Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:18 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 03:32 PM
I just wanted to throw this out there, even though its a little weird


In another discussion, Plato asks whether a perfect mathematic description, once it achieves its "perfection" could not suddenly become "real" by virtue of its ideal realization?

If you had a supercomputer that could describe the properties of every electron in the universe, it would presumably have to use at least one electron to describe each electron. So thus you would have an isomorphism (ie every element from either set - the Map Of Everything - goes to a unique element in the other set - Everything).

Thats quasi-science, quais-philosophy though

An extension of this is the idea that all representation is untrue since the only true representation is the thing itself or an ismorphism which is mathematically "the same"
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:20 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 03:38 PM

I kinda fall for this


HERE FOLLOWS SOME PSYCHO-METAPHYSICS.
If you are not hot for philosophy, best just to skip it.
The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.
With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us.
The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently.
It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.
Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the Eristic Principle.
The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the Eristic Illusion.
The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.
Reality is the original Rorschach.
Verily! So much for all that.


From Principia Discordia (a joke)

No thing is still a thing, although a more palatable way of stating it might be that there is only Being. Talking in the negative (ie if you were to say There Is Nothing Else) is self-defeating here.

Dammit, I really do have to hunt up that Symmetry Math link now since it parses the meaning of 'nothing' for us.

http://www.everythingforever.com/st_math.htm


A fact about reality we are discovering here is that there are two very different nothings, and presently the two are entangled together when they don’t belong together. In other words, there is actually something wrong with the word nothing as we use it today. If we carefully study the definition of the word nothing we can discover two very different definitions of nothing. One definition of nothing is a physically real condition that has no discernable form or substance, such as a white canvas, or a uniform void in empty space. This type of nothing is real and exists, and is actually quite ordinary. An empty refrigerator has nothing in it. A white artist canvas has nothing painted on it. The real nothing is always a place or a space that is uniformly undefined, where there are no distinct things. There is just one thing, like one color, or just space alone, so we call it nothing. But the other definition of ‘nothing’, the one we were just a moment ago trying to touch and describe is nonexistence, which is a very difficult concept to understand when defined separately from the real nothing, which is the very reason we confuse the two. We confuse the two out of need, because one we can describe, the other we cannot.

When the dictionary defines nothing as ‘something that does not exist’, it is reasonably obvious that the syntax of the phrase makes no real sense. How can ‘nothing’ be a something which does not exist? In fact simply using any word in an attempt to mean non-existence creates a sort of riddle. How do we make a word refer to something that doesn’t exist? What word can represent a form that isn't a form; a thing that isn't a thing? What language can define a concept that has no reality or meaning?

Of course we cannot solve the great old riddle of how something came from nonexistence. It’s the ultimate oxymoron, and the ultimate contradiction in terms. We cannot even refer to a state of nonexistence when there is no such state, and no such form, to refer to. Any attempt to describe it isn’t describing it. Any word representing it, isn’t representing it. Non-existence can only really be defined as something that cannot be defined with a word. It can only refer to something that cannot be referred to. Obviously there is a vexing fundamental problem here. Any attempt to define a nonexistence using any meaningful idea or thought, by using the meaning that otherwise defines all language, that defines our reality, is predestined to fail.

Nonexistence cannot be. It cannot exist. It cannot even be meant. And that predicament, that total paradox, is very different from the real nothing that exists and can be talked about. And the fact that we confuse these two concepts is the very reason we don't yet clearly understand why we exist. We exist because there is no alternative. There never was a non-existence in the past and there never will be a non-existence. Existence is the default setting of reality. Existence belongs here. It has always been.

http://everythingforever.com/ywexist.htm
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:21 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 03:51 PM

I dunno, because he is still starting from an assumption of all these different things exisitng - the physical, the mind/consciousness, culture etc. By the end though he's come around to basically stating Consciousness is the primal Thing == Universe and so everything is Consciousness. Its a confusing argument because its so easy to lapse back into dualistic (ie mind/body split) thinking.

