What is philosophy? Some folks say it's using logic to reason out meaning from the world. Some folks say it is using feeling to shape out what the world is in the first place. The actual literal definition of the word is "love of thought."

I love to think. Probably because I don't like to act. Whatever.

A certain reactionary moderator seems to have a very strict notion of what philosophy is. I'm curious folks, what is philosophy?

Personally, I say one cannot philosophize by oneself. One must give ideas out to another and debate or simply build off eachother to do serious thought. I don't think we go through life alone, as one single person, so why should we develop ideas as one? I mean, we, obviously, can build ideas by ourselves. But what's the point?





Maybe some reactionary moderators think it isn't philosophy unless it raises more useless questions than useless answers.


Who knows?

hmm....i have heard some delcare philosophy as nothing more than defining....trying to declare exatcly what "it" is....and i agree that when it comes to philosophy, building off each other is essential, but philosophy is like art, some are better than others, some have a better understanding of it, and some are famed for it.......at the same time, philosophy is the one of the oldest forms of art, communication, etc.....the greeks essentially revolutionized philosophy from "why does the sun rise" to "what is the sun, why is day opposite than dark, how does the sun effect the world, etc".....

also, philosophy has been delcared the predecessor of science, because of philosophy science evolves.....so in that since, philosophy is science with the thinking as the lab.....

I liek the comparison to science, sixxx. But I don;t think it's quite complete. I think things go down in the mental world downward... like this: Philosophy, the art of thinking sporadically, so that you have random, creative ideas and energyt o work science with. Science is the stage at which we test all the crazy shit we worked up and out in the philosophical stage. In the scientific phase, we put ideas to work to define themselves and to explain their own meaning. Finally, there's the applied stage, where we take everything we worked out and complexified and then decomplexified in the past two stages and figure out their usage. We puzzle out logical, direct, indirect, or spiritual implications of hte theory we created in philosophy and defined with science.

Make sense?

ill disagree... philosophy is in many ways scientific and in my opinion not very sporadic. but i can see where you might think it as such...

Well.... thought is, relatively, sporadic... thoughts can pop into and out of your head for no good reason. You have to choose which ons you hold on to and which ones you just let go of. You see a cat, suddenly you're thinking about why an enormous television can be of any use. While you probably went through a very logical thought process to get from "cat" to "that television there is too damn big," it happenned so fast, you fail to remember why .... but how do explain why your girlfriend went from "cat" to "June is coming way too slowly"? It's becuase people think in different manners.

Hence, thought, relative to most things, happens sporadically.

And since thought happends sporadically, then philosophy, based upon thoughts, must develop randomly.

i fail to see the connection, because everything is based on thoughts.....shitting, pissing, fucking, art, theories, etc..... philosophy is a way of acheiving a deeper understanding through thinking rationally and logically to provide a deeper definition....

i'll give you that thoughts happen sporadically, but not always, for you can focus on one thought, trying to elaborate it.......i think that if thoughts were truly sporadic, there would be no thought of all, because if (like you said) you go from a CAT to a TV to your GIRLFRIEND, without ever truly focusing or elaborating, then your thoughts would be merely sporadic events you could not comprehend

and besides, though similar, sporadic and random mean different things...

Sporadic is random clusters fo events, right?

no......sporadic is an isolated instance, and compared to another instance, there is no pattern.......to say that sporadic is a random cluster entails that there is a pattern......

Fair enough.

Anyway, now that we have that little bit settled....

I think, really, the study of and philosophy of philosophy is what really defines us, ontologically, that is.

I'm largely on the side fo Platonic School. Thought preceeded matter, all that business. So it cna be used circularly. We use thought to explain matter, creating science. We use thought to explain universal behaviors, creating philosophy.

but universal behaviours would be there whether we thought about them or not... thats why they are UNIVERSAL...

Incorrect. Philosophy means "love of wisdom". Sophos = wisdom, philo = love.

so anyway...

Sorry, I'm just a stickler for detail when it comes to interpretation...

It's best not to use things circularly. A circular argument is logically unsound, and begs the question. I'm rather fond of Plato in his thoughts on perception, such as the Allegory of the Cave, and his (or Socrates', as he portrayed them) thoughts on politics...but as far as the whole idea of true forms, I'm not willing to buy it beyond a mathematical view. Unless, of course, you want to turn it into a theological argument and discuss the possibility of the perfect forms being the thoughts of God, and such...

what? you dont like the idea that somewhere out there in the universe there is the perfect Barkalounger?

No, because that would lead me into a hopeless, lifelong search for the one perfect lounging chair to rest my prosterior in, and that is the path of insanity...

Indeed. I believe prefect forms exist in a sort of parralel dimension. We could travel the entire exapnse of space and the physical universe, even though we couldn't, but if you did, we'd never find perfect forms. They exists in a sort of co-influential realm next to ours, a spirit realm, if you will, among manby others that are right next to our space, even breaching it, but not touching it, necessarily. Althought this particular piece of dimension is pure perfection and nothing but.

perfection.......well, what proof have you that we are not perfect? for example, you could deny our perfection because we are not all knowledgable, but if we were all knowledgable then we would not have the perfection that is learning........
i think that we might indeed be perfect, because the only way i could consider our perfection (note that "our" i try not to limit to specifically humans, for if aliens did exist, they obviously have some perfection we do not and vice-versa) being anything less is to compare it to some other kind of perfection that surpassess existence and essence............

and i question the ontological idea......now, i am unaware of the type of ontological argument you are suggesting, but if it is anything like the one i studied, concerning thought (starting at thought) to prove it does exist, well i too question that.......for, when concerning existentialism, if i am correct, then the thing is primarily what it is, as it is, etc.....and existence can preceed thought......

thought, as i see it, is nothing more than a universal behavior, but a fantastic one which thereby effects itself dramatically.....

Well, let me respond to that carefully, not all at one time, in other words, i'd liek your help in responding to it, it'll be more fun. Do believe that, on some distinct level, humanity is very, very special?