Has philosophy REALLY come up with new ideas?
Reading work after work I think it's just intellectual circle-jerking stating the obvious, telling things most people would have thought on their own anyways. Camus "The absurdity of life", Epicurus "just don't be in pain lol", Sartre "aspire things that feel meaningful to you".
Don't get me wrong: having someone put these thoughts into writing is a good thing. But do philosopher's actually PRODUCE new thoughts?
Or do I just think this way because, well, these philosopher's did come up with it.
But when was the last time a philosopher said something truly revolutionizing?
Seems to me art does a better job at creating new thoughts and feelings in people.
>>1232981
>stating the obvious, telling things most people would have thought on their own anyways
So is mathematics, you insufferable pleb.
Philosophers do not have any way to reason better than regular people. See the Munchhausen trilemma. Everything follows the axiom deduction method. There are infinitely many unfalsifiable things you can say but only philosophers good enough at marketing themselves become famous.
Nietzche is an edgy Rorschach test for pseudo intellectuals. Plato made the incredible discovery that definitions exist. Aristotle talked shit.
Why, when Hume pointed out the is ought problem, do philosophers insist that they can derive any insight in to ethics? Because they're charlatans.
Listen to Zizek talk about his political views. 40 years of Hegel studying and all he can say is "I like this so the government should do it ." The same as a regular person
> But when was the last time a philosopher said something truly revolutionizing
Philoshopie changed the old times a lot, see neo platonism as exemple.
> seems to me art does a better job at creating new thoughts and feelings in people.
Not the goal of philosophie
>>1232981
Holy shit, I can't stand this place any longer fuck
>>1232981
Philosophy isn't like empirical science you retards. It's not about coming up with "new shit" that will make lives easier/more productive.
It's a method by which one comes to learn to think critically and how to engage most meaningfully in the world. It's kind of like exercise - you don't HAVE to engage in it, and most people don't, but if you want to have a healthy and flexible body/mind that allows you to use your physical/mental faculties to a higher level, it's necessary to engage in.
>do philosopher's actually PRODUCE new thoughts?
If they didn't, we'd still think like the ancients, and the ancients would have thought like we do.
No, the history of philosophy shows thoughts are not static, it is a process.
>when was the last time a philosopher said something truly revolutionizing?
In political philosophy for example, John Rawls s started social liberalism, causing liberalism to split into SL and libertarianism.
In moral philosophy, MacIntyre proposed an alternative descriptive origin of morality and gave new life to virtue ethics.
In the philosophy of rights and law, human rights is an ongoing process.
In the philosophy of mind emergentism is a recent development.
In logic Bayesianism started in the 50s.
Do you think Aristotle's work on the natural sciences reads the same as Origin of the Species and Chance and Necessity?
Even in theology you have things like the New Perspective on Paul...
>>1233033
>the munchausen trilemma poster
please trip so we don't have to waste our time detecting your smelly presence
Don't generalise, since some do and some don't. When somebody is telling you to read some "philosophical" novel filled with drivel about the author's personal life and preferences *cough Hume's essays cough* feel free to completely ignore their post.
Has there been any scientific research that philosophers think more critically? I've heard the "philosophy makes you think critically" meme over and over again. But is it true?
>>1233144
This.. if this is a troll, it's a magnificent one. Damn man. Hell, even if you AREN'T trolling you've managed to pull off one of the best I've ever seen.
>>1233109
>>No, the history of philosophy shows thoughts are not static, it is a process.
Then why should I waste my time reading anything but the most hot off the press-stuff?
>>1232981
Philosophy is not about "coming up with new ideas", idiot.
>>1233153
Who, OP? I'm certainly not.
>>1233144
Nope. I love philosophy but this field is full of circle jerking and retards who use clever sounding language to spout BS that's been refuted already a million times. Just the way it is. Being a *good* philosopher makes you think more critically but being a philosopher is like being an artist. Just poop on some paper, voila, art.
