Why do some members leave while others stay?
Is this some ego thing where members stay because they have something to prove to themselves or others?
In other words why would you want to leave this forum to anyone contemplating leaving?
In other words why would you want to leave this forum to anyone contemplating leaving?
Comments (74)
I've been here since the shop opened and have enjoyed numerous topic. If I recall correctly I'm the #1 topic starter. Even if my topics are mediocre or stale, I still find joy in seeing how others react. For someone on disability this forum takes my entire time during the day.
I understand that life calls out and demands ones attention... But, why would you leave this place indefinitely? As @Bitter Crank says, what's not to love about TPF?
Reading groups are a lot of effort to stay close to the text and provide useful exegesis. If you wanted yours to succeed, you could have put in more effort.
Also, life happens, and reading groups take a lot of effort and time which compete with other activities, often necessities, like work.
But success in what?
The reason I stay is simply because I don't really have anyone in my "real life" to regularly communicate with re philosophy. I desire to at least slightly "stay in practice" with it. Especially since chat has more or less died (at least IRC, which I used to enjoy), this is the best/most active place I've found online to allow me to stay in practice a bit. At that, I find this place rather frustrating most of the time. As I commented earlier today, it often seems like most of what I'm doing here is trying but not succeeding to communicate what I consider pretty simple ideas to others--most of what I wind up having to do here is correct straw men. If there were a better forum that was anywhere near as active, I'd probably hang out there instead. But I haven't found one yet.
Interesting. So is the quality of the place too low or what's the impediment or deterrent why you would not want to stay?
For whatever reasons, there's a block to understanding and interacting with at least some ideas that people aren't already familiar with.
Then all I can suggest is the KISS method to doing philosophy. Don't ask me for examples. Hehe.
I think people leaving have often posted their frustrations with other members prior to leaving. People who perhaps don't like being challenged, or perhaps don't like the ocassional troll who does stick around and makes the conversations unpleasant.
I find there are enough decent people here to outweigh the unpleasant ones, personally.
Yeah, I try to do that, but then sometimes you get responses like, "The things you say are too simpleminded to bother responding to" while the person still keeps forwarding straw men. :razz:
On the plus side, the discussions here have given me many different ways to look at things and talk about them. I have read a lot of new authors because of this place.
On the down side, many arguments keep repeating themselves.
As a place to express observations, it still is worth trying. For now.
At least many of you have read the same books I have.
Depends on what you're writing. For purely exegetical work, you should go through the arguments in the text in as close to the text's terms as possible; broadly, explaining each moving part of the argument and how it relates to the goals of (that part of) the text. There should be a structural mirror between your exegesis of the text and its content.
This might seem trivial, but it's actually pretty hard to stay relevant/text-focussed and exegetical at the same time; it usually requires suppressing immediate criticism of the text using concepts or viewpoints foreign to it. It's a lot easier to have an opinion about something than detailed knowledge about it, largely because it's easier to form beliefs (in metanarratives about the text) than grow knowledge (of a text's inner workings).
I would say thats a philosophy thing, rather than specific to this forum. Many of the major philosophy topics haven’t really changed much in centuries.
So, what you're really saying is to stay impartial towards reading a text. I agree. I've seen in my reading group threads hasty conclusions or ideas perverted even by myself. Or straw men appears from such practices.
Thanks for your input.
It isn't even necessarily a straw man; just the distinction between recognising internal consistency or inconsistency vs consistency or inconsistency with already held opinions or interpretive habits. EG, you're not going to get particularly far into Philosophical Investigations if you read everything through the lens of 'language = sound pulses or marks which represent mental content' or particularly far in a discussion of infinity if you don't know how limits, continuity or convergence work in context (to use two recent-ish examples from the board).
I presume you are referring to me saying that arguments repeat themselves. Your statement is true in some respects but may be worth challenging in others.
When a few people gather to talk, they get to know each other and what is important to them. That either includes enough elements that deeply interest participants or not.
People get bored with each other, especially if they run out of things to say to each other.
