What is Epistemology?, Thales says Everything is Water, Anaximander says Everything is Air, Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth , Skepticism entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The New England Skeptical Society, music by podington bear (nature kid), image credits: leap, annonymous, god hands, puppeteer, brain in vat, baby hands, bre, brain messages, scary girl, poltergeist kid, trees, fame guy, brain neurons, space pics (1, 2)
Up early. First early. Boy what time does Joanne get up to post these so early. Probably pretty early.
The video doesn't work!
Prove it.
Thinking comes after being therefore: I am, therefore I think. But how can I be if Descartes says I am after I think? I think I am being ... confused :(
Logically, if its true, as you say, that thinking comes after being, and there is thinking, then there must be being.
One of the great thinkers...I had to chuckle.
That was a glimpse into the future 2030...as if time exists.
BC is before Christ, who is the answer to #2. 'Everything else' works by faith (as you pointed out). Otherwise you don't know.
This episode was awesome! I think about how do we REALLY know what does and doesn't exists all the time! When driving in a car I always think to myself, is this real or am I just in a simulator? I guess we won't know until we die to see what comes next, if there is anything.
When you hear gunshots, you're not in a simulator!
Joanne,
Would you please consider selling some tissue samples on eBay, for the time when human cloning is perfected? Much obliged.
Credit card at the ready,
Edward Luhn
P.S. To the guy tending my brain vat: You know what I like. More.
considering it....and shedding millions of cells for free while I do so.
Cogito ergo spud....I think therefore I yam.
I can read you mind.
Who am I
As a spider weaves his thread out of his mouth, plays with it and then withdraws it
again into itself, so the eternal unchangeable Lord, who is without form, without attributes, who is absolute knowledge and absolute bliss, evolves the whole universe out of Himself, plays with it for a while, and again withdraws it into Himself.
- Bhagavatam
http://www.arunachala-ramana.org/whoami.htm
I learned all about Who I AM when I partyed in India last summer. Thanks Sri Hottie!
Paris honey, the filament comes out of it's ass, or some gland around there.
Sounds pretty kinky, thanks Kam, for the "heads up"!
Wake me up tomorrow.....
I haven't watched a rocketboom episode all the way through in a long time. I think it's great you did a philosophy episode and I hope you interview one of the rock stars of philosophy, Slavoj Zizek: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhDuYfZa5dE
I love that man! In a completely destructive and evil sense of course.
Have a great NOW, that's all there is.
“Take the instance of the cinema. Scenes are projected on the screen in the cinema-show. But the moving pictures do not affect or alter the screen. The spectator pays attention to them, not to the screen. They cannot exist apart from the screen, yet the screen is ignored. So also, the Self is the screen where the pictures, activities etc. are seen going on. The man is aware of the latter but not aware of the essential former. All the same the world of pictures is not apart from the Self. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
The seer and the object seen are like the rope and the snake. Just as the knowledge of the rope which is the substrate will not arise unless the false knowledge of the illusory serpent goes, so the realization of the Self which is the substrate will not be gained unless the belief that the world is real is removed". ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
"How can you speak or develop any concept unless the primary concept ‘I am’ is available? This primary concept begets further concepts, that is all other concepts occur to it. However, whatever concept occurs to you, including the primary concept ‘I am’, is not the eternal state". - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Video of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
What is & what isn't? Y'know funny that came up today because I was just thinking about that very question while eating a huge burger & fries yesterday. Y'see "fries" in England are called "chips", or something they do with leftover mash & brussel sprouts, where in America, "chips" are things used in Vegas, some old Eric Estrada TV show, something people have on their shoulder sometimes, stuff that flies out of a chainsaw & of course the Dorito or potato chip, where in England those are called "crisps" whereas in the USA, that's how I likes my bacon! which brings me back to "fries"
Hey Igor, more water in the vat please!
So in a similar vein to the http://whoaretheseguys.blogspot.com/ efforts:
Who the hell was that pictured after Derrida?
1699=1799=1899=1999=century. now this is MMVIII or ZVIII.is chance the history in 8 years that in the 400 years, does thing? ;)(bananas)
You DO exist, Joanne. I couldn't make you up.
So does this hottie!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yatta/2543706800/
Joanne, who is the guy you show after Jacques Derrida? And, shouldn't that be a woman? I knew something like this would come after all that "Truth and Method"...
Aloisia.
No, I'm not sure of anything.
Except for this quote by George Carlin:
"There's an odd feeling you get when someone
on the sidewalk moves slightly to avoid
walking into you. It proves you exist. Your
mere existence caused them to alter their
path. It's a nice feeling. After you die,
no one has to get out of your way anymore."
Well, apparently the Verve will not veer!
I loved this post. You're brilliant, if in fact you exist, and wrote this material, either of which I can't be certain, but cogito ergo sum and ergo think I am certain; and if we can agree that that's something, then even if your response is, itself, a figment of a brain-in-a-vat mental projection, then from all the way across pond, basically I'd like give you some sort of lavish award for entertaining me at the end of a long day. In this instant, then, from at minimum a vat, bravura.
