Best Philosopher Ever

[FlashDangerpants]

I'd say Sew Crates

With his famous maxim that we should "be excellent to each other". Good call.

[Belinda]

Yup. I saw something about Epstein and Chomsky today, maybe don't tell Gary.

I confess I do tend to glorify certain philosophers including Chomsky. But the world of social reality comes in shades of grey. I suppose even dear Spinoza ate dead animals.

[accelafine]

Yup. I saw something about Epstein and Chomsky today, maybe don't tell Gary.

I confess I do tend to glorify certain philosophers including Chomsky. But the world of social reality comes in shades of grey. I suppose even dear Spinoza ate dead animals.

Would you prefer it if he'd eaten them alive?

[FlashDangerpants]

Yup. I saw something about Epstein and Chomsky today, maybe don't tell Gary.

I confess I do tend to glorify certain philosophers including Chomsky. But the world of social reality comes in shades of grey. I suppose even dear Spinoza ate dead animals.

Few philosophers have been greater than Frege, hopefully none has been more of an utter bastard.

[Eodnhoj7]

Recently, Youtube philosophy dude Kane Baker discussed a blog post by Colin McGinn (formerly of UCL and Oxford fame before a bit of a #meetoo thing happened, so now he writes blogs)
You can find the almost hour long Youtube video here
Or the significantly shorter blog post here, I'll put in quotes in a follow up post.

McGinn's blog post is presumably tongue in cheek, and Kane B presumably understands that, but he went ahead and treated the whole thing with some degree of seriousness, and arrived at a very unexpected conclusion which I shan't spoil other than to say that he doesn't end up proposing himself as the greatest ever.

It all comes down to how you select criteria of course. With the OG argument ruling out Plato and other ancients because they only had access to ancient writings and not to modern ones which reduces their expertise, so it turns out that the ideal philosopher is modern enough to have a great deal of knowledge about the history of philosophy, and must have written many papers on a wide range etc...

But of course, there's one great resource which was not available to Plato because he was dead when it was created. But McGinn and Kane B are alive and they choose not to access it. More fool them I say. That resource is of course the Philosophy Now forums. Where else can you find the guy who will prove God exists in order to win an argument about whether taxation is theft? Nowhere. Where else can you read the works of EggnogJoe7 and Advocate? Nowhere. Where can you find out that Ken time-travelled here to learn out how to communicate with humans and become the all-Father age? Or where might Roydop answer the most important question of all time... or whatever shit VA doing these days...?

We should work this all out. The criteria presented by Kane Baker are....

• Expertise, specifically expertise in philosophical subject matter such as the arguments that have been presented in the past and the counters to them.

• Quality and clarity of writing (no mention of using AI to do the writing), it seems we are docking points for being overly gnomic and obtuse. If your followers have to write your main idea with both upper and lower cases, that's a bad sign for mist Dasein/dasein

• Breadth of writing, no narrow furrows here please.

• Quantity of writings.

• Originality (McGinn wanted "rightness" but Baker argues that this is not measurable)

• Argumentative sophistication, which surely speaks for itself.

• Openness, a willingness to argue matters that lie outside your own system that you might have created for your own narrow interests.

If I were to nominate for instance one of my favourite modern philosophy dudes, that would be Simon Blackburn, author of books ranging from moral epistemology to phil of language, which is quite broad. Creator of quasi-realism in the field of moral philosophy which is fairly original. The arguments for that quasi-realism are extremely sophisticated but his works are clearly written and highly comprehendible.

But can that compare to Immanuel Can. The master of everything who can prove that God exists and agrees with himself whenever his political views are disagreed with. Or could it stack up against VA, who always knows that if you get 1000 experts to make a list of all the bad things in the world, it would be the same list VA would make all by himself?

So... who's really the Best Philosopher Ever? I turn the question over to the denizens of PN, the only people with access to all the information needed to answer the question.

It is so refreshing to see you actually use your intellectual gifts for once rather than for poor jokes.

Good writing. Concise and ordered.

Favorite philosopher? Not so much a specific philosopher as much as an ancient school, Egyptian. But do I know it in depth? Yes and no. AI have said some of my texts resonate with Egyptian metaphysics so my understanding is not so much based upon reading it directly but coming to similar conclusions from different angles.

