Atheism

It's been a few decades since undergrad, but I remember a class in Phenomenology that was entirely a study of Being and Time. Memory fades, but I seem to recall us spending at least two weeks on the first page or so. It was the best of times and the worst of times for me. I pushed myself beyond boundaries that I hadn't even conceptualized previously and it was a period of tremendous intellectual expansion for me. On the other hand, there were a couple of douchebags in the class who were bent on spouting nonsensical, pretentious (Derrida-based) soliloquies at random. One was a professor from the Eng. Lit. dept., so the down-to-earth Philosophy prof. couldn't tell him to shut the **** up, though it was obvious that he wished he could. I probably had a point for this post at the beginning, but now I've forgotten what it was. This is just another example of something. Let that be a lesson to you.

3 Replies

@fresco,

Extracts, huh? How many pages?

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Thank you for providing such a clear answer to the question "does he have the brains ...?"

My comment to Edgar was appropriate, reasonable, and anything but supercilious.

As Layman mentioned...it is you, not I, who has shot himself in the foot.

By the way, your second sentence above could easily be classified as supercilious...a great deal more close to supercilious than my comment to Edgar.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quote:

Thank you for providing such a clear answer to the question "does he have the brains ...?"

I'll have to give you a little credit here, Fresky. Although your attempts to convince others that solipsism is an acceptable ontological/epistemological position which they should adopt have failed miserably, you have shown that it is a "possible" state of being.

You are kind enough to display, with virtually every post, that solipsism DOES EXIST! It is the ontology of choice for narcissists.

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@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

My comment to Edgar was appropriate, reasonable, and anything but supercilious.

Independently, if Edgar was dissatisfied with your answer to him, I'm pretty sure he'd let you know himself. He's a big boy.

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@Thomas,

Yup!

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@FBM,

Quote:

I remember a class in Phenomenology that was entirely a study of Being and Time. Memory fades, but I seem to recall us spending at least two weeks on the first page or so.

I tried to read it too. I doubt the whole thing means anything, really. It's like Wittgenstein's Tractatus: pure gibberish. Some "philosophers" think that the more obscure and incomprehensible they are, the better they look.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Some "philosophers" think that the more obscure and incomprehensible they are, the better they look.

Is that where Fresco gets that from????

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Some "philosophers" think that the more obscure and incomprehensible they are, the better they look.

True, Ollie. Most philosophers are con men, and they know the nature of the chump they are aiming to lure in. The chump will think they are saying something profound. The chump will then "buy in" so that he can purport to repeat this ineffable wisdom which is available only to the most sophisticated and enlightened. So the chump then sets out on a mission to con other chumps into thinking HE is brilliant.

Being a chump, he naturally thinks that everybody else is too, of course.

Quote:

“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.” (H. L. Mencken)

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@layman,

Yeah but that fake philosophy only. There are fakes in every profession. It doesn't mean that all philosophy is inherently fake.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Yeah but that fake philosophy only. There are fakes in every profession.

Well, sure, and I might have been a tad hyperbolic there, but I did, after all, say "most philosophers," not all philosophers.

What I said is particularly true of "followers," such as those who purport to "teach" philosophy, but have no original philosophical contributions of their own to make.

1 Reply

@layman,

Haven't seen the data, so I don't want to guess-estimate the extent of the problem, but it's a problem. Including on A2K where many people understand philosophy as an idle word game with no relevance or connection to everyday life. Fresco is the first to admit that he is a "naive realist" in his daily life, and only becomes a "naive idealist" (or whatever he is) when posturing as a philosopher. That's treating philosophy as a meaningless game.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

I don't want to guess-estimate the extent of the problem

OK, fair enough. But I think we can all agree about Fresky, eh?

Quote:

Including on A2K

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Extracts, huh? How many pages?

I'll let you do the estimate by listening to the whole course of lectures (like I did), which refers to specific pages.

I note that like Wittgenstein himself ( Wink

), you dismissed the Tractatus which I admit never to have read. More interest to me are the linguistic aspects of Philosophical Investigations which Rorty compared and contrasted with those of the earlier Heidegger in Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature. I suggest too that aspiring philosophical iconoclasts (like layman), try to read Rorty, a master of such iconoclasm, and well beyond the level of simplistic one-liners offered here as "criticism".

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@FBM,

Interesting to know you found H stimulating. You might not be aware that aspects of both Heidegger and Derrida made them "good guys" for Rorty in the reference above, largely because they both considered language as the key to understanding "philosophical" issues.

1 Reply

Demographic Study
May 12, 2015

America’s Changing Religious Landscape

http://www.pewforum.org/files/2015/05/PR_15.05.12_RLS-00.png

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@fresco,

Quote:

I note that like Wittgenstein himself ( Wink ), you dismissed the Tractatus

The subsequent influence of Wittgenstein serves to prove Ollie's point about obscurity, etc.

Quote:

Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it when a prisoner of war at Como and later Cassino in August 1918. The work contains almost no arguments as such, but rather consists of declarative statements that are meant to be self-evident. Wittgenstein's later works, notably the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, criticised many of the ideas in the Tractatus.

The chumps in the Vienna Circle (and others, like Russell) became enamored of his obscure crap and used it as a basis for their ill-fated and destructive doctrine of "verificationism."

Quote:

The Tractatus caught the attention of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle (1921–1933), especially Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick. The group spent many months working through the text out loud, line by line...Wittgenstein responded to Schlick, commenting: "...I cannot imagine that Carnap should have so completely misunderstood the last sentences of the book and hence the fundamental conception of the entire book."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

BTW, re your "meaningless game" comment, my general attitude to philosophy is one I take from Wittgenstein ..."The fight against bewitchment by language". That "fight" is rarely at the level of normal social transactions, but becomes significant with respect to research, especially "perceptual research", or with respect to the investigation of the very word "meaning" itself. And I suggest that it is the "search for meaning" which underpins threads such as this on "atheism" since "religion" is what a majority seem to need to support " a meaningful existence".

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@fresco,

Quote:

"The fight against bewitchment by language".

The irony of it all, eh? "Bewitchment by language" is almost exclusively what you try to promote, Fresky. You invariably try to resort to the use of a long series of terms using obscure, esoteric, hollow "jargon" from so-called philosophy (I, myself, would never call linguistic analysis "philosophy") to "make a point." Once again, the only "point" you are making is that you are a bombastic bullshitter who thinks he is demonstrating his superior "insight" when he spews out meaningless horseshit.

You can't articulate any points in "everyday language." The absurdity of it would be too apparent. So you obsfuscate, and think you have convinced others that you "know" something.

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@layman,

Wittgenstein is the typical fake. He had a few useful intuition in his entire life - e.g. about concepts having hazy boundaries. But much of his output was a pretense at philosophy.

1 Reply

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