Ex Theists

[Kyuuketsuki]

Our existence is derived from philosophy? News to me ... I rather thought it was a case of, "I'm alive, now what can I eat?". That 1 = 1 is a mathematical assumption ... again not philosophy (and certainly not derived from philosophy). Justice and morality are relative ... not derived from philosophy.

I repeat that philosophy (modern day philosophy) answers no questions that I can discern. I will change my view on that when (and only when) something is concluded in the basis of philosophical evidence and philosophical evidence alone.

I apologize if any of this offends you Kyu... but:

Apparently... you have no idea what philosophy means.

Actually I think I DO have a fair idea of what philosophy is I simply don't subscribe to the kind of philosophy you sometimes (and I mean that because you have posted some exceptionally rational stuff) do.

Obviously I have noted (with some dismay as I'm not fan of modern day philosophy) that you are "into" philosophy and it may well be that you reject all of what I say below but I have given this a great deal of thought across many posts and many years ... as a consequence I have rejected modern day philosophy as largely meaningless.

Philosophy seems to have (as is usual within the English language) a correct meaning and a number of common usage meanings but, thanks to Asimov (who I'm sure you know was a PhD, a Doctor of Philosophy) and his "New Guide to Science", it appears that it derives from the ancient Greeks. Asimov devotes some space to philosophy where he referred to the Greek investigations of the universe and that they called (and I quote) 'their new manner of studying the universe "philosophia" ("philosophy"), meaning "love of knowledge" or, in free translation, "the desire to know"'(page 8). I would argue that it is because current day philosophers seem to provide little or no direct value to the real world that much of the philosophy bandied about today is little more than academic psychobabble. The true philosophers are scientists.

Obviously I accept that philosophy can generate ideas that can feed into science (the real philosophy) but alone it is a pointless waste of space and nowadays philosophers seem largely people with huge ego's blowing deductive sunshine up each other's arses (and don't even get me started on its bastard child, metaphysics).

So yeah, likewise I have no intention to offend, but you and I see the world though different eyes, in many ways you are much closer to the Arcanus's of this world and I am very keen to see the debate you are taking him up on as I am not truly capable of arguing on his level (no implication of that being higher, just different ... if anything, based on the way he uses his philosophy, lower) whereas I think you are, you understand that tactics, the terminology and to some degree buy into the logic.

From the above it must be clear that I recognise the value of philosophy, simply not the value of the Arcanus style (and unfortunately I am poorly equipped to understand the difference between his and yours), that I consider philosophy (in Asimov's words) the desire to know and that science achieves that in a way that no other so-called philosophy does.

But ultimately no, I reject your assertion that I don't understand philosophy because my philosophy is what you would probably refer to as methodological naturalism (I'd refer to it as science or humanism).

Kyu