am i wrong in thinking that upper levels of philosophy are a

>>8605451

Any examples?

your 'real world' is different from their 'real world.'

>>8605453
a lot of postmodernism, like i said deconstruction
>>8605457
good point

>>8605451
>the real world
There's where you are wrong, there is no 'real world' at all.

>>8605467
To put it more correctly, what the lay person understands by the 'real world' are what Plato called the shadows of the cave, or the object of opinion. Start with the Greeks.

>>8605461

yeah but what about the upper levels of postmodernism and deconstruction make it a circlejerk?

>>8605467
>there is no 'real world' at all.
how you figure?

>>8605477
they don't seem to accomplish anything with their discoveries, a lot of it seems trivial

>>8605467

^

cf. Perspectivism


OP, do you know realize that were it not for philosophers like Plato we today would probably know a very different, if any, science and math.

To ask if philosophy 'contributes' is a philosophical question.


(also Deconstruction is not a concept)

>>8605485
I've put it more correctly on the second post, it's not about existence as ordinarily understood, but existence for knowledge.

Some of it blatantly is, but more for cultural reasons (the French love a mysterious celebrity intellectual).

Some of it is accidentally just a circlejerk - lots of people who are genuinely interested in big, fundamental questions of what it means to be human and all that jazz, but the institutions in place for studying those questions tend to turn them into desk jockeys wasting 14 years of their life on a back-and-forth over whether Hegel preferred bacon or sausage during his middle period.

The remainder is cool stuff though, and it expands human consciousness. The deconstruction of today is the scholasticism of a different era, but somehow that era gave birth to Bacon and Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz, all of modern political philosophy, etc., and that era somehow gave birth to others, who in turn expanded the consciousness of someone like a Marx, or a Mill, allowed for the conceptualisation and invention of psychology, etc etc etc

Philosophy doesn't proceed by linear positivistic "growth" (actually, neither does science - and you have philosophy to thank for that insight, though sometimes it goes overboard, as well as for critiques of self-assured "scientific" totalitarianism like Nazism+Soviet communism). It proceeds by expanding and nuancing field of possible thoughts and ways of thinking. It's arguably mankind's principal activity.

>>8605451
The upper levels of math and science are relatively useless to the wide majority of human existence too.

>subsequent discoveries in philosophy don't help lead to achieving a greater goal

There's more pitfalls in philosophy because the entirety of it is the "upper level" of intellectual thought. Despite this, there has definitely been advancement in philosophy since Christianity became widespread in Europe, and has overall evolved since ancient Greece where it originated.

>>8605467

>muh external world skepticism.

lel. babby's first epistemology.

>>8605516
Read the thread.

>>8605467
Well, ontologically speaking, no intellectually respectable person would deny the existence of the external, physical world. That being said, it's quite true that scientific theories (and a fortiori, common sense, and one individual experience) don't objectively describe the "real nature" of reality. That's not to say that they aren't in any way accurate, or that truth doesn't exist. Rather, our scientific theories (i.e. scientific descriptions) of the world are just that - descriptions. Philosophers like Kierkegaard, William James, Wittgenstein, Quine, Richard Rorty, Thoams Kuhn, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and phenomenologists and hermeneutic philosophers in general are all really on point. On the other hand, systematic philosophers like idealists, scientific realists, and logical positivists that attempt to construct universal systematic descriptions of the universe that "describe the true nature of reality", tend to be completely of base. That's why nobody really takes these people serious today. Similarly, post-modernist philosophers that make edge-lord claims like "nothing is objectively true" are also wrong. Its not that truth doesn't exist. It's that truth is ultimately established with respect to our current cultural and epistemic paradigm, and this can never be universal, final, or complete.

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>>8605451
>am I wrong

Yes

>>8605592
Thanks for expanding my crudely and hastily written post.

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If you want practical philosophy consider delving into the Pali Canon.

>>8605503
>Greece
>Where philosophy originated
What about China, or India, or Persia. The only way that holds water is if you say the western tradition of philosophy.

