Germany ranks 32 (USA is 18th) — Emptyheady

Apples to oranges.

edit: 1000 euro's per month is still cheap. — Emptyheady

Sorry, maybe city dwellers are inured to such costs, but that's still a lot of money, to me at least. The point remains, though, that one would have to find work in addition to going to school to survive in Germany.

Thorongil claimed it is expensive to live in Germany, which is factually inaccurate, Germany is quite cheap. — Emptyheady

What are you smoking, bro. It can cost around a 1000 Euros or more to live there per month.

maybe Mars is where it's all at... — Question

Where it all is, dammit....

Then, I'll move to some flatter land where there ain't no bridges to cross. — Question

Only to get swept away in a tornado.

I see. It's probably for the best, then. And the "free college" in Germany or thereabouts wouldn't cover the extremely high cost of living. Bernie always neglected to mention that when praising said model to the heavens.

Well, if you haven't said that then that is/was the nail that changed my mind. I find my apathy and "lack of motivation" a more healthy a realistic outlook that the 'arbeit macht frei' one professed here and whereabouts. — Question

I think I catch the drift of your reply, but just to confirm, what have you changed your mind about?

Will PM you.

What do you mean by "a little logic?" I'm talking about a whole semester's worth of the equivalent of calculus. That wasn't happening for me. Not with a full load.

And I'm not currently in or going into AP, so it's irrelevant to me now.

Man, these poor philosophy majors would never survive in a math department, let's be real...first-order logic is not going to kill you. — The Great Whatever

Speak for yourself. My math education was objectively terrible and symbolic logic is pointless for doing 99% of philosophy.

Let me be very frank. Much as one doesn't simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply "become a professional philosopher." First, you will need a BA in philosophy or a related discipline. To get that, first you will have to pay money to take the SAT or the ACT or both. Then, once accepted, you will have to take a slew of tedious general education courses that have nothing to do with your major. Some of them may be interesting, many of them will not be. You will also likely have to pick a foreign language and take classes in it for upwards of two years, depending. As for your philosophy major, the classes you'll take for it will depend on the faculty. For example, if there's no one who does Wittgenstein in your department, then you won't be taking any classes on him. Some of the philosophy classes may be interesting, some of them will not be. Most philosophy departments also require their majors to take an upper level symbolic logic course. If you're not good at advanced logic, or if the professor is terrible, then expect to find this class highly frustrating and nerve-wracking. In addition to this, some departments require their majors to write a senior thesis.

If you graduate and did not receive a full ride or had no savings or other means to pay for your degree, then you will have accumulated many thousands of dollars in student loan debt. If you're not burned out by the end of the four years, then during the winter of your senior year, while finding the time in between finishing papers, you can apply to MA programs. To do so, you will need to pay an obscene sum of money to take the GRE and make sure you have a good writing sample, a well written personal statement, and letters of recommendation from your professors. When researching MA programs, you will notice that there are fewer of them than philosophy BA programs. They come in two flavors: funded and unfunded. Sometimes the funding is good, sometimes bad. If you apply to funded programs, these can be somewhat difficult to get into, because everyone else wants to be funded to go to school. At the MA level, you need not worry too much about finding a department that exactly matches your own research interests, assuming you have any at this point. A general fit is sufficient. Next, you need to determine how many schools you should apply to. You increase your chances of getting accepted by applying to more and decrease them by applying to less. If you apply to, say, ten programs, this could cost you a figure close to a thousand dollars. You will have to pay to send your transcripts, GRE scores, and whatever else programs want from you.

