When we talk of nothing existing, we may say that there are zero entities. Yet zero is still a description, an entity. So paradoxically, one comes before zero. There is before there is not. — darthbarracuda
I agree that the individuated would seem to need to come from the unindividuated. Plurality, diversity, individuality, all come from a breakage of uniformity. The basic, fundamental "theater" is a single unity. Lately, I prefer to simply call this the posteriority. There is the puppet theater, and while the illusion is that the puppets are operating on their own, we understand that there is something "behind", pulling the strings. There is the anterior appearance, and the posterior ... "whatever". — darthbarracuda
I agree that the individuated would seem to need to come from the unindividuated. — darthbarracuda
The basic, fundamental "theater" is a single unity. Lately, I prefer to simply call this the posteriority. There is the puppet theater, and while the illusion is that the puppets are operating on their own, we understand that there is something "behind", pulling the strings. — darthbarracuda
There is the anterior appearance, and the posterior ... "whatever". — darthbarracuda
In space-time, we can always move beyond. There is always more. But the posteriority, by its nature, cannot be finite, there cannot be anything further behind it. It is where we move to once we move beyond all else, including space-time itself. It is infinite, but dimensionless. When we talk of nothing existing, we may say that there are zero entities. Yet zero is still a description, an entity. So paradoxically, one comes before zero. There is before there is not. — darthbarracuda
Is this fundamental reality what we mean when we refer to Being? Do entities Spinozistically participate in Being as clumps of transient solids participate in a non-Newtonian liquid? — darthbarracuda
I'll be very charitable and try to digest this behemoth and get back to you. — schopenhauer1
...learning more about the ideas does not mean consenting with it or at least everything about it, obviously. — schopenhauer1
Park your ego at the door. — apokrisis
I agree that the individuated would seem to need to come from the unindividuated. Plurality, diversity, individuality, all come from a breakage of uniformity. The basic, fundamental "theater" is a single unity. Lately, I prefer to simply call this the posteriority. There is the puppet theater, and while the illusion is that the puppets are operating on their own, we understand that there is something "behind", pulling the strings. There is the anterior appearance, and the posterior ... "whatever". — darthbarracuda
Naturalism is essentially the view that there is no ontologically transcendent reality. — Janus
do you also admit the Aristotelean concept of substance? — Esse Quam Videri
Yes. Hylomorphism was a good early stab at understanding Being. The problem would be that there was a lot of scholastic rewriting of what it might mean. But the systems view would take it as being essentially right, once shorn of any transcendental or supernatural aspects. — apokrisis
That's as may be (actually I think it's a strawman). — Janus
What purpose do you think life has for the Buddhist, for example? — Janus
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
The spiritual values advocated by Buddhism are directed, not towards a new life in some higher world, but towards a state utterly transcending the world, referred to as Nirvāṇa. In making this statement, however, we must point out that Buddhist spiritual values do not draw an absolute separation between the beyond and the here and now. They have firm roots in the world itself for they aim at the highest realization of that state in this present existence. Along with such spiritual aspirations, Buddhism encourages earnest endeavor to make this world a better place to live in. 1 — Nyanoponika Thera
If there were an eternal entity, then nature would be its temporal unfolding. It doesn't seem to make sense to say there could be more than one eternal entity, because differentiation is a spatio-temporal thing. — Janus
Also because temporal things become eternal by having been, then the eternal must consist in the having been of everything temporal.Every event becomes eternal by passing away into the objective history of the past. From the "point of view" of eternity, though, all of the past, present and future is always already eternally present. — ”Janus”
Spinoza says God is the ultimate efficient cause of everything, but I don't think this is right, because causality belongs only to temporality, not to eternity. So the temporal is not caused by the eternal, but is the other side of its "Janus face", so to speak. As Plato beautifully said; "Time is the moving image of eternity". — ”Janus”
Basically the yardstick for what can be considered real according to naturalism, is what an evolved intelligence is able to detect by sense (or instruments.) — Wayfarer
There is no conception of transcendent cause or reasons, by definition, so ultimately it is nihilist. — Wayfarer
so my etiquette may not be up to snuff. — Esse Quam Videri
Setting aside the question of anthropomorphism, does your system posit a "necessary" component that causally grounds the entire system? — Esse Quam Videri
The only final cause recognised in physicalist systems is the heat death of the Universe; life only exists because it provides a more efficient means to that end. — Wayfarer
That's as may be (actually I think it's a strawman). — Janus
Modern physics tells us that the finality guiding the Cosmos is a general imperative towards a flat and even balance - a Heat Death. So we can discern in that end the goal that grounds the existence of the Universe. — apokrisis
Basically the yardstick for what can be considered real according to naturalism, is what an evolved intelligence is able to detect by sense (or instruments.)
— Wayfarer
That sounds more like strict empiricism rather than naturalism. Consider the fact than many arch-naturalists are willing to accept the existence of (for example) abstract entities into their ontologies (e.g. Quine). — Esse Quam Videri
as a philosophical conception, empiricism means a theory according to which there is no distinction of nature, but only of degree, between the senses and the intellect. As a result, human knowledge is simply sense-knowledge (or animal knowledge) more evolved and elaborated than in other mammals. And not only is human knowledge entirely encompassed in, and limited to, sense-experience ...; but to produce its achievements in the sphere of sense-experience human knowledge uses no other specific forces and means than the forces and means which are at play in sense-knowledge.
Now if it is true that reason differs specifically from senses, the paradox with which we are confronted is that Empiricism, in actual fact, uses reason while denying the power of reason, on the basis of a theory that reduces reason's knowledge and life, which are characteristic of man, to sense knowledge and life, which are characteristic of animals.
Hence, first, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency between what an Empiricist does -- he thinks as a man, he uses reason, a power superior in nature to senses -- and what he says -- he denies this very specificity of reason.
the reason [Dennett] imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
No, not a straw-man. — Wayfarer
Not:
Modern physics tells us that the finality guiding the Cosmos is a general imperative towards a flat and even balance - a Heat Death. So we can discern in that end the goal that grounds the existence of the Universe. — Wayfarer
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