On Jan 19, 2:52 am, ornamentalmind <[email protected]> wrote: > Twir, you have quite an appetite!
Not really; I find it all terribly daunting (just read a longish section about Heidegger in a guide to philosophy, and am as baffled as ever); but I've been feeling it's time to try to get to grips with the subject more seriously, to see what major thinkers have said about things which everyday life has forced me to think about in my own potty way. > I too started out with almost a > spiritual sense of awe when it came to pure math. Somewhere along the > line it fizzled out…most likely when I spent two weeks and 28 pages of > text learning how to literally prove that 1 + 1 = 2. . . abstract > algebra I’d guess. . . It fizzled out for me when I became obsessed with trivia: encountered set theory, formal logic, Bourbaki, category theory, general topology (that at least made some sense), but lost sight of what the subject was about. Frequently got carried away with finding nice ways to do things not very different from what you just described, essentially proving 1 + 1 = 2. That's another strand of philosophy I have to pick up (but not just yet): I have to make sense of what mathematics is, as well as making sense of my own absurd life (not the least absurd thing about it being my rather Asperger-like monomania about maths). > As to where to stop…perhaps with one’s last breath? Can't wait. :-) > [long list of names snipped] Consider me even more daunted! Can't even imagine how I'll find my way into it all. > There are countless sites online for such things and rather than > burden you with some of the heavier ones, to start, Alan Wallace might > be good. His site includes references, audio downloads and a reading > library…again, free to use. When it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, he is > near the top as I see it. He is fluent in both Tibetan and Sanskrit. > > http://www.sbinstitute.com/ Thanks, will have a look at that site tomorrow. (It's after 4 a.m., can't sleep, just checked in here to see if anyone was awake; am half- asleep, may be rambling even more than usual, but it's preferable to my own appalling company in the wee small hours.) > My personal view is that when it comes to things ontological as well > as epistemological, the ‘east’ starts beyond where many in the ‘west’ > end. Sounds very likely to me. My vague feeling about it is of needing to hang on to the part of the Western tradition that makes sense to me, and letting the Eastern ideas fill in the gaps where it doesn't. Also, mysticism seems to connect the two traditions, seems to connect all religions. But very vague about it all, as you can see. I have some strong intuitions (two, to be precise, growing since 2006), but little idea how to formulate either of them coherently. Need to learn from how other people have written intelligibly about philosophy. But definitely starting from things that puzzle me about everyday life (and mathematics), not from any desire to exhibit mastery of an abstruse and irrelevant field of academic study. On the other hand (and in spite of appearances!), something more intellectually rigorous than self-help and psychobabble (which often reads like people trying to do philosophy, but doing it very badly). Perhaps it's all about thinking like a mathematician in relation to real life (instead of turning to /that/ to exhibit mastery of an abstruse and irrelevant field of academic study). Perhaps things will make more sense in the morning. Nothing's making any sense at all now, but something really did click for me earlier today, because of all that ridiculous conflict I got into, and I have a strong sense (just not right now) that actual philosophy can result from floods of half-crazy intuitions about rather down-to-earth things like that.
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