Getting into an MA program is not impossible, however, so let's say you do get accepted somewhere. First, you'll have to move there. Then, for the first year or year and a half, you will being taking classes. Some of them may be interesting, others may not be. In addition to this, you will likely be a teaching or research assistant. In the former case, you will be a grading robot. In the latter case, you will be helping a professor find stuff for his own research. Some programs let their students teach their own classes. This is usually intro to logic or intro to philosophy. Teaching your own class requires a gargantuan amount of prep time, especially when it's your first time. You may not like or be suited to teaching or you may like teaching. Even if you like it, grading is time consuming and procrastination inducing, and you will begin to wonder how it is the students in your class were ever accepted into a university, and indeed, why they were ever brought into this world. In your final year or semester, you will either take comprehensive exams, write a thesis, or do both. Exams require you to skim read a mountain of books and then regurgitate the ideas in them to your professors in written and oral formats. Writing a thesis requires you to write some fifty odd pages, give or take, on some topic you're interested in and your advisers are interested in, so it's best you nail down this topic early on in the program.

Assuming you graduate, then you can consider PhD programs. When researching them, you will quickly notice that there are even fewer of them than there are MA programs. Some of them may even post ominous statistics about how they receive two hundred applications and only accept five incoming students, causing you to think to yourself, "surely, given these numbers, there are well qualified candidates who are being denied." And you would be right. This thought then drifts into another: "How do these programs determine who makes the cut? At some point, they must resort to completely arbitrary and unfair criteria for cutting down the massive applicant pool." And you would again be right. If you are white, male, Christian, or conservative, then you may also begin to worry that you will be rejected if the admissions committee caught wind of any of these facts. Further along in your research, you will find that departments like engaging in a dick measuring contest, primarily thanks to a ranking system called the Philosophical Gourmet Report, whose man behind the curtain is a certain fat-faced, politically correct little gossip-monger named Brian Leiter.

You then notice that the programs on his list are those that have funding and can guarantee something approaching decent employment upon graduation. It's a riskier bet to apply to those not on it. So you apply to a set of PhD programs, with at least half on that list, though not to as many as you did MA programs, since you now want to be picky about which professors you want to work with on your dissertation, assuming you know what you want to write it on. If you don't know what to write on, never fear, just pretend to be original and creative. Let's say you happen to hit the jackpot and are accepted to a program somewhere. For the first two or three years, you will be taking classes. Some you may find interesting, others you may not. At the end of your third year, you will take yet more comprehensive examinations. Upon completion of them, you are usually awarded a superfluous second MA degree. In the final year or two, you are researching for and writing your dissertation, which is basically a book that no one will read. All the while, you will be a teaching/research assistant or teaching your own class (or classes!) and likely still have language requirements to fulfill. Furthermore, you will be expected to have at least one article, though preferably more, submitted for publication in an academic journal somewhere that, again, no one will read. This is merely to pad your resume and make you look good when applying for tenure track jobs.

Let's say you make it through five years of this. For the past eleven years, your undergraduate debt has been slowly but surely accumulating interest and may even have doubled. You now need a job to begin to pay it off and so start looking. You will find that the well of tenure track jobs is virtually dry and that you are competing with hundreds of other people just like you for the same tiny number of positions. Your suspicions of nepotism will also be raised when hearing of how other people landed such positions. Let's say lightning strikes twice in your life and you get a tenure track job. Now you must write yet more articles, publish a book, preferably more, and deal with the colossal bureaucracy of the modern university that will attempt to defund your department at every available opportunity, all while teaching upwards of hundreds of brainless vegetables the basics of philosophy. And voila, becoming a "professional philosopher" has been achieved.

My advice (as someone in an MA program in a related field in the humanities who has applied to PhD programs but is seriously thinking about dropping out of academia completely, even if he is accepted somewhere): you don't need a degree to be a philosopher. Find something tolerable to pay the bills, if possible, and pursue philosophy on your own time.

Relevant (and funny and true, although I do think Marxists have, in part, contributed to ruining higher ed):

Oh, his prose is fine, aye. I just remember never agreeing with anything I read from him.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya about the raising of the wrist, but reading him makes me permanently pissed.

Don't be personal. I like to operate with facts. — Takerian

Sure you do....

Schopenhauer doesn't ground the will in the thing-in-itself the way Spinoza grounds the conatus in the Substance — Agustino

Schopenhauer's argument is empirical, whereas Spinoza's is rationalistic. I am more fully convinced by the former because it corresponds to my own experience and provides the key for interpreting the whole of nature.

