On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

What good is evidence, why would evidence give you any indication of reality? Why would evidence have value to you? Does evidence help us gain knowledge? Well, we'd need to talk about epistemology to answer that question.The point is that you stating that philosophy is bunk using philosophy is obviously silly. One can of course, criticise the pragmatics of metaphysics, but to do so - one has to recognize that one is engaging in philosophy. Not really that unusual - Plato's method and worldview was very influential, and still is to many. It was so influential that a lot of the world almost forgot about thinking in anyway but Platonic ways. It unfortunately took until the 12th Century for some different ways of looking at the world were brought back into the scholarly discourse - and it had a rather impressive result. At least for a little while. And still doesn't. We have no way of knowing which is right, materialism or constructivism or supernaturalism or whatever. We can only make subjective calls about pragmatics - and that leads us to.. Exactly, what basis can it be rejected? On what basis can we accept that the real world exists so that it can be examined, described, and explained by science?We have to make certain assumptions about the nature of reality, even if we accept that they may be wrong. One might say that a suite of these assumptions forms a philosophical worldview - for example 'pragmatism' or 'logical positivism' - that is kind of like what Quetzal is proposing as superior to philosophy...which should strike you as kind of crazy. Well - we agree that many questions cannot be answered in any confident fashion. Descartes went all the way down to the existence of self as the only thing one can be really confident of. But you are equivocating the school of metaphysics with philosophy as a whole. As wiki points out:

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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).

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But to answer why you think it is a question better suited to empirical methods, you need to justify your position using philosophy. You'd go for a bit of empiricism and rationalism no doubt, throwing verificationism in there for good measure as well as a few other philosophical concepts. Correct. In fact, nothing has any ability to answer any questions. One needs to turn to philosophy in order to get started on asking any questions, and one might get answers that are meaningful or one might not. Bingo - that's philosophy right there. Well, at least some of it. Whether or not a question is answerless is a matter of philosophical debate, assuming it does not have an answer does that make it meaningless? Yet more philosophy. If decide they are answerable, how can we know when we have the correct answer? Philosophy. What do we do when we have what we think is the correct answer? Philosophy.It's all philosophy, all the way down I'm afraid - and everything you think about what is true, or real or a way of knowing some information...all comes under philosophy.Of course, you think that all philosophies but your own (more or less) are wrong, cannot answer questions, pose meaningless statements etc etc. However, you seem to make the mistake of thinking that you don't utilize philosophy yourself, since your way of thinking is right and everything else is silly meaningless philosophy.Think about it, you attempted to show that "what is most important to human beings?" is not a philosophical question by demonstrating how your own philosophical worldview would conclude is the best way to answer the question. How can this not strike you as strange?

It should be apparent, but the question is a question of epistemology. How does evidence help us gain knowledge? Can you answer it without engaging in epistemology? Obviously, and a more powerful example would be to look at animals that do likewise without any cultural exposure to epistemology. And a good job it is too, they have more practical things to do with their grant money. I never said it was a prerequisite to learning about the natural world. I said talking about epistemology was required to answer the question "How does evidence help us gain knowledge?". That's just silly. That's like saying that politics cannot decide policy and achieve political ends because there are many political parties. It's like saying that two scientists who disagree about what the evidence shows invalidates the field of science. Their disagreement, like it or not, could be a philosophical one. Take for example over at Talk Origins. One person thinks that there is enough evidence to call universal common descent a fact, another does not think there is enough evidence. This is a philosophical dispute about the nature and magnitude of required evidence before labelling something a fact.'Philosophy' is not intended to inform you of anything. Logical Empiricism might inform you about verificationism and falsification. On the other hand, consequantialism might inform you of the most moral course of action to take.You can't just say 'hmm, what does philosophy have to say on this subject?', you have to pick one. No - it would be like the 'gene-driven' school of evolution not being able to come to a consensus with the 'group theory' school of evolution or the 'individualistic' school of evolution and then concluding that this therefore invalidates the study of evolution. The 'gene-driven' school will never come to a consensus by definition...whether or not there are any members of this school when a consensus is arrived at. Incorrect. You are aware that verificationism cannot itself be verified, right? Added to this, some philosophical models demand that philosophical answers be verifiable or they are meaningless. Your philosophy, and my own, would seem to agree. You are assuming that X is unknowable - which requires defining what it is to be knowable. A philosophical debate in its own right. If it is unknowable then we'd probably be dealing with some kind of metaphysical argument and I would reject it as meaningless - as would you. However, not all philosophies agree on what is knowable - which means different philosophies discuss lots of things, many of which other philosophies consider unknowable. So, to you, experience (of the real) is the real. That would be the going along with the philosophy of empiricism, from wiki:

