Philosophy Now Forum

Dalek Prime wrote:Most of your day is lived for others, save your lunch break, and a crappy, tired dinner in front of the telly, watching other crappy lives do the same.

This reminds me of that old English comedy On the Buses, especially the inspector who looks like a forced reincarnation of Hitler after he committed suicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnUWcfve1c

Dubious wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:Most of your day is lived for others, save your lunch break, and a crappy, tired dinner in front of the telly, watching other crappy lives do the same.

This reminds me of that old English comedy On the Buses, especially the inspector who looks like a forced reincarnation of Hitler after he committed suicide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnUWcfve1c

Yep, that's life! Quite liked that show.

Dubious wrote:

yiostheoy wrote:

Greta wrote:The OP strikes me as musing over the Fermi paradox.

Consider a star. Why is it the most massive and intensely dynamic object for many light years? All around it is space with some planets, moons and other objects that are nothing by comparison in terms of mass and dynamics. Reality always configures itself into areas of relatively concentration and relative voids. The Earth just happens to be a mass that is information dense.

Being part of a zone with the highest information concentration for trillions of kilometres is a tough job but someone's got to be it.

That's astrophysics not Philosophy.

Since when is a scientific perspective disallowed in a philosophic one to endorse the latter's conclusion? As an existential statement it remains wholly philosophical. Your version of philosophy is one which gives it claustrophobia.

Agreed. If I posted that comment on a physics forum I expect it would be criticised as philosophy. Not science.

Fortunately, the labels don't interest me. It's the phenomena that I enjoy and yakking about, and I don't mind what labels might be applied to aforementioned yakking.

Greta wrote: Agreed. If I posted that comment on a physics forum I expect it would be criticised as philosophy. Not science.

Fortunately, the labels don't interest me. It's the phenomena that I enjoy and yakking about, and I don't mind what labels might be applied to aforementioned yakking.

Philosophy is far more interesting in its ex-temporary format vis a vis its more academic content. Whereas the former still seeks for answers and viability the latter presupposes it's already found them. There's a difference between looking at art or creating it yourself, an ongoing process since the variable nature of reality invariably cheats the truth into thinking that's what it is.

Dubious wrote:

Greta wrote: Agreed. If I posted that comment on a physics forum I expect it would be criticised as philosophy. Not science.

Fortunately, the labels don't interest me. It's the phenomena that I enjoy and yakking about, and I don't mind what labels might be applied to aforementioned yakking.

Philosophy is far more interesting in its ex-temporary format vis a vis its more academic content. Whereas the former still seeks for answers and viability the latter presupposes it's already found them.

There's a difference between looking at art or creating it yourself, an ongoing process since the variable nature of reality invariably cheats the truth into thinking that's what it is.

I appreciate that it's important for some philosophers to focus on definitions but it's groundwork I'd usually rather use (or not) than contribute towards.

Dubious wrote:

yiostheoy wrote:

Greta wrote:The OP strikes me as musing over the Fermi paradox.

Consider a star. Why is it the most massive and intensely dynamic object for many light years? All around it is space with some planets, moons and other objects that are nothing by comparison in terms of mass and dynamics. Reality always configures itself into areas of relatively concentration and relative voids. The Earth just happens to be a mass that is information dense.

Being part of a zone with the highest information concentration for trillions of kilometres is a tough job but someone's got to be it.

That's astrophysics not Philosophy.

Since when is a scientific perspective disallowed in a philosophic one to endorse the latter's conclusion? As an existential statement it remains wholly philosophical. Your version of philosophy is one which gives it claustrophobia.

Anciently, Philosophy ventured speculatively into Science.

Oddly however, up until the time of Galileo, nobody ever trained any instruments on anything physical to make any Empirical observations.

That was flawed philosophy.

The original question of Philosophy in those ancient days was to resolve whether it made sense to blame everything on the Olympian Gods?

Thales and his successors concluded that it did not. Each of the ancients came up with their own speculative theories.

