Dogs are not categories of thought. — Tobias

Not dogs as a category but dogs having "our categories of thought".

Dogs do not need to articulate the category of difference, neither do we, to taste the difference. — Tobias

Neither the dogs or us need the categories to taste the difference.

However, it is not because we found the possibility to incorporate change in our conceptual apparatus, magically change happened in the world. — Tobias

Change happens whether we are able to think change or not. That is the point. It points to the separation of thinking and being.

We simply did not comprehend how it could be an later we learned. — Tobias

So, thinking changed but thought did not.

For Hegel we come to realize the categories of thought through a dialectical process in the course of practical history ... — Tobias

Right. So they are not hardwired. And dogs do not share in the history of spirit that realized in western culture.

... there is a lot to say about Hegel's claim that with him a fundamental insight broke through in philosophy ... — Tobias

I agree, but I see that insight in terms of becoming, history, and culture. Not the realization/actualization of spirit in history, the concretization of thought, and the overcoming or aufhaben of the difference between subject and object.

I guess a dog's brain is hard wired too yes. — Tobias

But to note that a dog can taste the difference between cheese and carrot does not mean it's mind:

mind wired to see 'difference'. — Tobias

You got here by arguing that things:

... conform to our categories of thought — Tobias

You now expand our categories to include dogs. But a dog does not need the conceptual category of 'difference' to taste the difference between carrot and cheese.

Being is indeed a fixating concept, but it itself can only be thought in relation to nothing, leading to the concept of becoming, pace Hegel. — Tobias

Do you mean according to Hegel and contrary to or pace Parmenides? If so, it is odd that on the one hand you argue in favor of Kantian categories and on the other Hegel, who rejected them.

If you are arguing in favor of Hegel then it is only at the completion of history, with Geist's self-knowledge, with the realization/actualization in time of the real being the ideal, that it is true, for him, that subject and object are unified. But none of this means he was right. Many consider it metaphysical overreach, wishful thinking, or idealist fiction.

This is a difficult question for me to address for two reasons. First I really do not know much about it, which may have a lot to do with the second reason, there are a lot of stories being told that are difficult to disentangle. Names and terminology overlap. For example, the Essene belief in a coming new age is not eschatological. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls do not mention a messiah, others the messiah of David, a warrior, and still others the messiah of Aaron, whose work will be concerned with priestly things - the Temple, purity, and worship.Essenes
The first book of Enoch tells a very different story:

1.6 And the high mountains will be shaken; and the high hills will be laid low and will melt like wax in a flame.
1.7 And the earth will sink, and everything that is on the earth will be destroyed, and there will be judgment upon all, and upon all the righteous.
1.8 But for the righteous: He will make peace, and He will keep safe the Chosen, and mercy will be upon them.

As far as interpretations of the 'son of man' I have nothing particular to point to, but in the text of Daniel "one like a son of man" is something he sees in a dream. (Daniel 7:1). I take this to mean that the image or likeness he saw in his dream was that of a man. In Enoch 1: "there was a righteous man" (1.2)

As to Metatron and Enoch: "Because I am Enoch, the son of Jared." (Book 3, chapter 4, 2)

I also think of Transformers when I see the name.

Wouldn't viruses be non-living things that store genetic history? (Supposing they don't fall under the definition of living things).
— Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's an undecideable question. — Wayfarer

but I still maintain there is an ontological distinction between life and inorganic matter — Wayfarer

How can you maintain a distinction were the distinction between living and non-living things cannot be made?

What I was getting at is that something doesn’t necessarily have to be PROVEN to be true for it to actually be true. — Blake4508

Consider the problem of false messiahs. During the messianic age there were many who claimed or were claimed by others to be the messiah. And many who demanded proof. What is to stand as proof? Does the death of an alleged messiah stand as proof that he was not the messiah? As you know, with Christianity it does not. All kinds of stories developed - a necessary sacrifice, part of God's plan, he was not a man, he was resurrected and sits on the throne.

What is often missed is that the question of who is the messiah is answered for Christianity only by changing the meaning of what the Messiah is. In other words, it is not a simple matter of something being true but of what it is that is true and how we are to determine that this nexus of beliefs is true rather than another with some or many of the same elements.

Thanks Paine. Somehow it escapes MU's notice that there is the problem of unjust actors and unjust actions in the Republic.

this discussion is pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover

On that we agree, but not for the reason you imagine.

