/lit/ - Literature

Waiting for political, biological and technological advancements so it can have a say in the ethical ramifications.

Watchin' the game. Havin' a Bud.

>>3584962
occuring in people whos sole purpose isn't writiing shit for money

>What's philosophy doing nowadays?

Enjoying it's retirement in the French Riviera.

>>3584962
Debating feminism,religion,chillin' out in the church of satan and writing self help books.
Right?

>>3584970
True, true.

Don't worry, philosophy is dying. It won't be long until science erases it

>>3584969
It'll be a ball when the clones start rolling out.
>Does this person, indistinguishable in virtually every manner possible from non-clones, have a human soul?
Star wars seemed to think not.

>>3585071
We'll finally have to realise there is no magic essence. Trans-Buddhism is coming.

>>3585332
>>3585071
>>3584969
I remember reading about this Professor who talked about this in great detail. He basically said that it didn't matter if we created artificial intelligence that was indistinguishable from "real" humans because of the way we already function. We are forced to live our (current) lives under the assumption that both we and every other person is real and able to think as an independent person, because we have no way of discerning what a "real" person would do or say in any situation.

Unfortunately I can't remember his name, but it was interesting as fuck.

>>3585064

>Positivism.

>>3584962
Suffering as textual and cultural criticism.

>>3585356
>Hah, right? Philosophy of science is alive and important, just only true scientists are aware of it. Good thing there's technology for the plebs

Computational Theory of Mind
Animal Rights/Ethics
Abortion ethics
Environmental ethics
Clone ethics
Whatever Slavoj is writing about

Recovering from Wittgenstein, weathering the psychology barrage, and slumming it out in animal rights activism.

Virtual Reality is the next frontier.

Waking up shivering in it's own blood and vomit with a splitting headache, trying to remember what happened after it went to the bar with the 20th century, filled with regret, swearing that it won't happen again, wishing it never broke up with the 19th century and the Greeks, sending flowers to Schopenhauer's house, sending Socrates a text message with 'sorry sorry sorry'.

I'd say Google Glass, assuming it's popular, will be a huge philosophical problem.

I don't think the internet as a philosophical concept has been approached properly at all yet. Anyone know any good contemporary Philosophy of the Internet?

>>3584962
>What's philosophy doing nowadays?
In order to know what Phil is doing now it is crucial to have some exposition..

Phil noticed, while contemplating the beauty of a rhododendron, that he was getting big. Really big. He had tripled in size, and was shocked to find out that he was pregnant. After birthing his immaculately conceived bastard in a lukewarm birthing pool, anally, he looked down at the deformed monster and named him Si.

Si, although rather ugly, was a good child, and Phil and Si had some wonderful times together. As Si entered his teenage years he became arrogant. He demanded more allowance, he was power hungry, he started taking steroids and grew artificially larger than his ageing father.

"I want control of the estate," said Si in one of his tantrums.

Phil had seen this coming, and let Si look after Ethics and Aesthetics – a decision he knew he would regret.

Si did a terrible job. He invented mustard gas, nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, concentration camps, the electric chair, and would constantly tell his father, "It's not 'wrong'. There is no objectivity now, old man."

But still, Si still wasn't content with his new power. He started sneaking into the kitchen and slipping morphine into Phil's food.

The old man, now sedated, had no choice but to relinquish Logic, and, after a fierce wrestle on the shag carpet, even signed over temporary custody of epistemology.

Si hired a team of henchmen to start writing propaganda for him. They made textbooks, they made pamphlets, they started touring, experimenting on orphans, and Phil, now weak and frail, was powerless to stop them.

Phil now lays in bed all day, drip fed a saline solution into his weak old body, but he still lives. He knows what is going on, and one day Si will let his guard down.

>>3585691

I did my master's thesis on the ethics of sharing and downloading things illegally off the Internet.

There's a whole branch of philosophy looking at technology.

>>3585719
that was fun.

>>3585719
Nice.

