Actually, it's probably worse. You have the idiots managed by sociopaths. — Question

There's a daoist poet, Ruan Yi, who lived during the tail end of the Three Kingdoms period in China. He compared the situation to snakes congregating around the dragon, the dragon standing for imperial power/the emperor. It's an apt image imho, and one that repeats constantly throughout history... It's one of the reasons why I have such a low opinion of politicians in general.

"Part of being a historian is that you quickly learn to become a hater of all things. And you realize that we are on a small boat in a world of shit, and there's a leak."
-Jason Scott.

Well, if the only choices you have are sociopaths, delusional idealists and morons, the morons don't seem that bad.
But in all seriousness, I wouldn't know. We could speculate, but I suspect that the group of people we are talking about is too diverse to give any unified answer. People can have all kinds of reasons why they vote or don't vote. But, let's speculate.
People generally think politicians are lying scumbags, right? From a rhetorical perspective, their credibility, their ethos already is horrible; their audience isn't exactly receptive to whatever message they are peddling. Well, at one point in "De Oratore" by Cicero, he talks about an orator who feigned being unlearned, while he actually had studied rhetorics in Athens. This improved his ethos, the way his audience felt about him.
Another point would be that people with relatively low intelligence are more apt to rely on and respond to pathos as opposed to logos, telling anecdotal stories, using emotionally charged language and other shenanigans as opposed to logically constructed arguments to sway their audience.

I always figured only sociopaths and delusional idealists applied for the job. Morons work too, though.

Did you call any of the moderators a nazi yet? That's like a tradition when filing a complaint against them on philosophy boards everywhere...

There really isn't much to go on. We have the account of Sima Qian, and... that's about it. The rest is conjecture, and even Sima Qians account doesn't hold up that well. Then there's the discussion on the authorship of the "Daodejing" itself, and if Li Er (Laozi) served as a mouthpiece for other anonymous writers or not.

That's classical scepticism, not whatever Hume was doing:

"Scepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances to judgements in any way whatsoever, with the result that, owing to the equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed, we are brought firstly to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of "unperturbedness" or quietude. Now we call it an "ability" not in any subtle sense, but simply in respect of its "being able."
-Sextus Empiricus, "Outlines of Pyrrhonism" book 1, ch. 4.

Being familiar with the symbology employed in ancient Chinese discourse is your best bet. You get this through the "I Ching" and the "Shang Shu". It's most likely that Li Er (the historical Laozi) had access to these texts too, since he was an official in the imperial archives. While both Lie Yukou (Liezi) and Zhuang Zhou (Zhuangzi) provide insight into the "Daodejing", they also put their own spin on it, albeit in a subtle way.

We're going to do chapter 28? OK, let's do chapter 28. I'll go through it line by line, or at least, part of it. Here's the complete chapter:

"Who knows his manhood's strength,
Yet still his female feebleness maintains;
As to one channel flow the many drains,
All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky.
Thus he the constant excellence retains;
The simple child again, free from all stains.

Who knows how white attracts,
Yet always keeps himself within black's shade,
The pattern of humility displayed,
Displayed in view of all beneath the sky;
He in the unchanging excellence arrayed,
Endless return to man's first state has made.

Who knows how glory shines,
Yet loves disgrace, nor e'er for it is pale;
Behold his presence in a spacious vale,
To which men come from all beneath the sky.
The unchanging excellence completes its tale;
The simple infant man in him we hail.

The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms vessels. The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the Officers (of government); and in his greatest regulations he employs no violent measures."
-Laozi, "Daodejing", ch. 28, Legge translation.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing28.php

Alright. First line: "Who knows his manhood's strength, Yet still his female feebleness maintains". This relates to the first two chapters of the "I Ching", "The Creative" and "The Receptive". This line is about wu-wei, maintaining non-action in the midst of change. Miyamoto Musashi notes, in his "Book of Five Rings" (Scroll of Emptiness):

"In emptiness there is good but no evil. Wisdom exists, logic exists, the Way exists, mind is empty."

Links to the relevant chapters of the "I Ching":
http://www.akirarabelais.com/i/i.html#1
http://www.akirarabelais.com/i/i.html#2

Right.

Second line. "As to one channel flow the many drains, All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky."

