Carly Fiorina kicked out of HP

[Asher]

Neither does the incorrect use of pompous words.

I don't recall saying anything about the self.

[Agathon]

You're paying a bunch of people who couldn't find a private sector job to save their life, and that's about it.

That's crap. I know plenty of former colleagues with private sector jobs.

Frankly, I feel that "businessmen" and "professionals" tend to be self inflated idiots who think that their success at selling widgets entitles them to pronounce fatuously on all the ills of the world without any sort of self reflection or scepticism.

Deflating them is a favourite sport of mine.

[Asher]

I'm sure you've shown them up.

----

The rest of my incredible Philosophy essay from my freshman year, which surprisingly got a good mark since my prof had a sense of humour.

....

Perhaps more mind-boggling than Descartes’ hallucinations are the vast masses of followers who actually fell for his “doubting” crap. While, it must be said in its defense, this obsessive global skepticism has brought about an excellent sci-fi trilogy (well okay, the third one kind of sucked), it poses almost no useful conjectures.

The first person to step up to the plate at combating skepticism was George Berkeley. He was the first Western philosopher to say flat-out that the world doesn’t exist independent of our perceptions of it (dude, whoa), but then goes on to say that it doesn’t mean objects cease to exist when we aren’t looking at them, because God is always watching (wait, what?). Berkeley takes himself so seriously, he wrote this argument in the form of a limerick:

There once was a man who said, “God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If He finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”

“Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

While its benign structure may be cute if you picture a rosy-cheeked leprechaun dancing around in a bonny Irish meadow, it really doesn’t accomplish much argumentatively. He extends this thought into another formally structured work: the dialogues between two of what must be his imaginary friends, Hylas and Philonous. In these dialogues, Berkeley tries to convince us that material objects, existing independently of the mind, do not exist as such. Rather, he states that all that exists are ideas and the minds that perceive them, including the hive-mind of God, which magically perceives and knows all. Berkeley’s use of God as a black box solution to an already nonsensical hypothesis is really quite annoying, since the existence of God is assumed, but not proven; yet it leaves no room for argument, since there is also no proof that God does not exist. Since all of his conclusions depend upon the existence of that which can neither be proven nor disproven, his conclusions are also immune to skepticism, and that annoys me in ways only fundamentalist Christians can.

Finally… Moore… My precious. Who would’ve thought epistemology could be summed up so eloquently? Two hands, two objects… let’s go have a beer. **** skepticism. QED. Ah, my word count is too low, I suppose I’ll fill this out then. Wait, if I feign belief in skepticism, perhaps this assignment doesn’t even exist, and I don’t have reason to submit it, and so I’m typing (on what?) for no reason whatsoever. Well if that’s the case, then who are you? What is god? Am I really sitting in this chair, or am I perceiving chairily, or is there some daemon putting this image of a chair in my head? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Moore made a case against pointless, obsessive skepticism like this. He believes that we may doubt individual things (so, wait, the Earth isn’t the center of the Universe?), but when we become engulfed by doubt, we make incredible assumptions that can’t possibly be true. Moore instead suggests we all start with a ground we can agree on (common sense), rather than starting with bizarre ideas. Just because you can doubt, doesn’t mean you should.

In case it wasn’t totally obvious that Moore wins, let’s write a conclusion! Since we can’t form valid deductive arguments from any of these claims, we’ll have to stick to common sense. Well, Descartes believes in daemons. ‘Nuf said. Berkeley, well he’s almost more irrational than Descartes was, because if God were ever to blink, existence would cease to exist (say what?). Moore? Well he’s out having a good time getting plastered with his friends. So I’d say the sane choice is pretty obvious. Nevertheless, this still leaves room for skepticism, so let’s settle this once and for all, with the Philosopher’s Royal Rumble! Yes, we’re going to settle this the old fashioned way – fisticuffs! Assume Descartes, Berkeley and Moore got into boxing match. Descartes would sit curled up in a corner, frantically repeating, “I exist, I exist, I exist” convinced that as long as he is not saying it, he cannot know whether he exists or not. Berkeley would try to convince himself that as long as he concentrates on not perceiving pain, it doesn’t exist. Sadly, he is betrayed by God, who perceives the pain for him, as Berkeley is shamefully bludgeoned to death with a cod. That’s right, a cod. And Moore would merrily recite his cod limerick:

I must say it is rather odd
To be beating you with a cod
Ne’ertheless it is real
As I’m sure you can feel
Courtesy, the all-feeling God.

