Excerpts from Plato & A Platypus Walk Into a Bar...

DC, Marvel, Image, BOOM!, Dynamite and more! Discuss everything comics and related to comics. If it's comics and Nightcrawler isn't in it, this is the place!
Post Reply
Ult_Sm86
Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate
Posts: 5810
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:59 pm
Title: Passive Antagonist
Nightscrawlearth Character: :hellboy :r2
Location: Boogie Wonderland

Excerpts from Plato & A Platypus Walk Into a Bar...

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

From the Philosophical book titled:
[ib]Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes[/b]
"The Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" Fallacy:
First, a word wabout the social usage of this term: In some circles, when uttered with a straight face, this phrase can help you get lucky at a party. Interestingly, it has the exact opposite effect when uttered in English: "after this, therefore because of this." Go figure.

The phrase describes the error of assuming that because one thing follows another, that thing was caused by the other. For obvious reasons, this false logic is popular in sociopolitical discourse, such as "Most people hooked on heroin started with marijuana." True, but even more started with milk.

Post hoc, makes life more entertaining in some cultures: "the sun rises when teh rooster crows, so the rooster's crowing must make the sun rise." Thanks, rooster! Or take our colleague:

Every morning she steps out onto her front stoop and exclaims; "let this house be safe from tigers!" then she goes back inside. Finally, we said to her, "What's that all about? There isn't a tiger within a thousand miles of here."
And she said, "See? It works!"
R.I.P. Ultimate Peter Parker :spidey 6/22/11 USM#160
Read my reviews on SuperiorSpiderTalk.com! I'm a real, honest-to-goodness, published comic reviewer!
"It's not your fault. Listen to me. It's NOT. YOUR. FAULT." - a seismologist getting all territorial
┗[© ♒ ©]┛ ROBOT HAS NO USE FOR FEELINGS
Ult_Sm86
Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate
Posts: 5810
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:59 pm
Title: Passive Antagonist
Nightscrawlearth Character: :hellboy :r2
Location: Boogie Wonderland

Logical & Semantic Paradoxes

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

The mother of all logical and semantic paradoxes was Russell's paraadox, named for it's author, twentieth-century English Professor Bertrand Russell. It goes like this: "Is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves a member of itself?" This one is a real screamer-that is, if you happen to have an advanced degree in mathematics. But hang on. Fortunately, two other twentieth-century logicians named Grelling & Nelson came along with a more accessible version of Russel's paradox. It's a semantic paradox that operates on the concept of words that refer to themselves.

Here goes: There are two kinds of words, those that refer to themselves (autological) and those that don't (heterological). Some examples of autological words are "short" (which is a short word), "polysylliabic" (which has several syllables), and our favorite, "seventeen-lettered" (which has seventeen letters). Examples of heterological words are "knock-kneed" (a word has no knees, touching or otherwise) and "monosyllabic" (a word that ahs mor than one syllable). The question is: Is teh word "heterological" autological or heterological? If it's autological, then it's heterological. If it's heterological, then it's autological. Ha! Ha!

Still not laughing? Well, here's another case where translating a philosophical concept into funny story makes it clearer:

There is a town in which the sole barber- a man, by the way-shaves all the townsmen, and only these townsmen, who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?
If he does, he doesn't. If he doesn't, he does.


Now that's Russell's paradox for the party set.
[Edited on 14/8/08 by Ult_Sm86]
R.I.P. Ultimate Peter Parker :spidey 6/22/11 USM#160
Read my reviews on SuperiorSpiderTalk.com! I'm a real, honest-to-goodness, published comic reviewer!
"It's not your fault. Listen to me. It's NOT. YOUR. FAULT." - a seismologist getting all territorial
┗[© ♒ ©]┛ ROBOT HAS NO USE FOR FEELINGS
Ult_Sm86
Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate
Posts: 5810
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:59 pm
Title: Passive Antagonist
Nightscrawlearth Character: :hellboy :r2
Location: Boogie Wonderland

Metaphilosophy

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

The prefix meta, which basically means "beyond and inclusive of all below", pops up all over the place in philosophical discourse, like in metalanguage, a language that an be used to describe language. Or in metaethics, which investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. So it was only a meta of time before metaphilosophy appeared on the scene.

