[Retric]

First point: Yes.

I expect some refinement of an artist's craft over time. Just look at his faces. As a point of comparison my sister is a long way from mastery but he presents a reasonable progression for a HS student.

14 years old: http://geomexia.deviantart.com/art/Wired-Mother-Earth-273474...

15 years old: http://geomexia.deviantart.com/art/Deep-Sea-Gold-34634785

17 years old: http://geomexia.deviantart.com/art/Looking-Up-37173397

18 years old: http://geomexia.deviantart.com/art/Turn-Around-Turn-Around-1...

Bacon had some interesting ideas, but he lacked the skills to really explore them. IMO, that is forgivable for a dabbler or young person, but it's just not acceptable for a serious artist.

Second when looking for truth, philosophy is a dead end. You can still use a horse and buggy to get around New York but there is a reason it's become far less popular over time. Painting as a means to convey meaning from an artist to his audience has been similarly demoted because there are better ways to capture what you have seen. Leaving panting with abstract ideas better conveyed though words and meaningless garbage.

[foldr]

>Second when looking for truth, philosophy is a dead end.

If you're really looking for truth, then you need at least a little bit of philosophy to tell you what you're looking for. (I don't know about you, but I wasn't born with any very good ideas about what truth is, or why I should want to look for it.)

In my experience, people who claim not to have any use for philosophy usually have philosophical opinions cobbled together from whatever ideas happened to be in vogue ~50 years ago (those that have now permeated into the general culture). Ironically, the whole idea that science has "killed" philosophy is an offshoot of the philosophical school of logical positivism from the first half of the 20th century.

[Retric]

The realization that philosophy is a dead end is vary common and vary old.

Thomas Aquinas spent much of his life using the bible to make a hole host of philosophic treaties based on the infallibility of the bible. Then he realized that his entire work up to that point was "a house built on sand" and that for example trying to prove the existence of god basses on biblical teachings was pointless. He died in 1274.

He is not all that well known for making that realization, but if you actually read his work it becomes obvious that in his latter work he understood christian philosophy was simply a game he was vary good at. You can study fad's and paint a superficial picture of the development of philosophy but looking at what was published and what was popular does not in any way tell you when an idea was first conceived.

PS: I was 3 years old when I asked my mother why people believe in God. Not "is there a god" but why do people delude themselves. As a christian she defended faith, but I had already decided it was BS. So I assume a significant number of people throughout history quietly called the popular fictions of the day BS, and went about their lives. Suggesting that we needed philosophy to separate some truth from fiction seems pretentious when there is an ancient tradition of "losing the faith".

[foldr]

>The realization that philosophy is a dead end is vary common and vary old.

Well yes, that point of view is very old, but then so is the opposite point of view. I thought your point was more substantial than this, i.e. that modern science somehow invalidated philosophy. This point of view is obviously at least no older than modern science.

I'm not sure what your point is re Aquinas. He was a brilliant philosopher who is still very much worth reading (even if his prose is a bit tedious), so he doesn't seem like a good example of why philosophy is pointless. You certainly don't have to believe in the infallibility of the bible to get something out of his work.

[Retric]

If by modern science you mean Gregor Johann Mendel and Isaac Newton then yea it's only a few hundred years old. But, Archimedes also believed in testing his ideas when possible so "modern science" is probably not the best term.

Anyway, finding someone who in his youth wrote elegant treaties on the definition of justice says nothing about his latter beliefs and due to our limited lifespan from a historical standpoint they take place at about the same era. I said / wrote many stupid things as I child that I no longer agree with. All it takes is the realization that your assumptions are often wrong to realize that Philosophy is a dead end. However, once you understand that there is little more to be said on the topic unless you concoct a system that lets you ignore that fact. So you might go from "proving the existence of god' to saying it’s a question of faith.

PS: "I think therefore I am" is not necessarily true for a puppet reading someone else’s lines or a part of a far large hole. So, "Do I think?" is about as far as philosophy can take you.

[foldr]

>If by modern science you mean Gregor Johann Mendel and Isaac Newton then yea it's only a few hundred years old. But, Archimedes also believed in testing his ideas when possible so "modern science" is probably not the best term.

What's your point? The idea of science as something separate from philosophy which could actually replace philosophy altogether is basically a 20th century one, and is certainly no more than a few hundred years old. (Science just wasn't impressive enough before then for it to be a reasonable point of view.)

>All it takes is the realization that your assumptions are often wrong to realize that Philosophy is a dead end.

I don't see how that follows. The vulnerability of initial assumptions is a problem for any form of inquiry, science included, but it isn't a fatal problem. Much of philosophy is precisely about questioning assumptions.

>PS: "I think therefore I am" is not necessarily true for a puppet reading someone else’s lines

I have no idea what you mean by this, but it doesn't seem to address Descartes' argument. (He was obviously not suggesting that anyone who merely says "I think therefore I am" must necessarily exist.)

>or a part of a far large hole

whole?

>So, "Do I think?" is about as far as philosophy can take you.

This is manifestly nonsense. Unless you are seriously claiming that there has been no progress in logic, political philosophy, moral philosophy, the philoosphy of science, etc. etc. in the past few thousand years. At the very least, the range of possible views, and the best arguments for and against these views, are much better known and understood than they were before. And in some areas (e.g. logic, and those aspects of the philosophy of science pertaining to it) there has been progress in a much more definite sense.

[Retric]

Unless you are seriously claiming that there has been no progress in logic, political philosophy, moral philosophy, the philoosphy of science, etc. etc. in the past few thousand years. Excluding logic I would agree with that statement.

If you disagree then [citation needed].

Philosophy is the study or creation of theories about basic things such as the nature of existence, knowledge, and thought, or about how people should live. To be clear Philosophy does not encompass math and it does not require testing of those theories.

PS: Skepticism is a philosophical attitude that questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge. It was first articulated by Pyrrho, who believed that everything could be doubted except appearances. (ca. 360 BC - ca. 270 BC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho