https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1ix2o9a/rphilosophy_open_discussion_thread_february_24/
created by BernardJOrtcutt on 24/02/2025 at 14:00 UTC
6 upvotes, 11 top-level comments (showing 11)
Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules[1] (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/wiki/rules
This thread is **not** a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.
Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here[2].
Comment by Formless_Mind at 25/02/2025 at 17:26 UTC
4 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I wrote an essay in underlying my opinion on the Free-will and determinism debate and basically the argument/discussion at least to me is already self-defeating just from the word "Free" will
Since anyone should know a Will already implies free nature of my choices and desires in doing whatever l want, the word commonly used is misleading in my opinion when these discussions happen, to me if you've a will that already means agency towards your actions and thus the conversation ultimately comes down to whether or not humans have a will and l don't think most people even on the determinism side would object to people having a will that gives them agency.
Comment by Formless_Mind at 27/02/2025 at 04:29 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I've been on the idea that moral-systems which appeal to some higher authority/principle tend to do better than those that don't, merely for the reason that those moral-systems aren't a matter of opinion once you invoke a standardization in which all moral values are held to, then you begin to see why moral-systems particularly religious one's do far better than secular moral-systems because the question will always come to what standard or principle are you holding all your moral values so they don't get easily dismissed by just opinion alone.
I was wondering if someone had shared a similar view on this matter ?
Comment by gmthisfeller at 24/02/2025 at 14:09 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I would appreciate reactions to Alistair MacIntyre’s work.
Comment by Formless_Mind at 24/02/2025 at 17:21 UTC
2 upvotes, 3 direct replies
What people don't fundamentally understand about inequality is that competition is the source of it, there's always going to be people who are or know how to hack the game better than others and this can be in many domains not just production of wealth
So when people talk ideal politics of reducing inequality when sametime forgetting inequality is the natural outcome of any enterprise you implement
Comment by Pitiful-Bridge-1225 at 25/02/2025 at 13:05 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
With life there has always been a question of human suffering. It is a major part of all human life and after all our attempt to justify and/or answer it through philosophy or religion, we have not been able find any satisfactory answer or give a meaning or purpose to it. It feels to me that most of us do not want to be born and yet somehow, we contribute to the continuation of our race instinctually. Why has humans not yet overcome that instinct, even though as rational beings we argue that the perpetual cycle of birth and death is a drag.
Comment by mountain2023 at 25/02/2025 at 14:00 UTC*
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hello. This is a playlist of YouTube shorts that shows how mathematical platonism **feels** like. The total playtime is less than 6 minutes and it only consists of 6 shorts from 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium and Science Magazine.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2oS0FCE5ZH3dhyd4fgRw-KDiS-3eqyrt
Comment by Existenz_1229 at 25/02/2025 at 15:08 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm currently doing a reread of *Realism With a Human Face* by Hilary Putnam. He was a very sober, conventional analytic philosopher (as opposed to out-there scribes like Zizek and Butler), but he approached philosophical issues from a human-centered perspective. Our notions of reality, truth, knowledge and ethics need to be understood in terms of how humans create and conceptualize them.
Comment by gimboarretino at 24/02/2025 at 14:48 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The foundation, or the presupposition, or the postulate, or the truth, or the logos, or the justification of every theory, or assertion, or system, or proposition, or interpretation, or description, or model of reality.... **is the very condition of being in a position to conceive, to signify, to undestand,** ***to talk about*** **something such as "the foundation" "the presupposition", "the postulate", "the truth" and "theories, assertions, systems" etc.**
Every epistemological and ontological structure has as its true original bedrock the *being-in-the-world:* **to be, to exist with the capability of reasoning and speaking about these things and with the immense complexity that is required to do so.**
The giveness of being a conscious and intelligent entitiy, endowed with a set of a priori cognitive faculties, having undergone a series of empirical experiences and having mastered a series of notions of meaning and language... is the precondition for any such inquiry. The precondition for any condition to be conceivable and to hold meaning.
