History of Philosophy

[Dingbat]

History of Philosophy

Here is an interesting podcast that follows the development of Western Philosophy and Islamic Philosophy. It is pretty interesting and I am quite enjoying the pre-Socratic philosopher podcasts. Figured I would share it with everyone.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

It is pretty interesting and I am quite enjoying the pre-Socratic philosopher podcasts. Figured I would share it with everyone.

Indeed; the pre-Platonic philosophers are extremely interesting- particularly the Eleatic monists and Heraclitus. Parmenedes' argument is extremely sophisticated (not to mention being posed in an awesome poem), and anticipates a very technical problem in analytic philosophy (that of negative existential statements), and the Zenonian paradoxes of motion are sort of mind-blowing (they remained essentially unanswered/unanswerable until the discovery of the calculus, and even then, they force us to admit some bizarre presuppositions about motion and change- for instance, that when we travel from one point to another, we traverse all of an infinite amount of intervals of that instance, and do so successively , but that there is no first or last interval, the traversal of which sees us begin or end our journey).

 

[Dingbat]

Indeed; the pre-Platonic philosophers are extremely interesting- particularly the Eleatic monists and Heraclitus. Parmenedes' argument is extremely sophisticated (not to mention being posed in an awesome poem), and anticipates a very technical problem in analytic philosophy (that of negative existential statements), and the Zenonian paradoxes of motion are sort of mind-blowing (they remained essentially unanswered/unanswerable until the discovery of the calculus, and even then, they force us to admit some bizarre presuppositions about motion and change- for instance, that when we travel from one point to another, we traverse all of an infinite amount of intervals of that instance, and do so successively , but that there is no first or last interval, the traversal of which sees us begin or end our journey).

Indeed, the I just listened to the Zenonian podcast last night and it was a real mindjob in regards to his paradoxes. Quite fascinating. Makes me feel like I missed out on quite a bit with my intro Philosophy course. I really enjoyed the course but I don't feel I pulled much out of it. It has been much more interesting to get back into it on my own without a need for test studying.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Indeed, the I just listened to the Zenonian podcast last night and it was a real mindjob in regards to his paradoxes. Quite fascinating. Makes me feel like I missed out on quite a bit with my intro Philosophy course.

Yeah, you're not going to cover presocratic philosophy in an Intro course most of the time.

I really enjoyed the course but I don't feel I pulled much out of it. It has been much more interesting to get back into it on my own without a need for test studying.

I can see that; class is stressful. And its only work if someone else is making you do it, right? Anyways, if you're interested in Zeno, here's a discussion of a slightly different take on his dichotomy paradox from a while back (i.e. the first/last interval bit I mentioned)- Zeno's Dichotomy.