Can people here tell the difference between philosophy and new-age bunk?

Question

Mommyman: I can a make clever sounding and carefully worded statement in physics, but it doesn't automatically make it a legitimate questions.
Philosophy doesn't try to make things clearer by sinking another mist on the matter at hand.

Imagine: Philosophy is a concerted attempt to ask definite questions in the hope of reasoning towards an answer. It also sets parameters so as not to make its questions fall into generalisations. Vague statements are the bread and butter of religion and babble.

Joe, everything is philosophy can be interpreted another way; I think many things are capable of being philosophically looked at, but making gibberish statements about things does not constitute philosophy. It only shows human curiosity.

In general people abuse the fluid nature of philosophy to read every abstracted half-baked idea they might have into it. No other subjects, bar psychology and sociology are subjected this abuse and defilement.

Imagine: it's difficult to insist upon rigour without being labelled a plodding empiricist or someone with the proverbial 'closed mind'. Sure enough lateral thinking is employed in both philosophy and physics to bridge difficult gaps, but asking questions like: if you were a lightbulb, what wattage would you be? Is not philosophy.

Mommyman: I can never tell who shares my philosophy. I don't even have a fixed philosophy.
I would say that some questions ARE illegitimate. Asking if the mind is like a strawberry jelly is definitely illegitimate. This is at best bad linguistic philosophy.

Imagine: I drew the example out of nowhere. I don't know Barabara whats-her-name, I don't live in America. What I mean is that is the level of some pseudo questions.

Teryy, I have to agree. The problem is that people feel R&S and mythology has less profundity so they choose to label what they say 'philosophy' and it adds prestige.

Sorry, misspelt your name.

Imagine, Be careful though using the word metaphyisics. Even Hume had a metaphysics and he was notoriously anti-sophist. Kant, as a metaphysician, was supreme. I don't accept his entire conclusions, but I would never doubt his sincere attempt to remain rigorous.

You can't just take the word metaphysics and use it to describe anything.

Scots Pines: I read all responses, however long, thanks for responding. Hating a degenerate culture like ours, as I do sometimes, and despising the fact that belief in ameliorating our world has been cashed in for ameliorating your own penthouse, does not make a case for infecting philosophy with what is not philosophy. The sixties generation conformed to what was there in the sixties. Adn by the way, I do know a sackbutt player, but he might not be a virtuoso.

Imagine: And so we agree to disagree, and that's OK. I favour Hume's approach and not the awakening he prompted in Kant. But that's not to say I disregard it as philosophy. You see, I'm not as obtuse as I initially appear!

Yaoi: Of course I'm being rhetorical, sometimes it's the only to get a response and I like to hear reasons.
There are folks asking and answering real philosophical questions and you are one of them, but many are not.

I think that's a fair point Gee. Mathematics is another category (even if it blends with one branch of philosophy). I sometimes think they are either placed in a popular category to elicit a response or through sheer negligence.

Answer 1

Apparently not.

I have to agree. Looking at alot of the Q&A's that are being posted speaks volumes to that point. Sophistry and irrelevance is rampant.

[edit] When I used the term irrelevance, I was referring to questions that clearly have nothing to do with philosophy. A question I saw yesterday asked (I am approximating):
"what is 1.6392754 times 1.57129462"
Now I ask you, what in the world does a question like this have to do with philosophy? I was under the impression that the categories in Y/A existed for a reason.

Answer 2

Well, if you want to start playing with semantics...what's the difference between the two?

Edit: I only asked what you thought the difference was, because the way you worded your question indicated to me that you have already written off new age beliefs (which could be called "philosophies") as "bunk". I happen to think that there's definitely room in our thought processes to embrace some of the so-called "new age" tenets...it certainly can't hurt.

Oracle: The lightbulb question isn't part of the new age tenet either...it's a banal Barbara Walters interview question. Admittedly, the term "new age" is a cheesy throwback to "hippies" and "free love", and unfortunately has stuck with us for some reason. I prefer the term "metaphysics" anyway...which, according to the American Heritage dictionary, is defined as: "The branch of PHILOSOPHY that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value".

Oracle: I agree 100%. Kant was genius. His assertion to "know what OUGHT to be done, if the will is free, if there is a God and if there is a future world", has been the basis for my attraction to metaphysics. Strangely enough though, early on, he credited Hume with his "awakening"

Answer 3

If philosophy is the study of understanding... then there is no such thing as new age bunk. If you choose not to try and understand what you call new age bunk... then you yourself can not understand the difference between your two subjects.
No matter what the question is... somewhere there is someone trying to understand something.

Added:
No question is illigitimate. It is always asked for some reason... either for serious contemplation or for humor of some sort.
By the way... why didn't you single out Gee... is it because he shares your philosophy?

Answer 4

The main difference should be that philosophy should have the rigger of formal logic and methodical thinking.

However, much here does not show that....

New age is more like religion which will allow very large leaps without question. The new age questions and answers should be in R&S or mythology.

Answer 5

Aristotle said, "All men by nature desire to know (Aristotle - Metaphysics, Book I).”

If we desire to know, then we desire to know the truth. Also from Aristotle, "philosophy should be called knowledge of truth" (Aristotle - Metaphysics, Book II).

If these kids desire to know the truth, no matter how far their question strays from the possiblility of getting a truthful answer, they desire to know the truth in some way. Thus, they are practicing philosophy. Didn't they teach you everything is philosophy? Or did you forget that fact by studying too much?

Edit: I guess if you pointed out an example of this gibberish, I could better understand your point. I was trying to avoid philosophy being confined to one definition, as Bertrand Russell limits philosophy by calling it an intellectual pursuit, and as I just did by calling it knowledge of truth to prove my point.

Answer 6

Some can tell the difference and you know it by the quality of the propositions they use. As for the new age bunk, I answered one of those with some equally stupid idea of my own, to demonstrate the stupidity of the question. The questioner must have gotten the hint--she chose mine as the best answer,

Answer 7

I can, although I do not accept it as "bunk" ... I do not happen to be in touch with my "new age" friends and quite frankly I miss them ......even though they were a little spacey & unsound in their thinking, especially financially .....

**They were followed by a whole school of Yuppies who discovered that their school blazers brought in the jobs better than wearing flower power clothes and they had to admit that having enough money to raise their families (a basic urge, don't you know !!! ) took precedence over living in a fairy tale ...

**Basically, the new age belonged in the masses to younger people who did have the money to drop out of society, but soon discovered that cold water in the bathroom was not tons of fun, that they had to get to work themselves or face going on welfare (NOT part of the new age philosophy) ..... and then they were followed by a stream of hard-talking, pushy, materialistic kids who would not even look at flowers in your hair, beautiful clothes, long hair, or natural medicine ... $$$$ was the name of the game, and quite frankly, by now ( the year 2007) it is BORING !!!! Football stars and their clothing lines .... you know, no self-respecting new-age person would conform the way today's people conform ....they wear designer jeans, T-shirts with messages, they belong to the same .....I mean, unless you have a streak of rebelliion in you, I don't think it is possible to perceive what a bunch of conformists we have with us today It is so stable today!!! I mean, the weekend after a new movie was played in the theaters across the US, already $23 million was the gross take just for the weekend......it is quite unthinkable that people have so much to spend on the most unromantic, unpoetic, un spiritual, unmystical, non-nirvana producing JUNK .... I mean, where are our IDEALS???

Good grief! It has not changed for years. And all these little kids wanting to scream on TV and call it singing. They are even less attractive than the new age kids. Gardening is nice and neat these days: you can even buy big collections of wild flowers to plant on purpose in your garden! Clothes are stable: everybody wears junk. Movie stars are all bleach junkies !!! (and Ugly .....they are so UGLY !!!) I wonder what is about to happen?

The New Age carried with it a breath of fresh air which aroused a certain amount of jealousy among traditionalists, especially in the church and in education. It also generated a lot of out-of-the-way business in ways that reminded people of things in the world picture that were not generally a part of mass culture: crystals, incense, trips to Asia, flowers, ethnic clothes, imports from all over - especially that involved hand-work, all sorts of do-it-yourself activities like cutting your own hair, sewing your own clothes, picking herbs by the side of the lane for your medicinal teas, buildiing your own houses, publishing your own books .... I mean it was hard on business {for ref.to all this, see The Whole Earth Catalogue}...and we had stored named things that the West had never seen before ~ or since ~ like "Nirvana" or "The First Bardo" or "Christal's Crystals" .... it had a mystique and a playfulness, that .....most unfortunately ......we as a society could not afford.

And we had songs like, "I gotta be me" and "All you need is love" and ...... hehe...

The problem was, of course, since education was practically thrown out the window, things like classical arts were not very popular. Toe shoes and matters Aquarian do not mix ---- and how much of a career can you have playing the dulcimer? And I don't know ANYBODY who got rich playing wind chimes.

Although --- to be sure, a lot of rebellion has the benefit of finding out-of-the-way modes of expression and I am willing to back down on this but I do think that the whole movement towards playing music on the original instruments (really quire a nice development, although a lot of the musicians are still a little rough, technically - I mean, do you know any sackbutt virtuosos?) might have sprung up out of a refusal on the part of hippies to take on the classic disciplines of playing the violin, the piano, and goodness knows, who would conduct an orchestra, become a ballet dancer (they even eschewed 'modern dance' - it requires long years of work !!!!) or design a skyscraper, or make a big business out of importing lace from Italy?

So I think that for a time ~ before completely surrendering to a society structured on sex (which was snuck in a sleeping bag at one time) which equalled family, food, shelter, education, and (yawn) the tv .... before surrendering to that, I think the under-30 generation stuck to easier music, easier instruments, and macrame ..... I know I am rambling, but ....hehehe .....I had too much for lunch and I am sleepy, a not very "new age" person, am I !!!!

Those things like finance, art & design, cuisine, farming, and heavy industry are all specialties of the money-oriented.....and eventually .....(sob): ....no more beautiful clothes, no more guys with long blonde curly hair, no more sandals, no more tents imported from Tibet, no more girls with beautiful clothes and jewelry and ONLY black eyeliner (and lots of it) for make-up, no more bio-feedback, no more mediation classes, no more Indian bed-spreads on the walls .....oh GRUMBLES .... it is all GONE !!!

I mean, today you can see the MOST beautiful clothes from, say Valentino, a Parisian designer, and all that stuff .....but even the mainstream cannot afford that .....as for colors, so much today is black, gray and puce. The fashion models look like painted skeletons, and tough muffs. And religion is boring again. No one has a Findhorn Garden and consorts with Devas and warns the fairies that live in the gorse bushes that you are thinking of moving the bushes and would that be alright with them, please? Today is so ....so.....BORING!

And the kids have figured out how to fake being a great performer: they have figured out how to imitate a sound in music. You see, if you are clever and listen carefully, you too can sound like Glenn Gould. So we have no really great musicians (save a few who can't help themselves) but we have (in opera, say - with few exceptions, since Sutherland {an original if there ever was one} is retired, we have a bunch of little girls running around making all the right sounds but who, in fact, are not divas: they are counterfeits. There IS a difference.

The one last ditch effort that I saw to save the new age, that was a bridge between the hippie society / new age society and "civilized man", was the clothing of Perry Ellis who got the younger business men an extention-in-time by giving us (for the guys ....I root for them !!!) the new vision of nice loose pleated slacks, boat-mocs and those nice tweed jackets with the ends of the sleeve turned up so far that you could (on purpose) see the jacket lining. But, after he passed away, there were no more rebels. Not at that level, not for that income bracket.

I am AMAZED at how hard the door shut after that. SLAM !!!! Suddenly, the whole clothing scene was the most dreary, inexpensive (except for Italian imported shoes) mail-order lines of knits you ever saw in shades of gray, dark plum, and khaki if not positively avocado green and sepia. I HATED it.

But I FINALLY figured out why: The hippie life-style neither approves of contraceptives (since doctors are too expensive, and all those birth control concoctions from the Barbados are not fool-proof, much less safe) NOR......goodness knows......nor do they approve of unexpected children who strain beyond tolerance an already sketchy household budget ....(huh? what is a 'household budget") .....and people started coming down very hard on irresponsible hippies who had kids but could not take care of them........see: it limited your ... uh ... your love life, and since there is NOTHING worth that...............................THAT WAS THE END OF THE NEW AGE !!!!!!!!!!!

***I don't know that it is not a part of the overall philosophy of life so I'll say:

** no - I can't tell the difference since to me "new age bunk" IS a school of philosophy