Philosophy now?

[Bernard]

We often approach philosophy today as if we are rounding off the conclusions made to date in philosophy. I think this is a mistake. The same questions we have had for millennia are not really there for answers. No, the same questions seem simply to become harder over time. Our challenge today is more to do with how best to live with the questions rather than being able to make final conclusions about them.

[marjoramblues]

We often approach philosophy today as if we are rounding off the conclusions made to date in philosophy.

M: Who is this 'we'? What conclusions have been 'made to date' and how would we 'round [them] off'?

I think this is a mistake.
The same questions we have had for millennia are not really there for answers.

M: What questions; and why would we ask questions if we were not seeking some kind of an answer, or clarification?

No, the same questions seem simply to become harder over time.

M: Again which questions do you have in mind?

Our challenge today is more to do with how best to live with the questions rather than being able to make final conclusions about them.

M: Whose challenge? If we cannot come to some kind of a conclusion, or clarification, about whatever questions you are considering, then we don't necessarily have to live with them? Simply discard them as useless.

[Bernard]

The basic questions we cannot discard even if we wished to is what I am talking of: life, death and the universe type of stuff. Most of these questions do not have rational answers. Our problem lies in believing that if rationality doesn't provide nothing will.

[marjoramblues]

The basic questions we cannot discard even if we wished to is what I am talking of: life, death and the universe type of stuff. Most of these questions do not have rational answers. Our problem lies in believing that if rationality doesn't provide nothing will.

I hereby discard any unanswerable questions about life, death and the universe.
Now, where are the teabags...teapot...or...perhaps I should have hot chocolate...
G'night.

[Bernard]

Silly

[marjoramblues]

Silly

Yes.

[HexHammer]

the same questions seem simply to become harder over time. Our challenge today is more to do with how best to live with the questions rather than being able to make final conclusions about them.

Nonsens!
Socalled philosophers ask the same silly questions over and over, because they'r too stupid to do a tiny bit of research, besides most doesn't have sufficient cognitive abilities to comprehend very simple answers to their questions.

..that's the simple turth.

[Bernard]

Tell me hexhammer, what is life?

[HexHammer]

Tell me hexhammer, what is life?

LOL?

It would be a fool's errand to tell you, go look it up youself.

[Bernard]

I wasn't asking for me - Im the one after all who feels the drive for rational answers to such questions has become less and less necessary. A fools errand? I think you can brush past the conceit and have a bit of a swipe at answering.

[Andy Kay]

I'm inclined to regard philosophy as the process of trying to think more clearly about a specific subject matter, hence the different branches of philosophy. As such I think Wittgenstein contributed a lot in showing us that many philosophical problems reduce to nothing more than linguistically induced muddled thinking.

[Bernard]

Language is fizzling then? Epochs of suffering seems to produce rashes of poets: the the 1st and 2nd world wars for instance. Have we not suffered enough the past fifty years through which to refresh language?... Or has the suffering been too great - the psychological suffering and angst? Have we become speechless? A herd of mutes? Is that how other ages would really view us?

[HexHammer]

I wasn't asking for me - Im the one after all who feels the drive for rational answers to such questions has become less and less necessary. A fools errand? I think you can brush past the conceit and have a bit of a swipe at answering.

Tell me O wise one, how does this fitting into the thread at hand then?

[Bernard]

Anyone here know the exchange of nervous impulses between brain and typing fingers? No? Then I can type what I feel like, true?

(For wisdom: he who plays the doll and fears appearing the fool is a fool indeed)

[Bernard]

A QUIETER HUMAN

We talk
But do not speak;
In truth we have been muted,
This age of population and soul frenzy.

Have we quiet words for each other still

within?

No doubt,
but what oh what shall call them forth again?
You would believe that nothing short of miracles will do,

But of miracles full known we have never been short.

There is the only the trust of silence to go; all that's left, all that's real.

In silence go sweeping winds across mountain drops, broadening the view of the earth,

our lives,

as precious as the first and last human moments.