Jaq was asking... several weeks ago... but still...

hmm... i write that stuff all the time, but its a waste coz no one eva reads it.
so ill go with parties

Philosophy is good for ......ummm....knowing stuff!

wooo ninjakitty your av is great!

where u get the jay and silent bob pics?

>:D

snoochie bootchies!

Why isn't Bs-ing an option?

I'd like to use Philosophy to impress people in prison, so I don't get beaen up or gang raped or something lilke that!

philosophy... umm... knowing stuff? i have no idea what philosophy is... but i dont want to sound stupid and ask... so im not asking... cause its good for knowing stuff... but what stuff? good stuff? bad stuff?

"But because of the unity of all things, if you cause me to drop the soap, are you not also causing yourself to drop the soap?"

Thanks, guys! this is my first poll!

philosophy = love of knowledge otherwise it's pretty much open... until last century, pretty much, most science was called natural philosophy. there are two kinds, rational and empirical. and other stuff. but I don't know much about anything past, oh, 1850

I got it at this site http://www.freeavatars.net/ It's not really organized and I'm not sure where on the site I found it, but it's there.

thnx.
im stickin with my statement of intent for the mo (c av <), but if i change my mind j &s.b. kik ass

No prob.
*is determined to get 100 posts by the end of the night*

I was asking? Hmmm. Must have me confused....

hmm... reply to this twice pls ninjakitty?

Good poll Dice! I likes it. I think it's most useful for impressing people in prison. It'll stun them just long enough for you to make your getaway.

plus it'll impress Oliver Stone and he can make the movie version of your life...

yeah, you were saying something about it only being useful if you were gonna teach or write a best-seller. I think you were telling me not to go to Durham...

all of the above and none of the above.
are my eyes really brown?
how do we know that this isnt just a dream?
do i see the same colors and hear the same sounds and feel the same things that you do?
how do i know that you are really all here, reading and responding to me? maybe the internet is just automated responses.


--ok i will stop with my philosiphy now........--

u know i used to think that exact thing all the time...
like is green to me what red would look like to you, but we'll never know because we both look at it and c the name green...???

i luv this stuff...

OMG!!! i ask those 2 questions so many times to myself that its scary.... i really need an answer to the first one..... it scares me....

Oh yeah. I remember now. I didn't want you to go? No! I wanted you to go, but I didn't want to see you leave. You know what I mean? Bah. I make no sense.

Descartes deals with this in the Meditations... Heidigger? the language guy... the beetle box guy... help me out here... deals with whether what I say is, for example, green is what you say is green. 'cause maybe it's just coincidence that we're both using words that each understands as "the grass is green" or "the pig is green" or "the green hand moved to Alberta" or whatever.

it is my philosophy that philosophy is used to make your opinion sound like it actually has an impact.
i mean come it makes you sounds like you know what you are saying.

but i have to agree w/ the fact that it is for bs'ing people

what if when we are awake its really a dream and when we are dreaming it i reality?

I took a summer course in western philosophy... it messed me up pretty bad. I lost religion entirely for awhile, and it took me weeks of shutting myself up alone (Descartes style, if you know what I mean) before I figured out enough to feel sane again.

I took a course in philosophy. I found it quite boring, the language was erally archaic and so I didn't do the readings . . . Passed the class though. And I did learn something about philosophy, philosophers invented the BS. And I'm pretty sure that's how I passed. Also I wrote the philosophers drinking song on my final test paper. That couldn't have hurt....

phillosophy is a good bunch of ideas like religion i just like to balance out the ones that apply to me and corrupt them to fit my own personal ideologies. if that answers a question i'm impressed

What good is anything if you can't use it to take over the world.

return to reality oni

you forgot to put "pissing off bible beaters"... really good option...

that reminds me of the time i tried to convert a jehova's witness who came to my door into a buddist. you should have seen the look on her face

As a philosophy student i feel i hsuld stick up for the noble pursuit here, but i'm tired so can't be bothered to just now. Wait for more thrilling installments tomorrow

How come they allways seem to be the butt of jokes? Thats a little philosophy for yah. Answering the poll. It is all about impressing random people at grochrey stores.

i eagerly await

Philosophy, for me, is simply logic, a different way of looking at my world. This is why I can't stand some philosophers. I think that philosophy should be just as true as science, or religion. It is not a matter of opinion, but rather a searching for truth.

food for thought.