>>1233144
People who major in it score really high on LSATS and law exams. Statistically the people who score highest on law exams are STEM majors, then philosophy and history, then theres a drop then its pleb majors like pre-law and psychology
>>1233180
Well a lot of arguments now build on old ideas (or at least people write about them in that way) so in some cases it's worth knowing the outline of an old idea, say, empiricism, to get a grasp of a newer more nuanced take. That said, a lot of it is old and refuted and now only of value to historians. I will say old, simple philosophy can be worth teaching to A-level or equivalent students as 'babby's first treatise' or whatnot.
>>1233201
So basically, Foucault is God.
I knew it
>>1233195
So it is autism? Thanks science!
>>1233231
Probably
>>1233195
But is that equal to critical thinking or mathematical insight? I think the latter.
0/10
And you idiots are just falling for it.
>>1233180
>Then why should I waste my time reading anything but the most hot off the press-stuff?
Because when a philosopher writes, he writes his refutation of whatever it is that he's criticizing.
It is even less likely for an author to copypaste the philosophers he agrees with, he just references a predecessor or his work.
To make a silly example, when an atheist criticizes the Bible, you usually don't have the full text included in the work. Same goes when a theologian's work praises it.
You will only see the relevant verses that they quote, but in order to refute either you would be far better equipped after having read the whole thing. If you go by what they select, you may even only see verses dealing with violence, or love.
Reading "the most hot off the press-stuff" IS the waste of time, when you have little idea what it's talking about.
You wouldn't read the latest scientific work on hyponatremia if you didn't know what sodium is, would you?
I try to balance my interest with CURRENT YEAR contemporary philosophy with the classics, because I found out the hard way that I couldn't escape the latter.
>>1232981
Philosophy it's no more than a form of literature.
>>1232981
Bertrand Russel already answered this:
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/RussellValuePhilosophy1912.pdf
>>1233010
>So is mathematics, you insufferable pleb.
Butthurt philosophy major detected.
The average person has maybe a 2% correct idea of what mathematics even is and you're clearly part of that group.
Also, there's the fact that our technology and by extension our entire way of life is completely dependent on it
>>1233254
Critical thinking is like 30% of what you're taught in physics so... probably that.
>>1232981
I think the part you're missing is that they took ideas and ran with them to produce coherent, all encompassing philosophies out of them.
On it's own, the Hume's problems of induction are just stoner-thoughts. The difference is Hume pursued it and produced a rigorous epistemology out of it.
Reduce philosophers to a memey, simplified 'idea', and of course it doesn't look like they produced anything new.
>>1236274
>rigorous
Why is it rigorous?
Philosophy major here,
the answer actually is no.
For example, Nietzsche is essentially the second coming of Thrysamachus(spelling?), a character from Plato's Republic.
People still write today about the same problems that were argued over in ancient Greece. For example, philosophical skepticism has existed since, well, the school of ancient Greek skeptics, and no one has been able to unify everyone under a theory of knowledge that works. Best attempts these day are Thomas Reid's common sense realism, but it's kind of shit.
>>1233190
>being a philosopher is like being an artist.
Terrible analogy. Artists actually make money.
>>1236315
Because it stands up remarkably well to outside critique and allows someone to reach reasonable conclusions and behavior using the epistemology.
>>1237332
That's not rigor though.
>>1237342
Really? We're going to get into an argument about the meaning of words now?
Rigor: "the quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate."
Hume's work is both thorough, and exhaustive. Whether or not it's accurate is open to debate.
>>1233010
Any teenager can read a philosophical text and understand it. But even maths professors are sometimes struggling to understand the newest research math.
>>1237460
>Philosophical text is difficult to understand
>Proof that philosophy is meaningless obscurantism
>Philosophical text is easy to understand
>Proof that philosophy is stating the obvious.
>>1237460
>Any teenager can read a philosophical text and understand it.
not really
>>1233033
The "self" educated everybody...
Go shine my shoes boy.
>>1233180
It all depends on your goals.
If you want to be a philosopher you need to do it properly cause as a philosopher you must produce content. Write essays, books, articles etc..
If you are not a philosopher just read whatever you fnd interesting..What other reason is there ot read philsoophy if you are not intending to become a proffesional philosopher...