Yes it does mean that everything we do is good, — Metaphysician Undercover

Is your intent to demonstrate your sophistic skills?

Republic 509b:

Therefore, say that not only being known is present in the the known as a consequence of the good, but also existence and being are in them besides as a result of it ...

(Bloom translation)

Well I would not know how you can perceive 'difference' without a mind wired to see 'difference'. — Tobias

My dog can see difference and smell difference and taste difference. Is her mind wired with Kant's categories or some other a priori categories?

Why would it lead to a denial of change? — Tobias

Parmenides denied change. It did not fit his thinking.

In your view though it seems like we first have to experience non-identity in order to be released from our slumber that thinking prioritizes identity. — Tobias

It is not a question of identity in general, but the identity of thinking and being.

He held on to assumptions, namely that 'real' thinking deals with the unchanging, which we questionable. — Tobias

So, his thinking was questionable. Do you think that thinking has now progressed to the point where thinking and being are the same but in thinking they were the same he was wrong based on his thinking?

But everything we do is for a good. — Metaphysician Undercover

But that does not mean that everything we do is good.

As I explained in a post above, every act is inherently good. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is an assertion. One that is wrong and is not supported by Plato.

I don't know if you read that post, but this is fundamental to Christianity — Metaphysician Undercover

Sin is fundamental to Christianity, although that problem was supposed to have been fixed, Christianity does not claim that people no longer sin.

The good itself is what motivates the act, what Aristotle calls "that for the sake of which". Knowledge of the good itself, is knowing what motivates one's own actions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Knowledge of the good itself is not knowledge of what motivates one's own actions but rather what distinguishes between those actions that are good and those that are not. Actions can be motivated by the desire for power, greed, anger, and on and on. Plato was not blind to these motivations. He discusses them in the Republic and elsewhere.

There is no such thing as an overarching "the good" — Metaphysician Undercover

It is clear that you have not read or perhaps just not understood what Plato says about the good itslef in the Republic.

We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. — Tobias

Do we see things differently according to a priori categories or did difference become a category as the result of seeing differences? Kant claims the former. This is not the prevailing view today.

Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. — Tobias

That supports my point. They are not invariant a priori categories. Or, more generally, it is not the case that thinking and being are the same if thinking leads to the denial of change.

It took Herclitus to clear it up — Tobias

The relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is an open question. Some maintain that Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides and others that Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus.

What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. — Tobias

It not that he did not realize it, he just thought that becoming is a false opinion. His monastic thinking led him to reject change and difference. This is a good example of why we should not accept the premise that thinking and being are the same.

However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of though — Tobias

You have got this backwards. They do not conform to a priori categories of thought. It is, rather, that thought was forced to change to accomodate what did not fit existing categories.

the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably. — Tobias

Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change.

If your interest is in being argumentative, I am not interested. If your interest is in trying to understand views that differ from your own then you should begin by not misrepresenting what I have said.

What is at issue is not the division but that there are these very small and very large things that were unknown and unthought.

The division is human, the classification of one thing as different from another is a human made distinction predicated on the way humans perceive their world. — Tobias

The divisions are a way of referring to things that existed prior to anyone thinking such things exist. Whether you think the very small and the very large are the same thing or not has not bearing on the fact that such things as neutrinos and neutron stars exist.

Well up until recently there was no wheel either. What is, is limited by what can be thought. — Tobias

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not.

Not really, because that which is not cannot be thought. — Tobias

The problem is not with thinking that which is not, although more on that below, but with the assumption that what is is limited by what is thought. Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding.

As to non-being and indeterminacy see this discussion of Plato's metaphysics:

Plato's Metaphysics

The presupposition underlying much of this argument is the same one underlying the thread on Aristotle and time. An early formulation of this presupposition is found in Parmenides claim:

To think and to be is the same.

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or give an account of.

The presupposition underlying much of this argument is the same one underlying Rasmussen's paradox. An early formulation of this presupposition is found in Parmenides claim:

To think and to be is the same.

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or can give an account of.

I think what Aristotle is doing is similar to what Kant does with the antinomies. He is not arguing to a conclusion that will resolve the issue one way or another. He is, rather, laying out arguments that point to the limits of reason. The arguments lead to aporia.

But he is well aware of the danger of leaving such questions open. Others will rush in to proclaim the "truth".

As Al-Farabi notes:

Whoever inquires into Aristotle’s sciences, peruses his books, and takes pains with them will not miss the many modes of concealment, blinding and complicating in his approach, despite his apparent intention to explain and clarify.

(Harmonization) Quoted in David Bolotin's "Approach to Aristotle’s Physics".

This results in a misguided anthropomorphism. So when chemicals pass between trees through the fungal network, it's reported that the trees are talking to one another, conveying information. — Daemon

The misguided anthropomorphism seems to be your own. "Talking to each other" as it is used here should not be taken to mean that trees are doing what we do when we talk. "Conveying information" can be a simple process. A thermostat conveys information to the furnace. The furnace turns off and on in response to information about the temperature.

Information is communicated between persons, not objects. — Daemon

This is a clear example of anthropomorphism. Birds are not persons and yet they communicate information. They can warn of predators. They can also use false alarm calls, that is, lie: https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/21/2/396/322287

It is when you use what humans do as the proper model of what the communication of information means that you end in a muddle.

Notice, that when we are discussing the good of an act, we are discussing something attributed to or directly related to the act. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a distinction between the intent of or motivation for an act and the evaluation of that act. Not everything we do is good.

A human act is directed toward an end, the good. — Metaphysician Undercover

Being directed toward an end is not the same as attaining that end. Not every act is good.

We are talking about opposing qualities, like pleasure and pain, we are not not talking about opposites themselves, as independent ideals.. — Metaphysician Undercover

When you say:

... "the good" must have a contrary is the very idea which Plato ends up demonstrating to be faulty — Metaphysician Undercover

When Plato talks about "the good" he does not mean some quality that is good but the good itself. The good itself cannot be opposite of itself. The good itself is not some thing or act that is good. Knowledge of the good itself is that by which we can truly determine whether a particular act is good.

So chemicals travel through the fungal network: can you say what the information does, in addition to what the chemicals do? — Daemon

This is like asking what information does in addition to what propositions do. Both are means of conveying information.

Truth is perceived as “bad” only by those who are afraid of it and seek to impose their own mythology on reality. — Apollodorus

And yet you ignore it when the untruth of your own mythology that you seek to impose on reality is pointed out to you.

The way I see it, the discovery of truth can only happen through the elimination of untruth. — Apollodorus

If you really saw it that way you would eliminate the untruth of your own untrue claims.

As pointed out by many scholars, some of whom I have mentioned here, archaeology doesn’t lie. — Apollodorus

Once again you demonstrate that you do not know what you are talking about. Archaeological evidence must be interpreted. That interpretation is not free of historical and other assumptions.

udaism and Early Christianity were heavily influenced by Greek culture — Apollodorus

And what do you point to in order to show this influence? That they ate the Passover dinner while reclining! Unlike most Christian you know this does not come as a shock to Jews who celebrate the Passover. Does it come as a shock to you that Jesus ate with his right hand because he wiped his ass with his left hand? Or do you think he did not shit? Or that what came out of his ass was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit?

And what is the other thing you point to in order to show this influence? That Greek was spoken in Galilee! The language that may have been used tells us nothing about what was said in that language. or how religious beliefs were influenced.

If we take the mainstream Christian position (1) that he was the Son of God, then it stands to reason (a) that he knew Greek and (b) that he taught in Greek ... — Apollodorus

But it does not stand to reason that he was the Son of God. That is an article of faith not reason.

Psalm 84:11 literally reads “Lord Yahweh [is the] Sun” (Shemesh Yahweh Elohim). — Apollodorus

You left out the rest of the statement: "and shield". Now if we take this literally then just as God is literally the sun he is also literally a shield. God is then literally a physical entity both a sun and a shield.

But if we recall that “Yahweh” (YHWH) is articulated as “Adon-ai”, — Apollodorus

Another fabrication. Adonai is not an articulation of YHWH. It is articulated as "Yahweh" or some variant, although many Jews regard the name as too sacred to articulate. Adonai means lord. Often Adonai is combined with Elohim, another name for God, as it is in the Psalm - Lord God.

The same idea occurs in Plato's Republic where the divine Form or Idea of the Good which is the source of truth, knowledge, and justice, is compared to the Sun which is the source of life on earth. — Apollodorus

In the Republic it is explicitly stated that:

The good is not the source of everything; rather it is the cause of things that are in a good way, while it is not responsible for the bad things.

