By this definition the first philosopher (if that is even conceivable?) couldn't have been a (successful) philosopher... — Yohan

Of course. The first doctor would not have been successful either. Or dentist... yikes! The point is, a discourse or tradition is built gradually over time. Ignoring this might get you making those early mistakes all over again...

Philosophy is poorly defined, a collection of notions tied together with loose verbal strings. — jgill

It could also be the fact that philosophy is poorly regarded, a collection posturing, untied and incomprehensible. :wink:

You should read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. — L'éléphant

Good book.

The way I parse it, is that 'existence' is what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect of. So all of the questions about whether [God/transcendent/beyond] 'exist' are empty. But what is beyond existence is not non-existent. — Wayfarer

Fuck... if I only smoked hooch, that would be a great three sentence combination to ponder stoned.

It is not necessary to believe in the objective existence of supernatural things to be mystical. — Wayfarer

Yes, I've often felt the need to say almost the same thing many times over the years.

Thanks - interesting piece. How do you read W when he writes this:

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

It seems oddly emphatic, but then maybe it is metaphor??

I can see it and my favorite theists take a similar approach.

I think that's fair. Do you consider yourself a philosopher, or is it a subject you teach, or both?

One needs to have this exposure not in order to come up with great original thinking , but to come up with and refine a language of expression of the ideas. — Joshs

A significant dimension.

The same original kernel of genius one begins with early in life may find its language of expression in science or the arts rather than philosophy, depending on which form of expression one discovers is most satisfying. — Joshs

Yes, I have often thought this. But could Heidegger have done the same work as a movie director? I wonder if certain projects require a particular expression?

Perhaps I'm being uncharitable. I generally know what you're saying -- that a general awareness of these questions is valuable, and I agree. I think depriving oneself of the riches of the past is exactly like you mentioned, reinventing the wheel. But whether or not that is important in defining what makes a "philosopher" is debatable, and I'm skeptical of it. — Xtrix

I understand where you are coming from and you make a good case. I come from a background where philosophy has played a minor role, so the question has a particular resonance for me. I decided to join this forum to see what I might have missed by not being involved in philosophy. I was (and remain) particularly interested in morality, aesthetics and epistemology. But I don't read books for pleasure these days and find most works insufferably dull. I'm interested primarily in hearing or reading philosophical discussions/essays that have 'real world' or, shall we say, quotidian applications.

I know several economists who've never read Adam Smith, and several programmers who have never read Boole's work. — Xtrix

Of course. People do all sorts of jobs without reading historically significant texts in their area. The key issue in work is accreditation and/or competence, not books read.

And it's the question of competence that I am interested in and how this might be understood in relation to philosophy. Christ knows if it's possible. My thoughts, maybe they are reactions, are galvanized by the claim some make that anyone is a philosopher, that all it takes is a kind of reflection or a sort of love. My sense is it needs to be deeper than this.

Thanks. I'm afraid I find Wittgenstein almost incomprehensible.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16) — Fooloso4

A theist at the point he was writing this, then?

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. — Fooloso4

That's for sure.

the ethical and aesthetic are mystical. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical. — Fooloso4

I like what you wrote but can you clarify the last 'regarded as mystical'? Was there any nuance provided or explication of what mystical meant? Did it just mean 'nothing further' or was it an open question? The temptation of course is to proffer the transcendental card...

(Btw, Freddy died in bed at his sister's home.) — 180 Proof

Could have been worse. He could have died in bed with his sister... :cool:

How, then, is "success" measured? — jgill

No idea, but it involves knowledge of the subject

Probably not by getting hundreds of posts on a thread one starts on TPF. — jgill

:up:

Neurath's boat — 180 Proof

Yes! Totally forgot that one. Tell you what though, as I roll that fuckin' stone up the hill for the umpteenth time, I am definitely not smiling...

I don't know if there is one alternative, but I don't see why "thinker" can't be used as meaning basically the same thing, if by thinking we mean the type of thinking involved in what is normally called philosophy — Xtrix

I keep coming back to the idea that to be successful in philosophy (as I see it) one needs a solid awareness of the tradition and how ideas have been explored thus far. One can be a thinker and have no idea about the work already achieved. For me this latter part is important.

Who wants to keep reinventing the wheel?

