Considering virtually every 'great' thinker from the past would drastically change their opinions given what modern...

Considering virtually every 'great' thinker from the past would drastically change their opinions given what modern philosophy and science now knows (unless they were too proud to admit wrongness) is there any value in actually reading them given they are wrong about so much just by virtue of the lack of progress of their time?

>Considering virtually every 'great' thinker from the past would drastically change their opinions given what modern philosophy and science now knows
>implying

>given they are wrong about so much just by virtue of the lack of progress of their time?
>implying


thread over

This has to be bait

You seem upset. This is a legit question.

OP, I've been thinking about this as well. But you don't just read to get a 1:1 map of reality, but also to spark ideas about how to fill in the white spots on that map. Reading an idea that turned out to be wrong might inspire you to try it in a different way, or simply save you the time of testing it yourself. Read a lot, and don't be afraid to read shit, because it helps you distinguish bad ideas from good ones. Good luck!

No it's not. You are just lacking education.

Seems I've hit a nerve. Just a question my good man

Yes, because understanding what they got wrong and why and how they got it wrong is fascinating and informs your own problem solving procedures.

Yes, because science doesn't concern itself with your prosaic experiment as a human and how to conduct yourself.

Yes also because science doesn't capture agency--what is chosen--whereas philosophy does. You could dedicate yourself to drawing triangles for 10 hours every day for no reason other than you chose to. What could science say about that?

Philosophy is the individuating discipline. It prompts you to become your own person.

I know this board places emphasis on classics and original works but I feel exactly the same.

Unless we are talking of a great thinker or work that was ignored or somehow forgotten, the great thinkers of the past should have become part of culture.

When I read a contemporary book on evolution for example, I assume that Darwin's work has been fully incorperated.

I don't answer loaded questions.

Given that STEMshit is constantly ripping off the humanities to make its grim autism appealing ("we are all le stardust xD"), you'd think STEMfags would be a little more grateful.

OK, fuck off then

No ;)

?
What does this have to do with my comment.

this time has a flawed understanding too
future people will disagree
the question is whether they're worth reading:
- do they put your perspective into question, thus providing you with the opportunity to expand your horizons?
- do they say things in ways that are enjoyable to read?
- can you see anything that they have said having an influence on the modern day?
- what can you now add to what they've said?
- do they get something we no longer get?
- do they enlighten you?

Dig, dig, dig

No doubt but we go on the best we have not the best that was even though it is no longer true to the best of our knowledge

Woof

you can't assume that his work has been FULLY incorporated. Sure, if you want to know about the current standing on evolution accepted by a consensus of scientists, read someone that writes in top journals nowadays.
But if you want to know about Darwin's methods, how he wrote, his actual observations of the way living things interact, whom he's responding to
then
you have to read Darwin.

But he was fucking wrong. It's the same with philosophy.

Why read Plato when he was objectively wrong about everything?

but the best we have is the entire collection of human work up to this point. You can't assume that just because people can say things in a more information-dense way now because of the progress of language that the nuance and context of a body of older work from which all this is drawn will not say even more.

He wasn't wrong. He was right for his time. This time is made up for all previous times. So if you want to have a comprehensive understanding of this time, then you have to read the people who made us know what we know now. Even if they did so by being wrong so people who are right now can bounce off of them.

Besides, nobody is completely wrong.

>nobody is completely wrong
I am.

My reasoning goes:
- if hugely popular classic
- then can ignore
So I rather read Lamarck, Malthus, Alexander von Humboldt or al-Jahiz.

State one specific thing that Plato was wrong about, and then demonstrate how he was wrong.

Genuine question, how old are you OP. Something about your posts and this thread in general smacks of juvenile thinking, I might have agreed with you when I was 17.

Your reasoning goes:
- if thing falls into category
- ignore thing

And I know Lamarck and al-Jahiz were wrong but it could still be interesting nontheless.

Birds are made of wood

>and then demonstrate how he was wrong

Where did Plato claim that birds are made from wood?

I want to aquire knowledge that sets me apart. If I read the same as most people, I am not doing that. Sure I need some essentials, but otherwise I should diverge as much as possible.

Collective intellectual tunnel vision is bad.

Holy hell man


Can't you just educate yourself rather than asking pants-on-head idiotic questions and feed off the frustration you're creating ?


