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is /r/philosophy just complete trash?

I mean if the removal of every dissenting opinion calling out the circular reasoning and bullshit of the article wasn't enough you can tell by the comments alone it's shit. Philosophy stops being productive as soon as it's in an echo chamber so it's shit online.

It's pretty much impossible to discuss politics online tbh.

Screaming and threats count

NO THEY DON'T FUCK YOU

But that’s like all you do

There's places for the good stuff. You just gotta know where to look.

Yes bitch.

It's a cross sub for reddits worst callout culture types.

First year philosophy students am people that feel special for writing needlessly verbose comments that no one is going to read

Philosophy is trash. Anyone who really cares about philosophy is a mouth breathing, wannabe academic.

I mean, philosophy isn't actually trash and is of great benefit.

No

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/teaching-primary-school-children-philosophy-improves-english-and-maths-skills-says-study-10378958.html

Nigga no

I wouldn’t consider that a reason for why philosophy is important. I agree that it is, but transcendental value can’t be stripped down to synergy with literacy and STEM.

Pity the unbeliever who sees the world as a matrix of soil; crave to see the world as the luminous motion of His geometry. You were created only to achieve this type of perception.

• Shaykh Abdel-Hakim Murad

I understand where /u/pizzashill is coming from, most morons won't listen to the reasons you're giving because "it doesn't solve real world problems(because they're usually a short sighted cuck)" and will dismiss it as pointless fluff.

Morons: Lol philosophy doesn't solve any real world problems; why do we even bother

Morons ten minutes later: We need to cut the defense budget and spend the money on colonizing barren rocks in space! How else are we going to become like Star Wars?

Morons ten minutes later: We need to cut the defense budget and spend the money on colonizing barren rocks in space! How else are we going to become like Star Wars?

And I have seen the same morons shit on India for having a space agency.

Also I've noticed that a lot of people on like in your example discuss "real world problems" through Vidya, star wars, and capeshit lens on reddit.

200 years ago, all political conversation was done in reference to the Bible or Greco-Roman classical literature. Now it's capeshit and Harry Potter. In 200 years, all political discussion will be saturated with references to Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.

wouldn’t consider that a reason for why philosophy is important. I agree that it is, but transcendental value can’t be stripped down to synergy with literacy and STEM.

So, Logic is a subset of philosophy. That and epistemology are basically the foundations for any sort of STEM related career, whether people acknowledge it or not. Even in my own subset of STEM - systems architecture and software engineering, you could describe a number of the ways we operate under epistemological terms such as determinism, fallibilism, falsification theory, etc.

That all being said, I can certainly see how exposure to these areas would increase math scores as it's essentially the same domain, just different application. A simple analogy would be a guy who gets a job as a furniture mover with no prior experience who happens to lift heavy weights as a hobby. He's going to be better at his new job than someone who doesn't have that applicable experience. The same can be said for maths, other than computational ability, it's mostly structured reasoning, something that philosophy can absolutely train your mind to do.

So, Logic is a subset of philosophy. That and epistemology are basically the foundations for any sort of STEM related career, whether people acknowledge it or not. Even in my own subset of STEM - systems architecture and software engineering, you could describe a number of the ways we operate under epistemological terms such as determinism, fallibilism, falsification theory, etc.

Indeed, but the other subsets are also important.

Unless you're about to create Skynet, I'm not quite so sure metaphysics and axiology are super important.

Pity the unbeliever who sees the world as a matrix of soil; crave to see the world as the luminous motion of His geometry. You were created only to achieve this type of perception.

-Shaykh Abdel-Hakim Murad

The other types of philosophy have value not because they boost our scientific knowledge, but because their perspectives are key to developing a true perception of the world and God.

Logic is a subset of philosophy.

Back then everything was philosophy.

Over time all valuable parts of philosophy became their own fields of study (math, sciences, econ), then later the less valuable parts (sociology) and then the completely worthless parts (critical whiteness).

Logic is necessary for doing philosophy (well, at least for some types of philosophy). But during the past 50 years all interesting research in logic has been done by mathematicians.

But during the past 50 years all interesting research in logic has been done by mathematicians. That's not true, though. Many have background in mathematics but it is very much philosophy. Or are you saying e.g. epistemic logic is just math?

/r/badphilosophy is worse.

That's not really a high bar you're setting there

I kind of miss mrsamsa coming here and saying dumb shit.

Is he dead

yeah, we had to put him down

F

are there any good "bad" subs? they always just seem to be bitter that the majority think they are dumb

badecon is the best sub on the site

This thread is hilarious. Some guy blatantly misunderstands Amazon’s business model, than applies it to supermarkets for no reason even though they’re completely different

That's the typical level of thinking among Sanderistas

badtattoos

/r/philosophy regularly defends Sam Harris.
That's really all you need to know about that sub.

Unpopular opinion: I actually like Sam Harris. He explains things well. He is logically firm but not smug when he honestly disagrees with people on an intellectual level. He calls out charlatans, which has gained him a lot of enemies.