If memory serves they where considered the most advanced philosophers for their time. Plato and Pythagoras, if memory again serves, had some inspiration but as to the depth of the inspiration there are not enough documents giving a clear answer...at least that I am aware of.

From what I have observed, the majority of philosophy is scattered fragments of said school, Egyptian. But that statement is balanced more towards intuition than reason when I make it.

[FlashDangerpants]

Favorite philosopher? Not so much a specific philosopher as much as an ancient school, Egyptian. But do I know it in depth? Yes and no. AI have said some of my texts resonate with Egyptian metaphysics so my understanding is not so much based upon reading it directly but coming to similar conclusions from different angles.

I take it that you reject McGinn's potentially self-serving claim that any competent modern philosopher is better than any ancient, even a genius, simply virtue of having access to so much more knowledge than was available to said ancient then?

[FlashDangerpants]

I wonder where peacegirl's dad fits into all this.

[Eodnhoj7]

Favorite philosopher? Not so much a specific philosopher as much as an ancient school, Egyptian. But do I know it in depth? Yes and no. AI have said some of my texts resonate with Egyptian metaphysics so my understanding is not so much based upon reading it directly but coming to similar conclusions from different angles.

I take it that you reject McGinn's potentially self-serving claim that any competent modern philosopher is better than any ancient, even a genius, simply virtue of having access to so much more knowledge than was available to said ancient then?

Claims are contextual. So the answer is yes in one context and no in another. I do not reject or accept him but view him as making a claim. Let me elaborate.

Knowledge is the claimed boundaries by which we see how relations occur. We see relationships, apply boundaries to the relationships, as a set of relationships, and then call this distinction knowledge.

All cultures do this in various ways.

There is no law on how or what distinctions are made, other than distinctions are made. In these respects all cultures are relatively superior, inferior and equal to eachother in regards to knowledge.

To cut to the point using Egypt as an examlple

We cannot construct the pyramids.
They could not construct a car.

Superiority and inferiority? Relative.

[FlashDangerpants]

To cut to the point using Egypt as an examlple

We cannot construct the pyramids.
They could not construct a car.

Superiority and inferiority? Relative.

We can definitely construct pyramids.

[Eodnhoj7]

To cut to the point using Egypt as an examlple

We cannot construct the pyramids.
They could not construct a car.

Superiority and inferiority? Relative.

We can definitely construct pyramids.

Of the same materials/type/size/etc, no....remember: relativity.

The ancients could do things we cannot, we can do things the ancients cannot. Why?

Different forms and modes of how peoples make reality distinct, how and what a culture or civilization applies distinctions determines how they, the culture/civilization, unfolds.

Things are, for better or for worse, relative...this includes knowledge as well.

[FlashDangerpants]

To cut to the point using Egypt as an examlple

We cannot construct the pyramids.
They could not construct a car.

Superiority and inferiority? Relative.

We can definitely construct pyramids.

Of the same materials/type/size/etc, no....remember: relativity.

Yeah, yes, we can defintely do pyramids. The triangle is not a lost technology.

[Eodnhoj7]

We can definitely construct pyramids.

Of the same materials/type/size/etc, no....remember: relativity.

Yeah, yes, we can defintely do pyramids. The triangle is not a lost technology.

Good, then rebuild the pyramid of Giza using the same dimensions and materials....or rather show me someone who has.

[FlashDangerpants]

Of the same materials/type/size/etc, no....remember: relativity.

Yeah, yes, we can defintely do pyramids. The triangle is not a lost technology.

Good, then rebuild the pyramid of Giza using the same dimensions and materials....or rather show me someone who has.

The materials are just stone, why do you think we can't cut blocks of stone any more?

[accelafine]

We certainly couldn't build the pyramids the way they did it. We would need modern machinery. A lot of skills have been lost over the millennia. They would never look the same. The engineers of the day were told that they would die if they didn't find a way. That's a pretty good motivator.

[FlashDangerpants]

They used saws and chisels to hack out the blocks. These are not lost tech. This conversation was idle to begin with, but it seems to have drifted into insanity.