>>3585719

>>3585736
How do you find that interesting enough to devote years of your life to? Such a narrow topic.

>be Dan Dennett
>subscribe to shitty philosophy periodicals in a time of philosophical moribundity
>breeze through them casually for shit related to philosophy of mind or determinism
>write critique of nagel's latest retarded libertarian reconciliation over a weekend
>don't submit it to journal
>pad it out with conversational prose and a bit of snark
>go to publisher
>let publisher's marketing department decide whether to call it FREEDOM ADAPTS or something catchy like FAME IN THE BRAIN
>sell it as comprehensible pop sci for plebeian richard dawkins freethinker bright movement /sci/ types who want to feel like they're on the cutting edge of positivist philosophy
>make infinite money
>fund coke habit

>>3585808

Not him, but the professors I've had have always advised we choose narrow topics to write about so as to explore them with more depth. Broad topics often lead to broad, shallow analyses.

right now we're just waiting for capitalism to run itself out

>>3585855
I fucking hope not. I have just had my start-up loan and grant approved.

>>3585855
I think this is true.
I've turned to ballet until capitalism self-destructs and I can finally get my linguistic theories out.

>>3585808

It has to be quite narrow. Of course I studied other subjects during my masters, just that my thesis was on that topic. I chose it because I thought it would be pretty relevant, a subject that needed more discussion and one I wasn't too sure about where I stood on it.

Everyone seemed to like the idea. The lack of writing on it was a pain though. Had to use classic theories of property and apply them to modern usage instead.

>>3585855
any day now, brother, the system must collapse

any day...

>>3585719
Do "science is evul" fags realize that they're actually more obnoxious than "science can answer errything" fags?

>>3585868
No. Probably because they're not.

>>3585876
Case in point.

>>3585859
What would those be, out of curiosity?

>>3585736

Would you be a doll and possibly post a link to that? I'd love to read it.

>>3585972

I can't at the moment, still being assessed. By did, I mean just finished.

However, I can summarise my arguments.
I look at Locke's theory of property: how you own what you labour over. There are two ways of applying this to intellectual property - both hinging upon his idea that there is a limit so there is enough property left over not to deprive others.
The first view is simple: you own what you labour over and the limit is there to prevent others being deprived. Since people are not deprived by your owning your intellectual property except general things such as themes or individual chords in songs then you have strong intellectual property rights. This would result in very strong laws against illegally downloading stuff.

The second interpretation is that property rights are necessary to allow people access to communal goods. That everything is accessible to everyone. It would be difficult to eat a communal apple because everyone would take a bite. Therefore individual property rights are necessary for individuals to be able to make use of things. In terms of intellectual property this either means that ideas are communal and you are taking a part of they're not communal and so the argument is not applicable. Either way it results in weak intellectual property rights for the creator for illegally downloading stuff is fine.

I think Locke would support the latter as a few bits of writing mentioning publishing laws of his seem to criticize people for owning ideas and stories. Continued in next post...

>>3585993

Second part is more of a Hegellian interpretation. His idea was more that property is a way of achieving personhood. That it is important for people to own items which can help externalise themselves and help them become more fully rounded people. However, one may have an item that someone else would rather have as it fits them more as a person and vice versa so there should be the ability to exchange property. I go into a bit about bartering and money which I can't quite remember at the moment but isn't too important. In the end I conclude that his idea of intellectual property would be that people should be able to profit from their own work as it means they can use funds to achieve better personhood. But at the same time, they can't sell items at a price that deprives someone else of achieving personhood through owning it. So illegal downloading is okay if the price of the item is unfair or inaccessible to you, otherwise pay.

I end with my own system which is more Kantian. I like the conclusion of the Hegellian theory but don't buy the personhood idea. I suggest more that artists, industries and publishers need the money to function and produce works - it is unfair to deprive them the ability to make money. As well as if everyone downloads them it could prevent many goods being made in the first place. But if you aren't being given a fair deal or you can't access it (the show is only shown in the UK and you're in the US: you can't access it at all in the US so you're not depriving anyone of money when accessing it illegally online anyway).

