Apropos my previous post, it was suggested that the single most confusing aspect of philosophy explaining why philosophy is relevant.\u00a0 Can we justify ourselves?<\/p>\n
I figure that no one is worrying about medical ethics.\u00a0 What about metaphysics, obscure logic, and all the other good stuff that us philosophers call our own?\u00a0 If we can justify that stuff to the general public, then I figure we’re OK for everything else too.<\/p>\n
The things people care about here and now are generally the basics of life: food, water, safety, and, if their lucky, to have some sort of opportunity for a better life for themselves and their family.\u00a0 For something to be relevant means that it has to directly affect someone along these lines.<\/p>\n
I suppose there are a few ways to try to connect philosophy with the basics of life.\u00a0 Perhaps the shortest is through fear.\u00a0 If someone is nervous about something, then it is relevant to that person.\u00a0 Philosophy can be some scary stuff:\u00a0 You have some core beliefs?\u00a0 Let me show you how they aren’t worth a damn.\u00a0 You think you are a good person?\u00a0 Here’s why you’re not.\u00a0 You think you are sane?\u00a0 Don’t be so sure about it…<\/p>\n
Basically we have to get mean.<\/p>\n
It’s not that people’s core beliefs are worthless or that they actually are bad people or anything else.\u00a0 It’s just that with enough obscure argumentation skill, you can take things away from people that most people don’t think can be taken away.\u00a0 (And then also teach how to protect oneself from such attacks. )\u00a0 This would solve questions about relevance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apropos my previous post, it was suggested that the single most confusing aspect of philosophy explaining why philosophy is relevant.\u00a0 Can we justify ourselves? I figure that no one is worrying about medical ethics.\u00a0 What about metaphysics, obscure logic, and all the other good stuff that us philosophers call our own?\u00a0 If we can justify that stuff to the general public, then I figure we’re OK for everything else too. The things people care about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}