I agree, I thought you more had in mind specific philosophical arguments that people keep going over and over.
Interesting that you should ask, as coincidentally I have been considering whether to write anything more myself.
Basically, my reasons are;
I'm not really interested in beliefs alone, I like reading how people arrive at their beliefs relative to mine. There seem to be very few posters willing to explain their beliefs relative to mine, but insist only on defining them only in their own terms. This turns 60 page threads into a very draw out version of "I think this", "Well, I think this", "Oh".
I first got involved in a reading group which I thought might be interesting, but it proceeded along the lines @fdrake stipulated above, which I disagree with completely. The analysis of the sort he describes has already been done, possibly score's of times and it seems utterly pointless to rehash all that work as if it hadn't. If you want to stay focussed from within the text, read a book on it, this is a discussion forum.
The third issue seems to be people using the site as their personal blog, just writing things they think without actually engaging with the other posters. Again, I thought this was supposed to be a discussion site, not a blog.
On the other side, the things that have kept me here thus far are the opportunity to hone my own arguments (against the handful of people who actually understand what an argument is), and the fact that quite a few of the posts are funny.
I don't know if that's the sort of thing you were asking.
Yeah, that would be ideal, maybe, although I work a lot at night and I travel a lot, so a meetup group like that isn't the easiest thing for me to regularly participate in. (Also, I sure wouldn't participate in one focusing on Marx, Freud, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, etc., but that's another issue, lol.)
This often leads to me reading posts but not commenting. I view myself as generous in all three mentioned shortcomings but it's just often hard to ignore this points.
Few effort can f.e. be 10 open questions where already one could fill multiple chapters.
Note: 'not really philosophy' is not ment to discredit and rather expresses the view that some topics fit other fields better like f.e. politics or religion/theology.
Well, shucks :blush:
Are you saying that John Rawls, Thomas Hobbes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Soren Kierkegaard are all not philosophers?
:ok:
Nice strawmen. Are you trolling or what's the matter with you, anyway your response could be added to my list or be understood as not much effort. You know that in philosophy one should practice a positive interpretation. I don't know what positive interpretation you chose to come to this conclusion.
And just in case you really don't get it you A) forgot literally tons of Philosophers from platon over augustinus, thomas of aquinus to Kant, Hanna Arendt, Marx, Popper and so on. Just for the political realm.
For the theological realm one could argue that Kant seperated the term God from philosophy and that it could be undestood as a severe lack of knowledge to not know that. But even that was not my point. Since as I mentioned I am generous in this regard
B) My point is that a certain topic like the question should we paint the benches in village V in blue or red is despite it being a political question not 'really' a philosophical one. So we obviously have three categories 1) Philosophical but not Political questions 2) Philosophical and Political Questions 3) Not 'really' philosophical but political questions.
My statement suggests that we have not only for politics enough questions of type 3) for me to be a disturbance.
Oh, wow, my pretty benign comment certainly touched a nerve with you.
My point was merely that politics and theology are sub-disciplines of philosophy and thus entirely relevant to the forum.
Whether we should paint the benches blue or red IS a philosophical question IMHO.
It's got it all: ontology (what IS red or blue or a bench?), epistemology (how do we know what blue and red and benches are?), and axiology (is blue or red better? what is the value of the bench?).
And are all sciences subdomains of philosophy?
Quoting NKBJ
You don't address the point of you making a strawmen. The wow my benign... acts merley as a way to downplay what you did. You quote it but don't answer it.
Quoting NKBJ
We know that you don't want to address my point and rather mark it as intellectual garbage so you can present your "obviously" better point. Thats basicaly why someone uses a strawmen.
I still fail to see the cheritable interpretation of my view that would exclude all this philosophers as being philosophers. While your view seems to state everyone is a philosopher(please correct me If I am wrong)
I already contextualized my response by stating the reason as understanding you to not use much effort. Addressing this again isn't adding anything and serves mainly as distraction.
The question how I should code a for loop in c is not really a philosophical one. The question what the limitations of AI could be is. Despite both being techincal questions.