Anyway, you're making the assumptions that since only the present matter, all the past must be bullshit. Which aint true, considering the present's foundations is the past. Humanity haven't advanced much on a spiritual/philosophical point of view, hence why some of Aristote's stuff is still relevant nowadays.


So yeah tldr just git educated, you can't expect to understand the things of today if you don't understand the things of yesturday that led to today.

All knowledge you gather make you a lil more open minded and able to understand other ideas. There's no such a thing as knowledge that aint worth knowing about.

Well then what's stopping you from doing that ?

you're right
overall it smooths out because you get input from general cultural absorption anyway
but removing a type of thing from your sight is the definition of reinforcing your reality tunnel

If done well then it will. It's a constant refining. Keep the good stuff leave out the shit. That'll no doubt continue happening as we discover more but considering there was plenty of stuff known now to be pure shit that was deemed true before and that was the culture from which even the best minds wrote, there is bound to be plenty of shit in their stuff now. So again, sift the wrong, keep the right. Simple

At least posting a cool picture slightly made up for that cringe worthy persons you put on

Holy shit do you actually understand how you come across m8?

You are everything bad about fedorians, you're talking so much shit with so much air about you on a Vietnamese image board. People like you are all the same, how about you spend less time on the Internet and actually picking up some classics. Then you can go about forming your own ideas on the subject, because feeding yourself with secondhand opinions off of Veeky Forums doesn't really 'set you apart' either.

Changing your opinions doesn't mean you were absolutely wrong about everything.

The present is informed by the questions and answers people gave in the past. For example a lot of the math and understanding about relativity came out of experiments trying to measure aether. Regardless that aether doesn't exist, the exact reasonings and dealing with it is what gave us the math and data needed.

Lots of pgilosophical questions don't have a clearly demonstrable correct answer and any nuanced contemporary discussion can't help but refer to the mountain of thinking done before.

My answer is rambling but this is clearly a stupid question.

It's a "read my dead white (mostly Greek) men so you can form a unique and informed worldview" episode :^)

>Keep the good stuff leave out the shit.
>Keep the stuff that our culture deems appropriate and leave out the stuff that their culture carries along
A written work encapsulates not only the technical information therein but also the way of living it enshrines.

Chuang Tzu won't tell you things that you can put in statistical format. But read his work.

I can agree with that. But can you understand that my heuristic is to generally avoid the most popular classics (science and philosophy)? Note generally, I might still do it anyway.
Nothing is stopping me as I have access to it all. Formal education is horrible tho, it let's everyone learn the same. I think it is fine for the essentials but there should be some randomisation or diversification.
Way to go with the assumptions lad.

I don't know how I could possibly care that he was "wrong".

>having a heuristic

Holy shit

Back to class, timmy!

that there are forms (like a form of hammer which most hammers fit into)

Reason why it's false: modern fucking science.

It would be extremely dionysian.

>heuristic as a noun
Kek

Well you haven't shown otherwise smart-cunt. Another user suggested you argue with demonstration a point in which Plato is 'objectively' wrong. You also haven't stated your age (inb4 it doesn't matter)

Lol

>implying science investigates anything remotely resembling the realm of forms
it's like I'm talking to a shadow

There's several of us anons arguing in favour of the OP.

No there's not. There's ten of me arguing the opposite.

everyone cares about the people behind the arguments
oh wait, it's an anonymous imageboard

That's because you're stuck in the cave.

The goy I was replying to confused me with someone else.

m8 I'm a cavebro like the rest of the posters here
please tell me how to observe an actual object

Accept that the actual is a product of yourself

oh shit
I'm so sorry to hear that

...user

With you eyes :)

Because I do not care about Plato being wrong: he is simply a bore just like Dennet is. Now Seneca, he was interesting.

You will never be an exceptionally intelligent individual

intellectually, or..?

So I've got these eyes, right? and they shoot electrical signals to my brain that tell me what light is entering them, and my brain assembles this information into images that a feedback process allows me to observe and manipulate
ok
ok
but then
if I manipulate them then they make sounds too
so how come the same things can both come through my eyes and through my ears?

all is of you my boy

now go chase the stars

Thank you for sharing your opinions

You are wrong OP, it is that simple. Science hasn't done much to disprove philosophy, only ecology, medicine and physics (but noone reads old philosophers on those anymore, and if they do, it's to give them an historical and cultural perspective, which is already a valid reason in itself.)