The first part, "as to one channel flow the many drains", alludes to water and it's symbology in classical Chinese parlance. In this sense, water represents a yin attitude. The "I Ching" notes (hexagram 29, "Water"): "Water reaches its goal by flowing continually. It fills up every depression before it flows on."

Hexagram 29:
http://www.akirarabelais.com/i/i.html#29

The second part states "All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky". This is explained in line 5 hexagram 1 of the "I Ching":

"Things that accord in tone vibrate together. Things that have affinity in their inmost natures seek one another. Water flows to what is wet, fire turns to what is dry. Clouds (the breath of heaven) follow the dragon, wind (the breath of earth) follows the tiger. Thus the sage arises, and all creatures follow him with their eyes. What is born of heaven feels related to what is above. What is born of earth feels related to what is below. Each follows its kind."

It also alludes to the mysterious forces emanating from sage kings like Yao, Shun and Yu, as outlined in the relevant chapters of the "Shang Shu" (China's early sage kings are considered as model rulers according to daoists. They are held in the highest reverence.).

The final line of the first paragraph states: "Thus he the constant excellence retains; The simple child again, free from all stains." This is explained in chapter 25 of the "I Ching", "Innocence/the unexpected:

"Ch'ien, heaven is above; Chên, movement, is below. The lower trigram Chên is under the influence of the strong line it has received form above, from heaven. When, in accord with this, movement follows the law of heaven, man is innocent and without guile. His mind is natural and true, unshadowed by reflection or ulterior designs. For wherever conscious purpose is to be seen, there the truth and innocence of nature have been lost."

http://www.akirarabelais.com/i/i.html#25

The same concept returns in the "Zhuangzi" (outer chapters, "Heaven and Earth", 8):

"In the Grand Beginning (of all things) there was nothing in all the vacancy of space; there was nothing that could be named. It was in this state that there arose the first existence - the first existence, but still without bodily shape. From this things could then be produced, (receiving) what we call their proper character. That which had no bodily shape was divided; and then without intermission there was what we call the process of conferring. (The two processes) continuing in operation, things were produced. As things were completed, there were produced the distinguishing lines of each, which we call the bodily shape. That shape was the body preserving in it the spirit, and each had its peculiar manifestation, which we call its Nature. When the Nature has been cultivated, it returns to its proper character; and when that has been fully reached, there is the same condition as at the Beginning. That sameness is pure vacancy, and the vacancy is great. It is like the closing of the beak and silencing the singing (of a bird). That closing and silencing is like the union of heaven and earth (at the beginning). The union, effected, as it is, might seem to indicate stupidity or darkness, but it is what we call the 'mysterious quality' (existing at the beginning); it is the same as the Grand Submission (to the Natural Course)."
http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/heaven-and-earth#n2792

The rest of the chapter basically repeats what's being said in the first paragraph.

I tend to agree with classical scepticism, which means that I prefer postponing judgement. I stand firmly on my "maybes". That means the opposite of my views also consists of classical scepticism, since the opposite of "maybe" is "maybe not", even though it already is implied in the first term.

"The formulae "perhaps" and "perhaps not," and "possibly" and "possibly not," and "maybe" and "maybe not," we adopt in place of "perhaps it is and perhaps it is not," and "possibly it is and possibly it is not," and "maybe it is and maybe it is not," so that for the sake of conciseness we adopt the phrase "possibly not" instead of "possibly it is not," and "maybe not" instead of "maybe it is not," and "perhaps not" instead of "perhaps it is not." But here again we do not fight about phrases nor do we inquire whether the phrases indicate realities, but we adopt them, as I said, in a loose sense. Still it is evident, as I think, that these expressions are indicative of non-assertion. Certainly the person who says "perhaps it is" is implicitly affirming also the seemingly contradictory phrase "perhaps it is not" by his refusal to make the positive assertion that "it is." And the same applies to all the other cases."
-Sextus Empiricus, "Outlines of Pyrrhonism" book 1, ch. 21.

Anyone else love Epicurus? — R-13

Well, I don't dislike him. I've read his extant fragments but never really bothered reading beyond that.

Happy new year folks!

I'm not very fond of confucianism in general. Besides, I don't think Confucius was a confucianist. Dude was into Chinese naturalism. His "Analects" take on a different meaning if you're familiar with the "I Ching".

Lol, people conflating "truthfulness" with epistemological notions of truth... Is the general public talking about epistemology these days? No. "Post truth" is about false news, not about axioms, verisimilitude and/or the problem of induction. Calling outright lies "post truth" is political spin doctoring.

