Can a bad person be a philosopher?

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Fido

You must be kidding me...Heavy water is not water???

I did not say that. I said that 3H2O is not H3O. 3H2O (tritiated water) is heavy water. Hydronium is not tritiated water. You wrote H3O is also water. H3O is not heavy water. 3H2O is. Comprenez vous?

Originally Posted by Fido

Why is water a part of its name??? Is it not because it is a form of water???

Save your vacuous, vituperative rants until you're sure you've correctly read the post you're sinking your gums into.

Originally Posted by Fido

Pure Water, then you talk about h20

Ok, if you want to include trace solutes then you may as well call benzene and mercury water too.

Originally Posted by Fido

Look; I am considered a thread Hijacker around here, and I don't want to be a bad person trying to be a philosopher... To me, that charge is just the last refuge of a wanna be...

"To review your bill, press one. To add services, press two. To learn about our new high speed internet, press three. For technical support, press four. For all other calls, please stay on the line. The next available representative will assist you. We appreciate your business."

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

I did not say that. I said that 3H2O is not H3O. 3H2O (tritiated water) is heavy water. Hydronium is not tritiated water. You wrote H3O is also water. H3O is not heavy water. 3H2O is. Comprenez vous?

Save your vacuous, vituperative rants until you're sure you've correctly read the post you're sinking your gums into.

Ok, if you want to include trace solutes then you may as well call benzene and mercury water too.

"To review your bill, press one. To add services, press two. To learn about our new high speed internet, press three. For technical support, press four. For all other calls, please stay on the line. The next available representative will assist you. We appreciate your business."

I have already been called on this, and while I'll admit you are right about the heavy water I must say, as I said to the administation that water is a morph an not a morpheme, what we would consider a form, or an idea distinct from all other ideas... Water is a very generic term, never found completly free of other chemicals... The Oceans are water, and so are the clouds, and you can't drink either one....
So we can get back on track now so I don't get another ticket???

[Reconstructo]

Wow, this water issue was a real thread wrecker.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Reconstructo

Wow, this water issue was a real thread wrecker.

Sorry...There might have been a better way to handle it; but I was right...There might be a million different variations of water all having the quality of some h2o, but if you are tying to say H2O, there is no better way than saying just that...One of the qualities of water is that is absorbes everything...You know the ocean is water... Is it only the H2O; or everything else, because water is naturally H2O and whatever else... If one says water and it must always be qualified water, for example, calling H2O- pure water, then you can never say water is water...It is false...I always use cats and dogs as examples... The forms are defined...What ever comes out of a cat though it may stretch the definition of cat, will never be a dog...

[Reconstructo]

Only saints can think straight. It's the blood of Jesus that screws our heads on right. Thus spoke Reconstructo.

[Theaetetus]

Can we please get back on topic before I decide to start issuing more infractions?

[Reconstructo]

I was trying to, chief. The water thing is a bore.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Reconstructo

Only saints can think straight. It's the blood of Jesus that screws our heads on right. Thus spoke Reconstructo.

There is a certain logic to the language, and this is obvious since people are not just misunderstood, but understood... I do not think it is possible for people who cannot speak clearly to be philosophers...Clear thought follows from clear talk... Voltaire said if you want to talk with me, define your terms...(my paraphrase)...Too often has humanity been made the prisoners of their ideas because they did not have the means to examine them in detail...Even look at this question...It is simple enough unless one considers that two words, Bad, and Philosopher have only approximate meanings... Fortunately, nothing much hangs on the question....On the one hand, philosophy cannot be divorced from the daily activity of every life as once it was... Everyone is a philosopher... But is philosophy any sort of activity to enthrall a 'bad' person??? What makes many bad people bad is not the desire to learn, but the need to forget...

[Reconstructo]

I agree that philosophy is usually associated with clear language, but we do have our Heraclituses and our Heideggers. Rorty liked to distinguish between the oracular type who offer us new metaphors and the argumentative type who wring out clarifications.

My last post is half-ironic and half-sincere. Wisdom is the elephant in the room. A denial of intuition and the desire of philosophers to distinguish themselves from mystic is both good and bad. A holistic view sees that, as you say, all must be philosophers, for all of us alive have important questions concerning this life.

On the other hand, the tradition is a progress, I think. We who read this tradition and act as critics of it are in a significantly different situation than those who don't. We spend time down in the dialectical trenches and get a real taste for the process of philosophy, which I related to Hegel's dialectic.

Anti-intuitional philosophy has given me a machete to clear a path for intuition. Criticism must criticize itself, and confess its limitations. Life often requires a leap of faith, and an intuition of value. The poets sometimes know more about this than their shamefaced cousins, the philosophers, who would like to deny that they too are only poets, however suffused with their polished thrice-negated metaphors.

I recommend to anyone Derrida's "White Mythology" in Margins.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Reconstructo

I agree that philosophy is usually associated with clear language, but we do have our Heraclituses and our Heideggers. Rorty liked to distinguish between the oracular type who offer us new metaphors and the argumentative type who wring out clarifications.

My last post is half-ironic and half-sincere. Wisdom is the elephant in the room. A denial of intuition and the desire of philosophers to distinguish themselves from mystic is both good and bad. A holistic view sees that, as you say, all must be philosophers, for all of us alive have important questions concerning this life.

On the other hand, the tradition is a progress, I think. We who read this tradition and act as critics of it are in a significantly different situation than those who don't. We spend time down in the dialectical trenches and get a real taste for the process of philosophy, which I related to Hegel's dialectic.

Anti-intuitional philosophy has given me a machete to clear a path for intuition. Criticism must criticize itself, and confess its limitations. Life often requires a leap of faith, and an intuition of value. The poets sometimes know more about this than their shamefaced cousins, the philosophers, who would like to deny that they too are only poets, however suffused with their polished thrice-negated metaphors.

I recommend to anyone Derrida's "White Mythology" in Margins.

Forward is a goal with many paths..And philsophy is too....It can't be totally intuition...Insight comes with knowledge...I may not have the knowledge to say what is right, but I usually know enough to say when something does not make sense with what I know...