If you're a naïve materialist

there's alot of sexism here even if people dont disagree

What are you doing?
Descartes is one of the fathers of 16th century rationalism! All rationalism does is stress the importance of logos (reason) usually including intuition, in contrast to sensory experience, feelings, or authority. For me though, even reason requires a leap of faith, if you will, a trust that reason's objects are themselves reasonable, an adherence to proofs, to axioms, that vary with circumstance.
All of philosophy, going back to Plato: in one easy example I can give you, he castigates law (forensic oratory) as narrow, constrained, manipulative, and untruthful. Legal decision making is divorced from legal-rules, from pure and practical reason, and the power of law-making lies in the unfettered discretion of judges, tribunals, and law-enforcement agencies. Does the injustice of a law effect its authority, validity, or obligatoriness? Is equity a matter of interpretation or can it correct the intentions of the law-makers? Do laws, necessarily contracts too, entail no more than an obligation to paw the penalty and damages for non-fulfillment? Is it right for a judge to change the law at the cost of defeating the legitimate expectations of the unsuccessful litigant? Or to override the deliberately adopted policies of a democratic majority?
The questions show it remains that laws are manifestly in the cultural-technical order whereby reasoning we bring into matter subject to our power; they are objects created by human decision as an instrument of social co-ordination.

Now, to relate this back to Marx (as all of Holla Forums should attempt to do—PRAISE MARX):
Where Marx had adverted somewhat incidentally and allusively to an end of history, a communist society (contrary to early anarchistic and utopian-socialist arguments against law which tended to be nostalgic and recalling a primitive age of innocence, a noble savage) in which absolute FREEDOM displaces law and in which the state would whither away. Subsequent elaborations of a Marxist critique of law proceeds from an analysis of economic exploitation, and argues that the legal order and its substantive rulers are a more or less complex reflection of class relations which constitute the reality of social experience. Within this broadly deterministic view of legal relations, Marxist scepticism about the law takes the form of critique of the MATERIALIST (protection of the property form with a state) ideology of law. Expression of the commodity form of production and the legal subject is no more than the fictivly free and equal subject who would come to market to buy and sell. The legal relation is thus exemplified by contract and by the unequal economic conditions which good are exchanged.

HOW CAN YOU BE SURE THAT YOU EXIST? THAT YOUR DRIVES ARE YOURS AND NOT THAT AN EVIL DEMON, "AS CLEVER AND DECEITFUL AS HE IS POWERFUL" HASN'T DIRECTED HIS ENTIRE EFFORT INTO MISLEADING YOU TO NEED FOOD, WATER, AND MEDICINE WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY, THIRSTY, AND SICK RESPECTIVELY?

What are you on about?

Don't tell me what to do, you statist fuck.

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kek, I voted for myself

well this was one hell of a shitpost… I take it we're not talking about scientific materialism then?

Where's the anarcho-nihilist retard?

is there a way to interact as a feminist with leftypol that isnt sexist of full of hate

wat do

Dialectical (or scientific) materialism is wholly different than the realist (ie naturalist), naïve materialism that leftypol so often espouses.

"The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." — Marx

What do you mean? Do you think the posters are being sexist right now? Personally I think it's pretty tame.

not right now but in the past and then just constantly guys being creeps on other post whenever theres even a picture of a girl

Hahaha, hohohohho, hihihihhihi.

oh boy

Define materialism.

Good post

Start with the Greeks and Hume friend.

I don' trust you.

You seriously can't go wrong on Hume.

Absolutely appropriation!

Eh. Could be worse. Personally I ignore posts like (>>721399) because they are absolutely bourgeois ideology, and no amount of substantive posting, nor shitposting in equal measure, could bring about a happy conclusion.

To define it, let's go back to Democritus of Abdera for whom the world consisted entirely of atoms, tiny, absolutely hard, impenetrable, incompressible, indivisible, and unalterable bits of stuff, which had shape and size but no other properties, scurrying around in the void. This is pretty excellent for modern science, with the discovery of other particles like protons, electrons, et c, but anyways, that view has tended to substitute for matter (atoms as it were) some notion that whatever it is that can be studied by the methods of natural science. Though Hegel, and even Plato, will show that natural science, and empiricism has certain limits, and that things will be true regardless of whether they are or can be observed.

pretty dumb*
FTFM

Don't listen to Rebel.

