“The yellow dragon with red balls, which speaks japanese”. It is a very clear concept — Rafaella Leon

Oh no! Here's another "clear concept" for you:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I mean, there's very little to disagree with here... Your point is that Dostoevsky was a Christian philosopher? It's like writing an essay to prove Einstein was a physicist.

To play devil's advocate (heh...)

Satanism seems to have begun as LaVey's atheistic pseudoreligion, but over time the word "Satan" has come to mean vastly different things from the Abrahamic definition. The Temple of Set is a form of Kemetism wherein Set (aka "Satan" according to them) is the main deity of reverence. Other forms of Satanism equate Satan with hundreds of other beings from Nordic paganism, Babylonian religion, or the greco-roman pantheon (Typhon). If Satanism were truly just worship of the biblical Satan... perhaps my OP accidentally implied this... then the answer would obviously be "yes", Satanism is nothing more than anti-Abrahamism. But that's a false premise.

I'd also like to add that there are some (very few!) Satanic religions which revere truly original deities, mostly inspired by lovecraft. I was not aware of all this when I wrote the OP... unfortunately the Church of Satan has a near monopoly on Satanic definitions and publicity, and uses their power to define these things however they want.

Jesus implants his soul in you by destroying the old soul on the cross. — Gregory

You know those facehuggers from the Alien movies, which lay eggs in your throat which then hatch and burst out your chest? I always wondered where they got their inspiration from...


Yes, they worship Milton's Satan.

if you agree that God is an expression of human ideals — Bird-Up

Does anyone on earth with an IQ over 80 actually believe the Abrahamic God is "ideal"?

Sorry, I should have been more clear; I'm using "noumenon" in the Kantian sense.

Here's a brief mention of Buddhist influence on Heidegger in Wikipedia. I'm sure if you have access to scholarly publications you'll find much discussion on the topic.

Anyway, thank you for enlightening me on Heidegger. If I may, I would absolutely suggest reading more about Eastern philosophy. If you want primary sources, the Dao De Jing, Zhuangzi, Genjokoan, Heart Sutra and Mulamadhyamakakarika are very focused on ontology and epistemology. Buddhism especially has a very interesting ontology, which uses as its basis a synthesis of the Cartesian and phenomenological viewpoints, but instead develops it into a rigorous system of ethics. A good tertiary source is of course basically anything by D.T. Suzuki.

Thank you for the clarifications @fdrake

My understanding of Heidegger, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is as follows:

1. Cartesian ontology proved that Solipsism cannot be disproven logically. Heidegger does not dispute this conclusion.

2. Heidegger's novelty was not in addressing the problem of the un-knowability of the noumenon, but rather in ignoring the noumenon and using phenomenological experience instead of the cogito as the "axiom" for building his ontology. If he occasionally claims that the noumenon can be known, the claim does not have a logical basis.

3. Since his ontology is based on phenomena, he spends a lot more time investigating human psychology than other ontologists would. He claims that logic is not adequate to absolutely express phenomenological ontology, and that certain aspects of phenomena (and therefore, ontology) must necessarily lie outside the realm of logic for reasons such as the false equivocations that you pointed out. All logic is given meaning only through interpretation by a Dasein, and therefore all logic must necessarily fail to describe those axioms that the Dasein used in order to create it. It is (and always will be) impossible to prove the definitions of "and" or "implies" using logic, because these things are in some sense not logical, but phenomenological.

Is this a fair representation of his thought?

If so, then I fail to see the value in it. Perhaps Heidegger would be shocking to Descartes, but his ideas on the fallibility of logic and the central position of phenomena in human existence were already articulated several millenia ago by Laozi and Buddha respectively.

Would it be a valid criticism to state that his major achievement was in translating Eastern ontology into philosophical language for a Western audience? Or am I still missing something?

nevermind

This is violence against logic.

What you're attempting to say is:

$\forall x ( \neg p \implies p )$
$\forall x (\neg p)$
$\therefore \forall x (p)$

Translation:

Let's distort the fact that "false implies true" until it vaguely resembles "nothing causes something", and then complain because false still implies true.

That is a very thoughtful post. Some responses:

There's a lot of "given" that goes into formulating something in predicate logic

The critique of logic you mention-- that we have to explicitly state relationships such as that the set "red" is a subset of "colored"-- seems to ignore that this is exactly the same way that we as humans also learn that red is a subset of colored. I grew up speaking english, I live in a 4 dimensional universe with cartesian geometry and photons, I have light and sound sensing organs, and so after a few years of existence I learned that when I hear "red" it means a certain wavelength of light, and when I hear "colored" it means the set of all visible wavelengths of light. The problem of the "given" you mention in logic is just because we don't have the same patience when formulating logical statements as we do when raising children.

Imagine if we assumed that the entities in question - red things like apples - were fully determined by how they were represented in predicate logic

I agree that the noumenal apple is very different from the logical representation of it. The logical representation is only supposed to abstract the phenomenon.

Now, if we say that our knowledge of how red things are always coloured things is represented by the implication that red things are always coloured by including that as an argument premise, there is the question of the means of that representation and how it is is enabled through the "given" practical competences we leverage.

Not sure I follow... The means of that representation would just be something like

$\forall x (x \in R \implies x \in C)$

Heidegger situates his ontology in the "given" revealed by that gap between representations (outputs of representational behaviour) and the means of representation's leverage of know how.

I don't see room for Heidegger between two things that shouldn't be separated. It seems like you're saying he focuses on phenomenology, which is certainly true, but where are the noumena? This is my difficulty. You can't have a sound ontology without addressing noumena. Discussions on the limits of logic seem to me unrelated to this issue.

Edit:

If you're familiar with Wittgenstein, it's a similar brand of error to using a word outside of its context without noticing the violence done to its meaning ("language running idle") - the error here being one of apprehension/theorising style, taking a present at hand mode of apprehension outside of its intended context and not noticing the violence done to its topics of concern (similar to hyper reflection in Merleau Ponty maybe).

Do you have any examples of this Heideggerian violence? I'm generally familiar with Wittgenstein but his criticisms of language, ironically for this discussion, are easily solved by using logic instead.

Because if an opinion is logically unsound, then it is obviously inferior?

Hence why I am asking for help understanding why this would not be the case with Heidegger. Expression in predicate logic is an easy way to show the soundness of an argument.