Which of the following is the most worthless?

[Kuciwalker]

You didn't vote Polycast?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You didn't vote Polycast?

Polycast is more useful because it uses technology infrastructure in some way, providing some income to the tech industry.

[Kuciwalker]

So did OB's post.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
So did OB's post.

His post was useful insofaras it reinforced the notion of how useless filosofy is.

[Fake Boris]

Be proud of yourself, Asher - you're the village idiot.

[Asher]

I'm the village idiot and you're the French-Canadian philosophy student.

Does not compute.

[KrazyHorse]

The solution is to see philosophy as an art - in other words, something whose definition is internal to its practice.

Art which brings meaning only to those who study how to create that art is useless.

[KrazyHorse]

Real art is meaningful and useful because it can inspire feeling or thought in the general educated public. When you need to understand esoterica simply to comprehend the work it is not art. Which is why physics is not art. It may be beautiful to those of us who study it, but its value does not lie in such a masturbatory realm.

[Fake Boris]

Philosophy is a reflexion on questions that just about everybody asks. The method of professional (or non-professional but accomplished) philosophers is difficult for the layman much more because it is a result of a long and demanding process that few can afford, than because it's completely outside of human interest.

[KrazyHorse]

The methodology employed does not lead to answers any more meaningful than those which can be found by any intelligent individual.

That's what happens when you don't have an external check on the theories you propose.

[Fake Boris]

How do you explain, then, that today's common sense about morality is radically different from that of the 17th century?

Newton was a brilliant man, but I'm sure his opinions on morals were as out of touch with what seems obvious to us than those of his contemporaries.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
How do you explain, then, that today's common sense about morality is radically different from that of the 17th century?

Newton was a brilliant man, but I'm sure his opinions on morals were as out of touch with what seems obvious to us than those of his contemporaries.

If this is your philosophical argument then I'm changing my contention to:

"The methodology employed leads to answers less meaningful than those which can be found by any intelligent individual."

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
How do you explain, then, that today's common sense about morality is radically different from that of the 17th century?

The same reason clothes in the 70s differ from today's.

Similarly, filosofy is on par with fashion studies in terms of usefulness and academic rigor.

[Fake Boris]

I don't understand where you're heading at. Are you trying to say that Spinoza's arguments for free speech were less meaningful than the superstitions of the mob that burned Jan de Witt? (A mob which was encouraged by highly intelligent and erudite people, who just happened to be products of their times).

If your contention is that any intelligent being can come up to a reasonable truth on its own, do you explain the evolution of beliefs and ideas on the generalized stupidity of those that preceded us?

[KrazyHorse]

Sure, we can assign the credit for having arrived at a more rational moral code to some sort of "advance" in philosophy. Or, we can assign it to a general decrease in religiosity taking place over a number of centuries, which was itself a symptom of:

increased general education
increased scientific understanding imploding many supernaturalist tenets
increased social and economic mobility caused by the industrial revolution

etc etc

The point is not whether or not I as a modern man have more ability to rationally deal with such questions than did Newton, but whether I as a modern man generally uneducted in modern/contemporary philosophy have any less ability to rationally deal with such questions than you do, as a modern man who does have such an education. The fact that the resident philosophers get regularly pwn3d by others on such matters tells me everything I need to know.