This seems to be a fair amount of projection on your part.
Lol, case and point for the topic of this thread. Why would anyone stick around when you have to deal with people like this?
We must be sick in the head, cuz here we are.
Indeed! :rofl:
I described what the function of a strawmen is. (In the part you quotet). I am in no way flawless far from it. So if you spot me using a strawmen feel free to point it out. Where did I mark your own position as "intellectual garbage". In my view I didn't.
I asked first for reformulation/preciser formulation via the questions:
Quoting CaZaNOx and Quoting CaZaNOx
And then I specified my view so you could address/argue against it properly. (ignoring the previous dispute) Quoting CaZaNOx
But anyhow like for your friend that felt the need to reference me in condecending ways ("people like this", what is this refering to?) (or am I wrong to not see this as compliment?) without him having the courage to address me directly, I feel that you are having a simular negative view on me maybe combined with a lack of courage to aknowledge shortcomings (I repetedly asked you to mention the cheritable interpretation that would exclude those philosophers therefore showing that it wasn't a strawmen and the mistake was on my side. The fact that you didn't do that despite it being in your intrest seems to suggest the mistake is yours.) that makes any further discussion not fruitfull.
Btw framing the response "Are you saying that..." [insert famous philosophers] "are all not philosophers" as Actually expressing the point x and y are subdomains of P is questionable at best even when leaving aside what is written between the lines and then trying to paint me as acting in an emotional manner or as me projecting without pointing out what and where just for giving you flak for such a reply seems to me the desperate approach to throw dirt at me and hope it sticks.
After all I took the post to be about my opinion I thought I give it and that would be that. In it I mentioned points that you now seem to illustrate quite well.
So TLDR
1) I simply gave my opinion om the OP.
2) You reply in passive aggressive semi beliteling manner via strawmen.
3) I point it out.
4) You try to paint me as the agressor write down your own view on the topic.
5) I refute your illustrations and try tonleave it be by addressing your philosophical points.
6) You ignore my philosophical point and try to paint me again as acting in an irrational manner.
7) This response. Basically refuting your points and asking for proof (that I assume wont come) and addressing further points that I wanted to mention earlier but didn't in hope of a good debate evolving. And finally me stating that I will let it be and that this is a good example of what I ment with my initial post. (I am not stating I didn't/don't do any mistakes if you point them out properly I will concede them. F.e. Where and what I am projecting).
Anyway thank you for your time and have a nice time
I think that covers the main reasons for leaving.
As for me, I stick around solely to make fun of everyone and everything. No other reason. I don't care about philosophy. I don't even know what it is.
And I certainly don't love you all. I hate you all with a passion. Especially [i]you[/I].
It certainly seems to me that you are reacting in an exaggerated manner to my comment. And you are attributing to me all sorts of intentions and actions that I do not believe I exhibited.
As to the philosophical questions: I did actually respond already. I pointed out that philosophy covers matters from the political to religious to park benches.
Do I think there is anything that does not exist as a sub-discipline of philosophy? Not really. Or, at least, I don't think there is a topic that can't be made into a philosophical one if you try hard enough. And I also think people are often engaging in philosophy without even being aware of it.
Now, I will agree that there are some subjects not interesting enough for me personally to pay much attention to. And it sounds like you feel the same way. But in such a case, just ignore the thread and pay attention to those that do spike your interest.
I hope that adresses all of your concerns, and I too hope you have a nice time :kiss:
(Btw, is English your first language?)
Quoting NKBJ
Fair point to a certain degree. I interpreted it to be written between the lines but if you say that wasn't the case I am willing to believe you and apologize for my missinterpretation and the connected statements.
Quoting NKBJ
I agree 100% with this and already conceded to it. Cmp:
Quoting CaZaNOx
However I specified that it's a question of focus in my view. I am not questioning the philosophical realm and rather the "being appropriate" to address it as philosophy instead of addressing it as "more" part of it's subfield. F.e. I view all sciences as "children" of philosophy but the question how to code something as better left to the specific "child" and not the mother (philosophy) despite it also being part of philosophy.