That's it. Feedback has been good, though Hegel section is a little shaky.

>>3585071
Well I guess it will shed light of the concept of a soul.

>>3585868
Science isn't evil, the people who use it for evil are. Science itself is fairly objective, it's simply used by people for good or evil.

>>3585805
Fuck yeah i want some drunken philosophy about giant robots. Flying arms, warm chest and the shenanigans are so cool when you realize their philosophical impact i would buy that.

>>3584970
wazaaaaaa

>>3585993
>>3586005

Thank you, that seems very interesting, I'd love to read the full dissertation. Best of luck!

>>3584962

Obligationally extant and largely titular for opportunists who wish to, themselves be 'philosophers' such a grandiloquently compartmentalized group of 'fine men' although it's all a microcosm of the pretense we find ourselves living in.

not shit, for the foreseeable future anyway

culture itself needs to be in a constant state of cultivation for philosophy to be useful or relevant; that's always been how it works

proof: i've been feeling so unedgy the past few days it hurts

>>3587256
>i've been feeling so unedgy the past few days it hurts

Pobrechito.

>>3587260
thanks

>>3587256
Nihilism is always relevant, though

Liberals aren't allowing people to think outside the box because of political correctness.

>>3587369
not necessarily
plus it gets pretty boring after a while

>>3587385

i.e. nazis are kept in their place

>>3585354
That's entry-level crap, a very (very) old philosophical conundrum that has been solved countless times.

>>3585719
blaming science is like blaming the gun instead of the shooter. like blaming capitalism instead of a crook. human nature and our inevitable growth isn't at fault, it's those who do evil who are the enemy's of peace and prosperity. the natural systems of spontaneous order deserve less scrutiny than the state. and since I opened up that can of worms, the state shits on everything that doesn't thrive in the presence of fecal matter. It's a blight on human advancement, in both scientific and philosophic theaters. government is a net negative.

>>3585354
It's essentially Wittgenstein's bug in the box argument.

>>3587411
once you more about the nazis i.e. things that schools refuse to teach you, you'll find out nazis weren't as bad as they were made out to be
hitler just wanted a country where everyone cared about each other and people weren't starving in the streets because they didn't have money or couldn't find jobs
one of his slogans was public need before private greed i.e. the jews who ran the banks couldn't keep fucking people over anymore
hitler wasn't an evil man, he just wanted what was best for his people and the every day person, something that the banks did not want because they would lose money in a non-selfish society

>>3587958
*learn more

>>3587958
>hitler just wanted
That brazen attempt at rationalisation.

>>3587958
even michael jackson said the history books are being manipulated
happens at one minute mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lJmQFlosUw

I just wish hitler hadn't gone full retard and attacked people. It could have been a paradise.

>>3587962
the camps were mostly for weeding out the selfish and degenerates who'd put their profits higher than others sufferings
he mostly just wanted them out of his country and the jews declared war on germany before germany declared war on them(day before kristallnacht) becasue they became a threat to their selfish banking regimes, the same banks that are fucking over the average person today
most of the people in them starved because the allies bombed the nazi's supply centers

>>3587967
>most of the people in them starved because the allies bombed the nazi's supply centers

Did a lot of the people in them get gassed due to an error in hose maintenance?

Philosophy has been listening to too much music.

>>3587967

/pol/ please go, this is a thread about philosophy, not about pseudo-history.

>>3587974
all history is pseudo-history
any good history teacher will tell you whats recorded isn't how things really happened
winner gets to write whats recorded

and if you're against evil rulers, i hope you dislike the u.s, u.n., and israel as well, becasue their leaders are severely fucking corrupted

the world would of been a much better place and actually free if germany, india, and japan had won the war

>>3587967
You're confusing public perception in Germany at the time with what the camps were for. The final solution was very much a real thing, even if it wasn't known publicly in Nazi Germany, or by the Allied forces. It's also not as if many of the Allies weren't doing or attempting to do similar things: America had the infamous Japanese camps, Winston Churchill loved his eugenics and wanted to purify Britain using forced castration. The eugenics movement in America was very strong too, and Hitler even used American eugenics laws and ideas as a template.

