Alright, here's the next installment. You guys may actually find this one interesting. It's on the analogy of attribution. This covers cases like "medical" and "healthy."

Thanks for your stamp of approval! 8-)

Ignore this posting.

The most "serious" atheist philosopher, in my view, is probably David Hume. Problem is, his arguments only work against the moderns. They don't really apply to the classic and medieval philosophers.

I don't think it right even to consider Epicureanism a serious philosophical sect. The real philosophers (including the Stoics) were all basing themselves, more or less loosely, on Plato and Aristotle.

Epicurus came straight out of left field with some pre-Socratic philosophy that Aristotle had long put to bed.

And need I even mention the "swerve"?

How utterly ridiculous.

The way that Aristotle is treated, taught, etc. in contemporary settings generally isn't very good...generally speaking, contemporary philosophical education isn't very good.

Modern philosophical education: Begin with Descartes, pretend as though philosophy starts there, and then give the student a little smattering of everything, and then somehow expect the student to be something other than horribly confused at the end.

I recommend Alisdaire MacIntyre's "Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry" on this point. MacIntyre's writing style is...I won't lie to you...absolutely torturous. It's convoluted, long-winded, confusing and...I'll just say it.

It's terrible.

That said, many of the ideas are pretty good and worth making it past his bad writing.

At any rate, there are many factors that could have led to you not being impressed by Aristotle, which can include:

1. Bad translations.
2. A lack of understanding of the technical terminology.
3. A lack of context for his philosophy as a whole and how the texts were interpreted by later commentators.
4. A complete lack of Greek.

At any rate:

Posterior Analytics + St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the Posterior Analytics.

Worth it.

Epicureanism is so utterly ridiculous that it's probably one of the few, maybe perhaps the only, "mainstream" philosophy that Plotinus simply ignores outright in his writings.

He devotes time to attacking gnosticism.

He spends a LOT of time attacking Stoicism.

He completely ignores Epicureanism.

1. So, if you watch the video,I specifically did not psychologize either set of views. Imho, the psychological question isn't philosophically interesting. I mean, I suppose you can say that I "psychologized" the Epicureans, but only to the extent that I said "This is the 'goal' that these beliefs play in their system."

The more interesting question is what the concepts actually look like when they are fully fleshed out, which beliefs actually should be scarier or more comforting.

And I think that I basically agree with what Plato has Socrates say somewhere...I think the Apology? If there is no immortality of the soul, then death would be like a dreamless sleep. Why should that be fearful?

It's the concepts of God and the immortality of the soul that should be more fearsome. The idea of a Supreme Judge and retribution according to our deeds, either here or there...that's a scary thought.

Republic, book I comes to mind on this point, were the old dude is like: "Yeah...when you get old. You start thinking about those stories..."

2. Your comments bring Nietzsche and Levinas to mind. Nietzsche ultimately is the source of the "man god," "creation of new values" thing. I think that Levinas ultimately goes the "mankind is the new social god" route. Though for Levinas, it's the other person, not the self, who is the "new god," so to speak.

On the Berkeley discussion:

I actually think that Berkeley is underrated. He had probably the greatest insight of the modern period, and I rarely hear this quoted:

In the Three Dialogues, he tells us plainly that he is simply combining two assumptions:

1. The common sense assumption is that reality is what we perceive.
2. The assumption of the modern philosophers that what we perceive are ideas.

And he's right.

Had he only abandoned the second premise...

...but then, to abandon the second premise is to abandon modernity.

At any rate, Berkeley (and the whole modern period) was already refuted by Aristotle. Check out De Anima II.6.

I have to disagree on Plotinus. He's easily one of the most underrated philosophers around, not one of the most overrated.

The problem with Plotinus is that modern scholarship on Plotinus is terrible, for a number of reasons.

1. Most Plotinus scholars are continentals and analytics...neither of whom have any business doing the history of classical or medieval philosophy. Or, more often than not, philosophy at all. But I digress.

Case in point: Anyone here familiar with Lloyd P. Gerson? In his book "Plotinus: Arguments of the Philosophers," he actually makes the claim that there is an argument for hypostatic Intellect from the existence of eternal truth.

I am almost certain that he pulled this out of thin air.

An analytic historian of philosophy is someone who thinks that if he plays linguistic and logic games with a text, and failing that, tries to "reduce it" to common sense and common language, he'll end up with a correct or plausible reading.

Anyone familiar with Peter Geach? Analytical philosopher who wrote books on Aquinas? No? Good. Don't bother. Not worth it.

Fact is, if you're not someone who's knee deep in the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions, you're just not going to understand Plotinus. If you don't have, not only a good knowledge of the Posterior Analytics, the Metaphysics and at least some of the Physics...well...let's just say that's the bare minimum, and if that's all that you're bringing to the table, you still won't understand him.

Lloyd P. Gerson is famous for his exposition of the "two acts" theory in Plotinus' thought.

He's famous for that. That's a "big discovery" in modern scholarship.

Oy vae.

2. We only have access to fragments of Plotinus' recent predecessors among the middle Platonists, and we have absolutely no writings from his teacher, Ammonias Saccas.

3. The commentary that Proclus, a later Neoplatonist, wrote on the Enneads has since been lost. And as far as I'm aware, we don't have any other ancient commentaries on the Enneads.

From 2 and 3, note carefully: Just because we are alive at a later date doesn't mean that our understanding of an historical period, of an historical figure, of a philosophy, etc. is somehow better than those people of an age gone by. Texts get lost. Ideas fall out of the contemporary zeitgeist. Things get forgotten.

