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sdegutis
Guest
is that you have to be an expert philosopher to know when you’ve been proven wrong with philosophy.
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Katholish
Guest
Not really. The people who consider themselves expert philosophers are often the ones who have the most difficulty seeing their own errors. Common people use reason effectively all the time and have a fairly robust faculty of common sense (perhaps the number one tool of philosophy).
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sdegutis
Guest
In my experience, most people can’t tell the difference between a valid and invalid axiom. So they base their arguments off axioms that seem valid, and just use that to always “win” a philosophical debate.
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Pug
Guest
In mathematics you would have someone check your proof, often more than one someone, to be sure you have a solid proof. I don’t see why philosophy would be exempt from this. Both involve a complex argument using reason.
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Katholish
Guest
I have never really considered the hard part about philosophy coming up with a valid logical argument. Choosing correct premises is the difficult part, because premises often seem true when in reality they are not. The reductio ad aburdum then becomes the most important tool in philosophy which is based in what we call common sense. Those who consider themselves philosophy experts tend to follow a logical path and are slow to recognize the absurdity.
I think most common people are capable of seeing the teories of modern philosophy as absurd when they sit down and try to understand what the experts are really saying. We also need to keep in mind that if what you are doing is trying to “win” a debate, you are not really doing philosophy at all. Philosophy is a pursuit of wisdom and truth and once you close yourself off to truth by trying to force a certain conclusion which has not been sufficiently established, your ego gets in the way of any real philosophy.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Read chapters 1,2, & 3, Part 1, The Profession of Faith, in the Catehism of the Catholic Church. Man can come to know God, that He exists, that He is a personal God, the Creator of all that exists, and Who maintains all in existence, Who is worthy of worship and adoration, through natural reasons provided by observing the things that exist and by philosophical " reasons." However, as the Church observes, the most sure way is the knowledge we have through supernatural faith because few men have the time, the facility, or are otherwise incapable of arriving at God through these means, especially through philosophy, since it is extremely, extremely difficult.
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sdegutis
Guest
If you guys disagree with me, tell that to all the atheists I know who philosophize themselves into a world where God cannot exist, even though He actually does. Their axioms are all wrong.
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Qoeleth
Guest
Even expert philosophers don’t agree on most things.
Philosophy is a form of literature- there is no right or wrong, anymore than there is a right or wrong poem. Even if there was, the only possibly criterion for determining it is one of internal consistency (which may or may not be the goal of a particular text.
One might read Plotinus, Kant, Nietzsche, Levinas, Derrida, and enjoy it as writing. The question of right or wrongs seems pointless. It is an art-form of the arrangment of words, nothing else.
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tonyrey
Guest
The same argument applies to science or any other specialised subject!
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sdegutis
Guest
Way wrong. Philosophy is the search for truth. And each axiom must be founded on truth and on other axioms that are founded on truth. What you are describing is rhetoric, not philosophy.
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tonyrey
Guest
- Not all atheists’ axioms are false.
- Atheists agree - as every rational person must - that we are capable of knowledge.
- Otherwise they cannot know anything about God or anything else!
- We don’t have to be expert philosophers to know when people are contradicting themselves.
- Philosophy is not confined to university departments.
- Every reasonable person is a philosopher because no one can live without deciding what they believe is true and important in life.
- The wisest person I ever met was not a philosopher but a gardener who had a sense of perspective that academics often lack.
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Drinkgasoline
Guest
Tell us more about this gardener
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tonyrey
Guest
He was working in Jamaica for his family in Cuba but he was content with his lot even though he was as poor as a church mouse! It was his humility, serenity and positive outlook that impressed me. He accepted life as a blessing without question and enjoyed the simple things we often take for granted…Tell us more about this gardener
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Sair
Guest
It has to be said that humans - in particular, those of us who have the good fortune to have been born and raised in affluent societies - can be particularly bad at living in the moment and appreciating life’s simpler pleasures, and seeking them out as a source of comfort. Sometimes it takes a bit of effort to realise and value what we have, rather than always being focused on what we lack. Welcome to modern consumerism!
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FurtherSuntime
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tonyrey
Guest
A poor man’s wisdom puts philosophers in their place!
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greylorn
Guest
Think again. An “expert” philosopher will never admit a mistake, because by doing so he would cough up his “expert” status.
An expert philosopher is one who can defend whatever idiotic statements he, she, or it makes, against all comers, to the satisfaction of other “expert” philosophers, who are mostly a consortium of university-inbred nitwits whose job is mostly to protect their positions and status— finding truth, not so important.
Luckily here on CAF there are no expert philosophers, just a few individuals kicking around ideas derived from ancient religious beliefs, arguing for and against them in the context of an incomplete and confused modern science that most of them know about only thanks to the the Dr. Caca shows on documentary TV, with an rare modicum of common-sense logic in place of dogma.
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ProLepanto
Guest
But wait, given that a philosopher is a lover knowledge, then how can one be a philosopher if the premises they wed themselves to are false?
You can purport to love actuality all day long, but unless you truly are attracted to truth, it isn’t so.
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levinas12
Guest
It’s an interesting **philosophical **question - the difference, e.g., between Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the Illiad.
Yes, each of these works are arrangements of words. But the “narrative structures” seem
different.
What story is Aristotle telling?
Yes, each of these works are arrangements of words. But the “narrative structures” seem
different.
What story is Aristotle telling?
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levinas12
Guest
You raise an interesting philosophical question … what is the difference, e.g., between Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the Illiad.
Yes, each of these works is an arrangement of words. But they seem very different.
What is the plot of Aristotle’s Metaphysics? Where are the usual literary values?
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