Philosophy Now Forum

This morning I finished this book. I agree with the Amazon customer's brief review. http://www.amazon.com/Return-Philosophy ... 965&sr=1-1

and also with this paragraph from the publisher:

"While granting that philosophy must use a somewhat specialized language, Molnar attacks jargon-laden thought by tracing certain root assumptions that go deeper than the issue of language itself. He locates these assumptions in the work of philosophers who, espousing modernity, no longer trust the "reality of the real," and are convinced that the world and our perception of it are elusive, offering no foundation except in the human mind which, however, is also the result of a "social contract," a temporary consensus or transient network of meanings readily discardable. According to changing ideologies and social structures we use "signs" linguistic, psychological, hermeneutical, structuralist, existentialist not to express reality but to establish communication with others. Philosophy, then, shifts from the task of knowing reality to the task of communicating here and now."
http://www.transactionpub.com/cgi-bin/t ... &2D251&2D4

The last sentence above prompts me to think that it describes Richard Rorty's legacy: no substance, just some past "conversation". Today recently deceased philosophers are quickly forgotten.

tbieter wrote:
The last sentence above prompts me to think that it describes Richard Rorty's legacy: no substance, just some past "conversation". Today recently deceased philosophers are quickly forgotten.

I think part of the reason for this is the "type" of person that is considered "productive" vs. the type of person that is considered "non productive" in society.

Our society is geared toward goal oriented and structured thoughts. We reward the individuals who exhibit the type of understanding we expect with an education system geared to the way they think. While that is not a bad thing, it all but annihilates any unique thought process that doesn't fit the 'appropriate' standard. So while encouraging intellectual competence it discourages "out of the box" type thinking. I believe non structured individuals should have the opportunity to learn in an unstructured environment where they may flourish. I also believe they should be integrated into structured classes on some level to be able to share knowledge. For example, a non structured student's "assignment" might be to see if they could communicate a thought to the class without using words, in any creative type way they could imagine. Then the structured students assignment could be to creatively describe what they thought the non structured student communication "assignment" meant. The grade would be based on individuality and creativity instead of right vs. wrong. I know the idea of this sounds odd to some of you but I think the general idea of thinking outside the box would flourish. To teach kids how to be creative is not possible, to allow them to actually be creative is the key to developing those skills. I believe any 'type' would benefit from such unbiased educational standards and more important our society would benefit leaps and bounds by such freedom.