This video shows exactly why I enjoy this channel: you're open, honest and treat people with dignity. You'd think that's a given, but there is way too little of that on youtube, or anywhere else for that matter.
Thank you so much for addressing how the advice given to young people can be really patronizing. Although I can't speak for everyone, as a senior in high school I so often feel that adults like to brush off our anxieties and struggles. There's this irreverent tone of "oh don't you worry, your simple child mind can't comprehend how small minded you are being. When you're older you will see how silly you are." Which can feel like they are just saying that our feelings don't matter because we are young. Thank you because we do actually need advice like this.😊
When I think about the meaninglessness of life, I don't feel sad at all. I realise that I just am a collection of atoms , yes, but accepting that means that I can trace my ancestry back through cosmic timescales! Being 'just atoms' means that I am connected with absolutely everything in the universe! I am a bunch of matter that has journeyed through the universe for billions of years, and in such extreme improbability become apart of something we call life. My brief life will end, and I will continue my journey around the universe its end, although I will no longer know it. This makes me feel so incredibly lucky to have any kind of life. If I believed I had a 'soul' or a part in some cosmic plan I would not get to feel what I do when I remember this simple fact. The meaninglessness of life is what makes me truly happy, in a way which there are no words adequate to describe it.
But then, if there is no meaning of life, wouldn't that mean that humans are essentially irrational for we have the desire to survive. And if there is no explanation of our existence, then doesnt that mean that we probably doesn't understand something, which is likely beyond our comprehension. Then, I ask wouldn't the right mindset be to respect the material and metaphysical parts of our life.
@@NoOne-kn6em Ask yourself; why can't both be true? The cosmos persists, and continues to exist despite its own violence towards itself, therefore one could conclude that the universe itself has a will to survive. And if we are of the cosmos, then why wouldn't our innate desires match its?
Ah,and so did Derrida.There's also Francois "Laruelle's non-philosophy,[which] he claims, should be considered to philosophy what non-Euclidean geometry is to the work of Euclid." for not to keen on "reconstructing" (*cough*what we now know as WESTERN *cough*philosophy (with the heavy theme of decentralization by Postmodernism can't it even?..) or wanting to retire a funky way outta philosophy
This video has truly enlightened me... Thank you Olly! I'm 16, and I don't think I've seen everything yet. But with what you've said in this video, I'm honestly excited for the future now...in a beard-stroking sense.
I remember when I first studied philosophy I had a time when I felt like the universe was pointless, It was crushing. Then I thought "If there is no grand plan then I can't screw it up" and I honestly felt truly free.
thanks Philosophy Tube for this video, i'm in high school right now and nobody like what i like, i like philosophy and drama just like you too! but not much people here actually appreciate those things, but thanks you for telling me that colleges will be much better! Take care and be awesome!
I wish you best things. I was depressed, sad in high school and experienced some noble struggles in college - how to transfer to a university, succeed in classes, choose an academic goal, deal with economic hardship, overcome a breakup, face an unrequited love, etc. I eventually graduated from San Jose State University. Guess what? I’m completing my M.A. program in Philosophy. There is path for your passion and hobbies. If you still have the interest in philosophy, it will only mean you love learning and acquiring knowledge. Keep that spirit.
Some Muslim theologian( sorry can't remember his name) said that philosophy, unlike many subjects, is too dangerous by the shore, but as you dive deeper into it gets more certain. How far do you agree?
We shouldn't forget how many drown at sea... On a more literal note, because people base life decisions on philosophy (as they should) not knowing enough philosophy and basing your decisions on incomplete information can be damaging.
Inspiring and honest! I would like to add to the conversation the thought that I had come to when I felt that life was without meaning: If all things are meaningless, and the world came to be the way it is out of sheer randomness, doesn't that make the feeling of happiness that much fuller? If emotions, in all of their complexity, are just phenomena emergent from the randomness of life, I feel as though they have great value and meaning.
It occurred to me recently to wonder whether dissatisfaction with "meaninglessness" in life is a byproduct of capitalism. Under capitalism people are valued for the work that they can do, so many of us are defined by our jobs, and looked down upon if we don't have them, even if we weren't also denied the necessities of life for that as well. So when people raised in a system like that come to see that there's is no universal employer who hired us all to work for him, it doesn't feel like "oh yay I'm on permanent vacation and now I can relax forever", it feels like "oh fuck I'm unemployable and worthless".
Something I would like to add is that this shock feeling goes away. When I started to reject faith and religion I remembered having panic attacks. I also had this instant nihilistic view of everything. But that goes away. At least it did for me. I had lost an understanding of the world and my place in it. But this gives you a fresh opportunity to discover, threw science and philosophy, a new understanding and place.
I can agree on wanting to tell your past self something, I had a lot of struggles mentally with maturing. I'm a very childish person, I can be serious if I need to and can work/clean/live as necessary, but I am mostly really childish. When I was a bit younger however, I was struggling with the belief of I needed to grow up and be productive. That I just had to grow up, that I can no longer enjoy cartoons, anime or video games. The thought I had to get a serious job and be serious all day just to earn money. It didn't help that when I did ask, it was misunderstood and I was told I was being unappreciative to my father who works his butt off. Eventually I figured it out, but my little self confidence didn't survive. I just wish someone told me that you can be older than 18, love child like activities and still be a responsible person. That would have saved me some self confidence. I just hope I can save someone the years of lying to yourself and help them with this knowledge, like you are doing with your own experience.
Haha wow, you're such a genuine person, this video has really just made me think "hey. It's not that bad" like I've been surrounded by close minded ignorant people my entire 15 years of life, but you've made me realise that there's people out there that think and care for more than themselves, or what bullshit is being thrown at them through media
i find it surprising that your answer didn't contain something like how objective/absolute values/purposes being proven not objective/absolute gives you a chance to make/find your own values/purposes, and that's somehow even better because it's not coming from some kind of outside authority but yourself. at least that thought is very important to me in the discussion of the meaning of life. but then again you kind of touched upon this with saying you don't even need a purpose to be happy.
I've not studied much philosophy. But one that had a huge impact on me was The Allegory of the Cave. I'm sure most here have read it. I remember how scared the person was when they left the cave. You've taken the first step outside, don't be so scared you run back inside to the shadows that comfort you. Go see whats out there first. Its a big world.
all the things said about university didn't aoply to my experience. the pettyness and and urespectifull didn't stop. didn't find people exited about the learning part of it. everyone seems so okey with... well i feel like i didn't learn to be a student and all i learned is bits and pieces that i gave up without makeing sence of it. I'll be a teatcher soon and i fell so sorry for the students if i ever get a job. and i can't go back and try to do a better job, and i'm 24 "still thinking like this" . i love the feeling of realizing i just learned something new or in a different perspective but that feeling comes together with the predictiong that will be forgotten so soon, and all i'm left with is the feeling that "there's more" to stuff without actualy being able to think about it. i wish i didn't valued learning so much since i'm this lazy. i wish i could just enjoy things, and want more realistic ones for me. i wish i didn't see my stupidity and all this lack of articulation only gets worse. and i love this channel already but i get envy, aparently. i wish i could rob brains. i'll jut get out of the internet, and i won't be seing any smart professor eather, so i'm cool. i'll just live pretending learning is fiction and that's why i can't. ok this is pathetic and i don't know if i even care.
I'm not sure if here is the best place to ask, but I have been watching your videos and have become very interested in studying maths and philosophy at university. I am just finishing my first year of A levels and all of my subjects are mathematical or scientifically based i.e. very little essay writing. Is it still possible to study philosophy or am I just kidding myself?
