• Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    Perspective was considered by Descartes to be an illusion in a sense. Even seeing cuitness is an illusion for him. A thought of philosophy can be for from this idea. Is Heidegger wrong to say "being is not deduced by the idea of a human being" ?
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    Great thoughts MadFool and everyone
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    The law of the excluded middle doesn't apply to anything really, love be ing a great example (again Aristotle is wrong). I have favorites in the family but I love them all equally. I love my dad and twin brother the most but I love them all equally. The others have no reason to be jealous. I think most people can see my point here
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    A lamp for Aristotle has two natures, the base and the shade. This is because they are easily separable and not glued together. Each by themselves can be different things in different cultures. But if our consciousness determines what things are, we see that the lamp is one thing. One object. So Heidegger wins over Aristotle
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    Aristotle said things have common natures, but we can imagine a world only consisting of two identical metal balls. Do they share a nature? The more your mind emphasizes their individuality, the more it sees natures are not necessary
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    I wonder if science could make a man who has only two Y chromosome and.If this would be a superior type of superman. The finer distinctions are bound to cause.great headaches for believers in natures. The world is noumenic potentiality
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    What combinations of genes are viable is not verified by science. Evolution marches on, and nominalism has something to say about this debate. It's not about proving nominalism true, but showing that classifications are all about psychology. So it is not wrong to say there are two sexes, but what is in reality is another matter. How close are two females? Are they close enough to share a nature despite there uniqueness? Seeing "natures" is just psychology. I think the "in-betweens" do indicate a continuum, because it's impossible to know how to define the nature. Nowadays people want to change parts of themselves aesthetically. What if a woman wants to remove her clitoris for aesthetic reasons? What if a woman was born just like other females but had a penis instead of a clitoris. Who is to say that is not more natural or normal? It's the Christian idea that Adam and Eve were perfect representations of the sexes. Evolution is all over the place. I think philosophy can clarify in this way. But what is boils down to is just different psychological ways of looking at material objects (even conscious ones).
  • Analytic Philosophy
    This is the music of analytical philosophy and logicism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7kvGqiJC4g

    Mozart is, idn, Newtonian calculus??.
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress


    Great observations. Nature is both infinite and finite says Hegel. How to reconcile that is beyond human comprehension
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    There is nothing that stops an infinity of subdivision of space. There is also nothing in the human tool box to explain how infinite space can have a beginning and end
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    To go from San Francisco to Bakersfield, you have to go half of the space, otherwise your there. And half that, otherwise your there. There is a difference between an infinite regress and simple infinity. The universe is infinite. Spinoza asked "if God is infinite, he must be the world". That has to do with ontology, but in math it is true. Calculus can make the infinite finite although this is a contradiction. I believe the medium this procedure is done is in different from what calculus can describe
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    When calculus brings the infinity into the finite, we can say maybe that the One of Parmenides is the infinite. Or we know nothing about what makes the infinite finite. Kant calls it the noumena
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    An infinity is simply the highest thing possible. I know I am using a philosophical argument here, but there can't something higher than the higher. Call the latter the highest and move on. I don't think a set has to be infinite in order to contain itself. So the higher thought is infinity, and sets lead you there
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress


    It doesn't matter how your imagination sees the set. This is straight arithmetic, not geometry. There cannot be pattern in infinity if you go from 1 to infinity, obviously. If you add on infinities than you have patterns, but only if you believe in patterns. I don't believe in patterns, and also I am a materialist. There is only one infinity, there is only one thing to think about ultimately. It is not a person.
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress


    My thoughts are mechanical, but without motion. I think you are in contradiction in thinking motion and mechanical thinking can go together

    Whitehead was a Spinozian. The latter said that God does not love us, yet we are him. So he doesn't love himself. The ultimate action for Spinoza is thought, not love. Whitehead took this ultimate Intelligence and tried to add other stuff, but it gets tangled with stuff from Aquinas, so I don't know if it's valid to go into those areas. Interestingly, Whitehead wrote stuff in the 20's on wholes and parts which are now considered wrong.

    I think we can mechanize out thoughts because we are matter, all along guided by the set that contains itself
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    No set needs to include itself. That was a philosophical idea inserted into Frege's system illegally. But any one in the series can.
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress


    We are strictly talking about static sets and numbers in what you are referring too. The power of the ultimate set is a mathematical force, not mechanical. That doesn't mean we can't mechanize our thoughts, because our thoughts lead to the mathematical force, which is the object of our thoughts
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    I would love to know how Frege answered Russell in the extra part added to his book right before it was published. Russell's theory of types just says that sets can't come before objects. That is an opinion. Maybe sets can come first. I have no idea how ZFC answers this, but they might be wrong

    I think Newton was wrong to accuse Descartes in his putting of arithmetic higher than geometry. Newton and the Greeks were wrong (except of the Eleatics).

    I don't get the step in the 7th proposition (of Euclid) when he says: "Since AC equals AD, therefore the angle ACD equals the angle ADC...Again, since CB equals DB, therefore the angle CDB also equals the angle DCB."

