Personal efforts to be ethically consistent goes a long way.
Character as determined by personal conduct and actions. Your choices, your consequences.
The philosophy thread (reminder philosophy is not politics nor conspiracy theories)
White_Noise
#349
I was going to reply “Existence is a variable quantum field.” But then I thought that would open up the can of worms of whether existence is a subset of consciousness or consciousness is a subset of existence. And whatever the answer to that question may be (though consciousness is totally a subset of existence) that’s not a can I’m going to open when my laptop is at 8% battery and the clock just struck midnight.
White_Noise
#351
Hmmm, that is one way to make existence a subset of consciousness after all, though not in the way I thought.
The older I get the less I believe in relativistic existence where your consciousness brings the world around you into being, and the main reason for that is that there is too much around me that I don’t understand. So if the act of my being conscious sprang the universe into existence, why is there so much stuff in it that I cannot understand? I mean, just for instance, if the only thing I can be sure of is my own existence, how in the hell is some of the music out there that I hear clear as day getting made? I can’t sample like Daft Punk, and yet I can hear their music. If existence was predicated upon my acknowledging something, Daft Punk’s music couldn’t exist for me because I’m not familiar with the material they’re sampling from.
That line of thinking is why I believe there’s a fundamental state of existence that simply is without any relation to the observer - a variable quantum field if you will.
But, something else’s consciousness, I hadn’t really considered…
bfk
#352
Few seperate thoughts
Ego is only a shell
A man must go his own way…seperate himself from the herd…even if it ends in ruin and does this due to an inner calling…
bfk
#353
Both men and women have certain responsibilities…
And im not talking about oppression via gender roles.
Men are expected to take care of certain responsibilities just as women are expected to take care of certain responsibilities.
Some of the arguments on social media made by both men and women seem like a rationalization to be derelict from taking care of their responsibilities as adults.
Im talking about the invalidness of ideas like fucking off from work fridays…or hashtag bossbitch energy, or anything like andrewtatism…etc.
For men and women both must lead by example for the younger generations instead of revelling solely in selfish pursuits.
For revelling solely in selfish pursuits dont lead to personal excellence.
To be clear im not justifying the worst of a handmaids tale nor the worst of fight club.
My point is by taking care of these certain responsibilities it leads to people being better adults.
Like a doctor maintaining a job and being a good doctor.
bfk
#356
Some say that Ayn rand…isnt a philosopher…
Yet her ideas have had a massive influence…
The whole ayn rand philosophy debate…is ironic…
Because she is a woman that has ideas…but she wasnt very attractive physically…and her ideas went against the norms…of her time…
I do disagree with her that selfishness is a virtue…but again she does have a point because as an adult you have to take care of you…to some degree while you fulfill your responsibility to others.
I do agree with her that a person must be a master of their own destiny.
The irony is that her ideas is disregarded as a philosophy because she is woman that some people disagree with.
Philosophy isnt wholly what is logical…
epictetus rationalizes unphased resiliency in the face of adversity, and duty, and honor…
Nietszche rationalizes power as a virtue.
Aristotle golden mean…plus metaphysics…
Descartes is famous for a thought experiment where he states what if we lived in a dream
Philosophy is logic, metaphysics, ethics…how to conduct oneself…figuring out the nature of things…it is the scientific method of thought…
I state ayn rand is a philosopher but is only disregarded because her ideas go against norms and people disagree with her…
I disagree with nietzsche but he is still regarded as a philosopher.
As a person though, i wouldnt hang out with ayn rand. We wouldnt get along.
I have to read more of her…though…because her ideas are expressed through allegory.
bfk
#357
I cant name many woman philosophers…i can only name one…
I think most woman philosophers were/are writers
Mary shelly
Margaret atwood
Ayn rand
Virginia wolf…
But again they wrote fiction…and their ideas are present through allegory…
I think very few women have written pure philosophy books…
I find this very wierd.