But just because Hitler has become the most visible person in a much wider movement doesn't mean he wasn't a dick.

>>3587976
from what i've seen he wasn't a dick and had the best interests in every free and decent human being at hand, unlike the people who won the war
nobody even talked about gassing jews until the 60s
and there wasn't even six million jews in all of europe during that time period
i don't think a few pizza ovens were being used to commit genocide

So.. philosophy is not doing anything today? Besides the abortion ethics, the ethical implications of pirating music and other ethical shit

>>3587973
Philosophy is a talk on a cereal box, religion is a smile on a dog.

>>3587979
>nobody even talked about gassing jews until the 60s
>and there wasn't even six million jews in all of europe during that time period

Troll. It's just not possible to be this dumb.

>>3587982
>implying you have undeniable evidence of 6 million jews being around in europe at that time
History is an undefinable blur.

Pro-tip: the six million scandal dates all the way back to before world war 1

>>3587979
Your obviously not European.
Because if you were, you could just go to you grandparents and ask what happened to the Jewish neighbours.
Or did the goverment also get to your grandparents?

>>3587979
>nobody even talked about gassing jews until the 60s
If you ignore all the primary evidence, and a lot of secondary, maybe. But then you're basically putting your hands over your ears and going lalalala.

>>3587980
Philosophy is all about reconciling Marx with Lacan. Or Lacan with Marx.

>>3587988
i'm not saying they weren't rounded up, but they kinda had it coming.
These are the same people who own evil as fuck hollywood and all the big banks that create bubbles and fuck people out of their money.
The same people who are commiting thier very own holocaust on palestine right now.
and it wasn't just jews who got rounded up.
it was people who put their profits above other's suffering

theres people serving life terms in prison for questioning the official story
i advise you to refer back to the picture in this other post
>>3587979

>>3588000
>These are the same people who own evil as fuck hollywood and all the big banks that create bubbles and fuck people out of their money.
So you've somehow mixed together the whole "Elder Zion" conspiracy thing with the Volk movement, huh?

>>3588000
waste of quads

>>3586044
>Science itself is fairly objective, it's simply used by people for good or evil.
>Science itself is fairly objective
>objective
>Science

>>3587967
I always wanted to know why "jews were evil", they're simple bankers. it seems to me as a propagandal attack to achieve money from who had it and restructurate the economy.

>>3587999
Go to bed Zizek.

They don't teach philosophy anymore...just the history of

>>3588107
This is why people hate Jews. Same thing they're doing now with media, they were doing then with socialism. Jews were HUGELY involved with socialist movements, Bolshevism included, and those movements tended to welcome them as a source of educated professionals with no national allegiance. Jews have always been outsiders in the countries they inhabit, they are a nation unto themselves, so they don't care about state or government, so long as it provides comfortable living arrangements for them.

Who are the 'big' philosophers of our day?

What do philosophers even do when they have a job and get payed (e.g. a professor in university) to do philosophy (outside of lectures of course)?

>>3588168
watch TV and go to the supermarket

>>3588166
> Jews were HUGELY involved with socialist movements, Bolshevism included
Can you prove it?

>>3588168
What other jobs are there besides professor for philosophy students?

>>3588177
But that's philosiphy.

