Posts by steelridge58

Jack Williams6 said:Philosophy died a long time ago—honestly, it’s been dead for ages. It’s been completely usurped by science. Science actually provides answers to questions, and when faced with a question it can't solve, it uses scientific methods to hunt for one. Nowadays, calling someone a "philosopher" is basically just a polite euphemism for saying they don't know anything. (And if you aren't familiar with the term, a euphemism is just a stylistic way to swap out harsh words for softer ones to blunt the blow—you know, sugarcoating things). There is precious little that is more useless in the 21st century than sitting through some long-winded philosophical lecture. The whole pursuit of wisdom is really just an attempt to reclaim that innate sense we had as kids—though, granted, wisdom supposedly crystallizes in some people as they age. Or maybe it doesn't. Kids possess a certain kind of wisdom, and you can actually learn from them just how much we’ve mangled our own mental machinery by growing up, or which fundamental truths we failed to grasp that even a toddler understands perfectly well. You don't need grand philosophy for those lessons. It’s either clear to you, or it isn't. I remember once—at a local park I won't name—watching a child playing with total, carefree abandon while the adults stood around like frozen mummies, lost in some sort of trance. It hit me immediately that this state of being isn't necessary for people; that sort of mindless trance is entirely superfluous. That child, left to their own devices, could eventually turn into one of those pathetic caricatures—those zombies who stare blankly at gadgets and worship abstract ideas that only serve to restrict their freedom. But right now? That child can play without being forced into a mold. In other words, they can follow their own path and live a full life without needing a mountain of philosophy, letting the essence of that play stay within them while only its outward shape changes.

That's beautiful.
🙂 I truly believe that children exist at the very source of everything, or maybe it's more accurate to say that children *are* the source itself. That's why their wisdom feels so immediate and direct, coming straight from the spring, giving it that unique freshness and novelty that always manages to leave us adults feeling completely dazzled whenever we hear them speak.

Children embody wisdom through nothing more than their pure spontaneity and the way they express themselves without any filters. 🙂

Sandra Murphy33 said:You were focused on crafting a response—and then, seemingly without provocation, you looked up at the Moon, and there it was, your answer.

Isn't that just a beautiful coincidence?
🙂

That’s a lovely way to see it.
🙂

Laura Jones56 said:What Tut II is getting at here is actually the very reason I first decided to wander into this subforum in the first place. I found myself wondering if I could ever truly find out—or perhaps just grasp a small fragment of the truth. Well, I suppose I did learn something, though I ended up feeling more uncertain than I ever thought possible.
I suppose there’s an entire rabbit hole worth exploring there, though I haven't quite found the inclination to dive any deeper into the matter myself.
If there actually exists an objective reality that functions independently of the subject—meaning, I suppose, whether we as human beings are merely constructing the dimension we call "existence" out of thin air—one has to wonder what that reality would even look like. If we were to strip away our perception and work our way up from basic colors and shapes to the actual density and solidity of matter itself, what kind of landscape would be left?
To put it in layman's terms, I suppose one might call it collective subjectivism—though I’m not entirely sure there's a better way to phrase it—referring to that shared assumption we all hold, like the idea that grass is green.
I’ve heard people throw around these kinds of philosophical ideas—you know, the ones suggesting that something exists even if nobody is there to witness it, because if it didn't, you’d eventually just stumble into it, like kicking a stone with your eyes closed. It’s almost as if you perceive reality through touch when sight fails you. I guess it’s one of those ways to argue that existence isn't just about being seen, but about the inevitable friction of being present.
I suppose one has to wonder whether we ought to confine our definitions of subjective and objective strictly to the realm of human experience. Perhaps objectivity is simply that which remains logical, universal, and constant, regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it.
And is that perception truly an objective representation of a shared subject? I suppose one might wonder if such a thing even exists.
I’ve asked the same questions over and over, and I’ve poured over every single response, yet somehow, nothing seems to stick.

.

Whether things look a certain way regardless of our presence or entirely without us, we simply can't know for sure, because without a human mind there to perceive it, everything just remains a mystery.