Quoting NKBJ
Thats what I am already doing so yeah I agree.
Quoting CaZaNOx
Quoting NKBJ
Yes it does and thank you.
As I stated above my view entails that some questions aren't fitting for being placed here not just because of personal prefrence but because they are to "far away" from being what I would refer to as philosophy. As illustrated by the coding example I gave. If you want we can discuss this now that we are over the intial missunderstandings.
Quoting NKBJ
No. It's my second or maybe 3rd or 4th language depending on how you view it. I already have dyslexia in my first language. Some things are better some are worse in english but yeah I know/assume that there are enough mistakes in my posts. Sorry for that.
Your English is fine. Mostly just a few spelling mistakes. There's a Grammarly extension for Chrome that can pick those up for you along with grammar issues (though it's not as accurate with regard to the latter).
:up:
Hating with passion.... :fire:
S, have I told you lately what a beautiful person you are? :flower:
This gives us all some hope and inspiration. Especially since trolls are about a half ton each in weight.
Yeah, it's important to learn not to feed 'em!
Ah! Trying to kill me with kindness! :scream:
Just being truthful :100:
I know somewhere deep down within you that you know that I truly love you and would be devastated if something were to happen to you. So know that in discussion we may be brutal but in heart we are one. :hearts:
You are a good Samaritan, Tiff.
Just an honest soul~ :heart:
There are quite a few people here that are interesting to talk to about Philosophy; who seem well educated on the relevant material and who try hard to engage in discussion. But there are also people who won't read a post carefully, will only provide minimal responses and will abandon a discussion if their partner "doesn't get it" after 2-3 posts. As I know Philosophy, it should be expected that a discussion might take a while to get anywhere, and for people to understand each other.
PA
That seems to be the main problem for you (and a couple of prominent others). You just don't seem to get it that it is tedious to try to explain one's arguments, when the questions and objections come from someone who continually distorts what is being said to fit their own presuppositions, instead of trying to understand the presuppositions of the other, and examining their arguments in terms of those to see whether the arguments are consistent and coherent with those.
That is what it would mean to understand how others arrive at their beliefs, which is what you said you wanted to do. Understanding how others arrive at their beliefs can obviously be done without you needing to agree with the other's arguments, but without the good will necessary to refrain from trying to re-frame what is said to you in terms of your own presuppositions, such understanding will not be possible. The approach I have seen you mostly take leads only to talking past one another, and that is profoundly boring and a total waste of time and energy. That is why I, for one, don't bother engaging with you much.
The fact that you think there are "very few posters..." seems to indicate that you really only want to talk with those who agree with your own very subjective approach. I think there are many fine minds at work on these forums, even though I may not agree with very many of their arguments. It is also significant that those with the most chauvinistic approaches to engaging with others are often the same ones who say things like "Kant's philosophy is crap", "Heidegger is incoherent", "Hegel is a waste of space", "Postmodernism is garbage" and so on.
There's a lot in there;
First, I'm sure in some cases it is tedious and frustrating, that is of no concern to me, I'm not here to entertain, I'm here to learn.
Secondly, why 'distorts'? We each come with premises, if your argument does not work from my premises it is of no use to me, the only purpose of engagement is to see if it can be made to. This is not distortion, it is expansion (or an attempt at it), the more premises an argument works from, the more applicable it is.
Thirdly, I hear a lot about this 'consistent and coherent'. These seem to me to be pretty low targets. I'd have thought it the most basic requirement before even posting that you believe your argument to be consistent and coherent.
Quoting Janus
As I said above, understanding how some presupposition leads to some conclusion is the most basic understanding of logic. I don't need to examine an argument to understand this, I simply take it as read that the proponent has at least checked that one step leads to another.
Quoting Janus
I'm not sure how you are deriving such a conclusion from my posts. I'm not the one who has refused to engage anyone, so how am I expressing this desire to limit to whom I talk?
