General Philosophy Resources & Forums

Miscellaneous Topics
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Boystun asked:

1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

SL maintained that there are plenty of forums for discussing general philosophy. If anyone knows of such that are online forums, I’d appreciate learning of them. I do know of one. It is called Philosophy Now. I participated there on one occasion and was personally attacked in every disrespectful way a fellow (anonymous, likely male) could think up for every thing I might say: because I mentioned and conveyed some Rand without distorting and belittling her. I’ve heard others (and not Rand-interested so far as I know) say they won’t participate at that site because of the nastiness there.The fellow who was so disrespectful towards me there certainly achieved the purpose of shutting me up. I did not go back there. One thing I’ve liked about this site OO is that there is such a predominately civil exchange of views.

Well, a Google search provides the following for ‘philosophy forums’ (dynamic link).

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The site that came up on the top of the list generated now was The Philosophy Forum which looks reasonably structured at first glance.

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.

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I Love Philosophy has been out there since 2006 and has to have over 750,000 entries.

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There was a Rationalism forum that is no longer, I and some others that have come through OO posted there.

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I can’t vouch for the above sites, but for the next couple of listings, they have helped me to “frame the question” on occasion.

These references show up frequently providing useful “as the world sees it” information.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

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I’d expect an Objectivist to be attacked for advocating Objectivism on any philosophy forum that isn’t run by Objectivists. The reason for this is that most philosophy enthusiasts are influenced by academic philosophy, which rejects, or at best ignores, Objectivism.

It occurs to me that this is one reason why it would be useful to have a solid explanation for the academic rejection of Objectivism that would be acceptable to a typical philosophy enthusiast. Most explanations of this rejection by layman Objectivists seem to amount to “well, academics are dumb,” which isn’t going to be compelling to most philosophy enthusiasts.

To address the topic, Reddit has a lot of philosophy discussion subreddits (which are basically forums). r/philosophy is one example.

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Objectivism is rejected and ignored like philosophy is eschewed: by those who need it most. More challenging of late to me, is to intersperse the ideas without putting them under the umbrella. Consider it a reverse application of philosophical detection, letting them give you the material to work with rather than the other way around.

Reason may well be an indestructible weapon, yet it needs to be wielded to be effective. And seeing reality as the invincible ally it is, requires the ability to shuttle back and forth between the concretes and the abstractions just as invincibly.

Going out on a limb here, much of academics sees philosophy as a game where the rules are just made up and can manipulated while it is being played. To invoke the role of philosophy as a scientific referee doesn’t bode well on a playing field when the cold hand of reason is just another obstacle to be circumvented.

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28 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Objectivism is rejected and ignored like philosophy is eschewed: by those who need it most. More challenging of late to me, is to intersperse the ideas without putting them under the umbrella. Consider it a reverse application of philosophical detection, letting them give you the material to work with rather than the other way around.

Reason may well be an indestructible weapon, yet it needs to be wielded to be effective. And seeing reality as the invincible ally it is, requires the ability to shuttle back and forth between the concretes and the abstractions just as invincibly.

Going out on a limb here, much of academics sees philosophy as a game where the rules are just made up and can manipulated while it is being played. To invoke the role of philosophy as a scientific referee doesn’t bode well on a playing field when the cold hand of reason is just another obstacle to be circumvented.

In the spirit of the immortal words of Yoda “The cave! Remember your failure in the cave”

Never forget: MONADS 

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1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

In the spirit of the immortal words of Yoda “The cave! Remember your failure in the cave”

Never forget: MONADS 

Hercules used his polished shield to guide his sword in his encounter with Medusa. Not everyone is hostile toward Objectivism.

If I’m not mistaken, there are a couple of books out there that are implicitly based on a younger and more mature development of Objectivism, without having mentioned it once in over 2500 pages.