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Noble Dust

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As an amateur from the get-go, I find conversations with people who don't know much about philosophy to be pretty interesting. I'm always surprised by...
December 29, 2016 at 06:31
Fair enough on all counts. I hate to ask the annoying question, but - how do you define culture? I realize it's a hard word to define; I'm just asking...
December 29, 2016 at 05:44
My problem is this doesn't take it far enough. Art creates culture, it's not just an expression or experience of culture. Or, more accurately...one do...
December 29, 2016 at 05:20
No; art is culture. You have it backwards; art generates what we know as culture. So far, everyone in this thread except MJA is selling art far too sh...
December 29, 2016 at 04:59
Yes! I know the sort of experience you had. I've had experiences like that.
December 29, 2016 at 04:56
Ok, I do agree with you on those points, on a basic level. I do think that art being valuable because "we enjoy it, find it refreshing, invigorating" ...
December 29, 2016 at 02:49
Are you saying that art is valuable because the same skills it requires are useful for utilitarian purposes as well? Why not just turn it around and s...
December 29, 2016 at 02:18
Not to drag up Berdyaev again, but he has, to me, the best word about art. I'll find a quote later when I'm at home. He says that the creative urge is...
December 29, 2016 at 00:38
:P Good point though!
December 29, 2016 at 00:05
I think I was just referring to your whole comment. I have to disagree; there are countless technically skilled artists who don't "break the mold" or ...
December 28, 2016 at 23:58
Are you speaking from experience?
December 28, 2016 at 08:04
That's just the thing; I think assuming right away that depression must have a biological advantage or disadvantage is itself flawed (I have no intere...
December 28, 2016 at 06:13
Are you exclusively giving depression a physical source here? That's surely misguided, if so. Well, for one, the possibility of it leading to suicide....
December 28, 2016 at 05:17
I agree with you. It's funny, because I consider Beethoven superior to Mozart. I would venture to say a wide swath of the classical community would ag...
December 27, 2016 at 07:26
I think it's helpful to recognize that whether you think life is "futile" or not, any response to the question is fundamentally a belief. Whether you ...
December 24, 2016 at 22:45
Heck, even Steve Reich loved rock enough to write this...ok, I'm done ;) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRN_jUrJSnE
December 24, 2016 at 16:04
Or this maximalist pop tune written by a classically trained composer... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ephdl5HjIzQ
December 24, 2016 at 15:59
Or, from the other angle, some classical textures integrated into a rock structure... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmD-9_ZifB8
December 24, 2016 at 15:58
Ahh, but I disagree...if you appreciate the structure of classical music, surely you can appreciate this beast of a song: https://www.youtube.com/watc...
December 24, 2016 at 15:56
That holds up for logic itself, but I could replace the word "logic" with "intuition" here; in other words, I still see logic as a member of a set of ...
December 19, 2016 at 00:41
None of this is coherent. Can you explain it differently?
December 19, 2016 at 00:10
...I was cracking a joke about the etymological definition of the word philosophy...
December 19, 2016 at 00:05
I agree it's not a source, I've made that clear in my definitions, I think. I'm not clear on what you mean that logic is a set of methods, though. I t...
December 18, 2016 at 23:46
Sort of. Having a philosophy involves some sort of mental activity; "having" assumes a prior activity; I have cake by eating it. This is how I "do" ca...
December 18, 2016 at 23:30
Just that everything is experience, including logic. Just like Pierce and Aristotle are saying in your later comments. But what did Pierce mean when h...
December 18, 2016 at 23:13
Fair enough, I appreciate that. I think of "outer" and "inner" by way of this analogy: the engine of a car is made up of various components. Studying ...
December 18, 2016 at 22:02
Again, through intuition. It's interesting to me that when I bring up this topic, the arguments against it all have to do with defining terms. This se...
December 18, 2016 at 21:04
Logic - Arriving at knowledge through a linear series of 'if/then' statements. A systematic study of concepts. An emphasis on organization of concepts...
December 18, 2016 at 19:22
And seems self-refuting.
December 18, 2016 at 18:53
This thing of beauty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_jwv2QMtAo
December 18, 2016 at 18:42
Quite an objective statement!
December 18, 2016 at 18:40
Your concept of science seems too broad. It's true that the scientific method is applied to things like ethics, metaphysics, etc., and this is exactly...
December 18, 2016 at 18:09
The problem I have here is that philosophy is treated as a science. Philosophy should be a search for meaning. Meaning is not an empirical physical ob...
December 18, 2016 at 17:47
Experience isn't flawed, it's just subjective. Logic is testable but still subject to flaws, as the constant bickering over logical arguments for any ...
December 18, 2016 at 17:29
I disagree, I think populism is marked more by an overemphasis on emotion or even a misguided intuition. As you say next, being a good artist involves...
December 18, 2016 at 17:23
Creativity, art and forgiveness are not special religious insight. Countless people have experienced the creative urge, experienced or given forgivene...
December 17, 2016 at 23:31
How are you equating an inward spiritual experience with anthropomorphism? Absolutely, I've done this. I "lost my faith", as they say, a few years ago...
December 17, 2016 at 22:51
This isn't a response to my comments. I'd be curious to hear if you have any actual thoughts about them. The divine element in humanity is something e...
December 17, 2016 at 22:26
The problem of determinism vs. free will disolves once you recognize the divine element in humanity itself. It's not a master/slave relationship or a ...
December 17, 2016 at 20:46
hear ye, hear ye
December 17, 2016 at 05:56
I think the notion that we "created language" is a serious flaw here, and the implications for "meaning" one way or another are pretty significant. Th...
December 12, 2016 at 22:49
Explain???
December 12, 2016 at 07:16
Meaninglessness only has a semantic meaning within the context of meaning itself... In other words, meaninglessness is ultimately an apophatic way of ...
December 12, 2016 at 04:29
I would start with The Meaning of the Creative Act if you want to get an overall sense for his ideas. (Or have you read him already?) It's his earlies...
December 11, 2016 at 01:04
What have you read from him? It's probably his most mystical writing, in a way. He ties creativity to a bunch of different aspects of life and the wor...
December 07, 2016 at 19:48
I would maybe reference Tillich's concept of God as the "ground of being", or "God above God", which is similar to Gnostic concepts of God. Not to sou...
December 07, 2016 at 06:43
I'm working through it still, but intuitively, yes. This might sound like bad philosophy, but the two ideas taken separately both resonate in my mind,...
December 07, 2016 at 06:20
Yes, that is the real problem, I agree. I like Berdyaev's view of freedom as primary, the same as you're saying; he sees it as something prior even to...
December 07, 2016 at 00:07
True, it is an explanation that involves psychology, but it's also an intuitive conclusion, not a phenomenological or logical one. The problem here fo...
December 06, 2016 at 23:28
I'm not, thanks for the info. I pretty much agree with the concept, it's not far off from what I'm saying about forgiveness only issuing from the oppr...
December 06, 2016 at 01:29