I have a philosophy degree. AMA.
I'll check back about every 10 min for an hour or two, and I'll answer any question even if it's retarded. You can ask me about a philosophical idea/topic, ask me what I've read or believe, or ask me about my life or something.
No samefagging.
Whos your favorite philosopher? Mine's probably Neitzche or Kant
I'll bump this shit for maybe 20min and then just let it die
Whats your concept of consciousness and do you believe in an afterlife?
Why didn't you pursue a worthwhile degree?
What if you spent your life studying stoners pillow talk?
Kek
Lol "muh degree"
It is difficult to pick a favorite when many good philosophers had limitations, often from the limited knowledge of the times. Also, many very, very good schools of thought had philosophers with no or no surviving literature. Still, of the ones that survive with a good collection of recognizability and published works, I would rank (in no particular order) Kant, Aristotle, Leibniz, Russell, Berekley, Locke, Quine, and Aurelius as some of the best.
How you earn money?
what do you hope to accomplish from this ama?
I dont care because my desire is to have no desire.
Why am I mad all the time
I'll start with the easier one first. There is no reason to believe in an afterlife. It is a product of the human mind that we reason ourselves as temporary, existing as good, and hope we could perceive forever.
When we can explain something without having to create an unnecessary thing, it's called being parsimonious, or having few parts. There's a lot of good literature on how this makes for good empiricism that I'd encourage you to explore. We don't need to ascribe anything as permanently in the same state as it has never been proven, and when the best argument for it is something like 'you wont know til you die'. No, there is no afterlife, we need to accept it, realize what we can change, recognize the impermanence of everything, and realize we are all that we have. Fellow animals. No permanent souls.
Why didnt you study something useful, or can you make a good living out of it? Did you study this just to become a teacher for philosophie just like in egyptiology?
>I have a philosophy degree
What's it like still living with your parents?
For the consciousness: there has been a lot of good work done on this already that can be summed up better than I can, but I'll try. Firstly, it's important to study the neurobiology and even psychology of a conscious being to see how it may arrive. In a simplistic sense, one can "sum up", or take an overhead view on a thing by having it "ready to hand" or "present to mind". When one can associate these things as objects in their mind (i.e. things expressable as nouns) we make it into a sort of holdable thing. So, one is not only perceiving, but aware of things like their senses the limitation of the extension of their body in space, and aware that they can think of one thing or another. They've made themselves, in a very stripped down sense, an object. This might be some form of consciousness, or maybe just conscious awareness. Another conscious is simply having perceptions linked to an originally formed net of neurons, and these organize into a perceiving being through the constant reiteration of their design by evolution/reproduction, eventually leading to a "wider net" of neurons that don't just perceive, but analyze what is perceived. Add enough layers, and the neurological setup is aware of itself. In our degree, it's being able to know and say who we are, how we think, where we are, what we feel, etc. To a dog, it's might just be knowing you can have some small list of perceptible stimuli. A spectrum of awareness. There's really more, but I'll wait for a reply and look at more questions for now.
It's sad that there's been this massive commodification of education that leads to mindsets like this. This person likely couldn't even define and defend what they mean when they say "worthwhile", and the priorities in their life lead to dead or hollow ends. Either way, I'll answer honestly.
I was originally a biology and chemistry focused person with plans to be either a neuro or a heart surgeon, but when I was introduced to a course called Theory of Knowledge, my love for philosophy sparked. I wanted to understand more regarding human science, inquisition, famous intellectual mind schemas, unifying theories, and defining unanswerable questions. I chose the degree because I wanted rigor on something that was challenging, provoking, utilizable, and didn't give a shit if manlets who knew nothing about it thought it was pointless.
I know this is a Philosophy Thread and that's kind of the answer I would have expected and Time for a sanctimonious rant, ready? ok.
That just hurts to think about. People go after the afterlife because of the way it's used to control people, fearing eternal judgement. But what about the people whos lives are cut short? what about the people who lived in nothing but misery. What about them your just gonna offer a soulless dissection of what you think the mechanics of your chemical fat sack in your head. That their gonna lead short brutal lives then be cast off into the void?
That's a comforting thought to the people who can lead fufilling lives, a warning to make every moment count but that's so hollow in the ears of people who need real comfort when there is absolutely nothing for them in their lives. That maybe just maybe when they finally go to sleep for the last time there will be waiting somebody who gives a shit about them
I recognize real inquiry as different from "what if" babble. But I guess philosopher mathematicians and scientists were just stoners so idk.
Checkem
HOLY POST IS HOLY.
3 IS THE GOLDEN NUMBER.
BASED CHECKKEMMM
Where do we go when we fall asleep?
