Philosophy thread

[Longhorned]

Hard to believe we don't have one of these.

What's the meaning of life for you and all that kind of stuff?

[UAEebs86]

I drink, therefore I am.

- René Descartes

[Longhorned]

I drink, therefore I am.

- René Descartes

A good friend of mine once introduced me as, "This my friend John. He really likes alcohol."

[dovecanyoncat]

We live out of the future but we understand out of the past.

[Longhorned]

We live out of the future but we understand out of the past.

Like, we hope for things in the future but we form our understanding for what to hope for from our past experiences?

[azgreg]

[Longhorned]

Just you try to be an old man who gets women without philosophy.

[azgreg]

Just you try to be an old man who gets women without philosophy.

I'm a funny guy. Women love a funny guy.

[dovecanyoncat]

I drink, therefore I am.

- René Descartes

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raising of the wrist,
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his dram.

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,
"I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

[UAEebs86]

G'day Bruce!

[Merkin]

I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party. - Ron White

[dovecanyoncat]

We live out of the future but we understand out of the past.

Like, we hope for things in the future but we form our understanding for what to hope for from our past experiences?

More like, the present is a diaphanous illusion, a membrane that exists only to transition the future into the past. All that we are is either retired in a past of varying distance, that no longer exists but bears all ground of reflection and meaning, or out there ahead of us where every choice and action in the moment rests solely as a thing yet to be. Memory and imagination are the poles we are hung between, as if the present matters.

The modes of time are a real bitch when you think about it.

[Longhorned]

We live out of the future but we understand out of the past.

Like, we hope for things in the future but we form our understanding for what to hope for from our past experiences?

More like, the present is a diaphanous illusion, a membrane that exists only to transition the future into the past. All that we are is either retired in a past of varying distance, that no longer exists but bears all ground of reflection and meaning, or out there ahead of us where every choice and action in the moment rests solely as a thing yet to be. Memory and imagination are the poles we are hung between, as if the present matters.

The modes of time are a real bitch when you think about it.

I'd say that's why we need 1) art, and 2) sports -- especially basketball. For example, no, I can't grasp this fleeting moment right now. But if I'm watching a game I care about, I sure has hell can.

We could also go with Kant and say time is just a mode of intuition, but whether or not that's true, I'm too steeped in phenomenology to leave it at that.

[azgreg]

[azcat49]

You only DIE once but you live everyday. Life is too enjoy so don’t sweat the small stuff. No regrets

[Longhorned]

You only DIE once but you live everyday. Life is too enjoy so don’t sweat the small stuff. No regrets

What if it's the BIG stuff we sweat?

[azcat49]

If you can’t change the outcome don’t sweat

[azgreg]

You only DIE once but you live everyday. Life is too enjoy so don’t sweat the small stuff. No regrets

What if it's the BIG stuff we sweat?

Don't sweat the petty things, pet the sweaty things.

[Longhorned]

If you can’t change the outcome don’t sweat

You can't seriously say this to an Arizona basketball fan.

[Longhorned]

You only DIE once but you live everyday. Life is too enjoy so don’t sweat the small stuff. No regrets

What if it's the BIG stuff we sweat?

Don't sweat the petty things, pet the sweaty things.

Now we're getting there.

[dovecanyoncat]

If you can’t change the outcome don’t sweat

The future insists unfinished; the past remains unpredictable.

[azcat49]

Haha, you guys are the best.

[KaibabKat]

[CatsbyAZ]

Anyone care to help me interpret this one - from the notoriously pessimistic Arthur Schopenhauer:

“Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.”

Everything becomes lost in its very moment? It’s such an abstract thing to say.

[Longhorned]

Anyone care to help me interpret this one - from the notoriously pessimistic Arthur Schopenhauer:

“Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.”

Everything becomes lost in its very moment? It’s such an abstract thing to say.

Does he mean that, since it's April 10 again, it's time to post in the philosophy thread?

I'd guess he's following Kant's transcendental idealism, where the cognitive apparatus intuits by time as a mode instead of the assumption that time is a thing in the phenomenal world. I don't think he's saying things are lost in the present moment. He's saying the opposite: that the notion of passing time hinges on memory. So the notion of time involves things in the mind as empty images with emotional affect, but with no more value than what your hands once grasped but are now out of reach. The opposite might be Heidegger's Zuhandenkeit, where the real experience of being is in the moment without thinking where you're at one with the tools you're performing a task with expertly.

[dovecanyoncat]

I've never read Schopenhauer or Heidegger. But I think I remember one bit of Augustine mostly because I don't want to remember trying to remembering anything of Kant: What is memory but time present of things past. "In our hands" lies the mode of being? As to true value who's to say? When I'm hungry I'll eat anything.

[Longhorned]

So why don’t people like Kant? I’ve never met anyone who likes Kant. I feel like later philosophers were all yeah, that’s done, I’ll either build on it or talk about something else.

People also think Nietzsche is weird. I say, read Gilles Deleuze on Nietzsche and see what you think.

[dovecanyoncat]

So why don’t people like Kant? I’ve never met anyone who likes Kant. I feel like later philosophers were all yeah, that’s done, I’ll either build on it or talk about something else.

People also think Nietzsche is weird. I say, read Gilles Deleuze on Nietzsche and see what you think.

It's Kants mode I detest: long Germanic sentences with eleven semicolons and twelve footnotes. It's like listening to John Kerry back in the day. There's not enough breadcrumbs to find your way back out of a single sentence paragraph that wanders back upon itself and ends up with the verbs in its mouth at the end. I dunno. Kant is Thorazine on paper.