>>8605451
"highly advanced" philosophers working in the English language don't do deconstruction. That's in the English Department. There's a lot of complaints to be made about the social utility of academic philosophy, but you clearly know so little about it that you shouldn't be the one lodging any complaints.

By the way, your question is inescapably philosophical. Have fun.

>>8605749
>can't distinguish sophos from philosophos
The "sage" tradition is oriental, and presocratic "philosophy" was influenced it. But philosophy proper, which is not the dissemination of presumed wisdom by cultural authority but the rigorous and systematic pursuit of actual wisdom, begins with Socrates.

This picture is pretty disappointing. I was hoping to see some more moins. Don't you realize you run risk of no one giving a fuck about your subject when posting such a stupid OP body and such a hot semen demon?

all i know is there's nothing more annoying than relativists (cultural/moral/any flavor)

>>8605749
Oriental "philosophy" is more so what we would call today mysticism, eastern religion, or is some cases, "criticism" (specifically when such philosophy touches upon cultural and artist subjects).

They didn't really touch upon subjects like natural philosophy (i.e. science), knowledge (epistemology), logic, or social studies. They weren't really so concerned with the natural world, reasoning, or the dynamics of human society. They were more so concerned with personal "enlightenment", clearing the mind, accepting ones fate, and abandoning hedonistic and superficial desires.

While this was no doubt a commendable and worthwhile practice, it was far from the scientific and academic concerns of Western philosophy as it developed from the ancient Greek tradition.

>>8605451
Why judge things by their utility?

It's all just liberal post-industrial Internet Age bullshit propogated by people who can't wait for the New World Order. Athur C. Clarke was a way better philosopher than Michel "Fuck My Gay Ass and Give me Aids" Foucalt or Athur "My Sister Weight Half as Much as Me" Schopenhauer.

>>8605592
Well put. Sometimes it feels like Nietzsche finished philosophy

>>8605451
pls deconstruct these things to display the truth of your claims

>>8605451
Yeah pretty much OP

Western philosophy realised with the linguistic turn that Thought is never going to reveal any fundamental truths about Reality.

>>8605451

Who is this inadequately attired young woman?

>>8605592
Lots of words to say nothing. I'm not surprised you like to cop-out non-ideas.

It isn't sophistication that's left system building behind, it's pussyism....a lack of strength and insight. It's middle class apologetics, justifying medioctity. Aim high. Square off against the all.

Being wrong is better than being nothing.

Every "high level" anything is just bullshit. Art, philosophy, science, economy, education, politics... At the base level they seem to be grounded on some shit like doing cool things, thinking of how to think of stuff, discovering shit, how money works, how to teach, how to better society, etc. Then if you go further enough you discover they are absolutely meaningless and the way we react to these meaningless voids is either deny it and therefore not joining in the circlejerk, being naive or low level, or joining in at the expense of sustaining the illusion that you are actually doing something. Most of them don't even know, they are just living their lives, engaging in shit, recommending people and getting recommended, trying to make money and show themselves worth of something, just like everyone else. Everything is just bullshit at closer inspection.

>>8605808
>the rigorous and systematic pursuit of actual wisdom
You mean knowledge of the useless.

>>8605451
Nope. You are absolutely correct.

>>8605808
>>8605896
Buddhism is not a religion of revelation and is founded upon philosophical investigations from which its ethics and metaphysics is derived.

>rigorous and systematic pursuit of actual wisdom, begins with Socrates.
This is so wrong I'm actually angry.

>>8605896
>natural philosophy (i.e. science)
Except for their advanced astronomy, or mathematics, or medicine
>knowledge (epistemology)
Buddhism does.
>logic
Buddhism does.
>social studies
Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Legalism does
>They weren't really so concerned with the natural world, reasoning, or the dynamics of human society.
This is just outright not true and is said in complete ignorance of eastern thought.

>>8605980
Mostly agreed. To be honest academic philosophy is just a cabal of priests speaking their magic language to bamboozle the plebs and keep the money flowing.