>>3588176
On the eve of the February Revolution, in 1917, the Bolshevik party had about 10,000 members, of whom 364 were ethnic Jews.[9][15] Between 1917 and 1919, Jewish Bolshevik party leaders included Grigory Zinoviev, Moisei Uritsky, Lev Kamenev, Yakov Sverdlov, Grigory Sokolnikov, and Leon Trotsky. Lev Kamenev was of mixed ethnic Russian and Jewish parentage.[16][17] Trotsky was also a member (or "Narkom") of the ruling Council of People's Commissars.[18] Among the 23 Narkoms between 1923 and 1930, five were Jewish.[16] According to the 1922 party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total.[16] Jews made up 7.1% of members who had joined before October 1917.[18]

>In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a major role in the Social Democratic parties of Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Poland. Historian Enzo Traverso has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the innovative forms of Marxism associated with these Jewish socialists. These ranged from strongly cosmopolitan positions hostile to all forms of nationalism (as with Rosa Luxemburg and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky) to positions more sympathetic to cultural nationalism (as with the Austromarxists or Vladimir Medem). Again, it is probable that most of these figures would not have considered themselves to be part of an explicitly "Jewish" left, but the significant number of Jews active in diverse movements and parties "on the left" is relevant.

It's not controversial or anything. This is distinct from the Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy theories - it's just a tendency that Jews tend to have, since they're usually wealthier, more cosmopolitan, and they immigrate/move around a lot. They don't have that VATERLAND UND VOLK instinct, so they tend to intellectually gravitate toward internationalist movements, and noticeably so. Not as a strict rule though.

>>3588184
> take things that are toguether and fictionates it

>>3588168
#basedslav, obviously

>>3588191
>fictionates

You're making me side with the anti-semite.

>>3585379
>ethics
>implying anyone with an IQ of over 130 takes ethics or morals into account?

here are some of the big topics in philosophy in the english speaking world right now:

metaphysics: fundamentality and 'structure,' and how to understand them, with the hope that they will shed light on various familiar debates about composition, identity over time, and modality (basically a lot of metametaphysics)

epistemology: sources of doubt that are not traditional skepticism, like peer disagreement, irrelevant influences (e.g. your upbringing), higher-order evidence and so on. also formal epistemology is getting bigger all the time, so people are integrating bayesianism and other formal frameworks into more traditional epistemological projects

phil of mind: lots of stuff about the contents of experience and direct realism still, and the dualism/functionalism/etc. stuff never really goes away.

phil of language: epistemic modals are popular, same with de se or self-locating information, people are still refining direct reference theories and arguing about what propositions are, and there has been some interesting work recently on the nature of verbal disputes; relativism and contextualism were popular for a bit, but that might be waning

ethics: i'm not as familiar with these developments, but there has been a lot of recent work on the theory of value, in particular on incommensurable values. also a fair bit of formal work, like in epistemology (decision theory and so on). and, of course, the consequentialism/deontology epicycles continue as ever

it's a little depressing reading this thread and seeing how out of touch people are with philosophy (or the other way around)

>>3588269
>and, of course, the consequentialism/deontology epicycles continue as ever
The work on these in the last 70 or so years has blurred some of the more classical lines between the two.

genuine philosophizing has gone to shit; edgy white kids getting into the subject so to suppress their inferiority complexes and feel superior amongst their peers.
only today and today only, the greeks, scholastics and kant are shit, because they are not worthwhile enough for the modern, sophisticated and bandwagon-hopping teen; the observed urge to be up-to-date with the latest trends within philosophy is a cancerous characteristic, especially on here; >>3588235 being the prime example.

and the overvaluation of science is borderline ludicrous these days.
the sheer dumbfuckery of nasa's missions and the retards behind capital is a good one. spending all those billions of dollars to send a robot to mars in order to find whether or not the conditions on mars are suitable for sustaining life, rustles my jimmies slightly

>>3588176
Most biographies of people like Trotsky cover this phenomena somewhat. Often Jewish people would be discriminated against in law, despite the person themselves having little to no cultural or religious connection to Judaism. Religious Jews, for a large part, seem to have taken this oppression as part of their inherited heritage, that they were a people who had always been in hard times and so on, and tended to just lie there and take it.