Metaphilosophy wrestles with the burning question, "What is philosophy?" You'd think philosophers would have known the answer to that one going in. It makes you wonder how they knew they wanted to become philosophers in the first place. We never hear about hairdressers pondering the question, "what is hairdressing"? If a hairdresser doesn't know what hairdressing is by now, he's in the wrong line of work. We sure as hell wouldn't want him giving our wives an updo.
Nonetheless, modern philosophers are continually redefining philosophy. In twentieth century, Rudolf Carnap and the logical positivists defined away a huge hunk of philosophy when they announced that metaphysics is meaningless. They said teh sole task of philosophy is to analyze scientific sentences.

And Carnap's contemporary, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the godfather of ordinary language philosophy, went even further. He thought his first major book had brought the history of philosophy to a close, because he had demonstrated that all philosophical propositions were meaningless-including his own. He was so convinced that he had closed the book on philosophy that he settled down to teach elementary school. A few years later he reopened the book of philosophy with a new conception of it's purpose-therapy, of all things. By that, Lugwig meant that if we straighten out confusing language, we will cure ourselves of the blues brought on by nonsensical philosophical questions.

In our own day, "modal logicians"-logicians who differentiate between statements that are possibly true and those that are necessarily true-worry about which category their own statements fall into. It sounds to us like metastatements all the way down.

Seamus was about to go on his first date, so he asked his brother, the ladies' man, for advice. "Give me some tips on how to talk to them."
"Here's the secret" said his brother. "Irish girls like to talk about three things: food, family, and philosophy. If you ask a girl what she likes to eat, it shows you're interested in her. If you ask her about her family, it shows your intentions are honorable. If you discuss philosophy, it shows you respect her intelligence."
"Gee, thanks." Said Seamus. "Food, family, philosophy, I think I can handle that."

That night as he met the young lady, Seamus blurted out. "Do you like cabbage?"
"Uh, no," said the puzzled girl.
"Do you have a brother?" Asked Seamus.
"No."
"Well, if you had a brother, would he like cabbage?"

That's philosophy.
R.I.P. Ultimate Peter Parker :spidey 6/22/11 USM#160
Read my reviews on SuperiorSpiderTalk.com! I'm a real, honest-to-goodness, published comic reviewer!
"It's not your fault. Listen to me. It's NOT. YOUR. FAULT." - a seismologist getting all territorial
┗[© ♒ ©]┛ ROBOT HAS NO USE FOR FEELINGS
Ult_Sm86
Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate
Posts: 5810
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:59 pm
Title: Passive Antagonist
Nightscrawlearth Character: :hellboy :r2
Location: Boogie Wonderland

Absolutist Ethics

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Absolutist Ethics: Divine Law

Divine Law makes a simple business of ethics: If God says it's wrong, it is wrong, wholly and absolutely. That's all she wrote. But there are complications. The first is, how can we be sure what God really thinks? Fundamentalists have that one covered: Scripture says so. But how did the people in Scripture know the signals they were getting were really from God? Abraham thought he was called by God to sacrifice his son on the altar. Abraham figures, "If God says so, I'd better do it." Our first philosophical query to Abraham is, "What are you nuts? You hear 'God' tell you to do a crazy thing and you don't even ask for identification?"

Another problem with following Divine Law is interpretation. What exactly qualifies as honoring they father and mother? A Mother's Day Card? Marrying the boring son of the family dentist, as they honorable mother and father want you to do? These questions don't feel the Talmudic hair-splitting when the dentist's son is 4'11" and weighs 270. A prime characteristic of Divine Law is that God always has the last word.

Moses trudges down from Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand, and announces to the assembled multitudes: "I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is I got Him down to ten. The bad news is 'adultery' is still in."

-------------------------------------------~~~--------------------------------------------
A young and lusty St. Augustine apparently attempted a similar negotiation when he famously cried out, "Lord, grant me chastity. But not now!" Clearly, Augustine was trying a little Talmudic hair-splitting himself. "I mean you didn't say exactly when not to commit adultery, did you?" Sounds like a joke.[/i]
------------------------------------------~~~~---------------------------------------------


[Edited on 17/9/08 by Ult_Sm86]
R.I.P. Ultimate Peter Parker :spidey 6/22/11 USM#160
Read my reviews on SuperiorSpiderTalk.com! I'm a real, honest-to-goodness, published comic reviewer!
"It's not your fault. Listen to me. It's NOT. YOUR. FAULT." - a seismologist getting all territorial
┗[© ♒ ©]┛ ROBOT HAS NO USE FOR FEELINGS
Post Reply