On the other hand, r/samharris has been trash since it got brigaded and taken over by CTH.

I only really know his philosophy. Which is utter trash and shows he has absolutely no understanding of even the most basic concepts.

Reading briefly over the Wikipedia explanation of his book I can see he treads over some sacred cows held by the normal membership of /r/badphilosophy, but I see little indication that he doesn't understand them.

Actively disagreeing with other philosophers isn't necessarily a lack of understanding, it's disagreement.

The central point of his moral philosophy is that science can get you from an is-statement to an ought-statement, and everytime he tries to argue for this he shows that he has no idea what he's talking about. See for example this tweet chain or this debate.

Daniel Dennet, an actual philosopher reviewed his book and summarizes it pretty neatly:

The book is, thus, valuable as a compact and compelling expression of an opinion widely shared by eminent scientists these days. It is also valuable, as I will show, as a veritable museum of mistakes, none of them new and all of them seductive—alluring enough to lull the critical faculties of this host of brilliant thinkers who do not make a profession of thinking about free will. And, to be sure, these mistakes have also been made, sometimes for centuries, by philosophers themselves. But I think we have made some progress in philosophy of late, and Harris and others need to do their homework if they want to engage with the best thought on the topic.

Harris also quite literally says in his book that he doesn't engage with the philosophical literature because he finds it boring. I think that says everything that needs to be said about his value as a philosopher.

Huh. Well I've listened to most of his podcasts. I never liked his stance on free will, for a number of reasons.

It's his other content I enjoy. His stance on religion. His empathic ability to see what goes on in the kind of cultists. His callout of the alt right and regressive left. His position on meditation. His frankness about mind-altering drugs. His stance on freedom of speech and identity politics.

These are all sacred cows to various ideologies, so it's hard to find people honest about them. For example, no one wants to admit ISIS and Westboro Baptist members are often decent people who are just deceived about the nature of truth.

Like I said, I only know his philosophy. Which is terrible and makes him look pretty stupid.
And /r/philosophy defending him show that most subscriber apparently don't know much about philosophy either.

probably because I have little background.

Then you probably have as much background knowledge about philosophy as Sam does.

meh people shit on him too much

and mostly because of his controversial comments around profiling and his dumb " some thoughts are so dangerous nuke kebab " comment

but i think he is ok enough

Well I've been shitting on him without bringing up any of his controversial comments. His philosophical output is so embarassing it should be shat on much more. After all, from what I've gathered he himself doesn't like pseudoscience either.

fair enough fam

his meta ethics does trigger me a bit. back in the day he just insisted on a naive naturalistic realism

The tweet chain is just a bog-standard criticism of Hume's argument, and the YouTube segment you've linked reinforces the idea that he understands the argument, and simply disagrees with it.

I suppose it's true that he's criticising a centuries-dead philosopher rather than modern academics on the issue, but if he fundamentally rejects the premise they've built their scholarship on, what value is there in engaging?

Wat, in both the tweet and the debate he shows that he fundamentally doesn't understand Hume's point. There is no "standard criticism" of Hume's argument because it's true.
He rejects Hume but doesn't make an argument for his rejection and for anyone who has at least basic education in philosophy it's plainly obvious that this tweet chain is embarassingly stupid and the debate is downright humiliating. He seems like an edgy highschool boy thrown into a panel of experts (minus that physicist guy who seems equally uneducated).

Also, if Harris had actually read Hume he'd notice that he basically agrees with Hume. Hume argues that, although we can not logically derive ought statements from is statements, morality obviously isn't arbitrary. They both argue for moral intuition, although Harris - for some reason - thinks that the fact that ought cannot be derived from is would lead necessarily to moral relativism, a position that really no ethicist holds today.
If Harris would actually engage with philosophical literature he'd realize that his thoughts aren't new, they have been dealt with and if he actually wants to produce anything interesting he needs to educate himself first.

but if he fundamentally rejects the premise they've built their scholarship on, what value is there in engaging?

I mean, he can reject a simple fact based on nothing, that's fine. There are lots of people that do that, flat-earthers reject physics and creationists reject biology. I just don't think these people should be taken seriously.

There is no "standard criticism" of Hume's argument because it's true.

Ok.

There's a reason it's often called Hume's law. If you think an actual, proper argument exists that you can deduce ought from is feel free to present it. Harris' confused "Suffering is bad so it's obvious that we ought to reduce it!" argument completely misses the point though.

Something tells me that the only people that hate on Sam Harris, are people that watched his ridiculous interview with Cenk Uygur.

I really only watched this debate and holy moly does he come across as stupid.

is philosophy just complete trash? I don't think I've ever seen a philosophy forum that wasn't populated by clowns.

Forums have mods, and anyone pathetic enough to be a moderator of a forum probably has no life and will sooner or later will go on a power trip against people who don't agree with them resulting in an echo chamber.

I think subjects like philosophy and politics won't get good discussion on heavily moderated forums.

yeah. /r/badphilosophy lives up to its name