Philosophy's Branches and Roots.

Zoot and I have been bickering a bit about the different fora. The current structure--General Philosophy, Metaphysics, etc.--is Zoot's spontaneous creation, and I think it has a lot going for it. "Metaphysics", for example, can now mean everything and anything that word has been used and misused to refer to. I started making descriptions for each forum, but that's where Zoot and I started to disagree.

Perhaps the wisest course is to just see how things go and add or merge forums only when necessity or convenience calls for it. My own personal philosophy, however, has been coming down to the very question whether there should be a division at all, and if so, what it should be. I think the distinction between Physics and Ethics, in the sense of nature and custom, respectively, is the beginning of all philosophy.

Metaphysics I understand in the strict sense as the study of nature as a whole or the nature of nature. The fact that it's "metaphysics" and not "meta-ethics" already means that the whole of all physical and ethical things is understood as physical, not ethical, though. So it presupposes that distinction.

Philosophy or science (sophism) has a natural penchant for the physical things and a natural indifference to the ethical things. The philosophical discipline of Ethics only arises when sophism becomes philosophy or philosophy becomes political philosophy: it then applies the concept of "nature" to the ethical things and inquires what the natural custom, the natural law, the natural right (justice) might be. Where formerly it always hung out among squares and had no interest in circles, it now walks among circles in search of the square circle.

Some dichotomies analogous to that between Physics and Ethics, respectively:
- nature and convention;
- knowledge and opinion;
- necessity and freedom;
- nature and history;
- facts and values.

i'm open to suggestions from anyone for the forum titles and descriptions. what i am afraid of is categorizing subjects in ways that will be confusing for people who want to post... and i want people to post. it seems to me that if we just keep these terms simple, familiar, and conventional, people will know where to put their posts. i don't want somebody who wants to, say, start a thread on kant's critique of pure reason, but not be sure where it should be placed. now while i suppose such a thread could go in a metaphysics forum, most would agree that that's primarily an epistemological subject. there again you could lump epistemology into metaphysics, sure, but then what happens when somebody wants to start a thread on causality or change? that's a metaphysical subject more than an epistemological subject... and yet there it would be in the same forum as kant's critique of pure reason, which, does indeed address causality and change, but not primarily or exclusively.

now consider this idea that physics and ethics could be fudged together. that will only confuse most people because those two subjects have always been different. they may overlap in various ways, but that overlapping is questionable itself; we would then need a meta-ethics and meat-physics thread to demonstrate how the two are in fact, one. so on and so forth.

so i like the usual, conventional distinctions between subjects, and if somebody isn't sure where a thread should go, they would naturally put it into general philosophy. from there, we (the posters), could decide if the thread should be moved or not.

now saully has his own rather unorthodox ideas about the 'subjects' of philosophy, and i admire this originality, but at the moment i don't want to run the posters off. i want to keep it simple and comprehensible. i therefore suggested that saully create his own forum... like a sub-forum, where he could do as he wishes. parts of this forum would showcase his writing and be locked from others, while another part would be open for debate/discussion of his stuff. not sure if this can be done, but i'll (we'll) mess around with the control panels and see. that is, if saully wants to go for it.

Zoot Allures wrote:i'm open to suggestions from anyone for the forum titles and descriptions. what i am afraid of is categorizing subjects in ways that will be confusing for people who want to post... and i want people to post. it seems to me that if we just keep these terms simple, familiar, and conventional,

Ha!

people will know where to put their posts. i don't want somebody who wants to, say, start a thread on kant's critique of pure reason, but not be sure where it should be placed. now while i suppose such a thread could go in a metaphysics forum, most would agree that that's primarily an epistemological subject. there again you could lump epistemology into metaphysics, sure, but then what happens when somebody wants to start a thread on causality or change? that's a metaphysical subject more than an epistemological subject... and yet there it would be in the same forum as kant's critique of pure reason, which, does indeed address causality and change, but not primarily or exclusively.

now consider this idea that physics and ethics could be fudged together. that will only confuse most people because those two subjects have always been different. they may overlap in various ways, but that overlapping is questionable itself; we would then need a meta-ethics and meat-physics thread to demonstrate how the two are in fact, one. so on and so forth.

Yes. As Michael Zuckert writes:

"Adequate science or philosophy requires a clear grasp of the prescientific. But, as Strauss saw it, the long history of Western philosophy and science has obscured, although not destroyed, the prescientific awareness. 'To grasp the natural world as a world that is radically prescientific or prephilosophic, one has to go back behind the first emergence of science or philosophy', for 'the world in which we live', our 'common sense' or 'natural world' is already transformed by centuries of theoretical apprehension of it. 'The world in which we live is already a product of science' (Natural Right and History, 79)." (Zuckert, "Why Leo Strauss is Not an Aristotelian".)

so i like the usual, conventional distinctions between subjects, and if somebody isn't sure where a thread should go, they would naturally put it into general philosophy. from there, we (the posters), could decide if the thread should be moved or not.

now saully has his own rather unorthodox ideas about the 'subjects' of philosophy, and i admire this originality, but at the moment i don't want to run the posters off. i want to keep it simple and comprehensible. i therefore suggested that saully create his own forum... like a sub-forum, where he could do as he wishes. parts of this forum would showcase his writing and be locked from others, while another part would be open for debate/discussion of his stuff. not sure if this can be done, but i'll (we'll) mess around with the control panels and see. that is, if saully wants to go for it.

I can do that, but will I? We'll see.

MS wrote:Ha!

why you gotta always rock the boat, saully? if you go redefining all these conventional subjects, people aren't gonna join the site, dude. we let the forum stay like this for a while, and when we've got more members, then we begin their indoctrination.

