Posted on 08/22/2010 9:34:28 AM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
OK, you read that headline and assume I'm some anti-intellectual, backwoods rube, right? Don't jump to conclusions yet. I am not saying that all philosophy is foolish, pointless, or idiotic. But often times people that study philosophy end up more interested in absurd postulations mounting on an always increasing scale until they are simply babbling nonsensically -- but using big words to do it.
Take the so-called Sorites Paradox, for instance. Here is the claptrap that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lays on us to define the idea...
Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...
The heck with “heap” — how do you know when you have gone from a “passel” to a “sh!tload” to a “boatload?”
The Sorites Paradox sounds in many way similar to Alphabetic Conumberum, which in part encompasses the Sorites Paradox, but dos not sublamate it predictively or globally.
The Alphbetic Cornumdrum states that, “Heaps are like leaps, they start small and grow from creeps to leaps unless the peeps are creeps and then it’s leaps creeps heaps, go back to sleep peeps and count your sheeps”.
(Sanford, Fred division of Fillosofee)
By “everything” what do you mean?
(heh,heh)
Philosophy is very useful in determining or exploring the
limits of our languages,communications, and thoughts.
Will it provide to answer to our lives? Time (whatever that is)
will tell(if it could talk).
Life can’t be all like Larry the cable guy, “Git ‘er done”
If ten philosophers constitutes a department of philosophy, does nine? How about eight, or five or two. Perhaps one. In which case that one would walk around muttering only to himself and incomprehensible to anyone else.
The problem with these kinds of puzzles is the abject refusal on the part of the puzzlers to recognize that due to the occasional imprecision of language, in such instances we establish conventions. Hence, a ‘heap’, if it was considered important enough to be defined in common parlance, would be arbitrarily designated as x number of grains of wheat, the way we arbitrarily define a liter, or a gallon, or a meter or a yard, or a mile. Yet the philosophers too often would prefer to play games rather than admit that the problem of the vagueness of human language can sometimes have relatively simple solutions.
For the record I am a cum laude graduate with a BA in philosophy who chose not to continue to pursue a Masters or a PhD simply because it appeared that philosophy, as pursued today, merely trains a small (and shrinking) group of people to speak with a rarified language that only that small group of individuals can understand. It reminds me of the languages that twins often develop, which no one else can understand. Or worse, Wittgenstein’s private language theory wherein the words of each individual can only refer to things that person knows and thus cannot be understood by anyone else. Thus language becomes meaningless and useless for communication with others. (And IMHO, attacks on the meaningfulness of language are attacks on the existence of God. But I digress.)
Bonus: Anyone who actually reads the article will learn that ‘soros’, in Greek, means ‘heap’. Thus:
If
Soros means heap
and
a heap can also be called a pile.
Then:
Soros is a pile.
But then a lot of folk have determined that without even reading the article. ;-)
Pre school. Kindergarten. Grade school. High school. College. Teaching credential. Masters. Teaching job.
At no point is “Real World” involved in that process.
I like Thomas Reid.
Indeed. This is one of those age old mysteries. You know, one of those issues that philosophers like to mull over so deeply all the time.
I saw Neil Tyson De Grasse (curator for the NY Museum of Natural History) give a talk on “What is Science?” at the Butler University campus. After he finished some tweedy professor got up and asked him a “How do we know we exist” question. DeGrasse gave him this weird stare that lasted for 15 seconds and said “Philosophy hasn’t contributed anything to science in 200 years”.
Why not post it here?
Maybe he did and we just can't perceive it?
I can’t even tell if I really exist!
>>I can’t even tell if I really exist!<<
Let’s put it this way — if I wake up you all could be in trouble!
But OTOH the opposite could be true,
What’s the difference between a duck?
There’s a reason I quit after getting a BA in philosophy and went into corrections, followed by work in nuclear weapons effects.
Universities have become diploma mills. If a student can’t handle science, engineering or business they are “encouraged” to take some liberal arts track. Thus guaranteeing a steady income stream for the university; partying and avoidance of reality for the student. Every philosophy student I ever knew thought they were a Voltaire or Dante who, upon graduation, were confused as to why they couldn’t get an interview for a job at a college or in the private sector.
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