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In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

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Turns out that Johnson was engaging in philosophy. Wow, there is no philosophy as a whole. Tell the world, they need to know, crashfrog has swept it all away - only metaphysics and other philosophies (such as those that don't include verificationism) he rejects now remain.Sorry crashfrog, but what you said runs counter to everything I know so, since we are both fans of evidence, the dispute can be settled that way. Do you have any?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Let's stick with a general definition then...

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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).

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How would you be able to determine if your knowledge is extended? We need to agree on what knowledge is before we can be said to have gained
it, right? An agreed system of reasoning is a pretty good tool for justifying how and why evidence can
lead to knowledge, what we mean by knowledge etc A framework to settle questions and disputes is a pretty good definition of philosophy What disputes hasn't philosophy ever settled? It settled the
geocentrism one, for example, by arguing on the nature of the evidence,
what that means and how we can apply reason to reach conclusions about
the real world. Parsimony helped in that debate if I recall correctly. The two models worked identically, but one was vastly simpler - it did away with the superfluous entity of regression by explaining it.Should women be allowed to abort fetuses? Should we go to war? What do
we need to do to show that x is true? All philosophy I'm afraid. Perhaps you can define 'rigor' for me, and how I would know it when I
see it? Can you justify why it is a necessary or desired quality in a discipline? Well logic and reasoning and your accepted variants thereof, are derived
from useless philosophical discussions. Not everything is philosophy. That's why I said their argument
could be - it might be conceivable their dispute may over something else entirely - who knows? The forefathers of philosophy that influenced our culture and thinking to the point we don't even think about it anymore are pretty much dead so they are not arrogantly strutting around. The philosophers of today have to try and get the same post mortem appreciation - though some might get it while alive. It cannot be verified at all by any system you care to think up. Lol, the obvious rightness of empiricism. Classic gold. Arrogance indeed - your philosophy is so obviously right, it doesn't need justifying. Is seeing believing or is believing seeing? I don't believe something is real just because some part of my brain tells me it is - otherwise I'd fall for an optical illusion completely and utterly, even when I knew the 'trick'. You don't have to believe the subject is valuable if you don't want to. However, given that our entire society is built on the bones of philosophy, that your constitution is written with the blood of battles over philosophy. Ethics? Not useful. Except when we want to convince people that women shouldn't be raped, then a moral debate might be worthy. Want to have an argument, then the modes of debate of reason and of logic might be worthy.The only thing you have, in my opinion, succesfully argued against is metaphysics. And then only just, and probably only because I already agreed with you anyway. If the evidence you have presented so far is all the evidence you currently have then you have no evidence - only argument.Philosophy is bunk indeed! Cast your point into the flames and be done with it - your argument just refuted itself.

If you were still confused let's expand Hume's quote:

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The existence, therefore, of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded entirely on experience. If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits. It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another. Such is the foundation of moral reasoning, which forms the greater part of human knowledge, and is the source of all human action and behaviour.
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When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion

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You can read the whole section at your leisure here. Basically he says: here is my idea on how we can know anything about any entity, if we accept this idea, then the conclusion must be that abstract metaphysics and theology are sophistry and illusion. The 'volumes' he was speaking of are books in libraries that have been metaphorically overrun by people who are persuaded of Hume's principles.

