A_Seagull wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:02 am
What do people want from philosophy?
Is there a commonality of goal or does everyone with a passing interest in philosophy want something different?
What is it that people want? Certainty? Understanding? A hobby? To find God? To find purpose?
For one thing, it is completely senseless to ask the question prior to agreeing upon the definition of the word. Plato is the only person in history who defined it correctly, however, I have never read anyone, even claiming to be a so called Platonist, who recognized the answer. Plato did not teach Philosophy, Plato was a Grammar Teacher, and as he indicated, every grammar is dialectical, i.e., what we call today, binary. It is a well known fact, all information can be processed using binary recursion. This is because, the definition of a thing expresses a singe unit equated to a binary expression.
Plato called these two parts of speech by several names, after all, they are the only two concepts one has to master. Noun and Verb, relative and correlatives. shape or form containing some material difference. In general semantics, the container (noun) and the contained. Tom is a Cat. Noun equals noun and verb.
The intelligible binary multipled by the physical binary of a grammar system which is the symbol set for the noun, and the method of recursiveely applying the symbols for the verb, gives us exactly Four primitive categories of Grammar: Common Grammar, Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry . This is called a Grammar Matrix, or in the metaphors of the Bible, a matrix of mensuration.
Everyone knows also, that we use equality in a binary fashion, each one commensurate with one member of our binary. Common names for them are Arithmetic and Geometric, literal and metaphorical, etc.
People either claim, for example that the Bible is written literally, and that Plato wrote literally. But of the two types of identity, and Plato demonstrated this, arithmetic and geometric, which one forces you to learn judgment? Which one promotes the use of judgment and reflection. not Arithmetic, literal, any moron can generally accomplish that, it is Geometric, or again, metaphorical.
A mind has one, and only one job to do, its not a choice, it is not what you can give or take away, it is a biological fact; a mind is an information processor, and, if you are still with me, all it can do is process information using binary recursion.
So, how is it that every book on Grammar, even though Plato was the founder of formal grammar, claims that there are more parts of speech than two? Ask your computer, if there are more parts of speech than two, how is it that it does use binary, Okati was established Formal Grammar, including the fact that grammar is binary, which he called dialectal, yet not one educated person in history ever followed Plato and explained it.
Not one. Now one correct grammar book since the time of Plato.
Plato knew, very clearly at least these three facts.
1.) The purpose of a human mind,
2. How it has to, by fact, do its job.
3. Relation to self is inadmissible.
It does not matter what people want out of Philosophy, especially as defined by Plato. What they will always get from actual philosophy, is as Plato said, learning how to do our own work as a mind.
Now, I studied Plato for years, and still do. I have made compilations of his work, free downloads, all of it reformated and edited for machine reading so that you do not have to read him because you can now have the computer read it to you. My own reading program I wrote, will even automatically change voices giving each character their own machine voice. It can process around 600 files at a time so that I can compile the auido for the audio books I make and not have to tend the computer.
You will find that work, as I said, for free, on the Internet Archive.
Both the Bible and Plato, were developed to encourage mankind to learn to do his own work, which is biologically defined. A mind is potentially the most powerful life support system possible.
As relation to self is inadmissible, no one has a choice, they either have the intelligence to do their own work, or they do not.