Usually when I try to read a philosophical text, I find it very unsatisfying. The philosophers are just not rigorous, effectively invalidating all their own thoughts.
Take chapter 23 from the lecture. It is about "how to live life in the face of death" and possible ways to maximize "value". But it seems to dodge the question what is value in the face of death, which would be the only worthwhile question. Instead it dwells on ways to optimize value, which could be better done with solid economic theory (it is "how to invest actions and time to maximize results").
Why does it matter what value one's life has? The lecture doesn't seem to give an answer. Will there be a judgment in afterlife, depending on our lives value? I don't think so. I think the "value" is strictly a subjective, individual thing, and therefore Philosophy can't help much with it. Perhaps what is useful is to get a better idea of the effects of our decisions (will people be harmed by my life style, that kind of stuff). But then again it seems "hard sciences" would be much better suited to answering that question than ancient poems and philosophy.
Even if you believe in a judgment after life, I guess then you should assign a probability to the kind of god you will encounter and align your actions accordingly. I just don't see how philosophy could help.
Except if you say mathematics is a special kind of philosophy - I could accept that. So in theory there could be useful philosophy, but I have never seen it (except for maths).
Take that lecture: I actually new I could safely skip most of the chapters because they are obviously irrelevant (like the one's about "is there a soul or not"). They are just WAY too shortsighted. I bet they don't have a proper definition of what a soul would be, to begin with.
Usually when I try to read a philosophical text, I find it very unsatisfying. The philosophers are just not rigorous, effectively invalidating all their own thoughts.
Yeah, I agree with most of your points. I feel this is a little more true of modern philosophers I read-- there is less rigor than is warranted. I don't feel it invalidates the important parts (to me), which are the questions raised by their arguments/discussion.
Why does it matter what value one's life has? The lecture doesn't seem to give an answer.
This lecture aside, (as I mentioned), I personally feel the value in philosophy is in the questions it raises and areas it explores, not specifically in any answers it provides. I also want those answers, but I don't look to philosophers to provide them. Sometimes they offer conceptual models that do help in scenarios where science isn't giving me a better one, but their "answers" are more like "suggestions" that may later give way to formal theories and empirical experiments once science catches up.
They are just WAY too shortsighted.
I think philosophers, as a whole, aren't short-sighted. I've always believed that the best philosophers explore different "assumption trees" in their quest for earnest questions. Certain assumptions have to be made in order to discuss much of anything at all in philosophy (e.g. we exist, etc) so some of the short-sightedness symptoms you sense might just be hidden in the assumptions of that particular discussion.
OK, I agree that it is not philosophy in itself that is pointless, merely the majority of "popular" philosophy appears to be so. If you have any recommendations for good philosophy reads, I would be happy to check them out.
Why does it matter what value one's life has? The lecture doesn't seem to give an answer. Will there be a judgment in afterlife, depending on our lives value? I don't think so. I think the "value" is strictly a subjective, individual thing, and therefore Philosophy can't help much with it.
you're already committing yourself to a philosophical position, that "value is strictly a subjective, individual thing." But that's precisely one of the philosophical issues that's under debate! After all, how could you decide whether value is subjective or not via the scientific method? You can't. There's no value finding experiment. The only way to proceed is philosophically.
Well by saying "there is no value finding experiment", didn't you kind of already admit that debate is useless? That is what I mean by "is is a subjective, individual thing" - there can be no external measurement for value. Even if there was a god, we could not be forced to accept it's values.
Well by saying "there is no value finding experiment", didn't you kind of already admit that debate is useless?
If debate is useless, why are you debating me? ;) In any event, my proposition is that the question here -- the question of values and their subjectivity -- cannot be resolved scientifically. That doesn't imply that it's pointless to discuss. Your point about god is a good one, but it's also a philosophical one.
Sure, strictly speaking I consider mathematics to also be philosophy, so in general philosophy is not useless. However, common philosophy tends to be useless, including the lecture that was submitted here. I think if somebody wants to really learn to think precisely, they'll study maths. So most philosophers are "just" faking it by making too many words, hiding the fact that they don't really have a clue. Sorry if that sounds arrogant, I have just been so consistently been disappointed by popular philosophers.
Note: I have studied maths myself. I am no Gauss or Erdös, but I guess I have my standards for the application of logic, and most of the time, philosophers don't meet them.
Take chapter 23 from the lecture. It is about "how to live life in the face of death" and possible ways to maximize "value". But it seems to dodge the question what is value in the face of death, which would be the only worthwhile question. Instead it dwells on ways to optimize value, which could be better done with solid economic theory (it is "how to invest actions and time to maximize results").
Why does it matter what value one's life has? The lecture doesn't seem to give an answer. Will there be a judgment in afterlife, depending on our lives value? I don't think so. I think the "value" is strictly a subjective, individual thing, and therefore Philosophy can't help much with it. Perhaps what is useful is to get a better idea of the effects of our decisions (will people be harmed by my life style, that kind of stuff). But then again it seems "hard sciences" would be much better suited to answering that question than ancient poems and philosophy.
Even if you believe in a judgment after life, I guess then you should assign a probability to the kind of god you will encounter and align your actions accordingly. I just don't see how philosophy could help.
Except if you say mathematics is a special kind of philosophy - I could accept that. So in theory there could be useful philosophy, but I have never seen it (except for maths).
Take that lecture: I actually new I could safely skip most of the chapters because they are obviously irrelevant (like the one's about "is there a soul or not"). They are just WAY too shortsighted. I bet they don't have a proper definition of what a soul would be, to begin with.