Great, empiricism and rationalism. Logical Empiricism. That's a philosophical position by the way. Some people actually disagree with you, and will say that knowledge is only gained when it has entered into the soul or some nonsense. You intend to relatively quantify something you haven't defined? Yet both of us agree that Aristotle's view is better than Plato's right? And we both have good reasons for that opinion. It's like Lamarckism: we have good reasons to prefer Darwinism to it. They are still at loggerheads as schools of thought, it's just that there are few if any Lamarckists around any more. And yet geocentrism can still be used to give predictions about the solar system. Galileo et al were able to demonstrate a more parsimonious model which is the preferred one since as logical empiricists we generally accept the philosophical principle of parsimony, and one that could explain a wider variety of observations (which makes it a stronger theory according to the philosophy of science). The scientists get full credit for demonstrating heliocentrism as a better model, that we are able to define it as 'better' is thanks to philosophers. As science progressed, heliocentrism simply became even better looking until it was just simply impossible to be an empiricist and refuse heliocentrism. Much of our disagreement stems from the fact that you are using a different meaning of the word 'philosophy' that you think is the modern sense of the word, which seems to me to be idealism or metaphysics in general. Do you have any evidence that this is the modern sense of the word and not simply used in a derisive fashion. There's that word again. What is rigor and why is it a good thing? OK, show me, or describe to me, an empirical test that verifies verificicationism? Explain. Nobody can detect what you say is obviously valid. However, logical empiricism, the philosophy, can use good reason, consistent logic and other strong argument to state why it is valid and an accurate way of describing reality.
It isn't obviously accurate at all. I even have evidence for this - look at those religions that think it obvious that 'reality' is an illusion. They might agree that empiricism does a good job of describing some of this illusion, but it could not describe the illusion, nor reality. 1) Not everyone 'knows' it is true. You certainly think it is true, how can you know it to be true? It could in principle be false, and you would therefore be wrong. Logical empiricists solve this this with the principle of the tentativity of knowledge, but you reject philosophy so how do you do it?
2) 'Philosophy' cannot justify anything. It doesn't make sense to ask it. The schools within the field of philosophy all attempt to justify themselves and their conclusions. One cannot justify something using 'philosophy', one could use logical positivism or coherantism or theological perspectivism or the categorical imperative to justify something, however. You've not actually posited any evidence have you? A debate between philosophers I suppose is evidence...and there isn't any dispute there other than the fact that 'philosophy' itself is not a method of learning about something, a philosophical position can lead to learning about something, whatever 'something' happens to be. That two people with differing philosophical positions disagree isn't evidence of anything but what I have been saying...there are different positions in philosophy. We can't say which one is right, but we can prefer one to another (you go for logical empiricism of some flavour for example, as do I).Is there any other evidence you have presented - I thought you mostly were employing rhetoric. You are attempting to show how something that looks like logical positivism or empiricism is a better way of examining the world than something like theological perspectivism. That's a philosophical debate right there.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I found an interesting adaptation of Russell's work. It begins with the problems inherent in defining philosophy. Then it goes on to examining philosophy and its relationship with science. It kind of answers one of the criticisms that people have levelled at philosophy:

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When we look at the history of philosophy it appears that philosophy never attains final conclusions about anything. Even though philosophy takes its subject-matter both from our everyday experience and the sciences, it constantly remains on the level of conceptual analysis, critical examination, new ideas, and so time and again fails to produce definitive "positive results". Russell admits that philosophy is not very much successful in providing "definite answers" to its questions but explains the apparent inconclusiveness of philosophic answers partly as deceptive, partly as inevitable:

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(a) "Those questions that are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answers can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy." Philosophic questions can turn into scientific truths. In other words, many scientifically established truths have started as philosophic questions, but once they received definite answers they get moved to the realm of science. If one is not familiar with the historical development of science and does not know that its many questions originated in philosophy s/he may think that philosophers have been doing philosophy over two thousand years without being able to produce anything valuable ("positive results"). But this impression of perpetually continuing futility would be a very deceptive impression.

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Might this be a different, more productive springboard from which to dive into the subject?

