Philosophy Welcome to Philosophy *Rules and FAQ - please read*

Welcome everyone to the Philosophy forum. Where we can all share our love of wisdom through discussing things that may never affect us or things that affect all of us, such as justice, and even thought. To start things off, I should explain to everyone what a philosopher is according to Plato. A philosopher is one who exposes himself or herself to many different subjects, even though these subjects may not directly influence him or her. Whereas the philodoxical person is one who lives his or her life blindly by exposing themselves only to information that directly effects their own interests. We are going to leave the rest to future discussions, but enjoy yourselves in the forum. There are several guidelines that should help you to keep an open mind in our discussion in the following post.

-The Philosophy moderators, Meaikoh Takashi and That guy!

Note: feel free to post your questions about the forum, they'll be quoted with an answer in the post below for future users to see.

 

TG: Although it is from a psych text book, I found this to be very useful in getting me through my Western Philosophy course.

Forum rules:
-Try to make your posts readable (read it out loud before submitting perhaps).
-We're interested in your opinions and thoughts on different topics, so try to give reasonably long explanations of them - at least a paragraph (3 lines). Quoting a person and only saying things like "I agree" is spam.
-Respect one another's opinions, but this does not mean that they can't analyze your logic. And if analyzing someone's reasoning, be humble about it.
If you feel that a belief or argument that you post would deeply upset you if disproved, be cautious.

Critical Thinking Guidelines

Wade & Tavris, Psychology, Canadian edition (Longman Publishers, 2004), 5th edition (Longman Publishers, 1998) and Tavris & Wade, Psychology in Perspective, 2nd edition (Longman, 1997).

 

Question: Doesn't this have some massive overlap with the debate forum?

 

A debate entails different sides arguing against one another to try to persuade the other sides to agree with their side. A philosophical discussion is more of a discussion where no one is trying to "win", as MT and I discussed earlier, but to find the truth about a certain subject given every point of view: As philosophy is a "love of wisdom" it will require members to have an open mind towards what other users say. It is also mostly based on opinions of things that are extremely difficult to explain using merely subjective knowledge.

Members can also come in and talk about the different philosophers and their viewpoints and analyze their arguments, etc. Some of the discussions on here will lean more towards an older crowd as they may become quite complicated.

 

Ah, so it's a debate forum with soft padded floors and walls so nobody gets hurt.

 

One could say that it's a milder form of the debate forum, except that philosophy ends up going much deeper than debating in the end. Philosophy requires thought and acceptance of difference in opinion.

So play nicely, Neph, because we don't want these threads to turn into debates.

 

I'm not trying to turn THIS into a debate, but I have to say something right here...

How? How is a topic actually deeper than a discussion/analysis method? Philosophy could not even advance without debate.

Yes but it doesn't just accept ANYTHING, there has to be reasoning and logic behind said opinion... just like in a debate. I think you have the false belief that debates are always Side A vs Side B and there MUST be a winner...


Edit: Hey wait. Look at one of the forum rules... "Examine the evidence.
Ask yourself, "What evidence supports or refutes this argument and its opposition? How reliable is the evidence?” Just because many people believe, including so-called experts, it doesn't make it so." Seems to be one of the cornerstones of debate...

 

I was speaking very generally, and wasn't expecting my every word to be scrutinized. Most of the things you've mentioned are just common sense- which also has a place in philosophy. I suppose I should have mentioned it, but I expected you to already realize this.

In any case, as already stated, while you may or may not agree with Philosophy having its own forum, it does, and it is not the debate forum.

Thank you very much.

 

Well, you could always use the Socratic method, where you just keep asking question after question until your subject refutes themselves. That's worse than hurting someone's feelings by far. :anime:

 

"Yes, certainly"
"True"
Yes"

And we can all reply like Glaucon :anime:

It would be nice for people to follow these as rules, but they are more guidelines that are not strictly enforced. The thing is, if a member doesn't use these then his or her argument will not be taken as seriously. We'll also be putting up a reasoning tutorial in time which should help some philosophers here too.

 

Just a little question. I want to post something I found while reading throught my legions of books. It has to do with stereotypes. I don't want to turn it into a debate, more simply something people should read and think about.

I don't really know if I should do it here or not since I don't really understand what this section does.

I'll try and explain it better if you let me.

 

Go ahead, we won't eat you if you do :sweat: It'll be kind of cool to see if it was taken from Plato or some other philosopher also. If it becomes a full fledged debate we'll send it over that way.

 

This is awesome! I'm halfway through my philosophy course that the high school offers... it's awesome... a very good reference, if anyone wants some background reading, is a book called Sophie's World by J***** Gardner (I don't remember the first name and i may have spelled the last name wrong... i'll edit this tomorrow when i get to school and get my copy of it... Sophie's World is actually a fiction book but we use it as our 'text book' as well as various articles... it's quite a fun class actually.)

 

Hello, this sounds interesting. Not so many topics here though. I like to think, but I'm not sure I philosophy. I try to understand every single emotion I feel, why I do something, why everything is like it is, etc. But I never really find any "answers" you know.

Sometimes it hurts inside me when I try to think so much. I believe I spend so much time thinking on the life, because I really can't "escape" from it , if you understand me. I'm not sure if I force myself to think everytime, but I can't explain why I think so much on so few lines.

To say it very short; I like to think. To try to understand everything around me, myself, others, etc. My life. Do we all do that? I don't know. Maybe I should have made an other topic to post this thread on, anyway; nice rules.

Evanji

 

i've been thinking about taking that as well, but im not sure. as for this forum, how exactly do you start it. i dont know so im gonna try my best. i've heard that there is life on mars. and im not talking about aliens but like plants and such. they also say they think they found water. this means that mars was once like earth if this is true, but followed the same path that the earth did when the meteors hit the surface. but the question i think needs to be answered is, if earth and mars were once alike, both met the same fate, why didnt life begin again on mars like it did on earth. what prevented life from resprouting and starting again.

im guessing this is what you mean by philosophy but im not sure, if not, let me know.

 

Going back to a few rules I made in the psych forum, I feel that we need these in this forum too:

-Try to make your posts readable (read it out loud before submitting perhaps).
-We're interested in your opinions and thoughts on different topics, so try to give reasonably long explanations of them - at least a paragraph (3 lines). Quoting a person and only saying things like "I agree" is spam.
-Respect one another's opinions, but this does not mean that they can't analyze your logic. And if analyzing someone's reasoning, be humble about it.
If you feel that a belief or argument that you post would deeply upset you if 'disproved' or argued against, be cautious (if needed then do not post it).