"Only Aristotle was totally original"

That's not true... also Aristotle was wrong on so many things, though thanks to him we have naturalism. I regard Freud as an Aristotelian figure, in that he was also wrong on so much, but still paved the way for psychology and psychiatry.

Ayn Rand is much more a philosopher in the conventional sense than Hitler ever was. Objectivism is a valid philosophic doctrine. Anti-semitism is no philosophy. Fascism is a political philosophy though.

As I said even if you weren't trying to troll, you clearly aren't interested in actually have any sort of real discussion, just giving short pithy answers and trying to antagonize people who attempt to have any sort of discussion with you. The effect is the same, we're better off ignoring the entry and continuing to have real discussion with those who actually want to discuss things.

And with that I'm done. I do hope we can get the rest of this discussion back on track as I was enjoying some of the other aspects.

@Chrispminis I agree completely on Freud, he was clearly incorrect on a lot of things but his general approach and the way his work influenced and spurred on other's (even spurring others to disprove him!) is his real contribution, and for that I'd say he's pretty damn influential.

Aristotle is in the same basic boat.

If i were really trolling i would ask you to provide examples of the Aristotle's mistakes. But that's DrOct's part. I dont understand how you get the idea i m trying to antagonize anyone. You people just keep bullying me...

@Chrispminis "Objectivism is a valid philosophic doctrine."

Do you really think so? I get the impression it gets a really bad rap from most academic philosophers. That it is only a little further up the credibility scale from Scientology. (Perhaps that is too harsh).

@Dr Oct and Sean. You're probably right. I should know better.

Hellalt your are trying to defend your position by bickering about another and Ayn Rand has a credited philosophy although it did not influence this world as much as Marxism or Maoism (Marx- 2 Mao-1 as follower of marx and developed the base for china today see my post). in any case there are many people like you who mention Facist dictators like Hitler or they mention national socialism to sound like they have a contreversial stance on the subject but by not providing any evedence are ignored or ,as in your case, start arguing without ever providing evidence on the subject

hellalt, are you saying Hitler's anti-emitic views are a "contribution" to philosophy and the world?

are you saying that is a contribution, a positive...?

This Jew would not agree with that, sir.

no point continuing this

the thread or this discussion?

i think we can still talk about the great philosophers civily- but neither hitler not ant-semitism are philosophic, and "right" may be sujective and a matter of perception, but sir- they're just not right.

Hey what do people think of my Charles Darwin nomination? Now that man had some great ideas, or as Daniel Denett says "the single best idea anyone has ever had".

how can anyone approve of aristotle.

that fucker said that deaf people are incapable of thought or developing intelligence.

fuck that

hmm
what about his ideas about politics, logic, science, metaphysics, philosophy, morality, easthetics?
He just influenced everyone after him

spyman, I think it's a great nomination. I think I would actually agree with Dennett in saying that evolution by natural selection was the single best idea ever.

I don't agree with Objectivism, and it may have fallen out of style, but I still consider it legitimate philosophy in the sense I consider blank slate empiricism to be legitimate philosophy, though I think it has fallen out of style somewhat, especially with overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are not blank slates. Objectivism is far too black and white to be popular amongst academics of today. We're very much in love with the idea of grey, as is evidenced by fiction and film depicting casts of more nebulous moral character and less distinct good vs. evil conflicts.

Akroma, yeah and Martin Luther was an incredible anti-semite, and John Maynard Keynes was a supporter of eugenics. He was clearly wrong, and his conclusions weren't based on a lack of intelligence on his part, but a lack of knowledge. Ignorance, not stupidity. He was so fantastically wrong on so many counts, but he was still a great thinker and set the stage for naturalism, which led to the scientific method, which led to almost all the technology that improves our lives. Many great intellectuals were shockingly intolerant, but that's as a result of their cultural zeitgeist as viewed through the lens of our more modern views.

fuck his ideas about politics, logic, science, metaphysics, philosophy, morality, easthetics

Aristotle, pronounced the Deaf "deaf and dumb", because he felt that deaf people were incapable of being taught, of learning, and of reasoned thinking. To his way of thinking, if a person could not use his/her voice in the same way as hearing people, then there was no way that this person could develop any cognitive abilities.


