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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by sem@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I was just thinking about how the last time i learned any philosophy was 15+ years ago, so i wonder, what's something y'all know about philosophy? Let's talk about it!

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[-] cattywampas@lemmy.world 36 points 3 weeks ago

The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

[-] Botzo@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Did a senior paper 20 years ago marrying the concepts of naturalistic and normative epistemology.

The takeaway was that it doesn't matter if you can't actually prove that you know or don't know anything. You have to live and have always lived as if you can/do know things.

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[-] MutantTailThing@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago

The philosopher Schopenhauer absolutely HATED noisy people. He once threw a cleaning lady down a set of stairs because she was making too much noise.

Later he wrote a treatise where he posed that a persons tolerance towards noise is inversely related to their intelligence.

Also, one should not remove the anal beads as if one is attempting to start a lawnmower.

[-] Demonmariner@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago
[-] Botzo@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago

Depends on the number of beads.

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Yay that makes me a very intelligent person.

And I am allowed to throw people down the stairs!

(/s)

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[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

Almost everything I know I learned from existential comics. This is one of my favorites https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540

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[-] Almacca@aussie.zone 19 points 3 weeks ago

Time is an illusion. Lunch-time, doubly so.

[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Death is but a doorway, time is but a window, I'll be back.
-Vigo

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[-] eltrain123@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

We can talk about normality until the cows come home…

What’s home?…

What is normal?…

What are cows?!

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[-] showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website 18 points 3 weeks ago

I know that Ayn Rand is an charlatan posing as philosopher

[-] Unleaded8163@fedia.io 17 points 3 weeks ago

I watched The Good Place like 5 times, so I know just about everything about moral philosophy. I also took computer science, so I know to always give lots of chopsticks when serving a group of philosophers.

Have you read How to Be Perfect yet? The Audiobook is so much fun.

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[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 weeks ago

Did we watch the same show? I thought it was mostly about how Jacksonville, Florida was a weird place with weird people.

And something about whether Good Janet had free will, and if a Judge could be an alcoholic or something

[-] crwth@piefed.zip 15 points 3 weeks ago

A philosophy major explained to me that studying philosophy isn't really as useless as it seems. That's because whenever philosophers start to understand what they're doing, they stop calling it philosophy and branch into real scientists. He said it's unfair to judge the value of philosophy by the useless proto-sciences currently under study, but to consider the whole history of philosophy which includes every other field of study one can get a PhD in.

[-] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

I always get a kick out of the overlap between philosophy and math when it comes to formal logic/ proofs. Like, the underpinnings for dissecting an argument are exactly the same regardless of whether the discussion is about number theory or what it means to have consciousness.

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[-] Saprophyte@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Cars have windows and can move.

Houses have windows and cannot move.

Therefore it's not the windows that make the car move, but something else entirely.

  • PJ Evans
[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 weeks ago
[-] hegus@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Not quite. It just follows that windows are not a sufficient condition to make something move.

Consider this:

A person has legs and can walk. A dead body has legs and cannot walk. Therefore legs are not necessary in order to walk?

No, legs are just not sufficient you also need to be alive and some other things.

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[-] Davel23@fedia.io 12 points 3 weeks ago

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 weeks ago

Except for Zeno!

[-] Dalvoron@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Moral philosophy can be broadly divided into a few categories

Consequentialism - the idea that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. For example, utilitarianism suggests that moral actions are the ones which produce the most happiness.

Deontology - the idea that there are moral laws, and that moral actions are those that follow the laws.

Virtue ethics - the idea that virtuous actions help us flourish and vicious (from vices) actions hinder us. There is also the concept that virtues exist in the middle ("golden mean") of a scale between two vices, for example bravery is a virtue between the vices of cowardice and recklessness.

Pragmatism - the idea that there can be a moral progression of society and knowledge via study and inquiry. This is not so much a category of its own, but it's compatible with the the main ones mentioned above.

On a personal note, I do not like consequentialism as a moral theory. I lean more towards pragmatic deontology but virtue ethics is also compelling.

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[-] luthis@lemmy.nz 9 points 3 weeks ago

Absurdism. Life, the universe, existence, is absurd and irrational.

It's comforting and liberating to accept.

[-] BranBucket@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Grasping the idea that things don't always make sense, and that's it's okay when they don't, is like setting down a heavy load you didn't realize you were carrying.