Quincy:

If we start peeling back the layers—moving from the colors we see to the shapes we recognize, and finally down to the actual density and hardness of an object—we have to ask ourselves: what exactly constitutes matter? To put it in layman's terms—and I’m definitely not an expert here, so bear with me—I guess you could call it collective subjectivism, though I'm honestly not sure if there's a better way to frame it, when you consider something as simple and fundamental as the fact that grass is green.

According to Kant, everything we know as humans basically grows from two different roots: our raw senses and our reason.

Our senses basically hand us objects that have already been filtered through those prior frameworks of space and time, and then our intellect steps in to wrap all of that up under its own pure concepts, or what we call categories.
It’s funny how we think of them as separate things, but really, our raw sensitivity and our logical reasoning work hand in hand to build everything we actually experience.
Source
And what exactly would fit that thing you’re calling by that name, I guess?
It’s honestly kind of overwhelming when you stop to think about how we are essentially out here crafting the very dimension we call existence.

So, basically, both our sensory perception and our actual reasoning provide those built-in, a priori building blocks that make it possible for us to actually grasp anything at all—it’s like everything we experience has to pass through these internal filters first. When Kant talks about these fundamental, pre-set elements, he uses the term "form" to describe them.
Same source.

If we follow this line of reasoning, it would imply that the subject is actually what makes the object exist in the first place.
What exactly is it that explains why we can't ever truly grasp what reality looks like when we aren't looking at it? It’s that frustrating realization that we can’t step outside our own heads to see the world independent of our own perception.

Sandra Murphy33 said:And how can you be certain that some part of you didn't trigger his response...?
(The same goes for all those other variables...)

Of course, this assumes you actually believe in this idea of "something within yourself"—a concept that doesn't necessarily align with your own self-perception, yet remains something you might find yourself questioning repeatedly over time.

Oh, please, don't make this more complicated than it needs to be!
🙂

I was just totally focused on my keyboard and really concentrating on what I was typing.
The Moon wasn't even a passing thought in my mind.

Alright, I guess it's my turn. 🙂 🙂

While I was sitting here typing this out on the balcony, looking out over the rooftops of the neighborhood, I caught this sudden, brilliant glow from a nearly full Moon that just completely grabbed my attention the second I looked up.

It felt like it was calling out to me, which makes me wonder if all other "things" in this world work the exact same way.

Go ahead, Sandra Murphy33, be the first one to make things complicated. 😉

It’s always the same old stories from different people.

Questions.

People have actually been debating the question of future philosophy for over seventeen years now on these forums. I'm just going to jump right in and stick to the same topic we were discussing before.I mean, honestly, you could probably argue that philosophy actually has a future simply because we’re sitting here actively questioning whether or not one even exists anymore.
And here we go again, where I feel like we’re just watching history loop back on itself through the years, circling right back to this exact same debate, only now we have a completely different group of people sitting around the table arguing about it.

If I had to pluck out the most important bits from that old thread, I’d say:

In a strictly literal sense, philosophy hasn't actually uncovered any definitive truths. We find ourselves standing exactly where we were thousands of years ago, forced to tackle the very same questions that Thales and his successors first wrestled with. If we just end up parroting old ideas like some kind of mindless echo chamber, then we aren't really practicing philosophy anymore—we’ve just drifted into empty dogmatism. Honestly, I think anyone who walks around convinced they’ve finally grasped the absolute truth has effectively abandoned the entire pursuit of philosophy; once you stop questioning, you basically give up on the whole idea of intellectual and spiritual growth.

I’ve always felt that when you look at philosophy, you aren't really going to stumble upon "new discoveries" in the way we talk about them in the natural sciences, where we’re constantly uncovering fresh data or shifting paradigms based on empirical evidence. Instead, what we're actually doing is revisiting the same fundamental questions over and over again, though I suppose we're constantly deepening our understanding and expanding the boundaries of those classic debates every single time we dive back in.

Philosophy itself can't exactly "lose pace with the times," but I truly believe an entire era can definitely "lose its footing with philosophy," and when that happens, we’re left facing a tragic age defined by nothing but pure silence and emptiness.

As long as we remain human—assuming we don't somehow ascend into gods or transform into pure machines—we are essentially condemned to live a life shaped by philosophy.

In this modern era where everything seems driven by cutting-edge technology and the rapid pace of natural science, I can't help but feel like philosophers have been backed into a corner, left with nothing more than the tedious task of picking apart language.

