The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Oct 9, 2017 13:26:04 GMT
Vote for up to 8.
I've listed the philosophers commonly touted as greats but obviously I had to draw the line somewhere so feel free to suggest others I've missed.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 13:36:08 GMT
My choices (arranged in chronological order) were:
Plato Aristotle Thomas Aquinas Rene Descartes David Hume Bertrand Russell WVO Quine Michel Foucault
Based on my opinion of the importance and influence of their work, the quality of their writing--style, clarity, etc., and their relative lack of leading us in wrong directions, bad habits and influencing horrible work/movements. ("Relative" being important there; I think they all did some of those negative things, but I see my choices as the lesser evils compared to Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, etc.)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2017 13:56:37 GMT
A fairly comprehensive list, but I think Charles Sanders Peirce and Karl Popper should be necessary inclusions. I would also have added Anaximander, Anscombe, and Putnam. The last one died only last year at 89 but he was very influential. I don't think those are necessary tho.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 14:16:06 GMT
I felt bad having to leave out Mill, Ayer and Nozick (again just in chronological order), but I don't rank them quite as highly on my criteria above. (Some I mention in a later post as favorites I'd rank higher, anyway.)
Of the remainder, I'd rank them (so the following is a ranking, not in chronological order):
Dewey Comte Locke Augustine Anselm Moore Bentham Hobbes James Heraclitus
------------------I start having increasingly serious problems with the folks beyond this point; I'll add a comment for a few where my ranking (high or low) might seem surprising if you know anything about my views---------------
Berkeley (great writer/clear thinker, but absurd conclusions for ad hoc purposes) Camus Epicurus Frege (some good ideas, not a great writer.) Kant Leibniz Kierkegaard Schopenhauer Wittgenstein (sometimes a horrible writer (the Tractatus especially), sometimes stupid conclusions--lots of the Philosophical Investigations, and unfortunately extremely influential in those stupid conclusions) Nietzsche (horrible writer) Ockham Rawls Parmenides ****** After this point, mostly horrible writing with really bad reasoning/conclusions, too:****** Marx Sartre Derrida Hegel Heidegger
And I'm not familiar enough and/or with enough of their work, to rank the following: Arendt Boethius de Beauvoir Diogenes Machiavelli Paine Rousseau Voltaire Wollstonecraft Zeno of Citium (in fact, in his case I can't offhand recall a single thing about him. As you might guess, I know more about Zeno of Elea.)
Some other random comments:
* The "not familiar enough with" category suggests that I'm not very familiar with female philosophers, but that's not true. I've read plenty of Annette Baier, Christine Korsgaard, Martha Nussbaum, Marjorie Grene, Susan Haack, etc.--basically, modern analytic female philosophers.
* The weirdest thing about my ranking, if you know me well, is that I rank some religious-oriented philosophers so highly (and heck, Aquinas made my top 8), given that I'm such a hardcore atheist--I'm rather militant about that, and I make no bones about seeing religious views as absurd/kind of stupid. Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, etc. were fine writers, with very logical minds. So that's why I rank them as highly as I do. Their religious views are their flaw, but aside from that, they're quality authors and thinkers and did a lot of good in furthering clear thinking and communication.
* It feels weird ranking folks who didn't write much, or where not much of their writing survives. I don't rank philosophers on only whether I agree with conclusions.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 14:19:12 GMT
A fairly comprehensive list, but I think Charles Sanders Peirce and Karl Popper should be necessary inclusions. I would also have added Anaximander, Anscombe, and Putnam. The last one died only last year at 89 but he was very influential. I don't think those are necessary tho. Popper I'd rank highly. Peirce is a mess in my opinion, though. Horrible writer, extremely unclear. His extremely idiosyncratic terms don't help, or the fact that those idiosyncratic terms evolved over the course of his writing. Putnam was a good writer, but I don't very often agree with his conclusions.
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Post by cupcakes on Oct 9, 2017 14:20:51 GMT
tpfkar Vote for up to 8.
I've listed the philosophers commonly touted as greats but obviously I had to draw the line somewhere so feel free to suggest others I've missed. You've got to give me Patrick Star and Yogi Berra. I’m gonna bang my head to the wall
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 14:32:36 GMT
Some folks not on the list who I rank highly (just in alphabetical order):
Achille Varzi C.I. Lewis Colin McGinn Donald Davidson Ernst Mach George Santayana Hans Reichenbach Jerry Fodor John Searle Karl Popper Mario Bunge Ned Block Paul Feyerabend Richard Rorty Thomas Kuhn
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 14:34:17 GMT
The oddest ommission of the standard "big names" on the poll is probably Husserl, especially because he was so influential on a lot of the later continental philosophers.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Oct 9, 2017 15:14:37 GMT
Yes, Husserl, Feyarebend, Popper and Kuhn probably should have been included. Mea culpa. Charles Sanders Peirce is one of my favourites though I feel he's largely overshadowed by James and Dewey.
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Oct 9, 2017 15:21:54 GMT
Wittgenstein (sometimes a horrible writer (the Tractatus especially), sometimes stupid conclusions--lots of the Philosophical Investigations, and unfortunately extremely influential in those stupid conclusions) Hmm I always figured you for a Wittgenstein fan. Shows what I know!
