Philosophy

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Meh, my last two essay results have been an A+ and an A-. If only i'd have known I needed to put a little bit of effort in eh?

 

That said, as a result of the above i just keep thinking i can throw any old shit in for the other half of those modules and still pass them... Win!

Defiant!

[Alan Sex]

My little brother is a Professor of Philosophy at a university in the US. That bugger knows how to argue!

[VladimirIlyich]

My little brother is a Professor of Philosophy at a university in the US. That bugger knows how to argue!

 

Bet you he can't eat a fruit pastille without chewing it though.

[Alan Sex]

 

Bet you he can't eat a fruit pastille without chewing it though.

 

Bet you he could. He was about 320lbs until he started taking his health more seriously and got down to 240ish!

[VladimirIlyich]

 

Bet you he could. He was about 320lbs until he started taking his health more seriously and got down to 240ish!

 

Thats a lot of fruit pastilles hes given up!

Great effort by the fella though.

[s(k)aturation]

When a French philosopher is taken to visit a house of ill-repute is that a case of putting Descartes before the whores?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[Bruce Spanner]

31 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

 

Wonderful!

 

There's a great story about The Tractatus.

 

Bertrand Russell was Wittgensteins PhD tutor and on recieving it he took it home and then returned the next day passing it without correction or question and stating 'It is a work of genius, even I can not understand it'

 

This is about the time that Bertie started his ban the bomb phase...

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

This is interesting: some thoughts on thinking by Julian Baggini (author of the brilliant "Do They Think You're Stupid", which I would make mandatory in all schools).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/04/think-yourself-better-10-rules-of-philosophy-to-live-by#Echobox=1675505542 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 18/05/2008 at 14:01, Spy Bee said:

What came before the big bang?

Stephen Hawking said that's like asking what's north of the North Pole. The Big Bang didn't just create energy and matter, it created time, so there cannot possibly be a "before the Big Bang".

[Mudface]

9 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Stephen Hawking said that's like asking what's north of the North Pole. The Big Bang didn't just create energy and matter, it created time, so there cannot possibly be a "before the Big Bang".

 

As Terry Pratchett put it- "in the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The Trolley Problem.

[VladimirIlyich]

12 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

The Trolley Problem.

But what if the lever didn't work? You could say you had tried.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 18/05/2008 at 17:47, Josef Svejk said:

I'm a philosopher. For a living. That is to say, I'm lucky enough to earn money doing what I love to do.

 

But I've no time for philosophical obscurantism. And that Wittgenstein quote is a case in point. Though he's by no means the worst case. Look France-ward for that. Or towards Essex, Warwick, and a few other "Continental" talking shops in the UK.

 

Political philosophy, environmental philosophy, philosophy of education, history of modern philosophy (especially the Enlightenment). That's my bag...

@Josef Svejk I'm halfway through Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and it's doing my head in: I just can't make head nor tail of it.

 

Is it worth persevering, or should I bail and get on with my life?

[Josef Svejk]

35 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

@Josef Svejk I'm halfway through Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and it's doing my head in: I just can't make head nor tail of it.

 

Is it worth persevering, or should I bail and get on with my life?

 

Each to their own. But Kierkegaard is heavy going.

 

I always recommend the "great writers" for those interested enough in philosophy: Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche (who's the closest of those three to Kierkegaard in spirit)... There aren't that many among the big names, in fairness. But there are all sorts of lesser lights like (off the top of my head) Alexander Herzen in the 19th century or Neil Postman in the 20th.

 

Oh, and Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem is an absolute masterpiece of readable philosophy.

 

*Incidentally: I'm a lot more sympathetic to Wittgenstein now than I was when I wrote what you quote (gulp... 15 years ago). 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Ta, la.

 

I might plough on, even though I feel a bit like Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda.

[Curly]

On 04/02/2023 at 13:10, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Stephen Hawking said that's like asking what's north of the North Pole. The Big Bang didn't just create energy and matter, it created time, so there cannot possibly be a "before the Big Bang".

This is what I always thought, but I’ve listened to Brian Cox on Rogan recently while walking the mutt, and he was saying that we can only see back to the 13.8 billion years ago point of the Big Bang because light stops there due to whatever being there before being too dense for it to travel through - like the Big Bang was a result of cooling or the Big Bang caused the cooling, which allowed light to travel through up to that point. Or something.

 

He was also saying that life and the universe could be eternal - no beginning and no end. Took me about 6 hours to listen to a 2.5 hour discussion with all the rewinding and relistening and I still don’t have a firm grasp on it, as you can probably tell from the above synopsis!

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Out of chaos comes order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pci3TUFwCfg&lc=Ugxc2yUrtZXAXBP-Y5h4AaABAg.8v9iCoHfFs59vHfQJDGfHb&ab_channel=DrKrankeit