"Philosopher" is a good name for what Aristotle, Plato, Russell, Wittgenstein, and all those other guys are. It's a useful term.
— T Clark

I'm not sure they would agree. But even if they did, it's pretty easy to point to what is traditionally (and commonly) used as examples of what a "philosopher" is. I don't think that tells us much -- especially if it does nothing to clarify what philosophy or science is. — Xtrix

Most terms are problematic. What is the alternative to using the word philosopher? It's useful to have a vase to put the flowers in, even if the vase is not to our taste and some of the flowers are dead... :joke:

Thank you. I know this is a digression but how would a phenomenologist read idealism in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian sense? Are you getting at this when you write:

Bitbol accepts no notion of formal categorical contents of subjectivity. — Joshs

I've read small amounts of Bitbol and seen him deliver lectures. Interesting fellow. From your reading of these 'conditions of possibility' is he a Kantian idealist or an an idealist in any sense?

Perhaps it refers to 'publicly accessible regularities of nature' (operationalized in theoretical models as physical laws & constants and/or in philosophy as reason's limits). Maybe not "certain", but, IMO, a pragmatic heuristic nonetheless. — 180 Proof

Cool use of language! Very nice. I suspect this is what I am trying to get to as a plodding non-philosopher.

But if you think that "snow is white" is not a fact, but our subjective interpretation of the world, then you don't believe in the objective world. — L'éléphant

Snow is white to humans. It is a fact about human perception and language use. I have no issue with modest claims like cats being on mats, etc. But for me this does not tell us much about an objective world, just how a fragment of that world seems to us, based on the constructions of language and perception. This is a type of objectivity, perhaps, but I don't think I can push it far. Colour, as you know is a product of light and our sight process. Things themselves do not have colour. So it is objectively true that human eyes and brains process light in a similar way and come to a shared agreement about the names of what they see. I'll do my best not to arrive at Stove's Gem. :smile:

Okay then, that means you don't subscribe to objective reality. — L'éléphant

The thing is, I am not sure.

Let's agree that objective reality is one that has facts and truths. — L'éléphant

I'm somewhat sympathetic this 'whatever is the case' view of truth.

Generally I distinguish between two things 1) things being true and 2) the nature of reality (which may be ineffable). Some things can be assessed as true when they correspond to how something is in the world. A map. A name. A historical event. The effect of a poison. Most of these truths are based on evidence or empiricism. They are the easier ones.

Reality? Not sure what is in scope here. In general, it seems to me that communities determine what is true through a collaborative exercise in creating agreement. You could say that truth is created not found. Examples of such truths might include - 'democracy as the best government'; 'the value of education'; 'god/s care about humans', 'the imperative of progress'...

So, would you agree if I conclude from it that you don't believe in objective reality? — L'éléphant

No, I'd say we can get along in the environment we call 'reality' reasonably well. But intelligibility is context dependent. If everything is quantum fields we certainly find this less intelligible. I am not certain what the term objective reality refers to.

No matter which approach you take answering the question of the meaning of life, everyone agrees that it's firmly tied to the question "why". — Carlikoff

Not sure I agree with that.

Meaning and 'why' don't necessarily go together.

The meaning of life is a non-question, possibly incoherent. It generally comes down to being a more pompous or anachronistic way of asking, What's important to you?

We're desperately trying to find something that doesn't exist, because we simply cannot comprehend the confrontation with the fact, that the universe doesn't care whether or not we exist. — Carlikoff

I've never thought the universe cares. I don't see how this has much bearing on meaning unless you started from a position of transcendence, then you might feel like a heroin user who can't get on...

Because it is intelligible to us, it must be that the outside world has some form of meaning already prepared for us to discover. — L'éléphant

I disagree that the 'outside world' is intelligible to us, but we may do better with our inside world - our thoughts.

Ah, but my dear Schopenhauer, you tell me the brain is an illusion or representation...thrown up by the brain ? — lll

I think you meant mind in one of the places where you wrote brain. No. Mr S proposes that our physical selves, the brain and it's chemicals are what consciousness looks like when experienced from a dissociated perspective of Will (better translation perhaps, Energy).

“Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.” — Wayfarer

It's a great line, isn't it?

Schopenhauer also says:

"Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this (especially if it should ultimately result in thrust and counter-thrust) can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time."

The World as Will and Representation, I, §7

Even in translation he is such a charming and pellucid writer.

I told him that he can't hate it as much as philosophers do. — lll

So lovers of wisdom hate loving wisdom?

"Personally, I think that the weather is nice", I still talk about me knowing something; knowing, that in my opinion the weather is nice — Carlikoff

Thanks for clarifying. OK.