Comment by gimboarretino at 26/02/2025 at 11:23 UTC
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
What does it mean to be rational, to use logic to decipher reality? It means you want to obey the rules of being a rational observer, a rational agent, a rational thinker, to use a set of rules to systematically analyze, draw inferences, and form coherent, justified beliefs.
Let's say you conclude that by following reason, the logical interpretation of reality is an eliminativist one, where only atoms exist, their position and velocity evolving according to the laws of physics. That's it.
But you can always ask… okay, but why should we be rational in the first place? Why should we use logic to decode/interpret reality? The obvious answer is: because we observe that people who follow these principles are more successful in life, tend to have better predictive power, understand phenomena better, invent and discover and do amazing stuff etc.
This is why we say, "there are good reasons to do what they do—to be rational agents and thinkers."
But this statement (which, to be clear, I 100% subscribe to) presupposes the acknowledgement of the existence of conscious entities, or at least thinking/computing entities, observers, and empirical experience—rational observers who behave and reason according to the dictates of logic, succeed in thier tasks, and observer that observe this very phenomena.
This is a circular trap, a trap into which countless philosophers and scientists and people have fallen and continue to fall.
You are always bound to presuppose observers and agents and ***everything had constituted the conditions that convinced you in the first place to think that using logic to decipher reality was a good thing,*** a useful tool with which to proceed.
You are always bound, at least, to this fundamental empirical experience.
Comment by dialecticalstupidism at 27/02/2025 at 12:28 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Seeking for enlightenment from Nietzsche enthusiasts on this one.
Origin of knowledge (TGS):
This subtler honesty and skepticism came into being wherever two contradictory sentences appeared to be *applicable* to life because *both* were compatible with the basic errors, and it was therefore possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of *utility* for life; also wherever new propositions, though not useful for life, were also evidently not harmful to life: in such cases there was room for the expression of an intellectual play impulse, and honesty and skepticism were innocent and happy like all play.
Could you kindly help me with some practical examples of two such contradictory maxims that seem to be applicable to life because they are both compatible with primeval cognitive errors?
I was thinking of the following:
Two antithetical sentences: (1) it's fine to kick someone who bashes religious faith out of your group vs (2) it's wrong to do so.
(1) could be valid as religious faith is a life-preserving basic error, knowledge that helped (hence, it keeps helping) us survive, although its raw essence is untrue. So it's morally fine to kick him who works against something that preserves life.
(2) could be valid as we may very well consider that it is objectively wrong to do so, which is another basic error that helped us organize, therefore survive - the objectivization of morals.
This contradiction makes us debate and decide, exercising honesty and skepticism, which one is closer to Nietzsche's Truth.
I feel like I got it wrong, or not getting it at all, please do tell if what I said it's dumb.
Comment by Sensitive-Amount8702 at 24/02/2025 at 17:01 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Right on time. God Wills it.
(Don't need personal stuffs here, just opening the gates of knowledge hell itself)
I'll present just a virtualized aka simulated reality where we can discussion and learn from each-other (please bare with me, I'm not very astute as you all)
The problem with being able to comprehend extreme level topics but unable to rewrite them is a profound phenomena known as the inability to repurpose that which one has consumed over a time period of negative (or positive) cognitive reception via media, social, personal or other content viewed.
In this writing^ I will take from my own personal repertoire of: Memory issues - where would one such as myself fit into a particular or aparticular, localized or national society.
-----
That exposure, to endless fantastical, yet real events and their effects upon an individual is a common foundation upon therein where a civilization is built and divided into different subsections of socioeconomic factions like utilitarianism and unilaterial or radical political systems of archetypal adherence. As well as personal issues and problems interalized through that overexposure to consistent and repetitive and similar, yet entirely unidentical, events.
(Desensitization here, we can extend here, just food for thought to open the discussion)
What would one of us or you or me or I should do in such trying wordily times amongst any part of the world you live it.
(You can remain anon if you so wish it, not asking for personal info unless one wants to present it)