Would anybody be interested in having a weekly (or every two weeks or monthly) discussion thread about different philosophical topics? Is this a thing on Hubski already? I tried searching but I didn't come up with anything. Currently on my feed there's a good thread about the afterlife and a thread questioning morality, which have some really intelligent and fascinating discussions and perspectives (shout-out to Kafke for the interesting moral nihilism discussion) and inspired me to create this post.
Philosophy is something that has always really interested and fascinated me, but it can get notoriously difficult to understand at times. So I'd love these threads to be something that generates an interest in philosophy for beginners or people who have never really considered reading philosophical text, but also a place for deeper discussion. Personally, I'm interested in reading about some different perspectives and ideas that I haven't considered before. Perhaps even some people would like to provide their own personal summary on the topic.
If this thread is successful and generates enough interest, I wouldn't mind posting a different topic every week or so. I'll post some links to some beginner-level sources and fire off some questions to get everyone started.
To kick off the first discussion, I chose the first topic that got me hooked in philosophy and a topic that most people will usually have considered once before (especially since most people have seen The Matrix):
"Cogito Ergo Sum"
How do you know that you exist? How do you know that anything exists? How do you know that the things you see, the things you hear or any sensations you experience are "true"?
When you dream at night you see things and hear things and feel things, and they felt just as real in the "dream world" as they do in "real life". So how do you know that "real life" isn't just another kind of "dream world" that you've yet to wake up from?
External Links To Get You Started
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Solipsism
"Why Solipsism is Bullshit" - Just something I randomly found on Google (as a couple of problems that I wouldn't mind discussing but it's always good to have an opposing perspective).
Three Minute Philosophy on Descartes - Mostly humor, covers a bit of who Rene Descartes was and his contribution to society.
Philosophy Bro on Descartes - A humorous summary on Descartes.
"You know you're an engineer if you've ever modeled a cow as a sphere." - Ancient engineering joke And here's where a lot of philosophy strikes me as superfluous - it's all about the reference frame. Right now, I am at rest on my couch. I am not moving, my potential energy is zero, my kinetic energy is zero. Ahhh - but the couch breaks! Suddenly I am no longer at rest, for my potential energy derived from being above the floor unsupported transforms into kinetic energy hurtling my ass the fifteen inches it can go (*you know you're an engineer if you've modeled a couch as the void*) at 29 feet per second per second. Or, we take out the building. Now I'm dropping 30 feet at 29f/s^2. My reference frame changes. And hey - there could be an alien on an asteroid with a reference energy of zero, sitting on his couch, that suddenly hurtles into Los Angeles with a reference energy of zero, and suddenly all sorts of kinetic energy erupts out of the nothing because the reference frame of the discussion is the zero between two very impressive vectors. So which is real? Well, it's all real, but none of that shit matters at the moment. I'm at rest on the couch and if I concern myself with the other reference frames, I can have a nice flight of fancy (or terror, depending on one's attitude) but I cannot suddenly plummet to the earth through sheer force of will. Further, my reference frame is egocentric only out of habit. Does the bullet hit me or do I hit the bullet? The math is easier if I hit the bullet, actually, but from my perspective I'm much more interested in a me-centric analysis. That doesn't make it more valid, it makes it more selfish. So is this a dream? Is this a simulation? What is real? Well, okay, yeah, we can go there. But what's the point? If it's all a dream, I have to play by the rules of this dream. If it's all a simulation, I have to play by the rules of this simulation. The morals I abide by are the ones that function here, regardless of where "here" is. So until Deus ex Machinas his way out here, my "real" is as "real" as "real" gets, regardless of how fake it is from other reference frames. And should I suddenly find myself in need of a new reference frame to solve the equation, I'll do my best to model the situation to give me an answer. Maybe I'll even find the centroid of the cow since the spherical model tends to make it too simplistic. TL;DR: Nihilism
I really enjoyed reading that, especially since it sounds exactly like my roommate, who is an engineer. Although you are a lot better at articulating your thoughts. I'm a design student who really enjoys art. So whenever we go up to the roof to smoke, it's a fantastic clashing of his thought process and mine. Our other room-mate (his girlfriend) describes our conversations as "Jayden (engineer student) thinks with rules and numbers and PJ (me) thinks with colours and shapes." But that's also the fun of philosophy. For me, it's purely recreational and I agree with you to an extent. There is no end-game and it's all dependant upon the reference frame, but I find it really fun to explore everything within that reference frame, then get rid of the reference-frame, add another, stretch it out, squeeze it, add God, try to combine two reference frames, see if one of them bleeds, and so on. Now I'm just curious about you (especially because there's also a chance you might be my room-mate). Have you ever studied philosophy academically or read any philosophical text?