Ah, but there is 'truth' and 'Truth'. The trouble is that too many people think they know the latter when they probably know the former, and those that do know the latter probably ascend to a higher plane of existence, which would exlpain the number of missing people every year. They've got to go somewhere.

Anyway, back on topic: philosophy is about working out what observable truth's mean, science is about predicting what will be observable next time you try a specific thing judging on the way that things have worked in the past.

In this scheme of things there's not always a lot of room for religion. Religion is about trying to weave together the holes in other things, ie. creating ideas for things that are not based on observable truths and are not involved with stating the directly observable functioning of the universe.

I am aware that despite the above sounding reasonable to me I'm sure that those who are religious would probably argue otherwise, so my apologies to them. I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas of that the boundary is between philosophy and religion.

Philosophy is ultimately the only reliable source of knowledge, and the discipline underlying all other sources of knowledge. The sciences implicitly rely on philosophical doctrines.



Well, if you don't do the readings, you're not going to get it...

The language of philosophy is difficult for some people to understand, for two basic reasons. One is that a philosopher must describe concepts that don't exist in normal language use. The other is that a philosopher must be absolutely, painfully exact in the concepts he describes. Contrary to what anti-intellectuals might want to think, it's not about elitist jargon; it's necessary.

I would disagree about the necessity of academic language to philosophy.

"All we are is dust in the wind, dude" is philosophy, and, as Wordsworth would say, written in the language of the common man.

Discussion of philosophy will generally necessitate a sackful of latinate derivatives, but I'm doubtful of whether even this is always necessary.

To put a comparison into my field of studies, some writing about cyberpunk is utterly prosaic and as clear as spring water. Other essays are about as easy to wade through as baked mud.

Everything needs a few 'impressive sounding' terms, such as ideology or a priori, but if you sit down with a dictionary for a little while, or even better a philosophy dictionary, then you soon find yourself cutting a swathe through it all. Long words are useful because they often hold a very specific meaning, but there are ways of writing that make their use less necessary. I sometimes think academics use such words just because they've learnt them and want to force everyone else to do the same.

I think that there is an ideal balance between the specifivity of long words and the ease of reading, and unfortunately most discussions of philosophy don't get it right. Then again, sales of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' are still good, so that at least shows that it's not always necessary to be big and clever to talk about important things.

If it's philosophy, it's bad philosophy. It's an unsupported assertion and the metaphor isn't explained. In fact, it's more or less meaningless. In my first philosophy class, one of the first things my teacher told us was that we couldn't get away with just writing something that sounded vaguely profound. Philosophy isn't just - or even at all - unclear, irrelevant metaphors.

So what does "all we are is dust in the wind" mean? Does it put forward the existentialist position that existence is without essential meaning independent of us? Is it an argument for strong determinism, claiming we have no free will? If it's either of those things, where's its proof? That's not philosophy, any more than "Vote Conservative!" is political theory.

This is philosophy; John Searle's concluding argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence:



Notice the lack of drug-induced babbling.

Actually, I think you might have just proven my point! The last paragraph there has very few complex terms in it but still expresses the resolution of a philosophical argument.

I think, for me, the issue comes when philosophy spills over into other fields, as it will be naturally inclined to do. When philosophy meets literary criticism the result can be a hideous mismatch of terminologies that produces nothing other than a general fug in the reader. I sometimes suspect that the essays I'm reading are also tests of artficial intelligence, in that they have been randomly generated by an AI as a test to see whether anyone will notice the difference!

Good philosophy (ie, rational, well argued) need not have overt complexity of language scattered constantly throughout it like dust in the wind but can usually be expressed in common terms which instead build the complexity of the idea.

When you're writing a PhD you go in expecting that you have to 'sound smart' so you happily bring out all the obscure twelve-letter terms for things that confuse your friends in pubs. Pretty soon your tutors tell you to stop it. Clarity of expression is more important than complexity of language. When writing an essay you should make your argument with the best possible balance of complexity and clarity of language.

