If all our effort will never reveal absolute truth…

Then what should philosophy be aiming at?
And when does a belief system become a religion?

Btw are we going in circles? I just saw my ass!!

I don't really think there is an answer to that question, anyone can be a philosopher, and aim it in any direction they choose, because it needs no evidence, just creative thinking. What ever answer best fits the viewer equals their philosophy.

^well yeah but if your philosophy is not sound than your peers will criticize you and eventaully people wont read your work just like with scientists..

Philosophers write papers for other philosophers..for the most part..not for naive people that will believe anything and everything. What you are talking about it paradigm not philosophy.

"anyone can be a philosopher, and aim it in any direction they choose"

Anyone cando that with anything..doesnt mean it's going to make as much sense or be as valued as someone elses work. Even in science if you get deep wnought into it it becomes philosophy..lots of stuff in theororetical physics starts to sound like philosophy..which brings it all back full circle since philosophy really gave birth to science anyway.

Our whole scientisfic system of measurement came out of very wishy washy circumstances..Rene Descartes in 1619 had a dream of an angel that told him "the conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measurement"...so what is that about?..

Even socrates had a little voice that he listened to that told him all sorts of things that he contributed to his work..

I am not saying that spirituality is a part of science and philosophy, but it seems there was a time when they were meshed together as one..and alot of todays scientific method comes out of that time.

Philosophy is important..as important as science..dumbing it down and saying oh it can go in any direction it wants is a cop out and an attempt to simplify something that is much more complex than that.

Have you ever taken philosophy classes? If your papers dont make sense and you dont have strong supportive points you will be critisized..

Something that is true enough. Someoone once said that I dunno who though

I am suggesting a philosophy should be aimed at a way of living. It should provide a context from where to act. A world view.
Not just about planet earth, but more in a holistic view. What gives meaning to my life if earth is just a may fly in the face of eternity?
We shall never comprehend the full truth. So it can not be known. Sciences makes a good guess, but taoism comes closer if you ask me. It tries to deal with the unknown. Understanding takes a whole new perspective that way. It is about how you want to fill that one day you live.

"What gives meaning to my life if earth is just a may fly in the face of eternity?"

Depends on how you choose to scale that situation..it could be a beautiful miracle..could be an ugly tragedy..do you find importance in size?..becasue there will always be something bigger..but when you are in the moment nothing seems bigger than that and that is what makes it perfect.

Yes I agree we cannot know the full truth..all we ever have are approximations and I think that that is all we will ever have..without the mystery we have nothing to strive towards..the mystery is what drives us foreward through the highways of history always trying to grasp that thing that seems to be just beyond the grip of comprehension..

If we ever truely figured it ALL out what would there be left to do?..and we'd start asking where the hell that ALL came from and end up back in the same boat.

We have philosophy because we have curiosity..same reason as why we have science..there are some questions better suited for philosophy and some problems better suited for science.

We should know what our convictions are and stand for them. Upon ones own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends on ones ultimate interpretation of fact. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about ones subjective principles. AS THE MAN IS, SO WILL BE HIS ULTIMATE TRUTH.

Anarchism and peace. Taoism.

"well yeah but if your philosophy is not sound than your peers will criticize you and eventaully people wont read your work just like with scientists."

What is going to make your philosophy sound? Maybe it relating to known facts, there are still lots of possibilities it leaves room for, basically, your theory has to agree with the theory your peers suggest, sounds like alot of theory. And i also don't agree with alot of theoritical science. But these are just my points and my opinions, i don't want to start a debate on the matter, so i'll end it here.

"What is going to make your philosophy sound? Maybe it relating to known facts"

Yes. It has to be at least analagous..You cant get away with writing up any old bullshit..not in real philosophy classes anyway.

i think philosophy should be aiming to replace religion in terms of ethics and morality. it should also avoid anti science tactics that some philosophers have taken in our modern age. back in the days philosophy and science were often done together. now there are some philosophers who distaste science and write books to confuse the scientifically illiterate public. i think this is bad and needs to be tackled and when necessary taken down intellectually.