Stephen Hawking

And what else could potentially be linked to that whole mess of a question they were all arguing about? I guess we really went at it, didn't we? We spent so much time arguing and going back and forth that I think we might have actually managed to exhaust ourselves over absolutely nothing. I’ve been spending way too much time lately mulling over the tension between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and honestly, my brain feels a little fried from trying to reconcile their perspectives. It’s one of those deep dives that starts off simple but ends up pulling you into a complete existential rabbit hole where you start questioning everything you thought you knew about how we actually process truth. On one hand, you have Popper with his whole focus on falsifiability and the rigorous structure of scientific progress, which feels so grounded and logical, but then you run right into Wittgenstein’s ideas about language games and how the very tools we use to describe reality might be limiting our ability to understand it in the first place. It’s a bit overwhelming to sit with, especially when you realize that both of them were essentially trying to map out the boundaries of human knowledge from two completely different directions, leaving me feeling slightly lost in the shuffle of it all.

I’ve been sitting here staring at my coffee, wondering if we’re actually grappling with deep, fundamental truths about existence or if we’re all just getting hopelessly tangled up in our own linguistic knots. It’s that classic, nagging thought—are there genuine philosophical problems that exist independently of us, or is the whole thing just a massive series of language puzzles where we trip over our own definitions? I sometimes feel like I'm just circling the drain of semantics, trying to find something solid to hold onto, but then I wonder if the "problems" themselves are just glitches in how we communicate reality.

Sandra Murphy33 said:I’m just not following you here.

Where on earth did this idea for a compliment even come from? 🙄

I was just thinking about that "Compliment" piece by Sartre.

ruggedraven36 said:That "grouping" you're bringing up only works if you assume "truth" and "true" are identical. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if we call something a truth or say it's true.

When I talk about substitution,
I’m referring back to the sentence in your example where, instead of using terms like 'rational' or 'current,' I swapped them out for 'true' and 'logical.' That gave us two different versions where one analogy basically becomes the other.

Now, depending on how you look at it, it might not matter whether we use the word truth or the adjective true.

But it definitely matters when you're looking at how they fit into a specific sentence structure, because once you factor in the actual logical sense—you know, the underlying meaning—that's really the heart of what I was trying to point out.

Anyway, since this is drifting pretty heavily into the territory of philosophy of language, I probably shouldn't get too carried away with it here.

ruggedraven36 said:Reminds me of that famous Hegelian line: "Whatever is rational is actual, and whatever is actual is rational." If you follow that thread, you get: "Whatever is rational is rational." Is that nonsense? Not in my book.

I really don't think the context is the same here.

A closer analogy would be if someone said

Whatever is true is also logical, and whatever is logical is also true.

But even then, that isn't quite the right comparison, because what you're saying—that your example isn't nonsense—might actually just be a case of circular reasoning, or *idem per idem*, where you're essentially trying to prove a point by using the exact same point as your proof.

At the end of the day, though, an "absolute truth" is just a nonsense phrase.

Eric Newman75 said:And then there’s Heidegger, talking about the modes of human existence as being-in-the-world. It isn't some passive act of just "finding" oneself in a setting; it's an active presence within the world. This state of being is uniquely human—it implies a specific relationship with yourself and everyone else. The core assumption of our humanity is that we are inhabitants of this world; that's how we get closest to our true bit. In the search for that bit, we’re pushed by anxiety, death, nothingness, boredom, and the call of conscience. Anxiety, specifically, is that deep concern for one's own bit in light of how finite, historical, and mortal we actually are. It’s a feeling that forces you to understand your own bit, even if it triggers a massive sense of unease that makes most people want to run the other way. But, if a person manages to resist that urge to flee from anxiety, they finally grasp their own mortality and the concept of nothingness, which are both essential to reaching their bit. Anxiety and death are tightly wound together because human existence is inherently finite. Death is the ultimate possibility of absolute impossibility for a person, which is why it’s so inextricably linked to nothingness. Through anxiety and death, a person confronts nothingness as a defining feature of their bit, realizing that the whole project is ultimately rooted in nothingness.

Presence.
It’s that exact thing—that genuine connection to the world around us—that, when it starts to slip away or just vanishes entirely, leaves us feeling nothing but total indifference.

