Top 5 most damaging philosophies?

[boagie]

Originally Posted by saiboimushi

Dang, this is a difficult topic for me. I'm not sure what to put to down as a deleterious philosophy, since the very idea of what is deleterious presupposes yet another philosophy. The most obvious candidate for me is "Naziism," if one can call that a philosophy. Yet to say that Naziism is harmful is already to have in mind a definition of "harmful," which in turn rests upon an assumption of what is beneficial. Destroying an entire race of people is probably an evil thing to do--most if not all of us would agree on this point. But does our agreement rest on philosophical grounds? In other words, do we know that genocide is bad? Or do we merely believe that it is bad because our common culture tells us as much?


The same thing goes for racism and the philosophies that justify it. Is racism bad? Very likely it is. But do we know that it is bad, or are we just as ignorant as those who defend it and participate in it? If the proposition "racism is bad" is true, then our faith in this proposition is a true belief. However, while it appears self-evident that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, if we are entrenched in either kind, we have no way of knowing which is which.

It would seem, then, that the judgement of particular philosophies can only be made from the standpoint of a meta-philosophy. But how can we determine which philosophy transcends all others, and thus is truly meta?

saiboimushi,

Actually racism is a disconnect, it is seeing others not as like yourself but as different, generally inferior. The opposite of racism is human compassion, the recognition of a self not unlike yourself in others. To be racist is to be disconnected from your own humanity, to see others largely as objects of your displeasure. A man who is racist, or a man who enjoys torturing small animals does not cease to be human, for this is a possiablity innate to us all. It is rather the disconnect I spoke of, temporally being out of touch with what it is to be human, to be, even if temporally, a psychopath. Well it is true to some extent that context defines, we must remember it was our humanity that formed these societies that we might escape the amoral reality of nature, and thus become more human. The racist still lives in the jungle, an amoral creature in and of himself.

Ah yes, private property! Forged by Satan himself!

[urangutan]

Philosophy is not the condensing of belief into knowledge
Philosophy is not there to oppose belief
Philosophy is not just knowledge
I do not know what philosophy is

You can tie Nietzche to Naziism, Manson to the occult or God to sacrifice but it doesn't matter what I have read, how I have lived or to what I have listened too, I cannot blame you for my lot.

[ronsher_gangwar]

philosophy is all about following the weirdest thought in mind.... people say all squares are rectangles but all rectangles are not squares..... that all bible is philosophy but not all philosophy are bible.... i disagree!! there is nothing like a damaging philosophy like hot water may damage or hurt and cold may still damage or hurt but can never be unacceptable in any season... both are called but with no different names.... we live in dream where we we all play our roles and that's how it must go on.... change is cause and causality of constant fighting between human thoughts and nature corresponds to the accumulation of these thoughts positively as well as negatively.... we live in a dynamic world and ironically unconsciously..... the direction of our progress has astrayed we we were supposed to help out "ourselves" jump out of the dimensions we live for and within.

[Doobah47]

Originally Posted by Aedes

Ok, you've given one example, though it's hard to say that this results from a 'philosophy of truth' per se, as opposed to just premature closure on an evidence-based epistemology.

Perhaps I should say that when gathering support for a cause, zealots/politicians/philosophers tend to present an opinion and demand an inference of truth in that argument; the perpetrator may very well never insinuate that there be any 'truth' in the opinion, it is left for the following to decide upon a truth value. So in this case it is less a politiical philosophy, nor a philosophy of truth, but a part of philosophy of language, one which also enters a metaphysical/psychological philosophy.

To say "x exists" is to infer truth in language and truth in perception; my point is that our language structure is definite when the reality of the relation between language/perception and reality is always inabsolute, thus indefinite.