I really enjoyed this one Olly. I really hope well meet at some point IRL and have an long discussion about this. In addition to what you said about secondary school having had a very similar experience to you I would say that not only does "it" get better but "You" get better. Often the reason people at that age feel like they know everything about who they are and what they are doing is because in a certain sense they're right! BUT that is only because up to that point everything is very structured, school, learning, socializing, etc. Then, sometimes very suddenly it's all stripped away and you've all these choices to make with no idea what is best direction or personal philosophy for you. Personally I find the idea that I get to choose what the focus of my life is to greater or lesser extent empowering rather than daunting.
I too wish someone had told me that it gets better after high school. I hated school so badly that I dropped out in grade 10 and did the rest through a distance correspondence program. The older I get the more I regret not staying with it and going on to uni. I am contemplating going back now but the barriers of going back as an adult seem much larger then those of a regular student. I'm past the age where I'm okay with sharing a small dorm room, I can't afford to live on a part time job (I wouldn't have time for full time and study), I don't currently have a good supportive group of people around me that I know I would need, I would have to take some courses to upgrade my old high school ones before I could even apply to a uni, etc, etc. I am trying to save up some money in case I do decide to go back but if circumstances don't work out in the next 5 or so years then it's just not going to happen and I'll have to stick with youtube videos and free online courses.
"Enjoy it, this is the best time of your life" Is the single most depressing thing you can tell to someone who didn't peak in High School. Honestly, seems kinda rude to even assume someone is going to peak in high school, especially if they're having a really hard time with it.
It's quite depressing, I am also realistic and thoughtful about certain things. I don't want to say this but I'm always right when it comes to alot of things. Ex. 2 people getting a relationship and I'll think "2 months". And after 2 months they broke up, and I knew it. Sometimes I wish I was more oblivious about things to make myself feel happier, but I can't. Now I'm trapped because I'm so full of facts and don't have hope or dreams because I look at everything in a realistic way, that's why it's so depressing. I'm actually on anti-depressants atm, yeah it's that bad.
Olly, I don't understand how can you teach about Absurdism and Existentialism and at the same time not understand that philosophy might lead (at least) some people to the fundamental contradiction between our desire to find the meaning in the universe and the universe itself which is meaningless. When someone reaches that place, he has three options: killing himself, facing the absurd or taking a leap of faith. Advising someone to kill themselves is probably not the best solution and facing the absurd might be much more difficult than it sounds and might eventually lead to the first option. So the best advice for a person in this situation would be to take a leap of faith. I don't yet have any good advices on HOW to take a leap of faith (I would be very glad, if someone gave me some advices on that), but "things will be better after school" is not an advice. For me personally it sounds like "things worked out for me and that's the only thing I care about". If I were the one asking the question, I would be very disappointed in your answer and would feel that I would have felt better if you hadn't answered to my question at all. Hope this did not end up sounding rude and if/then sentences made sense in English :) P.S. If these sentences were incorrect, could someone show me the correct way?
+Sexist Racist Homophobe I think what Olly meant by "it gets better after school" is that the individual may find answers to their questions come more readily as they get older and are in an environment that is less horrid and toxic than high school. In my experience school is the worst place to deal with feelings like the individual described, and I think Olly was acknowledging this as a common experience. Also, what you heard as "things worked out for me and that's the only thing I care about", I heard as "things worked out for me and I think they will work out for you too". And since you asked for corrections to your English, the only mistake I noticed was "an advice"- it should be just "advice". But your English is very good in my opinion!
+Esmé , Thank you very much for your reply. I see now how my interpretation of Olly's answer sounded a little bit rude, since it made an assumption that Olly does not care about others. I did not mean that. However the interpretation "things worked out for me and I think they will work out for you too" sounds a little bit patronizing. It is like the mother saying to her child "you will understand this when you get older". I refuse to believe that time solves questions. Questions have a tendency to be solved over time, but they are solved not because time passes, but because someone solves them. And telling someone that they will solve their questions/problems in the future does not get them any closer to solving their questions/problems. That is why I do not consider Olly's comment to be the answer to a given question.
I love to use philosophy to think if my way of thinking is "the correct way". Although i know it probably isn't and i will probably never find the correct answer. And im oke with never finding perfection but stil pursuing it. But in my everyday life i scratch all the big ideas for a more simple view. But i used to be so confident in my own actions but now i know how much i dont know. This sometimes makes me doubt if my way is even going the right way or if im doing more harm then good. Because if that is the cause how would i know.
Totaly normal, to question our ultimate purpouse, it is countless the number of antique thinkers that struggled with that, and even bigger the number of normal people who do, my advice is to not to see it as a big topic, when I realize myself as an atheist was really scary, but my life didn't change much, haha so... relax.
+philosohy Tube Olly could you help me answer a question I have been pondering for a while. My friends and I ask a lot of philosophical questions such as socrates What is holiness? Im not going to put it in is a bit long. The question was along the lines of how do I know I am were I am e.g at school and not in a mental asylum being tricked by my brain or something like that. If anyone can help with this question it would be very helpful.
you seem to have fallen victim to epistemic skepticism. The fact of the matter is that in your mind/perspective you are in fact where you think you are and operate under that ussumption. Even if you were in fact a brain in a vat that would not change how you live your current life. The world is as real as how you act in it. Hope this helped!
Yeah, school sucks for the most part until you get to university. It's not that the learning sucks; it's that all the in-crowd people are assholes and it makes school suck for those of us who are smart. Plus, when you get to university, there's alcohol and, as we learn in chemistry, alcohol is a solution. In any case, people are more reasonable in university and it's when the smart people are finally cool. If I hadn't had someone older tell me about that, I probably would have never went.
I would disagree that philosophy is generaly a positiv exercise it can be both destructiv or postiv and happy. For example if you come to the conclusion that nobody has free will you are basicly foreced to either drasticly change your behaviour and abandon a lot of social constructs or live with the discrepancy between what you do and what you think. And to the meanig of live I think it is not nececarily about havin a porpuse or a overaching "quest" in your live but (at least in my case) about what do i want to do in my life?, do i want to life?, what life is worth living? and "smaler" things like what profesion do i want to work in? or what country do i want to live in.
Don't take me seriously... My latest epiphany on "The Purpose of Life" General Happiness is the ultimate purpose of living. Especially when the irony of living with the obsession of our own problems and boredom seem to threaten our happiness almost everyday. Sometimes it feels like happiness is a wild-goose chase, an elusive dream that has left our adult lives. It is as if happiness can only be felt by the nostalgia our childhoods. Society/Humankind/Government The people who make the best out of their life or have happiness in life, have the most purpose. They have the greatest right to exist in this world, rather than people who do nothing with it. (Those who 'limit' the ones who try to live a 'full' life.) I feel like this is the most basic mentality of society. Inevitably, most of us do what we can to be happy and to live in the present.
The video is really caring, honest and supportive. And I like the message. But I don't think you can just say to a person that thing will get better at university. University was my little particular hell, and the second year onwards was a slow descent into the world of the dead, full of isolation, depression and fear. University will be very good to some people. And will be really bad to others. It is not a magical place that will make life so much better. It is not that simple.
I found that philosophy actually brought me to the opposite conclusions of the person in this video. I kinda agree with Aristotle that we do have a function... It's simply to flourish and become the best versions of ourselves that we can - which is still as powerful a thought to me now as it was a year ago. From that day forth I rejected existentialism xD
I'm curious to hear your reasoning for believing that; given what we know now empirically about evolution, the way humans came to be and how it was causally inevitable, why do you believe there is an objective purpose for us? If you believe that we each create that purpose, then that actually _is_ existentialism (the idea that everything is hopelessly meaningless is nihilism; the two are often conflated)
+X-Blade Wielder I'd say the two are compatible. From the process of natural selection, we are here now, but we have been endowed with certain physical and psychological needs. The physical is food, water, shelter etc. But the psychological ones are more interesting. They include stuff like companionship, being part of a community, recognition, activity which fulfils all our faculties and potentials. Without these, we do feel like we haven't actually lived our lives in the truest sense. So isn't it obvious that our purpose is to be able to meet these psychological needs? Regardless of how we came to acquire them, we need these to flourish. So I think evolution is actually what's given us purpose.
TheRedViper100 I would still hesitate to say that that is an inherent "purpose," mainly because the word implies some sort of conscientious intent, which we have no reason for believing in. There is no free will (as the universe is one ubercomplex mechanical automaton), and with that in mind I think I can see your viewpoint more clearly.
0:38- I don't think u necessarily need God to believe morality can b objective. This is just based on the observation that morality is a social theory (i.e. it is about doing things for others) and that certain human desires are universal (e.g. every1 personally desires freedom of speech, long-term happiness for themselves, freedom of sexuality e.t.c). Based on that simple fact that some human desires r universal, I think u can say that at least SOME moral facts r objectively true (i.e. actions that fulfil none of a person's desires, and in fact diminishes them, r immoral).
the CORRECT answer to "what is the meaning of life?" is that the question is malformed, i know you do not want a dictionary definition, i know you do not mean "why are we here?" because the answer to that is abiogenisis and evolution, and if you mean "what purpose does our existance serve?" then you are REALLY wrong because our existance doesn't need to serve a purpose, we simply exist. ...... I wish that whoever came up with such a silly idea as "the meaning of life" would have at least examined exactly how malformed the question is.
+TruthUnadulterated By meaning to life, I mean a set purpose. Such a purpose would be visible and sensible from an outside perspective. To say that life's purpose is to make more of itself makes the assumption that life is worth propagating or in other words that it is good to do so. Sure that's what life does or tries to do, but it's empty unless something of moral value comes forth. The way to make life worth living and therefore propagating is to produce more good than bad. Many, if not most lives don't fit the bill. I see now that my thinking puts one in a similar place compared to those thinking in absurdism or such where each person creates his/her own meaning. I'm thinking that there is no real sense of meaning without a feeling observer.
+TruthUnadulterated Colloquially, the question of whether or not life or anything has something to be given a fuck about is thrown out when there is no feeling thing existent to give a fuck. So feeling life gives things meaning. I mean this in a general sense. There is also no morality without a feeling being to observe good and bad. This doesn't mean that I think morality is entirely or even mostly subjective, though. I see here also that meaning and morality to me are one and the same insofar as these discussions are concerned.
I believe that the philosofan who wrote this should NOT major in philosophy. They should major in something that will have better odds of helping themself or other people to better enjoy life and better the world around them. They will not find truth in philosophy. The only way I see that it would be a good idea to major in philosophy is if the person plans to offer some sort of Wittgensteinian type therapy to help people out of their philosophical stupor when they start running in circles and get themselves stuck in some sort of philosophical metal cul de sac. This might sound rude, but I am honestly just trying to be helpful.
I dont see why being invoved in gods plan gives your life any more meaning. Oh so youre here to please some other guy? Okay, so what. Whats so meaningful about pleasing god. Gods happiness doesnt matter any more than anything else does. What makes something matter then? Things only matter inside a certain system. Being popular matters in school but not in the grand scheme of the universe and everything. But mattering in the grand scheme of the universe doesnt apply to anything outside our universe. So whats the difference between your school and your universe? Not much really. There can never be some ultimate meaning and lemme show you why. A cog in a machine is happy because it matters to make the machine work. One day the cog thinks 'but why does the machine matter?'. It comes to a conclusion but then asks why that matters and so on. Eventually the cog realises that it can go on like this entering a bigger system each time but ultimately one system wont matter any more than the last. What people should really do is decide on a system e.g. earth, and then matter inside of that e.g. become famous. That way you can finally be happy knowing that while nothing really matters, you matter to something
I wish I had something more meaningful to say It's a nice video, I'm not sure... I agree with this search. I don't think there is to much value in having answers, as answers should change at any time. now a good question...
The study of Philosophy, much like that of Quantum Mechanics, is interesting in itself, but doesn't seem to bear very much relation to real life. I would no sooner expect to find an objective definition of morality than I would to start walking through walls. But fear not. The universe does have a plan for us. We live, we die, and our atoms get used for something else. That's it. That's all there really needs to be. Any happiness on our part is dependent upon us. And looking for purpose, or happiness, from this machine that we exist in is futile. Your purpose is this life, right here and now. Believe me, there's plenty of perspective to be had in taking part in this "small" piece of life.
I would say that philosophy and quantum mechanics would relate to real life if we were only properly clever. Do you know what I mean? I am sure eventually, quantum mechanics will be useful in much the same way that electromagnetics is useful to many of us today and wasn't a couple hundred years ago. Also, I don't see there being any issue with only seeing morality as relative. It IS relative. when we say something is good we are saying it is good for us and/or the things (people mostly) that we see around us. If there were aliens, they would have a different sense of morality. This is important to realize but I don't see how it makes it less applicable to reality.
rationalMexican Yes, we do have practical applications, but I was thinking more in the sense of how do either Q.M. or philosophy affect us directly. We don't experience people or objects popping in and out of existence around us. There is no confusion as to whether we're exhibiting more wave-like or more particle-like properties. The subatomic universe is a strange place that doesn't jibe very well with our usual sense of how things work. In that sense, philosophy doesn't play much of a role in what we decide is right or wrong. Or whether God exists or not. We believe what we believe. You can argue Moral Relativism forever and not convince me that female genital mutilation is acceptable. Philosophy deals in absolutes. And there are no absolutes anywhere that I've seen so far.
chemistryguy You know when it's come to anything close to "absolutes" in philosophy,two common camps are about experience vs rationalism always looking for sympathizers and dividing ppl since Plato's days.Yet there's a 3rd arguable "absolute" that a person has to have to live to operate and talk about the other camps;health.The neglect for a person's "internal health" is what has gotten us into so much trouble since the Post-Neitzchean void and is exemplified by philosophy having to do with rights.Human,animal,enviromental etc. How about vouching for that absolute,eh :/ ?.As far as common philosophical absolutes that "common" ppl in any part of globe hold I see three which will I'm sure not "negative" in-and-of-themselves have been used negatively all to often by ppl justifying exploitation,crime,slavery,killing in various forms and in some ways discrimination:utilitarianism,fatalism and instrumentalism. 3 old attitude/philosophies that have go on relentlessly throughout human history doing damage in places that have made ppl think asking "what is the meaning of life" is moot.2 old philosophies/attitudes that have to be transcended in the their conventional manifestion b4 we can call ourselves "post-modern".. >:/ AND DONT YOU DARE!,any philosophers laugh at saying that the word "transcend" is absurd in this context!,as a way of feeding those who think that engaging with some of the worst humankind has to offer isn't relevant b/c that word "doesn't exist" or is forever inapplicable!.
rationalMexican How do transistors use qm? We won't hit the QM scale for another decade, which is a problem because transistors don't work the same on the quantum scale.