Kant bases the assumption of the thing-in-itself, although concealed under many different turns of expression, on a conclusion according to the law of causality, namely that empirical perception, or more concretely sensation in our organs of sense from which it proceeds, must have an external cause. — Agustino

While Kant does say things like this, I think Schopenhauer is being slightly uncharitable here. Kant also says and would respond by saying that we must think that sensation is caused by the thing-in-itself, even if it may not be. We cannot but think this, because we cannot but apply the law of causality universally. This makes Kant inconsistent in his claims, but not incapable of being read such that he is free from Schopenhauer's charge.

So it seems that it may be most correct to say that what is a priori are the forms of space/time/causality, but the current conceptions we have of them, while logical and fitting with our current experience, could be wrong. However, we are always destined to have some conception of space/time/causality for the mere reason that they are forms of our perception - they are never given within perception, and we never perceive them, but we always perceive through them. "Everything about" them however is part of our conception whatever that happens to be, and it could turn out that this conception is wrong. But it can't turn up that we don't perceive mediated by space/time/causality. That is certain. — Agustino

Ha! You've finally come around to my position I see.

Hey, don't break my lute, Shyster Bumdart.

Meh. It won't paste any image. Just the link text.

I would post image, but don't know how.

Your scores are:
Care 80.6%
Fairness 69.4%
Loyalty 61.1%
Authority 63.9%
Purity 66.7%
Liberty 75%

Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.

How does this help to prove that the will is our essence? — Agustino

We experience our body in two different ways: externally as an object among other objects, but also internally, and unlike all other objects, as will. To know what our body is internally, subjectively, and in-itself is just to know its essence. So our essence is will.

How does this help to prove that the will is our essence? — Agustino

Read the second book of the WWP, lol. I'm too tired to summarize it.

They both say that our essence is will. But how they arrive at that claim is different. Spinoza more or less just declares this to be so. Schopenhauer argues that our essence is will by identifying willing with bodily movement.

The will is still the thing-in-itself for us — Thorongil

You're using the term "anthropomorphize" very loosely, then. He's not saying that the will is like a human being, he's saying it is a human being, his essence.

He clearly identifies the conatus to be our essence. — Agustino

I'm not disputing this. I'm saying that how he makes this identification is not as convincing to me as how Schopenhauer does so.

Yes but even Schop. abandons it for thing-in-itself ultimately. And don't forget that Spinoza does have the equivalent of will - it is called the conatus, which is our essence. — Agustino

The will is still the thing-in-itself for us, just not the thing-in-itself entirely. And Spinoza may arrive at a similar conclusion, but I think he does so invalidly. Schopenhauer's identification of bodily movement with acts of willing is much more convincing to me.

I think Schopenhauer also anthropomorphises the Will to a certain degree — Agustino

What? How?

Only from the point of view of the thing-in-itself are subject and object and the entire world qua representation "ideal". — Agustino

Exactly!

My personal view on metaphysics is probably still closest to Spinoza - one substance with two parallel attributes, thought (idea) and extension (matter). The one substance is the thing-in-itself, and the attributes are the two ways of looking at this same substance. I think this insight is still at its freshest and purest in Spinoza. — Agustino

Yes, I view Spinoza as a neutral monist. For a very long time, I counted myself a Spinozist because I thought he offered a solution to the mind/body problem of Descartes. But while he provides the blue print for how to solve it, his actual solution I was never fully convinced of. Kant merely states the same problem in different terms. When reading Schopenhauer, however, I thought, and still think, his notion of the will is the best solution.

This reminded me of this video (note I don't agree with everything there): — Agustino

Oh god, I hate that video. The voice, special effects, and music are way too pretentious. I actually think I was banned by the original maker of the video for pointing this out too.