The Atomists ended up with the most feasible model and theory, and it is the one we follow in Science now, absent the quanta, quirks, and quarks that Hawking loves to babble about on tv.

Until our electron microscopes could photo-image molecules the atomist model was only a theory. Nobody doubts it now.

Religion, the original opiate of the masses since ancient times, has long since been discredited by Science, and now many neophytes and homespun folks have made Science their Religion.

Philosophy remains the pure process of thought however.

You should not pollute Philosophy with Science or with Religion.

yiostheoy wrote:...
Oddly however, up until the time of Galileo, nobody ever trained any instruments on anything physical to make any Empirical observations.
...

He really needs to stop using Disney as his source for Astronomical History.

yiostheoy wrote:Until our electron microscopes could photo-image molecules the atomist model was only a theory. Nobody doubts it now.
...

Apart of course from Philosophers of Science and Kantians.

mtmynd1 wrote:
If you are because you think, make sure what you think is what *you* are and not the consensus of others. Ego has a way of distorting fact from truth.

Hello mtmynd1

Interesting topic.

How would you interpret this quote.... '' The thinking is the thinker itself. The thinker cannot get rid of the thought.''

What do you think is being said in above quote?

Thanks in advance.

Greta wrote: Agreed. If I posted that comment on a physics forum I expect it would be criticised as philosophy. Not science.

Fortunately, the labels don't interest me. It's the phenomena that I enjoy and yakking about, and I don't mind what labels might be applied to aforementioned yakking.

If you can research an issue with experimentation and observation, then it is a Science question.

If you can research an issue by reading what each of the holy books of each of the major religions say, then it is a religion question.

If you cannot research it outside of you own mind, and you must rely on your own innate perceptions and a-priori a-posteriori procedures, then it is Philosophy.

Dontaskme wrote:'' The thinking is the thinker itself. The thinker cannot get rid of the thought.''[/b]

Thinking is the verb. Thought is the noun. The thinker is the mind.
Mind can control the thought if we so choose.
Mind is our tool. We are not the tool of the mind.

Dubious wrote: Since when is a scientific perspective disallowed in a philosophic one to endorse the latter's conclusion? As an existential statement it remains wholly philosophical. Your version of philosophy is one which gives it claustrophobia.

Yes, as an existential statement a scientific statement is indeed wholly philosophical, but the conclusion that science is the only valid way of knowing gives philosophy, and indeed all of life, claustrophobia.

Reflex wrote:

Dubious wrote: Since when is a scientific perspective disallowed in a philosophic one to endorse the latter's conclusion? As an existential statement it remains wholly philosophical. Your version of philosophy is one which gives it claustrophobia.

Yes, as an existential statement a scientific statement is indeed wholly philosophical, but the conclusion that science is the only valid way of knowing gives philosophy, and indeed all of life, claustrophobia.

Science is the only valid way of knowing in the sense that philosophy doesn't explain electricity or the weather. In science we subscribe to nature in teaching us. In this respect, what we may think or prefer to think as in philosophy, a relative fiction, is immaterial. This 'relative fiction' however does not negate how we synthesize ideas, events and information into our own views of reality at any moment in time. Consciousness succumbs to philosophy as much or more so than knowledge succumbs to nature. We're always in the process of revising our own fictions as contained in philosophy. If we ever reach the point where philosophy ceases to be dynamic it can no-longer be qualified as philosophy and consciousness itself may have reached a dead end.

Dubious wrote:

Reflex wrote:

Dubious wrote: Since when is a scientific perspective disallowed in a philosophic one to endorse the latter's conclusion? As an existential statement it remains wholly philosophical. Your version of philosophy is one which gives it claustrophobia.

Yes, as an existential statement a scientific statement is indeed wholly philosophical, but the conclusion that science is the only valid way of knowing gives philosophy, and indeed all of life, claustrophobia.

Science is the only valid way of knowing in the sense that philosophy doesn't explain electricity or the weather.

I didn't say otherwise. I merely said it's not the only way of knowing. Science is silent in matters of values and purpose: it tells us what can be said about the world; it does not tell us how it is.