Forum about Philosophy

[Wumbl]

I feel like this thread didn't go the way OP intended

[silverraven0]

If you keep on thinking about the things that has happened or yet happening on your life, you would go nowhere beyond that thinking.

-made up by me, someone that's stuck with too many thought.

(Is this what you guys mean by philosophical thinking? Since I didn't learn it at school)

[DiegoPalacios]

I heard some people have the same conclusion about not been stuck in the past or been stuck thinking in what may be. But is still a good thought about how to approach life.

You may be interested in reading "The power of now" by Eckhart Tolle.

[qwerty]

Oh, I like philosophy (kinda)

The world is like a movie theater.
The projector at the back is consciousness. The light from the projector is perception. The screen is the 'true' world, which is unknowable. The image produced from the light hitting the screen is reality. The movie is our interpretation of reality after it has been filtered through our minds.

'Eastern' philosophers say the world is an illusion. This is because the screen, the pure image on the screen, the light, and the projector all exist objectively, but we do not see them. The movie exists only in our minds, but it is the only thing we normally see. We tend to experience what is not really there and fail to perceive what is there.

That's all I've got for now

[Jenny-Toons]

I just kinda make up my Philosophy on the fly, based more on my goal to live in the moment and love what life brings but also be prepared to take the pains and obstacles it can give too. As Bob Ross perfectly stated:

"Sometimes, we need a bit of darkness to truly feel the lightness. Those bad times come, but so do those good times."

[libs]

I feel like every writer should have some kind of knowledge on philosophy. Helps write a better story.

With that in mind, I am currently trying to write some new stories so I hope to learn about what "love" is.
also interested in the similarities and difference between horror and comedy as well as what's makes something scary or funny. Any ideas?

[AllynCrowe]

I am finishing my bachelors of philosophy this year, so here's a quote from one of my favourites:

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Descartes

[Luminosophy]

I think a lot of people's stress comes from thinking way too far ahead in the future, where they're trying to make decisions to secure their life when in reality they don't have enough information (and time) to do so yet. So they stress and stress and stress about the what ifs around the circumstances of critical decisions but it's just simply that they're not at the right time to make them. But without being able to make it in advance, life feels big and scary. You only know what you can know now, and therefore can only influence what's now. Put all your thought towards making right now the best it can be, so that life later will never be bad. : 0

[qwerty]

I think someone once said, "comedy is tragedy from a distance", although that isn't true all the time.

I think comedy arises from expectations being violated. Punch lines and comedic incidents always seem to work because you don't expect them to unfold the way they do.

I'm not really a fan of horror but I think you can make a story scary by:

• making the readers feel empathy / connection with characters and then putting them in danger (readers fear for the character)
• portraying a character in a state of fear (readers experience the character's fear vicariously)
• portraying things that are repulsive on a visceral level ("creepy" or gory things, "uncanny valley" stuff)
• ambiguity. Unknown or ambiguous potential threats can generate more 'creeps' or fear than clearly defined threats and are better for creating suspense.

And about "love", my opinion is that what is most commonly referred to as love can actually be a few different things:

• 'unconditional love' - one person cares about someone else without expecting something in return. In other words, selflessness.
• 'liking' - one person has pleasant feelings towards someone else.
• 'attachment' / 'conditional love' - one person suffers without someone else, e.g. "I can't live without you!" This is often portrayed to be romantic but is actually unhealthy.
• The normal idea of 'romantic love' I think is an undefined blend of the above three things, but with sex and some social norms thrown in. 'Platonic love' is the same, but without sex and with different applicable social norms.

Wow, that got long. I guess I like geeking out about this stuff X/

[SoFt]

For all of Diogenes' new fans, here's a great source of more information about him:

He had some good ideas, but I'm more a fan of Socrates if we're talking Greeks =P.

[EntropicalForest]

I have seen comedy broken down into the subversion of expectations before, but i dont think it really holds water. Some jokes are funny explicitly because their obvious. Like such things as watching someone sneak up behind some one to try and scare them, or when you get the giggles in anticipation when a prank is about to go off. Those things are seem to be funny on the bases of them playing out how you expected.

