Philosophy 1: Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel

[Kepler]

I asked ChatGPT:

Explain Nick Land with a dirty joke.

ChatGPT said:


"Why did Nick Land bring a chainsaw to the party?

Because he’s all about accelerating the collapse of old structures—and making a real cut in societal norms."

 

[Kepler]

Explain Dasein with a haiku.


Being here, we drift,
In the world, we find our path,
Time slips through our hands.

 

[Kepler]

Explain Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation as a knock knock joke.



Knock knock.
Who's there?
The Will.
The Will who?
The Will that drives all life, unseen and endless,
Endlessly striving, causing suffering and madness.

 

[Kepler]

Explain Hegel with a sonnet.



In dialectic's dance, the truth unfolds,
Through thesis, antithesis, and their strife,
A synthesis emerges, wisdom bold,
The Spirit grows through history and life.

From simple roots to reason’s higher mind,
Each moment shapes the whole in time's grand flow,
The self is formed by what it leaves behind,
In conflict, it becomes what it will know.

The Absolute, both subject and the world,
Seeks unity, where thought and being blend,
Through contradictions, life’s great truths are twirled,
And all things move toward their final end.

Thus, Hegel shows that life’s great, tangled thread
Is woven in the mind, by thought once led.

 

[Kepler]

Explain Nietzsche with a palindrome.


Sure! Here's a palindrome that captures a theme related to Nietzsche’s philosophy, particularly his focus on self-overcoming and the struggle with dualities (such as life and death, good and evil):

"Live, evil!"

 

[Kepler]

Explain the Veil of Ignorance using hockey analogies.



1. Drafting Players (Fairness in Team Selection)

Imagine you're the coach of a hockey team, and you're tasked with picking players for your team. But here's the twist: You have to make the selection without knowing anything about the players' current skill levels, positions, or past performance (that's your "veil of ignorance").

• Without the Veil of Ignorance: If you know a player's background, you might pick the best-known or highest-ranked players, giving preference to those who have already proven themselves.
• With the Veil of Ignorance: You would pick players based on fairness. Since you don't know who is skilled or experienced, you'd choose players that would allow for a balanced team—ensuring everyone has a fair chance of succeeding, no matter their previous experience. You’d aim for a fair distribution of talent, making sure no one has an unfair advantage before the game begins.

2. Game Rules (Justice in Competition)

In hockey, there are rules to ensure fairness and prevent one side from dominating the game unfairly. Applying the Veil of Ignorance to the creation of these rules means imagining you don’t know which team you’ll end up on.

 

[Kepler]

Explain Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason using words of at most a fifth grade vocabulary.


Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is about how we know things. He says we don't just learn from what we see or hear. Our mind helps us understand and shape the world around us. Some things we know are because we think about them first, like math. Other things we know come from what we see, touch, or hear. Kant believes we can't know things exactly as they are, only how we experience them. So, our mind plays a big role in shaping all that we know.

 

[MissThundercat]

Explain Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason using words of at most a fifth grade vocabulary.


Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is about how we know things. He says we don't just learn from what we see or hear. Our mind helps us understand and shape the world around us. Some things we know are because we think about them first, like math. Other things we know come from what we see, touch, or hear. Kant believes we can't know things exactly as they are, only how we experience them. So, our mind plays a big role in shaping all that we know.

So perception = reality?

 

[Kepler]

So perception = reality?

For practical purposes. Kant does say there is some reality outside our perception because something has to give rise to the perception, but since we can never perceive it directly we might as well ignore it. Then Schopenhauer comes along, sweeps everything off the table (after knocking his elderly landlady down the stairs), and says all there is for us is our perception and the fact that there is this "I" thing that is perceiving, and don't even bother with notions of any reality outside that.

And from there it's just a short jump to Spinoza and even "I" is the introspection of reality. We are reality playing with itself.

 

[Kepler]

Reasons and Persons sits on my shelf, unread. I feel kinda weird about that now.

 

[Kepler]

An instance of serious academic philosophy and the popular news cycle. It's not going well.

In brief: the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) are what you would think from the title: scientists, rationalists, and skeptics trying to protect the space of reason from attacks by the demagogues using religion as a cudgel. As a general rule, they do good things.

Steven Pinker is one of the most important and influential modern ethicists. Richard Dawkins you know. Jerry Coyne I had not heard of -- he is a biologist who is an important critic of intelligent design, creationism, and other religious dogma masquerading as pseudo-science. As a general rule, they do good things. Pinker, I would argue, has done great things.

So what happened was:

1. The FFRF published a paper by Coyne denying the genetic basis of trans identity.
2. There was a huge backlash.
3. The FFRF published a rebuttal by Kat Grant, a legal scholar and activist on LGBTQIA+ issues.
4. The FFRF pulled the Coyne paper.

Dawkins, Coyne, and Pinker protested the FFRF pulling the paper, and eventually resigned.

It's not wonderful and the rhetoric surrounding this is terrible on all sides. In my extremely uneducated view, Dawkins can be a blowhard who courts controversy and I am not surprised. Coyne was censored and so obviously he is angry and I would have been surprised if he didn't protest. Pinker, though... that's a problem. He is a guy who has spoken truth to power and he walks the walk in real life. He's not a troll. He quit because he didn't like censorship in the face of mass public anger and that is hard to argue with. It's really the very premise of FFRF.

Is it Ivory Tower to insist on rigorous standards of intellectual objectivity when addressing a topic where one population is in real danger from the predations of sociopaths who will enthusiastically misappropriate your argument as a weapon?

 

[MissThundercat]

I'm working through Schopenhauer: World As Will And Representation.

if daily life is suffering, does that mean it's up to the individual to make it not suffer?

 

[Kepler]

I'm working through Schopenhauer: World As Will And Representation.

if daily life is suffering, does that mean it's up to the individual to make it not suffer?

To Schopenhauer, this is the Will:

You must realize that your desires can never be satiated and you will never find happiness unless you can learn to live with accepting you will always have unsatisfied wants. He believes there can be no escape from the whip of the Will on its own terms, so you have to flip the script. One way, following Indian philosophy, is to want less. Be still, appreciate, kill excess. Another way is through the sublime of the aesthetic experience. Art and music can uplift us. It is temporary relief from a gnawing dissatisfaction, but so is eating. So is everything.

If Schopenhauer wasn't such a POS he would have added love, but he was incapable of that and just equated it to lust. Of all philosophers, although I greatly enjoy reading him I would more greatly enjoy tossing him down a flight of stairs. Genius is rarely charming.