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[-] ChristerMLB@piefed.social 9 points 3 weeks ago

Modern formal logic is still considered part of philosophy, and is the basis of most programming languages. Ethics is very practical and specialized versions get taught in a lot of professional educations (medicine, law, economics, teaching, et.c.) - and it sure would be nice if people paid more attention to political philosophy.

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 weeks ago

I knew someone who took an engineering ethics course in college that completely changed his career and i think made him a better person.

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[-] Boozilla@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 weeks ago

The philosophy of Antinatalism makes a lot of logical sense to me. I find it difficult to argue against without appealing to nature, traditions, emotions, etc.

People really, really, really hate AN, though. It's not something I enjoy engaging about. I don't really care if other people subscribe to it or not. I'm not an AN evangelist.

Unfortunately, AN attracts a lot of weirdos, childfree types, and suicidal people. There are some brilliant folks who subscribe to it, too. But the signal to noise ratio is awful.

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[-] thirteene@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Identifying an arguments fallacy by name usually doesn't resolve an argument

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[-] Apeman42@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

Time is a river. Life is a journey. The door is ajar.

[-] solrize@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like an orange.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Fruit flies like an orange.

The first time I ever saw this phrase, I read it as "Fruit (travels through the air) like an orange."

And I was like, I guess that makes sense, cause it is one. I just thought it was silly and stupid.

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[-] Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 3 weeks ago

Stoicism helps massively in a chaotic world like today

[-] monotremata@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 weeks ago

My favorite is Lakoff's category theory. He notes that philosophy largely pretends that categories are defined based on rules of inclusion and exclusion, but in fact human thinking is mostly based around categories defined by a prototypical example and various relations to that example. So, e.g., a penguin and a sparrow are both birds, but a sparrow is more like the prototypical bird, since it's smaller and it flies.

Many of the great philosophical questions over the years have been about trying to decide on precise rules of inclusion and exclusion for categories, even though the closer people look, the less it seems like there's a meaningful boundary (e.g. "life" vs "non-living," where you start to see things like viruses, prions, etc. that don't fit cleanly into either category).

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[-] luthis@lemmy.nz 7 points 3 weeks ago

Knowledge is power, but France is bacon.

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[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago

People get upset if you try to say they aren't real

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[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

The last two and a half millennia of western philosophy has been the slow realization that Epicurus and Heraclitus were closer to the truth than Plato or Aristotle.

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[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

I know the world suffers so today because not enough people understand philosophy.

philosophy was replaced by philanthropic endeavors by the grossly rich. recorded and streamed online for all to see how "good christans" treat the destitute and needy.

morals are obligations only the poor are required to pay.

the world as we know it is dying horrifically and there's nothing any one person can do to stop it.

the call to the danger is drown out by the incessant shrill bells of subscriptions releasing hourly, 24 hours a day. nobody will hear it before it's too late.

we are already dead.

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[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

There are many branches in philosophy, and it's easy to mix them up. Depends on what you're into.

  • Ethics: notions of right and wrong and moral values.
  • Epistemology: questions of knowledge. How do we know what we know.
  • Metaphysics: ideas of space, time, existence.
  • Aesthetics: appreciation of art, beauty, music, literature, etc.
  • Logic: for the math-oriented. How do we reason and arrive at conclusions? If X, then Y.
  • Language: how we communicate. Meaning of words, symbols, and metaphors.
  • Phrenology: method of relieving cranial pressures.
  • Science: how to reason about the physical world.
  • Religion: Understanding the divine and how we fit in.
[-] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago

How does phrenology belong in that list? It's a pseudoscience.

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago

PhD is philosophy doctor.

[-] leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl 4 points 3 weeks ago

the modern golden rule is all about gold and rule.

i also believe it takes strength to be kind. in the same sense that being cruel and chaotic follows the entropy of the universe.

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[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago

All philosophy is based on the two opposing views "Cogito Ergo Sum" vs. "Esse Est Percipi".

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[-] Gentryfried@feddit.uk 3 points 3 weeks ago

~~I know that i know nothing~~. I know that i think, therefore i am

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[-] DougPiranha42@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Lots of inspiring thoughts in the comments section! Way to go!

[-] volore@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 3 weeks ago

I know that I know not enough, and nothing more.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

Machiavelli was not saying to be mean as much as be prepared to be mean.

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[-] gigastasio@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

Few years ago I picked up a random philosophy magazine out of curiosity. Single thing I remember is an article with a guy arguing that all inanimate objects have rights.

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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
73 points (96.2% liked)

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