I have nothing else to do at the moment so i thought i would find some interesting philosophical questions:
1) Can you prove to me that you are not figments of my imagination?
2) What is being?
3) If life is predestined, is there such thing as good and bad? Can you punish someone who did not chose to do something, but did it because someone decided that they would do it at the dawn of time?
What do you think?
Also, heres a link to some funny philosophical questions. http://aproposofnothing.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/a-few-philosophical-questions/
With exams coming up we could all do with a good laugh :D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
1.You couldn't make me up!
2."Being" is a term with a complicated history, especially in the 20th C when philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre made it a central concept in their existentialist philosophies. But if we take it to mean, straightforwardy, existence, then your question is an ontological one. Are there lots of ways of existing, of being, or only one.
A fairly common taxonomy is to divide things into a) natural kinds (eg elephants, mountains), b) artificial kinds (eg cars, watches) and c) social kinds (eg families, football teams). One of the big moves in the last few decades (postmodernism, social constructionism) is to present more and more things as social kinds, ie defined by society - such as scientific knowledge, sexuality, disability, madness, historical events.Even natural kind categories could be seen as being socially constructed - eg dogs, cats, hills, mountains. Whether something is a hill or a mountain is a social agreement.
The point is that natural, artificial and social kinds "exist" in different ways. Ask yourself the question: would this thing still "exist" if there were no humans or other intelligent life to perceive it? For example, the metal and glass and leather in my watch would still exist, but would the watch itself? After all, a watch is defined by its function for human beings.Do general categories (sometimes called "universals") exist? Not just individuals but he general classification: not just Hugo, Rover and Spot, but "dogs"? When you begin to see existence as linked to social constructions of types, it can put a different slant on questions such as "Does God exist?" because, clearly, in some ways he does, but not necessarily in the way theists would claim.
Nice answers. The first made me laugh so hard i started choking :(
Post a Comment