basically i would like to discuss the ivory tower effect which i read from some article.... philosophy as you probably already know is from the greek "love of wisdom" and this is all very good, loving wisdom is an admirable goal and wisdom sometimes seems to be in short supply so it is important that we continue to philosophize, however more and more i notice that those who claim to be philosophers love philosophy more than wisdom, they engage in increasingly futile attempts not to discover truth but to win arguments, to appear to have loved some wisdom into their head and i fear that it will inevitably lead to the loss of all wisdom (a trend which, and this may be me being a pessimistic pragmatist, seems to be manifesting itself in our own time)i wonder is there hope for philosophy? how is it that in questioning the "basic principles", a philosopher can delude themselves into thinking they have found not truth but Truth?

to me philosophy is a method of thinking, to see things in as many point of view as possible.
while all sciences including philosophy have the ultimate goal of finding truth, there are philosophers that argue that all we know is relative truth, not absolute truth. so if they think they know the truth or is very confident in something, are they really philosophers?
so it comes down to the definition of philosopher, but unfortunately the term philosopher is loosely defined..

in philosophy, there's an art to argue called sophism, and people who practice them are called sophist. i don't remember exactly.....there's a rule called negation of negation (correct me if i am wrong) where when 2 people argue, usually both will settle with a point of view between 2 arguements .

Part of wisdom is knowing or the understanding of when to stop. As with everything else, too much is never good, the same goes for philosophy. Too much might just make you go bonkers no?

Its fine to question (and philosophize), since knowledge is always useful and there may be more facets in which to analyze things.



Wikipedia defines it as such, so optimally we should stop philosophizing over some things after a certain point. At least that's my take to it.

Why should we stop unless it cannot be improved further? And if we don't try how do we know it cannot be improved anymore?

a philosopher that debates without wisdom is no help to anyone. They are not called philosophy. They are koktok.

I think your main issue is with those who do analytical philosophy. When posed 'twice two makes four', "analytical philosophers" will not directly agree or disagree, instead they raise more questions like what do you mean by 'twice', by 'two', by 'makes' and by 'four' before they finally agree or disagree or even derailed leaving all questions unanswered.

It's unfair to dismiss them altogether, because being anal is important to achieve profound understanding of a subject. But it happens many times that focusing too much on a tree, you'll miss out the whole forest. But I note that given that there's no restriction of time and resources, there's nothing wrong in studying the forest tree by tree.

It is also often the case that some are eager to win arguments because there is the belief that truth is truth, it is irrefutable. Therefore winning an argument implies you are holding the truth -- a hasty conclusion. I guess that's why people say that wisdom comes with age. Young people are hasty. That must be the case. (Notice the irony ).

ah ha, someone understand what i'm trying to ask...thx for the comments

Mmm. Philosophy itself is not a method of thinking, instead it's a field that proposes various ways of thinking for various fields. And perhaps instead of asking "are they really philosophers?", the more accurate question is "is he/she a good philosopher?" or "how good they are in philosophy?". The first question can be a simple "yes" or "no", and it is often a "yes", because while philosophy is the "love for wisdom", therefore anyone with this love, is a philosopher. Now comes the real question how good someone is at it, why do I accept his or her philosophy over what's proposed by Wittgenstein, for example.

But all in all, I agree that the term "philosopher" is loosely defined.

Negation of negation is also not so much a rule rather then it is a method. The rule is within the method. A simple one, quite self-explanatory. Say you propose that negation of negation is a rule. I negate with, no, it is not a rule. The negation of negation would then be, no, it is not not a rule. This renders us both to go back to square one. It brought to question was I right to negate, or were you right to negate my negation?

Why negate the negation when we can simply insist on our initial position? We negate the negation when our opponent has proven our position faulty, but we are also not convinced by what he's bringing to the table in support of his negation. Either one argument survive or it ends up in a stalemate.

Plausible reason would be the costs outweighs the benefits.

Or it could be that improving the issue will not get me laid.

Thanks to you too. Good thread.

Ah, good point. But seeing as philosophy mostly requires only human resources, even if the person's time can be better spent elsewhere, it shouldn't require said person to completely give up philosophising on a particular topic. He could just go part time.

Aha! The "everything a man does he does to get laid" debate! Check it out:
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/iq2-video/2009/get-laid

lol@video. I'm gonna find time to watch it. XD

Also, yeah as you said. To give up on it totally is a shame. So the alternatives are to let those who really have NBTD do it, or just we do it as we go.

This post has been edited by Sukebe: Jan 28 2010, 12:22 PM

One of the practise of philosophy is to question and seek solution. In most cases, we answer our own question with what we felt is best. Then we throw the question out to the open. We try to lead people to adopt our solution because we already think it is the best. For those who agree with us, it would be nice and fine. It only shows that we are on the same key. For those who disagree, we continue to convince them. Eventually we conclude that they are on different wave length and give up. We fail to realise that in all thing that is always opposition. We continue to maintain our ivory tower with those who opose. It all started with the inability to maintain an unbias view because before throwing out the question out we already form our opinion. Pride is also another reason why we refuse to lose an argument. Good point Communist, I guess this is the blind side of philosophy. It is a good pointer that I need to look into.