Ask Lemmy

The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

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.

Almost everything I know I learned from existential comics. This is one of my favorites https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540

I watched The Good Place like 5 times, so I know just about everything about moral philosophy. I also took computer science, so I know to always give lots of chopsticks when serving a group of philosophers.

I know that Ayn Rand is an charlatan posing as philosopher

Time is an illusion. Lunch-time, doubly so.

A philosophy major explained to me that studying philosophy isn't really as useless as it seems. That's because whenever philosophers start to understand what they're doing, they stop calling it philosophy and branch into real scientists. He said it's unfair to judge the value of philosophy by the useless proto-sciences currently under study, but to consider the whole history of philosophy which includes every other field of study one can get a PhD in.

Cars have windows and can move.

Houses have windows and cannot move.

Therefore it's not the windows that make the car move, but something else entirely.

• PJ Evans

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

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.

Moral philosophy can be broadly divided into a few categories

Consequentialism - the idea that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. For example, utilitarianism suggests that moral actions are the ones which produce the most happiness.

Deontology - the idea that there are moral laws, and that moral actions are those that follow the laws.

Virtue ethics - the idea that virtuous actions help us flourish and vicious (from vices) actions hinder us. There is also the concept that virtues exist in the middle ("golden mean") of a scale between two vices, for example bravery is a virtue between the vices of cowardice and recklessness.

Pragmatism - the idea that there can be a moral progression of society and knowledge via study and inquiry. This is not so much a category of its own, but it's compatible with the the main ones mentioned above.

On a personal note, I do not like consequentialism as a moral theory. I lean more towards pragmatic deontology but virtue ethics is also compelling.

Absurdism. Life, the universe, existence, is absurd and irrational.

It's comforting and liberating to accept.

Modern formal logic is still considered part of philosophy, and is the basis of most programming languages. Ethics is very practical and specialized versions get taught in a lot of professional educations (medicine, law, economics, teaching, et.c.) - and it sure would be nice if people paid more attention to political philosophy.

Identifying an arguments fallacy by name usually doesn't resolve an argument

Stoicism helps massively in a chaotic world like today

Time is a river. Life is a journey. The door is ajar.

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).

Knowledge is power, but France is bacon.

People get upset if you try to say they aren't real

I know the world suffers so today because not enough people understand philosophy.

philosophy was replaced by philanthropic endeavors by the grossly rich. recorded and streamed online for all to see how "good christans" treat the destitute and needy.

morals are obligations only the poor are required to pay.

the world as we know it is dying horrifically and there's nothing any one person can do to stop it.

the call to the danger is drown out by the incessant shrill bells of subscriptions releasing hourly, 24 hours a day. nobody will hear it before it's too late.

we are already dead.

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.

The last two and a half millennia of western philosophy has been the slow realization that Epicurus and Heraclitus were closer to the truth than Plato or Aristotle.

PhD is philosophy doctor.

the modern golden rule is all about gold and rule.

i also believe it takes strength to be kind. in the same sense that being cruel and chaotic follows the entropy of the universe.

All philosophy is based on the two opposing views "Cogito Ergo Sum" vs. "Esse Est Percipi".

I know that I know not enough, and nothing more.

Lots of inspiring thoughts in the comments section! Way to go!

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.

Machiavelli was not saying to be mean as much as be prepared to be mean.

~~I know that i know nothing~~. I know that i think, therefore i am