What is Philosophy?

[tapaticmadness]

Any madman, psychotic, schizophrenic can make that claim.
That is not extreme empiricism but extreme rationalization without empirical grounds.

We might actually agree on something here. I have often said that philosophy is madness.and I have written a truckload about just that. My inspiration comes from Plato's Phaedrus. Many many philosophers through the ages have taken that as inspiration. You are correct is believing that from that Principle of Presentation all manner of mad philosophy flows. That is why I love philosophy. I am mad. (I think you know that my madness is totally erotic, sexual, scandalously paranormal.) Of course you as a sensible rationalist who follows commonsense will have to cover your ears when I speak my delight.)

So you agree with me you are mad as certified by a professional based on the DSM-V
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
You should seek a psychiatric to confirm your thought.

Philosophy-proper is not madness but a systematic pursuit with intelligence and wisdom as defined in the OP.

There's nothing in either of these replies that I can respond to. All you did was assert that you are right and I am wrong. Maybe you could ask me a more specific question about my philosophy.

[Skepdick]

Philosophy-proper is not madness but a systematic pursuit with intelligence and wisdom as defined in the OP.

Wisdom comes with recognising that there is more to wisdom than Philosophy-proper.

Wisdom comes with recognising that being intelligent and correctly defining intelligence are different things.

Philosophy is not merely 'lover of wisdom' but note the implied 'practical' within the term 'wisdom' i.e. the applied knowledge.

Those who concern themselves with the application, and more importantly - the invention of knowledge are scientists and engineers. Not Philosophers.

[tapaticmadness]

Those who concern themselves with the application, and more importantly - the invention of knowledge are scientists and engineers. Not Philosophers.

Hello Skepdick, what is your answer to the question What is philosophy? What is your philosophy? I would like to respond to your replies, but I don't know what you believe. What are you a skepdick about? I will begin by saying that I am an anti-substantialist. Berkeley was right saying that there is no material substrate holding up the appearances while they change. Berkeley was wrong in thinking therefore that appearances are subjective, they aren't.

[Skepdick]

Hello Skepdick, what is your answer to the question What is philosophy? What is your philosophy?

My philosophy is to not have one as far as possible. All philosophy is dogma.

I would like to respond to your replies, but I don't know what you believe.

I believe in free will. Why? Well, the neurons in my brain just fire in such a way that my mouth opens and I say I have free will. What choice do I have? --Scott Aronson

Personally,I believe that I have no beliefs.

What are you a skepdick about?

I am probably a skepdick about skepdickism. Probably not.

I will begin by saying that I am an anti-substantialist. Berkeley was right saying that there is no material substrate holding up the appearances while they change. Berkeley was wrong in thinking therefore that appearances are subjective, they aren't.

I am an epistemologist who hates the label. I am also a non-determinist and a gambler. So, the concepts of "rightness" and "wrongness" seem equivocated when used outside of moral judgments.

To me philosophy is just a tool for exchanging perspectives. If you say X, I'll take an opposing stance on purpose. Because that will allow each of us to acquire a new perspective - the perspective of interlocutor. And that's a good thing. Since you are an anti-substantialist and I have no idea what that is - I will be a substantialist anyway.

The one perspective that I seem to share, that nobody else in Philosophy seems to is that contradictions don't signal errors - they signal learning.

[tapaticmadness]

I believe in free will. Why? Well, the neurons in my brain just fire in such a way that my mouth opens and I say I have free will. What choice do I have? --Scott Aronson

Personally,I believe that I have no beliefs.

I am probably a skepdick about skepdickism. Probably not.

I am an epistemologist who hates the label. I am also a non-determinist and a gambler. So, the concepts of "rightness" and "wrongness" seem equivocated when used outside of moral judgments.

To me philosophy is just a tool for exchanging perspectives. If you say X, I'll take an opposing stance on purpose. Because that will allow each of us to acquire a new perspective - the perspective of interlocutor. And that's a good thing. Since you are an anti-substantialist and I have no idea what that is - I will be a substantialist anyway.

The one perspective that I seem to share, that nobody else in Philosophy seems to is that contradictions don't signal errors - they signal learning.

I am an ontologist. I love labels. When I was a boy I loved to go into the natural history museum where everything was labeled and dead. I am not a perspectivist because there is nothing there that one can have a perspective on. I see what I see and that is real. As for contradictions, the world is full of contradictions, indeed, logic itself floats on the winds of paradox. All of that signals the presence of the paranormal, which I do believe in. That is to say that I am an unperson from the margins. Universal Forms exist and they have made me and control me. I do not believe in freewill.

[Skepdick]

I am an ontologist. I love labels.

That's a non-starter for me. To be an ontologist one requires direct access to ontology (reality) - the Kantian noumena. I don't think humans enjoy that privilege. Even our senses and intellect are in conflict with each other as Democritus once wrote:

Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence?

I am not a perspectivist because there is nothing there that one can have a perspective on.

In so far as all ontologies are categorisation schemes on sense-data, there are greatly many ontologies possible - each ontology is a different perspective. A conceptual scheme if you will. A model. Even - a Philosophy.

