I was just thinking about how the last time i learned any philosophy was 15+ years ago, so i wonder, what’s something y’all know about philosophy? Let’s talk about it!

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    There are many branches in philosophy, and it’s easy to mix them up. Depends on what you’re into.

    • Ethics: notions of right and wrong and moral values.
    • Epistemology: questions of knowledge. How do we know what we know.
    • Metaphysics: ideas of space, time, existence.
    • Aesthetics: appreciation of art, beauty, music, literature, etc.
    • Logic: for the math-oriented. How do we reason and arrive at conclusions? If X, then Y.
    • Language: how we communicate. Meaning of words, symbols, and metaphors.
    • Phrenology: method of relieving cranial pressures.
    • Science: how to reason about the physical world.
    • Religion: Understanding the divine and how we fit in.
    • Goldholz @lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      Care to elaborate, im afraid i dont quite understand. Do you mean the countries that claim(ed) to be socialist or that marx’ analyses and argumentation is wrong?

      • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
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        2 months ago

        I’ve always thought that was one of the successes of Marx, is that even if his system has never existed in the world, it was such an interesting framework to work with that it spanned a whole discipline of thought. Not a failure at all in my eyes, even if it wasn’t the success Marx intended.

        • Goldholz @lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          If you only read to page 64 of the capital. You’ll have noticed how scientificly he went on about making his case. And while every proper attempt to create his idea, has been crushed by either capitalists or authoriarians, i agree. His biggest legacy is the IDEA and the mass spread of it. Sure it was always a fight peasents vs nobility, but never so well organized and public than after his work

  • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
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    2 months ago

    My favorite is Lakoff’s category theory. He notes that philosophy largely pretends that categories are defined based on rules of inclusion and exclusion, but in fact human thinking is mostly based around categories defined by a prototypical example and various relations to that example. So, e.g., a penguin and a sparrow are both birds, but a sparrow is more like the prototypical bird, since it’s smaller and it flies.

    Many of the great philosophical questions over the years have been about trying to decide on precise rules of inclusion and exclusion for categories, even though the closer people look, the less it seems like there’s a meaningful boundary (e.g. “life” vs “non-living,” where you start to see things like viruses, prions, etc. that don’t fit cleanly into either category).

    • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Wouldn’t that be structuralism? Ie the truth (category in this case) is defined by the relations an entity (penguin or sparrow) has with some other entity (the example bird) rather than something intrinsic to that entity

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      That is a neat insight!

      There is a whole category of misunderstandings that happen when contexts collide.

      I feel like science tries to get specific so they can make predictions and explain phenomena, but using the same language the rest of us gives us things like the penguin and sparrow conflict, tomato is a fruit, strawberries aren’t berries, etc.

      Meanwhile I’m over here like, not only can you call all insects “bugs”, you can call spiders, small arthropods, anything that fits the general vibe of small and bug-like, so long as you’re not causing misunderstandings in a scientific context

      In the case of penguins and sparrows,

      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Fruit flies like an orange.

        The first time I ever saw this phrase, I read it as “Fruit (travels through the air) like an orange.”

        And I was like, I guess that makes sense, cause it is one. I just thought it was silly and stupid.

  • Boozilla@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    2 months ago

    The philosophy of Antinatalism makes a lot of logical sense to me. I find it difficult to argue against without appealing to nature, traditions, emotions, etc.

    People really, really, really hate AN, though. It’s not something I enjoy engaging about. I don’t really care if other people subscribe to it or not. I’m not an AN evangelist.

    Unfortunately, AN attracts a lot of weirdos, childfree types, and suicidal people. There are some brilliant folks who subscribe to it, too. But the signal to noise ratio is awful.

      • chunes@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It means that you think procreation is unethical.

        Most antinatalists take issue with the concept of consent. The logic goes: the person you’re forcing to be in this world by procreating didn’t ask to be here; there is no way to obtain their consent; therefore, it would be unethical to procreate.

        Most antinatalists are also negative utilitarians, which is a philosophy that says minimizing harm is more important than maximizing pleasure. This explains why they reject the ‘gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet’ logic most people use where procreation is fine since most people want to be here.

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Few years ago I picked up a random philosophy magazine out of curiosity. Single thing I remember is an article with a guy arguing that all inanimate objects have rights.

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Descartes. Makes sense to me that this is the only thing anyone can know with true certainty

  • MutantTailThing@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The philosopher Schopenhauer absolutely HATED noisy people. He once threw a cleaning lady down a set of stairs because she was making too much noise.

    Later he wrote a treatise where he posed that a persons tolerance towards noise is inversely related to their intelligence.

    Also, one should not remove the anal beads as if one is attempting to start a lawnmower.