What do you mean much of the rest? It certainly affects the overall structure of it, in quite a significant way. That it doesn't affect a lot of the insights Schopenhauer had, sure. — Agustino

I think this conversation is somewhat tedious, unimportant, and one-sided, for we are really just confronting the problems with assuming that the world as presentation is the world entire. If we stop short at the presentation, or the first book of the WWP, then we face insoluble problems, including the one we have been discussing. In one sense, Schopenhauer accepts realism, in that we can posit a mind independent world of matter, space, and time as the necessary condition for, and in which arose, knowing beings. However, such a world is not even thinkable without presupposing a subject and so cannot be said to exist with certainty. I was born, acquired ever more control over my faculties, and through them surmised that I am a product of a world that existed before my birth. At the same time, I could never know this world absent said faculties, and thus in another sense I appear as though I came from nothing

Schopenhauer is a materialist, in part, and a Berkeleyan idealist, in part. He affirms both. "But they are mutually incompatible," you will say. Correct. Schopenhauer calls this an antinomy of knowledge. How does one solve the antinomy? Not by picking a side. One must find the common essence of mind and matter, and that essence is the will, which is neither a mind nor a material thing. I have always read Schopenhauer in this way, as a neutral monist. So this explains my incredulity at times concerning your objection and the cautiousness of my replies, e.g. "I lean toward," "I could grant," etc. It makes little difference, from this new perspective, whether space is an a priori concept, an a posteriori object, or both. The will has manifested itself as a world in space regardless. How it has done so is an ancillary and much less interesting question to me. The mere fact that it has solves the fundamental problem in philosophy. It also doesn't negate the bedrock claim of Schopenhauer's that there can be no object without a subject and no subject without an object. These are correlates. They stand and fall together. Take the subject away and there is no objective world. Take the object away and there is nothing to be conscious of.

In fact Berkeley did the right thing and denied the existence of abstractions independently of any perception. — Agustino

But this is basically what I did just say: "it is abstracted from perception." Obviously the abstraction is not empirically perceived, but your use of the word "void" was unclear, for I took it to mean "not derived from perception."

Okay fine that works, but this is no longer Schopenhauer's/Kant's position. — Agustino

With respect to this one issue, yes. But I still don't think it affects much of the rest of Schopenhauer's system.

or simply denying that mathematics consists in knowledge — Agustino

I would lean toward this.

you think that there can be purely conceptual knowledge, void of any perception, such as the geometric objects which are abstracted from perception a posteriori (this is a denial of [1]). If you deny (1), then you have negated S/K's foundations. — Agustino

This is the closest to my view, but I would say that conceptual knowledge, such as what mathematics reveals, is not "void" of any perception, since it is abstracted from perception.

What does being mediated by space entail? — Agustino

That we perceive a plurality of objects, which, along with their being in time, are in causal relation to each other.

If you know space a priori, in what does this knowledge and perception consist? — Agustino

Once again, this question is technically unanswerable, because to do so would commit the category mistake I talked about. Space cannot be separated from the whole of cognition. That is, it cannot be thought of apart from time and matter.

Do not mistake the objects of our experience for objects existing independently of experience. No object can exist independently of experience, for all objects presuppose a subject. So there can be no space as an object that exists independently of experience, which you seem to think. Can there be space as an object that exists within experience? No, because I experience no such object. If you think we do, I would simply ask you to point it out to me. Can there be a physical space based on geometrical and physical models? Yes, and this, I suppose, would the be 4D space-time of modern physics, but these models are themselves based on experience, which, again, does not contain space as a distinct object within it. We don't experience 4D space-time, as you have noted before, which means it cannot be said to have any independent existence; it's just something that drops out of the model. That it agrees with our experience does not mean it is our experience or that it must be posited as existing outside of experience. If you think it must be, then tell me why. So where does that leave us? I say it leaves us positing that space is a priori. It's not something found in experience and can't exist independently of experience. It's an essential ingredient in our ability to experience at all.

I feel as if it were a matter of taste and feelings, eh? — Question

Yeah, and a lot of people like to reject him by making ad hominems. Some in the secondary literature try to offer actual arguments against his positions, of course, but I've never been very persuaded by them.