You sure got a talent for diving right into the most pressing issues, virola...



Even one of my philosophy professors admited that after the end of a course. Why philosophy? Because it's entertainment for the mind and helps to make personal connections.



Well, it's also the topic of seminars at university. And: I like it. It's one of my favourite topics, and there are very sound arguments backing the limitness of sciene, the first beeing that we can't know the framework behind our human existence, which leaves room for irrationality.

In my opinion, the strong, fundamentalistic stance of atheists and scientists in the US is some form of overcompensation, to bear the right wing nutjobs and their creationistic point of view.

I want to hear these arguments.

What the heck does we can't know the frame work behind our human existence even mean?

Biology has done a good job figuring it out. What has nonsense anti science modern philosophy contributed to this by saying "what can we really know...." (with spooky sounds in the backround).

This is why I asked others in another thread if they took philosophy at university lectures. I knew it was the Universities spreading this junk that "resonates" with users of psychedelic drugs so well.

But before I dismiss it seriously or keep poking fun I want to hear or see some real arguments. Will have to wait a few days for response tho..

I should state my real stance against it. There are certainly limits to what humans can know. But when people are taught this kind of stuff who have no strong scientific backround it fosters anti intellectualism and a negative attitude towards science in general among not the uneducated but among the educated! It teaches people they can just believe anything they want because "who knows it could be right becuase we can't know everything" blah de fucking blah.

Its why you have idiots running around writing all these scholarly works about total nonsense like 2012 cosmic consciousness and the educated believing it.

we are turning an age of information into an age of ignorance.

Everything we percieve of make up intellectually is a reflection of our conscious mind, with it'S distinct limitations of not beeing able to know everything, with it's distinct way to think, to construct reality. This is basically the main argument against intellectualism. Kant called it "The thing in-itself", the unknowable.



I think that this is a very good argument. I'm not against science, I find it fascinating because it is capable of navigating us through the realm of our own creation, to predict the future and thus to predict ourselves. Well, it'ÄS pretty spooky at the same time!!!

But there is still this X we can't percieve. Bergson offers a solution to this problem:

For him, INTUITION is something we humans inherit to percieve things as they are. The intellect is something we can use to fabricate tools, to mold the anorganic. What is intuition? Bergson talked about instincts. I wouldn't reduce the term to a biological level but would go so far to see it as the voice everyone can hear. There are different terms for that voice:

-God
-The collective unconscious
-The Ancestors
-The inner voice

I think that this voice, this instinct is a bridge to X...a bridge between our rational world and the realsm of X, the irrational. If I recall it correctly, this was also bergsons idea.

Now you know why this arguments resonates so strongly with the psychedelic experience, because it offers us this bridge to the unknown, translinguistic world of the Alien, the unfiltered, unconstructed which is no different to the world gouverned by science, the world we live in when we open our eyes.

Science and Religion are not even competing, and there is no need to artificially invoke a competition. Science is not god, and god is not science. They're different ways of experiencing different levels of life.

Some interesting arguments i see.
Thank you.

But I think we have been here before..
I think it is just a big puzzle. And the pieces are here.
We just need to sort them out, to get to a 'fruitful attitude'.
In the end, it will come down to ethics, can't see it any other way for now...

Lucky for us, we are all open minded and susceptible for reason.
We can get to the bottom of this... if we do not get stuck in semantics, or the other pitfalls.

Will ponder your ideas. Then get back on this.

For now, I wish you a merry christmas.

Philosophy has no end.
You can keep going forever philsophing - u won't get any final conclusion.
Just toughts.
No truth.

Therefore you are wasting your time.
But i like time wasting from time to time and i'm good at that too

@burnt
either you are spiritual or you believe in the mind. Choice is yours.

"Its why you have idiots running around writing all these scholarly works about total nonsense like 2012 cosmic consciousness and the educated believing it."