What little I remember of Nietzsche was quite readable. I didn't have to diagram his sentences to keep up with the clauses.

[CatsbyAZ]

Does he mean that, since it's April 10 again, it's time to post in the philosophy thread?

Thanks for the thoughtful response. My own response is to realize that I don't have the mindset (intelligence) to digest academic philosophy like I did 5 - 10 years ago when, in an amateur sense, I would read philosophy. Or more accurately, I read a books about philosophy given how I obviously don't read/speak German. I remember the day/location when I learned of Heidegger's Zuhandenkeit.

I've since been dumbed down by binge watching and the endless parade of vapid news headlines.

[Longhorned]

Does he mean that, since it's April 10 again, it's time to post in the philosophy thread?

Thanks for the thoughtful response. My own response is to realize that I don't have the mindset (intelligence) to digest academic philosophy like I did 5 - 10 years ago when, in an amateur sense, I would read philosophy. Or more accurately, I read a books about philosophy given how I obviously don't read/speak German. I remember the day/location when I learned of Heidegger's Zuhandenkeit.

I've since been dumbed down by binge watching and the endless parade of vapid news headlines.

You're welcome! I gave up on academic philosophy. There are many reasons, but here's two:

1) In one of the many talks I went to, somebody in the audience asked a question and used Tiger Woods as an example. But the speaker had never heard of Tiger Woods. She'd been going on an on for an hour about Kant, but didn't even know who Tiger Woods is.

2) In another talk, an analytical philosopher spent an hour arguing that there's no such thing as a "car". Instead, it can only be true that there are two separate entities: an "in-car" and an "out-car", whereby an "in-car" is inside a garage at home, and an "out-car" is out in the world. And where it gets really interesting is when the "out-car" comes home, raising ontological questions about what happens as it gradually drives into the garage and exhibits a flux of incalculable states of hybridity before fully becoming an "in-car" again.

In academia, it seems like nobody really cares about academic philosophy, other than the faculty and grad students inside departments of philosophy.

[catgrad97]

Does he mean that, since it's April 10 again, it's time to post in the philosophy thread?

Thanks for the thoughtful response. My own response is to realize that I don't have the mindset (intelligence) to digest academic philosophy like I did 5 - 10 years ago when, in an amateur sense, I would read philosophy. Or more accurately, I read a books about philosophy given how I obviously don't read/speak German. I remember the day/location when I learned of Heidegger's Zuhandenkeit.

I've since been dumbed down by binge watching and the endless parade of vapid news headlines.

You're welcome! I gave up on academic philosophy. There are many reasons, but here's two:

1) In one of the many talks I went to, somebody in the audience asked a question and used Tiger Woods as an example. But the speaker had never heard of Tiger Woods. She'd been going on an on for an hour about Kant, but didn't even know who Tiger Woods is.

2) In another talk, an analytical philosopher spent an hour arguing that there's no such thing as a "car". Instead, it can only be true that there are two separate entities: an "in-car" and an "out-car", whereby an "in-car" is inside a garage at home, and an "out-car" is out in the world. And where it gets really interesting is when the "out-car" comes home, raising ontological questions about what happens as it gradually drives into the garage and exhibits a flux of incalculable states of hybridity before fully becoming an "in-car" again.

In academia, it seems like nobody really cares about academic philosophy, other than the faculty and grad students inside departments of philosophy.

1) Big fan of the categorical imperative.

2) Not so big a fan of Schrodinger's Car. I always park my car outside, and my wife has given it a name. Therefore it just is a car.

[dovecanyoncat]

It's categorically imperative that cars and trucks be given names.

[Longhorned]

I always park my car outside, and my wife has given it a name. Therefore it just is a car.

Categorical identity via exclusion disavows the ontological towardsness of belonging. The thing things the thing. It is self-enveloped.

[CatsbyAZ]

You're welcome! I gave up on academic philosophy. There are many reasons, but here's two:

1) In one of the many talks I went to, somebody in the audience asked a question and used Tiger Woods as an example. But the speaker had never heard of Tiger Woods. She'd been going on an on for an hour about Kant, but didn't even know who Tiger Woods is.

2) In another talk, an analytical philosopher spent an hour arguing that there's no such thing as a "car". Instead, it can only be true that there are two separate entities: an "in-car" and an "out-car", whereby an "in-car" is inside a garage at home...

My last philosophy read before giving up was a Hegel overview. Back in Sept 2014. A lot of my giving up had to do with also giving up on theology, which I always read in tandem with philosophy. (Until about 50 or 60 years ago philosophy & theology were taught together.) As late as 2016 I was still reading guys like John Owen and Saint Augustine.

It was after reading John Calvin that I realized how strikingly misrepresented his teachings are in today's public sphere. (For example, most of what Christians and non-Christians alike refer to as Calvinism is in fact a reinterpreted form of polarizing reformation theology as taught and repackaged by a puritan preacher named Jonathan Edwards, famous for a sermon titled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God). From there I kept coming across how lost in translation/interpretation many more philosophers/theologists are as taught today.

As far as the major reason for dropping interest in philosophy/theology was realizing how impractical it was. It's a fun intellectual exercise, especially with like minded brains to discuss with, but outside of the church/academic setting it's unfortunately pretty useless. And as far as theology, certain denominations adopt certain theologies as their greater gospel, which misses the point. Judgement day won't assess how well you know who Calvin is. Happy Easter.