I honestly find myself wanting to compare it to how the Greeks used the term "bitak," which basically translates to being "right there," what Heidegger refers to as "presence" (τό παρόν).

So, I suppose just being present doesn't actually guarantee that we have achieved true presence with the world, which is more of an active relationship that we have to build, nurture, and maintain through the way we actually live our lives.

Melissa Stewart6 said:The world isn't inherently indifferent or chaotic, but it certainly feels that way to someone who carries that chaos within themselves.

On the other hand, pinpointing the truth is actually quite straightforward. Truth is objective and logical—not because it’s been packaged into some complex philosophical system, but simply because it is true. At the end of the day, truth serves as the ultimate standard for understanding, far surpassing any personal narrative, fleeting sentiment, or raw passion.

Saying truth is logical just because it happens to be true feels like a circular argument to me, almost like saying
truth is inherently truthful
which honestly sounds like total nonsense:
A truthful truth.

Either way, you seem to be focusing strictly on formal logic, but if we look at things through the lens of epistemology, formal logic is really just one tiny piece of the puzzle since that field tries to account for the entire scope of how we actually perceive reality.

So, following that line of thought—and regardless of whether you agree with my logic or not—I have to disagree with that final sentence in the quote.

Think about it: how do we actually learn things? If truth is the "highest criterion" for knowledge, what does that even tell us about the actual paths we take to get there?
Not a single thing.

There are so many different ways to reach understanding,
including those deeply human routes like our own personal stories, our emotions, or even intense passion... and I could go on forever about this,
but it really encompasses everything,
from the very breath in our lungs and our pulse to the way we hear, see, and truly experience life itself.

Harold Doyle3 said:Of course it does. These are just the building blocks. You adapt to your circumstances. Why? For survival. Plain and simple. You either change yourself or you change your environment. Is there any other purpose out there? Can you reshape the entire world to be, say, free of all suffering? No, you can't. So what's left? All you really have is to pass the torch to the next generation—just like your ancestors gave you the chance to exist—while you spend your time digging into Hegel or whatever else you find meaningful along the way.

Survival is just the prerequisite for living, but how one actually lives is a whole different story, and that’s where the question of meaning really starts to kick in.
One makes the other possible, because without survival, you wouldn't even have the chance to pursue anything else.

Life itself is an opportunity, just like you mentioned, and an opportunity implies a set of possibilities, or rather
- what can one single person actually achieve?
Well, what you can do, what I can do, what every one of us can do.

By that same token, staying alive is absolutely necessary, but it isn't enough on its own to create the sense of purpose that—if I'm being honest—every single one of us is searching for in our own unique way.

So, survival provides the foundation for life to exist, and life gives you others through birth, but nobody can hand you a purpose on a silver platter; we all have to design our own lives, which is really the ultimate space for freedom and possibility... life is this massive chance to explore the truth of what we are truly capable of
but, at the same time, it's also something that can be completely wasted.

ruggedraven36, I wanted to jump in on what you wrote by touching on those concepts of precedence Quote : no exist it and utility, which honestly brought back some old memories from my undergrad philosophy seminars, so I’m going to pull out a few snippets from the opening post here

Precedence Quote : no exist it

Are there any other modes of existence besides these?
Take a tree, say a cherry blossom tree in full bloom (just my own little example), and we can experience it through the mode of precedence Quote : no exist it—essentially just being indifferent to it, much like we would be to a rock. It’s just "something that exists" in a totally neutral sense. Or, we could see it through the mode of utility, where it becomes "something for..." (well, soon it might be for eating cherries, or for firewood, or maybe for carving into walking sticks...).
But isn't there something more happening here? Don't we perceive that tree in another way, as something living, something that grows entirely on its own accord, possessing a mode of existence that transcends those two? Absolutely, there is.

Coming up in the next part: how logic and science reinforce this idea that precedence Quote : no exist it is the only true way to exist, which ends up unconsciously promoting a kind of inhuman indifference. And when you combine that with technology—which really only recognizes one other mode, namely utility and manipulation—you end up facing some pretty grim consequences.

by @nobody else

Amanda Flores88 said:🙏
Yeah, you nailed it. Everything's been said.

