what defines life - Page 3

What you said right there gari, and the order by which it was composed is a very wise place to be.

Strange how an apparently profound question encourages such dunder-headed answers. Pure, undiluted waffle. Sickly, saccharine-sweet sophistry. Blabber-mouthed obfuscation. Of course, it is lack of integrity and not lack of intelligence that makes you do this to yourselves. Anyone with even the merest knowledge of Analytic philosophy would know that the question itself is the problem. If we could deal with a concept as general as 'life' in the first place we would probably know the mind of God - and philosophy would not exist!

Lol.

Wittgenstein, heres an analytical answer for you:

Life is that part of time which occurs between the bringing into existance an entitiy which is capable of inner stimlus to direct its actions and the death of that entity which is capable of inner stimulus of its actions. i.e. a computer doesn't think for itself but os programmed to think a certain way. It could, plausibly, be true that humans are programmed and we don't really think for ourselves. This is of itself possible, but it is far wiser to believe one has control of their own actions, otherwise it would bring around quite a bit of chaos!

Anyway this means life is defined by the beginning and the end...i.e the structure defines the form.

Thats the best I can come up with which seperates living things from non-living entities. However, life, as far as we know, is that bit which comes in between and I happen to experience quiete a bit of it in the meantime This makes me an expert in itself. And the bit in between is somewhat less dull to speculate upon.

Someone said this to me; the mind becomes a bad thing when it turns in on itself A helping hand is much better than pointing the finger. How do we possibly get on in life if we never question it? If you have a philosophy in life which you follow and it meets what you want, is this not evidence that perhaps somethings is working? Is truth not that which works?

heyjme, if we construe an Analytic answer as one for which the golden rule is Define Your Terms, this isn't a bad go. But, as far as I can see, you anthropomorphise "life" in a way that it is precisely the task of Analytic philosophy to prevent. Interesting as you answer is, it's subject matter is the mind; and in refuting the "mind-as-machine" idea that has exisited in some variant or other since Condorcet (you have allies in luminaries like John R. Searle and Roger Penrose) you actually throw into even severer blackness a question that was dubious (if not meaningless) from the start.
I suppose I should briefly outline my assumptions here. It is the first and perhaps only task of philosophy to highlight the limits of language - to draw out the distinction between what can and cannot be said. Now this might sound like an austere viewpoint to adopt; it might seem an altogetehr impoverished view of philosophy, even one that it is too depressing to accept. But what cannot be said might be SHOWN. Where reason falls short, a visionary power of intuition may bhear us up to new heights. The thoughts you were trying to express in your little thesis should have been expressed through poetry. As they are, no amount of cogency can hide the fact that they are essentially metaphysical twaddle.

And, my friend, what is the point of not 'anthropomising' life when those that judge life and write it down and think with their minds are themselves not human?

In order to understand the workings of philosophy, we must first be anthromorphic, for the proponents of what is metaphsyics according to the high chairs of scholary debate, are themseleves human.

I'd rather ally with faith, persistence and hope, than to live in the recurring now, set by walls of stome that cascade their walls of truth over what exists, and in doing so, create barriers to prevent what might exist.

Call it visionary if you like, or twaddle, or some other technical terminology characteristic of my writingds, but its what I 'feel' rather than 'think'. Some would call it mad. Now, I don't really care for philosophers who ask why all the time, nit-picking of what is, and what isn't. If half my life is a lie, so beit, far better be it that way so that we can live tomorrow.

No I cant prove to you that it isn't just my mind talking,. If you wanted me to go down to plain fact I would answer

'I am not the doer'.

But my feeling tells me otherwise for the neccesity of man to be conscious of his actions.

Of course man cannot know these kind of answers, but he can bear the brunt of some pains so that those in future can be potentially better than he can be You may not understand this, or may enlighten me further. Critical analysis is good and keeps things in check, but it is equally, if not more, important to risk being a subject of that criticism. The best inventions, best pieces of art, best theories have been put forward by people who have propably also put forward some of the most ludicrous ideas. Thats the downside of asking why not. But, remember the downside of criticism is that Murphy's law can prevail.

The most common method in science is to criticism. But what use is criticism (yes this means advantages, disadvantages, but its essenitally fault finding) if it is not immediately followed with...it would have been better to...=Progress.

I can see the tack of where your coming from in your threads, and there is truth in it, of course. And for the spectator I could look like one of the mystic sheep willing to buy anything which allows them to stop being scared. But, the difference is, rather than bang my head against the wall against the truth, I'll keep trying to find the gap in the wall so it doesnt have to be this way. If you check to see what I've said I've never really said what life is, or the place of God, etc. (the bit between life and death excepted, as it is fairly easy to state this) but given what I think I know of it so it can be lived better.

It is not the case that we must "first be anthropomorhpic" - Kant showed decisively that the conceptual frameworks with which we think are ineluctably so. And I'm sorry, but to say that you don't care whether what you say is, at bottom, solipsistic ramble: I find that scary! This attitude is certainly not one that could be tolerated in philosophy. Reason is my mistress, and truth my guide. If that sounds like a runny mix of science and mysticism, it is instructive: for, in the end, reason offers no argument for reason. The decision to reason might itself be arbitrary. It is certainly not irrational to be unthinking. Thoughts?