All the crap about expanding your mind or learning to think is just bullshit. It will not improve your life in any way, its just something anti social shut ins tell themselves to feel good about their tendencies.
>>1233109
>In logic Bayesianism started in the 50s.
what
do you know what the word Bayes even means (comes from)
>>1237198
>muh grand theory of everything
And you study pilosophy?
The Principle of Alternative Possibilities has been implicitly presupposed for basically forever. Then, Harry Frankfurt showed in the 60s/70s that it's very questionable.
Philosophy can't come up with any new ideas. Thats impossible.
All the ideas are, are letters jumbled up into words, which are then jumbled up into sentences. Those sentences are then jumbled into paragraphs and then couple pages essays and then finally to books.
You don't learn anything new. All that ever is and will be are in the 26 letter alphabet we know intrinsically. Everyone else telling you otherwise is a charlatan.
>>1237802
>You don't learn anything new. All that ever is and will be are in the 26 letter alphabet we know intrinsically
You have a thoroughly idiotic understanding of the concept of information. Or none at all.
>look, the greeks talked about it all already
Thats not the point. Imagine philosophy as a soap bubble.
First that bubble is small but slowly as histroy advances it becomes bigger and bigger, wth every area stretching out and expanding.
Its the same "grand" topics but they expand immensly throughout history.
Any philosopher will have an oppinion about the purpose of philosophy but a pretty modern and utilitarian one is Deleuze's that talked about philosophers as concept creators. Like artists create new visual and musical movements and combinations, and the sciences create new scientific theories so does philosophy invent new concepts. A new language that describes the world in greater detail and in a way that helps its contemporaries.
You can think of philosophy as a tool to find the right -questions-.
Bergson wrote that once a question is stated properly it already contains the answer. The answer is perhaps hidden and needs to be uncovered but not discovered or created.
Thus, philosophy helps us to restate things in more appropriate terms to allow otherp arts of society rethink their outlook on their own fundmantla thinking.
>>1237788
There were no 'bayesian' or 'bayesianism' words before the 1950s and 1960s respectively.
For reference, I'm talking Wald and Savage on statistics, not a certain 18th century writer.
>>1237802
>ideas are letters
that's wrong you fucking retard
>>1237812
>There were no 'bayesian' or 'bayesianism' words before the 1950s and 1960s respectively.
>For reference, I'm talking Wald and Savage on statistics, not a certain 18th century writer.
You'll really have to make your case in more detail, because currently there seems no connection to reality.
Frequentist statistics were basically invented in the late 19th and early 20th century. Before, Bayes was well established, and in many contexts, the definition of statistics (which is why it didn't really need any other name than "statistics"). Turing famously used it in WW2.
Furthermore, Wald was basically a Frequentist (see e.g. the eponymic test). The key figures in early modern Bayesian theory were Jeffreys and Jaynes much more than Savage. The real breakthrough with Bayes came when Monte Carlo became computationally viable. And so on and so on.
>>1237802
Evolution can't come up with and new organisms, Thats impossible.
All organisms are, are base pairs jumbled into genetic code, which are then jumbled up into genes. Those genes are then jumbled into chromosomes and then finally to a genome.
You don't evolve anything new. All that ever is and will be are in the 4 letter alphabet we know as DNA. Everyone else telling you otherwise is a charlatan.
>>1237460
15 year olds can't even interpret Nietzsche correctly. Kant or Hegel would be a disaster.
>>1237845
Reminder: some people actually believe this.
>>1237845
But this is true though. You can't make up a non DNA creature from DNA.
Evolution doesn't create new animals, but rather simply animals that are different.
>>1237780
nice bait, made me reply
>>1237872
>Evolution doesn't create new animals, but rather simply animals that are different.
You have a very particular understanding of "new".
To most people, "has never existed, in reality or thought" suffices.
>>1237877
People use new and different, but they mean the same thing.
There is nothing completely new between different species of animal. They all share the dna but are mixed differently. Outcome of those different pairings might be "new" but overall, its not a new creature but rather a different one than the one that it evolved from.
>>1237198
all theories have fallen to pieces eventually, or else you become a fanatic. I'm afraid that the only way is that of skepticism.