All ideas and beliefs are equally untrue including the following: Mental and physical are the same. The sculptor lasers his consciousness onto a stone with a tool and now his awareness/consciousness lives in that stone. You create the roads you drive on because you have eyeballs but you dont have eyeballs unless you have awareness to know you have eyeballs. Basically this is real and not real at the same time and thats where all suffering comes from
Having a Bachelors in philosophy means nothing. The only advice I have to you (if you wish to continue doing philosophy) is to find something else unless you can get into a top ten in the world PhD program.
Is homosexuality nature or nurture?
Do you believe Jesus was a real man or a personification of the Sun?
The world is harsh, and much like a nature show. That gazelle offspring that survived 2 weeks before being eaten by a hyena gang had little purpose in your summation of life value, but we just have to accept that we live in a reality that is fundamentally like that. We will cause more pain to ourselves by trying to lash out against it, and by telling us pretty little falsified that we think might bring us comfort if we could just, maybe, delude ourselves into believing it.
I think we always need to see our life from the star to finish, and plan accordingly. When we try to take the things that make the most sense and apply them, we find there is a lot of truth in this world we can explore, and a lot of people around us made nearly the same that we can share so many experiences and qualities with. It's horrid to just play the escapist route. Disregarding the uglier reality around us to favor this permanent, pretty picture we've made as this human paradise. We have each other, and ourselves. Becoming comfortable with that in the battle of mortality is the best strategy.
Next, modern physical theories do not all agree on some of the smaller details of material existence. In some, the 'reincarnation' of previously animate and conscious matter may become conscious and aware after a long time and a much different representation. While you would have no memory of this in a different form, it's interesting to think that we all come from this basic 'unit' of stuff that can be parsed, molded, shaped, shuffled, and made into such complex things. I feel there is more to say on this topic if existential dread, but as far as afterlife I believe it summed.
Are the Ancient Greeks still relevant today?
I was an auditor in college, soon I'm going to be a working as some sort of machine learning data scientist after I'm done practicing and finalizing my projects by the end of this year. I also like to invest. I mostly trade options on Robinhood now.
I'd like for some people to find something interesting, maybe change a mind, comfort a person, inspire someone, and generally see how people react to this.
Probably frustration, so you're annoyed that some goal you kind of wanted is not really progressing, instead you're stagnating.
No jesus was interpretation from shrooms near Jerusalem or some shit. Look up christianty psilocybin origin
You can refer to a previous answer of mine, but I studied it to improve the way I process information, make conclusions, and open my mind to alternative ways of seeing many inquiries. I did not do it strictly for employment, but I did find much of what I learned applicable to challenges in the workforce. I can make a good living out of it, yes, but it takes more than JUST the degree to do that.
Into practice mode or some shit. Helps you process stuff. Whatever man.
Noice
>This person likely couldn't even define and defend what they mean when they say "worthwhile"
Maybe not, but at least I can earn a living.
>>worthwhile
>>earn a living
There you go
Look, I want to follow you, but you have to know that the limitations of metaphor philosophy are vague, loose-fitting concepts with a lot of suggestive filler in, kinda like horoscopes and psychics. That being said I'll try to parse and address your topic.
You're giving some sort of philosophical skeptic argument. Firstly, you abandon the right to say anything has truth value (aka argue) when you say no idea or belief has truth value. Second, there is an outer world around us that can verify truth values in things like preopositional/logical/existential claims. If you can double blind placebo something and it's replicable, that damn thing was observed because there truly is something in reality making that happen. It doesn't matter that we have to create mental infrastructure in order to process it.
I dont need nor care about your advice or definitions of meaning.
It's mostly nature but occasionally nurture as well. Depends sometimes on how you define nature/nurture. Hormone flooding during certain fetal dev stages is high associated with homosexuality, but is it a "natural" thing, or an environment variable? Kind of feels like both.
Right answer
Thoughts on suicide? Go all the way or as much as you care for. Also, no samefagging? Does this mean one question per person?
Real person, no miracles. Not sure if you're serious.
This dude aint even heard of Munchausens trilemma. Must have a bachelors lul
did your course of study include the wacky existentialists? mine doesn't. they leave it as something to explore after a BA, much like computer science students are not taught C++ because if you manage C and object oriented, you can handle learning the bullshit linking of C++ on your own. it's probably a fucking pain to teach too. i'm dual CS and philosophy and need like one more philosophy course and the stupid 4th semester foreign language and i finish at least that.
What has been your experience with psychedelics?
any interesting reads for a complete ignorant on the subject? a little context: ive been struggling with some problems, started a therapy recently and honestly cant get my shit together lately. was wondering if there are some books on "how to live properly" so to speak.
how to live properly?
"plato - republic". he had it all hundreds of years before "jesus".
tell me what you think bout islam
it also teaches you all about "vices". it's the perfect guide to life.
Samefagging is impersonating a different person when you're really the same person, and I realize I misused it when I really meant try to keep it civil by not giving an answer trying to look like mine.
