My suggestion is that the problem is most likely a communication barrier. — Jeremiah
Albert Camus is clearly the most prominent figure that comes to mind. His ability to put philosophy into an easily digestible format is a skill to envy by both philosophers and writers. — Jeremiah
I talk to myself all the time.
— m-theory
Quite so. It's often the only way to have a conversation with someone intelligent. — Bitter Crank
Do you talk about Philosophy w/ people who don't know much about it?" — anonymous66
That's one of the reasons I frequent this place. I don't have people I regularly interact with offline to discuss anything philosophical with. — Terrapin Station
But why do you take my retelling so? I never suggested he was inferior or irrational. Quite the contrary, I admire his reason, and looked with scorn upon the bookworms - that's why I offered him as an example. Even apparently uncultured and uneducated folks can reason/philosophise.Ah, well, lack of culture... You do know that he doesn't have a lack of culture, he just doesn't have YOUR culture. (Don't get me wrong; I value literacy highly, but in anthropological terms, he is probably as "cultured" as you or me.)
Actually I thought his answer was perfectly adequate. Lots of people don't know what to believe anymore. You weren't giving him a cultural literacy test, you asked him a reasonable question, he gave you a reasonable answer. — Bitter Crank
in the mornings. — anonymous66
Many heads nodded in agreement and two days later I received an envelope in the mail asking if I wished to be the head lecturer at my university's philosophy department. I declined, of course, because I won't support the nihilistic regime known as contemporary analytic philosophy.
This is 100% true. — darthbarracuda
I don't mind analytic philosophy, in fact I study it often. It's just that it has the tendency to create over-specialization and cottage industries: professional philosophers writing for professional philosophers. Nobody else, except the oddball like myself who takes a glance at their work. Analytic philosophy, especially metaphysics and epistemology, is largely irrelevant to other fields and society at large. — darthbarracuda
I've been making an attempt to talk about it w/ a group I've been drinking coffee w/ in the mornings. Does anyone else talk about philosophy w/ people not already interested? — anonymous66
he brought up Descartes... Because everyone who took a damn philosophy class in college brings up Descartes. — Carbon
So enjoy it. Go talk to people. Engage with the world in person or on sites like this. Because at the end of the day that's where the raw fun of philosophy is. In a very real sense, what you're doing with your coffee group is substantially more pure philosophically then what academics do. Sure - you might not be as specialized, but you're enjoying it! And maybe by chatting with a few people about your interests, you'll encourage a few other people to get into philosophy as well. — Carbon
Can't that be said for all academia though? Usually after you studied you are so specialized that it makes no sense to make it public to people because they don't understand. That is the essence of why we create groups in the first place, to gather with people who know all the relevant information on how to be a klu klux klan etc. — intrapersona
Every discipline has it's esotericism. It's just that philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, tends to be almost entirely esoteric. It's meaningless, worthless, and an Other to those who have never studied it. — darthbarracuda
So enjoy it. Go talk to people. Engage with the world in person or on sites like this. Because at the end of the day that's where the raw fun of philosophy is. In a very real sense, what you're doing with your coffee group is substantially more pure philosophically then what academics do. Sure - you might not be as specialized, but you're enjoying it! — Carbon
Nearly always they are interested in questions concerning the overall meaning of life, but many, if not most, have followed the current fashion of disdaining any religion. — John
But people generally hate talking about logic-chopping academic philosophical issues; they think it is meaningless, inconsequential bullshit. — John
Perhaps there is a growing disdain for traditional religion as a general rule, but I'm inclined to view this as a change of religion, especially since religion in a generalized sense seems to be almost spontaneously generated by human beings. — R-13
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