I hate Philosophy.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Haha, I like this. Gave me a good laugh.

Whatever. Philosophy isn't truth. For the most part it isn't anything practical. All they are, are ideas and thoughts conceived by other people, shaped by their own personality. It can help you expand your mental capacity because you are just essentially placing yourself in the mind of someone else. All it is at it's heart it putting yourself in someone elses shoes. Trying to hype up philosophy as something super duper important or incredibly meaningful in anyway is opinion, not fact. I love chemistry and I think a lot of basic chemistry is stuff that the average public should know, but am I going to say it is important in any way? No, because that isn't true.

[The Stranger]

and who are you to decide what is true or not? stick true to what you said previous, in terms of consistency, and say that it is your mere opinion that chemistry is nothing important.

besides the importancy of philosophy is not equal to its value. unimportant things can have great value, money/gold, people, pretty much everything we hold of value has no importance in the great scheme of things.

[a completely inoffensive name]

and who are you to decide what is true or not?

I am ACIN, and have the same standing as anybody else to comment on what is true or not. I'm not holding a gun to your head telling you to listen to what I have to say.

stick true to what you said previous, in terms of consistency, and say that it is your mere opinion that chemistry is nothing important.

It isn't inconsistent. I don't think anything or any subject is something that is important to know for everyone. Hence I don't think that chemistry is important and hence someone saying that philosophy is important is not a fact but an opinion that I think is wrong.

besides the importancy of philosophy is not equal to its value. unimportant things can have great value, money/gold, people, pretty much everything we hold of value has no importance in the great scheme of things.

I don't recall saying that philosophy has no value. I pretty much agree with the end of your statement there.

Then again, if we were to look at philosophy degrees from an economical standpoint...

[phonicsmonkey]

Then again, if we were to look at philosophy degrees from an economical standpoint...

Like any degree it matters more where you study it and how well you do at it. I did philosophy and ended up an investment banker. Now I'm in funds management.

Many people at my university who studied economics hoping to get into investment banking did not suceed.

Having said that I think it's easier in some countries than others - that was in England whereas here in Australia people seem much more closed-minded about what you have studied.

[Csargo]

Then again, if we were to look at philosophy degrees from an economical standpoint...

ALL HAIL THE GLOBAL MARKET.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Whatever. Philosophy isn't truth. For the most part it isn't anything practical. All they are, are ideas and thoughts conceived by other people, shaped by their own personality. It can help you expand your mental capacity because you are just essentially placing yourself in the mind of someone else. All it is at it's heart it putting yourself in someone elses shoes. Trying to hype up philosophy as something super duper important or incredibly meaningful in anyway is opinion, not fact. I love chemistry and I think a lot of basic chemistry is stuff that the average public should know, but am I going to say it is important in any way? No, because that isn't true.

And it's still a useless subject.

[Subotan]

And it's still a useless subject.

That sentiment is only ever held by people who lack the mental ability to actually do it.

For example, would you say that Rousseau's contributions to political theory were "useless"?

Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title.
We might, over and above all this, add, to what man acquires in the civil state, moral liberty, which alone makes him truly master of himself; for the mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.

[Kralizec]

For example, would you say that Rousseau's contributions to political theory were "useless"?

Not useless, but arguably damaging to the world as a whole. Volonté générale is, for all intents and purposes, a pretext for dictatorship.

[Drunk Clown]

That sentiment is only ever held by people who lack the mental ability to actually do it.

Nobody likes it when someone calls your subject, in which you have put effort, useless. But don't act like you have to be super smart to do philosophy and say that someone who doesn't like it hasn't got the capacity, cos to be honest, it makes you look like a who thinks he's better than others.

[Subotan]

Not useless, but arguably damaging to the world as a whole. Volonté générale is, for all intents and purposes, a pretext for dictatorship.

That depends on how you interpret "Forced to be Free" - either at face value, or the actual meaning of ensuring that the minority don't try to screw up the democratic system solely on the sole grounds that they lost, and that participation in the system entails legitimation of it.

Nobody likes it when someone calls your subject, in which you have put effort, useless. But don't act like you have to be super smart to do philosophy and say that someone who doesn't like it hasn't got the capacity, cos to be honest, it makes you look like a who thinks he's better than others.

There's a difference between calling a subject, say, "boring" and "useless". The former is a normative statement that others don't have the right to challenge you on and declare that you're wrong (Even if they disagree), whilst the latter is a declaration of objective fact which has the potential to be wrong. If we take, say, homoeopathy, I can point to numerous examples of how it is no better than a placebo - it is a useless subject. In contrast, if I said chemistry is useless, then that shows that either I don't know chemistry is, or that I'm not smart enough to be able to understand how important chemistry actually is. Philosophy is in the same category as chemistry here, as there are directly observable benefits from philosophy such as Democracy, Logic [Which in turn led to the creation of computing], ethics etc. Now, it is entirely possible that Warman doesn't know what philosophy is, as he seems to think that philosophy is epistemology, which isn't true (thank god), but...

[Drunk Clown]

Is epistemology useless then?

PHILOSOPHY!!1!!1

[Kralizec]

That depends on how you interpret "Forced to be Free" - either at face value, or the actual meaning of ensuring that the minority don't try to screw up the democratic system solely on the sole grounds that they lost, and that participation in the system entails legitimation of it.

It's been a while since I've read Rousseau (or any real philosophical work, for that matter), but I'll try:

- Unlike philospophers like Montesquieu, Rousseau was never interested in curtailing government power. He merely wanted to wrest it from absolutist monarchs and invest it in the "general will of the people"
- Rousseau was opposed to any sort of elected assembly, saying that such a representative body could never express the General Will of the people and thus could never be sovereign. Part of the reason is because the general will is supposedly indivisible.
- He says that the will of the majority is not (necessarily) the same as the General Will, because individuals can have petty desires that influence their personal will, wich is distinct from their will as citizens (wtf?)
- Which brings up the question who gets to determine what the general will is, anyway.

I'm not saying that Rousseau is personally responsible for any dictatorships that came after him, but several of them (including the regimes that followed the French revolution) show us that it's a pretty bad idea to have a government or leader that claims absolute power under the guise of acting in the interest, or will of all.