There's a lot of ways to approach suicide, and I really should have asked people to be a little more specific on their questions because saying "thoughts on" would need me to do a sweeping overview of all the approaches when I'd rather speak more exactly. I'll just kind of rapid fire. It shouldn't be illegal to commit suicide, it's within a person's autonomy and it may actually prevent a lot of future, impending suffering. But I'd say that many are not like that, instead preventable and unnecessary. It's a uniquely human thing to commut consciouly aware suicide. I think suicide's prevalence in society is a reflection of its sickness. Our lifestyles are so far distant from what we've evolved on, so the sedentary, indoor, socially-isolated habits drive us to do these things. I think the social isolation should really be highlighted. School, work, and personal entertainment really trashed the collaboration that we all should have, that has made human society so powerful. Antidepressants are generally a dumb response to depressive suicidal thoughts. Lmk.
what are your thoughts on descartes' dreaming argument
thanks user, ill look into it
you seem very preoccupied with asserting your beliefs to others as if you need some validation by changing their mind
let me ask you, what did your father do for a living
How will you get through your shift at McDonald’s without necking yourself?
Pyrrhonian skepticism was great, thought-provoking, and very structured/methodical, but ultimately self-defeating and wrong in it's claim that "points of departure" as the initial premise for a deduction are all worthless due to either circularity or an unjustifiable sub-argument. Also, if you need to rely on feeling superior through referencing philosophical jargon instead of explicating an argument you're a special kind of person.
>I have a philosophy degree. AMA
Do your fellow fast food workers enjoy listening to you was philosophical while you cook the fries? Or do they tell you to stay?
Philosophy - 2500 years and not one problem solved. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find 2 "philosophers" who can agree on what a correct answer is. Kek.
My degree was very personalizable, with the main honchos as standards and many further explorations/subtopics the main content, but separable into what philosophical study you wanted. I could have taken more on common existentialists, but settled for relevant excerpts and personal reading. I think there's a lot to unpack in existentialism, and it's going to be highly relevant to the social and personal struggles of an evermore secular modern man. Furthermore, since existentialism is simply a field and not a school of thought, there are many bright minds claiming opposing truths, so if you find one field wacky you might find another very sensible. Still, it's not something everyone's into, some can simply accept existential issues very easily and not really want to delve more into it, and there are really a lot of other subjects to cover.
>was
*wax
I've used acid and shrooms. They can be useful if you can dose it properly and create the right scenario, but most people don't and what could have been productive is either wasteful, temporary, or minimal. I think it can be useful to have a new stimulating pathway to think about information, to process patterns better, and often to examine things in the macro.
hello , question: if i were to find a inter-dimensional portal to the past , what are the odds if i stuck my penis through it would end up in your moms mouth....
What's the final course for the philosophy BA? For example, history writes a research paper. Did you have to do that? A capstone?
Epistemology is interesting as fuck. I'm writing my MA thesis on epistemic shifts and historiography.
Hello I just got to your question, so this is my answer not that the other user is wrong by recommending plato. Without knowing what you think philosophy is and what you want out of it (which I really should to give you a good rec) I'd point you first to Marcus Aurelius meditations. Generally, a good mix of moral and existential philosophy is done there, but remember that translation is difficult to do for those old texts and you may find a few things irrelevant. You should also read it slowly, generally for most philosophy. It's also fine to look at the overviews and other writings about the writing if you need interpretation, dont feel compelled to read the source material if it's not ringing with you. I'd also recommend Aristotle over Plato. Look into Rule consequentialist with Hooker and other, newer thinkers. Read Russell and Chomsky to see if you like them.
What do you think of Nick Land?
Good use of rhetoric in order to define a pseudo-opposition's position as dismissable.
Why is OP always a faggot?
Are we our thoughts or our actions?
A lot of religions are dumb when literally interpreted. Islam happens to be a religion where the native region is really environmentally and socially fucked, so it gets a particularly bad rap. Usually extremists are just interpreting the Quran wrong, though.
It's spelled Chompsky, retard.
Fucking pleb
Because eventually the 'physical vessel' grows too attached and needs to be recycled, the memory of the soul/consciousness/experiencer within that physical vessel however can occupy more than 'one' vessel.
BOOM! 26 DAUGHTERS OF TIME - 1 FOR THAT FUCKING LETTER J!
COME HOME BITCHES! 25 IS MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR DAAAADDDY!
>etc. etc.
whats wrong with my isp?
Have you ever raped a woman?
I have a presentation on monday and it would be good to hear someone else’s opinion. Why do you think “politics” is hard to define and conceptualize? The books i read are basically saying that it’s because the perception of the concept changed wildly in history and that a uniform definition can’t be formed today without pissing everyone off. Do you have a hot take that maybe i can include for bonus points?