I have found that there is no intrinsic meaning in life, we are just atoms, the human race is an advance mold growing on a ball flying round another ball (flying around another ball). But, being a biological being involves keeping the chemicals in your brain nice and balanced, you have a physical blob of atoms that is your body, and the composition of those atoms is determined by DNA (and other factors) to desire certain things and react accordingly to those and other things. If you are content in one believe, and then that believe is shattered, it takes time for your brain to re-wire it self and ground itself in new beliefs, after all, it does not want to rush in again only to be blown up again. This is nice and vague, because, meaning of life is nice and non-existent. It's about the pursuit of life. Finding what makes you happy, what happiness is, what life is, and then pursuing that. Only to find out that what you are chasing is not what you want any more, and now you must chase something to chase. And hey, this is just my expression of my own solipsistic isolation. I'm sure everyone has different goals and beliefs. For me, expression and communication is the greatest joy there is. Also Nietzsche was a boss at helping me find some meaning. You only live once. You will live it forever, over and over again.
hey mister depression, even if you are just a constuct of atoms, those atoms are arranged in such a way that you have conciousness and can feel emotions, same for other humans and animals, surely your actions should be the pursuit of things that make you happy and also others happy, morality can exist without the need for gods, and though life has no objective "meaning" you are the one who can assign it your own subjective "meaning" such as a life goal.
I'd take issue with your use of the word "clever" in that "counselling", Olly. Both wild and domesticated animals often demonstrate an astonishing "cleverness" by out-smarting us, and I find uneducated people are no less "cleaver" than those with years of experience and / or study when presented with sufficiently unique problems to solve. I believe people do not get any more "cleaver", with age. (aside from the numbing / distracting effects of hormones etc. XD) It's more a level of innate mental ability or IQ. (and IQ tests are often proven to be inaccurate as people break the rule about never taking more than one and get a different result ... but that's something else) What you're talking about is being knowledgeable, or gaining wisdom. Becoming educated, and expanding the horizons of thought and it's application. From my point of view, cleverness has nothing to do with this, and it's insulting to _very_ cleaver, but uneducated (or "self taught") people to suggest that it does. It denies (outright) the cleverness those people have, simply because they haven't had access to (or a desire in) academic materials. Maybe they simply aren't old enough, and I've seen some _really_ cleaver children (infants, not just offspring) who take for granted things their educated parents hadn't even considered. ^_^ From the things you've said before, I am confident that _wasn't_ what you where trying to convey at all, so I wanted to point out how loaded that use can seem. ;)
I define cleverness as the prompt ability to creatively problem solve. Would you agree with that definition? Do you care to attenuate that definition for me? anyone?
Education can improve the ability to "creatively problem solve" by filling in values for variables in the equation. (or providing a "standard formula" for early stages of the problem) Which is why I suggested a "unique" problem, which I would define as being one for which there is no pre-existing standard set of equations that may help solve it, _if_ you where educated enough to be aware of them. I think your basic definition is adequate, as just that. However, it can lead to misunderstanding when you recognise (or fail to recognise) that, even if an educated person solves "a problem" _faster_ than an uneducated one, the uneducated person _may_ actually be solving more problems to complete the entire task. This is because (s)he does not have the benefit of others experience to draw upon. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" as Sir Isaac Newton would have put it. ;) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton) To my mind, this dose _not_ make the uneducated person _less_ "cleaver" than the educated one. Depending on the complexity of the task, the ability to solve it entirely on your own may elevate my estimation of how "cleaver" you are far _more_ than if you solved only the last part which is not included in your "education" to date. Also, at the point where one person is already educated, we can never know if they even _could_ complete the task entirely on their own merit, if they hadn't already had the benefit of that education to draw upon. Where the uneducated person (if both _do_ complete the task) clearly can. That's "cleaver". No?
bobsobol I agree with your assertion that people who are less educated could take longer because they do not have the prerequisite knowledge. However, I would say if we assume that they are more educated in solving all sorts of problems, than that does make them more clever. You seem to want to equate their metal capacity or the speed in which they think to the word clever. I just don't see that. To me, it seems when people say someone is clever they mean to say that person has some better solution to a problem including using some other piece of knowledge that person has. As this is the definition the general populous conforms to, I see it as the definition of the word as it's users and listeners tend to define it.
Philosophy Tube Really Olly ?.For someone who said in the trailer vid that they'll be bringing stuff on the "*cutting-edge* of philosophy" I'm a bit surprised that you'd have such a typical reaction. The more flippant part of me wants to go like this ua-cam.com/users/results?search_query=feel+good+inc+gorillaz+laugh to how fairly mundane(but still nuanced) imo your response was that I'd have referred that philosofan to an article by humor writer Felix Clay www.cracked.com/blog/the-search-meaning-in-shitballs-existence/ which was surprisingly poignant for so frivolous a source. Saying your going to not be "thinking about philosophy 'analytically' " a la Russel,Frege and Wittgenstein makes me think you have some particular fondness (or bias?) -u- for the "analytic" school that has made you possibly a bit neglectful to emotional stuff like this which while a common question to produce a multitude of feedback as you'd see on youtube would provide an opportunity for *you* a legitimate philosophy student to respond instead of letting it be categorized as "pastoral" instead of analytical,which is something I grew out of expecting from you early on. ..*someone with counselling training ~.u.~* might wanna start focusing on those "pastoral" questions from time to time when he's not telling us about what he's been learning in class.. MAN after having seen this ,would I enjoy seeing you do a video or several on Derrida and deconstruction lest you outright dismiss Postmodernism ;] If I were to study philosophy I'd perhaps choose to go "happily crazy x} " in the combined philosophy+math degree program they have here in Hamilton,Ontario's MacMaster U .
University is awful. Thinking is discouraged to make room for tedious memorization and repetition. Respect is earned through enthusiastic obedience. Creativity is smothered so that more can be standardized. Socially, it is true that things tend to get better after high school. However, nobody should go to college with the hope or expectation to find an environment that promotes learning and exploration, because the truth will be purely disappointing.
I dunno, I think that probably depends on which one you go to. I found my high school to be as you described and uni to be fantastic, though I don't doubt that they're not all like that. The original questioner is going to Cambridge.
ive been studying philosophy on my own for about 2 years now. i just spent 10 min trying to write something after that bahahaha i think way too much -__- this comment will be here after i die FUCK YEA! heeeeyyy daughter or son if your reading this, uhh if your scared of death its ok things in this universe die and are born alll the time. ill see you in the over crowded spirit world!!! bahahahaha
This video shows exactly why I enjoy this channel: you're open, honest and treat people with dignity. You'd think that's a given, but there is way too little of that on youtube, or anywhere else for that matter.
Thank you so much for addressing how the advice given to young people can be really patronizing. Although I can't speak for everyone, as a senior in high school I so often feel that adults like to brush off our anxieties and struggles. There's this irreverent tone of "oh don't you worry, your simple child mind can't comprehend how small minded you are being. When you're older you will see how silly you are." Which can feel like they are just saying that our feelings don't matter because we are young.
Thank you because we do actually need advice like this.😊
"It gets better. Things get so much better."
When I think about the meaninglessness of life, I don't feel sad at all. I realise that I just am a collection of atoms , yes, but accepting that means that I can trace my ancestry back through cosmic timescales! Being 'just atoms' means that I am connected with absolutely everything in the universe!
I am a bunch of matter that has journeyed through the universe for billions of years, and in such extreme improbability become apart of something we call life. My brief life will end, and I will continue my journey around the universe its end, although I will no longer know it.
This makes me feel so incredibly lucky to have any kind of life. If I believed I had a 'soul' or a part in some cosmic plan I would not get to feel what I do when I remember this simple fact. The meaninglessness of life is what makes me truly happy, in a way which there are no words adequate to describe it.
But then, if there is no meaning of life, wouldn't that mean that humans are essentially irrational for we have the desire to survive. And if there is no explanation of our existence, then doesnt that mean that we probably doesn't understand something, which is likely beyond our comprehension. Then, I ask wouldn't the right mindset be to respect the material and metaphysical parts of our life.