EDIT: I read an article in Scientific American once extending the analogy of the ship to a car which is more intuitive to people today (since car parts actually get replaced often during its lifespan) and also extending it to the human body. We are always made up of different atoms and even molecules. The SA writer tried to turn it into a referendum on atheism though, which was just him being gratuitious.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:23 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 04:50 PM
No thing is still a thing, although a more palatable way of stating it might be that there is only Being. Talking in the negative (ie if you were to say There Is Nothing Else) is self-defeating here.


Why not only nothing?

In order for nothing to still be a "thing", it has to be determinate nothing... i.e. set in relation to something else. It is no longer indeterminate nothing. This is no mere symantic argument or a "definition of terms". I’ll do it by paragraph numbers as my copy and the online copy are slightly different:


Nothing is usually opposed to something; but the being of something is already determinate and is distinguished from another something; and so therefore the nothing which is opposed to the something is also the nothing of a particular something, a determinate nothing. Here, however, nothing is to be taken in its indeterminate simplicity. Should it be held more correct to oppose to being, non-being instead of nothing, there would be no objection to this so far as the result is concerned, for in non-being the relation to being is contained: both being and its negation are enunciated in a single term, nothing, as it is in becoming. But we are concerned first of all not with the form of opposition (with the form, that is, also of relation) but with the abstract, immediate negation: nothing, purely on its own account, negation devoid of any relations — what could also be expressed if one so wished merely by 'not'.

§ 136

It was the Eleatics, above all Parmenides, who first enunciated the simple thought of pure being as the absolute and sole truth: only being is, and nothing absolutely is not, and in the surviving fragments of Parmenides this is enunciated with the pure enthusiasm of thought which has for the first time apprehended itself in its absolute abstraction. As we know, in the oriental systems, principally in Buddhism, nothing, the void, is the absolute principle. Against that simple and one-sided abstraction the deep-thinking Heraclitus brought forward the higher, total concept of becoming and said: being as little is, as nothing is, or, all flows, which means, all is a becoming. The popular, especially oriental proverbs, that all that exists has the germ of death in its very birth, that death, on the other hand, is the entrance into new life, express at bottom the same union of being and nothing. But these expressions have a substratum in which the transition takes place; being and nothing are held apart in time, are conceived as alternating in it, but are not thought in their abstraction and consequently, too, not so that they are in themselves absolutely the same.

§ 137

Ex nihilo nihil fit — is one of those propositions to which great importance was ascribed in metaphysics. In it is to be seen either only the empty tautology: nothing is nothing; or, if becoming is supposed to possess an actual meaning in it, then, since from nothing only nothing becomes, the proposition does not in fact contain becoming, for in it nothing remains nothing. Becoming implies that nothing does not remain nothing but passes into its other, into being. Later, especially Christian, metaphysics whilst rejecting the proposition that out of nothing comes nothing, asserted a transition from nothing into being; although it understood this proposition synthetically or merely imaginatively, yet even in the most imperfect union there is contained a point in which being and nothing coincide and their distinguishedness vanishes. The proposition: out of nothing comes nothing, nothing is just nothing, owes its peculiar importance to its opposition to becoming generally, and consequently also to its opposition to the creation of the world from nothing. Those who maintain the proposition: nothing is just nothing, and even grow heated in its defence, are unaware that in so doing they are subscribing to the abstract pantheism of the Eleatics, and also in principle to that of Spinoza. The philosophical view for which 'being is only being, nothing is only nothing', is a valid principle, merits the name of 'system of identity'; this abstract identity is the essence of pantheism.