And that, I believe, is why I end up with so little patience for philosophy: once you change the reference frame, get rid of the reference frame, add another, stretch it out, etc you've lost any anchor. To me, the relation to the anchor is what matters: "what do I get out of studying this?" A thought experiment left unhinged is fiction and while I'm fond of fiction, I prefer it full of characters and plot. The last time I debated philosophy was 1994. The last time I had a roommate was 1997. So while there's a chance I'm your roommate, it would involve some serious abuse of the space-time continuum.
You're definitely not wrong, but I do believe there is a lot to be gained from philosophy, especially since we know that we won't actually answer any of the questions that we ask in philosophy. For example, once I began studying philosophy, I definitely found myself more curious and open to other ideas and perspectives. Although this may be because I'm still very young and lots of things are new to me. So do you think your attitude towards philosophy is caused by your "engineer perspective"? Because as I explained earlier, I've observed a small correlation between engineering students and an attitude that is reluctant to accept philosophy as constructive haha.
I think I'm a fundamentally pragmatic person and I have a prejudice against things I find lacking pragmatism, such as philosophy. I don't say this with pride - I say it to illuminate a personal blind spot of mine. I also agree with you as far as curiosity and perspective, but I think I'm far more open to, shall we say, "applied philosophy." This is one of the things I love about Kundera - his works are very much an exploration of "what would you do? And why?" while Daniel Quinn drives me up the fucking wall ("allow me to contrive an artificial situation so that I can make a point that has no basis in real life"). It probably is related to an engineering background- or at the very least, an engineering mindset. Theoretically, you should be able to divide a bar of chocolate in half an infinite number of times. Practically, you're going to hit the wall just a little bit south of "chocolate chips." Theoretically, I can walk halfway to the wall forever. Practically, I'm going to bump my nose after a few minutes. Asymptotes are very real but so is precision, and there are very few things in life where the precision of the problem permits asymptotic behavior. So I look at a list like this and think "Qualia? Who fucking cares? So long as we can all agree what blue looks like does it really matter?"
Ha! Exactly! But that's still a form of philosophy. It's just divergent from the main stream (the main stream, in this case, is incorrect, IMO). That's why I argue that bad philosophy can hold us back quite a bit, scientifically speaking, but that good philosophy can help us look in interesting places and form new ideas. (As an aside, your statement is almost exactly what Wittgenstein, the most hated of philosophers by philosophers, argued in The Philosophic Investigations; the book is written in conversational form; the quote: “How is he to know what color he is to pick out when he hears ‘red’? — Quite simple: he is to take the color whose image occurs to him when he hears the word.”)"Qualia? Who fucking cares? So long as we can all agree what blue looks like does it really matter?"
I'ma read me some then. Fukkit. I've been building a studio and mainlining audiobooks at double speed for the past three weeks and could use a change. On the plus side, I now understand the middle east, terrorism, islam and the PNAC. On the minus side, it'd take me a week to explain.
His two major works are The Philosophic Investigations and Tractatus Philosophicus Logico. Do read Investigations; don't read Tractatus. Tractatus is his early work that made him really famous, and he completely retracted it when he wrote Investigations. Many people criticize Investigations for inventing the precursor to what became relativism. I would argue, however, that physicists already invented relativism decades before. But that's just my naive view.
I can be fun to kick around some philosophic arguments with friends, but make no mistake, philosophy matters. A lot. Especially to science and politics. Quite a bit more depth exists to philosophy than tired epistemological word games. Philosophy has given us such great things as The Enlightenment, and such terrible things as the USSR. The world's first public park (in Edinburgh), started as a philosophic exercise of David Hume. Data aren't truth. That is the misconception of science. Edit: Here is another shameless plug for a blog I wrote about the importance of philosophy to biology and politics.
I agree, philosophy is quite important for science and especially engineering. Not the word games, but things like ethics and the philosophy of science. For example, what is the ethical impact of the machine I am making. How can I improve my scientific progress. This too is philosophy. It is not just metaphysics. Edit: I'll read your shameless plug later :P
As I recall, Descartes' path to cogito ergo sum was not particularly solipsistic. He did not see his existence as the existence, as a solipsist would; rather he could only specifically prove his existence (and barely that) and didn't want to overstep his logical boundaries by extending the characteristic of being to others. Retracting it in the first place (starting with nothing) was merely a logical foundation, not a judgment or a conclusion. As for the rest, I have no idea if anything I see is "real." It doesn't matter to me. See ecib's post in the thread about the afterlife -- I can barely grasp that anything exists at all, much less ask whether it exists on the plane that I experience every day. We're all just atoms and photons if you want to look at it that way.
I would be interested. I always had an interest in philosophy, but my current field of study (Electrical engineering) does not really allow in depth thought about such things. As one of the professors once said:
Wetenschap: kleine problemen met antwoorden. Filosofie: Grote problemen, geen antwoorden
It means as much as "Science: Small problems with answers. Philosophy: Large problems without answers"
I'm always down to learn new things and beginners links are great. Philosophy is something I find intriguing but not intriguing enough to actively go out and try to become well versed in it. If you continue to put it in front of me I will read it.