Well, I heavily studied the Neoplatonists and am currently working my way through Stoics so dead white guys works for me…
Not as much as dead white dragons though.
I saw a study saying that philosophy was the malest, whitest discipline there is. It’s hard to understand until you see that splintering of discussions away from “philosophy”, leaving only the white male ontology/epistemology wonks left to talk amongst themselves. It’s totally understandable, try having a discussion about the perspectives of marginalized groups in a “philosophy” class, you might as well have the conversation on twitter and put “#GamerGate” at the end of every tweet. The subject is a bit like a northern coastline:
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Hard to argue with this. In spite of that, one thing I can say in favour of studying (the history of) philosophy is that it embodies a nice bit of built-in subversion (in that if you stick with it long enough you start to see the thinking falling into the same ruts over and over again). They might not be in the majority, but philosophy departments do produce (or maybe just train) a fair number of iconoclasts.
I’m with whoever it was up-thread who mentioned a prof who loved Aristotle even though he was empirically wrong about everything (but with me it’s Kant…)
Any philosophy after the mid-19th century is useless wankery about the meaning of “is” and similar shit.
I’m a Classics nerd.
Do I talk about myself less than other people here? We argued about this around a year ago and I sent you 1-2 pages about myself as a private message. I talk a little bit about my family, my history, my daily life. But since others here don’t usually bog down every topic with pages worth of biography, I have no reason to assume that they want me to. Might that not merely communicate a self-centered attitude? Which is another reason why I don’t say much about myself - that I strive to avoid having personal problems. I actively avoid having much of a “personal life”, but I am aware that this in some ways paradoxical.
What difference might it make to you if I were in a basement typing ideas? What would be significant apart from what you think of the ideas? Everybody is “just some person”. I have explained that my outlook is egalitarian, so my opinion here should come as no surprise. I also think that publicizing ideas is a delicate balance, because in a culture based upon exploitation, media has a strong tendency to make everything about personalities rather than ideas. Like how attaching a “face” to an idea encourages more superficial visual models (like, what, 80% of the brain?) instead of deeper conceptual models involving actual relationships.
I do make stuff on my own, But where making social constructs differs is that they require participation. So, for a group, even asking more general questions such as: Why are we doing this? Should we do this? What should we do? Who should do what? How long will it take? How will we allocate resources? Who else is involved? are socially if not technically functional - because otherwise there is no project. Some generalities come first.
I can see how a forum such as this can seem as such. That can be a great thing socially. But I agree that it is not sufficient for implementing much. Your skepticism in this regard is something I relate to, because most people don’t live according to their ideals or even “best practices”, and most people who like what they consider to be “good ideas” don’t live by them. My (unhealthy) marriage failed over disagreements about daily life and roles in society. One of the amazing contradictions I encounter is that because “The Status Quo” is so deeply assumed in many people’s minds, that people often blindly insist upon it while being able to provide no well thought out arguments for it. When people abdicate their responsibility, they basically argue for positions they either don’t hold or don’t understand. Fronting for others. This causes it to be difficult to get much done with people.
Whereas everything from before the mid-19th century is just obviously false. It’s a tough spot.
I’m not sure “true” and “false” apply to philosophy the way it applies to, say, technical sciences. I mean, sure, the cosmology of Stoicism is pretty false but are its ethical stances and thoughts on virtue?
There is nothing philosophers hate more than finding out that their previous non-falsifiable claims have become measurable. In the case of ethical stances of stocism we might be a few years off that, but I’m working on my moralometer.
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