Quoting Janus
Is it? How so? Those all seem like legitimate positions to me. Are you suggesting that there is some objective measure which prevents a person from concluding (as Russell famously did) that Hegel is a waste of space?
In addition, as far as I recall, you and I have only engaged in the thread on morality. A thread which opened with a paraphrasing of the relativist position. Are you claiming that your responses to that have been to try and understand the relativist position from their own presuppositions, because I'm finding it extremely difficult to parse your comments in that light.
Yes, I'm with you on that one, and I've raised that objection before. Soundness is pretty important. Ignoring criticism just because it isn't an internal criticism is pretty bad form.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, I agree with you on that point also. We, [i]the actual moral relativists[/I], are [i]still[/I] having to correct misunderstandings from those attempting to argue against us. And it's a much bigger problem if they arrogantly assume that they're in the right on this point. Too much talking, not enough [I]listening[/I].
As I've said before, I don't believe the relativist position, at least the one that claims that moral justification is all and only about the individual's moral judgement is consistent with the actuality of inter-subjective human life; therefore i don't take it seriously. Sure it is not internally inconsistent, which is not surprising because it is too simplistic and uninteresting to be prone to internal inconsistencies.
The kinds of distortions I've referred to consisted in asking me for some "object" that would confirm the "objective" claims I made about ethics, when I had never made any such claims and had said that the closest we can get to objectivity is inter-subjective agreement, in ethics or in science. Anyway I am not interested in discussing it further, because I know it will just be more of the same.
Right, so if you don't take a position seriously because of your opinion of it, then it's OK to not try and understand it from its own presuppositions, but if I think a position is not consistent with actuality, I must nonetheless engage in good faith and try to understand the position from its own premises.
I'll try to to bear that in mind in future.
I tried to understand what the presuppositions of your and others' relativism are and as far as I could tell the only criterion to justify moral judgements according to relativism is that the individual prefers it.
Now I think that is simpleminded, but there's not much point arguing about it, because all I seem to get are assertions that I don't understand without any cogent explanations to enlighten me.
:smile: I have been gone a long time. I've been so busy -- and tired at the end of the day to engage fully. I also stayed away previously from the other forum (where a lot of us came from). I find that the absence made me realize how much philosophy forum and the people who participate here matter.
I'm still trying to find a balance between spending time here and dealing with things in private life.
But I will.
To gain more knowledge is one incentive to to stay, but it is not the only incentive.
I come and go as my need to argue and my need to prove to myself that I can prove things to others wanes and waxes.
I want to leave because I write more than I read. I want to stay because I learn more by listening than by writing. Thank you all.
It's 180 Proof! :gasp:
180 Welcome home. Like a lot of things in life, we don't know what we have until it is gone.
I have grown to appreciate your thoughts more than you realize and I Thank you for all the perspectives you have offered.
:heart:
I have the feeling that if we were all moved mainly by the desire to understand then there wouldn't be this animosity, but instead it feels like many simply want to boost their ego and put others down.
That's quite ironic, considering you're called 'leo' and rarely seen.
Truth really is stranger, eh?
I don't see what you mean.
But you're not around producing animosity or prideful roaring.
So it's ironic.
That's what I guessed, but I wasn't sure because a lion doesn't necessarily have animosity. Leo is simply my first name.
As to why I'm rarely seen, that would be because I participate much less, and I suppose since I don't have an avatar I don't stand out.
Likewise, I find that the objective reality thread died too soon in comparison to some of the regularly refreshed garbage.
knowledge bereave
if you stay
like light, bring day
so stay
join the fray
of wisdom, speak, tell
dark ignorance dispel
make us laugh
life is tough
make us cry
utter not a lie
truth we seek
strong and meek
in that quest
worst and best
when you meet
first you greet
when you part
feel in your heart
sparks will fly
not that you'll die
minds will link
don't dare blink
lest you miss
that you'd kiss
:rofl:
Is breathing real? Yes.
Is the love between us real? Yes.
Are we our choosen family? Yes.
:heart: :heart: :heart: