motto lotto

Monday, July 13, 2009

the legitimate purposes of philosophy

  • the pursuit of truth - too boring/exhaustive for one person's lifetime, delegated to the sciences as a collective enterprise
  • unearthing prejudices - especially by looking at the prevailing wisdom of our time and tracing its development but also by carefully attempting to understand other disciplines, people, cultures and ages (ways of being)
  • delineating between phenomenal and epiphenomenal beliefs - to better target beliefs that need changing and also to better determine how to change oneself (specifically I think it's best to target/understand beliefs that impact your MO and even at times to work backwards from behavior to understand beliefs)
  • untying a knotted understanding - personal therapy to avoid spending mental energy on things that don't really matter
  • reframing - tweaking our perceptions and stories to achieve different ends, gaining new eyes
  • "know thyself" "become who you are"
  • means to explore an arbitrary literary/artistic drive
Anything I'm missing?