CMA? What is that? Crystal Meth?

What I would like to get at is when it is appropriate to say these things (belieing, knowing, and certainty) as well as whether certain words function the same as others e.g. belief and opinion, believing and knowing, etc. Witt probably has cleaned most of this up, but that doesnt mean we shouldnt further investigate.

I feel you. I think I just burnt myself out on this issue, as it was once the center of my attention.

What has any of this to do with the issue of the relation between believing and knowing? No wonder people think that philosophers get nowhere. They don't, because they don't care about answering questions. This thread has been a study in what psychologists call free association. It is embarrassing.

Free association....

Well, the point of free association is that it isn't so free, and therefore useful as a reveal er of what the shrinks like to call a complex.

Some see connections that others don't. I like to call this philosophy.

Philosophy has made the same mistakes over and over again... It is like groundhog day for the intelligent...We are little advanced from the Greeks...We make a mistake thinking we need to understand, especially of infinites... What we need is enough knowledge to not do evil in the attempt to do good... At that we have failed...

Seeing connections is very useful for commuters. It is less useful for philosophers. What is useful for philosophers is logic and analysis.

---------- Post added 04-16-2010 at 02:57 AM ----------



You may be little advanced from the Greeks. Why would you think contemporary philosophers are?

The Greeks were surrounded by Barbarians, and they had the excellent examples of Homer, and yet Plato, who was the first to deal with social institutions in a critical fashion could not make the connection between his society and the societies of the then, near past... I don't doubt, that given a choice between minutia and the greater picture of humanity laid out in time, that most, if not all philosophers get out the magnifying glass and tweezers... The guy who came the closest was Nietzsche, and I think he drew the wrong conclusions... The best of the bunch in some respects was Kant, and he tried to form a morality out of whole cloth...Now, Historians and Anthropologist must look at the larger picture, but how many do, trying to find the larger contexts for the events they see???

I have no idea what point you are trying to make, or how what you write here has to do with my post.

You asked why I think... I told you why I think; because we cannot get the big picture in our mind in time...

You asked why I think... I told you why I think; because we cannot get the big picture in our mind in time...

I did not ask you that. What makes you believe I did?

That may be true, but I dont think you addressed the question Ken put up.

Did you not say: why would you think...??? I told you why I would think that... But I am not up to the last minute on philosophers, and so it is a weak spot I will admit...

---------- Post added 04-16-2010 at 09:14 AM ----------


Splain it to me...

So how is that stuff about "big picture" a reply to my question?

It is probably because you do not get the big picture of the life of human kind that you are not great at this and have no more to add to philosophy than contemporary philosophers...Our progress has been the lack of progress...

How can any individual get the big picture of life if we are finite?

It is probably because you do not get the big picture of the life of human kind that you are not great at this and have no more to add to philosophy than contemporary philosophers...Our progress has been the lack of progress...

We are not finite... We are the river that is never the same river twice...It only adds to the complexity of the situation that from the moving perspective of life we must perceive all of life which has always been fluid and is yet fluid...

Just because we change doesnt mean that we are infinite.

Has any of this anything to do with the OP? Anything at all? Or is this an illustration of why people who complain about there not being progress in philosophy are, themselves, to blame for that, because they are constantly in the throes of diversion and free association?