>>1237845
Ah...I would laugh at you but I know that in the past I also spouted such nonesense.
>>1237886
Is some kind of "some infinities are larger than/contained within others" type of argument?
t.math pleb
>>1237886
>There is nothing completely new
welcome to the universe, everything flows into other things, nothing is completely new and nothing is completely the same
>>1237460
>has read a rather plain fragment of Plato cherrypicked by his highschool philosophy teacher
>thinks he understood it because teacher spoonfed it to him with subtlety
>GUYZ, LE PHILOSOPHY IS EZ BS MAYMAY
>>1237874
Its not bait. People lead perfectly happy lifes without studying philosophy.
Philosophy is easier done proffesionaly and results in created content or its done simply because its an interest of your, like a sport or like reading a novel..
Anyone claiming philosopy is some sort of self help methos is just universalising his own affinity to philosophical thinking.
>>1237896
But saying that evolution is the result of 4 letters alone, without including the multitude of selection pressures would be an incomplete understanding.
>>1237886
what about elepants
for billions of years, there were none
now there are some
seems new to me
(thanks evolution)
>>1237802
edgy teen detected
>>1237912
Thats the difference of time, not a problem within evolution. You'd simply have to extrapolate the missing evolutionary path.
>>1237909
Scratch easier, forgot to erase it.
>>1237910
But i was replying to the reductionist view in the post. So we are in agreement...
>>1237928
The claim was, evolution doesn't create anything completely new. And this is correct. You can't create something from nothing. In order to create those "new things" like elephants you'd have to go back to the its most recent common ancestors. Then do the same to the ancestors and repeat. Through accumulation and minor changes, the evolution takes place. Those changes are not completely new but rather small random mutations.
>>1237956
Ah, okay. So we agree:
- evolution creates new things, but not from scratch, but via near-continuous variation (the discontinuity being on a single-individual level)
I had thought I had encountered one of these creationists who, ignoring mutation, claimed since natural selection could only decrease information, evolution could not create new things.
>>1237909
>Implying there is a proper way to "do philosophy".
>Implying peoples' happiness has to be relevant in philosophy.
Professionality is irrelevant in philosophy. You are working with concepts inside a very narrow dynamic of public vs. private life or "Idle time" vs. "working time" if you prefer. Contemporary philosophy, with its self-enclosure in faculties and classrooms has led to this.
As some other fellows have stated here, philosophy is the very act of critical thinking. You do not need to be paid to do it. At it's core, it is the attempt of analizing and understanding your own's surroundings. It does not need to "produce" content as in the materialistic terms you stated before. It can perfectly lead to a life of contemplative solipsism, which happiness does not need to be a part of.
It is commonly accepted tha Diogenes was a philosopher and he would laugh at the concept that to be a "philosopher" you have to produce content. He would laugh even harder if you told him to write it down.
It is not moved by the desire of improving one's life, but the desire to understand. You could even say that's it's ethymological meaning.
Pic related, it's you.
>>1238014
Professionality may be irrelevant, but there certainly is a way to do philosophy. That is to analyze, be logical, and accept criticism NOT as an attack but as an improvement upon yourself. Your main goal is understanding for the sake of understanding, not to boast about your understanding or to defend your position to the end. If there is flaw, accept that and improve or discard the idea.
Emotional attachment to ideas is something that philosophers should avoid. Emotional attachment to wisdom/knowledge in general is the most important aspect of Philosophy. Afterall, this is a "love of wisdom"
>>1238027
I agree with most of your post eccept for the "not defending your position to the end". To discover all of your flaws you must defend your position to the end; the point where you cannot longer defend it anymore without incurring in a leap of faith. The problem is that you could argue that everything needs of a constant leap of faith in reality itself. Skepticism is the bane of any intellectual construction.
>>1237795
Hey man I'm not into that teleological bullshit, but it is true that philosophers of different times and places resemble each other because there isn't really a lot we can do to discover the true nature of reality since we are human.
>>1237515
If it has commentary and you complement it with other readings, you can. Understanding philosophy isn't hard, coming up with relevant philosophy is.
