What is your favourite topic?
  • Pattern-chaser
    1.8k
    This is just a fun thread. What are your favourite (philosophical) topics, the ones you enjoy thinking about or discussing? You don't have to say why - that you enjoy them is sufficient here - but you can if you want to. :up: I'll start:


    • Those topics for which science and logic are not the most appropriate investigative tools. [In philosophy, the problems suitable for scientific investigation are the easy ones. Not that they are easy in absolute terms, only in terms of those topics that philosophy can address. The difficult topics are those which are not listable or computable, which are not algorithmically compressible, and so on. You know the list. :wink:]
    • The human mind, and how it works. [Excluding its connection to the human brain. I don't deny this connection, but find the working of the mind itself much more interesting than how it is physically realised. ]
    • The non-conscious mind. [I hate that term! It's a catch-all term that refers to the whole of the human mind, after the (relatively small/minor) 'conscious mind' is subtracted. It implies that our conscious and nonconscious minds are somehow of equal significance, when the non-conscious minds (is that a fair use of terminology?) do so much more. From keeping my heart beating, and my lungs filling, to driving me home from work without conscious (obviously! :wink:) effort on my part, to creating poetry to emerge later into conscious awareness as if from nowhere. ]
    • Human perception. [The journey a real-world event makes, via the senses, to end up in the mind. ]
    • Human culture. [Using 'culture' in its broadest and most inclusive sense, to include music and all the 'arts', religion, politics, science (the discipline, not its subject matter) and mathematics (likewise), philosophy (and again :wink:), celebrities who are famous for being famous, beauty, love, meaning, quality, design (not just 'interior' design), language, communication, and magick. ]

    Your turn. :smile: Enjoy! :up:
    Pattern-chaser Options
  • Shawn
    13.3k
    Favorite topic?

    Wittgenstein.
    Shawn Options
  • Pattern-chaser
    1.8k
    ↪Posty McPostface
    :wink:
    Pattern-chaser Options
  • Shawn
    13.3k
    ↪Pattern-chaser


    :cool:

    Come post in my 'Do we have higher-order volitions?' thread. I think it aligns with your interests. Haha.
    Shawn Options
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    I enjoy thinking about The Nothing, which can't be discussed but which I encounter only by the dread I feel when thinking of Heil--wait, I mean HEIL--wait I mean that back-stabbing, anti-Semitic, Hitler-worshipping acolyte of the "inner truth and greatness of National Socialism"; Joseph Goebbels' Mini-Me, that...

    Well, you said it was a fun thread. And what could be a more philosophical topic than nothing?
    Ciceronianus Options
  • Pattern-chaser
    1.8k
    what could be a more philosophical topic than nothing? — Ciceronianus the White

    Er, something? :chin: :wink: :smile:
    Pattern-chaser Options
  • Relativist
    2.6k
    My favorite topic is theory of mind - particularly the problems and possible solutions to physicalism (on the one hand) and the mind-body problem (on the other hand).
    Relativist Options
  • John Doe
    200
    I enjoy thinking about The Nothing, which can't be discussed but which I encounter only by the dread I feel when thinking of Heil--wait, I mean HEIL--wait I mean that back-stabbing, anti-Semitic, Hitler-worshipping acolyte of the "inner truth and greatness of National Socialism"; Joseph Goebbels' Mini-Me, that... — Ciceronianus the White

    Nothing would make me happier than to read 1,000 words of this in the form of a dissertation proposal or grad school application. :lol:
    John Doe Options
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    ↪Pattern-chaser
    Something is merely the absence of nothing. You must know nothing to know something.
    Ciceronianus Options
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    Nothing would make me happier than to read 1,000 words of this in the form of a dissertation proposal or grad school application. :lol: — John Doe

    I don't think that's likely. And it would be challenging, but I think I could manage. It may be necessary to use the words "essence" and "Being" and "existence" quite often. Would hyphens count as words?
    Ciceronianus Options
  • John Doe
    200
    I don't think that's likely. — Ciceronianus the White

    Makes sense. Why even bother with academic philosophy when reading Being & Time makes you a thousand times more profound than any of the poor souls toiling away in academia?

    It may be necessary to use the words "essence" and "Being" and "existence" quite often — Ciceronianus the White

    Obviously, because if you had to translate those words into basic English then you wouldn't be doing philosophy but engaging in some perverse brand of Cartesianism.

    Would hyphens count as words? — Ciceronianus the White

    If you even have to ask then obviously you haven't read Volume 58 of the gesammelte Werke you god damn philistine.

    And it would be challenging, but I think I could manage. — Ciceronianus the White

    Well, it would certainly make a fun thread. :up:
    John Doe Options
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    If you even have to ask then obviously you haven't read Volume 58 of the gesammelte Werke you god damn philistine. — John Doe

    I'm afraid that's true. Or any of it, for that matter, except perhaps a (happily) forgotten excerpt in some anthology or other.
    Ciceronianus Options
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