I agree..but that doesn't have too much to do with real philosophy. Really it has more to do with anthropology and mythology and new age type of stuff...I dunno why we have to get that all mixed up here with real philosophy..there is a point where people break off from real philosophical thinking and instead go off into fantacy and other fringe ideas..just becasue someone says they are doing philosophy, doesnt necessarily mean that they are.

The way you are making philosophy out to be burnt is very biased and sort of one sided..sure there are those people out there..but there are also those exact same people in the science community as well..and they are criticized by their peers in both fields.

"Well, it's also the topic of seminars at university. And: I like it. It's one of my favourite topics, and there are very sound arguments backing the limitness of sciene, the first beeing that we can't know the framework behind our human existence, which leaves room for irrationality."

That makes sense to me. I had one philosophy teacher that I really liked..he was very open minded and at the same time had a firm grasp on reality. He made aot of effort to findotu ways to point out the fact that all we have is assumption..in the end anyway.

We can know little things,little details here and there about how things work..and science is what does thast for us..but currently science has it's limits just as everything else does..science is like a flashlight.. it helps us shine a light on one situation..bringing certain areas into perspective, and as we do that the picture begins to grow..our understanding of this place gets bigger and bigger on one level..but there are still those fundemental questions that remain..and there always seems to be more out there to explore and discover..

What science gives us is an informed approximation...the fact that it is informed is what makes it important..becasue it is(or at least should be) based on things that we can test..so in that way the scientific view is an informed assumption. Thats all we really have though.

I cant really see there not being a science..if it didn't exist we would come to it all over again and just call it something else..science is a fundamental part of our exploration of reality.

I should say that I am not attacking philosophy in general but a very specific kind of philosophy that I see becoming more accepted and popularized but not necessarily in a way that was intended by the original philosopher. My main problem is its political mis-use on the left and the right. But also the attitude of new age wack jobs uses such ideas in their pointless arguments.

I am not viewing all philosophy under the categories I am criticizing I like lots of philosophy. I am more annoyed at the offspring of certain philosophical musings.



So are Kantian ideas the origin of this kind of modern anti intellectualism among the educated that I am talking about? This is different then the anti intellectualism of religious folk which I don't want to discuss.



Just because we cannot experience ultimate reality does not mean we cannot learn about it. We have no way of perceiving radio waves with our 5 senses. But we know they exist. We know what the electromagnetic spectrum is and why its the way it is. This and many other examples are aspects of reality that we know about. I don't see how its unknowable just because its not experiencable (made up that word).

I think this whole of 'noumena' is flawed. If he wants to talk about 'objects' what does he actually mean? I can understand what a molecule is even without experiencing that molecule. I don't get it??????



This is the kind of stuff that I think is garbage that comes from this kind of philosophy. I don't care if there is an X that I can't perceive. There is plenty we can know without directly perceiving it. God, the collective unconscious, the ancestors are not explanations for a "little" voice guiding human intuition. Human intuition is not even a good term for how we know stuff about the world. Not in the face of modern neuroscience. The inner voice is just us reasoning things out. Kant at least had some nice ideas some of which are very influential and may be correct in certain senses but this kind of stuff? Come on it doesn't explain ANYTHING.

I also think this concept of a rational and irrational world is nonsense. The world is the way it is. We don't know everything about the way the world is but that doesn't matter. We can think rationally or irrationally about things we observe in the world. People used to think disease was caused by spirits or demons now we know many diseases are caused by bacteria and virsus's. It doesn't matter what a human being thinks about it nothing changes those facts. This whole philosophical discourse on a rational world and a irrational world is meaningless.



The psychedelic experience does not defy science. Its not a translinguistic world either. I think much of the imagery and symbolism of psychedelic visions are influenced by language and culture. I do think there is a point in psychedelic experiences where language is meaningless and your brain isn't thinking in such a manner but this again does not defy science or give us any indication about the unknown that Kant is talking about.



