I've heard bits of Russell, Nietzche, and even Kant (though no one actually reads Kant--he sort of works his way into intellectual minds through others, kind of like AIDS) coming from IceNine during my poking and prodding...

So my question is...which is the dominant philosophical influence? Aristotle? Plato? Kant? A mixture of everything?

teller said:

All philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.

IceNine said:

Aha! Plato! The platonic archtypes...the ideals...?

teller said:

Plato was one of the greatest thinkers of all-time, but this does not mean that I agree with all of his thoughts... take the forms and metaphysics for example... I just don't agree...

Cattyness, my ass.

IceNine said:

Ok...so there's not some magical plane where mathematics exists, for example.

What is it about Plato that sticks out in your mind as his major strengths?

teller said:

No, there is no magical plane where anything exists... this is the heart of metaphysics and I do not agree with it.

I think that Plato's greatest strength was his ability to reason. He was the most brilliant man alive during his lifetime and he influenced all thought after him.

IceNine said:

This is the heart of Platonic metaphysics. Objectivist metaphysics, for example, also rejects the magical plane. I have thought on occasion that Platonic metaphysics gave rise to Christianity, as this magical dimension has much in common with the Christian God. But we both reject it so let's move on to more debatable issues...

IceNine said:

Do you give Aristotle any points as Plato's teacher? I am more aligned with Aristotle, as you will soon see...

teller said:

I am a big fan of Aristotle as well... he was quite the brilliant man as well, but he was actually a student of Plato's.

IceNine said:

You are a well educated man, Ice...I believe I transposed the two.

But what I lack in detail I make up for in substance...

Please tell me, what is your opinion of Kant? And if not familiar with Kant, his philosophical daddy, Hegel?

Mind you I may not know who came first, but I KNOW I'm aligned with Aristotle.

teller said:

Immanuel Kant provided some useful ideas and thoughts... I disagree with much of what he said, but I do believe that he was quite brilliant.

Kant's ideas of perception were quite astutue... he argued that perceptions of objects are due to both the object and our perceptive apparatus... much like Locke who argued that there is the thing in itself and there are secondary properties such as sounds, colors, etc. that are subjective and don't belong to the thing in itself. Kant took this argument further and said that the PRIMARY qualities are also subjective.

Alright...now for the painful part...

What is your opinion of Ayn Rand?

teller said:

Ayn Rand was a very intelligent woman and I respect her views but I don't agree with all of them.

I agree that reality is reality and humans should perceive reality, not invent it and I agree that we must not believe in things that are of a mystical nature. I also agree with her idea that our ethics should be guided only by our reason and that there is no universal mystical force to guide our actions. I also agree that man's reason is the only way of acquiring knowledge... she was very intelligent.

I do not agree with her ideas on the concept of knowing reality. She believed that it was possible to know "reality" and rejected skepticism. I am not 100% sure what her concept of "reality" was, as you cannot truly know everything about an object, but we can know the reality of its existence as a tangible, physical object.

IceNine said:

Alright then...just making sure she wasn't tossed into the trash. Her ideas about "knowing reality" are obviously in conflict with your brand of subjectivism, and this is indeed the battlefield upon which we've settled. So...I think I'm finsihed here for now...

teller said:

I don't discard anyone wholesale... I think that pretty much all ideas are useful... hell, I even enjoyed reading George Berkeley, although he was nutty.

Take it to orgnotes you two

Natsume said:

This was fun... nobody likes the more intellectual topics for some reason...

Natsume said:

Oh c'mon...it's the org god IceNine in the swift cut and parry of debate, does no one take any pleasure in this?!

Does no one have any respect for philosophy? Does no one realize that these are the questions that have bugged man for centuries? Does no one care if I defend the objective validity of reason?

IceNine said:

So? Wouldn't your philosophy dictate you say "fuck em!"?

teller said:

How ironic that an atheist/agnostic would be called an Org god. I bet he'd rather we just call him the King.
[This message was edited Sat Nov 9 8:06:44 PST 2002 by Aerogram]

Aerogram said:

I don't know if it is philosophy or not, but I say that all the time!

:LOL:

Does anyone else on here like philosophy at all?

I think, therefore I'm hella-cool.

EricCartman said:

"Damn, Cartman... stop saying Hella!!!"

IceNine said:

The Hell-I-will.

IceNine said:

In college, my philosophy teachers were mostly arm-chair marxist revolutionaries. I got so tired of their weary-eyed dogma I asked to be transferred to another teacher who happened to be a freshly defrocked nun. She was great... Since I didn't go to the classroom due to my crappy hearing, she met me for one hour each week out of the goodness of her heart. I aced the courses, but alas I've forgotten too much to debate philosophy.
It seems I choose to stuff my cranium with useless facts rather than great philosophical principles.

Aerogram said:

As long as you are stuffing your cranium with knowledge it is all good!

AND... who is the moron who is voting this topic zero stars? That is funny... a topic that is intellectual and intelligent in nature, yet someone feels that it deserves zero stars... :LOL:

Aerogram said:

Well, as long certain ideas made an impression on you. I never did like the idea of having to study all the "big" thinkers throughout the ages. I mean, would you go through all the ancient alchemists' work as a prerequisite to studying modern chemistry? Of course not...it's an understanding of the facts that matters.

Of course philosophy has always been an exception it seems...as the later thinkers were so often inferior to the ancients, steering mankind down the wrong path. The big trend in philosophy right now is postmodernism, and it's pretty much useless. You'd be better off reading Aristotle or Plato. But again, it's the ideas that matter, ultimately, not the names.

Sahar said:

um...ok...

Are you new here? I don't recognize your name...?