§ 138

If the result that being and nothing are the same seems startling or paraodoxical in itself, there is nothing more to be said; rather should we wonder at this wondering which shows itself to be such a newcomer to philosophy and forgets that in this science there occur determinations quite different from those in ordinary consciousness and in so-called ordinary common sense-which is not exactly sound understanding but an understanding educated up to abstractions and to a belief, or rather a superstitious belief, in abstractions. It would not be difficult to demonstrate this unity of being and nothing in every example, in every actual thing or thought. The same must be said of being and nothing, as was said above about immediacy and mediation (which latter contains a reference to an other, and hence to negation), that nowhere in heaven or on earth is there anything which does not contain within itself both being and nothing. Of course, since we are speaking here of a particular actual something, those determinations are no longer present in it in the complete untruth in which they are as being and nothing; they are in a more developed determination, and are grasped, for example, as positive and negative, the former being posited, reflected being, the latter posited, reflected nothing; the positive contains as its abstract basis being, and the negative, nothing. Thus in God himself, quality (energy, creation, power, and so forth), essentially involves the determination of the negative-they are the producing of an other. But an empirical elucidation by examples of the said assertion would be altogether superfluous here. Since the unity of being and nothing as the primary truth now forms once and for all the basis and element of all that follows, besides becoming itself, all further logical determinations: determinate being, quality, and generally all philosophical Notions, are examples of this unity. But self-styled sound common sense, if it rejects the unseparatedness of being and nothing, may be set the task of trying to discover an example in which the one is found separated from the other (something from limit or limitation, or, as just mentioned, the infinite, God, from energy or activity). Only the empty figments of thought, being and nothing themselves are these separated things and it is these that are preferred by 'sound common sense' to the truth, to the unseparatedness of both which is everywhere before us.

§ 139

We cannot be expected to meet on all sides the perplexities which such a logical proposition produces in the ordinary consciousness, for they are inexhaustible. Only a few of them can be mentioned. One source among others of such perplexity is that the ordinary consciousness brings with it to such an abstract logical proposition, conceptions of something concrete, forgetting that what is in question is not such concrete something but only the pure abstractions of being and nothing and that these alone are to be held firmly in mind.

§ 140

Being and non-being are the same, therefore it is the same whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are part of my fortune or not. This inference from, or application of, the proposition completely alters its meaning. The proposition contains the pure abstractions of being and nothing; but the application converts them into a determinate being and a determinate nothing. But as we have said, the question here is not of determinate being. A determinate, a finite, being is one that is in relation to another; it is a content standing in a necessary relation to another content, to the whole world. As regards the reciprocally determining context of the whole, metaphysics could make the — at bottom tautological — assertion that if a speck of dust were destroyed the whole universe would collapse. In the instances against the proposition in question something appears as not indifferent to whether it is or is not, not on account of being or non-being, but on account of its content, which brings it into relation with something else. If a specific content, any determinate being, is presupposed, then because it is determinate, it is in a manifold relationship with another content; it is not a matter of indifference to it whether a certain other content with which it is in relation is, or is not; for it is only through such relation that it essentially is what it is. The same is the case in the ordinary way of thinking (taking non-being in the more specific sense of such way of thinking as contrasted with actuality) in the context of which the being or the absence of a content, which, as determinate, is conceived as in relation to another, is not a matter of indifference.

§ 141

This consideration involves what constitutes a cardinal factor in the Kantian criticism of the ontological proof of the existence of God, although here we are only interested in the distinction made in that proof between being and nothing generally, and determinate being or non-being. As we know, there was presupposed in that so-called proof the concept of a being possessing all realities, including therefore existence, which was likewise assumed as one of the realities. The main thesis of the Kantian criticism was that existence or being (these being taken here as synonymous) is not a property or a real predicate, that is to say, is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. By this Kant means to say that being is not a determination of the content of a thing.' Therefore, he goes on to say, the possible does not contain more than the actual; a hundred actual dollars do not contain a whit more than a hundred possible ones; that is, the content of the former has no other determination than has the content of the latter. If this content is considered as isolated, it is indeed a matter of indifference whether it is, or is not; it contains no distinction of being or non-being, this difference does not affect it at all. The hundred dollars do not diminish if they do not exist, or increase if they do. A difference must come only from elsewhere. 'On the other hand,' Kant reminds us, 'my fortune benefits more from a hundred actual dollars than from the mere concept of them or from their possibility. For in actuality, the object is not merely contained analytically in my concept, but is added synthetically to my concept (which is a determination of my state), although the hundred dollars in my thought are not themselves increased one whit by this being which they have apart from my concept.'