Pornography can be defined, especially if you were going to quantify it. "How much pornography do you have?" "Oh! About 50GB" Are SETI quantifying intelligence? Actually it can give accurate predictions (where Mars will be in the night sky, for example). It just can't predict as many things as heliocentrism (the phases of Venus, for example). Well I'm not going to agree or disagree with that. However, you use philosophical concepts and so you must think that verificationism is either fallacious or tautological. How do we know that any given principle or technique based upon a principle is able to discern between truth and fiction reliably, without circular reasoning? Thankfully, it was philosophers that developed the principles of verification and falsification, empiricism and positivism and the subsequent rejection of metaphysics and theology. But don't let that get in your way It wasn't empiricism it was verificationism, look back and you'll see: If you didn't know what I meant by it, why didn't you just look it up? wiki -

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a criterion for meaningfulness that requires a non-analytic, meaningful sentence to be either verifiable or falsifiable

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The point is that culture determines what we consider 'obvious'...if we look at the history of human thought, what was considered 'obvious' about the nature of reality has changed considerably.I'm not sure why you think that none of them thinks that it is obvious. It has been part of their cultural religion for a long time. Mystics tend to become so because knowing of Maya, they seek to pierce the veil. To do that requires years of meditation or other rituals and learning etc. If you'd like we could try something more familiar to both of us: some people think it is obvious that a transcendal deity exists and that it created the universe as a temporary holding place for humans, after which we will find ourselves in an eternal realm of paradise or hell.I don't think that is particularly obvious at all, but people absorb their culture quite readily and believe that the cultural conclusions are 'obvious'. That humans have differing views on what is obvious should be...ahem...obvious. Given that philosophers are human, it is natural that this tendency is reflected there. To Bohr it was obvious the universe had at its heart a probabilistic core...it was not obvious to Einstein. Well yes, but don't confuse that with meaning that philosophy is a single methodology. There are different ways of thinking, different questions that can be asked. Different frameworks within which to answer them. There are different schools of thought within science, eventually one becomes more accepted or even universal - and this happens within the field of philosophy too. I know, but you've acted like this is a problem. You can't tell me that Logical Positivism/Empiricism is a right philosophy despite the fact that you have basically been arguing its superiority. You speak on about how philosophy can't decide these things, which means your philosophy can't decide which philosophy is right either. That doesn't mean you don't have a philosophy, and it doesn't discount your philosophy. If pushed, I'm sure you can successfully defend the philosophical principles that you clearly believe are superior to the principles you reject. However you cannot prove your philosophy is right, because to do so requires philosophy -which as you pointed out, cannot (by its very nature) resolve the issue. Philosophy has a lot of uses. One use would be in learning about stuff. You posit that in order to consider something as being a true statement we must be able to verify it, it must be coherent and we have to define knowledge in a way which takes into account the tentativity of what we can say we know. It might seem obvious to you, but for the majority of human history people didn't think this way. Sure, those ideas were more or less taken into consideration here and there, but not in a formal or exclusive way. Humans honestly thought it obvious that there were other ways that we could gain knowledge - and many humans thought (and some still think) that these other ways are superior to empirical methods and that were verification should be adhered to it should empirical knowledge being verified by spooky knowledge (eg., where empirical knowledge contradicts say, theological knowledge, empirical knowledge is fiction).It took a lot of philosophical debate to get humanity in the position where a significant number of people can agree that the principles argued by empiricists have significant merit and should be employed exclusively as a means to learning about the world we inhabit. And to the surprise of many, this philosophical debate continues to this day! Fortunately, despite the fact that philosophy cannot tell us which side we are on, we are still able to decide which side is superior.Another use is to try to discuss questions about which we cannot currently get answers to, but which we may one day be able to. Take consciousness for example. Dan Dennett is known for discussing this as a philosopher, and he has put up a philosophical argument, which I think is very strong, criticising certain methods of dealing with question that have been proposed. He looks at the field of neuroscience and tries to argue where scientists should be looking and what kind of theories might be proposed, and what a theory of consciousness would have explain, and what a pointless theory would look like.Philosophy is quite useful when it comes to trying to get to grips with what it is exactly we are trying to explain, what an explanation will have to include to be defined as an adequate explanation and so on and so forth.We can have confidence in the conclusions and ideas reached by philosophy - you have been showing confidence in some of those very ideas. How much confidence we can have, is up to the individual. I have quite a lot of confidence in empiricism, but not everybody does. I can think them fools, but I cannot 'prove' them wrong.

