Philosophy: books and discussion

[TGS]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Should the philosopher discourage laughter?

The Australian philosopher (I know, sounds like a Monty Python sketch), David Chalmers maintains a web page of philosophical humour, which you can see here. Some of it is even funny.

[DrJCS]

I am going to start John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct today. I hope to spend some time with this title as I complete my readings of Dewey's works.

[GeoffC]

Hi DrJCS, read then post .... please do ...

[GeoffC]

.... or post regardless ....

[FlorenceArt]

Found on Language Log, I don't know where it comes from originally.

[GeoffC]

mmmm that begs the question as to how something can be both remote and handy at the same time....

naming convention !

[FlorenceArt]

Maybe we should found a new cult. The Church of the Universal and yet Handy Remote. I'd be the High Pristess. I've always wanted to be a High Priestess. With Capital Letters.

[GeoffC]

will you be requiring sacrifices

or will you bring us to heel in other ways .....

[FlorenceArt]

Ooh, sacrifices Can I have chocolate?

As for the other, hmmmm yes, why not...

[GeoffC]

So Mobileread moves on a little more, now with a Queen and a Priestess ..... (though we may have to double-check the vacancies on offer for Priestesses) ....

[TimMason]

Obeisances to the High Priestess. Does Cadbury's Fruit and Nut count?

There are certainly better ways of producing penicillin than those that include spitting in a vat and leaving the mixture exposed to the open air.

Perhaps if you have a pretty limited tool-set this method is not bad at all. But my argument was that the ritual actually brought together in one package a set of items - modes of creating solidarity both between and across generations, and so on - that we do not normally bring together.

I don't want to make the claim that this way of knowing is superior to science - just that it is different. Today, we can organize things so that a man will spend his life making nails, and very good nails they will be; earlier ways of being had less specialism, and blunter nails. but they were not, for all that, simply lost in mists of ignorance.

If you say that there is no other knowledge but the scientific kind, you seemingly pour hundreds of thousands of years of human existence into a large muddy bucket of error.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Obeisances to the High Priestess. Does Cadbury's Fruit and Nut count?



Perhaps if you have a pretty limited tool-set this method is not bad at all. But my argument was that the ritual actually brought together in one package a set of items - modes of creating solidarity both between and across generations, and so on - that we do not normally bring together.

I don't want to make the claim that this way of knowing is superior to science - just that it is different. Today, we can organize things so that a man will spend his life making nails, and very good nails they will be; earlier ways of being had less specialism, and blunter nails. but they were not, for all that, simply lost in mists of ignorance.

If you say that there is no other knowledge but the scientific kind, you seemingly pour hundreds of thousands of years of human existence into a large muddy bucket of error.

I think this sub-thread may be confusing two very different things. One: being ways of remembering/conveying/transmitting information and Two: ways of knowing how/why things are the way they are.

Science and the Scientific method on which it is based addresses the second one. The way or remembering those gains "may" be addressed by the first (or perhaps not).

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Obeisances to the High Priestess. Does Cadbury's Fruit and Nut count?

Heresy! You are profaning the Holy Chocolate! Only dark chocolate will do, with no less than 85% cocoa. I may be a High Priestess, but I have my standards.

I would not be true to my detestation of Plato if I didn't mention that empirical knowledge is also knowledge. I believe much of modern medicine is still constituted by methods and products that have been proven to work, even though we don't exactly know how or why.

Of course, there's also the matter of how they have been proven to work, and that's where the modern scientific method comes in. Traditional empirical knowledge doesn't have half the track record that modern medicine has, because modern medicine doesn't just say "everybody knows this product has that effect" but it actually goes on to test it. For one effective remedy of traditional healing, how many imaginary ones?

There, I'm not really sure what I was trying to say, but I guess I've said it

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

....

There, I'm not really sure what I was trying to say, but I guess I've said it

And when the Priestess speaks that is it!

and make that a Dark Chocolate Sacrifice!

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And when the Priestess speaks that is it!

and make that a Dark Chocolate Sacrifice!

Thank you, o worthy follower