Search found 20 matches

by Makerowner
Wed Dec 09, 2009 3:59 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

I think it's best to ignore what Makerowner calls "the reflexive structure of the will" - it's not only wholly peripheral to the general direction of Nietzsche's philosophy, it's also directly contradictory to it (what Makerowner has outlined is clearly metaphysics of exactly the sort that Nietzsch...
by Makerowner
Tue Dec 08, 2009 6:54 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

Nietzsche interpretation is probably one of the most contested areas in philosophy, so I don't want go too much into it, but there's one point I particularly want to comment on: A key positive part of Nietzsche’s worldview is his concept of ‘will to power’; this is an acceptance of the Schopenhaueri...
by Makerowner
Sat Dec 05, 2009 10:19 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

The "you just aren't smart enough to understand Hegel" idea is frankly nonsense. The greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century were, in my opinion (excluding Hegel himself from the discussion, and also Fichte, who predated him), Mill, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Mill is consider...
by Makerowner
Tue Dec 01, 2009 12:38 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

This attitude is unfortunately very common in the anglophone world, though of course it's not exclusive to it: "I don't understand this, therefore it's nonsense/a fraud". It's obvious that Hegel's writing style is difficult--though I think the difficulty has been exaggerated somewhat--but to make t...
by Makerowner
Sat Nov 28, 2009 3:51 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

What's your personal opinion on Hegel? I've seen other dismissive statements in that vein, e.g. from Popper, who in the "Open Society" goes on to demolish Hegel at length - not as a philosopher who went wrong, but as a charlatan who hides his intellectual emptiness behind an unpenetrable writing st...
by Makerowner
Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:58 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

What your brain gets is a fuzzy overall picture plus an area in sharp focus. This isn't normally a problem since they coincide— look at any area and you get it in sharp focus. Since there is no way to focus on the area not in focus, we get the illusion that the whole picture is sharp. "What I see" ...
by Makerowner
Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:10 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

Since the thread is already good and derailed... As for the Tolstoy/Dostovevsky thing, I think you miss the point. You said earlier you thought you had a unified, hi-res visual field. The experiment proves you don't. You think you see a page of Tolstoy, when no such page exists. ( Reading isn't the ...
by Makerowner
Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:16 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

One thing I'd like to mention about Hegel is that "Absolute Knowledge" is his concern only in the Phenomenology of Spirit; in his later works, eg. the Philosophy of History, the end point is not perfect knowledge but (as Salmoneus mentioned) perfect freedom. --Though of course, what Hegel means by f...
by Makerowner
Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:47 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

I wanted to make a note on Kant before you got to Fichte, but I guess I was too slow... In any case, I just wanted to emphasize that Kant was not doing psychology. He's not saying "it happens to be the case that human beings always use the category 'causality' to describe the world"--this is essenti...
by Makerowner
Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:01 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

At the same time, however, there was something both frightening and final about Hume’s philosophy, in which Empiricism sealed the last bolt in its own coffin. The grand attempt to justify and explain all human knowledge from experience had only succeeded in eliminating virtually all knowledge that ...
by Makerowner
Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:03 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

Yiuel: I think it's best to read Plato's "Socrates" as a fictional character, and not to worry about how accurate a representation Plato's "Socrates" is of the historical person Socrates. Which isn't to say that there wasn't a historical person Socrates, but that the historical person's effect on su...
by Makerowner
Thu Oct 08, 2009 9:01 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

For anyone interested in more about the Cynics, one of the main sources for them (and many other philosophers whose works don't survive) is Diogenes Laertius ' (not the same person as Diogenes the Cynic) Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , though it was written several centuries later by a...
by Makerowner
Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:03 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

Maker: Anaximander: oh. OK. I must have missed those passages in Nietzsche. [I've mostly read the mature works] It's in Philosophy in the Tragic Age IIRC, or maybe in his lectures on the pre-Socratics--both from around the same time as "Schopenhauer as Educator". Euprattein: I think it's dangerous ...
by Makerowner
Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:17 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

I'm curious, however: how does Anaximander oppose Nietzsche? I can't think of much overlap in their discussions - Anaximander was an astronomer, metaphysician, and biologist, while Nietzsche was concerned with ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology. I meant the opposition in the other direction. Duri...
by Makerowner
Sun Oct 04, 2009 4:36 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: A brief overview of the development of Western Philosophy
Replies: 252
Views: 64740

A great idea, and I couldn't think of a better person on this board to do it. I'm certainly not an expert, and I haven't even taken a BA in the subject, but I have done a lot of reading in philosophy over the last couple of years. One thing I'd like to mention (not as a criticism, but rather to poin...
by Makerowner
Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:15 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Phonological Gain
Replies: 52
Views: 12790

quite good answers now =) anywhere where one can find a list in which order sounds usually tend changing as ive read its not entirely random <.< Of course it's not entirely random. A sound change like y>q_h/_l is impossible. There's no simple list of what sound changes occur, but a very general rul...
by Makerowner
Sun Sep 27, 2009 8:54 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Phonological Gain
Replies: 52
Views: 12790

I find it difficult to imagine other methods than this are often enacted for languages to acquire new sounds...extensive borrowing, maybe, but that's a stretch unless the entire population of speakers have been conquered by a linguistically separate group. There are weirder, messier ways of acquiri...
by Makerowner
Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:23 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The Official ZBB Quote Thread
Replies: 2878
Views: 637085

dinnae wrote:But we need to keep track of who was funny, and when, to be able to show that the community is not as nerdy as it seems at first sight
The vast majority of the jokes in here actually show that it's even nerdier than it seems at first sight.
by Makerowner
Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:21 am
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Languages in Civ IV
Replies: 55
Views: 51971

Can anyone tell what language the Malians are speaking? I'd like to see if I can do a little research and figure out what they're saying. Is it Bambara?
by Makerowner
Fri Nov 09, 2007 8:09 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")
Replies: 2538
Views: 881178

I'd like to join in. Which language should I start with?