Philosophy...

[buschmaster]

...

[burning bridges]

...What's the fucking point? Who benefits from it and how?

What impact has philosophy had on us?

The major tenets of Western civilization are for the most part developments stemming from what some random dude named Plato was thinking about a couple thousand years ago. More specifically, what he developed from his conclusions about another Socrates fellow.

How different do you think our world would be if Buddha and the Nazarene kept to themselves?

Philosophy, for me, is the creation and reevaluation of values. Values that, if taken up by the herd, can have long-lasting impacts on society and human relationships in general.

[Trolldor]

Aristotle's thought halted Scientific progress for centuries.
Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

[burning bridges]

Aristotle's thought halted Scientific progress for centuries.
Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

Philosophy has engendered scientific progress. Scientific progress, for most of history, was fueled by the pursuit for the "thing-in-itself", Absolue Truth, Pure Logic, the real world as opposed to the apparent world, the nature of God - these ideals constructed by values claimed by philosophers over the centuries.

Today, we are honest enough to know we are dealing with empricial reality and not the realm of some metaphysical ideal. But philosophy was certainly influential with this development, starting from the very beginning with the Socrates/Plato value formulation that rationality = truth = virtue.

[Trolldor]

The very beginning was Socrates and Plato?

...uh-huh.

[Hermit]

Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

Epistemology is a huge branch of philosophy, and a branch of that is empiricism.

Also, skeptics would not be amused by your somewhat sweeping assertion.

[Trolldor]

Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

Epistemology is a huge branch of philosophy, and a branch of that is empiricism.

Also, skeptics would not be amused by your somewhat sweeping assertion.

Yes, well I suppose I could expand.
As one comes closer to the Aristotalian thought, is based on 'common sense' or 'what seems reasonable'.
The philosophy of Ancient China was centred around the idea that the past held answers for every problem the future might present, and then the dam ruptured and they were at a complete loss because there was no precedent.
Post-modernism is a branch of philosophy which rejects the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and asserts that nothing is 'knowable', that technology and science are worthless.

A great deal of philosophy (at least that I have encountered), like the past, is an example of what not to do and what not to follow, rather than a system by which we might better comprehend the future.

[Hermit]

Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

Epistemology is a huge branch of philosophy, and a branch of that is empiricism.

Also, skeptics would not be amused by your somewhat sweeping assertion.

Yes, well I suppose I could expand.
As one comes closer to the Aristotalian thought, is based on 'common sense' or 'what seems reasonable'.
The philosophy of Ancient China was centred around the idea that the past held answers for every problem the future might present, and then the dam ruptured and they were at a complete loss because there was no precedent.
Post-modernism is a branch of philosophy which rejects the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and asserts that nothing is 'knowable', that technology and science are worthless.

A great deal of philosophy (at least that I have encountered), like the past, is an example of what not to do and what not to follow, rather than a system by which we might better comprehend the future.

I agree with you, in so far as I understand you as saying that great swathes of philosophical thought are a crock of shit. That would not extend, though, to concluding that "Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to".

[Trolldor]

Yes, well, it was a badly phrased line, hence the rather extensive expansion.

[JOZeldenrust]

Aristotle's thought halted Scientific progress for centuries.
Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

He also reintroduced empiricism into western Europe in the twelfth century. The rediscovery of Aristotle's work made the renaissance possible.

Plato had a much more stifling effect on western thought.

[JOZeldenrust]

Philosophy is a lesson on what not to listen to.

Epistemology is a huge branch of philosophy, and a branch of that is empiricism.

Also, skeptics would not be amused by your somewhat sweeping assertion.

Yes, well I suppose I could expand.
As one comes closer to the Aristotalian thought, is based on 'common sense' or 'what seems reasonable'.

This sentence is incoherent.

The philosophy of Ancient China was centred around the idea that the past held answers for every problem the future might present, and then the dam ruptured and they were at a complete loss because there was no precedent.

An important part of Chinese philosophy is also that perspective is important in problem solving and, by extension, when forming value judgements. In a way, they discovered the foundation of modern economic theory, and why the labor theory of value doesn't work, in 400 b.c.e.

Post-modernism is a branch of philosophy which rejects the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and asserts that nothing is 'knowable', that technology and science are worthless.

Post-modernist philosophers make neither that rejection nor that assertion. They pose questions, centering around criticism of scientific realism. One of the main criticisms the post-modernists make is that scientific theories are narrative constructs, but stories aren't physical, so scientific realism requires the supernatural (strictly speaking the superphysical) to be true.
Post-modernism also points out some of the problems that keeping normative claims out of science causes.

A great deal of philosophy (at least that I have encountered), like the past, is an example of what not to do and what not to follow, rather than a system by which we might better comprehend the future.

So philosophy changes over time. You can't expect one philosophical school to get it all right. Look at what questions they posed, what reasoning employed by their predecessors they criticized, and the answers they proposed, then look at the weaknesses in their own argument, how those weaknesses have been criticized by later schools, etc.

[FBM]

Aristotle may have gotten a lot of things wrong, but he was the first 'scientist', in a sense. At least he didn't wank around with invisible and imaginary 'forms' that gave fuel to the religious whack-jobs. Plato also did some good stuff, as did the pre-socratics. Without the contributions of philosophers, we wouldn't have the scientific method. Granted, without the works of philosophers, we wouldn't have the likes of post-modern deconstructionism, either. But waddaya gonna do?

[Coito ergo sum]

...What's the fucking point? Who benefits from it and how?

Read the Socratic Dialogues, esp. Apology, Crito, Phaedo and my personal favorite, Euthyphro. http://books.google.com/books?id=6hJao5 ... &q&f=false

Or, Alciphron: http://books.google.com/books?id=jx3TQ5 ... &q&f=false

Or, the speeches of Robert Ingersoll, like "Some Mistakes of Moses." http://books.google.com/books?id=A2XMc3 ... &q&f=false

We all benefit from philosophy, IF we read what they wrote. Reading these works broadens the mind, and sparks our own thinking on philosophical issues, and allows us to think and relate more deeply to issues of morality, justice, knowledge, reality, physics, metaphysics, and the like.

The unexamined life is not worth living, and philosophy is that examination.

[Hermit]

Aristotle may have gotten a lot of things wrong, but he was the first 'scientist', in a sense.

There is a fragment by one of the pre-Socratics describing an experiment proving that air is not a vacuum. It involved dipping a cup upside down into water and noticing that the air is not displaced by water. The logic behind the observation was that if air was insubstantial, water would have had no problem filling the cup, even though it was upside down. That may be the first scientific experiment in the western world of which a record survives.

I cannot remember which pre-Socratic it was, nor can I find the relevant fragment now. If someone can find it for me, I'll very much appreciate it.

[Coito ergo sum]

Regarding postmodernism, pick up Fashionable Nonsense by Sokol and Bricmont.