Jack Handey

 oldviolin wrote: 
There comes a point when you see through to the truth... and if you aren't insane by then, you see things as they are.

 oldviolin wrote:
 
That's a good question, old violin. Some might say to grow. This seems to be a paradigm prevalent in Nature... out with the old and in with the new. Or maybe it's to suffer. But suffering in itself is worthless unless it somehow motivates growth. We're here to suffer and overcome suffering?

Maybe the universe is a paradigm of all possibilities. Like a fractal radiating from the gross to the smallest details of itself. So what formula is the universe solving by way of reality's example? If it's a machine that replicates again and again to infinity, making adjustment of self-perfection, then maybe we are here as part of that solution. We're here to solve/be the details.

Maybe we're as ghosts in the machine... not merely human beings, but all creatures. We're here so the universe can feel and suffer and overcome suffering, and dream. Maybe we're here to dream. To overcome the difficulties of being... to experience, create, and experience the creation... to make evident our dreams. Because that's what the spontaneous cascade of reality has brought us to... dreaming.

That's the best I've come up with... so far.

 cookinlover wrote: 

Dang. I was hoping to get at least thirty seven cents or so.

 oldviolin wrote: 
You're one quarter correct about that.

 Manbird wrote: 

After all, if one is one then one and one half must be at least half again as much fun...imagine all the nutrition choices...

 Manbird wrote: 
He got laid off from his job a couple of weeks back - his company was "down-sizing".  He's still optimistic about the global domination thing though.

 Manbird wrote: 
I seen one of those in Arkansas

OMG, when I was listing great philosophers earlier, I knew I was leaving out someone obvious and I just remembered; THE preeminent philosopher of all times:

 oldviolin wrote: 
I would like to see a half centipede half shark and half monkey creature evolve and maybe take over the world. 

 Proclivities wrote: 
and the Kardishians

 Proclivities wrote: 

and crows...

 fuh2 wrote: 
There will probably always be ants and cockroaches.

 donna_birichina wrote: 

Then, by extrapolation we come close to something resembling the world of today...

 donna_birichina wrote: 
Ultimately like any other species we will probably become extinct. Over the earth's 4.5 billion year existence it has shed 99% of its species. Hopefully though, our species which seems headed for suicide, wont exterminate all the other living species also.  

 oldviolin wrote: 
That's a heavy question, one that assumes there is an answer. What if there is no reason for our existence? And therefore we are obligated to live our lives in a way that justifies them?

If you really want to study philosophy, study mathematics. 

 Proclivities wrote:  
Edward O Wilson, who wrote "Sociobiology",  talks about this a lot. He also  wrote a book about it -"Consilience The Unity of Knowledge"-

Wikipedia: He wrote it as an attempt to bridge the culture gap between the sciences and the humanities that was the subject of C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, 1959. Wilson's assertion was that the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give a purpose to understanding the details, to lend to all inquirers "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws."

If you have the time, he is interviewed about philosophy of free will, death, religion ethics etc here at length. with subtitles too.

This from Bookrags.com.

... More and more, through the 1980s, Wilson turned to philosophical questions. With respect to the theory of knowledge (epistemology), Wilson stresses the interconnected nature of our understanding. He wants to show that everything can be explained in just a few basic principles. The Victorian polymath William Whewell, in his The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, spoke of the highest kind of knowledge as being that which connects together the most disparate areas of science. Whewell spoke of such connection as a "consilience of inductions," and this phrase prompted Wilson to call one of his books Consilience (1998), referring to its plea that we bind together all aspects of human knowledge.

Along with epistemology, ethics has always been an interest of Wilson's. His hero in this field is Herbert Spencer, and although Wilson would not want to associate himself with the negative connotations of attempts to link evolution and morality-especially with so-called Social Darwinism-Wilson stands right in the tradition of those who argue that morality is and must be based in human nature as created and preserved by evolution. What is of great importance to Wilson is the need to be sensitive to the environment around us. He speaks of "biophilia," the human love of nature. He believes that we need nature not just to sustain us but also because, in a totally artificial world, we humans would wither and die. Our evolution has tied us to both physical and psychological needs of other organisms. This means that the Wilsonian categorical imperative focuses on biodiversity. In a world without many species, humans are condemned. Following his own prescriptions, for the past decade Wilson has been ardently committed to the preservation of the Brazilian rain forests.

Like Spencer and all other traditional thinkers of this ilk, Wilson turns to notions of progress to link evolution and ethics. Most particularly, he denies that the evolutionary process is one of aimless meandering. Rather, Wilson interprets it as showing an upward rise, from lesser to greater, with humans at the top. Wilson's thinking on this point is part and parcel of his feelings about ultimate questions. An intensely religious man who lost his faith in Christianity in his teens, Wilson was able to replace it with a new religion: Darwinism. He sees religion as an essential part of human culture, binding the tribe together, but he argues that this religious cohesion can endure in the modern age only with the propagation of new "myths" (his word). This is the essential message of Wilson's On Human Nature (1978). This is the story of evolution with the philosophical foundation of materialism. For Wilson, science, ethics, and religion are as one. They make for the ultimate consilience.

I wouldn't say, first of all, that the philosophers themselves are actually favorites. It is their ideas that strike a chord and make one think deeply about existence.
In any event, Wittgenstein is rather thought provoking in his line of reasoning that leads up to "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." Shortly, meaning that we are unable to even comprehend anything which lies beyond the structural linguistic constraints of our language. That our language limits what is even possible to imagine.

 fuh2 wrote: 
I understand your point, but if one wanted to learn the fundamentals of Philosophy, wouldn't one first study the fundamental philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and those guys, instead of first studying Biology?  Of course, that is a philosophical question.