You do not recognize my efforts as efforts. — Paine

But others do recognize them as a valuable contribution here and elsewhere. You have shown more patience over the years with certain people, and are far more polite than I am, but we all have our limits.

What should not be overlooked is how much of what the snake said is the truth:

For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (3.5)

God confirms this:

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. (3.22)

Being like a god is a main source of our suffering. Knowledge is productive. Adam knew Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. (4.1) Knowing good and evil means doing and producing good and evil. Both are fruits of the same tree.

... what can be said in his later philosophy is still limited to the world — Sam26

In the Tractatus he makes the distinction between "the world" and "my world". That distinction does not carry over to the later writings. What can be said is no longer limited to the facts delimited in the Tractatus. It is no longer a question of what can be said but of the shared language of a form of life.

The limits of language in the Tractatus were drawn in order to show the limits of thought or its expression. In the preface to PI the limits of thought are no longer determined by facts:

The thoughts that I publish in what follows are the precipitate of philosophical investigations which have occupied me for the last sixteen years. They concern many subjects: the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition and sentence, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things.

Rather than narrow things down his investigations opens up our view of thought and language.

122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. - Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation [ an übersichtlichen Darstellung] produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.

The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)

125. This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand: that is, to survey.
It throws light on our concept of meaning something. For in those cases, things turn out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen. That is just what we say when, for example, a contradiction appears: “That’s not the way I meant it.”
The civic status of a contradiction, or its status in civic life - that is the philosophical problem.

The world is all that is the case — Sam26

It may have no bearing on your project, but Wittgenstein's focus on seeing aspects, ways of looking, and ways of seeing run counter to the claim that the world is what is the case. Although he does not develop this, even in the Tractatus he is thinking about these things. This is why the ethical and the aesthetic, in its original sense of what is perceived or seen, are regarded as the same. That they are not in the world does not mean that they are not of the utmost importance. Ethics too is said to be transcendental. (T 6.421)

Logic is what is transcendental from inside the world. Ethics and aesthetics from outside, that is, "my world".

With regard to ethics he says:

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. (T6.43)

With regard to the way of seeing things:

... the figure can be seen in two ways as a cube; and all similar phenomena. For we really see two different facts. (T 5.5423)

I gave up at ‘there’s a unique form for every particular’. — Wayfarer

This is so twisted I did not even bother to attempt to straighten in out. Once again, typically, it is not clear whether he thinks this is what Aristotle was claiming or if he thinks he is correcting him.

I don't think Aristotle would have let him within 100 yards of the Lyceum.

[Correction. I did make the attempt. Repeatedly, through various iterations. For a moment I forgot while trying to straighten out the most recent tangles.]

You didn't address the post. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I didn't. To what end? You have shown yourself to be incapable of separating and distinguishing between what Aristotle said and whatever it is you think he should have said or want him to have said. You end up with something you call his "true position". A position that is at odds with and irreconcilable with what he actually said.

I think I was wrong to say that you are faithful to Aquinas. On second thought it seems likely that you would reinvent him as well in your own image of his "true position".

In the text, the matter is immediately cast into the language of actuality and potentiality. Something causes change. Something else is changed. — Paine

But does this speak to his claim about a certain kind of unnamed object?

2.7 opens:

The object of sight is the visible, and what is visible is color and a certain kind of object which
can be described in words but which has no single name

He goes on to say that color is not visible without light, and there are objects that are not visible by color or light.

Some objects of sight which in light are invisible, in darkness stimulate the sense; that is, things that appear fiery or shining. This class of objects has no simple common name, but instances of it are fungi, flesh, heads, scales, and eyes of fish. (419a 1-6)

Although he does not include the stars in the short list of the class of objects that are invisible in light, they are objects that are visible in darkness. Is there something in common between the things he lists and the stars? Something other than color? He continues:

In none of these is what is seen their own proper' color. Why we see these at all is another question.

And drops it.

A good example of eternal unmoved movement:

In Plato's Republic Glaucon says astronomy compels the soul to see what's above. Socrates responds that as it is taken up now it causes the soul to look downward. (429a)

The cause in these examples is not physical. More importantly, for both Plato and Aristotle it is not a one way street. Both the mover and what is moved are interconnected. Together they form a whole. It is not simply the stars that cause the movement up or down. It is Glaucon who moves his head and Socrates who moves from what is visible to what is intelligible. This is an indication of why in Aristotle's Physics he talks about the soul.

Premise 2: If a universally accepted explanation for the existence of evil were found, it would enable humans to reconcile with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. — gevgala

The real problem of evil, the misfortunes we suffer, would remain. A theological reconciliation does nothing to change that.

Put differently, the real problem of evil is not theological. To the extent theologians treat it as if it is, they are part of the problem not the solution.

You use the exoteric/esoteric distinction as a blunt instrument to twist and distort the text so that it will mean whatever it is you want it to mean.

If you are to take this interpretive approach you must start with what he actually said as your starting point. You do not do this. You ignore what he said in some cases and deny that he said it in others. Often you mistake the part for the whole or deny there is a whole, so you can treat the part as the whole.

More precisely, you are faithful to Aquinas. If Aristotle says "X" and Aquinas "Y" then Y is the truth. But you blur the distinction: If Aristotle says "X" and Aquinas "Y" then Aristotle really meant Y.

I hope it’s not some semantic or linguistic trick being used here in the definition of the word change. — invicta

Something unchanging always remains what it is as it is.

Some quick comments:

There is little or no agreement as to what Aristotle means by 'God'. This much is clear. Whatever it might be it is not the creator of the universe. It does not interfere in the affairs of men. It does not hear our prayers. In brief, in order to understand what he is talking about, start by forgetting whatever assumptions, beliefs, and concepts you might have about God.

It is worth noting that Aristotle does not start with gods or prime movers (plural), but does use the term theology and does talk about things divine. There is a great deal of road work that must be done first.

This is completely consistent with what I've been arguing. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not. Have you forgotten what you have claimed?

There are no unnatural, or divine bodies, nothing in the universe is moving in an eternal circular motion, because all has been generated and will be destroyed, consisting of natural bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover

The only thing you got half right is that they are natural, albeit bodies.

Looking into it, the "certain nature", might be the transparent, Gendlin
but it might be what makes something transparent. Reeve

As to the kind of object, some commentators identify it as "phosphorescents".Gendlin A compound word from Greek and Latin.

Not everything is visible in light, but only the color proper to each thing; for some things are not seen in the light but bring about perception in the dark, e.g., those things . . . such as . . . scales, and eyes of fish ... (419a 1-6)

What is that "certain nature"?

What is:

...a certain kind of object which can be described in words but which has no single name (418a26–28)

So, on the basis of an unexplained omission in one compilation you attempt to dismiss parts of the text that appear in fuller translations of the same text by the same translator as well as other translations and in the commentaries.

Does the compilation include Book 1.2 269a 30?

But there is nothing out of which this body can have been generated. And if it is exempt from increase and diminution, the same reasoning leads us to suppose that it is also unalterable.

And, as quoted before:

On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)

There is general agreement that at least some of works of Aristotle are based on lecture notes, but that is no reason to disregard those parts of the text that run counter to your preferred beliefs. If these are student notes then they are students who knew and understood Aristotle far better than we do. In addition, the works often quickly get blamed for our lack of understanding. With a thinker as important as Aristotle it seems more likely that whoever compiled these notes, whether Aristotle or students did so with care. The burden is on us to tie things together and resolve seeming contradictions. In addition, it may be that Aristotle thought that certain problems are irresolvable. Rather than discard parts of the text, the point may be to bring out and allow the problem to stand.

Aristotle does not want simply to inform us or give us our opinion, he wants us to grapple with problems, to think.

I don't know which translation you are using but both Stocks, whose translation appears in several places on the internet with those lines intact, and Guthrie's Loeb Classical Library translation, say the same thing.

Therefore the movement of that which is divine must be eternal. But such is the heaven, viz. a divine body, and for that reason to it is given the circular body whose nature it is to move always in a circle. (286a10)

That there is one heaven, then, only, and that it is ungenerated and eternal, and further that its movement is regular, has now been sufficiently explained. (289a8)

based on the properties we choose to attend to. — Dfpolis

Agreed. Both those we include and those we exclude.

I know very little about schools of interpretation, but I do not see how interpretation can be avoided. If you are satisfied with your interpretation and wish to produce a video that is your business. I assumed, however, that if you were posting here you were looking for some response.

I agree that we will not resolve the issue. I pointed to some problems regarding your claim of continuity. Do with them as you want or will.

But this doesn't make them the same in any significant sense. — Ciceronianus

Not the same, but rather, my argument is that there is a politics of knowledge which apparently from the quote Cato failed to understand.

Cicero on the other hand, following Plato, wrote his own Republic and Laws.

Cicero famously said that Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens. Socrates' concern was with how we are to live, both in public and in private.

@Ciceronianus {Added

A few lines later he says:

... we have followed that school particularly, or that manner particularly, which we believe Socrates had used (namely, the dialogical) in order to conceal our opinion ... (Tuscan Disputations V. 6.10-11)

The importance of concealing one's opinion is something Cato failed to learn.

When reading Plato it is importance to keep this practice in mind.}

As treated by Plato this is both the politics of the soul and the politics of the city.

Statesmanship is not only the knowledge of how to rule effectively but how to rule well. What it means to rule well, so too how to live well, raises several philosophical questions.

Cato, said Cicero, "gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not Romulus' cesspool." — Ciceronianus

Do you interpret this as an indication of the difference between politics and philosophy? In what way?

In Plato's Apology Socrates says:

... a [man] who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public life if [he] is to survive for even a short time (32a).

There is a difference between what one says in the political arena and what one says in private. But, of course, when one writes books the boundaries between them are porous. When writing philosophy there must always be political considerations, both, on the one hand, with regard to what may happen to you and your work, and, on the other, the good or harm it may cause.

My intent is not to attribute some claim to you but to clarify for the reader.

The standard translation 'actuality' is misleading. It can be understood to mean something real or existing. The Greek term enegeia, from ergon, is to be at work. It is not as if dunamis is not real or does not exist.

In one sense, the eidos or form is what acts on the hyle or matter to form an ousia.

In another, what it is to be the thing it is, its essence, is the form of an ousia. Man is the form of Socrates. But this is not just an idea, not just a way of categorizing, not just an answer to the question what. In order to answer that question, 'man' must be by nature something that distinguishes itself from all else.

You see no thread in terms of the logic of language that goes from his early thinking to his later thinking? — Sam26

No. What I see is a disjunction. From PI:

107. The more closely we examine actual language, the greater becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not something I had discovered: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming vacuous. We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction, and so, in a certain sense, the conditions are ideal; but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!

108. We see that what we call “proposition”, “language”, has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is a family of structures more or less akin to one another. —– But what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here. But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear? For how can logic lose its rigour? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigour out of it. The preconception of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole inquiry around. (One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need.

... the logic of our language is misunderstood — Sam26

For the later Wittgenstein it is the logic of our language as presented in the Tractatus that is misunderstood.

It's the logic of language and how it connects with the world of facts. — Sam26

It is the logical structure or scaffolding that underlies both language and the world and thus their connection:

The logical scaffolding surrounding a picture determines logical space. (3.42)

The proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical scaffolding (4.023)

I'm not sure why you keep using the term "transcendental logic — Sam26

Because Wittgenstein says so:

Logic is transcendental. (6.13)

It is transcendental both in the Kantian sense of the conditions of the possibility of language and world, and in the sense of what transcends or stands outside of the world.

Without too much exaggeration, the only thing they have in common is the word 'logic'. The transcendental logic of the Tractatus is not simply the logic of language, it is the logic of the world. According to the later Wittgenstein, the rules of grammar (logic) are arbitrary (PI 497). There is no necessary or non-contingent connection between logic, language, and the world.

How should we define knowledge? In context.

The latter Wittgenstein rejects the transcendental logic of the Tractatus. This is not a continuation but a repudiation.

The continuity is on the other side of the "what cannot be said" formulation: what can be shown, what can be seen, what can be experienced. Although he drops the terminology, the ethical/aesthetic.

Your thesis of a mortal Kosmos is so sharply different from Aristotle's' account of different kinds of ousia (substances) that the contradiction itself requires an explanation. — Paine

A few quotes from On the Heavens that support your claim:

It is equally reasonable to assume that this body [primary body] will be ungenerated and indestructible ... (270a)

The reasons why the primary body is eternal and not subject to increase or diminution, but unaging and unalterable and unmodified, will be clear from what has been said to any one who believes in our assumptions. (270b)

We must show not only that the heaven is one,’ but also that more than one heaven is impossible, and, further, that, as exempt from decay and generation, the heaven is eternal. (277b)

That the heaven as a whole neither came. into being nor admits of destruction, as some assert, but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time, we may convince ourselves not only by the arguments already set forth but also by a consideration of the views of those who differ from us in providing for its generation. (283b)

What is it that I am counting there? — Heiko

That is the question. There is no count unless you know what you are counting. In response to the question "how many" is the question "how many what?"

The idea of "twoness" which makes two things countable — Heiko

It is not the idea of twoness, it is the identification of the unit or one and the determination of how many of that unit are present or taken.

Aristotle's eidos ("form") has two meanings. One is a being's actuality (as opposed to its hyle/potency), — Dfpolis

Form is the being at work of an ousia. Form acts on, it actualizes a thing's potential. The form, the "what- it -is" of Socrates is not Socrates. Socrates is the ousia, not the form. The form, the what it is of Socrates, is man.

That is not simply the concept man but what he is by nature.

[Added:

The term "being" ... denotes first the " what " of a thing, i.e. the individuality ... when we describe what it is, we say ... that it is "a man" or "a god" (1028a)]

Whose concept would that be you are talking about? — Heiko

The ancient Greeks. Two key points:

No concept of zero.

One is not a number. The first number is two. One is the unit of the count. We retain something of this in that when we say that there are a number of things it is never one thing.

Counting them actualizes the potential.
— Fooloso4

As to me this sounds like a duplication of the idea. — Heiko

You might look at it this way: there are some items we cannot see or touch in a dark room. How many items are there? Potentially there might be any number of things.

You create a space of number potentials waiting to be turned into numbers. — Heiko

No, you have things. They are not waiting to be counted but can be.

I am not arguing in favor of their concept of number, only trying to explain it. It has well known limits and problems.

The problems of philosophy include just about every subject one can imagine, including ethics ... — Sam26

Wittgenstein believes that if we understood the logic of our language, that this will put an end to philosophizing. — Sam26

Although the problems of philosophy include the problems of ethics, Wittgenstein does not regard ethics as a philosophical problem, which is to say he does not put an end to ethics.

those who accept the Forms — Metaphysics, 1071b12–22, translated by C.D.C Reeve

We might assume Aristotle is talking about Plato and this is not entirely wrong, but the argument in the Timaeus acknowledges the problem of the Forms and:

some starting-point that is capable of causing change. — Metaphysics, 1071b12–22, translated by C.D.C Reeve

In the discussion of astronomy in the Republic Socrates says:

Perhaps your belief is a fine one and mine innocent. (229c)

This echoes Socrates' discussion of the inadequacy of the Forms in the Phaedo, where he calls the hypothesis "innocent".

