Talk:Philosophy/Archive 13

message: One cannot go wrong, in one attempts to write a General Introduction to Philosophy make making a concerted effort not to offend the recognized masters. And these 2 names tell as that the History of Philosophy is NO ACCIDENT (don't think of Cars here, but of an Aristotealian accident).
:According, I object one beginning with all the fine words on learned in the Modern Academies we call colleges and universities. These prejudicial words include epistemology, ontology, & [ethics]]. It also belies your Western prejudice - as much as you claim that you want to include Taoism and Zoroastrianism - to show your lack thereof - prejudice that is.
:Yours, etc., taking issues Ludvikus 21:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hegel]] & [[Marx]] 

message: "Philosophy (literally 'love of wisdom') is a subject in the Western intellectual tradition that is concerned with rational inquiry into issues of knowledge (What is it to know?), being (What is?), and conduct (What is right?)."
Is it really exclusive to Western? There are millions of pieces of Eastern philosophy... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.226.67 (talk • contribs) 
--------
Some definitions of 'philosophy' by 'great thinkers'.
1.  Plato calls it "the acquisition of knowledge", ktêsis epistêmês (Euthydemus, 288 d).
2.  Aristotle says philosophy is concerned with first causes and principles" (Metaph., I, i).  (tên onomazomenên sophian peri ta procirc;ta aitia kai tas archas hupolambanousi pantes).  Note that Aristotle calls it 'wisdom' (sophos) and not 'love of wisdom'.  Similarly in the Middle Ages it was often called 'sapientia', and not 'philosophia'.  Later in the same chapter he says it is knowledge of ultimate truth, i.e. that which is the cause of all derivative truths.
3.  Seneca says it is the study of the highest virtue (Philosophia studium summae virtutis" ("Epist.", lxxxix, 7)
4.  Aquinas says philosophy is the science which considers first and universal causes, and that philosophy considers the first causes of all causes (Sapientia est scientia quae considerat causas primas et universales causas; sapientia causas primas omnium causarum considerat).  (In Metaph., I, lect. ii).  He also says that 'wisdom' and 'philosophy' mean the same.
5.  Descartes says that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom: "Philosophiae voce sapientiae studium denotamus" (Princ. philos., preface).  Like Aristotle, he defines wisdom as the knowledge of truth through its primary causes (cognitio veritatis per primas suas causas).
6.  Berkeley says it is the study of wisdom and truth" (Princ.).
7.  Kant says "Wissenschaft von den letzten Zwecken der menschlichen Vernunft", which I'm not sure how to translate.
8.  Quinton (quoted above) says it is is critical, rational, systematic thinking about three main subject areas (existence, knowledge, virtue).
None of these mention the 'love' of wisdom.  It is the study or pursuit of wisdom, where 'wisdom' is explicitly characterised as knowledge or understanding of the fundamental principles of anything.  Dbuckner 09:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Western?

message: I'm just kidding. Nevertheless, that what we're engaged in.
:We want to be inclusive, right? It's hard to describe the following scenaro without offending someone, but imagine an isolate human (I'd like to say from the "West", but that's loaded too) - let's say from the rest of humanity. Let's pick the Amazon. Imagine a tribe, with a recognizes elder, someone an anthropologist (a Western category) would say is considered wise within the community. Now since he does not speak (we assume) any known language that the rest of us do, our first problem would be to learn to translate his language. Once we have done that, its quite conceivable that we would discover that he would ingage himself (or herself - no sexism intended) philosophizing!!!
:(1) But how are we going to make the inference?
:(2) What would it mean to inform someone of his activity?
:(3) Are all others, who are not interested in his discourse anti-rational, or irrational? Does the word rational help in describing his activity? Or should we not stick to the simplest words, just to be inclusiven.
:(4) What role has Science played, if any, in stripping Philosophy of its Subject Matter?
:(5) Why is everyone (not reallly "everyone" just two I know of HERE) BLIND to the fact that the World is Viewed and Seen primarily through Western spectacles? Again, is this not a Western wikipedia? So were not the eariest philosophers the Ancient Greeks? We will get to Buddism and Confusanism later. "Philosopy" is a western word. And does not mean that the West is better than the South, or North, East. It just means that the Greeks had something special, unique, which differentiated them from their neighbors!!! Now does that mean the the Caanonites, or the Persians, or the Egyptians, or the Hittites, did not "philosophize"?
:(6) So we should begin with the Western Intellectual Tradition!!! I can imagine, as I write someone opting for Pan-semitism, and engaging in speculation about the lost Caananite civilization, saying that it way they - not Plato - who discovered the ONE - from which comes the discovery that: there is no god but God!!! Or am I addressing those who have missed the debate regarding Plato's unity/trinity: the One, the Good, and the Beautiful, which has also manifested itself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and degenerated into a movie in the United States as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly??? Or am I being here UNPHILOSOPHICAL because my subject matter violate RATIONALITY? So Hegel was not a philosopher either, right? Too irrational?
Yours truly, --Ludvikus 21:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please, my fellow philosophers, excuse the typos I had no time to correct Ludvikus 21:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  But evidently, I cannot be a philosopher. For I am a Canadian, I was born in 1982, and I don't much like Plato. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 03:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Metaphilosophy]]