@@NoOne-kn6em Ask yourself; why can't both be true? The cosmos persists, and continues to exist despite its own violence towards itself, therefore one could conclude that the universe itself has a will to survive. And if we are of the cosmos, then why wouldn't our innate desires match its?
This comment made me less depressed. Thank you 💙🖤
Cheers friend :)
I see philosophy to be deconstructive rather than destructive.
Ah,and so did Derrida.There's also Francois "Laruelle's non-philosophy,[which] he claims, should be considered to philosophy what non-Euclidean geometry is to the work of Euclid." for not to keen on "reconstructing" (*cough*what we now know as WESTERN *cough*philosophy (with the heavy theme of decentralization by Postmodernism can't it even?..) or wanting to retire a funky way outta philosophy
Every time Abby says "It gets better", I just get so emotional
She has no idea how much better. 🥺
This video has truly enlightened me... Thank you Olly! I'm 16, and I don't think I've seen everything yet. But with what you've said in this video, I'm honestly excited for the future now...in a beard-stroking sense.
hows the future
I remember when I first studied philosophy I had a time when I felt like the universe was pointless, It was crushing. Then I thought "If there is no grand plan then I can't screw it up" and I honestly felt truly free.
I believe that nothing matters in the macro, but to me in a subjective sense, it makes everything matters even more, seeing how there's no afterlife
thanks Philosophy Tube for this video, i'm in high school right now and nobody like what i like, i like philosophy and drama just like you too! but not much people here actually appreciate those things, but thanks you for telling me that colleges will be much better! Take care and be awesome!
Hi Jim Le. I'm curious how things have gone for you three years later.
I grew up in a tiny town, and I know what's it like to have been an outcast.
I wish you best things. I was depressed, sad in high school and experienced some noble struggles in college - how to transfer to a university, succeed in classes, choose an academic goal, deal with economic hardship, overcome a breakup, face an unrequited love, etc. I eventually graduated from San Jose State University. Guess what? I’m completing my M.A. program in Philosophy. There is path for your passion and hobbies. If you still have the interest in philosophy, it will only mean you love learning and acquiring knowledge. Keep that spirit.
Some Muslim theologian( sorry can't remember his name) said that philosophy, unlike many subjects, is too dangerous by the shore, but as you dive deeper into it gets more certain. How far do you agree?
We shouldn't forget how many drown at sea...
On a more literal note, because people base life decisions on philosophy (as they should) not knowing enough philosophy and basing your decisions on incomplete information can be damaging.
Inspiring and honest! I would like to add to the conversation the thought that I had come to when I felt that life was without meaning:
If all things are meaningless, and the world came to be the way it is out of sheer randomness, doesn't that make the feeling of happiness that much fuller? If emotions, in all of their complexity, are just phenomena emergent from the randomness of life, I feel as though they have great value and meaning.
It occurred to me recently to wonder whether dissatisfaction with "meaninglessness" in life is a byproduct of capitalism. Under capitalism people are valued for the work that they can do, so many of us are defined by our jobs, and looked down upon if we don't have them, even if we weren't also denied the necessities of life for that as well. So when people raised in a system like that come to see that there's is no universal employer who hired us all to work for him, it doesn't feel like "oh yay I'm on permanent vacation and now I can relax forever", it feels like "oh fuck I'm unemployable and worthless".
Something I would like to add is that this shock feeling goes away. When I started to reject faith and religion I remembered having panic attacks. I also had this instant nihilistic view of everything.
But that goes away. At least it did for me. I had lost an understanding of the world and my place in it. But this gives you a fresh opportunity to discover, threw science and philosophy, a new understanding and place.
it's obviously 42
Rita Silvestre that joke really isn't meant to be funny the third time you hear it
@@aagantuk7370 but by the 537th time it's funny forever after.
Ehehe it sort of seems funny now that life is better yes
I can agree on wanting to tell your past self something, I had a lot of struggles mentally with maturing. I'm a very childish person, I can be serious if I need to and can work/clean/live as necessary, but I am mostly really childish. When I was a bit younger however, I was struggling with the belief of I needed to grow up and be productive. That I just had to grow up, that I can no longer enjoy cartoons, anime or video games. The thought I had to get a serious job and be serious all day just to earn money. It didn't help that when I did ask, it was misunderstood and I was told I was being unappreciative to my father who works his butt off. Eventually I figured it out, but my little self confidence didn't survive. I just wish someone told me that you can be older than 18, love child like activities and still be a responsible person. That would have saved me some self confidence. I just hope I can save someone the years of lying to yourself and help them with this knowledge, like you are doing with your own experience.
Haha wow, you're such a genuine person, this video has really just made me think "hey. It's not that bad" like I've been surrounded by close minded ignorant people my entire 15 years of life, but you've made me realise that there's people out there that think and care for more than themselves, or what bullshit is being thrown at them through media
this channel >>> school of life
Maggy Frog they are both good
i find it surprising that your answer didn't contain something like how objective/absolute values/purposes being proven not objective/absolute gives you a chance to make/find your own values/purposes, and that's somehow even better because it's not coming from some kind of outside authority but yourself. at least that thought is very important to me in the discussion of the meaning of life. but then again you kind of touched upon this with saying you don't even need a purpose to be happy.
Olly! You're into theatre! My level of respect for you just went up a hundredfold.
Thanks! The plan is drama school after graduation.
Love you and your brilliant life messages ❤
I find it beautiful we make our own meaning. We are very fortunate to even exist for a short period.
This is a beautiful, heartfelt response. ♡
The God of Deconstruction would probably say: "There is beauty in every stage of ignorance!"
I've not studied much philosophy. But one that had a huge impact on me was The Allegory of the Cave. I'm sure most here have read it. I remember how scared the person was when they left the cave. You've taken the first step outside, don't be so scared you run back inside to the shadows that comfort you. Go see whats out there first. Its a big world.
Wow. The predicament the writing fan is in is nearly mine exactly... of course, it's a pretty common situation.
At around 0:40 in he mentioned a video about atoms swirling in a void. What video is that
all the things said about university didn't aoply to my experience. the pettyness and and urespectifull didn't stop. didn't find people exited about the learning part of it. everyone seems so okey with... well i feel like i didn't learn to be a student and all i learned is bits and pieces that i gave up without makeing sence of it. I'll be a teatcher soon and i fell so sorry for the students if i ever get a job. and i can't go back and try to do a better job, and i'm 24 "still thinking like this" . i love the feeling of realizing i just learned something new or in a different perspective but that feeling comes together with the predictiong that will be forgotten so soon, and all i'm left with is the feeling that "there's more" to stuff without actualy being able to think about it. i wish i didn't valued learning so much since i'm this lazy. i wish i could just enjoy things, and want more realistic ones for me. i wish i didn't see my stupidity and all this lack of articulation only gets worse. and i love this channel already but i get envy, aparently. i wish i could rob brains. i'll jut get out of the internet, and i won't be seing any smart professor eather, so i'm cool. i'll just live pretending learning is fiction and that's why i can't. ok this is pathetic and i don't know if i even care.
I'm not sure if here is the best place to ask, but I have been watching your videos and have become very interested in studying maths and philosophy at university. I am just finishing my first year of A levels and all of my subjects are mathematical or scientifically based i.e. very little essay writing. Is it still possible to study philosophy or am I just kidding myself?