Comedy might be more rooted in the concept of truth and less so in Subversion, which is kind of explored with theories of the Fool/Clown. And it might not be a literally truth either, but perhaps a meta-truth of sorts. I think some of the best examples of this is that while something like a pun might be received as funny or witty, it seems jokes or experiences which or more relatable (Meta-truth) get a more visceral response from people in general (think of something like a shared experience or inside joke).

So while I think being surprised is a big part of comedy I think its perhaps a little more complex than that.

[bakasama25]

I can see why he has fans, One story had Plato saying humans were "featherless bipeds", Diogenes being Diogenes just got a chicken plucked it's feathers and showed Plato saying, "Hey, Plato! Here's your perfect man!"

He comes off like being the Emperor Norton of Ancient Greece.

[Leon]

I'd like to share some thoughts I had before and see other people's opinions. I was doing my stuff and I started to think about the Big Bang and the usual representations of it when I start questioning myself what was before, be it an older universe that died, complete blackness or both. Following the first line of thought, I began to imagine these universes and questioning what started the chain, what started reality itself and what was before, if there was something. Did reality had always existed or had it been a total nothingness that we can't even imagine, a lack of anything?. Then I think about a deity and the God particle, Higgs boson, which creates new matter, and I ask myself "What created the God particle? What created God? When did the atoms and the particles that conform them appear?

Of course, we still don't have the knowledge and technology to answer these questions, but since recently I stumbled upon some Buddhist philosophy, I understand that we can live without knowing the truth behind them, even if they end up priving to be unanswerable.

[Hodge]

Well this thread is odd haha.

@Leon Ah yes, the good ol' question of "Why does anything exist at all?" and contemplating contingency. This is a favorite of mine~ Admittedly, I'm heavily influenced by Aquinas (Catholic theologian) on this subject, but classical theology is a dying subject it seems. I'm also of the position that obsessing over how one knows or could even know truth can often be a stumbling block. Though I don't think it means we should just stop questioning and investigating, but it opens the door to further knowledge.

@libs The question of "love" for awhile was about eros and agape for me. Eros is about desire and lust. Agape is the selfless and unconditional sort. I'm writing a BL, and so though I understand the appeal of eros and its sexual aggression, I want to add in some agape in there as well.
Also, I was watching a youtuber play Detroit: Becoming Human or whatever, and at some point he went on a tangent about how love is just a bunch chemical processes. To which I thought, "If love is just a feeling, to hell with it." I kinda mocked the game, because at the end of the day, sure robots are just "piles of nuts and bolts," but humans are just "sacks of shit and water," by this line of thinking. So yeah . . . a bit of a depressing idea on love haha.

[Leon]

Of course, I'm not saying that we should just ignore it, but to not obsess with it, especially when we need to make more advances first.

[qwerty]

Hmm, I think you are right that there is more to it.

It's possible that what we call 'comedy' is actually a set of distinct experiences rather than a single thing.

For example, 'cringe humor', where you vicariously experience the embarrassment or awkwardness of characters, seems like a totally different thing than 'witty humor', which relies on finding unexpected patterns or associations between things (e.g. puns).

All forms of humor though seem to have as a common denominator something like 'intensity of mental engagement'.

That would explain the tendency of expectations to be subverted, since our minds have a strong tendency to work on 'autopilot' for the sake of efficiency when things are predictable and only truly 'engage' when we don't know what to expect.

[qwerty]

Regarding whether the Universe has always existed or not:

• If something is capable of not existing and then existing, or existing and then not existing, that implies that some sort of change is happening.
• Change can only happen along some kind of axis / dimension (e.g. time).
• But if the Universe can be thought of as, say, a 3-dimensional object that changes over time, why couldn't it also be thought of as a static, unchanging 4-dimensional object? If a dynamic n-dimensional object, why not a static n+1 -dimensional object?
• Therefore whether the Universe has always existed or not really only depends on how you conceptualize it.