message: One user want's to bring in the term Academic to qualify philosophy in the opening sentence.
Here is the right way, in my opinion, to do it.
     Philosophy is an occupation, or profession,
     practiced as such in most modern countries,
     by the teaching of a specified curriculum,
     by faculty members at a school, college, or university.
     The instructor is often designated a professor
     and is often a writer of published books
     or articles in recognized scholarly journals in the field.
And by the way, that's what Plato was in his Academy. Yours truly, --Ludvikus 17:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academic Philosophy, or in Academia 

message: The Stoics (q.v. Stoicism) divided logic into rhetoric and dialectic,
     so that from the time of Stoic ascendency until the close of the Middle Ages
     dialectic was assimilated to the discipline of logic, and formed part of the trivium
     of the Liberal Arts.
          - Dictionary of Philosophy & Religion by W.L.Reese, p. 129
For "what are you talking about" User:Dbrucker Yours truly, --Ludvikus 18:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, that quote is evidence against your prior assertions that "dialectics" is "instead" of rationality. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 03:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Dialectic giving way to Logic]] 

message: ----
Rick! The ancient Greeks abhorred the infinite. They would not let you start with an actual infinite set, like the set of natural numbers, or the set of reals. So you would not have pi to divide in two! What you would get is the unit (one) which, by the way, is not a number, and you could take any number of times (erxcept an infinite number), and you would apply the basic operations to such sums, products, subtractions, divisions, any number of times.
:What did the Pythagoreans discover in the irrationality of the square-root of two? And by the, pi's irrationality was discovered much later.
:What shocks me incredibly is the failure to recognize the connection among rationality , ratio, the Pythagoreans, and why Arithmetic gave way to (or was assimilated into) the other mathematical science - Geometry by the ancient Greeks. --Ludvikus 20:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: An Aside on Pi and Infinity

message: Here's another, I think, powerful argument against the use of reason in the opening.
:We all appear to be passionately interested in philosophy.
:And likely at least some of us think of ourselves as philosophers.
:Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the predicament of thinking the other as unreasonable.
:Ben, honestly, don't you believe that I'm being unreasonable here?
:Now what do you think I think of your argument? Do you think I think you are reasonable, or not?
:It it precisely because of such impasses that I find the term useless and want it dropped.
::It seems like character, rather that reason, determines one's point of view. And we cannot do anything about the characters which we encounter, nor can we hope to make much progress through argumentation. It has been my experience that quite the contrary holds to what one would expect. I have often been extremely disappointed by the failure of my REASONED arguments to pursuade my adversary. The result of that experience is my conclusion that people's views are significantly not swayed by so-called reasoned argumentations. Again, here we have a case in point - the debate over whether or not philosophy is a reasoned inquiry. I give you Marx (not that it's my view): Philosophy reflects Class Interests. And I give you Freud: Ben, how much of your position is determined by your 'Unconscious - or mine for that matter? --Ludvikus 19:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've already answered this question. When you refuse to engage in cooperative discussion, you are being unreasonable. However, to the extent that you form a conclusion which you take to be supported by premises, you are being reasonable. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 23:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whose Unreasonable Here? 

message: Let's agree on what's most agreeable - regarding the openning paragraph.
*Western  should link to Western world (it currently links to the disambiguation page).
*knowledge should be changed to the more inclusive - and less pretenscious - knowing.
*rational shall be dropped as an adjective qualifying inquiry.
*We all agree, right?
Yours truly, --Ludvikus 17:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 17:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No to what, Ben? --Ludvikus 17:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Two and three. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 17:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: In what sense is "knowing" (which I've never seen used in this way outside of an academic context) less pretensious than the perfectly standard word "knowledge"? VoluntarySlave 10:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Western world]]  & [[knowing]] 

message: *I've been asked to be brief (as if it'll help).
*Trivial: Philosophy is rational inquiry. Retort: Every inquiry is rational.
*Controversial: Ben & Dbuckner are irrational here. Retort: No, you are (meaning me).
**Did I make my point briefly? Yes, but too brief to pursuade irrationalist!
:Yours truly, --Ludvikus 22:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Darmok and Gilaad at Tinagara. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 02:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivial or Controvesial

message: When the word philosophy was first used by the Greeks, it meant simply the search for knowledge or science. 
Soon after, through the influence of Socrates, Plato, and later, Aristotle, it took on the additional meaning of the search for wisdom or the best life."
A specific sense of the word first meets us in Plato, who defines the philosopher as one who apprehends the essence or reality of things in opposition to the man who dwells in appearance and the shows of sense.
Logic, ethics, and physics, psychology, theory of knowledge, and metaphysics are all fused together by Plato in a semi-religious synthesis. It is not till we come to Aristotle that we find a demarcation of the different philosophic disciplines corresponding, in the main, to that still current.
So Aristotle separates philosophy into disciplines but each discipline is ultimately trying to do the same thing: apprehend the essence or reality of things. Right? Zhang Guo Lao 02:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That would take argument. Most people wouldn't agree that ethics is about apprehending the fundamental reality of things. Plato (and all other forms of transcendental realism) would, but they're a minority position. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 03:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ?