Start with the Daodejing.

Well, really, the world is just the result of your perception of the world inside your head. If something cannot be observed (interacted with, manipulated, percieved) neither directly or indirectly, then is it not fair to say that is does not exist in your world?

Kek, it took me some time to connect this. For some reason (like who the fuck cares about this topic) I thought you accused materialists of being naïve.

Again: why is naïve materialism even a topic here?

How would, in this example, a law be a material circumstance?

Do laws not largely reflect the societies and the material capital exchanges and power-struggles in a society? Are you going to have a hunter-gatherer society ban slavery, when that is not even a concept to them? Are you going to have laws giving women the right to vote in a feudalist monarchy?

No. The material circumstances of a society dictates the radical horizon of Ideas; therefore they are only partly created by human decision. Indeed, we choose them, but only from a doctrine or path that is already laid out for us, one that exists within society itself.

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UGH
FUN IS NOT ALLOWED GUYS
I CAN'T EVEN

If you think posting picture of women is sexist and evil, just post pictures of dudes.
Noone gives a shit.

Because our resident post-leftists need something to intellectually masturbate to.

If you do not observe your shooter, are you immune to their bullets? If you don't punch yourself in the face are you not still free to punch yourself in the face?

Because "orthodox" Marxism is largely absolutist and it's what a majority of Holla Forums users subscribe to when they claim someone is either bourgeois or prole.

I just agreed with this notion.
The point is that the law obscures these power-struggles within a society, thus denoting my scepticism about the necessary relationship between legal rules or the 'law in books' or legislature and judicial practice, while asserting the indeterminacy of fact-finding procedures rendering references to law extremely arbitrary and ambivalent. The ideals of human freedom, indeed of revolution, is antithetical to legal governance, to the extent that law is necessarily coercive and repressive of autonomy, an 'unnecessary' or rather superlative form of human relation. The authority of law is an ideological maipulation and is predicated upon a domination or repression of lower castes, and classes.

So, you're saying that the 'doctrine' for creating airplans (read: instruction manuals for building such industrial achievements) are already inherent within our mind? That we merely have to activate within ourselves our inner airplane? No. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment. Our knowledge in all these enquiries reaches very little farther than our experience.

You're right, actually. I'm gonna cum all over Holla Forums.

♥

At first I was going to recommend the Bible but then the council of Nicaea fucked that all up.

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Shit, that is all you have been doing since you came here.

Start with a historical overview/summary of major thinkers. (History of Western philosophy is what you'll want to start with, though a work that discusses both East and West is fine too.)
This will provide you with a glossary of thought and a (lose) structure to interpret these thoughts. It will also help you find a philosophy or person you are especially interested in. This will encourage you to engage with philosophy via this thinker or thought.

Although the other suggestions are not bad, I encourage you to neglect them for now. Very few philosophers in the history of philosophy are directly accessible – and most of them are the opposite of concise and cohesive. On top of this, philosophies are as individual as their originators. Some will interest you more than the others – some will appear more understandable or tangible. Therefore, I recommend it's better for you to orientate yourself and then engage with whatever appeals.
There is also the 'historic' issue of whatever ideology or material realism was prevalent at the time. An overview of thought will introduce you to these factors as well. This will also, hopefully, prevent you from being dragged to 'one side' of certain philosophical quandaries. This intellectual favoritism is already palpable in the thread, so keep that in mind when heading in. (Nothing wrong with that, mind: it's unavoidable. My advice perpetuates this as much as anyone else's.)

To actually stay engaged there are a couple of things you can do. Use your discretion and pick the method you feel is most suitable for you.