So, by those who accept the Forms I think he means those who accept them and are unaware of the problems Plato raises.

On the issue of the starting point Plato and Aristotle take opposite sides, but agree that it:

must be grasped by argument and thought, not sight. (529c-d)

Aristotle's argument is:

There must, therefore, be such a starting-point, the very substance of which is activity. — Metaphysics, 1071b12–22, translated by C.D.C Reeve

A reasonable argument, but reasonable and true are not necessarily the same.

Timaeus says:

So then, Socrates, if, in saying many things on many topics concerning gods and the birth of the all, we prove to be incapable of rendering speeches that are always and in all respects in agreement with themselves and drawn with precision, don’t be surprised. (29c)

The question is whether Aristotle accepts what is reasonable as true. Surely he is aware of the problem of giving an account of the arche.

I started a discussion of the limits of knowledge in Aristotle's Metaphysics.

There is a 1 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 1.
There is a 2 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 2. — Heiko

For the Greeks "2" is always two of something counted. In order to count there must be the unit, some one, some "what" of the count.There is no count unless and until it is known what it is that is being counted - apples or bananas or pieces of fruit.

There is a potential for "1" or "2" or any number of things only as long as you or someone else is able to count and there is something to be counted and those things are visible and each one distinguishable. Counting them actualizes the potential.

How do you give a definition to everything? We don't. We don't have enough time. A bad joke loosely based on a salacious joke about cows and an enthusiastic bull.

Aristotle's astronomy tried to account for how beings found within the 'sublunary sphere' had anything to do with those observed outside of it. Now that we understand that they are not different kinds of beings, the view of all beings belonging to a single cosmos is strengthened by our increase in knowledge. — Paine

The question of our relationship to the heavens is an interesting one.

In the Republic Socrates says:

It is the "fourth study" after solid geometry. It is the study "which treats motion of what has depth" (528e)

Glaucon says "astronomy compels the soul to see what's above and leads it there away from the things here". Socrates corrects him. When studied in this way it causes the soul to look downward. (529a)

He calls the stars "decorations in the heavens embroidered on a vaulted ceiling". The image of the starry night, is the opposite of the image of Good in the sun. Astronomy when studied as Socrates proposes is not the study of visible things in the heavens, it is about "what must be grasped by argument and thought, not sight" (529d)

Aristotle calls the heavenly bodies divine. He may have regarded our relationship to them as one of distance, the difference between divine and imperfect being. Or perhaps just the opposite, our closeness to the divine through our perception of them. I suspect this is addressed in On the Heavens. @Wayfarer.

That they are not different kinds of beings might be regarded, at least by some, as nothing special. But the ability to see the night sky without light pollution is, despite what Socrates said, an awesome experience. The images of the Webb telescope may also have bearing on how one regards and feels in relation to the cosmos.

There is still a great deal of interest in Aristotle, and not just historical interest. Although my guess is that interest does not extend to his astronomy.

Wouldn’t the claim of the existence of such a bodily substance be an empirical claim? — Wayfarer

That the heavenly bodies exist is an empirical claim. That they are imperishable is also an empirical claim, by the standards of the time. Generation after generation they stay the same neither coming into being or passing away. Since they are visible they are bodies, but since they do not change they must be a body that is different from terrestrial bodies.

It is not clear to me what you are asking. If these philosophers had to flee that is an indication that they have touched a political nerve. Ideas matter. As far as a paycheck, it often works as a constraint on agency. Tenure worked against that constraint but there is both a political and economic push to make it a thing of the past. While ideas matter in the short term money seems to matter more. But the philosopher plays the long game.

How can you guys stand it? — god must be atheist

I pick and choose and have fairly low expectations.

On the positive side, it has given me occasion to do some reading and writing that I might otherwise not have done.