metaside
#358
Maybe try a Google search on it? Even in history there are some famous examples such as Elena Cornaro Piscopia:
Upon the recommendation of Carlo Rinaldini, her tutor in philosophy, Felice Rotondi petitioned the University of Padua to grant Cornaro the laurea [d] in theology.[10] When Cardinal Gregorio Barbarigo, the bishop of Padua, learned that she was pursuing a degree in theology, he refused on the grounds that she was a woman.[10] However, he did allow for her to get a degree in philosophy and after a brilliant course of study she received the laurea in Philosophy.[10] The degree was conferred on 25 June 1678, in Padua Cathedral in the presence of the university authorities, the professors of all the faculties, the students, and most of the Venetian Senators, together with many invited guests from the Universities of Bologna, Perugia, Rome and Naples. Lady Elena spoke for an hour in Classical Latin, explaining difficult passages selected at random from the works of Aristotle: one from the Posterior Analytics and the other from the Physics .[11]
[…]
A few months after Elena’s conferral, Charles Patin, lecturer in medicine at Padua, applied for his daughter Gabrielle-Charlotte [Carla Gabriella] Patin to begin a degree.[18] The university, supported by Gianbattista Cornaro-Piscopia, changed its statutes to prohibit women from graduation. The next female doctorate was granted by the University of Bologna in 1732 to Laura Bassi.[19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Cornaro_Piscopia
There are some comparatively famous ones such as Hannah Arendt (political philosophy) or Simone de Beauvoir (existentialism) and many contemporary examples, see for example:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/philosophy-in-a-new-key-a-study-in-the-symbolism-of-reason-rite-and-art-third-edition-susanne-k-langer/6728666?ean=9780674665033
Maybe you can find some that interest you here:
White_Noise
#360
I’ve read a decent chunk of Ayn Rand. My summary is thus:
If you’ve already read “Atlas Shrugged”, then stop. Reading more doesn’t clarify her ideas any, everything else I’ve read by her is a less clear expression of the ideas she brings forth in “Atlas Shrugged”. “The Fountainhead” (another thousand page behemoth of fiction about architecture) has about 3 paragraphs in the whole book on the level of an average chapter in “Atlas Shrugged”. Just save yourself the time and do a few short stories, and maybe “We the Living” which is kind of an autobiography of her time in Russia. I haven’t read that one myself, but knowing more about her life might help you understand her motivations behind her ideas a bit more.
I think Rand has some good points too, but she goes far too far with them, takes them beyond rational extremes really (I gather she wasn’t a fan of religion for example, but I have yet to find a purely rational system that can deliver morals - there’s just nothing like an all powerful deity always judging you to make you not kill people). I can’t blame her given she clearly didn’t have the best of childhoods in Leninist Russia, and I think she blames a large part of those problems on the system that tried to take away individuality for the sake of the state. Those aren’t ideas I agree with either, I think they fundamentally go against human nature and more than one state that has attempted to put the state above the individual has failed spectacularly (see pretty much every state east of the Iron Curtain, North Korea which only still exists through brute military force and propaganda, and the jury is still out on China - they now have lasted longer than the USSR but they definitely have some problems of the state’s making to do with demographics).
BUT, at some point economics just dictates that it’s better for both the individual and society as a whole to specialize and cooperate with each other. Even Rand has to admit that you can’t just go live in a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life, she creates a fictional society of like minded people who help each other out. Well, the next step beyond that is to create some common beliefs so that larger groups of people can get along (religion, national identity, shared culture/history). That’s a big part of what makes society society, to get to more than a few hundred people, to be able to trust and work with people you don’t know, you have to have some stuff in common. Almost all the things Rand decries are what makes that possible, and that just isn’t going to fly today. We’re far too far down that path to go back to living in pastoralist tribes of a few hundred apiece, which is not unlike Galt’s Gulch in terms of size and lack of outside contact with the world.
bfk
#362
Anarchy is not all that its cracked up to be ideologically…
Because
For anarchy to work people have to act ethically by nature…
But humanity doesnt always act ethically…
Therefore anarchy as a societal structure doesnt work.
1roomstudio
#365
We assume rational thought puts emotion aside.
But rational thought is an emotional response to the desire to be fully conscious and assure ourselves that we have free will.
I believe in free will… not because I have rationally deduced it… but because it is emotionally satisfying. Without free will… Desire and emotion would be meaningless,… and useless. Automatons function without Desire or emotion.
Rational thought creates the illusion that our choices are mere calculations…. That we are automatons. We are not automatons.
Desire and emotion create choice which results in an emergent reality that starts with us and ripples outward to others. The result is not predictable… which implies, although is not proof of, Free Will.