…Not that Moore buys into Berkeley’s all-feeling God thing, but hey, it rhymes with cod, and I’m sure it would’ve blown Berkeley’s mind at the moment of his death. And after all, isn’t that what epistemology is all about?

----

I really didn't give a rats-ass about the course...

[Agathon]

That's a C paper if ever I saw one. Standards must be low at the University of Calgary.

[Agathon]

The introduction is interesting, but the rest shows little or no originality.

[Asher]

I was expecting to withdraw from the course.

The problem was, the prof was a Kiwi...and he had a sense of humour and found it to be an enjoyable, if unconventional, paper.

I don't expect the hard-ass Plato-type people to like it. Especially considering it was written late at night hours before it was due.

And for an intro to philosophy class, it's about as original as you can get. If I had a dime for every cookie-cutter intro-essay...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Neither does the incorrect use of pompous words.

I don't recall saying anything about the self.

Of course you didn't explicitly say it.

Without the "self" you are literally nothing.

Sophism doesn't get you anywhere, either.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Of course you didn't explicitly say it.

Without the "self" you are literally nothing.

Sophism doesn't get you anywhere, either.

You're the king in that.

I don't believe in solipsism, and that argument wasn't an example of sophism.

What it is an example of is what happens when someone incapable of constructing a real argument grabs a dictionary and opens it to the words starting with "so", and types them out if they sound obscure and may work.

For what it's worth, maybe a little blurb may help you: This argument isn't about existentialism. I never claimed that the self is the only thing that we know to exist. You're incorrectly using words you don't understand, not unlike your behavior in computer threads...

[Agathon]

And for an intro to philosophy class, it's about as original as you can get. If I had a dime for every cookie-cutter intro-essay...

Nope. I've seen this sort of incompetence from students many times. As I said, Calgary's department must be a joke if they gave you a good grade for that.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
Nope. I've seen this sort of incompetence from students many times. As I said, Calgary's department must be a joke if they gave you a good grade for that.

Philosophy departments are a joke, period.

The problem with philosophy is what's an A-paper to one prof is an F-paper to another.

Unless, of course, the papers are written within the strict confines of the logical-argument system that philosophers try to blind us with to hide the complexities of an illogical world.

For what it's worth, the guy's more qualified than you are, with a PhD from Cambridge.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The problem with philosophy is what's an A-paper to one prof is an F-paper to another.

Dude, face it... that was a crap analytical paper. More focused on scoring 'cool' funny points than engaging in analysis. I don't care what liberal arts department you are in, that essay would have been at the bottom of the curve.

Unless, of course, the papers are written within the strict confines of the logical-argument system that philosophers try to blind us with to hide the complexities of an illogical world.

Is this a tacit admission that you cannot succeed in logical argument?

[Asher]

I was looking around on the Philosophy site, and found the site of my Philosophy of Logic prof.

http://www.phil.ucalgary.ca/people/zach.html

Why is it that you can spot a philosopher from a mile away? Is it the emo look?

[Agathon]

For what it's worth, the guy's more qualified than you are, with a PhD from Cambridge.

Actually no. Cambridge has undergone a remarkable slide in the last 25 years. It used to be one of the top places in the world, but alas no longer. If you'd said Oxford, I would have agreed. But even U of T is better than Cambridge now for my particular specialization.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Dude, face it... that was a crap analytical paper.

It was an analytical paper?

The goal was to argue which philosopher is more in-line to your opinion.

Is this a tacit admission that you cannot succeed in logical argument?

Nope, it's that the logical arguments are all still relative to the person's experience giving them.

Mathematical logic is a different thing.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon

For what it's worth, the guy's more qualified than you are, with a PhD from Cambridge.

Actually no. Cambridge has undergone a remarkable slide in the last 25 years. It used to be one of the top places in the world, but alas no longer. If you'd said Oxford, I would have agreed. But even U of T is better than Cambridge now for my particular specialization.

Well that's nice dear, but he went to Cambridge in 1963.

Areas of Interest

Epistemology
Philosophy of Mind
History of Philosophy since Descartes
Recent Publications

A Sort of Balance: Essays on the Later Wittgenstein, Olms Verlag, 2003.

"The virtues of common sense," Philosophy, 2001

The Condition of Madness, University Press of America, 1999

"Truth or consequences," The Modern Schoolman (1997)

"Wittgenstein's elephant and closet tortoise," Philosophy (1995)