The storage medium of philosophy

by phil on Saturday Aug 12, 2006 12:39 PM

While as philosophy is really good at working on truth, the way we store truth in our heads has more to do with rhetoric than truth. You know those "ah-hah" moments and our attraction to quotes from famous people?

Forget about Hegelian dialectic as an understanding of history. Show me the intersection between learning theory and philosophy, i.e. how does the common man integrate the truths that trickle down from philosophy? How do philosophers themselves integrate their truths into their lives. Are they fairly consistent? Does philosophy properly help them intellectualize thorny issues in their lives, or does it just rationalize away uncomfortable truths.

Why aren't there many deep nihilists? Clearly, the camps on most issues, like determinism/indeterminism, are 50-50. But I rarely meet a philosopher who will be like, "yeah, there's nothing." Even Sartre had being AND nothingness, which just seemed like his desperate attempt to say There is SOMETHING, isn't there? Then, that's why I only give a damn about probably Wittgenstein and Nietzsche. Nietzsche for being sardonic about the whole lot of human life (at least there's one philosopher that has the balls to flirt with the evil implications of philosophy), and Wittgenstein for speaking heavily about meta-philosophy. That, and he only scratched the surface of things that he knew he was really right on.