Welcome everyone to another member interview on philosophyforum.com! Member's interviews provide the opportunity for members to get to know other members a little bit better by answering a small number of questions and saying a little something about themselves.
Today's interviewee is ____
GoshisDead_____ , who has been a member on the forum since ______
3-11-2008_____ .
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So what about you? Most of the forum knows you through the profile at the top of every post you make. Tell us about your profile.
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Q1: So tell us a little about your name, why you chose it, what it means, etc.
Quote:My name is a jab at people who are afraid to commit to an ideal. A Nietzstchean reference but afraid to take the Lord's name in vain.
Q2: Tell us a little about your avatar. Does it mean anything special to you?
Quote:Avatar is so classy, its a Southpark reference condemning the hairy death of giant guinnea pigs.
Q3: Explain to us the significance of your user title (if you have one) and/or signature. Where does it come from? What can this small tidbit of info tell us about you?
Quote:It would be obvious if you were a member of team obvious.
Q4: What made you join the forum?
Quote:Given the constant banter about free will on the forum either I chose to join the forum or a confluence of events stemming from the big bang and beyond forced me to join all the while making me think it was my choice. Oh and it seemed like the only forum around where the worst types of trolls are not pandered to, that much.
Q5: Can you tell us anything more about your stats, like the volume of posts, your thanks/thanked ratio, and your rep power?
Quote:I am a selective poster, I tend not to care about a lot of the issues on the forum and don't feel that my adding two cents would be worth the 5 cents of time it takes to add it. So my post and thanks counts are lower than one might expect from an active forum member of two years.
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Tell us a little bit more about you in general.
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Q6: If you could describe yourself in one short sentence, what would it be and why?
Quote:I am not easily agitated and have bad spelling.
Q7: Do you have any other interests other than philosophy (i.e. hobbies, work, etc.)?
Quote:Judo, Fishing, Linguistics, Art, Writing, and since I spend so much time at it anyway I decided to make it a hobby, disciplining children.
Q8: Do those interests coincide with your affinity for philosophy?
Quote:Everything coincides with philosophy, as I have an unpopular working defenition of philosophy. Philosophy is a meta-doscussion. This meta-discussion can be about anything, and thus everything can be related to philosophy. However my hobbies do tend to be directly influenced by philosophy. I paint and it tends to be abstract post modernism. I write and it tends to be idealistic mysticism. I practice martial arts which has its own set of cultural and life changing philosophies. etc...
Q9: Can you tell us anything more about yourself?
Quote:My main interests other than making sure a family is successful and provided for are linguisitcs and cultural studies, which is the reason why most of my posts have an angle that at least borders on these subjects.
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Tell us about philosophy forum and you.
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Q10: What are your favorite areas of the forum? If you have more than one, give us your top five.
Quote:I enjoy the ethics forum, although it always seems to come down to cultural ethical relativism. I enjoy the aesthetics forum although I am woefully uneducated in the theory. I enjoy the social and language forums, although the philosophy of language often has no real connection with linguistics proper. I also enjoy metaphysics and religious forums, as I am a religious sort of guy.
Q11: Do you blog? What are some of the topics you discuss?
Quote:I have not blogged in a while, I normally blog when a book I'm reading stimulates some sort of thought string that I think needs to be written in order for me to process it better. Lately I have been trying to write fiction and the books I've read do not lend themselves well to bloggin in this venue.
Q12: If you could describe philosophyforum.com in one word, what would that word be?
Q13: How would you describe your posts and the style/structure you use?
Quote:I spent a lot of years writing linguistic analysis for people with little to no education past middle school. My posts tend to be pedantic because of it. I normally use a style that paints a broad picture then isolates the exceptions or anecdotes that make my point. Because in descriptive linguistics one writes about the rule then the exceptions to the rule under which conditions. Sometimes its effective, often times it blows up in my face, or my point is lost in the generalization.
Q14: What would you do to make philosophy forum a better/more interesting place?
Quote:Become more interesting myself.
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Tell us a little about your perspective of philosophy in general.
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Q15: What first got you interested in philosophy?
Quote:I enjoyed Hume's discussion on causation in a 101 class ages ago and was hooked ever since.
Q16: Explain how philosophy is important to you.
Quote:I enjoy philosophy because it forces my mind to adjust to the openly non-applicable.
Q17: What keeps you interested in philosophy?
Quote:Its connection with history, watching the ideal become part of the cultural model of an era, then change.
Q18: If you could define you own particular philosophy in one short sentence, what would it be?
Quote:If we were meant to be our own prime moving agent, we would not have language or culture.
Q19: What do you think the benefits of philosophy are?
Quote:Philosophy benefits the world by providing a venue in which to non-judegmentally examine the human condition and its relationship with the universe.
Q20: What do you think the drawbacks to philosophy are?
Quote:Philosophy is horribly non-applicable. Often what comes from philosophy takes a generation or two to distill into some applicable form that could influence huamnity
Q21: What is your favorite subject in philosophy (i.e. ethics, logic, etc.)?
Q22: What is your least favorite subject in philosophy?
Q23: Who is your favorite philosopher and why?
Quote:I am in love with Henri Bergson. Mainly because he wrote Laughter and I truely do enjoy laughing.
Q24: Who is your least favorite philosopher and why?
Quote: Bertrand Russell. I really do dislike people that are so ridgid that they will not even entertain the possibility of the non-empirical real. And he's boring about saying it too.
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Lightning Round!!! Answer either or!
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Q25: Global warming or Global fooling?
Q26: Conservative or liberal?
Q27: Formal or informal?
Q28: Smart or ignorant?
Q29: Mac or PC?
Q30: Awesome or Phenomenal?