Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
- Excogitatoris
- New Trial Member
- Posts: 0
- Joined: November 1st, 2016, 10:21 am
Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
I’ve just found out about this forum, and I’m excited to read your thoughts and share mine.
I strongly believe that philosophy could make anyone a much better thinker, which means a much better person. And that you don’t have to be a student, or have devoted yourself entirely to philosophy in order to understand complex ideas, or complex philosophers. (Such as Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Paul Ricoeur etc...)
I also believe that forums like this one, have a mission to do, and that is to simplify and make what is hard to grasp, much easier to read and understand.
I’m also excited to meet people who actually decided to give more time to think about the problems of our existence.
See ya around!
- Renee
- Posts: 327
- Joined: May 3rd, 2015, 10:39 pm
- Favorite Philosopher: Frigyes Karinthy
Re: Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
Why, just look at Shawn McSocrates there, the cattle farmer, and Brody McSchoppenhauer, they are Pegasus farmers, playing poker, for large stakes: right now there is the existential categoricus imperativus lying on the table, and ole' Mexican farmer Jesus Gomez Spinoza is about to put a spin on it by meeting it and raising it by two syllogisms.
--- Just kidding! Welcome to the fold, Patrick, i hope you have fun here with us.
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- Posts: 2181
- Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am
Re: Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
Haha! you've been watching Westworld haven't you.Renee wrote:Yepp. We're simple country-philosophers here, Patrick. We sit 'round the campfire, and philosophize until the cows come home. The woman is milking the goat, the men are smoking tobacco pipes and sitting in the saloon, drinking dry whisky, philosophizing-way. "In whiskey, veritas." We grab the bull by the horn of the dilemma, and wrestle with it. Sometimes it's the bull which wins, sometimes it's its droppings which win.
Why, just look at Shawn McSocrates there, the cattle farmer, and Brody McSchoppenhauer, they are Pegasus farmers, playing poker, for large stakes: right now there is the existential categoricus imperativus lying on the table, and ole' Mexican farmer Jesus Gomez Spinoza is about to put a spin on it by meeting it and raising it by two syllogisms.
--- Just kidding! Welcome to the fold, Patrick, i hope you have fun here with us.
Welcome Patrick . Any particular area you're interested in?
What do you mean?I also believe that forums like this one, have a mission to do, and that is to simplify and make what is hard to grasp, much easier to read and understand.
Kidding! Totally with you there.
- Excogitatoris
- New Trial Member
- Posts: 0
- Joined: November 1st, 2016, 10:21 am
Re: Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
Hey Gertie,Gertie wrote: Welcome Patrick . Any particular area you're interested in?
Thank you. It seems that you guys are so much fun.
What I'm interested in at the moment, apart of my university researches and papers, is the the philosophy of Spinoza, as a philosophy of joy. So I'm trying to deepen my knowledge of his Ethics.
In general I like philosophy of religion, and philosophy of science as well.
What about you?
Ow by the way, I'm a big fan of WestWorld! Waiting for Episode 6
Patrick
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- Posts: 2181
- Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am
Re: Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
I'm ignorant of Spinoza, but all for Joy, so let me know if you crack that one! Looking forward to seeing you around the place, mostly interested lay peeps like me here I think, it's nice to have insights from people who've rehearsed the arguments in a more formal way to add their perspectves .
- Renee
- Posts: 327
- Joined: May 3rd, 2015, 10:39 pm
- Favorite Philosopher: Frigyes Karinthy
Re: Hi! [3rd year philosophy student]
I don't know anything about Spinoza, other than it makes a nice side-dish, creamed, heavy on the garlic.
I've had my own ideas about joy/happiness, and then I heard something new, on the radio, which said happiness is something that happens to you when your expectations are exceeded. You buy a lottery ticket, you expect to win ten dollars, fine, you are happy with forty thousand dollar win. Or that you get a promotion at work, or have a fine holiday, Xmas comes, you hear good news about your health from your doctor after some scare, the jury finds you not guilty.
My original thoughts about joy and happiness were very strictly tied to evolution. Joy is what you get when your needs are fulfilled; you don't need your needs fulfilled when you are full; but gradually you feel the hunger more and more strongly, and then hopefully you get satisfaction again.
This is a push-pull relationship of need, motivation, action, and happiness. Essential to biological behaviour.
I developed a theory which is along the same way, but goes a bit deeper into it: the more essential a survival element is, the more painful is its absence of satisfaction, and the less lasting happiness it provides by its satisfaction.
Take breathing, for example. It gives you death if you deny it satisfaction for more than five minutes, and breathing gives you no special joy by satisfaction.
Take drinking water. Its absence kills you in three days, and very painfully so; and quenching your thirst gives you pleasure, not happiness.
Take eating. It kills you if absent for two weeks, but happiness it can't provide, although it provides joy and pleasure (which breathing does not when satisfying).
Take the later-developed skills (in terms of when they entered the species' activities in evolutionary terms) and needs of greed, family expansion, intellect development and art appreciation. They each give you lasting happiness, although not everlasting; and denying any one of them does not kill you. These skills and needs are complex; their satisfaction can come in many different ways; while breathing is singularly satisfied only, drinking is somewhat varied, food is much varied, but not to the complexity of variableness that these (in evolutionary terms) later developed skills can be satisfied at.
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That's my view in a nutshell. I don't want to take it to the grave with me, but no journal of philosophy is interested in publishing it, so here it is, my gift to mankind.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023