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Originally posted by filtherton
Well, let me just reiterate that my above statements were meant to apply to most philosophy, not all as you insinuate.
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At no part during my deconstruction of any of your statements did I use anything that approached insinuation. Whether you say that most philosophy or all philosophy is useless speculation is not important for any of my aforementioned arguments on the previous post. I only question the premises and the a posteriori that you bring to the discussion.
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Do you realize what is going on here? Unga starts a thread asking people's opinions on philosophy and i offer mine. Yay, someone is providing their input. Then, other people also offered their opinions. All is well.
What is the first thing you did when you read unga's request for a perspective? You attacked my opinion as "typical of someone who can't think up a worthwhile argument". That's fine, not really helping unga, but ok.
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Unga didn’t ask for people’s opinions his words were ‘Any hints on what I should really be focusing on throughout the book?’ and if anyone else found the Republic difficult to get to grips with. It was you who went off saying that ‘philosophy generally amounts to an intellectually masturbatory exercise where no one really learns anything useful’ and ‘most philosophical arguments can be ended with a simple "So what?”’
Perhaps you truly believe that Unga would benefit with this attitude towards his philosophy course. I doubt however that the ‘so what?’ line would look convincing in an argument either for or against any of the issues raised in Plato’s republic. Also I doubt that if he were to try to ‘intellectually masturbate’ his way through the course that his grades would amount to very much.
The reason that I chose to attack your opinion is that it can be a harmful attitude for the student to take when embarking on said course. In that sense I feel that my points were far more helpful for Unga than any of the ill conceived rhetoric that your first post contained.
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So i attempt to refine my opinion, thinking that maybe it was i who misspoke. One of the most important things i said was that i didn't think ALL philosophical discussion was useless, just most of it.
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In a way it was you misspoke. Someone asked for help on a specific field and you ignored their request. The fact that you do not ‘think ALL philosophical discussion was useless’ again in no way alters any of the points that I have made. Most of my points have been based on the clauses that you presented with each of your statements, making them more or less a priori. This may be one of the most important things that you have said, but I feel that it bares little relevance to the discussion at hand. I do not believe that most philosophical discussion is useless, just as I do not believe that most discussion in any learned discipline is.
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Now before you go completely proving my point about intellectual masturbation and the lack of desire for personal growth, let me point out that if not for your desire to be right you probably would have acknowldeged the fact that my opinion was not an attempt to claim that all of philosophy is useless, just that most of it was.
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Through the linguistic choices that I have made throughout this discussion I have acknowledged your opinion. However as most of my arguing has sort to reason within the confines of your ever-changing premises in order to dispute your opinion the need to acknowledge said opinion has been less of a big issue than you seem to want to believe. I may well accept that it may be one of the most important things that you have said, I do however question whether it is important.
Also at no point during this discussion have I ever had the desire to ‘be right.’ Most of your philosophical discussions may result in intellectual masturbation, and this may result from the fact that you have a desire to ‘be right.’ This desire however is something of a hurdle that may well prevent rising yourself from the levels of cognitive wanking and slapping yourself on the back.
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But, alas, your whole argument rests upon my complete an utter rejection of all that is good and useful in civil/philosophical discussion.
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My argument has never, and will never rest on the your ‘complete an utter rejection of all that is good and useful in civil/philosophical discussion.’ It rests on the questioning of the premises that you have put forward.
I personally do not ‘intellectually masturbate’ when I argue philosophical points. You are the one who claims to have mostly met with such approaches, my experience has these type of approaches very thin on the ground. Your need to ‘be right’ may drive your part in this discussion, do not assume that it is mine. Perhaps a better question is ‘have you lost your mental libido yet?’
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Whether you know it or not you agree with me to a certain extent. For example, you don't seem to be going out of your way to learn and refine your perspective by actively participating in even one-fourth of the threads currently going on in this philosophy forum? I know your lack of participation isn't due to your inability to argue and discuss philosophical points, you pointed out and have demonstrated that you can do that just fine.
Why then, if ALL philosophical discussion has such intrinsic value(your main point?), value that can only be overlooked by the incapable or the lazy(Me), are you not attempting to grow and learn as much as possible by adding your perspective in every thread in the philosophy forum? Is it because you don't care to discuss the topics of the majority of these threads(my "so what" argument)? Aren't you effectiveley ending your part of all of these arguments with a big fat implied SO WHAT?!?!? by not participating in them?
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Ok, lets see where this idea goes.
By not participating in many of the philosophical arguments on the forum, am I employing (through ‘big fat’ implication, apparently) your ‘so what?’ argument?
How can I end my part in all of these arguments if the part was never begun in the first place?
Not taking part in the arguments does not imply ‘so what?’ on my part. There are discussions going on all over the world that I am not a part of, and I don’t feel in a position to dismiss any part of them. The non-participation in an argument merely acknowledges a constraint on my time. Deeming something less important than something else, does not however lead me to assume that it is therefore unimportant.
The choice of one argument over another for myself doesn’t mean however that I value one over another, for the most part it is merely that I encountered it. ‘So what?’ has the connotations that the user is questioning (certainly from my understanding of how you employ the phrase) the point of the discussion. By not taking part in a discussion I am not thereby questioning the point of the discussion. In fact I am not questioning the discussion at all.
There is nothing seemingly gainful in the analysis of the unsaid. By not taking part I am merely not taking part, the conclusion that this somehow implies a ‘so what?’ on my part is flawed. I think that there is more implied with the words ‘so what?’ than mere non-participation dictates.
Also not posting on a thread that I have read does not seem to imply that I would view said thread as being useless and meriting a ‘so what?’ response. It has been the case that I have read some very interesting arguments, but that my view has already been put forward in a previous post. Also it may be the fact that that while I find a discussion both engaging and relevant, that I cannot form an opinion that is a worthy response to such points. Surely that does not infer that I am in anyway treating the points within the argument with a contemptuous ‘so what?’
Btw I would like to thank flamingdog for posting me to let me know that this discussion was continued on another thread. I may have missed out had he not done so.