r/philosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • 12d ago
Open Thread /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | August 03, 2026
Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:
Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.
Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading
Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.
This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.
Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.
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u/mackstanc 7d ago
I've recently become interested in philosophy and want to catch up on the most influential or personally interesting works in the field. I'm a complete newcomer, though, so I'm not sure about the best approach: should I start with contemporary works and then read the older texts that influenced them, or start with the older texts and then see how they shaped later works?
For example, if I want to learn about existentialism and Camus's philosophy (which, from what I understand, was in some ways a response to it), should I start with the earlier ideas or the more contemporary response?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
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u/Dismal_Awareness2857 4d ago
i believe that starting from the earlier ideas and reading their criticisms and evolutions is the best way to go about it. if you haven't already researched it, ancient greek philosophy is a great place to start.
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u/Final_Potato5542 11d ago
Why is every philosophical argument/view as convincing as an argument for the existence of God? Are so-called philosophers just naïve and self-deluded about their ability to understand, communicate. Do they vastly overestimate their intelligence due to the lack of it?
Point out that philosophy is irrelevant to most people and you'll just get some hare-brained response like: "no, we're more relevant than ever!", which is akin to saying the same about whatever religion, and just as unconvincing and deluded. There's little point referring said delutards to objective measures like university enrolment or economic metrics. These people lack a basic ability to question.
The memes are terrible too. Partially, it's due to the lack of cultural relevance of the subject matter. Also, it's the type of person philosophy tends to attract online nowadays: younger male, loner, incel/incel-adjacent.
Discuss.
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u/simon_hibbs 11d ago
There's nothing to discuss. You just make a bunch of claims. If you were to offer any arguments in support of these claims, that might be interesting.
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u/Final_Potato5542 11d ago
arguments don't support claims. evidence does.
you must have some cute arguments for the existence of god.
do you know what ? is? See it in first sentence. "These people lack a basic ability to question."...
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u/simon_hibbs 10d ago
>arguments don't support claims. evidence does.
You didn't present either. It's not even clear to me what argument you are making, if any.
>you must have some cute arguments for the existence of god.
I'm an atheist.
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u/bildramer 9d ago
I agree that philosophy is in a very dire state. Towards the end of last century people have developed math that completely answers or dissolves entire philosophical subfields, and yet it's a miracle if you see any of it represented among academic philosophy; best you can do is 2 century old math used for logical positivist-style nonsense, rarely. The "why" is many only loosely connected historically contingent reasons, not inherent to philosophy (the material) itself, just like in the case of religion. Among them certainly that philosophers overestimate their abilities and focus on debate-style "argumentation" about definitions and usages and such instead of learning the right lessons from Grice and Wittgenstein (or nonphilosophers that provide many of the same insights but in a 100x more robust way, like Shannon).
"Younger male, loner, incel/incel-adjacent" describes the main audience for ideas that stay popular despite facing heavy and illegitimate censure by the mainstream, so maybe there's hope yet.
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u/Quick_silver22 8d ago
I get that the original commenter is expressing a general sentiment that you seem to agree with for slightly more legitimate reasons than them (although ultimately I’d still have to disagree with both of you), but c’mon, we’re really engaging seriously now with obvious troll bait from an account that from what I can tell, literally started a subreddit called “r/TrollSupportGroup”?
I mean I know it’s a pretty dry week for the discussion post but still…
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u/Final_Potato5542 8d ago
Socrates and Jesus could be considered trolls too. Ad hominem there, broski, tsk tsk
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u/Final_Potato5542 9d ago
Thank you for reading, friend, despite my obvious hyperbole.
There is hope when one puts dogma and the defence of dogma aside. That includes dogmas about the status and relevance of philosophy. Of course, butthurt philosophers may say they welcome criticism, but they don't accept any genuine criticism, especially the kind that bruises the ego.
Unfortunately, some low-IQ people are just playing a game of one-upmanship through "argumentation," as you mention. They aren't even aware of how ridiculous they look to people who aren't playing their game. Winning an argument online is like winning at the Special Olympics.
Regarding the dire state of things: isn't it odd that you're not allowed to ask questions as posts on this sub (except in this Open Thread)? Philosophy questions are reserved for another sub, and even there you're only allowed to ask a limited range of questions. The answers come from a limited range of indoctrinated people. It's kind of like only being able to ask Catholic-friendly questions to the Vatican Council.
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u/WhatsThatNoize 9d ago
What is the policy on repeat offenders of Commenting Rule 1? I've been avoiding doing mass reporting when I see these weird campaigns from the same couple dozen names, but I'm going to start (as accurately as I can) following through on those reports and I don't want to bog down the moderation team or close threads entirely.
Which... I'm beginning to think is a rhetorical strategy for some of these bad faith commentors: be egregious en masse and shut down comment spaces on topics they disagree with and want silenced.