*strokes goatee*

all great fascists must begin their rise to political power as populists, and the people want epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, science. they don't know what the hell the nature of the Nature of nature means, man. and if you go trying to turn physics into ethics too, you're gonna confuse the shit out of them.

so just relax and wait. give them ordinary philosophy, they will come. i promise.

Zoot Allures wrote:

MS wrote:Ha!  

why you gotta always rock the boat, saully? if you go redefining all these conventional subjects, people aren't gonna join the site, dude. we let the forum stay like this for a while, and when we've got more members, then we begin their indoctrination.

I didn't mean to be cross, I just wanted to point out your appeal to convention, which is ironic in the light of my OP.

"[The pre-Socratic sophists] proceeded on the basis of the distinction between nature and convention and relegated the human things proper, the just and the noble things, to the realm of convention. Accordingly they thought the only significant politically relevant knowledge was knowledge of rhetoric, for convention, being merely a persuasion, is subject to the art of persuasion." (Zuckert, op.cit.)

https://www.etymonline.com/word/persuasion

A carrot or, as Cornelis Verhoeven translates Heraclitus' orobos, sweet peas...

"Adequate science or philosophy requires a clear grasp of the prescientific. But, as Strauss saw it, the long history of Western philosophy and science has obscured, although not destroyed, the prescientific awareness. 'To grasp the natural world as a world that is radically prescientific or prephilosophic, one has to go back behind the first emergence of science or philosophy', for 'the world in which we live', our 'common sense' or 'natural world' is already transformed by centuries of theoretical apprehension of it. 'The world in which we live is already a product of science' (Natural Right and History, 79)." (Zuckert, "Why Leo Strauss is Not an Aristotelian".)

i'm wondering what a 'pre-scientific' understanding of the world would be.

as i see it, a cognitive awareness of the world has always been scientific, because of the very structures of reason. it isn't necessary that man codify these structures into principles for him to be scientifically minded; he wouldn't need to formalize taxonomy, for example, to be able to recognize similar plants and animals and organize them into sets. this is an instance of doing science, and instance of organizing data, giving it uniformity.

it really is impossibe to have a non-theoretical apprehension of the world, in this sense, because man automatically theorizes when he becomes aware of the world and begins to think about it in such terms. when a hunter observes animals at a water hole at a certain time every day, he naturally forms a theory; they'll be there tomorrow and probably the day after that.

so you see scientific thinking is already happening, and that there can be no pre-scientific apprehension of anything.

zuckert seems to be creating a false dichotomy for the purposes of introducing philosophy as an intermediary between, or following, one of these two stages (which really aren't separate).

philosophical awareness i define as the approach of ordinary language toward the identification of the scientific principles that organize thinking. here, new terminology is invented to classify such principles, but no new thinking occurs. to say 'this thinking is philosophical' really means 'this thinking is about some scientific method, mode, or principle of reasoning, in a formalized way.'

philosophy is recognizing scientific reasoning. or, in the unfortunate event that it runs astray, it becomes a process of mistaking itself as a product of its own analysis. as such, there is no friction against which to test itself. as wittgenstein put it:

"we have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"

and:

"... this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all."

so long as philosophy is understood as being in opposition to, or independent of, scientific reasoning, it will be misused and abused.

now i am willing to say that poetic language can stand on its own in the sense that heidegger emphasized when he revealed that awkward place between philosophy and science where we often exist. but this is an entirely different linguistic device, and not to be thought of as something subject to the same rules as scientific language.

poetry is like gliding effortlessly and gracefully on this ice, but never being able to get off it precisely because of this lack of traction.

As you can see, these types cannot think outside a proxy authority....a Jew nonetheless, also translating Nietzsche to a gentile sharing genes with the icon in question.
Philosophy is the study of reality.....which includes politics, psychology, metaphysics, but begins with the apparent, with the physical, the corporeal and builds knowledge/understanding upwards and downwards.
Bottom<>Up reasoning, rather than beginning with the ideal, the truth, the solution, and emoting backward = Nihilism - inverted thinking.

It is dominated by males because males are genetically predisposed to challenge authority.

The specimen, Ollie,k starts with text....the idea.
It then refers and defers to other ideas, not once daring to exit this mind to mind relationship and engage world directly.
he is, at best, an academic, a follower, and can never develop his own understanding of reality....can never become a philosopher.
Psychologically he is stuck in a pubescent state, never able to leave the shadow of his 'father', and go into the world on his own.
This makes him prone to feminine obsessiveness with authority, and easily submissive to any hyperbole, delivered with masculine bravado.
He cannot think outside his chosen authority's (male, father) premises. He cannot challenge them, because he cannot step outside of them and think independently.
He knows many things but cannot understand them without the authority telling him what they mean.
He always speaks using the authority's style, his language, because the understanding is adopted, not his own - second -hand.
He gather information, data, and then runs to daddy to make sense of it.
It's all theoretical....idealistic....never practical, pragmatic only when he is told how to apply it.
Vulnerable to extraordinary claims....like you know who.
He admires this certainty, conviction, this wilfulness, because he lacks it.

When you discuss anything with him, it is with his mentors, his idols, you are speaking with, via him. He is their representative, or they are his proxies.
He speaks from behind them, or under their shadow.
He wants to be their means to an end, like a female wants to be so for a male.....his favourite concubine, wife, being fertilized by the master himself.
She dreams of giving birth to his seed, mixing it with her essence.  
Attracted to hyper-masculinity, equal to his emasculated spirit.
She only replaces males/idols when she judges one to be superior to another....her loyalties shifting to accommodate her judgment of her own feebleness.
She feels no loyalty to her own kin, her own blood, finding herself attracted to what dominates at the moment, which is Abrahamism. To what she deems to be powerful she gives herself totally.