Most overrated philosopher? Mencius. That guy is ass.

Franz Brentano.

No problem. ;)

"Huizi said to Zhuangzi, 'I have a large tree, which men call the Ailantus. Its trunk swells out to a large size, but is not fit for a carpenter to apply his line to it; its smaller branches are knotted and crooked, so that the disk and square cannot be used on them. Though planted on the wayside, a builder would not turn his head to look at it. Now your words, Sir, are great, but of no use - all unite in putting them away from them.' Zhuangzi replied, 'Have you never seen a wildcat or a weasel? There it lies, crouching and low, till the wanderer approaches; east and west it leaps about, avoiding neither what is high nor what is low, till it is caught in a trap, or dies in a net. Again there is the Yak, so large that it is like a cloud hanging in the sky. It is large indeed, but it cannot catch mice. You, Sir, have a large tree and are troubled because it is of no use - why do you not plant it in a tract where there is nothing else, or in a wide and barren wild? There you might saunter idly by its side, or in the enjoyment of untroubled ease sleep beneath it. Neither bill nor axe would shorten its existence; there would be nothing to injure it. What is there in its uselessness to cause you distress?'"
-"Zhuangzi", inner chapters, "Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease", 7.

"A pheasant of the marshes has to take ten steps to pick up a mouthful of food, and thirty steps to get a drink, but it does not seek to be nourished in a coop. Though its spirit would (there) enjoy a royal abundance, it does not think (such confinement) good.'"
-Ibid. "Nourishing the Lord of Life", 4.

"The mountain by its trees weakens itself. The grease which ministers to the fire fries itself. The cinnamon tree can be eaten, and therefore it is cut down. The varnish tree is useful, and therefore incisions are made in it. All men know the advantage of being useful, but no one knows the advantage of being useless."
-Ibid. "Man in the World, Associated with other Men", 9.

"Effort said to Destiny:

'Your achievements are not equal to mine.' 'Pray what do you achieve in the working of things,' replied Destiny, 'that you would compare yourself With me? 'Why,' said Effort, 'the length of man's life, his measure of success, his rank, and his wealth, are all things which I have the power to determine.' To this, Destiny made reply: 'P'êng Tsu's wisdom did not exceed that of Yao and Shun, yet he lived to the age of eight hundred. Yen Yüan's ability was not inferior to that of the average man, yet he died at the early age of thirty-two. The virtue of Confucius was not less than that of the feudal princes, yet he was reduced to sore straits between Ch'ên and Ts'ai.

The conduct of Chou, of the Yin dynasty, did not surpass that of the Three Men of Virtue, yet he occupied a kingly throne.

Wei Tzu, Chi Tzu and Pi Kan were all relatives of Chou Hsin, by whose orders the last-named was disembowelled.

Chi Cha would not accept the overlordship of Wu, while T'ien Hêng usurped sole power in Ch'i. Po I and Shu. Ch'i starved to death at Shou-yang, while Chi Shih waxed rich at Chan-ch'in. If these results were compassed by your efforts, how is it that you allotted long life to P'êng Tsu and an untimely death to Yen Yüan; that you awarded discomfiture to the sage and success to the impious, humiliation to the wise man and high honours to the fool, poverty to the good and wealth to the wicked? 'If, as you say,' rejoined Effort, 'I have really no control over events, is it not, then, owing to your management that things turn out as they do? Destiny replied: 'The very name "Destiny" shows that there can be no question of management in the case. When the way is straight, I push on; when it is crooked, I put up with it. Old age and early death, failure and success, high rank and humble station, riches and poverty--all these come naturally and of themselves. How can I know anything about them?

'Being what it is, without knowing why--that is the meaning of Destiny. What room is there for management here?"
-"Liezi", book 6, "Effort and Destiny".

Here's a summary of the past 2000 years of philosophy:

- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.

- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world.

Philosophy has failed, miserably. Skepticism has won; by a rather large margin.

The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity.

Why does anyone still continue to study this nonsense? — lambda

While I like your enthusiasm, I'll just note that those are not the main charges against dogmatism. Anyway, why study philosophy? Many reasons. One might not be a pyrrhonic sceptic. Ataraxia might not be very high on your list. One might agree with academic scepticism, where the notion of "truth" is abandoned but "probability" is embraced. One might want to learn about other philosophers who started their investigations from a dubitative as opposed to dogmatic stance. Or one might want to study more dogmatic philosophers simply because they might have something to say.