At the very least one can have a different perspective on the different philosophies when interpreting one's sense-data.

I see what I see and that is real.

Does reality come pre-categorized to you? Not to me.

Because different people could be committed to different ontologies, they will then experience different realities. In as much as this has a name it's Model-dependent realism

I do not believe in freewill.

Then how did you choose your philosophy?

[tapaticmadness]

I am an ontologist. I love labels.

That's a non-starter for me. To be an ontologist one requires direct access to ontology (reality) - the Kantian noumena. I don't think humans enjoy that privilege. Even our senses and intellect are in conflict with each other as Democritus once wrote:

Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence?

I am not a perspectivist because there is nothing there that one can have a perspective on.

In so far as all ontologies are categorisation schemes on sense-data, there are greatly many ontologies possible - each ontology is a different perspective. A conceptual scheme if you will. A model. Even - a Philosophy.

At the very least one can have a different perspective on the different philosophies when interpreting one's sense-data.

I see what I see and that is real.

Does reality come pre-categorized to you? Not to me.

Because different people could be committed to different ontologies, they will then experience different realities. In as much as this has a name it's Model-dependent realism

I do not believe in freewill.

Then how did you choose your philosophy?

Yes, you are right. An ontologist must have direct access to ontological reality, but that is not the Kantian Noumena. The Kantian Noumena doesn’t exist. And neither do sense data. I belong to that band of New Realists that reared their head at Cambridge a little over a hundred years ago. German Idealism was the enemy they were in revolt against. Even against the later Hegelianism which is the forerunner of today’s holistic pragmatism.

I look across the way and I see a boy in a maroon-colored shirt. The color and the form of being a shirt are both real things there in the world. Color and that shirtness are external to my mind. Color is not a sense datum, something in my mind. Shirtness is not a matter of language that convention has taught me to say. I am a realist, not an idealist.

And I see that maroon-colored shirt on that boy directly, without going through mind constructs to get at it. that is my anti-representationalism. We are not looking at representatives, deputies, vicars, stand-ins, images of the world in the mind when we perceive what is really there. Thus no sense data. My mind is up against the thing-itself.

So, yes, what is out there comes pre-categorized. And even my philosophy, in its being different from other philosophies, was there before I was forced to think it. My philosophy came to me, I didn’t choose it. I am possessed by these thoughts.

I want to say a word about Reality. There is no such thing as the one Reality beyond all our images of it. There are all the different appearances without there being any one substance that they are of. Thus my anti-substantialism. Only the appearances exist and those appearances may very well contradict each other.

Here's something you might enjoy (or roll your eyes at) -

A reference in John Passmore’s A Hundred Years of Philosophy to this article in The Monist: T. P. Nunn, "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?," MS, Vol 10 (1909- J910), 191-218. It’s old. Here’s the passage:

The first, in England, to formulate the characteristic doctrines of the New Realism was T.P. Nunn. Best known as an educationalist, Nunn wrote little on philosophy, but that little had an influence out of all proportion to its modest dimensions. In particular, his contribution to a symposium on ‘Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?” (Printed in The Monist: T. P. Nunn, "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?," MS, Vol 10 (1909- J910), 191-218. ) was widely studied both in England where, as we have already noted, it struck Bertrand Russell’s roving fancy, and in the United States. Nunn there sustained two theses: (1) that both primary and the secondary qualities of bodies are really in them, whether they are perceived or not: (2) that qualities exist as they are perceived.
Much of his argument is polemical in form, with Stout’s earlier articles as its chief target. Stout had thought he could begin by presuming that there are at least some elements in our experience which exist only in being perceived – he instanced pain. But Nunn objects that pain, precisely in the manner of a material object, presents difficulties to us, raises obstacles in our path, is, in short, something we must reckon with. ‘Pain,’ he therefore concludes, ‘is something outside my mind, with which my mind may come into various relations.’ A refusal to admit that anything we experience depends for its existence upon the fact that it is experienced was to be the most characteristic feature of the New Realism.
The secondary qualities, Stout had also said, exist only as objects of experience. If we look at a buttercup in a variety of lights we see different shades of colour, without having any reason to believe that the buttercup itself has altered; if a number of observers plunge their hands into a bowl of water, they will report very different degrees of warmth, even although nothing has happened which could affect the water’s temperature. Such facts demonstrate, Stout thought, that secondary qualities exist only as ‘sensa’ – objects of our perception; they are not actual properties of physical objects.
Nunn’s reply is uncompromising. The contrast between ‘sensa’ and ‘actual properties’ is, he argues, an untenable one. All the shades of colour which the buttercup presents to an observer are actual properties of the buttercup; and all the hotnesses of the water are properties of the water. The plain man and the scientist ascribe a standard temperature and a standard colour to a thing and limit it to a certain region of space, because its complexity would otherwise defeat them. The fact remains, Nunn argues, that a thing has not one hotness, for example, but many, and that these hotnesses are not in a limited region of space but in various places around about the standard object. A thing is hotter an inch away than a foot away and hotter on a cold hand than on a warm one, just as it is a paler yellow in one light than it is in another light. To imagine otherwise is to confuse between the arbitrary ‘thing’ of everyday life and the ‘thing’ as experience shows it of be.
In Nunn’s theory of perception, then, the ordinary conception of a material thing is revolutionized; that is the price he has to pay for his Realism. A ‘thing’, now, is a collection of appearances, even if every appearance is independent of the mind before which it appears. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities ... ew-realism

[tapaticmadness]

I am an ontologist. I love labels.