Being and non-being are the same, therefore it is the same whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are part of my fortune or not. This inference from, or application of, the proposition completely alters its meaning. The proposition contains the pure abstractions of being and nothing; but the application converts them into a determinate being and a determinate nothing. But as we have said, the question here is not of determinate being. A determinate, a finite, being is one that is in relation to another; it is a content standing in a necessary relation to another content, to the whole world. As regards the reciprocally determining context of the whole, metaphysics could make the — at bottom tautological — assertion that if a speck of dust were destroyed the whole universe would collapse. In the instances against the proposition in question something appears as not indifferent to whether it is or is not, not on account of being or non-being, but on account of its content, which brings it into relation with something else. If a specific content, any determinate being, is presupposed, then because it is determinate, it is in a manifold relationship with another content; it is not a matter of indifference to it whether a certain other content with which it is in relation is, or is not; for it is only through such relation that it essentially is what it is.

NOTE: My translation is better than the online one. I’ll point it out when it really matters.

.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:25 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 05:22 PM
Being and non-being are the same, therefore it is the same whether this house is or is not, whether these hundred dollars are part of my fortune or not. This inference from, or application of, the proposition completely alters its meaning. The proposition contains the pure abstractions of being and nothing; but the application converts them into a determinate being and a determinate nothing. But as we have said, the question here is not of determinate being. A determinate, a finite, being is one that is in relation to another; it is a content standing in a necessary relation to another content, to the whole world. As regards the reciprocally determining context of the whole, metaphysics could make the — at bottom tautological — assertion that if a speck of dust were destroyed the whole universe would collapse. In the instances against the proposition in question something appears as not indifferent to whether it is or is not, not on account of being or non-being, but on account of its content, which brings it into relation with something else. If a specific content, any determinate being, is presupposed, then because it is determinate, it is in a manifold relationship with another content; it is not a matter of indifference to it whether a certain other content with which it is in relation is, or is not; for it is only through such relation that it essentially is what it is.

Yes, of course. This is basically stating that everything scrutable is relative.

I do tend to approach it from a more scientific viewpoint but that seems immaterial to me.


Only being is - non-being is not. But, if only being is, there can be nothing outside this being that articulates it or could bring about change. Hence being must be conceived as eternal, uniform and unlimited in space and time. The changes we experience must thus only be illusion. - Parmenides.

Back to motion:


The nature of “motion” has been contemplated for millenniums. How does a moving particle change its position with time? This was an unresolved mystery for the antique Greeks, but since the seventeenth century, with the introduction of differential calculus, we treat motion as a limiting process of infinitely many incremental, diminutive, steps. Since this works excellently when modeling macroscopic motion, the dynamics of moving objects is since the seventeenth century generally treated by solving differential equations assuming a continuous progression of time.

Although with take the validity of continuous motion for granted, upon deeper reflection this idea seems rather strange. In fact, it is difficult if not impossible to think of motion as a continuous process. We always tend to visualize motion as a sequence of small displacements. The difficulty with continuous motion is that it implies that an infinite number of steps must occur in a very short time. The ancient Greeks recognized this puzzle as one of Zeno’s paradoxes. More recently the same problem has reappeared in the context of quantum theory since it appears that the nature of the quantum world is discrete rather than continuous.

The very natural idea of moving by a sequence of consecutive steps might actually be the way Nature implements motion. Continuous motion might never occur in Nature. It is not unlikely that the notion of a continuous physical process is a human idea supported by a mathematical representation, differential calculus, without corresponding physical reality. The nature of the progression of time might very well be discrete, and the modeling of dynamic processes by differential equations might fail in the quantum world.