>>3588107
That had been a component for sure. Often the Jewish bankers would be owed money by someone like a King, who legitimises their power through something other than wealth (chosen by or closeness to God), though of course wealth is important. When a King could no longer pay his debts, it was easier to simply run the Jews out of town or lynch them or whatever. It isn't until quite recently, where people worked out you could become wealthy by being at the centre of a complex web of transactions, that this was nullified: if a King decided to kill the guy, he'd soon find out that in reality he owed a lot of money to several other Kings. A lot of the conservative Jewish communities were also just considered weird.

>>3588303
> to find whether or not the conditions on mars are suitable for sustaining life, rustles my jimmies slightly
Thanks for reminding me why I hate people like you.

>>3588325
onnnno! i have awaken le 14 year old science fanatic that has trouble coming up with a coherent argument

>>3588330
>dumbfuckery of nasa's missions
>retards behind capital
Yes, your arguments are so much better.

>>3588340
you're clearly not picking up the subtext, retard
all the billions nasa has spent could be used to a much greater good on THIS planet
you're fucking delusional if you think we're going to find out the mystery behind the existence of living things or the universe for that matter, by investigating le fucking rocks on the fucking mars

>>3588340
The onus is on the sciencefag to prove the value of space exploration. I mean if you're gonna leave our home planet and lose the meaning of the earth you better have a damn good fucking reason.

>>3588269
>metaphysics: fundamentality and 'structure,' and how to understand them, with the hope that they will shed light on various familiar debates about composition, identity over time, and modality (basically a lot of metametaphysics)
I still don't understand what the fuck it does
Same goes for your whole post. It's a huge block of nothing

>>3588303
>spending all those billions of dollars to send a robot to mars in order to find whether or not the conditions on mars are suitable for sustaining life, rustles my jimmies slightly
Not understanding economics this much

>>3588401
New to this thread, but I'd like to mention that more and more it seems like the sole goal of costly programs like NASA is to create a Plan B.

Scientists are very aware that this is the only inhabitable planet we've got, and they're also very aware that something could definitely happen to it. They're more aware of this than the average bloke on the street, I mean. They're in a dire rush to create some sort of safety net.

>>3585379
Right.

>>3585680
my sides

>>3588407

that post is just a signpost, pointing out some of the most popular topics in the big philosophy journals these days. you shouldn't expect to understand the topics just from that post, since it's just identifying them, not explaining them

also, your response demonstrates how little you know about contemporary philosophy (which is not an insult, just an observation)

>>3588423
We won't be humans anymore without this planet under our feet.

>>3588401
Megastructures for energiez

>>3585680
The 20th century was more of a return to the Greeks than the 19th century.

>>3588423
>They're in a dire rush to create some sort of safety net.

And you're basing this off of what exactly?

>>3588401
>>3588370
God, I bet you guys don't even know space is made of the perfect 5th element.
>implying NASA won't find the philosophers stone
>implying you won't be crying when they turn all your base metals to gold or silver

>>3588423
It's much more about legitimising their power on the global scale. The whole plan B thing is more spin than anything, although I don't doubt many politicians take it seriously.

>>3588441
Then care to explain what philosophy's doing nowadays in common terms that I can understand?

>>3588452
I didn't mean to imply the 19th century was a lot like the Greeks, I meant to imply that the ancient Greeks and the 19th centuries are the most worthwhile eras of western philosophy.

>>3588477
What's physics doing nowadays in common terms I can understand?

>>3588465
>God, I bet you guys don't even know space is made of the perfect 5th element.

>>3588481
Helps space exploration and technology development such as computers

>>3588477

i could say something uninformative like "increasing our understanding of the world and our place in it." more detailed explanations would take too long, especially over 4chan

>>3588502
>more detailed explanations would take too long, especially over 4chan
I'll take this as a "i don't know either"

>>3588509
Not him, but why would you care about a subjective opinion? If you're ignorant and unfamiliar with the subject matter - simply read and make up your own conclusions.

