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Topic: Good website on philosophy (Read 829 times) |
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Atheist Crusader
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Good website on philosophy
« on: 2004-05-05 22:25:56 » |
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This is a good website on philosophy that is highly biased toward objectivism: http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com .
I believe it may be the begginings of a way to bring more minds into the fold. This website could prove to be a valuable resource in conversion tactics and enlightening methods, as well as general expansion of the mind for current Virus members.
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Atheist Crusader
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Re:Good website on philosophy
« Reply #2 on: 2004-05-15 01:28:44 » |
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Perhaps I should have made myself more clear. I realize that the actual philosophy on the website is largely infantile. What I was speaking to was something which probably should have gone in some other forum, but the website itself is "philosophy" and "the competition," so I thought it belonged here. What I wanted to point out about this website is it's persuasion techniques.
Since we do not have a collection of persuasion tactics of our own on one webpage, I figured using the ones both explicitly stated and found within this website would be some sort of start. While objectivism itself is horrendously flawed in more ways that I could possibly count here, they, like the Mormons, have good ideas about how to persuade. That is all that I was saying. I apologize for any confusion this has caused.
-Atheist Crusader
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brack
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Re:Good website on philosophy
« Reply #3 on: 2004-05-24 18:07:30 » |
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Crusader-
I'm not sure why you think it's a good website. It makes extreme claims with virtually no support. It blah-blah-blahs its way through descriptions of all it's major principles, then uses those undemonstrated principles to 'prove' a bunch more stuff. It quotes Ayn Rand liberally. It seems more like the tool of some corporate nuts than a well-reasoned body of philosophical wisdom. You can look at any page and find more logical fallacies than you can shake a copy of Atlas Shrugged at. So why would you want to use these 'persuasion tactics'?
Anyway, what specific features of that site do you think are good?
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Atheist Crusader
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Re:Good website on philosophy
« Reply #4 on: 2004-05-24 18:34:40 » |
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Brack-
In all reality, I really only like the format of the website and the delivery (although, as you say, it's not backed up by facts). Obviously there are some huge problems with it, but I thought the reasoning behind why philosophy was important was sound and valid. Perhaps I am wrong, but I actually believe that the part about why philosophy is important could easily lead to not listening to the rest of the site. This is the part of the website that I appreciate.
I just don't think the format of what could be considered our philosophy section is really good enough, and something like the branches they use on the website would be ideal (also going through and explaining why things like objectivism are bad would be nice as well).
-Atheist Crusader
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Matt Arnold
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The Electric Monk
    
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Re:Good website on philosophy
« Reply #5 on: 2004-06-02 11:19:41 » |
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Personally I like post-Randian objectivism. I haven't read very much of the specific site in question, but I've found the objectivism of people like George H. Smith to be very helpful to me. A good example is the membership of the Fellowship of Reason (http://www.fellowshipofreason.org). Today's objectivists recognize that Rand's movement became a repugnant cult of personality during her lifetime. The specific errors that led to it have been identified and discarded. These errors go far deeper than parroting "a is a" as a thought-killing device, or incessantly using the word "qua." To quote from this FAQ, (a working link at http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/WRONG.HTML)
Quote:| Just as the valid parts of the philosophy of Aristotle have survived, so will much of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. But just as we have discarded Aristotle's ethical concept of the 'virtuous Athenian', so should Ayn Rand's psychological concepts of 'evil,' 'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest ideas' be discarded. Rand's attempt to mix psychology with philosophy should be relegated to the status of historical footnotes. |
I agree with what Michael Shermer said in his critique of objectivism at http://www.skeptic.com/02.2.shermer-unlikely-cult.html : 1. Criticism of the founder of a philosophy does not, by itself, constitute a negation of any part of the philosophy. 2. Criticism of part of a philosophy does not gainsay the whole. 3. The critic of part of a philosophy does not necessarily repudiate the whole philosophy.
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He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
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