As for what preceded the Universe, not in time but in causation, it is logically self-evident that something exists which created the Universe but which was not created by anything else. In other words, something which exists outside the normal workings of causality (I'm not claiming it's God though):

• If nothing can exist without a prior cause, then there can be no first cause.
• If there is no first cause and nothing can exist without a prior cause, there can be no subsequent causes.
• Therefore if everything must exist only because of something else, the Universe couldn't exist.
• But it does, meaning the existence of some kind of 'causeless entity' is necessary.

What is this thing that created everything? I don't know, but the only eternal thing in existence would appear to be what one could call 'the void', 'nothing-ness', 'potentiality', or 'the unmanifest'. Everything that manifests is transient, but that which hasn't manifested is eternal.

Just my thoughts...

[dawgofdawgness]

Oohhh philosophy is fun! Anything that makes my brain melt is good. I have some weird questions:

1) Say I spat in someone's juice when they weren't looking. Later when they drink their juice, they don't notice a THING. Am I still a bad person?

2) Is altruism a social construct?

3) Last Thursdayism. Thoughts?

[SoFt]

What is this thing that created everything? I don't know, but the only eternal thing in existence would appear to be what one could call 'the void', 'nothing-ness', 'potentiality', or 'the unmanifest'. Everything that manifests is transient, but that which hasn't manifested is eternal.

Just my thoughts...

To your credit, they are very good thoughts. I quite enjoyed this post . As an agnostic, that is about the most I'm open to saying about any higher being or creative force: it'd make sense for such a thing to exist, but I can't imagine it's an active participant in our reality on any level we can conceive.

@dawgofdawgness

1) "Bad person" is extreme, but the hypothetical offender has absolutely done a bad thing. I do not want to know, nor would I trust anyone who lives under the delusion that a crime/sin/bad act is only criminal/sinful/bad if it is seen. The only people who seem to subscribe to the idea are people who are constantly committing dastardly deeds in the shadows.

2) Pure altruism, perhaps. Altruistic tendencies are an adaptive trait among social animals: do good for the tribe, and the tribe will take care of you. What I believe most think of when that specific term is introduced, though, refers to good acts performed selflessly, with no intended positive outcome for the one who does the deed. I feel the supposition of selflessness is limiting. People don't act in a vacuum. Those who do good very much hope to gain from it. What they hope to gain is just less tangible than a physical acquisition: cleaner air, a positive example to show their children, or just the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from seeing a smile that you caused.

3) I actually had to look this one up . I don't believe in it or find it particularly interesting, but I recognize it as a possibility. More interesting to me, though, is the idea that you created everything last Thursday--that the person presently reading this post is God (or just a god) trapped in their own self-delusion. On the other hand, that cuts close to Buddhism, doesn't it x)?

[DiegoPalacios]

1) Say I spat in someone's juice when they weren't looking. Later when they drink their juice, they don't notice a THING. Am I still a bad person?

yes, because a good or bad action is not only based on perceptible effect. Intention and effect (no matter if nobody saw) makes an action bad.

About a good action with bad intetions: while the effect may be possitive, the person was not being good at heart.

Good intentions and bad actions: Harming others is harming others no matter how noble are the intentions, so the effect will still be negative.

2) Is altruism a social construct?

Some people say humans are inherently good and others say human are inherently evil. I think they are inherently neutral. Babies act based on self-preservation instincts and as they learn about the world they become able to make choices. Education and their experiences affect them a lot, either, from repeating the patterns of their parents/guardians or by going the opposite route or accepting some aspects while rejecting others.

I think altruism is an instinctual mecanism of survival because it allows beings to work with each other and to support each other. You can see instinctual altruism in some animals, like a mother dog taking care of their pups. Some animals lack this instinct, for example, komodo dragons eat their children. Human instincts are more similar to mammals.

I think being good is as natural as being a dick.

3) Last Thursdayism. Thoughts?

While it is possible that our memories could be manipulated to think we had more experiences than we already had, i think that if we were created by a deity, it would be too overly-complicated and absurd to make that. If we were created by random events i think the chances the world turned that way (created last thursday) are lower than the chances of those experiences actually happening.