Does that mean you think that abolition, emancipation of women, freedom of man all that kind of thing, have not meaningfully contributed to human problems?

Perhaps we can deal with some of the particulars later. Let's see if we can't boil this down. First off, I'd like to see you define philosophy as best as you are able - or provide something from an online source you agree with.With regards to verificationism, I talked about it because you said that one of the weaknesses in what I'll call philosophy_crash (whatever that is) is that it lacks the ability to verify something. I mentioned verificationism (the principle that underpins the idea that verification is needed for something to be meaningful) and it's own logical weakness (that it cannot be verified). I gave you a definition and advised you look it up. If you think it is an issue that Firefox's default dictionary does not know the word, I present to you the mighty Therapsid classification.You say that philosophers encouraged people to get all mystical, and that naturally they are empiricists. That requires evidence but I can counter the claim with evidence of my own. First philosophers are people, so in fact people encouraged people that empiricism was childish in your statement. Further, the human brain is fallible. A human brain, that is not trained otherwise, will come to conclusions about the world based on their own personal observation. This leads to superstition and confirmation bias, and leads to a further observation: Other people have reached different conclusions, so who is right?How do I convince someone that dancing widdershins does not increase the bounty of the hunt, but that the true way is to go into a trance? In my experience trances have increased the bounty, but in his widdershins dancing works. Perhaps both do? Perhaps neither do? We need a system of telling truth from fiction. Voila - philosophy.Being infallible they got it very wrong for so long. Things that appeared self-evident to people turned out not to be after they were critically examined. We got better at understanding what we mean by 'truth' and 'fiction' and we got better at developing ways and means to get at it. Not all people were investigating this at this deep level - some where happy appeasing the gods they thought must obviously exist because in their experience, sacrificing to them had a perceived benefit.Anyway, then a great swathe of humanity got infected with a terrible parasite called christianity which managed to get state backing and a 'think like us or die' mentality which set back honest enquiry into the proceedings by centuries. It still went on, much to the chagrin of The Church (and it went on in other regions that were not so infected). Philosophers kept working on other systems of knowledge, and a proto-scientific method managed to get a foothold based on the works of Greek philosophers, as well as Arabian knowledge, in the 12th Century. Unfortunately the Arabian investigation was severely hampered by a mutated form of the christianity virus and that set them back massively. Then as proto-science advanced new discoveries were made that challenged The Church and the philosophical arguments that ensued managed to weaken the strain of christianity towards a more moderate variant (eventually). As science started getting to what we would now see as science, there was a dispute over induction and how science should deal with it. The logical positivists were seen by some to lead to science with too much induction in it, leading to unsound theories, Popper came along and proposed falsification and the philosophy of science took its latest major philosophical move into analytical philosophy. The hypotheses that were developed according to the new worldview were more sound, and older theories were able to be dismissed as not being falsifiable in any practical way (how falsifiable is another philosophical discussion of course).So - that's a ridiculously rapid overview of philosophy from my perspective and hopefully that might help you understand what I am talking about. It's history is not one of getting to the 'obvious' answer right away but of thousands of years of thought. Much of that thought is tosh, but it was a necessary path unfortunately.Philosophy_crash sounds terribly pointless, and I wouldn't bother defending it. Even if you don't think it is an accurate or correct description, do you think that philosophy_mod is equally pointless?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

So your position then is that people can act without first having an idea?

I'm still curious about this modern definition. I went to modernphilosophy.com which is authored by a modern philosopher. He says that

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Modern philosophers have to use their intellect without denying their intuition; they have to stand on the solid foundation of science, while straining to see from as high a vantage-point as possible; they have to look objectively, while acknowledging their subjectivity, and they have to be discriminating and open-minded at the same time. Above all, philosophy, like science, is about finding the truth, whether we like it or not.

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Modern philosophers have to ensure their words and works are accessible. If they can’t communicate their ideas simply and elegantly they need to go back and study them until they can. The obscure, the irrelevant, and the impenetrable, have no value in modern philosophy.