And this applies to any statement, any question, any sentence in any language; you always claim to know or not know something, which of course requires you to know what knowledge is. — Carlikoff

Does this render the word knowledge useful then? Do we really know ourselves and our tastes? I'm not certain of this. Is knowledge then more of a free-floating notion?

The idea of reality as something outside our mind is highly questionable for me, so, this is for me the basic problem of talking about knowledge: we should first discuss what we think about metaphysics, which is the existence of reality as something independent from us. — Angelo Cannata

I think this is largely right. Have you read any phenomenology?

My own view increasingly is that knowledge is meaning or 'truth' we create together through our intersubjective communities. There are some things that we can verify, but most human activities are guided by presuppositions held by the communities we belong to and also by unreflective conclusions drawn by basic inference. Maybe it's best to be pragmatic about it all. If it works it can be called knowledge. But if you look too deeply it all becomes blurry.

If being bad at something doesn't preclude admission then it seems to be a general will that allows identification. — Shwah

For me the question has never been what makes a good philosopher, it is what makes a philosopher - good, bad or indifferent?

What attributes does a thinker have in order to be called a philosopher?

When you think about it, every question and every statement, literally every sentence in every language requires the speaker to know what knowledge is — Carlikoff

Hmmm. Not sure about that. Ordinary language and the usage of words is one thing. But we quickly learn that people actually hold different understandings of words and concepts. Dictionaries are about usage not definition. And words change usage regularly and sometimes they come mean the opposite of how they were originally used.

Then there's the problem of perspective - as in one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Who holds the knowledge in this case? Depends what side you're on. Conceptually people don't always share presuppositions and these seem to be the building blocks of what we like to call knowledge. People say they have knowledge of god - and other people argue god is unknowable, a myth. Who holds the knowledge?

The problem of knowledge for me is the slippery nature of facts and theories of truth. From a pragmatic perspective we are able to muddled through together with general agreements about some things, but it is all pretty loose and quickly becomes conflictual.

I often fester over these: What do we know? How do we justify it? What is the role of experience versus learning? What about propositional knowledge?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

Hey, you left out Richard Rorty! :yikes:

The question is "What is a philosopher?" That's the question I intended to answer. Seems like you want to know how to do philosophy. — T Clark

I guess I went there because I can't separate the two matters; to me they are one. Maybe that's wrong...

You must be a hearse whisperer...

. I've never liked that 'Skeptical Enquirer' rag, although I noted with surprise the recent online interview between one of its founders, Michael Shermer, and Bernardo Kastrup, which was surprisingly congenial, I thought, causing me to re-consider a little.) — Wayfarer

It's hard not to like Kastrup, he is very endearing and he communicates/writes so clearly. I consider myself to be in the naturalist camp but I find idealism very interesting and if I appear critical of it is is just to test it out as best I can, not to ridicule. I think the Western philosophical and religious traditions seem to be built around idealism and its ghostly afterlife haunts most of us. And yes, maybe idealism is coming back into intellectual fashion. I suspect simulation theory and the impact of online living has assisted in proving us with new metaphors for gateway understanding.

It's as if the problem is a congealing of a feeling into a system with teeth that can't tolerate a hearse of a different color. — lll

I like a black hearse, myself. Consider me a traditionalist.

Sorry Tom, I'm sticking different things in that hole when I don't have an answer... — EugeneW

Is this a euphemism?

Nice. I wonder why people think we have answers to the question, why is there a universe?

Isn't inserting god/s into that hole what you do when you don't have an answer? It's using a mystery to explain a mystery?

Ok. I had a quick look. Sounds more like the cultural cost of doing math, when a religion is unhappy with it. Anyway let's bracket this part of the discussion for now it doesn't seem a rich source of evidence of god.

In this, since religion informs math, it is not informable by culture. — Shwah

How does religion inform math? When I said math can be informed by anything I simply meant that math is practiced via a perspective and this perspective can be influenced by anything from education to technology.

I think maybe a more concrete example is how arithmetic informs calculus (you need arithmetic to do calculus but not vice versa). Whether you use a duodecimal system or decimal etc, and even how you do arithmetic (whether it's wrong or not) informs how the calculus problem will be (what digits are used and whether it's wrong or not or whether there are multiple answers). — Shwah

I doubt any of this plays a role in the atheism versus theism debate in general, regardless of any epistemological implications of some beliefs.