message: The large photo doesnt belong at the top of the article. Please remove. -Ste|vertigo 05:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove the photo 

message: 1.  Rick:On the feminist philosophy, even Wikipedia maintains in Feminist philosophy that feminist philosophy attempts to use the methods of philosophy.  And the philosophical method, as the citations show, involves rational, critical and more or less systematic investigation.  Ludvikus has already made that point for me.  In addition, it seems insulting to suggest that feminist philosophy couldn't possibly be rational.  What actually did you mean there?
2. Rick: "If this article is to claim that all philosophy is rational, it is not enough to show that some philosophy is rational".  I wasn't showing that some philosophy is rational.  I was showing that some philosophers say that philosophy is rational.  E.g. Quinton: "philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world …"  Do you see the difference?  
3.  Ludvikus, on whether the definition of 'enquiry' includes 'rational'.  I've already replied to this above.  No it doesn't.  To 'enquire' means to ask.  An 'enquiry' is thus the process of asking something.  Thus can be done in a rational and methodical way, or not.  An 'inquiry' (note the spelling) means an official investigation of something, as in a government inquiry.  Since the purpose of these is often to 'prove' the official line (note my scare quotes) these are not always rational.  
4.  On Aristotle, he defines philosophy as the investigation of first causes and fundamental reasons.  That is in the metaphysics.  I don't know about the ethics.  I'll take a look.
5.  On Kant, there is a difference between using reason to establish the limits of reason, and not using reason at all.  What does Kant actually say here?  
6.  "When the word philosophy was first used by the Greeks, it meant simply the search for knowledge or science".  Which Greeks?  Aristotle simply says that philosophy = wisdom, and then defines wisdom as knowledge of the fundamental reasons behind anything.  I've just located a Greek copy of the Metaphysics, so I'll search through to see what actual words he uses.  Dbuckner 08:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Here is a link to the Perseus site which gives the English of the Metaphysics in parallel with the Greek.  Then you can see exactly what Greek word Aristotle uses.  For example, you can see what word he uses for the 'irrationality' of the diagonal of the square.  Regarding philosophy, he has two words.  One is literally 'lover of wisdom' and 'loving wisdom' (philosopher and philosophising), which he uses to describe the early philosophers and what they did.  The other is just plain 'wisdom', which he defines as knowledge of first principles.  I think anyone who is going to argue about this should at least read chapter 1.  Dbuckner 09:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Replies 

message: The current page (9th Jan 2006) is a locked version that occurred at an arbitrary moment in the development of this page.  At that time, a number of proposed intros were being discussed  here. I restore this discussion as it had been archived in my absence on New Years eve.  Feel free to comment on the below intros but please be brief and to the point, long pastings of dictionary entries and discussion unrelated to that intro would be better avoided. 
To propose another intro add another subsection (ie, with ===) below.
Note, also that the first main section of the arbitrary locked article, "Philosophy in Historical Context", was not in any of the previous versions.  And was a part only of one of the competing intros (D).  So, should we elect by concensus a mixed or different intro this section would also need to be altered or reverted to the first main section previously there, "Branches of Philosophy".
Some guidlines for intros, it should neither be too short nor overly long, about a page or less.  Guidelines suggest starting with "Philosophy is...".  Since there have been so many philosophers and philosophy books, encylopedias etc. don't assume that just because you have a referenced source that it is uncontestable.
: I don't understand why the following are presented as mutually exclusive. Philosophy is all of these things. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 15:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've moved all 10 A4 pages of this into a special archive.  Please don't put material like this on the current talk page, as it's too lengthy, disrupts the flow, and it is confusing when backdated comments appear on a current talk page.  Thanks. Also, why on earth would anyone want to discuss these 4 definitions.  They are very poorly written.  What we should be doing is discussing the definition point by point, numbering each possible section and refining the wording of each.  Point 1 was how much should be said about the etymology.  Point 2 was about whether words like 'rational' 'methodical' 'critical' should characterise the methodology.  Every other authoritative reference source says they should. Everyone in Wikipedia says they shouldn't, mostly.  What makes Wikipedia different?  Is it that the editors here are much better philosophers, or more authoritative?  How do we decide?  Dbuckner 16:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction, Consensus forum for choosing our intro