Can anyone sum up for me just how it is that Plato's School (the Academy) eventually became the school of skepticism? It seems to me that If Forms, then Not Skepticism. And Plato argued for the forms. Were there adherents of Platonism who argued with the Skeptics? — anonymous66

Lets take a look at Diogenes Laertius' "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers:

I. ARCESILAUS was the son of Seuthes or Scythes, as Apollodorus states in the third book of his Chronicles, and a native of Pitane in Aeolia.

II. He was the original founder of the Middle Academy, and the first man who professed to suspend the declaration of his judgment, because of the contrarieties of the reasons alleged on either side. He was likewise the first who attempted to argue on both sides of a question, and who also made the method of discussion, which had been handed down by Plato, by means of question and answer, more contentious than before.
-Book 4.

VIII. He seems to have been a great admirer of Plato, and he possessed all his writings. He also, according to some authorities, had a very high opinion of Pyrrho.
-Ibid.

So there you have it. One of the scholarchs also was a fan of Pyrrho. Simple as that.

Sextus Empiricus notes:

Arcesilaus, however, who was, as we said, the president and founder of the Middle Academy, certainly seems to me to have shared the doctrines of Pyrrho, so that his way of thought is almost identical with ours. For we do not find him making any assertion about the reality or unreality of anything, nor does he prefer any one thing to another in point of probability or improbability, but suspends judgment about all. He also says that the End is suspension -- which is accompanied, as we have said, by "quietude." He declares, too, that suspension regarding particular objects is good, but assent regarding particulars bad. Only one might say that whereas we make these statements not positively but in accordance with what appears to us, he makes them as statements of real facts, so that he asserts that suspension in itself really is good and assent bad. And if one ought to credit also what is said about him, he appeared at the first glance, they say, to be a Pyrrhonean, but in reality he was a dogmatist; and because he used to test his companions by means of dubitation to see if they were fitted by nature for the reception of the Platonic dogmas, he was thought to be a dubitive philosopher, but he actually passed on to such of his companions as were naturally gifted the dogmas of Plato. And this was why Ariston described him as "Plato the head of him, Pyrrho the tail, in the midst Diodorus"; because he employed the dialectic of Diodorus, although he was actually a Platonist.
-"Outlines of Pyrrhonism" book 1, ch. 33.

PS2:
SSX 3.
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3.
God Hand.

PC:
Ultra Street Fighter 4 (practicing tatsu loops with Sakura).

"I know not what I seek; carried on by a wild impulse, I know not where I am going. I wander about in the strange manner (which you have seen), and see that nothing proceeds without method and order - what more should I know?"
-"Zhuangzi", outer chapters, "Letting Be, and Exercising Forbearance", 4.

If you were Putin in this scenario, what would you ask for, and what would you want to do - and why? — Agustino

I'd ask for more Russians to be putin the Ukraine.

Something I really find perplexing is this whole idea of object apprehension. (I'm referring to object in the most general sense of the term -- i.e. any 'thing'). — aporiap

OK.

If you just take raw experience -- devoid of concept filters or object categories -- what presents is a continuous field of sensation.

That's not possible. "Raw experience" as such is an abstraction, not an actual phenomenological way of experiencing. Even with the presence of some or the other form of aphasia, there still are background experiences present.

Taking just the visual field of experience, what presents is a continuous field of incongruous color. Each discernible intensity of color is spatially positioned with respect to other color-intensities (**color is also an object category, but I use it to just denote the raw sensation/raw quality of visual experience). Sharp contrast in color-intensity delineates boundaries. When a given color-contrast is arranged such that it forms an enclosure -- we perceive a shape. That perception-- i.e. that perception of a shape-- would be considered an example of a gestalt. A gestalt being a singular, discrete 'whole' or object. Enclosure/closure is one of many principles used to apprehend wholes.

... Yeah, no. When I direct my gaze at an object, it becomes highlighted in the center of my vision. I'm looking at a pack of cards, right now. It's differentiated from it's local environment by being more clear in my vision than the things outside of my attention which temporarily appear more blurry. If I direct my attention towards another object on my desk, the pack of cards becomes a part of the background, while the other object becomes dynamically highlighted. In gestalt psychology, this perceptual process is called "figure-ground": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure%E2%80%93ground_(perception)

Another fundamental property of perception is called "emergence". Perceptual emergence is a reflexive function where forms are apprehended as spatial wholes instead of individual elements. Emergence is easier to showcase than to explain, so here's a picture:



Notice the dog sniffing in the foreground, and the tree in the background.

