thefloodbehind said:

Samurai Drifter said:

thefloodbehind said:

Nietzsche ... cool books, but his arguments are fueled by hatred and egotism, not reason.

Dennett is a complete dumbass.

As for me, hm ... Lao Tzu. Spinoza. Kant. Schopenhauer.

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Explain how Nietzsche's arguments are fueled by hatred and how Dennett is a dumbass, otherwise I'm just going to have to assume you don't know WTF you're talking about.

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I've talked about Nietzsche earlier in the thread.

I've never really studied Dennett in depth, just a few essays and some videos. He's neither a good writer nor speaker, that's where part of my sentiment comes from. Also his views on consciousness are just way too shortsighted. He refuses to take Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness into account, preferring instead to equate biochemistry with the subjective experience, which makes no sense.

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Grapefruit said:

thefloodbehind said:

Samurai Drifter said:

thefloodbehind said:

Nietzsche ... cool books, but his arguments are fueled by hatred and egotism, not reason.

Dennett is a complete dumbass.

As for me, hm ... Lao Tzu. Spinoza. Kant. Schopenhauer.

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Explain how Nietzsche's arguments are fueled by hatred and how Dennett is a dumbass, otherwise I'm just going to have to assume you don't know WTF you're talking about.

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I've talked about Nietzsche earlier in the thread.

I've never really studied Dennett in depth, just a few essays and some videos. He's neither a good writer nor speaker, that's where part of my sentiment comes from. Also his views on consciousness are just way too shortsighted. He refuses to take Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness into account, preferring instead to equate biochemistry with the subjective experience, which makes no sense.

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I've heard "the hard problem of consciousness" debated for many times on here by an old regular and came to the conclusion there is just no way you can know whether consciousness can be explained totally as a brain function or not.

Assuming instead that it's not, how the hell do you explain that? Do you have any solid proof of said explanation or is it purely abstract reasoning? If you can't explain it properly and back that up, through either chemistry or anything else you have to admit that the explanation is a mystery where the answer could potentially be on either side of the books.

You can't entirely deny one side on a whim because it's counter-intuitive to you. Imagine an investigator does actually want to look for the answer, well that's hardly scientific or open minded now is it?

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thefloodbehind said:

as Russell observes, Nietzschean philosophy is grounded in universal hatred and fear. if we want to progress as a species, hatred and fear are not the way to go. Schopenhauer, whom Nietzsche regarded as his "educator," argues that morality is based on compassion, and i'm inclined to agree ... Nietzsche, however, radically denies compassion in favor of violent egotism. do you really think that this is a good idea for humankind? get these kinds of ideas in the wrong hands, e.g., the Nazis, and shit's gonna get shitty real quick. not to say that the Nazis are really Nietzsche's fault, but there is a connection, that is for certain. Heidegger (who is featured in the video i posted, after Bertrand Russell), for example, highly revered Nietzsche and was a Nazi.

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saintphotios said:

And... ummm.... fuck Nietzsche!

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zannennagara said:

thefloodbehind said:

as Russell observes, Nietzschean philosophy is grounded in universal hatred and fear. if we want to progress as a species, hatred and fear are not the way to go. Schopenhauer, whom Nietzsche regarded as his "educator," argues that morality is based on compassion, and i'm inclined to agree ... Nietzsche, however, radically denies compassion in favor of violent egotism. do you really think that this is a good idea for humankind? get these kinds of ideas in the wrong hands, e.g., the Nazis, and shit's gonna get shitty real quick. not to say that the Nazis are really Nietzsche's fault, but there is a connection, that is for certain. Heidegger (who is featured in the video i posted, after Bertrand Russell), for example, highly revered Nietzsche and was a Nazi.

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Russell should know about ideas getting into the wrong hands as an early supporter of Marxist-Leninist communism, the immense death toll and repression of which should mitigate the force of his criticism of Nietzsche a tad. If you can find me a philosopher, theorist or mystic whose works have not been manipulated into horrid corruptions by power-seekers, you are finding me someone who has not been widely read enough. Holy texts that espouse self-abnegation and compassion are written within nations that give rise to emperors, fascists and tyrants, and it is obvious that there as elsewhere select out-of-context ideas are extracted to justify the domination of the strong few over the weak many.

I cannot imagine reading an entire work of Nietzsche's (Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo, for instance) and coming to the conclusion that he is "grounded in universal hatred and fear" when he excoriates legal codes and social norms that institutionalize those things. I can imagine conflating the fury and incision of his manner of speaking with hatred, since he has the tendency to cut open one's most forgotten and tender scars, but in my view this is refreshing and captures a particular emotional recalcitrance suited to his arguments against denial of one's own passions and ideals.

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Grapefruit said:

I'm not a fan of reductionism either.

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and yet, you post on here.

blingbling said:

slavoj zizek

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Crystal G said:

blingbling said:

slavoj zizek

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I actually got to see him speak in person when he was speaking over at UCI.

Really, truly, funny and sardonic guy.

Oh, and my favorite is Karl Marx.

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iThink said:

What do you guys like about Zizek?

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