>>3588509

i'll translate some of these (from the original post (>>3588269)) into questions that might be easier to understand:

metaphysics: are there objective answers to metaphysical questions, or is it all a matter of convention/language/etc.? by "metaphysical questions" i mean questions like: are there composite objects (objects that have parts), or do only simples exist?

epistemology: should discovering that our beliefs are influenced by irrelevant factors (like our culture and upbringing) reduce our confidence in those beliefs? what about when we find that we disagree with others that we regard as epistemic peers?

phil of mind: what i am immediately aware of in perceptual experience? physical objects, or mental constructs of some kind? what about in cases of hallucination? also, are mental phenomena reducible to physical phenomena?

phil of language: what are the semantic values of expressions like "might" and "I', especially when used in epistemic contexts (e.g. "it might rain today" or "I might have cancer")? can we develop a formal semantic framework that captures the complexity of natural usage? how does context affect these values?

ethics: how do i make decisions when the goods involved in those decisions are of incommensurable value? can we develop a formal framework for modeling decision making?

>>3588521
>subjective opinion
But I'm asking about philosophy's objective purpose in this day and age?

>>3588489
Even if that were true, that'd be physics from 100 years ago. What's it doing NOW?

>>3587432
If a philosophical conundrum can be solved than its not much of a philosophical conundrum.

>>3588530
>philosophy's objective purpose
what the hell
either way, it's still coming out of his mouth and therefore is bastardized and subjective

>>3588527
>are mental phenomena reducible to physical phenomena?
care to elaborate on this one? isn't the external phenomena basically the representation of your mental phenomena i.e. categorized sense perceptions merely fidgeting inside our memories?

>>3588489

>Helps...technology development such as computers

Philosophy does this too; for a recent example, look up Kripke models

>>3588550

>isn't the external phenomena basically the representation of your mental phenomena i.e. categorized sense perceptions merely fidgeting inside our memories?

i'm not sure i'm understanding your question, but it sounds like it presupposes a version of idealism, possibly kantian. is that right? if so, most contemporary philosophers (in the english speaking world) reject idealism; they think there is a material, mind-independent world and the question is whether mental activity is reducible to some kind of physical activity or not. there are exceptions of course (John Foster is a traditional idealist, and there are antirealists like Dummett, Wright, Putnam), but they are rare

>>3588567
>whether mental activity is reducible to some kind of physical activity or not.
having a hard time comprehending this one. do you have an example or something?

>John Foster is a traditional idealist, and there are antirealists like Dummett, Wright, Putnam
will look into them, thanks

>>3588596

>having a hard time comprehending this one. do you have an example or something?

the basic issue is whether mental states (like, say, feelings, emotions, consciousness and beliefs) depend on physical states (like, say, the physical and chemical state of the brain).

one way philosophers have approached the question recently is by asking whether we can conceive of physical duplicates that are not mental duplicates. that is, imagine a creature that is physically just like you (has the same brain structure, body, lives in the same environment, and so on). is it possible for that creature to lack mental activity, like consciousness? (it will, of course, behave as if it has mental activity, but that's not the issue). some philosophers think yes, which means that mental activity is something over and above physical activity, while others think no, physical duplicates are automatically mental duplicates

>>3588446
Why?

>>3588481
The problem with physics is that there is a significant lag between discovery and useful implementation of the everyday kind, with certain exceptions like graphene and whatnot.

>>3588648
First of all, you're describing technology rather than physics there. That has nothing to do with explaining what physicists are doing today. Secondly, graphene and whatnot are science from like 50 years ago. Stuff like Rawls and Nozick by that measure are contemporary philosophy.

>>3588706
>technology rather than physics there
Are you saying advances in physics are not essential to technological advancement, especially now?

>>3588779
It's nothing more than a critical framework, as far as technology and design goes. The whole reason why tech. design is iterative is because science can't determine the end product, though we can perform calculations after the design takes form to see if it "makes sense" in the physical world as we know it.