I'm right there with you. 🙏

Eric Newman75 said:I don't know. Up until recently, I actually believed the world was an orderly place, governed by cause and effect. I used to think there was a point to being honest, hard-working, worthy, and educated—that these were values the universe itself would reward. I believed there was meaning behind suffering and trials, especially the courage required to overcome evil.

Now? I don't see it that way anymore. The world is just chaos ruled by pure randomness. A single cell can decide if you die in absolute agony—like some six-year-old kid who’s never even touched a cigarette or had a drop of booze, someone who did absolutely nothing to cause their own destruction. Human life is so incredibly fragile it’s almost impossible to put into words, and there isn't a thing in existence that can soothe the sheer uncertainty of it all. Everything is just wax melting in a flame, smoke drifting in the wind, snow under a midday sun, a dream of the dawn.

That’s why I stay quiet. That’s why I don't feel like talking. There are things I want to forget. And there are things I want to hold onto forever. Because I still believe in the struggle. In strength. I just don't believe in grand, sweeping words. It's the small things that get to me—complete strangers whose kindness or a simple smile leaves me speechless. Then I pass it on to someone else, another stranger, because I feel this need to pay it forward. It doesn't matter how much unimaginable horror or pain I've endured. What matters is that despite all that, I can still feel love, empathy, closeness, happiness... a genuine respect for another living being and for life as a whole.

It's hard to explain that to someone who hasn't stood at the very edge of everything. To someone who hasn't stared into the abyss. To someone who hasn't let that abyss stare right back into them. But it’s cathartic. It really is. And it sets you free.

I won't go any further on this. I've said what needed to be said.

Eric Newman75 said:And then there’s Heidegger, talking about the modes of human existence as being-in-the-world. It isn't some passive act of just "finding" oneself in a setting; it's an active presence within the world. This state of being is uniquely human—it implies a specific relationship with yourself and everyone else. The core assumption of our humanity is that we are inhabitants of this world; that's how we get closest to our true bit. In the search for that bit, we’re pushed by anxiety, death, nothingness, boredom, and the call of conscience. Anxiety, specifically, is that deep concern for one's own bit in light of how finite, historical, and mortal we actually are. It’s a feeling that forces you to understand your own bit, even if it triggers a massive sense of unease that makes most people want to run the other way. But, if a person manages to resist that urge to flee from anxiety, they finally grasp their own mortality and the concept of nothingness, which are both essential to reaching their bit. Anxiety and death are tightly wound together because human existence is inherently finite. Death is the ultimate possibility of absolute impossibility for a person, which is why it’s so inextricably linked to nothingness. Through anxiety and death, a person confronts nothingness as a defining feature of their bit, realizing that the whole project is ultimately rooted in nothingness.

The real key is not to retreat into distractions, because resisting that urge is everything; even suicide is just another way of running away, and that’s the central point in Camus’s existential philosophy when he talks about the absurd. You have to endure it, to ultimately embrace the absurdity. It's about embracing life exactly as it is, seeing its inherent beauty and... well, "how beautiful Mary's lips are..."

It's about experiencing the death of everything that stifles life, which honestly feels deeply connected to that Nietzsche idea of saying a resounding YES to life.

Actually, what you wrote here really helped me make sense of something I read a long time ago in an interview with a married couple who were philosophers, something that never quite clicked for me back then, where they talked about how two people essentially save each other's nothingness—not saving one another *from* nothingness, but actually saving the nothingness itself. Now, thanks to your explanation, it all makes perfect sense to me.

Ethan Gomez82 said:I've never understood this obsession. What "meaning"? You've already got life—now you want a manual for it too? It feels like asking for extra toppings on a pizza you're already full from. What are we talking about here? A user guide? A recipe? If someone is actually desperate for "meaning," they probably shouldn't have been born in the first place. ☕

Maybe you just haven't had to face those heavy existential crises yet, where you're sitting there all by yourself, questioning why you're even here, or feeling like you need something more than the routine you're stuck in, and you start looking for new possibilities because you just refuse to stay stagnant—which is actually a good thing, provided it's coming from deep within your own soul.
When you start asking those questions, it's almost like you're taking responsibility for your own existence.

We search for meaning when we find ourselves in those specific moments of life that force us to pause and reflect—those times when we really dive into our own heads and take a hard look at the lives we're leading.