If you're data or letter interested, you are likely to find enjoyment in the literature itself. If that is the case I can recommend picking up as many books by and about whatever philosopher you end up enjoying. The different approaches and explanations of the same/similar concepts can provide unique insight into both concepts or philosopher. (Keep in mind that philosophy is easily accessible - and for free - via the internet. If not through your search engine of choice, imageboard posters can be an invaluable resource for any literature)

If you're more visually orientated, there are a ton of fantastic works that deal with philosophy, philosophers and related subjects. Throughout history artists have done marvelous things with philosophy. The Christian canon is readily apparent in European medieval craft. Likewise, contemporary and current fine art is filled to the brim with different concepts. If you enjoy engaging with art, I can recommend picking up literature about history of art and paralleling that with your study in philosophy.
There are also plenty great documentaries and films of philosophy. Most of these will explain themselves and don't need an introduction. Also, for many of the recent, prominent philosophers, you can find seminars on youtube. If you prefer to learn by ear, this might prove useful.

If you're socially motivated, I recommend doing what you are already doing. Find individuals and groups that engage with philosophy. The sharing of ideas and engaging in dialectics can be a very rewarding endeavor – and, here also, can provide unique insight into certain thought.
You will have to choose for yourself what group you want to engage with. Maybe Holla Forums fits the bill. Otherwise, you can look outside of the internet for philosophy discussion groups. Students, philosophy or otherwise, tend to organize these things here and there. If you keep your eyes out you might get lucky. In extension of that, you could also try sneaking into university seminars. Depending on where you live this might be piss easy. Again, use your discretion.

As I don't know how you think, or what you are engaged with, I leave most of this open. That said, I do press reading a glossary of thought - 'historic' or otherwise - just to orientate yourself. Good luck!

Bullets do not prove a shooter. This envokes the problem of causation. Bullets may be an indirect observation of the shooters, but insofar as there is no interation or perception possibe with the shooter, no he doesn't exist, because all that exists do so because I percieve it.

I have no power to punch myself in the face; if it is my will not to do so, I don't do it; if it is my will to do so, I do not have the choice not to do it. At no time is there a free choice here.
All I get to "choose" is wether I want to struggle with or embrace my Will.

One either does bourgeois or does prole indeed.

Indeed. How is this a strike against materialism, when laws are immaterial?

You're not going to see airplanes invented in a world where the industrial background to produce them doesn't exist or more importantly, in a world where air doesn't. To invent airplanes would simply have been beyond the radical horizon of our imaginations; to invent a mode of transport that doesn't exist, dependent upon things that don't exist, travelling through a medium, that doesn't exist. To imagine such a thing in such a world, would take a much more brilliant mind than any human being has ever had, or perhaps a mad one.

So indeed, in our very society latent ideas hide. We don't come up with them, we merely stumble upon them as we travel down the road already laid for us.

tfw inductive logic is bullshit

Stopped reading at
P U R E I D E A L I S M
I can't even…muster up anything. You win, lel.

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Nice. Asshole.

Prove anything exists outside of your perception, that isn't assuming that constant conjunction and causation is the same thing.

If you have 5 bananas and you eat 3 you would have 2 bananas left. If you hold 5 fingers up and put 3 down you would have 2 left. However, 5 - 3 = 2 is ALWAYS true, regardless of me writing this down, regardless of if you observed bananas, regardless of if you observed fingers.

Prove you exist outside of perception.

Math doesn't apply strictly to the real world. Read Gödel.

The fact that 5 -3 = 2 in math and reality is a nice coincidence, but math is a fantasy we made up, and the real world exists, in so far as it is our perception, exists outside of that.

"5" does not mean "five bannanas", "minus" does not mean "to eat" and "3" does not mean "three bannanas".
Five, three and minus does not exist. We only have those ideas, because we live in a world where those ideas are useful and thus within the radical horizon of our imagination.

To you, I don't.

k
y
s

But 5 - 3 = 2 is true, nonetheless, and it would be true regardless of if you learned arithmetic.

5 - 3 = 2 is only true because we defined it as true.
If I didn't learn arithmatic it wouldn't be true to me, as I would have no concept of either "5" "-" "=" or "2".