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So modern philosophy is about standing on the shoulders of giants and looking for interesting new avenues of research. Sounds like something someone who just completed a piece of original research to the satisfaction of their peers just did. Regardless of any perceived dishonesty, I think the modern PhD along with the modern definition of philosophy work together rather well.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You misunderstand. When you try and discover a way to distinguish truth from fiction you are engaging in philosophy. We finally arrived at the system we have, it took a lot of thought - and a lot of dispute. Yes they were, I'm afraid. Remember epistemology? Part of epistemology are the criteria of truth.

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In epistemology, criteria of truth (or tests of truth) are standards and rules used to judge the accuracy of statements and claims. They are tools of verification. Understanding a philosophy's criteria of truth is fundamental to a clear evaluation of that philosophy. This necessity is driven by the varying, and conflicting, claims of different philosophies. The rules of logic have no ability to distinguish truth on their own. An individual must determine what standards distinguish truth from falsehood. Not all criteria are equally valid. Some standards are sufficient, while others are questionable.

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Which is what I have been saying. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Says me and says philosophers. When you want to know what science is, you ask scientists. Yet when you want to know what philosophy is, you stick to your own opinions. Genius.Philosophy cannot say, for definite, what is true or false. Many years of thinking about the subject has given us ideas about criteria with which to judge the truth of a proposition. The point is that nothing gives us a way of knowing what is definitely true and what is definitely false, and that part of philosophy concerns itself with trying to explore different ways to discriminate - and to argue their various strengths and weaknesses. I showed you something which says that part of philosophy is about how to verify certain statements (since logic alone cannot do this). I'm fairly sure it actually confirms the areas we already agreed about, and where we disagree with one another, it confirms things in my favour. However, feel free to wave it away with six words - it really shows the strength of your argument.Since you simply said 'your quotation' I can only assume that you are yet again not investigating the matter for yourself by, you know, looking things up. Let me quote further from the page. Feel free to continue denying reality, people are being entertained by it:

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There are three "primary truths" inherently accepted in the investigation of knowledge and truth. They are the first fact (the fact of our existence), the first principle (the principle of non-contradiction) and the first condition (the ability of the mind to know truth). They cannot be validated with positive proof, as they are an inherent in every analysis. As a demonstration of their a priori nature, a person objecting to these essential truths cannot set a standard of proof without implicitly accepting the premises.

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Agreed?

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Coherence refers to a consistent and overarching explanation for all facts. To be coherent, all pertinent facts must be arranged in a consistent and cohesive fashion as an integrated whole. The theory which most effectively reconciles all facts in this fashion may be considered most likely to be true. Coherence is the most potentially effective test of truth because it most adequately addresses all elements. The main limitation lies not in the standard, but in the human inability to acquire all facts of an experience.

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Why do we consider theories to be probably true? Because of the criterion of coherence. Shock horror - a criteria of truth inherent in that pointless waste of time that we both use to justify the theory of evolution's validity at least once a month around here. Damn philosophy.

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Strict consistency is when claims are connected in such a fashion that one statement follows from another. Formal logic and mathematical rules are exemplary examples of rigorous consistency.

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Oh my god. Another criterion of truth that you have been arguing for in this very thread - you'd never have thought crashfrog was a lover of epistemology!

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If an idea works then it must be true, to the Pragmatist.

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"Empiricism justifies empiricism", I assume because you think it works...a criterion of truth. Epistemology...philosophy.You can, if you want, just deny this. You can say it is not so. You can say that nobody ever needed to think of this, and nobody needed to argue this etc etc, if you'd like. It's actually quite funny how remarkable your denial is - almost like you really really want philosophy to be discredited and the reality of the matter is unimportant. Out of interest though, do you have any argument of substance? Have you actually done any research on the matter? Is this just an inherent bias because of how much philosophy students got laid even though they seemed to be talking bollocks when you were investigating truths and getting no action? I really am interested why you are so invested in this.Or alternatively you can just snap out of it and we'd all have a little more respect for you. Your call.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.