The immaterial soul, that which allegedly survives death, can't be proven from within a material setting. — TheMadFool
My understanding is that philosophy in the twentieth century began to just try to focus on analysis of language. However, I did not think that this meant that was because that was all that there was, as if all the underlying problems had been solved. — Jack Cummins
I don't believe in the immaterial soul, but I can imagine events that might convince me. If some Dr. Frankenstein could light up a corpse with dear grandma's departed soul, then I think it'd be reasonable to postulate some kind of 'non-physical' existence of this soul in between bodies. — j0e
philosophical "mysteries" are mostly little word games on the edges of the world. They are annoying but for the most part irrelevant. — Banno
In the Twentieth Century, philosophy was like a confused and clumsy person who repeatedly tries to commit suicide, but keeps failing, though with the addition of debilitating damage at each attempt. The public face of philosophy was often, for many years, people like Bertrand Russell or Jean Paul Sartre, whose personal, moral, political, and philosophical follies were the kinds of things that will be no less than an embarrassment for posterity. In the classic sophistry of a dilemma of false alternatives, respected academic philosophy often seemed to have offered only two choices:
...the sterility and agnosticism of positivistic, scientistic, and merely analytic schools, characteristically, if not always originally, Anglo-American...have frequently denied the possibility of knowledge in metaphysical or ethical matters, and sometimes the possibility of constructive philosophical knowledge at all, with, according to Karl Popper, a "concentration upon minutiae (upon 'puzzles') and especially upon the meanings of words; in brief .... scholasticism." As Allan Bloom said, "Professors of these schools [i.e. positivism and ordinary language analysis] simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students." Students and the intellectually curious looking for some concern, any concern, about the truths of being and value, the content of wisdom, or some humane purpose, found instead what has aptly been called a "valley of bones." Although continuing analytic philosophy sometimes appears as a small island of some sanity in a sea of increasing nonsense, as with John Searle, it retains almost all of its sterility, futility, and what could even be called a self-referential autism.
I'm secure in my general unbelief — j0e
any evidence could make me believe in gods, ghosts, or ghouls — j0e
And the problem is that we wish for answers and wish for grand meanings — Jack Cummins
Yes, I can be happy knowing so little too, and I do still enjoy sitting reading philosophy books... — Jack Cummins
I can see your point of view, but I am not sure that the three big philosophy questions can just be neatly swept away, — Jack Cummins
Perhaps the usefulness of the joined pursuit should not be about proving points, but about mutual sharing of ideas. — Jack Cummins
There are several mysteries which seem essential to the philosophical quest; the existence of God, free will and, life after death. — Jack Cummins
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