Hell, if we agreed upon saying "5 - 2 = 8" that would be true too, because math is an imaginary world in which we have defined absolute truth and absolute falsehood. "5 - 2 = 3" is not some kind of observation we made, it is an axiom, a definition we made up.

Thus, of course it is always true, but only in the same sense that A minor will always be the minor-parallel of C major: it's true because we framed it to be true within our minds. It has nothing to do with reality though.

And don't get me wrong, I am not saying that there are no limits to empiricism; I am saying the absolute opposite. We cannot know anything is true from perception, but we can know that the perception itself is true, so there is really no difference between truth and illusion.

I mean, I guess, but we'd also have to agree upon many other shifting values, such that "8 + 2 = 5", or all the other values around these numbers.

I mean…I guess..I can concede this, but I'm just confused.

You didn't understand my question. I'm suggesting that it's naive to posit a subject as existing outside of perception once you go down the line you have ("everything is perception").

i
d
p
o
l

You're the one who started name-dropping, buddy.

You dismissed Heidegger's philosophy because of the author's biography, while approving of Arendt's and Husserl's philosophy based on the fact that they were Jewish.
You know, just yesterday I've seen someone saying they can't take anarchist tradition seriously because some classical anarchist author made anti-semitic remarks. What you said is on the same level of retardation.
If that isn't idpol, I don't know what is.

Gödel was a platonist fyi. Also "Read Gödel" lol. He didn't write any philosophy. He has merely been abused by philosopher who misinterpreted his mathematical theorems.

She's a total qt

Can you recommend me a book to start with?

So I had to google it.

>Sosteric, Mike. "The Death of Newton: Consciousness, Spirituality, and the Second Scientific Revolution." Socjourn (2005). sociology.org/content/2007/thedeathofnewton.pdf

What kind of shit is this?

Thing is that, in my book, there are no things there are true from observation and things that just are truths.
Nothing is true.
We just have weird colours going off in our heads, and if they're too radically different from someone else's we're called mad and culled from society, thus ensuring an ideological consensus in society through "natural" selection.
"5 - 2 = 3" only because math does not exist in the "real" world.

Certainly, I percieve myself. Me and my property (my perception) that is all I know to be "truth".

The thing Descarte failed to realize that it doesn't matter if this all powerful demon is manipulating our senses. It's all the same, really.

I was kidding, Christ!
I actually really like Sein und Zeit.

What a tragic predicament, but I agree. I'm still confused though, and don't know what to make of this mess.

Also, you forgot to give a link to:

Stop bullying catposter! She likes Kierkegaard!

I do have feelings too.
I think I've been nice to you. I've tried, even if I may have failed. Calling all this a "mess" is not very nice :/

If you mean that you're confused as to what this means of the use of philosophy in general:

Fuck it. The more unspeciffic it is, the more accurate it is, and the more speciffic, the less accurate. Be pragmatic; what seems like it might work from previous experience; does it seem like there are historical tendencies?

Run blindly in that direction, and if it doesn't work out, try something new.

I did not mean this conversation, though i do sense that it's become a bit out of my mastery, much to my embarrassment; I meant that existence is our exile, our mess if you will, and nothingness our home.

You have, indeed by entertaining this insanity of mine, and I have not, making fun of nitpicky things, misconstruing, et c.

PS are you that Lacan friend, who gave me a bunch of books?

It's not at all out of your mastery, and there's nothing to be embrassed about.
You know more right now than I will ever learn.

I am a humble Farmer. Most books I read are tip on how to make potatoes grown better, not psycho analysis.

Hmn…you've humbled me somewhat (even saying I'm humble is a sort of brag!).

Here's a more or less relevant comic for you.

There's no need to be humbled.
I made you reconsider one thing on one subject. I know for a fact that you could humble me on a hundred others.

At least I am glad you've come here. It heightens the level of the conversation.

That is a good comic.
Potatoes are but tubers though. But unlike Gold, their value will never disappear.

S-snow?

Alas, my identity (or lack hereof) has been uncovered.

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