(379b)

It is also explicitly stated that the sun is an image of the Good.

Whatever similarities there are between the God of the Hebrew Bible and Plato's Good, they are not the same.

Of course, if we look at it from a modern Western perspective, we may find it difficult to accept that the authors of the Hebrew Bible could have equated the God of Israel with the Sun in any other way than metaphorically. — Apollodorus

Again you ignore what was pointed out. In Genesis 1 the sun is created on the 4th day. It did not create itself and it is not the main source of light.

Why do you ignore this? It is because you are afraid of the truth?

The OT itself says: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6). — Apollodorus

Things take on a very different meaning when taken out of context. Who are the assembly of gods who know nothing and understand nothing and walk about in the darkness? (82:5) What kind of gods die like mortals? (82:7)

Name dropping should not substitute for understanding. Kavka is not denying the difference between Athens and Jerusalem. His is a project for the future, for what is not-yet. This not to be done by denying differences or an attempt to make what is different appear to be the same.

From the introduction to Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy

1. What is not? Everything that has not yet actualized its potential. Most viscerally, me.

2. What is meontology? The study of unmediated experiences of lack and privation. This study inaugurates self-critique and the realization that I live in a moment best described as not-yet. I thereby begin my path toward human perfection and toward God.

3. How do I live in this not-yet? In manic desire for what appears to me to be stable, for what displays a comfort in its own skin that I have never experienced. For you.

4. What is the effect of this desire? In the hope against hope that my desire will come to fulfillment, I keep you in mind, near me. I take care of you and work to engender political reforms that allow our conversation and relationship to perdure. I act to delay your death – even, perhaps, if this contributes to the skyrocketing proportion of the GDP taken up by the cost of medical care – and the death of your friends, and their friends, ad infinitum. In these brief moments when I break free of my narcissistic chains, I act messianically and redeem the world that is responsible for your suffering and your death, which will always be premature for me. I engender a world that my tradition (and perhaps yours) says God engenders, and I articulate my resemblance to God.


This argument makes a long journey from Athens to Jerusalem. It moves from a philosophy of nonbeing to the passionate faith in a redeemer still to come ... whom I represent. Indeed, the notion of a redeemer to come – the difference between Judaism and Christianity – cannot be defended without turning back to the analysis of nonbeing in the Greek philosophical tradition. Without Athens, Jerusalem (Judaism) risks being unable to articulate the meaning of its own religious practices, becoming no more than a set of customs divorced from their ultimate source, a sedimented series of
rote actions that can create an identity for its practitioners only through the profane category of “culture.”

His project is not what you claim "remains to be considered":

What remains to be considered is the relation between universal and particular realities (or experience of them), or between Father (universal) and Son (particular). — Apollodorus

It is not about a universal and particular reality, but rather about “a meontology which affirms a meaning beyond Being, a mode of non-Being (m¯e on)". What it shares with Plato is indeterminacy, open-endedness. This was discussed in my thread Plato's Metaphysics

Your own negative comments there show that you do not understand what is at issue either for Plato or for contemporary thinkers like Kavka.

Click on the link.

So can you say what the "information" does there, in addition to what the water and nutrition do? — Daemon

The information is about water, nutrients, and temperature. That information can be transmitted throughout the network and adjustments made.

However could not the “Christian humanism” that rose during the Renaissance be a kind of spiritual humanism? — Dermot Griffin

The author of the essay points to 'humanism' and 'scholasticism' as a "deeply controversial terms". I don't see how adding 'Christian' or 'spiritual' helps. In fact, it is indicative of the problem. It is still an attempt to divide history into distinguishable periods and fit the work of a thinker into a period.

The author of the essay is not arguing against events but against concepts such as "historical periodisation":

...such grand statements as the outline of a period such as the Renaissance are futile and empty. The arbitrariness of assigning the term ‘Renaissance philosophy’ to a period in time can be easily seen if we have a look at the historical development of the term itself.

Renaissance philosophy is often presented as a conflict between humanism and scholasticism, or sometimes it’s simply described as the philosophy of humanism. This is a deeply problematic characterisation, partly based on the assumption of a conflict between two philosophical traditions – a conflict that never actually existed, and was in fact constructed by the introduction of two highly controversial terms: ‘humanism’ and ‘scholasticism’. A telling example of how problematic these terms are as a characterisation of philosophy in the 16th century can be found in Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). He was critical of a lot of philosophy that came before him, but he didn’t contrast what he rejected with some kind of humanism, and his sceptical essay An Apology for Raymond Sebond (1580) wasn’t directed at scholastic philosophy. In fact, both these terms were invented much later as a means to write about or introduce Renaissance philosophy. Persisting with this simplistic dichotomy only perverts any attempt at writing the history of 14th- to 16th-century philosophy.

