The thing is, Nietzsche hated half-assed narcissists like the Veni Vidi Vici people. In his book The Gay Science, he basically lists a bunch of passionate archetypes, the lover, the man with a cause, etc., as a bunch of narcissists. He says there is nothing more vain than to love something that one declares to be the greatest thing of all in and of itself, and that people serve higher causes because they're too proud to serve earthly ones. So I disagree that he'd value the Richard Villiers of the world.

How can you say Nietzsche is a foundation of modern logic when you guys cant even agree on what he meant in his most popular theory? If you cant define his meaning how can you debate his ideas?

Not Nietzsche. Philosophy. Try to keep up.

~J

Do NOT burn my thread down. But yeah, you can't just dismiss philosophy. Philosophy is thought on an abstract level about the world, and that's just way too big to just throw away.

Philosophy is just man trying to give himself a reason for what he does and a framework to explain himself in the Universe.

Ultimately I dont think the Universe gives a rats ass as to why we're here or what we do. And until we realise that Philosophy will go round and round trying to make man important and not just a highly evolved biped in the Milky Ways fringe.

What's important, though, is that WE give a rat's ass. And that's what philosophy's about, in my opinion, finding out what's worth giving a rat's ass about.

Sure we do, its a cultural crutch we use to work and live together. Doesnt have to have any greater meaning.

Philosophy doesn't necessarily bring people together, and if people THINK there's a greater meaning, well, that's about the only thing that's important, isn't it?

Philosophy is the father of social engineering.

A greater goal in life, not a greater reason for someone running over your dog.

And if you throw away philosophy and the search for a higher meaning completely, then you're left with a pretty vapid existence. Nothing is left but the sputter and the ooze of mundane living. There would be no curiosity, no beauty, no meaning, nothing.

First off, I hate organized religion. It manipulates the people's search for a higher purpose for the sake of a lower purpose, namely the need to maintain power.

That said, that does not mean that a higher purpose isn't there. Would you say the same about technology if it were controlled by a bunch of asshole technocrats who reserve the training necessary to use it to a small elite the way theocrats do with religion? Just because the institution set up around an idea sucks ass does not mean the idea sucks ass.

But your kind of happiness is based around something abstract, like philosophy. Not to rag on art and CGI, I like them both. But even your happiness is nebulous and immaterial; and yet it's worth something to you. Who says philosophy isn't the same?

All GOOD philosophy is truth; the truth is what it is, both great and not great.

End Yoda mode.

And I agree with that part completely. But philosophy doesn't have to be the province of the sheep or the shepherd, and I would say all philosophizing done both in earnest and with a good intellectual conscience stays out of reach of both.

No, all truths are partial. Anything that adds to the whole is great and simply itself.

Never read him or Candide.

And I'm sure a PHILOSOPHER would support your aphorism that all truth is subjective.

Okay, philosophical, non-material truths.

But theres the rub. Whose non-material truth?

A Scientists with something as grand as M-Theory or as simple as a^2+b^2=c^2.

Or a religious leaders invisible man in the sky? Religious leader A's doesnt include C's but is the same as B's but different.

Note:

Alphabetical labeling of religions mentioned above are meaningless and culturaly based and not meant to give one any more importance than the other.

Your friendly neighborhood Dumpshocker.

Immaterial as in not "This is a car. The car drives. We ride in the car."

So immaterial as an invisible man who lives in the sky that will do bad things to me after I die if i dont do good things in life?

Yes. And I don't believe in the invisible man.

Philosophy is in quite a bind. After all, any logically valid argument contains its conclusion in its premises. That means that a logically valid argument is also by definition a Fallacy. A valid argument is also a circular one. D'oh!

Philosophy is interesting, not because it tells us what to believe, but because it tells us what beliefs make sense. That is, if the premises of your argument flow logically to a conclusion, then your conclusion could be true. You can't prove premises are correct by any means (you could be in the Matrix right now after all), but you can prove that certain things wold be true if the premises are correct.

On the other hand, if a set of premises flows to a contradiction it can't possibly be true. We know that A and ~A can't both be true simultaneously. So for example, we know that some beliefs simply don't make sense.

There is no reason to believe in, for example, Omnipotence. The simple question "Can God create a rock so big he can't lift it?" generates a contradiction if the answer is "Yes" and it generates a contradiction if the answer is "No." The premise, that there is, or could be a being of unlimited power is a demonstrably false premise.

And that's useful. We can't prove that other people are important or even that people other than yourself exist. But we can conclusively prove that some pernicious ideas are not worth consideration. And fortunately, one of those ideas is Islam. Score one for Philosophy.

The only truth that you know beyond possibility of contradiction is that you exist. Even questioning whether you exist presupposes a questioner. You are real. Other than that, allyou can do is eliminate impossible notions and make some core assumptions (like "The sense data you receive corresponds to a real universe that generates that sense data" - stuff like that). The idea that introspection alone could lead you to some sort of capitalized Truth is the kind of hogwash that'll end with you asserting that Horses have the wrong number of teeth.

-Frank