And finally a bride from how something==everything==nothing (which was in the link above if you browse through it for a while)


My unsuspected thesis has been simply that we know very well the extreme of balance and symmetry, and so we know the infinite universe. The immense sea of space between the stars, or between protons and electrons is well known to us. The space we experience between our bodies and other things in the world, that which we think of as empty space is an extreme form of order. I realize it is not an easy switch, to think of empty space as full, or to not think of zero as nothing, but perhaps it is a transformation long overdue.

We have learned in science that each particle of our body disappears and moves about as a wave of probability, then comes bursting back into reality out of the infinite number of possibilities which form the wave. And Einstein's Relativity describes a four dimensional spacetime existence, not a many worlds, but a many times universe where time bends and flows like a branching river. Yet neither theory has been enough to change that collective image of ourselves as single separate objects miraculously arisen above and afloat in a void of nothingness.

Never do we imagine that the infinite must be all around us, that we are entangled within its ebb and flow; a part without being apart. Who among us is without roots embedded in earth, dependent upon the light, our hands to the sky. No man is an island, but rather part of a seamless whole, and we are all only the universe interacting with itself.

Eastern mystics and western poets have been telling us for a long time that whether we speak of something and nothing, Yin and the Yang, the proton and electron, and now a positive and negative density, we are describing two parts of an undivided whole. I have only begun to think in those terms myself, and I admit that I have been too busy writing and struggling towards explaining what I understand, to sit back and enjoy my own vision of an undivided universe. However, there is no place that is empty, no stone un-turned where existence is not. To be or not to be, is not the question.

Yes, he writes like a doofus but you get the idea.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:26 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 05:31 PM

Only being is - non-being is not. But, if only being is, there can be nothing outside this being that articulates it or could bring about change. Hence being must be conceived as eternal, uniform and unlimited in space and time. The changes we experience must thus only be illusion. - Parmenides.

Back to motion:


The nature of “motion” has been contemplated for millenniums. How does a moving particle change its position with time? This was an unresolved mystery for the antique Greeks, but since the seventeenth century, with the introduction of differential calculus, we treat motion as a limiting process of infinitely many incremental, diminutive, steps. Since this works excellently when modeling macroscopic motion, the dynamics of moving objects is since the seventeenth century generally treated by solving differential equations assuming a continuous progression of time.

Although with take the validity of continuous motion for granted, upon deeper reflection this idea seems rather strange. In fact, it is difficult if not impossible to think of motion as a continuous process. We always tend to visualize motion as a sequence of small displacements. The difficulty with continuous motion is that it implies that an infinite number of steps must occur in a very short time. The ancient Greeks recognized this puzzle as one of Zeno’s paradoxes. More recently the same problem has reappeared in the context of quantum theory since it appears that the nature of the quantum world is discrete rather than continuous.

The very natural idea of moving by a sequence of consecutive steps might actually be the way Nature implements motion. Continuous motion might never occur in Nature. It is not unlikely that the notion of a continuous physical process is a human idea supported by a mathematical representation, differential calculus, without corresponding physical reality. The nature of the progression of time might very well be discrete, and the modeling of dynamic processes by differential equations might fail in the quantum world.

And finally a bride from how something==everything==nothing (which was in the link above if you browse through it for a while)


My unsuspected thesis has been simply that we know very well the extreme of balance and symmetry, and so we know the infinite universe. The immense sea of space between the stars, or between protons and electrons is well known to us. The space we experience between our bodies and other things in the world, that which we think of as empty space is an extreme form of order. I realize it is not an easy switch, to think of empty space as full, or to not think of zero as nothing, but perhaps it is a transformation long overdue.

We have learned in science that each particle of our body disappears and moves about as a wave of probability, then comes bursting back into reality out of the infinite number of possibilities which form the wave. And Einstein's Relativity describes a four dimensional spacetime existence, not a many worlds, but a many times universe where time bends and flows like a branching river. Yet neither theory has been enough to change that collective image of ourselves as single separate objects miraculously arisen above and afloat in a void of nothingness.