That's a non-starter for me. To be an ontologist one requires direct access to ontology (reality) - the Kantian noumena. I don't think humans enjoy that privilege. Even our senses and intellect are in conflict with each other as Democritus once wrote:

Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence?

I am not a perspectivist because there is nothing there that one can have a perspective on.

In so far as all ontologies are categorisation schemes on sense-data, there are greatly many ontologies possible - each ontology is a different perspective. A conceptual scheme if you will. A model. Even - a Philosophy.

At the very least one can have a different perspective on the different philosophies when interpreting one's sense-data.

I see what I see and that is real.

Does reality come pre-categorized to you? Not to me.

Because different people could be committed to different ontologies, they will then experience different realities. In as much as this has a name it's Model-dependent realism

I do not believe in freewill.

Then how did you choose your philosophy?

I think this article speaks to your belief. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_an ... ct_realism Here's an excerpt -
"Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the accepted view of perception in natural science that states that we do not and cannot perceive the external world as it really is but know only our ideas and interpretations of the way the world is." I, of course, believe in Direct Realism.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Philosophy-proper is an inherent fundamental function [tool] and an impulse that drive to facilitate the optimal well-being and flourishing of the individual[s] and therefrom humanity within reality.
viewtopic.php?p=447344#p447344

Despite being bastardized by academia, 'philosophy' is still valid as represented by an inherent neural algorithm within the brain and mind of all humans. To differentiate from its negative association, we need the appropriate term 'philosophy-proper' as defined above.

[Lorikeet]

The tools of philosophy, language, must be maintained sharp and useful.
Nihilism, as displayed in this very forum, attempts to blunt language, converting it to nonsense.
The objective is not to engage reality, but to preserve inclusivity - parity.

Modern philosophy has been corrupted by a misuse of language.
Instead of acting as connectors between mental models and reality, words are used to disconnect from reality.

We are now at a point in the American dominated "western world" where a woman is a subjective concept.
When the utility of symbols/words has been so thoroughly degraded of course philosophy would become an exposition of personal desires, demanding to be taken seriously.

The act came first, not the word.
See Goethe.
When we begin with an act we can all perceive, ascribing a symbol/word to it, then all concepts are clarified....such as free-will, race/ethnicity, sex/gender, good/bad, god, morality/ethics etc...

[Age]

The tools of philosophy, language, must be maintained sharp and useful.
Nihilism, as displayed in this very forum, attempts to blunt language, converting it to nonsense.
The objective is not to engage reality, but to preserve inclusivity - parity.

Modern philosophy has been corrupted by a misuse of language.
Instead of acting as connectors between mental models and reality, words are used to disconnect from reality.

We are now at a point in the American dominated "western world" where a woman is a subjective concept.
When the utility of symbols/words has been so thoroughly degraded of course philosophy would become an exposition of personal desires, demanding to be taken seriously.

The act came first, not the word.
See Goethe.
When we begin with an act we can all perceive, ascribing a symbol/word to it, then all concepts are clarified....such as free-will, race/ethnicity, sex/gender, good/bad, god, morality/ethics etc...

So, the thread title here is, 'What is philosophy?' But, you start your response with, 'The tools of philosophy, language, must be ...'.

We now know that the tools of 'philosophy', to you, is language but we still do not yet know what 'philosophy' is, to you, exactly.

So, what is 'philosophy', to you "lorikeet"?

[Lorikeet]

Philo = friend.
Sophia = wisdom.

The love of what is useful and effective, requiring an objective understanding of reality.
Wisdom is about knowing what is probable and what is not; what is effective and what is not; what is useful and what is not.

[Lorikeet]

Philo = friend.
Sophia = wisdom.

The love of what is useful and effective, requiring an objective understanding of reality.
Wisdom is about knowing what is probable and what is not; what is effective and what is not; what is useful and what is not.

It's interesting that for the Greeks man can only be a friend of wisdom, not a lover.

Why?
Because not everything about the world is friendly towards life, and towards human ideals.
A philosopher wants to become its friend, despite his personal, subjective, interests, needs, desires.
To befriend one must tolerate.
A friend is someone whose vices are tolerable and whose virtues are desirable. We all tolerate the bad things about our friends, so as to continue enjoying the good things about them.

This is why when the intoxication of erotic love/lust subsides relationships fall apart, if and only if there's no friendship, no agape, and the relationship was entirely erotic.
Erotic love/lust, is irrational and blinding. one is intoxicated by tis hormonal effects.


This is the natural mechanism evolved to deal with the intrusive nature of copulation, shaping the psychology and physiognomy of male/female biological types.