Information isn't everywhere in the universe, it's in minds. It isn't in the tree stump. — Daemon

It is in the acorn that grows into the tree that is cut down to a stump. It is in the stump that sends forth new shoots. It is in the roots that communicate with other trees. It is in the mycorrhizal networks:

By analyzing the DNA in root tips and tracing the movement of molecules through underground conduits, Simard has discovered that fungal threads link nearly every tree in a forest — even trees of different species. Carbon, water, nutrients, alarm signals and hormones can pass from tree to tree through these subterranean circuits. Resources tend to flow from the oldest and biggest trees to the youngest and smallest. Chemical alarm signals generated by one tree prepare nearby trees for danger. Seedlings severed from the forest’s underground lifelines are much more likely to die than their networked counterparts. And if a tree is on the brink of death, it sometimes bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbors.[/quote Trees

Interesting read. — Dermot Griffin

"Interesting" but based on what you say, you reject the premise.

The initial argument needs to be amended:

1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU).
3. Therefore, there is no reality in total [everything must not have an explanation] — lish

Remember, Plato demonstrates that the good cannot be equated with pleasure, by showing how pleasure has an opposing condition, pain, and the good cannot have such an opposite. — Metaphysician Undercover

See the distinction between opposite things and the opposites themselves in the Phaedo.

“… you do not understand the difference between what is said now and what was said then, which was that an opposite thing came from an opposite thing; now we say that the
opposite itself could never become opposite to itself, neither that in us nor that in nature. Then, my friend, we were talking of things that have opposite qualities and naming these after them, but now we say that these opposites themselves, from the presence of which in them things get their name, never can tolerate the coming to be from one another."

(103b-c)

And, we see that morality is induced through faith, rather than through knowledge — Metaphysician Undercover

A good example! Unfortunately for you it points to the opposite of what you claim. Euthyphro believes he is acting piously by indicting his father. Socrates argues that Euthyphro does not know what piety is. He turns the discussion to the question of the just. Whether what Euthyphro was doing was good turns on knowledge of the just and good.

Immoral things are often induced through faith. Atrocities done in the name of God. Acting as though one is doing the will of God. In such cases it is not a lack of faith but a lack of knowledge. They are doing what they think is good but what they are doing is the opposite.

Good luck with this one Tom.

For you yes. For me no. — EugeneW

You still do not understand what apodictic means:

"clearly established or beyond dispute" — EugeneW

Not just for me or you but:

necessarily true and can be demonstrated to be true. — Fooloso4

So, if I say that you are wrong about everything and won't dispute it then it follows that it is beyond dispute that you are wrong about everything. Exactly. Beyond dispute.

An apodictic proposition is necessarily true and can be demonstrated to be true. Not arguing about it does not make it beyond dispute, it simply means you won't dispute it. If I claim that a circle must have a diameter that equals its circumference that does not mean it is beyond dispute if I won't argue about it.

I would rather not insult you so I am not going to continue with an exchange that has taken a turn to the absurd.

Good. Now you have to figure out what that means. Hint: it in not enough that one person or group of people to regard it as beyond dispute

Again, you need to look up the definition of apodictic.

You need to look up the definition of apodictic. Holding a moral theory in no way makes it apodictic.

Sounds like an essay question. — Bartricks

For once I agree. I was about to post the same thing.

As to the question itself: We are told that the consequences were unforeseen, but not being told what the actions were we do not know if the action was irresponsible, that is, that there was a reasonable expectation that the consequences would be bad.

If, for example, a vaccine is developed and after rigorous testing of efficacy and safety it is approved but some small percentage of patients develop serious and possibly life-threatening side-effects, it is clear that the consequences for that population are bad. But if the majority of people who are vaccinated benefit we cannot simply say that administering the vaccine is bad. Further, if protocols are in place and have been followed those who developed and administered the vaccine should not be held morally responsible.

As with other moral theories, consequentialism has its limits. No moral theory yields unequivocally or apodictically correct answers.