I really enjoyed this one Olly. I really hope well meet at some point IRL and have an long discussion about this. In addition to what you said about secondary school having had a very similar experience to you I would say that not only does "it" get better but "You" get better. Often the reason people at that age feel like they know everything about who they are and what they are doing is because in a certain sense they're right! BUT that is only because up to that point everything is very structured, school, learning, socializing, etc. Then, sometimes very suddenly it's all stripped away and you've all these choices to make with no idea what is best direction or personal philosophy for you. Personally I find the idea that I get to choose what the focus of my life is to greater or lesser extent empowering rather than daunting.
I too wish someone had told me that it gets better after high school. I hated school so badly that I dropped out in grade 10 and did the rest through a distance correspondence program. The older I get the more I regret not staying with it and going on to uni. I am contemplating going back now but the barriers of going back as an adult seem much larger then those of a regular student. I'm past the age where I'm okay with sharing a small dorm room, I can't afford to live on a part time job (I wouldn't have time for full time and study), I don't currently have a good supportive group of people around me that I know I would need, I would have to take some courses to upgrade my old high school ones before I could even apply to a uni, etc, etc. I am trying to save up some money in case I do decide to go back but if circumstances don't work out in the next 5 or so years then it's just not going to happen and I'll have to stick with youtube videos and free online courses.
High school was hell for me. I didn’t fit in and was bullied all the time. College had its ups and downs, but it was definitely better.
"Enjoy it, this is the best time of your life" Is the single most depressing thing you can tell to someone who didn't peak in High School. Honestly, seems kinda rude to even assume someone is going to peak in high school, especially if they're having a really hard time with it.
"It gets better" and nine years later, Abby is a queen
It's quite depressing, I am also realistic and thoughtful about certain things. I don't want to say this but I'm always right when it comes to alot of things. Ex. 2 people getting a relationship and I'll think "2 months". And after 2 months they broke up, and I knew it. Sometimes I wish I was more oblivious about things to make myself feel happier, but I can't. Now I'm trapped because I'm so full of facts and don't have hope or dreams because I look at everything in a realistic way, that's why it's so depressing. I'm actually on anti-depressants atm, yeah it's that bad.
What is the meaning of meaning?
Love that sweater man!
Are you an Indian
@@ChandraSekhar-qz2cm yep.
Olly, I don't understand how can you teach about Absurdism and Existentialism and at the same time not understand that philosophy might lead (at least) some people to the fundamental contradiction between our desire to find the meaning in the universe and the universe itself which is meaningless. When someone reaches that place, he has three options: killing himself, facing the absurd or taking a leap of faith. Advising someone to kill themselves is probably not the best solution and facing the absurd might be much more difficult than it sounds and might eventually lead to the first option. So the best advice for a person in this situation would be to take a leap of faith. I don't yet have any good advices on HOW to take a leap of faith (I would be very glad, if someone gave me some advices on that), but "things will be better after school" is not an advice. For me personally it sounds like "things worked out for me and that's the only thing I care about". If I were the one asking the question, I would be very disappointed in your answer and would feel that I would have felt better if you hadn't answered to my question at all.
Hope this did not end up sounding rude and if/then sentences made sense in English :)
P.S. If these sentences were incorrect, could someone show me the correct way?
+Sexist Racist Homophobe I think what Olly meant by "it gets better after school" is that the individual may find answers to their questions come more readily as they get older and are in an environment that is less horrid and toxic than high school. In my experience school is the worst place to deal with feelings like the individual described, and I think Olly was acknowledging this as a common experience. Also, what you heard as "things worked out for me and that's the only thing I care about", I heard as "things worked out for me and I think they will work out for you too".
And since you asked for corrections to your English, the only mistake I noticed was "an advice"- it should be just "advice". But your English is very good in my opinion!
+Esmé , Thank you very much for your reply. I see now how my interpretation of Olly's answer sounded a little bit rude, since it made an assumption that Olly does not care about others. I did not mean that. However the interpretation "things worked out for me and I think they will work out for you too" sounds a little bit patronizing. It is like the mother saying to her child "you will understand this when you get older". I refuse to believe that time solves questions. Questions have a tendency to be solved over time, but they are solved not because time passes, but because someone solves them. And telling someone that they will solve their questions/problems in the future does not get them any closer to solving their questions/problems. That is why I do not consider Olly's comment to be the answer to a given question.
Taking a leap of faith sounds a whole lot like lying to yourself.
@@uneek35 Camus called it "philosophical suicide"
I love to use philosophy to think if my way of thinking is "the correct way". Although i know it probably isn't and i will probably never find the correct answer. And im oke with never finding perfection but stil pursuing it. But in my everyday life i scratch all the big ideas for a more simple view.
But i used to be so confident in my own actions but now i know how much i dont know. This sometimes makes me doubt if my way is even going the right way or if im doing more harm then good. Because if that is the cause how would i know.
Wow. I loved your vid!
Totaly normal, to question our ultimate purpouse, it is countless the number of antique thinkers that struggled with that, and even bigger the number of normal people who do, my advice is to not to see it as a big topic, when I realize myself as an atheist was really scary, but my life didn't change much, haha so... relax.
+philosohy Tube Olly could you help me answer a question I have been pondering for a while. My friends and I ask a lot of philosophical questions such as socrates What is holiness? Im not going to put it in is a bit long. The question was along the lines of how do I know I am were I am e.g at school and not in a mental asylum being tricked by my brain or something like that. If anyone can help with this question it would be very helpful.
you seem to have fallen victim to epistemic skepticism. The fact of the matter is that in your mind/perspective you are in fact where you think you are and operate under that ussumption. Even if you were in fact a brain in a vat that would not change how you live your current life. The world is as real as how you act in it. Hope this helped!
That's a nice way to think of it I like that answer
+jahquion brown Glad I could help. Olly also has a "does the physical world exist" video if you want to watch that too.
Cool, I will do.
A very existentialist type answer. I like it :D
Yeah, school sucks for the most part until you get to university. It's not that the learning sucks; it's that all the in-crowd people are assholes and it makes school suck for those of us who are smart. Plus, when you get to university, there's alcohol and, as we learn in chemistry, alcohol is a solution. In any case, people are more reasonable in university and it's when the smart people are finally cool. If I hadn't had someone older tell me about that, I probably would have never went.
Alcohol is a solvent until you dissolve something with it. The result is a solution.
I would disagree that philosophy is generaly a positiv exercise it can be both destructiv or postiv and happy. For example if you come to the conclusion that nobody has free will you are basicly foreced to either drasticly change your behaviour and abandon a lot of social constructs or live with the discrepancy between what you do and what you think. And to the meanig of live I think it is not nececarily about havin a porpuse or a overaching "quest" in your live but (at least in my case) about what do i want to do in my life?, do i want to life?, what life is worth living? and "smaler" things like what profesion do i want to work in? or what country do i want to live in.
Why is the question of life's meaning non philosophic? Because it lies outside the scope of analytic philosophy.
How to tell a great fanbase for a channel: all the comments have at least two lines. (except this one. oh, now it does!)
Don't take me seriously...
My latest epiphany on "The Purpose of Life"
General
Happiness is the ultimate purpose of living. Especially when the irony of living with the obsession of our own problems and boredom seem to threaten our happiness almost everyday. Sometimes it feels like happiness is a wild-goose chase, an elusive dream that has left our adult lives. It is as if happiness can only be felt by the nostalgia our childhoods.
Society/Humankind/Government
The people who make the best out of their life or have happiness in life, have the most purpose. They have the greatest right to exist in this world, rather than people who do nothing with it. (Those who 'limit' the ones who try to live a 'full' life.) I feel like this is the most basic mentality of society.
Inevitably, most of us do what we can to be happy and to live in the present.
love this video
The video is really caring, honest and supportive. And I like the message. But I don't think you can just say to a person that thing will get better at university. University was my little particular hell, and the second year onwards was a slow descent into the world of the dead, full of isolation, depression and fear. University will be very good to some people. And will be really bad to others. It is not a magical place that will make life so much better. It is not that simple.