    I understand how the proof goes in the sense that he shows that at first an angle seems to be larger than another, then equal, and thus there is a contradiction. IDN though, there is something missing here for me. He sets up what is an impossible situation given his geometry and thus when he tries to prove its wrong, doing it from his geometry, even though the setup in not in his geometry

    Geometry starts from wrong principles, because space is inherently contradictory.
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress


    You start with THE highest set. There has to be one overarching all the others. I think of them as these: [set] But imagination is not needed for this since it's arithmetic. Infinite regress is not possible without something controlling it. Our reasoning powers are such that they control infinity by finite means. So we can explain all our math by finite means I believe. Logicism was not refuted by Godel
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    Last night and tonight I went over the first propositions of Euclid. I get stuck on proposition 7. He loses me because he makes a lot of assumptions without providing the proof, from what I can see. If infinite regress is possible, it seems to me the ABC triangle could have the same angles with the DEF triangle and not meet at any point. Infinite objects must have a medium just as an infinite regressive system does.
  • Does infinite sets lead to infinite regress
    Why not outlaw selfreference then, which is a set container itself anyway. It's almost too easy to throw out Godel then. I don't follow Godel to begin with. Isn't it just Russell's paradox, which as I've said i don't think is a paradox
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    Einstein's position was self refuting. If things are all determined you can't even do science because the law might be that the after an age a new age with the opposite laws appear. You can never catch the universe red handed. Can the determined become random or the random become determinef. Nobody knows.
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    If I roll a dice a zillion times, each roll is one and six that I will come up with a 6. So the same applies the zillion (one to one correspondence). Strict logic seems to say the world does work by determinism and Einstein was right therefore. If the laws suddenly "changed" because we didn't really understand them, the scientists would say a new force has enter our universe. Hume would say "what's the difference, what is force", and he might be right
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    Spinoza and Leibniz thought everything was controlled by one principle. Infinity in substance, which far outstrips when you count to infinity and call it infinity. Occasionalism is a much better option. Did Einstein believe in compatabism. Spinoza was a determinalist. Either way the subjective and objective don't interact. When you say the first principle is impersonal or even nothingness personified, patterns cease
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism


    Chaos behavior is about "patterns" in randomness. How could "some outcomes are more likely even in a completely random system".? I think we sense patterns based on beauty only. If I cut a square into four triangles, can you prove it has more "pattern" than a white sheet of paper with one dot in the corner? Is it more patterned if the dot is in the middle? If beauty is in the soul of the beholder, then even pattern might not inherently out there.
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    Does not compatibilism completely explain the Quantum Eraser experiment and Bell's theorem away? If there is no random factor with regard to the subject observing, how can it ever be proved that there is randomness out there? I guess on this thread I am trying to argue that you can't prove there is order either. Neither one nor the other
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism


    But how do we know the pattern is not controlling us? We think that we discover patterns, like Descartes thought he discovered innate ideas. It could come from a different source
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    I don't think we can get ahead of the ball with the universe since its always ahead of us! What does the universe rest on, if it's matter. Does a force keep it in place? If the force is from an object we have an infinite regress. So I think meta nothing is like what people call spiritual or Plotinus "pure potency". Like a thought without a thinker, it acts without an actor
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    If we were to get ahead of the random and understand it almost like understanding a person, our actions would still be in control all along by this universe
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    But patterns are nothing more than what humans perceive is beautiful, regardless if infinite chaos can be contained in a mathematical system
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    The distinction between chaos and patterns is in the mind of the beholder. Who is to say what the chaos theory would be for a different species
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    ,

    Patterns are in the eye of the beholder. Patterns work in technology perhaps by a preestablished harmony
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    As Heraclitus said, everything may be in flux. I don't see how the human mind can grasp through math the many infinities in which the random can take form
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism


    If any law can suddenly ooze out into reality at any time, then to our subjectivity the world is random. The many dimensions theory gives even more visual support for this argument
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism


    If "the other" is predictable for phenomenologists, than there is no random. I thought Derrida thought writing and thinking too random and subjective to be objective
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    If the Christian says "why not drink hemlock since you agree with Hume that any law from anywhere in the universe or other dimensions might intervene to stop your death", I can retort that God might interfere to stop your death, or cause your death from eating a prexel. The Christians have a god to rely on ultimately.

    To be truly philosophical is to be anti-science and be more Buddhistic. I think Teilhard at heart was a Buddhist (after all he cried when he discovered as a child that iron rusts with a Catholic virus in him.

    Become a sage
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    That pattern recognizes works in science can be explained by compatabilism. The free will (the random factor in Bell's theorem and the Quantum eraser experiment) could be parallel to the world and work like Leibniz said about harmony. Newton got his idea of a deterministic world from Descartes, who thought we can in reality know all the workings of the universe (and of all human truth) if we applied ourselves. This rather esoteric, or at least philosophical, opinion doesn't grasp that he world is a lot freer than we may think.

    Anything could have happened in the past, and anything may happen in the future. We never see the "laws" themselves, to know them in their nature.

    Newton thought God stepped every now and then to correct the disorder that naturally happens in this universe.

    Side note: Teilhard believed God let randomness run it's course and help form evolution. The randomness would not be controlled by God, but merely sustained in nature.

    The randon was a demi-god for Teilhard.
  • Chaos theory and postmodernism
    I think Derrida was saying we can never predict the random because true randomness is more random and free than we can imagine. Our concepts of the random and the infinity is an approximation of the substance of those ideas
  • Schopenhauer versus Aquinas
    Will and Representation says the world is will, but it says it could be an evil will. Schopenhauer thought our desires can be thwarted in life. Aquinas thought our desire to be happy forever will always come true if we do what is right to get there. Christians say the desire for something higher prices there is something higher. Schopenhauer rejects such arguments