Never do we imagine that the infinite must be all around us, that we are entangled within its ebb and flow; a part without being apart. Who among us is without roots embedded in earth, dependent upon the light, our hands to the sky. No man is an island, but rather part of a seamless whole, and we are all only the universe interacting with itself.

Eastern mystics and western poets have been telling us for a long time that whether we speak of something and nothing, Yin and the Yang, the proton and electron, and now a positive and negative density, we are describing two parts of an undivided whole. I have only begun to think in those terms myself, and I admit that I have been too busy writing and struggling towards explaining what I understand, to sit back and enjoy my own vision of an undivided universe. However, there is no place that is empty, no stone un-turned where existence is not. To be or not to be, is not the question.

Yes, he writes like a doofus but you get the idea.[/quote:1arz82k8]

Who are you quoting? Too much has passed for me to know which link you are refering to.

Also, you need to be heard from. Just a second ago, we were on "nothing is still a thing". The following proposition can not be "of course, that's not true". Is Hegel right or not (your preferences notwithstanding)? If not, why not?
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:28 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 05:38 PM

Yes, I think he's right. Pure being and pure nothing are the same. I am really trying to provide some basis to intuitively grasp that conclusion. I also buy the idea that the only way that can be is if the pure being/nothing is Consciousness. That does tread dangerously close to Deepak Chopra sounding crap though.

Can you related this back to how this helps us understand the 'right now'. To me it seems like we're debating philosophy - which you said was impossible :)

On EDIT: if I was going to disagree it would be on the grounds that there is no pure nothing, which is something of a koan (my new word I learned last week). The thing is though, I think my two answers differ only in semantics.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:31 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 06:09 PM

You have fucking ADD... We've been at this for about a minute and a half...

OK, If you want to go to the end, let's start with a piece of the end. The following is not Hegel, but me.


(this is not meant as a formal proposition… just quasi-formal;-))

Proposition #1: There is no God, or there isn’t no God if you prefer. Existence, in the indeterminate sense, has no meaning. It is absolutely irrelevant whether there is or is not such because such knowledge can only come from determination, which would result in a determinate God, and therefore, not God as absolute being. The same goes for metaphysics. A determinate metaphysics is physics. So too for any other noun you care to plug in. Everything which is determinate stands in relation to other things and thus to us. It is knowable, even if it is not known. There is no such thing as speculative philosophy because speculation about the indeterminate is not possible. You can speculate about nothing but, by doing so, you are no longer speculating about pure nothing… i.e. “Nothing is still a thing”.

(this is part of the reason why “Philosophy died with Hegel”)
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:32 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 06:20 PM

So, is the Universe determinate? Thats an open question, obviously, but it bears on what the implications of your statement are.

And I'm not sure I 100% agree anyway, because you are basically juxtaposing 'deterministic' and 'formalized' and calling them the same thing. Is a koan deterministic? (a koan being an idea that can't be answered on an intellectual level but could still make sense intuitively - like asking if a ball is shot through the center of the Earth will it hover at the center due to gravity)

Oh and of course, the biggie - if God can do anything can He make a hole so wide He can't jump over it?
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:35 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 06:32 PM

In Hegel's sense, of course it is, for the same reasons you just agreed to. If you mean mathematically or spacially, the question is not germaine. Consider Hegel on determination. He would call part of what you call "indeterminate", determinate... and that, on the face of it.

Do we keep going or backtrack?

We just wiped out God, metaphysics, and a bunch of other stuff in about 2 and a half minutes. We also wiped out one of your earlier assertions (that Hegel is just "speculative philosophy"... now he is "non-speculative").

We've got about three or four of my propositions to go (and about a hundred thousand pages of Hegel of which we'll cover about 10 - Marx is more important). Next is Becoming.

Or we can go to Determination, according to Hegel... in order to answer, "you are basically juxtaposing 'deterministic' and 'formalized' and calling them the same thing"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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