The person that is me…
I look into my past; I see images, I remember words…but do I remember feelings? These memories are my own, yet the person I see in them is it me? I live in the present, I lived in the past, yet the person who lived in the past is just a memory. A high tech multimedia file stored in my brain. The feelings that these memories bring; the hurt, the joy, the love are they in that file or do I reproduce a faux copy of them in the present?
The person who lived in the past is dead…it’s just me; this being in this instant of time, that is all.
Do I know myself then? I am just an instance of an entity; an instance that changes into a new one, one that expires. Can anyone ever know me?
They judge what they say is me. On actions ‘I’ took in the past, words ‘I’ said, things I regret now. Do they judge right? If it was I in that instant when ‘I’ did that which I regret, would I do it? Maybe I always would do it wrong, because you can take a thousand instances but they will still not represent the entity in its true self.
All the things my material self seeks are finite pleasures to feed my present instance. Ah, but most of all, that which I seek is eternity; an end to time. Be it glory in battle or afterlife in Heaven; it’s an instance of me that is timeless; it’s me as it will live on forever, it’s me!
How can I know myself then? How can I know anyone? How can anyone know me? Maybe there is no such thing as me. But I must believe there is; to live, to breathe my next breath. Maybe the self is so complex that only a being as supreme as God has the ability to know it; the right to judge it.
I must suspend my judgments. I must disregard theirs. I must strive so that the next instance of my self is a closer portrayal of the entity that is me…
Comments
Collin Mcginn- The Mysterious Flame.
"the necessary references to the work of others" -Not True. not a necessity always only when you make a claim about someone else it is highly ADVISABLE to support your claim so that the person can look up if you're right and what the context is like.
Yes its relatively boring. Fiction might be more entertaining but philosophy is not every man's concubine it is an academic field and therefore addresses issues academically, hence what you call "the bla bla yuck yuck" like that of engineering, computing, socilolgy, biology, history, LITERATURE,....papers. I can get you books on ANIME and you can find the bla bla yuck yuck there as well.
CRITICISMS is a blessing. I can get you a hadith on this.
Without criticisms bullshit will prevail. Comments on posts are allowed to entertain criticism.
And criticisms are fine but what i meant was criticisms of criticisms and hence forth make the argument go round in circles and make the actual content of the topic seem like some devil's contract (with all those hidden clauses and safeguards against breaking those clauses and stuff).
So i'm not criticizing the subject because i suppose this is the way it works, but it does make works of philosophy quite abstruse and thus they invoke my irritability.
Criticisms:
so you think criticisms are ok but only for the first time or to a limited number of times 2 or 3 or whatever.
But you see its actually a war of ideas. Concrete ideas come about when there is a clash of thesis and antithesis. Then there is what is called synthesis. This goes on during the clash (unlike a real war). What emerges is strong enuff idea to be free of criticisms. Marx used this principle to interpret international relations.
yes philosophy should go to everybody. More importantly Medicine should go to everybodu and also psychology so that people can be healthy and know the basics of interaction and understand the limitations of human-human interaction. In the world of the political bourgeoise economics and finance should go to everybody. Computing shouldn't be eliminated everybody needs really needs some computing skills today.
That doesn't mean you should publish medicine articles and psychology articles in straits time or some youth magazines. That doesn't meanu should avoid all technical lingo and simplify your research and forget the facts and write something down ignoring all this.SOME things are not simple they are just not simple.
Still somethings in all of these fields come down to people. Medicine finance and philosophy as well. But whereas all others are considered necessary philosophy is not and therefore u don't see the government setting up a ministry of philosophy to let people know .... Moreover before you can be told that Cigarette is harmful it needs to be established that cigerette is harmful and this gets established in journals with due respect to every single complexity.
And about you other allegations, Bertrand Russel won the field prize in mathematics, though most of us would know him as the most famous philosopher of the last century. Moreover, there are people who explicitly call themselves scietific philosophers. A case in point is Scott Adams, the genius behind the comic Dilbert. Do look up on him when you're free.
Something else I'd like to add is that just because you know something about a subject matter does not make you the custodian of truth. Before putting forward your case please consider all possibilites.
as to the issue of most philosophers having been busy with asking the question what the universe is and the important issue is to ask why. The question of why the universe is has been and is being addressed. How can you say that it isn't being addressed. Open up the book Metaphysics a guide and anthology the first essay is by derek parfit.
Title of his essay: "WHY THIS? WHY ANYTHING?" the beginning of the essay goes like this
"Why does the Universe exist? .. why is there a Universe at all..."
As regards Wittengstein's being the most famous philosopher of the last century well lets see. What is Wittengstein doing saying that the only thing left for philosophers to do is to study language. Is he studing language? No! According to you he is the most famous philosopher but he isn't studing language in that comment of his'! why?
And as to your offensive remark of saying that all philosophers are drop outs of engineering and mere loosers. If i ever do I will respond to that after Ramadan- U ignorant bird brain animal.
(ANY RESEMBLANCE TO AHSAN CAN NOT BE TRUE. UNREAL CHARACTERS HAVE NO ACQUAINTANCE WITH REALITY. OFFENSE IS INETNDED.
Why is the latter question more important? specially seeing that you have benefitted a lot less from the latter question than the former one.
In logic this is known as
The Fallacy of Rhetoric. in itself what you pose has no logical force and validly follows.
"nothign validly follows"
hmm well what the heck; i do like a good fight...so lets get right down and messy. we can arrange a suitable venue for a fist fight if you two prefer...
About ethics. Ahsan, u have made clear that u R iGnoRant of the matter. Why people do what they do is slightly different from why nation stattes do what they do. And in issues of great significance what the states do is what the people do. Should abortion be legalized, should surrogacy be permitted, should euthanasia be allowed, should people like you live be sentenced to death once or multiple times. All of this is a philosopher's job.
As a matter of fact every respectable university today (including NUS) has an ethics commitee which has to approve any research that needs to be carried out. Any research stuff that they disapprove of can not be carried out. The chairman of ethics committee NUS is a philosopher and the same stands true for the national ethics commitee of singapore.
I never said that the question of why the universe exists is redundant or does not need to be asked. Becareful when you draw conclusions like those. All i said was that what you are doing is just armchair speculation why do you think is it important? You don't have a reason to say anything about that, and since you don't have a reason don't bring the issue up. All i'm saying is that your unqualified, ignorant and unreasonable so SHUT'Z upz.
All subjects that you have mentioned (sociology, political science, science....) are observational. They have nothing to do with conjectural or speculative intepretation of a set of data that specialists in these fields bring about. Philosophers do that because they are supposed to be the experts in matters concerning speculative stuff.
-_-"