not only is it wrong, but also absolutely outragous. the term "deaf and dumb" was still commonly used until the motherfucking 70s.

the more influence you have, the more careful you have to be about what you say. he might not have been malevolent, but he was definetly neglient and oblivious.

the reason for his belief was not a racist one. Just that in Ancient Greece reasonable thought equaled not just simple language but rhetoric. Also, according to cognitive science there is no thought without speech. Of course deaf people think and speak in sign language but i'm not sure if such a language was commonly established back then

I don't think Aristotle was the first to use the term deaf and dumb... Dumb in it's original meaning literally means silent or mute, and the term deaf and dumb was in reference to deaf-mutes, albeit with a derogatory tinge (at least in recent history). Discrimination against the deaf and mute has a long history. In the Talmud's Hebrew Law, the deaf were not allowed to own property, and that's predates Aristotle by like 700 years.

Plato also didn't have nice things to say about deaf people, and I think the modern day connotation of dumb being equivalent to stupid is just part of a long standing institutional discrimination against the deaf and the mute. I certainly wouldn't blame Aristotle... the farther you go back in history, the worse minorities of all sorts have been treated.

"the reason for his belief was not a racist one. Just that in Ancient Greece reasonable thought equaled not just simple language but rhetoric. Also, according to cognitive science there is no thought without speech. Of course deaf people think and speak in sign language but i'm not sure if such a language was commonly established back then"

It's true that intelligence was thought to be directly related to oratory skills in Ancient Greece, and that therefore if you were mute, you had no intelligence at all. It's nonsense that "according to cognitive science there is no thought without speech". I don't know where you read that. Sign language may not have been commonly established back then, but if any number of deaf-mutes came together, I have no doubt they would quickly develop one. It has been shown that if you put a bunch of children from around the world together, with no common language, they quickly develop a common sign language with which to communicate.

yeah, but if he was the inventor of the scientific method, then why did he not check wether his claims are right or not ?

anyone who spents some time with the Deaf and makes at least some slight effort to educate them will soon realize that such claims are wrong.

they might be true if you completely isolate the person in question, but in isolation, hearing people will stay uneducated as well.

even before sign language got around (low population density prevented that for a long time), it was still possible to teach the Deaf how to read and write. Aristotle was known for being a gifted teacher, surely if he actually TRIED, he would have had no problem teaching a deaf child how to write and read. Random monks in monasteries managed to do that, so why wouldn't he ?

oh why of course, because he was both arrogant and lazy. arrogant in his belief that his reasoning seemed logical, and lazy in the way that he never bothered to confirm wether he was right or not.

scientific method my ass, aristotle was a pseudo-scientist who never spent more than a couple of hours among the Deaf, if he spent any time with them at all.
given how rare prelingual deafness (deafness quaired before being able to speak) is, that might even be the case.

it's a common cognitive science belief although there's a lot of discussion about what comes first, language or thought
check this out for some info:
http://student.bu.ac.bd/~mumit/Research/NLP-bib/papers/Boroditsky01.pdf

Akroma, he didn't invent the scientific method, he laid the ground work for pre-cursors. He was the first major philosopher to even really suggest that we could gain knowledge through the use of empirical knowledge. However, he did not check whether his claims were right or not, because in an amusing twist, he believed that you could simply think about such issues long enough and come up with a suitable answer using logic. He didn't ascribe to the experimentation that is now an integral part of the scientific method, but he was still a philosophical pioneer.

Sure, it would have been great if he actually sat down and spent time with deaf people, but at the time, nobody did, but most people had unsavoury ideas about the intelligence of deaf and dumb people. He wrote prolifically, and the fact that his writings must represent an intolerant cultural zeitgeist is unfortunate because I don't think he deserves the blame. "Random" monks were better placed to teach deaf people because they had already a certain sign language in place to circumvent vows of silence. Aristotle was not even a pseudo-scientist because science didn't exist at the time.

hellalt, fair enough, but you said "speech", not "language", which makes a very different case. Deaf people do have language. Your statement sent alarm bells ringing in my head because it's believed that hominids first communicated via sign language, a vestige that is still seen through hand gestures which supplement speech, as well as other non-verbal manners of expressing information, such as through facial expression and stance. The article you linked to only claims that language may shape thought, but actually admits that the strong view of linguistic determinism has long been abandoned. "This strong Whorfian view—that thought and action are entirely determined by language—has long been abandoned in the field."

aristotles wordlview was certainly influenced by common prejudices of his time and surroundings, but as a "great thinker" he should have made the clear distinction between prejudice and fact while writting stuff down.

yes, he deserves the blame, because he is the one who gets quoted whenever someone sais that the Deaf can't think.

antisemitism was fairly common as well, but I still blame HItler for what happened, and not the entirety of germany.


he was the one who wrote it down, and he did so in the intention of writing it down as facts, and not as something in a diary.


he is *not* a great thinker. he might have been a thinker, because he sure thought about a lot of stuff, but he wasn't really great at doing it.

he evenmoreso deserves the blame because his claims served as confirmation and excuse for those who came after him.

@hellatl
I wouldn't be so sure that cognitive science agrees that there can be no thought without language. Steven Pinker the famous linguist spends a good portion of his book the language instinct dispelling this notion. Certainly there can be no complex communication without language, but just because we don't have words for a concept doesn't mean we can't think of it. We can invent a concept in our minds and then later find the word to express it.

"he should have made the clear distinction between prejudice and fact while writting stuff down."

Well the sad thing with prejudice is that the distinction is not clear. Else we'd be rid of all prejudice. =/

"antisemitism was fairly common as well, but I still blame HItler for what happened, and not the entirety of germany."

I would entirely blame Aristotle if as the leader of a nation he condemned six million deaf people to death, not to downplay the historical discrimination against deaf people, but I don't think the comparison of Aristotle to Hitler is fair either...

"he is *not* a great thinker. he might have been a thinker, because he sure thought about a lot of stuff, but he wasn't really great at doing it."

I'm afraid we'll have to respectfully agree to disagree. Given the means and knowledge of his time, as well as the relatively impoverished thinking that preceded him, his work was stunning. I don't mean to defend discrimination or downplay the historical struggle of the deaf. I just don't think this makes Aristotle unworthy of approval or respect. I have no doubt that many of the things we do and accept nowadays will some day be seen as barbaric and intolerant. Eg. Animal testing or anti same-sex marriage legislation.

Calling it a night.

@spyman

I agree with what you say. Thought preceeds language. We only give name to things after we have either observed them, or if they are conceptual, after we thought of them.

saying that language is the frontier of imagination is incorrect. Imagination is the frontier of language.

I don't think this debate is about who the most morally righteous philosopher was, but rather who has contributed at least some great ideas. There may well have been genius's who have had a tremendous influence in shaping our world, and yet also having sociopathic personalities. Perhaps Julius Ceasar was such a sociopath? A huge portion population of Gaul died due to his invasion. If Hitler actually had some great idea then regardless of his evil exploits he could be worthy of a place on this list, but the fact is he didn't. Or at least no one here has been able to suggest one yet.

I'm happy to see that the discussion has continued and in a positive direction. I'm glad to see hellalt even actually contributing in a real solid way to the discussion.

Akroma - I agree that Aristotle was wrong on a lot of things, due mostly to his not using experimentation, I don't agree that he has no place on this list because of that. The fact is that in his time and before his time, no one was using experimentation to confirm things. Like Freud, he was wrong on most things he came up with, but it was his general method of using reason the way he did that laid the groundwork for later people to take it to the next logical step: experimentation.

And Spyman, I agree, I don't think people should be disqualified due to their morality, (in fact based on the way this discussion and "voting" was framed I don't think anyone should be *disqualified*) but I do think people should be willing to talk about their choices and defend what it is they think is great about them (hence why I like the discussion on Aristotle).

If someone want's to nominate someone without any discussion or justification, then I don't think that name should be taken off the list, (I have not called for Hitler to be taken off the list) but I do think it's worth ignoring it, and instead talking about some of the other entries, if no one is willing to actually discuss it in any meaningful way.