:

What is the cheapest university department to run?

Well, the second cheapest is the pure math department. They only need pencils, papers, and wastebaskets.

The cheapest is the philosophy department . . . they don't need any wastebaskets.

~~ Paul
 
Andonyx said:
To give an example, wether you agree or not with his conclusions, Nietzsche has a huge impact on Western philosophy.
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Well, first of all, Nietzsche himself made the same criticism, in particular about Kant, that he used far too many words.

I'm a big fan of Nietzsche and have read a lot of his works. IMO Nietzsche almost never did any philosophy, as it would be described today, and on the occasions he did it, it was largely bogus (e.g. the Eternal Recurrence). What he mostly did, and he was smack-dab brilliant at it, was a mixture of what we'd now call anthropology, psychology, and social history.
 
Andonyx said:


And yet, you hang out here.


I kid! I kid!
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Masochism, plain, pure and simple masochism... :D j/k

Anyway, nowdays IMHO philosophy is much closer to sociology than anything else. Seems to me that the tendency is to be icorporated in to sociology and in some parts by psicology. The best parts of Nietzsche's works to me could be classified as sociology.

The quest for "whys", "reasons" and "meanings" of the universe seem to be (untill evidence is shown) utterly futile IMHO. Cosmology and physics left little space for the need of "whys", "reasons" and "meanings". Just the "how" is needed. So, the only way left for philosophers is to look for the "whys", "reasons" and "meanings" of society and the human mind (fields already covered by sociology and psicology).

*hides behind a wall to avoid stones, bricks and eventual bullets*
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Or is it really what it seems: a giant masturbatory exercise in poorly-defined futility?

Just wondering.

~~ Paul
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Masturbatory exercises can reduce the risk of prostate cancer. So inquiring minds want to know whether or not philosophical exercises can reduce the risk of brain cancer.
 
You know the debate is over when the debaters begin squabbling about definitions.

However, I believe there have been a couple of discussions where everyone was open to the possibility of them being wrong, and tried looking at the subject from both sides of the fence. That's when people 'get it'.

However, being human, it rarely happens. People seem to hate being wrong so much they cannot accept the steps it would take to be right.
 
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