The whole point of the Mediations on FP was to dispel the philosophical skepticism that had revived because of the revival of Greek literature, particularly the phyrrhonians and the academic skeptics. The dreaming argument was just to get the place of full discarding of anything where a shred of doubt could be produced, even if the argument was trash or weak. Descartes and I share the same hatred of arguments of the form "how could you know _ if you couldn't know _", and that's probably about where we stop because I want to throw up after I read anything after the second meditation.
thanks for your input. ill give those a go.
If I cant change their mind I accept it, but if they come to me to discuss something I'll assume they will want to and will do so on fair terms of argument/inquiry. I don't really think your assertion is right that I need the validation, and frankly you should probably give up psychological reads on user image boards. This is something fun I wanted to do for a few weeks, I had time tonight, so I did it. What would I be validating here, my beliefs? So explaining my beliefs to strangers is me validating myself? If you all argued against me, I'd feel the same way than if you were supporting or doing nothing. Anyway, my father was a teacher.
I was a waiter in high school. That was my last experience with food service. Not really sure what you're trying to do.
Says the link is invalid. Also, I'm not done with all the questions
K so that wasnt me, but you're kind of missing the point of what the guy said you twat. You basically equated meaning with earning a living by saying at least I can earn a living. If you dont see that you're a special kind of special. Don't reply on an image of a fallacy (which you brought up in an improper context) to act as a crutch for your arg/statememt.
It's written on some tablet or something
Thought is an action as well, but not all actions are what you might define as a thought. Either way, we're a mushy vertebrate with a sensory system that has thoughts and produces sorts of actions.
Jesus Christ. You like to hide behind three and four syllable words dont ya? Allow me to reply in the needlessly articulate fashion from which you can not seem to deviate lest you show how bereft of substance your statements here have been. Just kidding.
Arbitrary axioms and their relation to truth values as you call them are not to be hand waved as you have done. Critiques of logic have merit. Frankly, you reek of scientism and materialistic empiricism and seem to be speaking as if those positions are decidedly true. Im honestly tempted to call you a sophist. And since you levied the claim against me, I am going to remind you that you started a thread to answer peoples questions as if you had meaningful answers to give. I suspect you are in need of feeling superior.
I'm not sure what you're talking about
They are making you pay for a service taxpayers funded and basically rape you because you have no other option to get that sweet low ping high mbps
No, but I did date this chick that loved to be choked and totally dominated so it sometimes felt almost like it I guess.
There's a good excerpt from Aristotle about political science being the most invasive science (and we mean science a little differently here). You should try to get some information from that, it's rich. Off the top of my head I'd define it as a sort of normative regulation on potential human action, defining permissibility and truthful consequence of our interactions and personal actions, and on what metric that is to be measured by. To be honest with you, I wouldn't say that it's hard to define the field without pissing people off, rather to say the right conclusions would piss one group or another off, and extracting the universals, so to speak, within political philosophy has led to vastly different political systems.
I think Spinoza had the theory for 'everything'. Even Einstein said something along those lines. What do you think?
Politics is a form of rhetoric in which the speaker advocates what he perceives to be in his own interest. Most of the difficulty of defining it arises from the frailty of perception, or from the error of subordinating the aesthetic to the political: When a regime is nightmarish, the leaders of it are only slightly less blind than their followers.
Okay, first of all dont you be callin' me no sophist because that would kind of go against your whole premise that I'm a person who claims that universals exist, or that there exist some set of true propositions. They clearly didn't.
What is your point again? I'm not sure if you're arguing that axioms are determined arbitrarily, because I dont disagree, they are made to be recursive and create a system that operates on general equilibrium. Many things do that, in fact that would basically be the appeal to symmetry that physics makes. Where I depart is from subsequent propositions that I'm assuming are what you intend to bring up by citing what you cited. Some form of phyrronian skepticism. Would you not see the folly in trying to propose that since axioms are determined arbitrarily (or similarly that any deduction requires a point of departure), that then we can not extract information from them? That's the whole point of a system under general eq, it still has extractable information that it makes in the relations of its components.
Now stop being a cunt let's just talk
So I'm not sure if you're talking about the unifying physical theory or more like Spinozas claim that god was everything, a sort of semi-conscious matter. Explain please.
Alright guys it's been about 2 hrs. I think I'm gonna see if anyone has any more replies and maybe respond to a few more then I'm going to dip. It was good talking with you all.
This is some idealistic garbage and anyone who buys it isn't going to be able to buy anything else because they'll be broke as fuck
what are your thoughts on the concept of escapism?
Fair. I am done being a cunt. I was slow to catch the nuances you are correcting making between Truth and meaningful information. I wanted to make sure. Continue to spread the good word Sup Forumsro
What does "ama" mean?
What kind of dosages were you talking and what were your experiences with them? How would you compare/differentiate the experience of acid and shrooms?