>Plato
>a bore

What? He's probably the most fun philosopher aside from Nietzsche and Lucretius

still chasing

Well then each one of you has something to prove if you're gonna bust in with

"Lmao old white guys were objectively wrong, the classics have no value in them, modernism is everything and foundations are irrelevant. Plato BTFO LOL"

Or you could just stay in this thread and just keep edging each other off until you all cum and feel guilty and embarrassed again.

for you

>"Lmao old white guys were objectively wrong, the classics have no value in them, modernism is everything and foundations are irrelevant. Plato BTFO LOL"
I am saying something different. I think modernity is not without flaws, consider the following:

Most moderns read the classics.

no he's objectively the most fun aside from N and L.

OBJECTIVELY.

Literally the least interesting philosopher of all time.
It's sort of embarrassing to admit you find Plato boring. A lot of his shit is pure entertainment, and, he invented one of the greatest characters in literature.

Honestly everything before Beauvoir is shit since it doesn't even include women.

Who?

You do know that there was a philosopher who was literally called Richard Fun?

>I assume that Darwin's work has been fully incorperated.
Are you aware that Darwin's work has been largely ideological, and people after him have been desperately trying to empirically prove it by assuming it's correct and working from that?

YOU

This. You should only be reading Tao Lin and Sam Harris.

(You)

I prefer Aztec philosophy.

like what?

Considering this pattern will inevitably keep occurring, is there any point to learning anything?

Sadly there is only the work by James Maffie on Aztec philosophy.

Little survived.

entirely no,
what would be best would be to gain an understanding of these terms/subjects and their dictionary definitions and decide for yourself their true meaning. But then again you might consider yourself better able to decide after having read these works.

>Science
>Philosophy
>Knowing

This

Knowledge is and can only be a product of prior knowledge. There's no getting off the ride, my retarded friend ;)

How about using your brains while reading the greats of the past?

You can like, use your knowledge of modern science, thought and history to "fix" their opinions. Don't believe the Greeks when they make some outdated claims about physics, but learn from them when they talk about something else (even if only because of latter thinkers referring to them constantly).
Read Marx, but don't consider it the truth, but rather a theoretical framework for working out the/a truth (with newer knowledge and so on). Or whoever you're reading, don't just copy them, use their ideas. Plenty of thinking isn't even what is but what ought to be.

Either way tho, understanding contemporary thinkers would be fucking hard without reading the old ones. Maybe the contemporary Hegelian or Marxist or Lacanian or whoever I'm reading discards a lot of what the guys originally said and adjusts the rest, but I still need to know the terminology and the base of it all.

That is good. But to start with the classics would be a mistake. You should start with some more recent work and afterwards go with the classics so you can see what's wrong like how you said.

>you should start with some more recent work and afterwards go with the classics so you can see what's wrong like how you said.
ou should start with some more recent work and afterwards go with the classics so you can see what's wrong like how you said.

What an arrogant way to go about reading. May as well become a new atheist.

It would purify the dire state of contemporary philosophy.

0/10

>given what modern philosophy knows

so fucking nothing?

top kek

no one gives a shit newfag

>philosophy BTFO

well done OP

how can philfags ever recover?

>propose a theory of particle physics in 500 BC
>retard scientists take 2500 years to come to the same conclusion

Fabrique Nationale>>>some shitty Bosnian football team

cmon fampai this shouldn't be such a hard decision

meh not a great example, lots of scientists would love to stick a couple of recording canulas in you while you force yourself to draw all those days, to measure the way your brain was suppressing sexual/social/reward circuits with only such basic stimulation.


Might be able to learn a good deal about the neuropsych of impulse control, which is an important part of agency. Especially since our modern world faces huge issues involving legal definitions of agency/impulse control in mental illness, addiction, and general crime punishment and prevention.

yes

they are though. bones are too heavy

Your question implies that there is a general consensus on philosophical issues and that we have claimed some way of thinking "right" and that thinkers of yore would have to submit to our updated understanding of the world. It really is a vague and somewhat stupid question. Sure, they would accept and learn of all the knowledge science has begotten us but then what? Do you think Kant would be an astrophysicist in today's world? Of course there is value in reading Plato or Aristotle but most posters have already told you about how modern philosophy is only where it is now because of the past philosophical progress. This board is AIDS.