I think of seeking meaning much like how you might pull over while driving down a highway just to see where you are, looking around at the landscape to make sure you're still on the right track and in sync with the path you've chosen, because
someone once told me
that life is much bigger than any one of us
and honestly, if you stop to really look at it, that’s actually true.

There’s an endless amount you could write about this topic—all these questions regarding the purpose of our existence, which, ironically, also holds its own sense of purpose.

Oh, how wonderful, how sweet... this presence myth

We are part of the universe—we exist within it, and it exists within us

Because of that, encountering the phenomenon indifference world can actually be an experience, a realization of that very coldness deep inside ourselves that mirrors the world outside; it’s really just recognizing our own shared essence, the same underlying fabric.
Or, it could be felt, much like what Camus might have suggested, as the indifference of the external world we inhabit and live in, which means our whole job—as long as this adventure called life keeps playing out—is to forge meaning deep within our own pulsing bodies.

In that light, saying we should sometimes surrender to the world's cold apathy doesn't mean it's a requirement imposed by that indifferent world, as James Lee77 pointed out, but rather it would be an imperative of the pulsing world—of life itself—in response to that perceived indifference.

Yet, we can hear that same chilling indifference within ourselves, in the depths of our being, acting as an echo from the depths of the cosmos, though that doesn't change the core of our mission, as I mentioned before.

It’s just that perhaps accepting it would be more meaningful, semantically speaking, before we ever surrender to it (on those occasions where the actual meaning of doing so is something else entirely).

quietangler3 said:It isn't trolling! It’s a link to the thread you unjustifiably deleted yesterday. That thread contains nothing but my posts—the original premise and the follow-up clarifications regarding your completely baseless rambling. Look, it's much simpler to provide a link to something already somewhat developed (and connected to this new topic) than to copy everything from that link into a new thread (except for your colorful little outbursts). Besides, your rambling actually serves a purpose; it gives the reader a clearer view of exactly what I'm referencing. You would make a catastrophic judge. Maybe try learning the ABCs of common sense within the judicial profession first: PEOPLE DO NOT EXIST FOR THE LAW; LAWS EXIST FOR THE PEOPLE!!! To put it more bluntly: A MALICIOUS JUDGE CAN BE A GREATER CRIMINAL THAN THE WORST FELON, AND THEY CAN USE THE BEST LAWS AS A TOOL TO COMMIT THEIR OWN CRIMES, AND VICE VERSA. In my humble opinion, your moderation is malicious, and therefore deserves every other epithet that follows from that fact.

Why? Is it because poetic license isn't allowed when opening threads? Or because you don't have the slightest clue what a figure of speech is? Or is it because you think nothing is allowed to be provocative (even if it's positive provocation)? Or perhaps it's because using the word "bullshit" is absolutely unquestionable in official discussions across the English-speaking world and nobody considers it problematic, yet you think that word isn't welcome here on this American forum for reasons known only to you—reasons you can't even state, let alone elaborate on? Because if you could elaborate, you'd undoubtedly be a candidate for the Nobel Prize! Or is it just some nonsense from the sixteenth century???

You are certainly not invited to pass judgment on the quality of my posts. That is a scientific fact. I am sorry I have to state it so bluntly.

Look, any sane person has to—primarily out of a sense of moral duty—reject completely baseless harassment that stems from someone's inferiority complex or personal frustrations. Period.

So what? Am I supposed to open a thread asking "Is God a bullshit philosopher?" in Business, Politics, Law, Real Estate, or maybe History? Is that the plan?

Jesus Christ, what else am I going to have to endure in this crazy world...

Whoever decided to appoint you as a moderator really needs to take a long, hard look at that decision after this mess...

Go for it, honestly, though you might want to tweak the question a bit depending on which board you land on, because I mean, why would God be nothing more than a bullshit philosopher specifically?

Larry Walker24 said:steelridge58, look, I don’t have anything against you personally, but you were literally out here claiming you didn't deserve to be a mod just a day before you actually got the role. So maybe try being a little more credible, yeah?

Larry Walker24, I actually saw you post that exact same thing on another thread once, and if I may be so bold as to suggest, I'd really encourage you to go back to wherever you read that—wherever that was—and give it a second look.