Of course people derive partial meaning from this or but still remain unsatisfied because lack of overall purpose.
I found that philosophy actually brought me to the opposite conclusions of the person in this video. I kinda agree with Aristotle that we do have a function... It's simply to flourish and become the best versions of ourselves that we can - which is still as powerful a thought to me now as it was a year ago. From that day forth I rejected existentialism xD
I'm curious to hear your reasoning for believing that; given what we know now empirically about evolution, the way humans came to be and how it was causally inevitable, why do you believe there is an objective purpose for us? If you believe that we each create that purpose, then that actually _is_ existentialism (the idea that everything is hopelessly meaningless is nihilism; the two are often conflated)
+X-Blade Wielder I'd say the two are compatible. From the process of natural selection, we are here now, but we have been endowed with certain physical and psychological needs. The physical is food, water, shelter etc. But the psychological ones are more interesting. They include stuff like companionship, being part of a community, recognition, activity which fulfils all our faculties and potentials. Without these, we do feel like we haven't actually lived our lives in the truest sense.
So isn't it obvious that our purpose is to be able to meet these psychological needs? Regardless of how we came to acquire them, we need these to flourish. So I think evolution is actually what's given us purpose.
TheRedViper100 I would still hesitate to say that that is an inherent "purpose," mainly because the word implies some sort of conscientious intent, which we have no reason for believing in. There is no free will (as the universe is one ubercomplex mechanical automaton), and with that in mind I think I can see your viewpoint more clearly.
0:38- I don't think u necessarily need God to believe morality can b objective.
This is just based on the observation that morality is a social theory (i.e. it is about doing things for others) and that certain human desires are universal (e.g. every1 personally desires freedom of speech, long-term happiness for themselves, freedom of sexuality e.t.c).
Based on that simple fact that some human desires r universal, I think u can say that at least SOME moral facts r objectively true (i.e. actions that fulfil none of a person's desires, and in fact diminishes them, r immoral).
the CORRECT answer to "what is the meaning of life?" is that the question is malformed, i know you do not want a dictionary definition, i know you do not mean "why are we here?" because the answer to that is abiogenisis and evolution, and if you mean "what purpose does our existance serve?" then you are REALLY wrong because our existance doesn't need to serve a purpose, we simply exist.
......
I wish that whoever came up with such a silly idea as "the meaning of life" would have at least examined exactly how malformed the question is.
Great. Download WISE UNIVERSAL in Play Store thanks you.
I was actually made happier by accepting the fact that there is no noncircular meaning to life
+TruthUnadulterated By meaning to life, I mean a set purpose. Such a purpose would be visible and sensible from an outside perspective.
To say that life's purpose is to make more of itself makes the assumption that life is worth propagating or in other words that it is good to do so. Sure that's what life does or tries to do, but it's empty unless something of moral value comes forth. The way to make life worth living and therefore propagating is to produce more good than bad. Many, if not most lives don't fit the bill.
I see now that my thinking puts one in a similar place compared to those thinking in absurdism or such where each person creates his/her own meaning. I'm thinking that there is no real sense of meaning without a feeling observer.
+TruthUnadulterated Colloquially, the question of whether or not life or anything has something to be given a fuck about is thrown out when there is no feeling thing existent to give a fuck. So feeling life gives things meaning. I mean this in a general sense. There is also no morality without a feeling being to observe good and bad. This doesn't mean that I think morality is entirely or even mostly subjective, though. I see here also that meaning and morality to me are one and the same insofar as these discussions are concerned.
I believe that the philosofan who wrote this should NOT major in philosophy. They should major in something that will have better odds of helping themself or other people to better enjoy life and better the world around them. They will not find truth in philosophy. The only way I see that it would be a good idea to major in philosophy is if the person plans to offer some sort of Wittgensteinian type therapy to help people out of their philosophical stupor when they start running in circles and get themselves stuck in some sort of philosophical metal cul de sac. This might sound rude, but I am honestly just trying to be helpful.
My free book has the answer to the actual meaning of life
I dont see why being invoved in gods plan gives your life any more meaning. Oh so youre here to please some other guy? Okay, so what. Whats so meaningful about pleasing god. Gods happiness doesnt matter any more than anything else does. What makes something matter then? Things only matter inside a certain system. Being popular matters in school but not in the grand scheme of the universe and everything. But mattering in the grand scheme of the universe doesnt apply to anything outside our universe. So whats the difference between your school and your universe? Not much really. There can never be some ultimate meaning and lemme show you why. A cog in a machine is happy because it matters to make the machine work. One day the cog thinks 'but why does the machine matter?'. It comes to a conclusion but then asks why that matters and so on. Eventually the cog realises that it can go on like this entering a bigger system each time but ultimately one system wont matter any more than the last. What people should really do is decide on a system e.g. earth, and then matter inside of that e.g. become famous. That way you can finally be happy knowing that while nothing really matters, you matter to something
damn man killer advice/input
Anyone here worshipping ancient egypt gods?
I wish I had something more meaningful to say
It's a nice video, I'm not sure... I agree with this search. I don't think there is to much value in having answers, as answers should change at any time. now a good question...
The study of Philosophy, much like that of Quantum Mechanics, is interesting in itself, but doesn't seem to bear very much relation to real life. I would no sooner expect to find an objective definition of morality than I would to start walking through walls.
But fear not. The universe does have a plan for us. We live, we die, and our atoms get used for something else. That's it. That's all there really needs to be. Any happiness on our part is dependent upon us. And looking for purpose, or happiness, from this machine that we exist in is futile. Your purpose is this life, right here and now.
Believe me, there's plenty of perspective to be had in taking part in this "small" piece of life.
I would say that philosophy and quantum mechanics would relate to real life if we were only properly clever. Do you know what I mean? I am sure eventually, quantum mechanics will be useful in much the same way that electromagnetics is useful to many of us today and wasn't a couple hundred years ago.
Also, I don't see there being any issue with only seeing morality as relative. It IS relative. when we say something is good we are saying it is good for us and/or the things (people mostly) that we see around us. If there were aliens, they would have a different sense of morality. This is important to realize but I don't see how it makes it less applicable to reality.
Quantum mechanics is already a part of real life. Modern electronics uses it all the time (transistors and lasers, for example).
rationalMexican Yes, we do have practical applications, but I was thinking more in the sense of how do either Q.M. or philosophy affect us directly.
We don't experience people or objects popping in and out of existence around us. There is no confusion as to whether we're exhibiting more wave-like or more particle-like properties. The subatomic universe is a strange place that doesn't jibe very well with our usual sense of how things work.
In that sense, philosophy doesn't play much of a role in what we decide is right or wrong. Or whether God exists or not. We believe what we believe. You can argue Moral Relativism forever and not convince me that female genital mutilation is acceptable.
Philosophy deals in absolutes. And there are no absolutes anywhere that I've seen so far.
chemistryguy You know when it's come to anything close to "absolutes" in philosophy,two common camps are about experience vs rationalism always looking for sympathizers and dividing ppl since Plato's days.Yet there's a 3rd arguable "absolute" that a person has to have to live to operate and talk about the other camps;health.The neglect for a person's "internal health" is what has gotten us into so much trouble since the Post-Neitzchean void and is exemplified by philosophy having to do with rights.Human,animal,enviromental etc.
How about vouching for that absolute,eh :/ ?.As far as common philosophical absolutes that "common" ppl in any part of globe hold I see three which will I'm sure not "negative" in-and-of-themselves have been used negatively all to often by ppl justifying exploitation,crime,slavery,killing in various forms and in some ways discrimination:utilitarianism,fatalism and instrumentalism.
