The Philosophy Discussion Thread

Rorty on why we need religion and why we don’t much need it anymore.

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Philosophy is just theology for jerks.

It depends on how you look at it.

In other words, what philosophy is will depend on your philosophy regarding philosophy.

So, since you have a philosophy about philosophy…

QED

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I’m a jerk!

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Came across this definition: “Xenobiology is, like theology, a deep and serious inquiry into a field whose subject matter may or may not exist.”

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I just googled it, sounds pretty cool.

Interesting article about logic and warfare from the war college.

Never heard the definition that Wiki gives; meant it in the sense of exo- or astro-biology: aliens!

Getting back to Rorty, I can see his pragmatism applying to human life (not just because he’s a Lefty- but partly :grinning:), but can’t quite accept it for the physical world. As I’ve said before, I think there is some sense in which the correspondence theory of truth does describe reality, not just ‘work better’.
I mean, I think Newton’s laws of motion are ‘truer’ than Aristotlean theories; Copernican heliocentrism is truer than the Ptolemy’s geocentric system. Of course Einstein gives a description of the Universe that is more real than Newton’s, not just more useful. We are discovering real facts that we didn’t know before.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/11/danger-critical-race-theory/

By now, most Americans have heard of critical race theory. But many do not know just how radical or pernicious CRT is — because, as a new study from the American Enterprise Institute shows, the media does not explain its key tenets in its coverage. So I asked one of our nation’s preeminent historians, Princeton University professor Allen C. Guelzo, to explain CRT and why it is so dangerous.

Critical race theory, Guelzo says, is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant in the 1790s. It was a response to — and rejection of — the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason on which the American republic was founded. Kant believed that “reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives” and so he set about “developing a theory of being critical of reason,” Guelzo says.

Kant was critical of reason- he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason and the Crique of Practical Reason. They’ve got Critique right in the name! (thats the same as being critical of sumpin, ain’t it?)

But the critique of reason ended up justifying “ways of appealing to some very unreasonable things as explanations — things like race, nationality, class,” he says. Critical theory thus helped spawn totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century such as Marxism and Nazism, which taught that all human relationships are relationships of power between an oppressor class and an oppressed class. For the Marxists, the bourgeoisie were the oppressors. For the Nazis, the Jews were the oppressors. And today, in 21st century America, critical race theory teaches that Whites are the oppressors.

Christ, this slackwit teaches at Princeton?
Sheldon Cooper:

“Princeton? A fine institution-why, Albert Eintein taught there. On the other hand, Leonard got his PhD there, so it may have gone downhill.”

Obviously, if they employ this guy.

I read Critique of Pure Reason in college. I even wrote a paper on it. Don’t remember what I wrote.
But Kant is still on my shelf, so I’m gonna reread it.

A. What Is Critical Race Theory?
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group and self-interest, and emotions and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Race-Theory-Third-Introduction/dp/147980276X

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Yeah, nothing wrong with going back to Kant (or Marx, or Hume, or the Frankfurt school). Everyone is building on the ideas of other people, that’s how it works.

Nothing wrong with the WaPo article, either. Seems pretty accurate. If anything, what we have here is a textbook example of how people are supporting CRT when they don’t know the key tenets or philosophical roots from a hole in the ground (or other such things).

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You read that whole thing, didn’t you?

Yeah, I need to read it again though. Mostly I remember a litany of historical complaints.

If I were you, I wouldn’t read it again. Then again, I didn’t read that the first time!

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If you replace supporting with opposing, is it any less true of the general riffraff out there? :thinking: :yin_yang:

I’m not in a position to say, my experience is limited to Canadian academics and the general riffraff on here.

And based on that experience, i would say people such as @tempogain and myself have looked into this far more carefully than those who seem in favour. The Canadian academics were of the type that would say logic is oppression and that because I’m a straight white man my opinion doesn’t count.

are you a straight white man under the rubber alien suit?

I read it a few months ago (it’s short!) but I’ve already forgotten what was in it.

Hmpf. Rude question of the day! :unamused:

But fwiw I can pass for a Canadian academic. :nerd_face: