Lesson Plan · 7:40pm Jul 29th, 2019
Dear Bronies and Pegasisters,
as of today, I'm planning out for the next project, is a sort of continuation on Discord Teaching Philosophy. This time, however, I thought that maybe it would be a prudent move to go for a more anthology where it's made up of a series of small stories with a thin common thread. I thought that it would be best to have Discord teach one character at a time, as well as teaching others then just the Student six. So what I have below is a rough draft of the lesson plan. Keep in mind, there's no particular order in how it'll go, but rather a rough blueprint of what I'm going to be tackling. If you think that maybe there could be other philosophers that would give a perspective on these lessons or perhaps a different character that might be in need of wisdom, feel free to give your suggestions in the comments.
Signed,
- CrackedInkWell.
Sandbar - On Fate and Free Will (Dealing with cutie marks? Do points have a choice in what they can or can’t be?)
Smolder - On Life and Death (possibly afterlife? Cost of longevity?)
Silverstream - Should Power Belong to the Few or Many?
Yona - What’s the point of Spirituality?
Gallus - On Envy and Jealousy
Ocellus - On Identity and the Self
Twilight - On Balance of Governing.
Applejack - Why do nice people lie? Why does dishonesty exist?
Rainbow - On Bad Faith (Sartre)
Rarity - What Luxury Couldn’t Buy (Epicurus? Diogenes?)
Fluttershy - Why others are mean?
Pinkie Pie - On Cheerful Sadness.
Starlight - If worse comes to worse.
Discord - Know thy Self. A Philosophical mediation
Awesome
I approve!
Now I'll get some popcorn and... where did the chocolate milk go?
Hmm
I'm not entirely sure that is was Empedocles that said this, but I feel like this could be a good wild card in terms of who the lesson could be for. For Thorax and Ocellus and the failure of Chrysalis' invasion or maybe for the Princesses and all the villains that they've faced throughout the years, but either way, this is a very good Socratic philosophy in the terms of "The end is never the end, often times it is only the beginning."
Edit:
Also I would like to bring up the way he died. The legend goes that he took his disciples to the top of an active volcano, proclaimed that he was a god, and the proceeded to show the Earth whose the real boss by literally belly flopping into a crater of super heated rock all while laughing and proclaiming that he would be reborn, thus completing his cycle of love and strife.
He was a madman, but a madman who went out like a champ whilst throwing double birds in the air and doing five alley-oops and backflip into a literal hell hole. Empedocles was a badass. And I believe no one else would come close to his level of philosophy because he was the last greek philosopher to decided to record his thoughts in verse.
Edit 2 :
ONE MORE THING I think should mention, Empedocles was considered the inventor of rhetoric by Aristotle, and Galenvs considered Empedocles to be the father of Italian medicine. Just to name a couple of achievements. His belief of love and strife was connected to the four elements, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, where love brings all of them together and strife makes them wage war against each other destroying everything in there in path. Also, Aristotle once said:
Take that as you will.
These all sound extremely interesting! The ones that especially caught my eye were Sandbar's & Yona's- they're so interesting & practically are what makes up Discord. I also really love what @SCP Pinkamena commented on about war. That topic would also be interesting for Discord to touch upon as I can really see him agreeing with the philosopher that she mentioned. Especially with his experience in war as he never wanted to destroy ponyville but rather create something new. Anyways I can't wait to see what you bring to the table! I might just re-read that fanfic again too! It was definitely one of my favorites. Good luck with the next one!
Hey, if your wondering why im commenting dumb philosophy shit everywhere at 4am...its because im a drunk philosophy minor... in uni... and its 4am
(im a Comp Sci major btw, philosophy degrees don't do shit)
These stories are pretty cool (if a little basic for my tastes) it would be cool if you covered more of the weird philosophical movements... specifically stuff like Egoisim, Post-modernism/Metamodernism, and **snirk* Dialectical Materialism
Also, I really hope you cover Hegal soon.
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I thought that now might be the appropriate time to respond as hopefully you might be at least somewhat sober. Firstly, while you might find these lessons basic, especially when they don't really rely on using complex phrases and words such as "Hegelian Dialectic" or "Pyrrhonism." This is actually done on purpose. Speaking as someone who is in college and has taken Philosophy, while I do think that some of the lessons are not just interesting but helpful, I for one disagree on how it's being presented. Personally, you can talk about Ontological Naturalism, Wittgenstein and his proper historical perspective, or compare Plato Phaedrus with Aristotle's Ethics all you want, it won't give anyone the guidelines to what real problems most people tend to face in daily life such as: what do I do when someone I love dies? How do I become an adult? What's the point of working at a 9 to 5 job that doesn't have meaning in it? Why do good people lie even though society agrees that lying is a bad thing? What do we do in an oppressive society? How do we cope when there's no hope at all?