>>3585868
>>3585877
Those two posts are hardly obnoxious.

>>3585719
>Phil "lets" Si take control
>Phil was at one time important or relevant to people not Phil undergrads
Someone has some false nostalgia.

But an entertaining read. It was a clever post.

>>3588534
discoveries in science take time to be developed into technology, 100 years from now there will be technology based on the physics of today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsb3XdjbbLI

guys my professor from communicty college made a video explaining hegel. you think sci majors will help it?

>>3585691

>Google Glass
>record what you see!

I cant wait for the inevitable porn done in true POV

And the inevitable criminal recording his murders and/or rapes in true POV

it shall be glorious

"Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box."

-Emma Bunton, What I am.

>>3589035
>"Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box."
>-Emma Bunton

It's Edie Brickell, Paul Simon's wife, you giant cock.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDl3bdE3YQA

>>3589065
>you giant cock
I second that sentiment. Gotta love some New Bohemians.

philosophy is doing the same thing is has always done. which is talk about whatever the fuck it wants to talk about.

however there has been a recent trend by feminists/social justice people to criticize it more and more because its (for some reason) seen as the grandaddy of social sciences but is primarily white.
i read an article recently about how liberalism is racist because it ignores race.
what these people want to do is sociology, but they want to call it philosophy.

so now most science people and social science people hate philosophy proper.
its definitely being more and more restricted with what its able to talk about. which is kinda funny considering its supposed to be about the pursuit of truth, it seems like a giant alarm should go off when political goals get in the way of what philosophy can talk about. in the past you had to pretend to believe in the kings divine glory, i wonder what philosophers today have to hide.

>>3589153
>pursuit of truth

>>3585691

I don't know if there's any merit to exploring the internet as a philosophical concept because it doesn't really introduce anything "new" it just makes old things easier/faster to accomplish.

The internet is a communications tool akin to telephone and radar, it's not like it's its own entity or moral frontier

>>3589196

it has the capabilities for almost unlimited free speech with anonymity. it allows for scattered or disenfranchised groups of people to become the authority on their own issues, whereas before oftentimes a group could be easily misrepresented by traditional media authorities.

the internet not only does old things faster, it opens up those things to everyone.

also the internet is changing, there is a big push to destroy anonymity and make all your internet dealings one giant traceable profile.
its a big question that will shape our future world if we decide to allow for freedom, where someone can be whoever or whatever they want never being tied down and not properly traceable, or if we make online just an extension of your offline person.


personally i side with the idea that the internet allows for a new type of personhood. one where you are entirely unattached from what you do. it could be that we have multiple sides of ourselves that we want to express but not have them related to each other.

>>3588527

Reading these brief summations makes me want to educate myself on some fields of philosophy. Especially epistemology, which is something I've thought a little about before, without knowing it was a thing.

>>3589269
>Especially epistemology, which is something I've thought a little about before, without knowing it was a thing.
You must be new here

>>3589294

Nice to meet you.

>>3589294
>You must be new here
Nuh-uh. I've been here since Daniil Kharms.

>>>/sci/

>>3588612
What is the explanation for the mental activity without the physical? Magic?

>>3590241
>Magic
No, your general ignorance of philosophy is.
There's somewhere an active troll thread of neoatheism and Sam Harris, suitable just for your kind.

Philosophy today is pretty much as-advertised on this board

Namley, shit Anyone who would like to style himself a philosopher today better be a complete original, or else prepared to drink himself to death in a state of unbending mediocrity

The question, the spectre really, that haunts philosophy today is:
>WHY IS OP A FAGGOT?

>>3588166 (Dead)
>>3588184 (Dead)
why did the mod delete this useful and interesting information?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/dp/0307377903

It seems like not many people have heard of this. So to answer the question seriously, they're doing this.

Also; captcha = ygraff reading

>>3589532
But Philosphy is not science. Philosophy and other humanities are stuck here until Moot makes a board for us instead of another fucking video game and gay board.