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Oct 9, 2017 16:26:55 GMT
Suppose I should list my own votes (in no particular order):
Kant - probably the most complete philosophy in my opinion. Don't agree with him on everything but I feel there's no other philosophers close
Kierkegaard - I feel he really grasps the emotional element of philosophy that many miss
Rousseau - the best thought out of the social contract philosophies and an admirable egalitarian
James - I probably prefer Peirce but James is almost as good at arguing the case for pragmatism
Descartes - asked probably the most fundamental question in philosophy. His answers were admirable if flawed.
Hume - deserves a spot for pointing out the is-ought problem alone
Berkeley - don't agree with him but throws an interesting challenge to those complacent in materialism. Also an excellent writer.
Rawls - combine him with Rousseau and that's pretty much political philosophy solved.
Random thoughts on a few others: Plato - love to read him, love the questions he asks. Though aside from some of his views on aesthetics I disagree with most of his conclusions
Bentham - torn between him and Berkeley for my last pick. I used to love him but now I find him a bit too reductive in his thought
Heidegger - what I know of his thought intrigues me but it's so off-puttingly dense that I can't really judge him
Marx - I have a lot of time for Marx (though I'm somewhat shy of being a Marxist). However I think while he was a good sociologist, economist and historian, he was a crap philosopher. He might well have agreed.
Mill - Bentham for intellectual snobs. And did he really need to use 80000 words in every sentence?
Parmenides - a bit like Berkeley, provides excellent food for thought with his crazy world view
Wittgenstein - intrigues me but I can't be arsed reading a computer program
Paine - I like him though his focus is somewhat narrow.
Wollstonecraft - Kinda like Thomas Paine, but with a greater focus on women's rights. Pity she was a bit of a class snob.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Oct 9, 2017 16:31:23 GMT
Wittgenstein (sometimes a horrible writer (the Tractatus especially), sometimes stupid conclusions--lots of the Philosophical Investigations, and unfortunately extremely influential in those stupid conclusions) Hmm I always figured you for a Wittgenstein fan. Shows what I know! I can see thinking that, but I pretty strongly dislike him, especially for his influence. A lot of the Tractatus is just incoherent in my opinion. It's like Heidegger trying to write analytic philosophy, haha. And then re Philosophical Investigations, I couldn't more strongly disagree with Wittgenstein on the private language issue, on his analysis of meaning, on his rejection of mentality in the sense of "inner space." A lot of that is about moving away from psychologism, and in my opinion that has been one of the biggest mistakes of contemporary philosophy. Finally, I think Wittgenstein was an important influence on over-focusing on natural language in philosophy where we see it as something that can even deliver important non-linguistic insights while treating language as something that has a mind-independent "life of its own" so to speak--that's wrapped up in the rejection of psychologism and the notion of a private language, an interior mental life, etc. That's all pretty anathema to my own views.
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Post by 🌵 on Oct 10, 2017 0:44:26 GMT
I selected:
A.J. Ayer Bertrand Russell David Hume John Stuart Mill Rene Descartes Robert Nozick W.V.O. Quine
and then "other". For the other, here are a few of my favourite philosophers:
André Kukla - One of the most rigorous philosophers I've ever read. He has an amazing knack for teasing out important problems and hidden assumptions in seemingly simple arguments.
Bas van Fraassen - Has almost single-handedly resurrected a comprehensive empiricist/antirealist approach to science in the face of a vaguely realist consensus.
Jesse Prinz - What happens if we transport David Hume to the 21st century?
John Dupré - Philosophy of biology is probably my main interest, and Dupré has done a lot of important work here. He's also one of the pioneers of naturalistic, scientifically-informed metaphysics, a programme that I have many doubts about but that I think is a significant improvement on the traditional "armchair" approach to metaphysics exemplified by philosophers like David Lewis.
Ian Hacking - Very entertaining writer, and although his arguments are often somewhat oblique, there are so many interesting ideas packed into his work, and fascinating discussions of historical and contemporary practices of science, that I'm willing to forgive the occasional lack of clarity.
Paul Feyerabend - Again, a very entertaining writer, and I admire him for defending some genuinely radical ideas.
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Post by permutojoe on Nov 2, 2018 22:14:30 GMT
I'll go with Hume. Rationality being slave to emotion is a trivial point yet so many worldviews, political, religious, interpersonal etc, and perhaps even the foundations for Western Civilization in general, completely forgot to take this into account.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Nov 24, 2018 13:00:08 GMT
Rene Descartes Diogenes Immanuel Kant Søren Kirkegaard Nicolo Machiavelli Plato Jean-Jacques Rousseau Arthur Shopenhauer
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lava-rocks
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Post by lava-rocks on Nov 26, 2018 0:59:01 GMT
I like Alan Watts. He was the one who said:
"We (humans) are the agency through which the universe becomes aware of its own existence".
He may not have said it first, but it was attributed to him. He also promoted open relationships and polyamory.
Otherwise, he was a bit of a jerk with one good idea.
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dodge4life
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Post by dodge4life on Dec 27, 2018 7:15:42 GMT
I think, therefore I vote for Rene.
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Post by President Ackbar™ on Dec 27, 2018 7:18:34 GMT
No Socrates?
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The Lost One
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Post by The Lost One on Dec 31, 2018 11:41:51 GMT
No, I left him out, mainly because it's hard to know what he actually thought.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Jan 16, 2019 21:53:19 GMT
Kant aka WAFFLE.
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