I've noticed that there haven't really been any crippling defeats in scepticism, which makes me wonder, can't you disprove any philosophy. You can read something such as Rene Descartes, with his 'I think, therefore I am' and I realised it was based on logic. So couldn't an Evil Demon fool you into believing in Logic? And once you say that, couldn't you just argue with any philosophy, saying 'How do you know?' and end it there. I don't know, I just feel like there is no way to fully disprove Scepticism. What do you think? — Hobbez

I think scepticism is fine. Then again, I determine nothing.

"The other can be evident to me because I am not transparent for myself, and because my subjectivity draws its body in its wake. We were saying earlier: in so far as the other resides in the world, is visible there, and forms a part of my field, he is never an Ego in the sense in which I am one for myself. In order to think of him as a genuine I, I ought to think of myself as a mere object for him, which I am prevented from doing by the knowledge which I have of myself. But if another’s body is not an object for me, nor mine an object for him, if both are manifestations of behaviour, the positing of the other does not reduce me to the status of an object in his field, nor does my perception of the other reduce him to the status of an object in mine. The other person is never quite a personal being, if I myself am totally one, and if I grasp myself as apodeictically self-evident. But if I find in myself, through reflection, along with the perceiving subject, a prepersonal subject given to itself, and if my perceptions are centred outside me as sources of initiative and judgment, if the perceived world remains in a state of neutrality, being neither verified as an object nor recognized as a dream, then it is not the case that everything that appears in the world is arrayed before me, and so the behaviour of others can have its place there. This world may remain undivided between my perception and his, the self which perceives is in no particularly privileged position which rules out a perceived self; both are, not cogitationes shut up in their own immanence, but beings which are outrun by their world, and which consequently may well be outrun by each other. The affirmation of an alien consciousness standing over against mine would immediately make my experience into a private spectacle, since it would no longer be co-extensive with being. The cogito of another person strips my own cogito of all value, and causes me to lose the assurance which I enjoyed in my solitude of having access to the only being conceivable for me, being, that is, as it is aimed at and constituted by me. But we have learned in individual perception not to conceive our perspective views as independent of each other; we know that they slip into each other and are brought together finally in the thing. In the same way we must learn to find the communication between one consciousness and another in one and the same world. In reality, the other is not shut up inside my perspective of the world, because this perspective itself has no definite limits, because it slips spontaneously into the other’s, and because both are brought together in the one single world in which we all participate as anonymous subjects of perception."
-Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology of Perception", p. 410, 411.

So, do you think that humans should have the right to legally be recognised as machines or robots? — DanEssex

What, like a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner? Why would you want that?

-Wunengzi. This guy: http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Daoists/wunengzi.html
-Carneades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carneades
-Leonard Nelson: http://www.friesian.com/method.htm

"Hexagram 18, nine at the top means:
He does not serve kings and princes,
Sets himself higher goals.

Not every man has an obligation to mingle in the affairs of the world. There are some who are developed to such a degree that they are justified in letting the world go its own way and refusing to enter public life with a view to reforming it. But this does not imply a right to remain idle or to sit back and merely criticize. Such withdrawal is justified only when we strive to realize in ourselves the higher aims of mankind. For although the sage remains distant from the turmoil of daily life, he creates incomparable human values for the future."
-"I Ching", Wilhelm translation.

I voted "not at all".

"Heaven and earth do not act from (the impulse of) any wish to be benevolent; they deal with all things as the dogs of grass are dealt with. The sages do not act from (any wish to be) benevolent; they deal with the people as the dogs of grass are dealt with.

May not the space between heaven and earth be compared to a bellows?'Tis emptied, yet it loses not its power; 'Tis moved again, and sends forth air the more.
Much speech to swift exhaustion lead we see;
Your inner being guard, and keep it free."
-Laozi, "Daodejing", Legge translation, chapter 5.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing05.php

@ OP: I suggest taking a look at the ontology of Alexius Meinong.

Hey Baden! Whatsup! :)

This place looks nice dude, props!

Hey folks.