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Ideas which do not ground within our daily experiences are worthless

netzealot

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Reading some of the titles of the threads in this forum makes me think many people's idea of philosophy is overly intellectual. In fact, it is the opposite...

"Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." (Wikipedia)

The first two words of that definition are synonyms for normalcy, not some kind of lofty blather about topics that ultimately do not concern anybody 99.9% of the time (and no, just because you're passionate about your ideas doesn't make you philosophical... who isn't?)

In fact, I strongly suspect that any kind of topic which steps away from issues which are not strictly related to the human condition are not philosophy at all but rather just one person's narrow existence bloated by pseudo-intellectualism to such epic proportions that anybody engaging in that discussion even knows if whether they're even talking about the same thing.


Since when are philosophy and reality so dis-attached? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind free thinking or creativity, it's just selling these kind of topics as able to apply to reality with the kind of rugged capability their writers try to finagle them with when 99.9% of the time they have absolutely nothing to do with nothing, and even struggle to relate within themselves.
 

Orangey

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Reading some of the titles of the threads in this forum makes me think many people's idea of philosophy is overly intellectual. In fact, it is the opposite...

"Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." (Wikipedia)

The first two words of that definition are synonyms for normalcy, not some kind of lofty blather about topics that ultimately do not concern anybody 99.9% of the time (and no, just because you're passionate about your ideas doesn't make you philosophical... who isn't?)

In fact, I strongly suspect that any kind of topic which steps away from issues which are not strictly related to the human condition are not philosophy at all but rather just one person's narrow existence bloated by pseudo-intellectualism to such epic proportions that anybody engaging in that discussion even knows if whether they're even talking about the same thing.


Since when are philosophy and reality so dis-attached? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind free thinking or creativity, it's just selling these kind of topics as able to apply to reality with the kind of rugged capability their writers try to finagle them with when 99.9% of the time they have absolutely nothing to do with nothing, and even struggle to relate within themselves.

This forum is particularly bad about the whole "blathering on about irrelevancies using pseudo-intellectual jargon and posturing," just because most here can't even do that competently, but I have to say that even (or perhaps particularly) academic philosophy and its cognate subjects suffer from this problem. I say this as someone who left academia not too long ago for largely the reasons that you articulate here.
 

miss fortune

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of course there's always ideas that are fun to play with- like that slinky little black dress that you bought that's way too slutty to wear to anywhere that you actually go, but you like to take it out and wear it around the house on occasion just because it makes you feel like a sex goddess :cheese:

not that I would EVER do that :ninja:

some ideas are just for fun though... and that's what the philosophy that people take seriously lacks :sadbanana:
 

Phil P

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Maybe your daily experiences are worthless because they have not touched upon philosophical ideas?:newwink:
 

KDude

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“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” -alan watts
 
G

garbage

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We've got two ends--the cloud of insanely abstract ideas and the set of everyday problems. We can start from either end--from a problem or from an idea--and eventually marry the two. Hell, the sciences started out as branches of philosophy, essentially taking trains of thought that seemed to have potential and rolling with them. Engineering takes our cool lil' sciences a step further and applies them to solve problems directly.

Questioning assumptions can generate useful ways of thinking, but it has to be balanced with taking some things for granted at times--otherwise, we'd never move forward.

I'm inclined to agree with you, that application--even in the broadest possible sense--is insanely important.

We should dig deep, collect our ore, and bring it to the surface for everyone to enjoy.
 

Lark

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I really dont think the topics discussed in this part of the forum are that lofty at all, seriously, I've been reading some dense post modern books lately, because I hate post-modernism and want it to die a flaming death, so, naturally enough, I need to understand it to the best of my ability the better to stalk and kill it. Dead. And nothing I've read on typoc comes within a country mile of those books.

A lot of them are crap, a lot of so called "continental philosophy" is bullshit, I think a lot of Satre's stuff for instance is complete and utter rubbish, serious navel gazing and very consciously and deliberately intellectual (or what could be described as pseudo-intellectual by anyone who still respects the term intellectual) which I dislike, I disliked it more when I read an interview with him in which he talked about wanting to be an intellectual to an interviewer who was, and I am led to believe this is part of French culture (at least at the time), in awe of him as an intellectual or commentator.

That's the jumping off point for my dislike because even those who I think make really good points, like Derrida and deconstructionism, Habermas and clarity of communication, Wittgenstein its insights into language and communication (although the things which really interest me about Wittgenstein's philosophy resemble Maimondes, that could be spelt wrong) are generally pretty convoluted.

So far as jargon goes, well, sometimes that's unavoidable, and depending on the texts, context, era etc. I've learned that some learning of scripts, or unlearning and relearning, is needed to decypher it, for instance the discussions of sentiment, reason, passion in Smith, Hume and novelists of that time period, idealism, materialism, realism in Hegel, Marx and co. affect, emotion, rationalisation in Freud, Adler, Jung and afterwards there schools of thought all used different language and they were not even some of the worst for making up new words, like Sullivan's "parataxic" (spelling) and stuff like that.

Although I thought it was worth doing because those ideas are all revelent to life and how its lived. I know that academically there are those who seek to befog any discussion as much as clarify, it can make them feel superior for a moment, usually I've found until someone has the balls to ask them to clarify what they just said, you know someone who is unembarrassed about their present state of understanding and will freely admit it (that can really fuck up superior types who're used to silencing or hindering dialogue with that kind of thing). I dont think that's a good thing but I dont like dumbing down too. People try to simplify too much sometimes, if something takes effort, concentration and attention and a bit of learning that's no bad thing.

Anyway, what I think is most abstract from life and most irrelevent from reality most of the time tends to be easily understood, it tends to be really popular and appealing to a certain sort of thinking, or more often irrational feeling, its often articulated in clear as day language and so no one thinks they're being duped but if you carefully and critically examine it you'll realise its more fantasy than fact, if it ever were fact to begin with.

I think that about big economic ideologies like socialism or capitalism and other political slogans freedom, democracy, for instance, all those things are less and less part of peoples day to day lives in any positive sense but they're positively revered and testified to theoretically.
 

RaptorWizard

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All of the above threads (stolen from my signature) are great examples of the useless pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo LevelZeroHero has so tenaciously criticized, and although I don't agree with him on his ideas that these topics are not points of great importance, at least the willingness to challenge displayed by the OP is a philosophically desirable trait in and of itself.
 
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