More people tend to disagree with him than agree with him, in my experience. I'm the only person I know who actually agrees with his philosophical system in the main.

An even shittier place.

But you also presuppose a model of space which individuates. — Agustino

No I haven't. Not a mathematical model at any rate.

how can something ideal be other than of the same kind a model is? — Agustino

What you term "Euclidean space" is a phantasm, something created by the model itself. It has no real, independent existence and has nothing to do with what space may be in itself (which is unknowable and unthinkable).

lines are not material objects. So they can't be perceived empirically. — Agustino

Yes, but they are derived empirically, and this is where I part company with K/S. This also negates premise 4 in your argument, since points and lines are abstractions from the world of perception. So all geometry is ultimately based on empirical observation, but what we observe empirically isn't space but objects that are in space, which is to say, objects that are mediated, in part, by space. The two simply can't be separated out, as Tesla says. And here's Berkeley: "Extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable." A "matter-less space," such as "Euclidean space" would have to be, is a contradiction in terms. That being said, it is still true that we perceive and therefore know space, but this perception and knowledge is a priori. What I mean by a priori is not "based on reason alone," but "logically prior to experience." What this means is that space cannot be caused to exist by a Divine Mind, and so I part company with Berkeley, because it is an inseparable ingredient in causality itself, which is the union of space and time.

Not sure one is claiming that the potential is true, either. — Heister Eggcart

But that is what you're doing.

believing in the potential for something to be true? — Heister Eggcart

You're still believing that something's true here, namely, you believe it is true that something else could potentially be true.

Why stop there? — Agustino

Because I have to. That's where my knowledge stops.

3D Euclidean space — Agustino

No such thing exists. You're just referencing a mathematical model. That model, whether it's accurate or not, is not and cannot be identical to that which it is a model of, otherwise it would be the thing and not a model. I don't know how many times I need to say this.

If you possess mediate knowledge of something called "Euclidean space," or any other kind of space, that's great, perhaps you possess an extra special kind of cognition. But I don't.

The thing though is that a lot of what you'd see as unorthodox wouldn't be perceived as unorthodox by other orthodox Orthodox Christians :P — Agustino

I'm pretty sure doubting the Trinity is a big no-no for them.

One can believe something without claiming it to be the truth. — Heister Eggcart

One can believe something without knowing it is true, but I think it's just definitional that to believe something is to regard it as true.

But amongst philosophers Orthodox Christians can be very different from each other. It's one thing to read Tolstoy, and a different thing to read, for example, Berdyaev. You'd claim that these two are also more heretical than they seem at first, and yet they are both Orthodox Christians. — Agustino

Ah, but I said "orthodox," lower case. Perhaps it's true that one can be an unorthodox Orthodox Christian. Perhaps that's what you are, but you appear unorthodox in either case.

I'm sure it also determines how they appear... — Agustino

Only if by "how" we mean that it determines that things appear in the plural.

Why does space allow triangles to exist? Why isn't the nature of space such that triangles are impossible? — Agustino

There is a sense in which triangles are indeed impossible, for we don't perceive perfect triangles in nature, while the triangles we can imagine are based on the imperfect shapes that we perceive. So space only determines that things are numerically distinct, not what they are. What determines what they are, i.e. what their essence is? The will. What determines what the will is? Nothing, for the will is groundless. So your question is nonsensical.

There's a quote from Nikola Tesla I like and feel like quoting here, as he says much the same thing I do:

I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.

-

And what determines the possibility of non-euclidean axioms (and Kant and Schopenhauer have both critiqued the notion of axiom actually) if not the nature of space itself? When we postulate axioms, don't we actually refer to a specific kind of space? — Agustino

Your answer has been "experience," which I need not dispute to maintain my position. A model of experience is not the experience itself.

>:O meaning? — Agustino

That people ought to take your declarations of being an orthodox Christian with a grain of salt.

I've determined that Agustino is much more heretical than he appears.