tominator93
tominator93 t1_j6zf41j wrote
Reply to comment by stumblewiggins in “All knowledge must be built upon our instinctive beliefs. If these are rejected, nothing is left. We can organize these beliefs and their consequences, modifying or abandoning them until they don’t clash, forming a harmonious system.” | Bertrand Russell on Epistemology by dbrereton
Yeah, agreed that the entire article can’t be reduced down to Hegelian dialectics. Just that the last line in the header quote seems deeply dialectical in nature.
Hegel himself described his dialectics as the “speculative mode of cognition”, which seems quite close to what Russell is describing there.
tominator93 t1_j6yd31e wrote
Reply to comment by stumblewiggins in “All knowledge must be built upon our instinctive beliefs. If these are rejected, nothing is left. We can organize these beliefs and their consequences, modifying or abandoning them until they don’t clash, forming a harmonious system.” | Bertrand Russell on Epistemology by dbrereton
Isn’t that just a granular level of the same process though? To the extent that societal beliefs emerge from the networked interactions of individuals wrestling with their shared intuitions and beliefs?
tominator93 t1_j6y0hr4 wrote
Reply to “All knowledge must be built upon our instinctive beliefs. If these are rejected, nothing is left. We can organize these beliefs and their consequences, modifying or abandoning them until they don’t clash, forming a harmonious system.” | Bertrand Russell on Epistemology by dbrereton
> We can organize these beliefs and their consequences, modifying or abandoning them until they don’t clash, forming a harmonious system.
Isn’t this just Hegel? Thesis, antithesis, synthesis?
tominator93 t1_iy5lsm0 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in What we want from our relationships can change with age: “loneliness results from a discrepancy between expected and actual social relationships” by giuliomagnifico
I personally would adjust this statement as “making your own well-being a priority in your life”. This prevents you from falling into the trap of chasing some unattainable, vaguely defined notion of “happiness” as a “goal state” that the culture tells us we should be experiencing at all times. Something that I think is all too easy to do for most of us.
This approach also has the benefit of being much more actionable most of the time. “True happiness” is abstract. But If something is sapping your well-being, you usually can identify it with 2-3 minutes of honest reflection.
tominator93 t1_iw484wa wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in A cross between an Existentialist and an Old Testament prophet, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard urged his "single individual" reader to follow the "highest passion" of faith rather than becoming one of the stereotyped pseudo-individuals of "The Crowd" by thelivingphilosophy
This probably depends on who you consider to be a “philosopher” to a degree, especially if one definitionally excludes anyone who also engaged in theology as a primary focus. One could argue that there were plenty of folks in the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition prior to Kierkegaard (Augustine, Aquinas) who delved heavily into sin as well.
tominator93 t1_iu70d7k wrote
Reply to comment by Josquius in How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language - fascinating ethical shifts come with thinking in a different language by fonliahea1994
Agreed. The more you’re actively thinking about language production, the more I imagine you’d be engaging left-brain analytical processes often associated with utilitarian thinking.
Speaking in your native language, I imagine that right-brain, wholistic thinking would have more room to push people to a more deontological position.
tominator93 t1_j6zl3us wrote
Reply to comment by 51CK54DW0RLD in “All knowledge must be built upon our instinctive beliefs. If these are rejected, nothing is left. We can organize these beliefs and their consequences, modifying or abandoning them until they don’t clash, forming a harmonious system.” | Bertrand Russell on Epistemology by dbrereton
Lol yeah, exactly this. Reaching a “harmonious system” seems to be a pretty ambitious goal.