4.I think that Armstrong is just right on this point: the Enneads are an unsystematic presentation of a systematic philosophy. In addition to the problem of the difficulty and obscurity of Plotinus' thought, which is DEEPLY and COMPLEXLY scholastic, in addition to the fact that we have him, so to speak, "ripped out" of his historical context, that he appears in the midst of a veritable sea of forgotten and lost personalities...

...in addition to all of that, he's just downright obscure, and more on some occassions than on others. To quote Kevin Corrigan: "Plotinus never says the same thing twice." He's not like other thinkers where he will copy/paste and expand basically the exact same thing in different contexts when he's talking about the same thing. He's not like Kant where he will basically repeat himself ad nauseam so that you basically know exactly what he's going to say next.

The dude's writing is both dialectical and obscure. He'll entertain 12 different positions at once (a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much), argue through them all, and you'll be left scratching your head wondering what he actually thinks. And then just wait until he takes up the same topic a few treatises down the line!

He simply lacks the expositional clarity of a figure like Proclus.

But...

...

All in all, he's definitely a Platonist, and one of the most important ones. Proclus and Plotinus are probably two of the most influential Platonists in the middle ages and decidedly helped shape the course of Arabic and Western scholastic thought. Avicenna and Al-Farabi both knew a version of Plotinus and Proclus, albeit through arabic paraphrases, integrated them into their own systems, and passed that on to the Christian scholastic west.

The "footnote to Plato" thing is mostly accurate, though, at least if we're talking about philosophy posterior to Plato and prior to Descartes. The entire period was basically one giant debate between Plato and Aristotle. Throw in some materialism here. Remove materialism, and replace with some Islam there. Replace Islam with some Christianity there...

...You get the idea.

And yeah. That's basically philosophy before Descartes. And even after Descartes, there's pretty heavy Platonic influence.

Either way, I think that two things are happening:

1. You are grossly underestimating Plato, mainly because you've probably only read him through modern lenses. Jonathan Barnes and Proclus are not equal interpreters of Plato and Aristotle. Just saying.

2. You are grossly overestimating modern thought and methods.

Renee Descartes.

The dude was a complete amateur. He did his [equivalent of] undergraduate in philosophy with the Jesuits, subsequently forgot everything, and then started asking advice for some anthologies to get him "up to speed" on philosophy again.

He was an amateur. The modern philosophical period is a PERIOD of amateurs up until Kant, and shame on him for basing his academic philosophy on the work of amateurs.

Dishonor. Dishonor on them. Dishonor on their whole families. Dishonor on their cows.

For someone on a philosophy forum, that strikes me as uncharitable...and that's all I have to say on that matter.



I'm aware that there's not much context, etc. in the videos, mainly because I wanted to keep it short and relatively uncomplicated. I figure that if I do videos on metaphysics later, I could just say: "By the way, watch those analogy videos first."

As far as the authors you mentioned: I haven't actually read any Meister Eckhart, though I am aware of him from people like Etienne Gilson. I've heard of Nicholas of Cusa, but I don't really know what his doctrines are.

For any interested, here's the next installment.

Fair enough. I'm ABD for a philosophy Ph.D. Heaviest areas of competence are medieval and classical philosophy.

The analogy material falls under my competence with medieval and classical philosophy.

How do you understand "authority"? Do I know what I'm talking about? To the extent necessary for the content of the videos? Yes.

Are there objective "credentials" that I can point to which would support my claim that I know what I'm talking about? Yes.

Have I published on the topic? No.

Either way, quit trolling. If you don't want to watch the video or talk about the subject matter, then find another thread to have a discussion in.

Terrapin:

I do have to admit though. The thought of a high school student going onto youtube wanting to remember what the difference between metaphor and analogy is, watching my videos, and then going to school the next day:

Teacher: Alright, Jimmy, do you know what an analogy is?

Jimmy: Well you see, analogy is an analogous term, and according to the Angelic Doctor, there are three senses in which a term can be analogous. The most proper significate of the term is the analogy of proper proportionality, which involves both ontological and conceptual identity-in-difference...

The teacher then begins taking notes...

...That thought .that thought makes me giggle.

Terrapin:

LOL. What's funny is that I actually am going to cover metaphor in the video I make on the analogy of proper proportionality.

Jeremiah:

An authority on analogy? I wouldn't call myself an authority on the topic. I did take a grad course on it. Does that count?

Hanover:

If you don't want the video, then you certainly don't have to watch it. In fact, I find it strange that you would even comment in a such a thread at all.

The "script" for the video was slightly more than 3 double-spaced pages long. Do you really have a strong preference for reading that as opposed to hearing it? Also, there's more content in the video than the script.

Terrapin:

General audience. The intended prerequisite for understanding the analogy video is that you've watched and understood the univocity video. I'm aware that some of the stuff in the analogy video still may be confusing, but I'm going to make a video on each of the three types of analogy which I hope will clear things up.

Which parts did you find too complicated, confusing and not very explanatory?

This is the prequel to the above video, if anyone is interested.

Terrapin:

It's each additional addition that makes it progressively more unlikely. I had in mind the Sam Harris interview on The Young Turks.

Basically, he argues in the following way:

There is likehood x of Jesus coming back (as Christians claim). The likelihood decreases if you add that not only is He coming back, but that he's coming back to x location (Jacksonville, MS, if I recall correctly as the Mormon claim).

Likewise, the likelihood decreases the more additions you add.

God -> gods -> dog gods -> pug dog dogs -> pug dog gods who eat kibble and chase postal workers.

Admittedly, this "unlikely" argument isn't directly from Xenophanes. It's more an extension of what he's arguing.

I think, at its core, the bit that's really Xenophanes' directly is the psychological projection bit.

Have you read Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke?

He has a little section in the back where he deals with this question.