And the reason why I'm approaching this sort of everyday stuff at the most basic of levels is simply that if you believe that your thoughts are indeed important, what's wrong in telling them in laymen's terms? Philosophy shouldn't be something that only a microscopic portion of the population should know, but one that everyone not only has access to and can easily be understood. I speak in simple terms so that anyone could understand with little misunderstanding as possible.
As to regarding Hegle, I do see a practical value in his idea of dialectics. There is something reassuring about the idea that despite how bad something gets, it's only temporary until the pendulum swings the other way (so to speak). I think I'll save this for Starlight.
(P.S. believe it or not, the point with "Discord Teaches Philosophy" with Decartes has nothing to do with him being right. Far from it, the story is much subtler than that. It teaches that philosophy can, in fact, be interesting and that the whole point of Descartes is that nothing should be accepted unless put through scrutiny. My apologies if you read the same story and you got a completely different message out of it. To be honest, I fear that if you get to "The Philosophical Substitute: Discord" then you're just going to hate it and rant about each chapter for ten-thousand years.)
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Yeah I get it, its like those videos on youtube that state optimistic nihilism and people in the comments talk about how depressed they are going through existential crisies. Its for people who have just about no intrest in philosophy, and are just curious.
You have no fucking idea, just yesterday I had a 14 hour discussion about the nature of nothingness and how it interacts with logic itself...
...
yes, that is what I do for fun
...
and no, I do not need an intervention.
[nerd shit]
You see, this chapter really got me thinking about pure epistemology again. Over the course of the last year, I have focused more on metaphysics, morality, and the Philosophy of self, but this fic lead to me re-examining the nature of doubt, consciousness, and logic itself.
I have went through many epistemological stages in my life. At age 9 I became an Epistomological Nihilist - at age 12, I realized that self-defeating arguments are bad and became a Pyrrhonist (basically the same thing but logically consistant) then a Postmodern Radical Subjectivist at 14 - and finally, at age 16, a Phenomenologist.
)
Throughout all of these ideological transformations, one thing stayed true - I believed in the self-consistency of logic...
That idea really got tested in this discussion I had with a friend on a 4chan discord server (yep...
I was talking about the subject of this fic, primarily the nature of Cartisian Doubt, and how you can doubt logic itself - when, out of the blue, my postmodernist friend stated that I was actually incorrect in my statement about the law of noncontradiction...
We were in the middle of talking about The Nature of non-existant objects, when he said that he could prove that there are ideas that there are certain thought-objects that break-down the fundamental laws of logic. He said that he learned of it though study of Ancient Eastern Philosophy, specifically an 3000 year old Math book known as "Lokavibhaga".
I, of course, was highly skeptical of his claim - how could I, after all my study of this subject, have missed something so fundamental as a violation of the laws of logic.
He responded with:
This seemed like total BS to me, I countered that -
This he quickly refuted by stating that there are genuine, observable effects of non-existence that you can observe - as existence itself is only defined relative to non-existance.
This banter continued on for hours, I would bring up a point, and he would poke holes in it until the counterargument fell.
After many, many hours exploring the philosophy of math, truth, existence, and set-theory (specifically the difference between a
0-set and a null-set) He had me in a corner. I could see no way to defeat this monster, looming over logic.
You see, logic can easily deal with non-existence when contained within systems,
ie. "I have zero apples" or "Zero is simply a place on the Number Line" etc.
the problem arises when you try to describe the concept itself, outside of all systems, the logic simply
falls apart when it tries to deal with this abstract.
Thoroughly discouraged, I decided to halt the conversation because it was 5am and I needed to sleep.
That night (morning, day, whatever) was spent pondering this logical black-hole that is nothing (aka non-existence).
Over the course of the next day, I started from the basics, and broke down the problem through multiple different theories of consciousness, until it hit me! I found the problem with the argument!
I quickly ran over to my Laptop and wrote the solution to this logical anomaly
From there it was smooth sailing.
He countered this claim by trying to argue that ideas exist on their own, outside of definitions and such - however it was at this point the conversation shifted, HE was now the one providing counter-arguements, and I was the one playing defense.
Finally, after an hour of this, he conceded that yes, my theory was indeed a good solution to this problem, and one he hadn't thought of.
It solves the entire dilemma, and ties it up quite nicely with a bow on top.
[/nerd shit]
The point Im trying to make (aside from just sharing a fun experience with someone who can understand what I'm saying) is that your fic caused me to re-question things, leading me down a path to a new understanding- and appreciation for phliosophy.
So, while no, I didnt really get anything from the story itself - It ended up teaching me more than I ever could imagine.
Your story did its job profoundly, it didn't so much teach me , as much as started me on a path on questioning.
Thank you so much for this wonderful learning experience!
- Nihil
Edit: JESUS FUCK! I JUST REALIZED THAT I WROTE 800 WORDS
whats wrong with me lol