I don't claim truth. Your perceptive powers of what I'm saying may be true. I'm not perfect. I don't claim laws of knowledge.

I'm not here to pursue the mighty aim of finding tuth tso that I can become an intellectual snob (the truth hurts).

This is my point, I'm here to help. Like a doctor, he has his tools to cure, but he often vures the person, not the condition. Of course, without his knowledge he can't become a doctor. The next step is how good his people powers are. Would he say to a very ill person: you have 65% chance of dying, you are unlikely to live past 48 hours and even if you do live, your qaulity of life will be poor. This narrow-minded judgement forgets many things. A person is less likely to become well if a person in power suggests that they will die (e.g. stress causes raise in blood presure, lack of hope promotes slowdown of recovery) and it forgets that knowing the human condition, many ill people are kept alive (longevity despite quality of life) because it is seen to help those nearest-its the fear of loss in many cases which people are afraid of.

I can;t help but bring knwoledge of the human condition into anything. No historian will be great without knwoledge of psychology. I'm not solipsistic, though some things attract me its flawed by personal death and morality issues. But it does have some truths about the effect which I observe, e.g. Buddhists mainatin the idea of Karma, but I don't believe in Buddah.

My intent is not to become an intellectual snob. My intent is to help. Philosophy is merely a tool in this process to me, nothing more, nothing less. It isn't the be all and end all. So I dont car to sit at a table and discuss it for endless hours; the heroes are the people that do, not who say. For example could philosophy teach you how to console a kid whose parents have just died. Could it teach how to understand what your pet is about to do? Could it help raise children to be happy? Could it help solve hmanities problems? I'm not knocking the philosopher but merely saying that it is one avenue of many...it is character that maters, not how much you are informed.

Without scienctific education, I couldn't do my job. This of course serves a valid purpose, but it hardly does much else unless I find something groundbreaking.

Now, what do you do and why do you do it?

I'm a professional intellectual snob. Apparently. And I do it to feed my already sated ego. I suppose.
But you're right - wry comments aside, philosohphy is a tool. Having no subject matter, it can in the end be nothing more than a mode of thought. So you would think that it's a prepatory exercise for the real meaty subjects like life and the human condition and love... except for the fact that it never actually answers any of the questions or solves any of the problems which it has set itself. This is not to say that philosophy cannot progress - it's problems are immensely difficult but not, as it were, insoluble. By slow degrees, we can see the light. Even if only the faintest glow.
So yes, I can see you point, especially - as you will well know - since it's one that 99.9% of people the world over would advocate. Perhaps my outlook is wacky, my task quixotic. But as far as I am concerned, philosophy is the most mysterious and wonder-inducing thing in life; and to abandon it simply because it cannot cancel the world debt or purge the world of suffering seems to me not just wide of the mark, but slightly sinister as well.

There's a saying- an old defination of a philospher: He's a blind man in a dark room, trying to find a black cat which is not there. He theorizes about it, discusses it and tries to prove it exists-and what more, he finds it!
Yes philosphy wonderfull, and if you have a deep thinking mind then you should probably explore philosphy, but after a while when one becomes mature you realize that life is truly understood when you learn to understand through your heart.

understand through your heart... explain?

You learn more about life when you start to feel it, as opposed to understand it intellecutaly. Intellct is only a small part of the human experiance, there is a far greater world out there which the rational mind cannot touch

after reading the debate between heyjme and wittgenstein, I feel like what I say is so insignificant. Where do you two go to college and what are your majors?

Chris D, don't take this as an attack, but I abhor modesty. To me, modesty - especially the kind which bespeaks subordination - is tanatmount to moral bad faith. It is a failure of the will; it is a craven surrender of autonomy; it is the death of independent thought, and the obliteration of the 'intellect' in its efficacious, meaning-conferring form. Granted, there is a difference between healthy egoism and unadulterated megalomania, but why just cower and mutter platitudes? There is no intrinsic reason why you can't contribute. And don't be wowed be WizardLogic's "thesis". It's specious, muddled and pretentiously written, and the whole thing can be dispensed with in an instant merely by invoking non-Euclidian geometry. I don't mean to establish a solidly ad hominem approach, but cranks really do get to me.

I'm English, studying English and Politics at the University of York and having severe difficulty getting by in life. In light of this, maybe I'm impotent in the face of calls to the "heart" over the "mind". All I'll say is that I don't like the idea of a feelings/mind dualism: why can't they be defined so that they coalesce and, as it were, represent constituent parts of the same thing?

I really don't mean to be modest, but I just feel wowed at your intellect and at such a young age. I'm not in college yet and have had no formal teaching of anything in philosophy. I am eager to learn more and honestly at the moment, I have a lot of trouble reading any one of your posts. I have to use dictionary.com 50+ times before completion of any of them. Now my last post wasn't really me being modest but more so a compliment to your intellect. Also, why are you having severe difficulty getting by in life? Can't get as smart as you want to be?

Why am I having difficulties? The short answer is that I'm simply not functioning. No friends, no pleasure in anything, can't concentrate, can't hand in essays. I can't control my own mind! If I had any guts, I'd kill myself.