I agree that there is a difference between 'the character is considering the meaning of his life' and 'the character encounters existentialist doubt', after all, existentialism is a very specific discourse in philosophy, but sometimes the slight ambiguity of the former is more accurate. How can you be sure that the character's thoughts are truly being conveyed as part of an existentialist discouse? Is that just your assumption because you feel drawn to that mode of thought? It may be more accurate to stick to the plain language version and then build complexity from simple ideas rather than hoofing in the heavy-weights when they are only a 90% fit.

Using your standard for philosophical discourse, the Tao Te Ching is a terrible work of philosophy. It uses incredibly plain language to convey a set of apparently self-contradictory notions that build into a single complex structure for approaching all of life. Considering that this is one of the oldest philosophies in the world I think it's quite safe to say that the text has fully endured the test of time.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao,
The name that can be named is not the true name.

Not a single complex term in there, but those two lines contain the essence of all Taoism. Depth comes comes from layers of simplicity. By evoking previously argued styles of thought you can often assume too much about their understanding of the world and reduce the rational basis for your own work.

Then again, pre-PhD level, that's probably what they want you do to, so maybe I should shut up...

Philosophy comes in handy for (among other things) deterring would be attackers when walking alone late at night. Just either confuse the hell out of your attacker or plague them with despair and nihilism and run off into the distance before they end it all.

Also parties, conversations about (for instance) how the entire universe is an LSD trip in gods mind are fun, mentally stimulating and only occur at 4am in the morning after consuming copious quantities of alcahol or caffeine.

Hmm. With my engineer and self-proclaimed futurist hat firmly screwed on, I'm going to say that Mr Searle is not quite on the money. His 3rd assumption is invalid, and will become more invalid as time and technology moves on. Contemporary computing certainly obeys his rule, but that's only applicable to contemporary technology.

Expert systems, where the computer programmer doesn't actually have visibility of what's going on inside the software, but rather 'teaches' the software by a process that boils down to showing it something (providing some input) and telling it the correct response (showing what output it should give). Expert systems, while strictly speaking defined by a set of formal rule, behave differently based on how they are 'trained' i.e. by the data presented to them during training.

A parallel could therefore be drawn with children. All children behave the same when born: cry, poo and suckle. It's only once they're 'trained' (i.e. presented with stimulus) that they start to exhibit differences.

Coming from the other direction, seeing as no-one's really defined what gives rise to 'mind' and 'intelligence' in humans, I'm going to put forward my hypothesis.

The human mind is a direct result of the structure and organisation of the brain. It's my belief that conscience is a by-product of an incredibly complicated arrangement of fundamentally simple components. A single synapse can't do anything on it's own. Put several billion of them together in precise the correct configuration, and you've got a Jonman. Each synapse is a rule-based system, governed by very simple rules. The vast complexity of all those synapses interacting causes unpredictable behaviour that we call 'intelligence'.

So, in other words, a human mind is entirely defined by the formal structure of the brain. So if artificial intelligence is impossible, so is good ole human intelligence.

I'd just like to point out that I made that post two years and four philosophy courses ago, during final exams and as such shouldn't be judged so harshly.

And I'm not an anti-intellectual dang it. I did learn to understand philosophy and the readings, but I still don't enjoy it as much as Commie over here.

Philosophy is a way of exploring and attempting to define the world around us or at least develop theories that will help us make sense of the world, both seen and unseen.

My understanding is as thus: Science is knowledge and predictions of the observable world, philosophy is understanding what those facts mean, and religion is knowledge of the unobservable world, in many ways, why scientific facts are true.

It is obvious, if you accept those ideas, that science is truth - it is based in observable fact. Religion as well must be true in the same sense. I believe that there is a God in the same way that I believe there are computers. He may not exist physically, but I believe he is as real as any observable fact.

Philosophy has the most leeway when it comes to truth - it is an interpretation. However, it too must be grounded in fact. Plato's cave, while a beautiful description, has no basis in truth, in my mind. I don't believe there is a world of forms, even if I did agree with the idea that our minds work in such a way as to catagorize things like that. Thus that part of Plato's philosophy is untrue in the same sense that our world is not flat.

That excerpt was the conclusion of a chapter, so I'll expand a bit more.

Computers as defined function - and I may be wrong here, correct me if I am - by manipulating symbols (ultimately 1s and 0s). But these symbols are just symbols. They don't "mean" anything to the computer; it's just a system that reacts in one manner to a 1, and in another manner to a 0. 1 and 0 could just as well be A and B, or Snuffle and Quark, or a banana and a grapefruit. From what I read in the Wikipedia article you linked, expert systems are no different.

When our minds manipulate symbols - for instance, as I'm formulating this post - they have meaning. The words I'm typing aren't just collections of symbols, they refer to objects, concepts, processes or what have you. Since computers don't have this quality, they can't have minds.

[note that I don't agree with Searle's reasoning, I'm just trying to explain it a bit better]

Ultimately we always have to use the information given to us to learn the 'meaning' of the visual appearence of a chair, or the word 'chair'. If a computer can learn also then it doesn't really matter what manner of thought it uses. Also, a synapse is basically digital, it's either firing or it's not, leading back to ones and zeroes.

This won't contribute much (Or anything) to the discussion at hand, but I tend to find discussions of this nature to be ultimately futile, and tiring. People tend to trot out whatever blather they've retained from philosophy courses they've taken in school, sounding, no doubt, very erudite and learned, but ultimately adding nothing to the sum total of knowledge, and making the uninitiated (Such as yours truly) feeling like idiots (Which I, personally, feel is often the whole purpose of the discourse). Like arguing religion, arguing philosophy is a matter of two or more people airing their personal beleif systems as if they were fact, rather than opinion, and using the opinions of others to back up their choices. But it's all opinion, with no more weight than air... And virtually any opinion is as valid as any other, for their will never be any substantive proof. And without proof, it is all just castles built in the air...

MY opinion, for what it's worth...

How can it "learn", though? If I type into my computer the definition of "chair" along with pictures and stuff, it's just got more meaningless symbols to manipulate.

That's precisely my point.

All a computer has at it's input side is a bunch of 1s and 0s, squirted sequentially into it.

All the human brain has at it's input side is a bunch of electrical signals, squirted into it. With the human mind, some of those bursts represent visual data from the eye. Others represent muscular feedback or tactile data from the skin. Taken out of context, the signals inside your brain don't mean anything. It's only through learning as a toddler that that is a chair and red looks like this that we assign meaning to patterns of those signals. Similarly with a computer - it needs to be told what a particular arrangement of data represents (ever tried using a printer without the drivers installed?).

Think of a newborn human as a PC with a fresh Windows image. It has an OS, but no applications. Early childhood is the time when those applications are written/downloaded.

See, from this perspective, the rise of true artificial intelligence is inevitable. Build a rule-based system complex enough, and it will exhibit behaviour complex enough to be classed as a seperate intelligence/mind.

Think of a newborn human as a PC with a fresh Windows image. It has an OS, but no applications. Early childhood is the time when those applications are written/downloaded. (as quoted from above)

That is a worrying way to see humanity and the human brain which, it must be remembered, is still only partly being used by, what could be deemed our advanced-and rapidly expanding-techological and mental evolution.A computer matches a brain with its 'neurone firing' wires but a computer hasn't got an accompanying potential to love, hate, express an independent identity or feelings of violence. Computers need input from external sources all the time or someone to log them on while you and I require stimuli but can still have an inner, totally separate existence which never logs off, even when we are asleep.
I agree that children are sensitive to the imprints and patterns around them when they are born and soaking up language and this provides the subsequent blueprints and morals which they use to live as adults, but a computer can only take literal information. If I hug or harm this machine it will not remember and it will not become mentally damaged in any way, while a child may turn the affection or pain outwards in the way it treats others.

I believe Philosophy is a way of feeling our way through the complexities of the world for without it we would be 2 dimensional and society, invention and theory could never advance without it. Philosophy created the power to dive deep into the sea and find cures for cancer, the means to traverse the world using flight and water and also allows us to try and explain our reality as best we can with the small parts of our brains we have the capacity to utilise-for now anyway.
I think there should be no singular train of thought in philosophy and that we should all accept a gestalt collection of ideas to formulate what we undesrtand about life.

I ticked 'all of the above' for the poll because some philosophers have achieved world domination through their immortalisation, and I would definitely use it to impress the grocer!!


Here endeth the lecture!!
Rain

Yet.


As for computers needing to be turned on - I promise you, your brain would shut off as well if I was able to stop the flow of electricity. A computer is limited by its dependance on electricity the same way we are dependent upon food, water, livable temperatures, and sleep.