Religion is bullshit so science doesn't need to compete with it.

If this line of thinking comes from the above philosophical concepts that you have used then you have proven my point that this kind of philosophy is fostering nonsensical beliefs.

You take the idea that we can't know everything (which is a sound argument) and turn it around to say that religion is a different way of experiencing life? Thats nonsense. Religion doesn't explain chemistry or physics or even the origin of human morality. Science can offer explanations for all of these things. Religion explains nothing except that humans can make up explanations for things that are wrong.



Science has answered fundamental questions. Example evolution. It explains a fundamental question about the origin of species. What fundamental questions are you talking about? So we can be more specific.



Well we can not make exact measurements about the fundamental units of the universe so I can accept this kind of reasoning. But it in no way gives ANY credibility to spiritualism or religious beliefs. This is why I am saying philosophy should fill the voids left by religion. It can give opinions on ethics culture politics etc. Science and philosophy should be working together and in many cases it is. But wack jobs who almost universally have a religious motive are ruining these strong bonds in the eyes of the public creating a distrust of science and fostering their stupidity.

Edit: I guess I should add that I consider religion 100% dead in the face of modern science. There are some small truths but they are unimportant as other explanations for morality and human emotions etc are far more complete.

You see white, when you put it next to black. We see and understand things within a context that is defined by a perspective. So every measurement or description is a comparison. Every number or word defines only a contrast, duality. A word or number does not say anything about the ding an sich, which is a non-duality. A word or number describes only a state, a relation, a contrast, a relative position within a context, defined by the perspective that is applied.

You see things by means of your eyes, so everything you see with your eyes will appear within a context defined by the ‘perspective’ of your human eye. Which is limited. So everything you see is an abstraction. Even if you use a telescope, microscope or computer, every analyses will result in a more or less accurate description of what is true about it, in some context. You have at most rough and moving boundaries, where in between truth would have to be somewhere. In this way poetry and science are alike.

Only the ding an sich that is ‘all’ or ‘unity’, can comprehend itself, and know everything. Only from the perspective of ‘all’ can one know absolute truth, which would be the answer to all our questions. But ‘all’ cannot be adequately described by words because there is no duality within unity. There would be no contrast words can refer to.

Epistemology digs deeper into the questions about what we can know. Very important for everybody to consider because any philosophy (whether it be inspired by science or religion, or any other perspective) is based on assumptions about truth. The context wherein you place things (by words or numbers) so to understand them, always forms a system of beliefs. You assume.

In my opinion we need an open perspective that allows for anything from any context from any perspective, to fit in some way, somehow, in some form, some time. Because it is all there for a purpose, as a part of the way things go. Such an open perspective should be used as a ‘grand strategy’ to understand. And it should be one of ethics above all. We are together as beings on earth, whether you like it or not. We all share this perspective. So we need an attitude(ethics) that can deal with what we do not know or understand, without slowing us down. We can use different perspectives to find a different way to look at things, dilemma’s, challenges, questions, conflicts, situations, whatever. Perspectives will form a bigger context to reason and act from, and a matching attitude. One that is more fruitful.

Understanding is more about how (to get there), and less about what (is true). For as far as I can see the earth will burn out one day in may. Probably sooner something terrible will happen, from a being on earth perspective that is. So eventually it will be time for us to evolve into something different. Or at least need some revolutionary technology. We have a way to go my friend.

There will be new perspectives, and these will provide an ever growing context. What we think and feel about something … it will be different when put in a bigger context. Let us accept this and get used to it, make use of it. This will allow for tolerance, peace and prosperity (less resistance to overcome as we are beings on earth) which is fruitful and stimulating. Our kids will have ideas, based on our ideas.

We should be flexible enough to move between different perspectives as they are presented by life, the way things go. It is about trying those other and new perspectives. For us it is not about truth. It is not about you and me. It is about what we have in common.
That will bring us further.