3 old attitude/philosophies that have go on relentlessly throughout human history doing damage in places that have made ppl think asking "what is the meaning of life" is moot.2 old philosophies/attitudes that have to be transcended in the their conventional manifestion b4 we can call ourselves "post-modern"..
>:/ AND DONT YOU DARE!,any philosophers laugh at saying that the word "transcend" is absurd in this context!,as a way of feeding those who think that engaging with some of the worst humankind has to offer isn't relevant b/c that word "doesn't exist" or is forever inapplicable!.
rationalMexican How do transistors use qm? We won't hit the QM scale for another decade, which is a problem because transistors don't work the same on the quantum scale.
ciao grazie
Go listen to Allen Wats now!
I have found that there is no intrinsic meaning in life, we are just atoms, the human race is an advance mold growing on a ball flying round another ball (flying around another ball). But, being a biological being involves keeping the chemicals in your brain nice and balanced, you have a physical blob of atoms that is your body, and the composition of those atoms is determined by DNA (and other factors) to desire certain things and react accordingly to those and other things. If you are content in one believe, and then that believe is shattered, it takes time for your brain to re-wire it self and ground itself in new beliefs, after all, it does not want to rush in again only to be blown up again.
This is nice and vague, because, meaning of life is nice and non-existent. It's about the pursuit of life. Finding what makes you happy, what happiness is, what life is, and then pursuing that. Only to find out that what you are chasing is not what you want any more, and now you must chase something to chase.
And hey, this is just my expression of my own solipsistic isolation. I'm sure everyone has different goals and beliefs. For me, expression and communication is the greatest joy there is.
Also Nietzsche was a boss at helping me find some meaning. You only live once. You will live it forever, over and over again.
hey mister depression, even if you are just a constuct of atoms, those atoms are arranged in such a way that you have conciousness and can feel emotions, same for other humans and animals, surely your actions should be the pursuit of things that make you happy and also others happy, morality can exist without the need for gods, and though life has no objective "meaning" you are the one who can assign it your own subjective "meaning" such as a life goal.
One of these days I will just write a one sentence comment honest.
cranberries.
I'd take issue with your use of the word "clever" in that "counselling", Olly.
Both wild and domesticated animals often demonstrate an astonishing "cleverness" by out-smarting us, and I find uneducated people are no less "cleaver" than those with years of experience and / or study when presented with sufficiently unique problems to solve. I believe people do not get any more "cleaver", with age. (aside from the numbing / distracting effects of hormones etc. XD) It's more a level of innate mental ability or IQ. (and IQ tests are often proven to be inaccurate as people break the rule about never taking more than one and get a different result ... but that's something else)
What you're talking about is being knowledgeable, or gaining wisdom. Becoming educated, and expanding the horizons of thought and it's application. From my point of view, cleverness has nothing to do with this, and it's insulting to _very_ cleaver, but uneducated (or "self taught") people to suggest that it does. It denies (outright) the cleverness those people have, simply because they haven't had access to (or a desire in) academic materials. Maybe they simply aren't old enough, and I've seen some _really_ cleaver children (infants, not just offspring) who take for granted things their educated parents hadn't even considered. ^_^
From the things you've said before, I am confident that _wasn't_ what you where trying to convey at all, so I wanted to point out how loaded that use can seem. ;)
I define cleverness as the prompt ability to creatively problem solve. Would you agree with that definition? Do you care to attenuate that definition for me? anyone?
Education can improve the ability to "creatively problem solve" by filling in values for variables in the equation. (or providing a "standard formula" for early stages of the problem) Which is why I suggested a "unique" problem, which I would define as being one for which there is no pre-existing standard set of equations that may help solve it, _if_ you where educated enough to be aware of them.
I think your basic definition is adequate, as just that. However, it can lead to misunderstanding when you recognise (or fail to recognise) that, even if an educated person solves "a problem" _faster_ than an uneducated one, the uneducated person _may_ actually be solving more problems to complete the entire task. This is because (s)he does not have the benefit of others experience to draw upon. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" as Sir Isaac Newton would have put it. ;) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton)
To my mind, this dose _not_ make the uneducated person _less_ "cleaver" than the educated one. Depending on the complexity of the task, the ability to solve it entirely on your own may elevate my estimation of how "cleaver" you are far _more_ than if you solved only the last part which is not included in your "education" to date. Also, at the point where one person is already educated, we can never know if they even _could_ complete the task entirely on their own merit, if they hadn't already had the benefit of that education to draw upon. Where the uneducated person (if both _do_ complete the task) clearly can. That's "cleaver". No?
bobsobol I agree with your assertion that people who are less educated could take longer because they do not have the prerequisite knowledge.
However, I would say if we assume that they are more educated in solving all sorts of problems, than that does make them more clever. You seem to want to equate their metal capacity or the speed in which they think to the word clever. I just don't see that.
To me, it seems when people say someone is clever they mean to say that person has some better solution to a problem including using some other piece of knowledge that person has. As this is the definition the general populous conforms to, I see it as the definition of the word as it's users and listeners tend to define it.
Philosophy Tube Really Olly ?.For someone who said in the trailer vid that they'll be bringing stuff on the "*cutting-edge* of philosophy" I'm a bit surprised that you'd have such a typical reaction.
The more flippant part of me wants to go like this
ua-cam.com/users/results?search_query=feel+good+inc+gorillaz+laugh
to how fairly mundane(but still nuanced) imo your response was that I'd have referred that philosofan to an article by humor writer Felix Clay www.cracked.com/blog/the-search-meaning-in-shitballs-existence/ which was surprisingly poignant for so frivolous a source.
Saying your going to not be "thinking about philosophy 'analytically' " a la Russel,Frege and Wittgenstein makes me think you have some particular fondness (or bias?) -u- for the "analytic" school that has made you possibly a bit neglectful to emotional stuff like this which while a common question to produce a multitude of feedback as you'd see on youtube would provide an opportunity for *you* a legitimate philosophy student to respond instead of letting it be categorized as "pastoral" instead of analytical,which is something I grew out of expecting from you early on.
..*someone with counselling training ~.u.~* might wanna start focusing on those "pastoral" questions from time to time when he's not telling us about what he's been learning in class..
MAN after having seen this ,would I enjoy seeing you do a video or several on Derrida and deconstruction lest you outright dismiss Postmodernism ;]
If I were to study philosophy I'd perhaps choose to go "happily crazy x} " in the combined philosophy+math degree program they have here in Hamilton,Ontario's MacMaster U .
Long live lgbtq i a
University is awful. Thinking is discouraged to make room for tedious memorization and repetition. Respect is earned through enthusiastic obedience. Creativity is smothered so that more can be standardized.
Socially, it is true that things tend to get better after high school. However, nobody should go to college with the hope or expectation to find an environment that promotes learning and exploration, because the truth will be purely disappointing.
I dunno, I think that probably depends on which one you go to. I found my high school to be as you described and uni to be fantastic, though I don't doubt that they're not all like that. The original questioner is going to Cambridge.
ive been studying philosophy on my own for about 2 years now.
i just spent 10 min trying to write something after that bahahaha i think way too much -__-
this comment will be here after i die FUCK YEA!
heeeeyyy daughter or son if your reading this, uhh if your scared of death its ok things in this universe die and are born alll the time. ill see you in the over crowded spirit world!!! bahahahaha
theres is drafrants betwean opan minded and being goliball
“There is a difference between being open minded and being gullible” What does this mean?
there is no meaning wartch rick and morty