I want more. Thinking about thinking, with humor and short-attention-span grabbing graphics makes me think I really do exist. Otherwise I just fade away into suburban existential doubt. Really, this was brilliant.
just great!!
Maybe luna is still inside the earth baking and lune is just a hairball coughed out of a surfer named earth.
Wait a sec; -epistemology is that thing my baby-mama had on her due date; -Warning!, do NOT go into the delivery room!!! -Just stand out in the parking lot with a pack of smokes and a martini like a normal guy, please -for your own good.
2)Ex Nihilo, Nihil Fit; bitches! -Plotinus
c)Omphaloskepsis
a gift for Joanne C.
What is Mind?
http://www.werbos.com/WhatIsMind.htm
I don't think Descartes was skeptical enough. He smuggled a few presuppositions into his thought experiment. How did he recognize that it was him doing the thinking? Or that the thing he was doing was thinking, and not something else? He should have said "There is something going on, therefore something exists". He doesn't show that he exists, just that there is something other than a total void.
With the power of Soul, anything is Possible...
Clapton & Kravitz -- burp, fart...blech
Pearl Jam _ Gimme A Fucking Break
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0wAQGKZsnbU&feature=related
Bruce Springsbomb--no wonder his concerts are 7 hours long ....zzzzzzzzzz
Dave Matthews- People actually pay money to listen to this crap band.
Jimi- 40 years later and nobody can touch him cause he's still a million light years ahead of them all
Accept No Imitations
Hypothetically, if I AM just a brain in a vat and the mad scientist is making me think I'm watching the video, that means that he's trying to make me think, "Hey, what if I'm just a brain in a vat?" What's is he doing that for!? Who knows what I might do. I might jump out of my vat, unravel myself and strangle him.
Maybe he's been trying to see if I'm clever enough to figure out that I'm just a brain in a vat, and it turns out I'm not so he's helping me along a bit by showing me this video...
I would like to ravish her
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move.
What If I'm not a brain in a vat ? What if all these sensory perceptions are really what is going on. What if the feelings I have are not at all artificially induced ? Then the world would probably be as I experience it.. what a awful thought...
"Descartes' best skeptical hypothesis was he might be dreaming. The Greeks had already come up with this problem."
There was also a Chinese philosopher who dreamed he was a butterfly, and when he woke up, he wasn't sure if he was not a butterfly dreaming he was a man.....
oo i heard of that guy. but either way someones dreaming, so whatever is dreaming is a brain in vat, y waste time thinking which brain in what vat.
sometimes i think epistemology is a contradiction all in itself...but do contradictions exist.
My emispemology is summed up as: "It is what it is"
Not even a photo of Hegel?
Zhuangzi- author of the second most important Taoist work: the Zhuangzi.
i'd be interested in your further thoughts on this. epistemology, even Descartes' cogito, I think in a way is a contradiction. Knowing, direct perceiving or experiencing is something different from an idea. Do contradictions exist? Contradiction exists as an idea. But perceiving directly I find no ideas that are innate.
The inateness of ideas i cannot say...all we know is that we have them. The other thing we cannot say is how fully or brains and ideas do or do not comprehend "what really does exist and what doesn't" The idea of a contradiction is only made out as contradiction in our own minds following our own logic. what may seem like a contradiction to the mind of millions, can make perfect sense on a plane of thinking above our own. the laws of physics and logic are only tied to us in this reality..but idk
We can imagine all types of things and come up with all types of theories if we look at things from a third person perspective. But in the first person perspective there is only immediate awareness. We don't have to posit any ideas in the first person perspective. Even Descartes' cogito idea is unnecessary--he tried to establish the cogito as an idea that cannot be doubted. Well, bring in Derrida's deconstruction and such attempts to centralize ideas fall apart.
The point is that ideas, theories, etc. are abstract and different from immediate awareness. To think we can capture and crystalize immediate awareness with such propositions as cogito ergo sum is an illusion and is an exercise in futility. It is like confusing the map with the territory. Cogito is useful insofar as it is understood as a map. But it is not an unshakable foundation for epistemology.
im currently reading about axiology and i cant make upa word of it :( can anybody help me out with it please :(
LOL!
I poop, therefore, I am.
eureka! Just as I imagined it to be, I think ;-/
descartes = a bedamned rationalist.
Solipsism ultimately amounts to Realism. When you really take solipsism seriously, the distinction between realism and solipsism collapses. Descartes really messed everyone up by fathering Dualism.
why not just talk without all the silly head bobbing.
Is reading and listening to all of this stuff what turns people crazy? What is crazy? is it real or just an illusion? lol im outta here!
Unless we are the incarnation of desception?? or something!
girl + philosophy = love ;)
no, philosophy doesn't turn people crazy.