I then asked you to provide an example of an overarching meaning for life from any other metaphysical system, Buddhism for example, which you failed to do. — Janus
This raises a question in my mind: would this eternal entity be inside or outside of space and time? If inside, then differentiation would be possible after all, and it opens up the possibility that there could be multiple eternal entities. If outside, then temporal unfolding would presumably not be possible. — Esse Quam Videri
This would seem to imply that there are a multitude of eternal entities – namely, every entity (event) that has ever passed away. — Esse Quam Videri
my understanding is that Spinoza tied causality to the principle of sufficient reason. Everything in his system requires a reason for its existence, and causes provide those reasons. Since god (substance) is the only entity in Spinoza’s metaphysics that provides its own reason for existence, it must act as the causal ground for every other entity (modes) in the system — Esse Quam Videri
not because it is not the case that some physicalists (such as apo) might understand entropy to be a kind of ultimate telos — Janus
On the contrary, i agree with Nietzsche that the demand for such an ultimate purpose is what leads to nihilism — Janus
And so this is like the Buddhist notion of co-dependent arising. Or Hegelian dialectics. — apokrisis
Even finality is dualised in the sense that entropification take organisation. The Heat Death is a state of extreme order as much as extreme disorder. Everything becomes as much alike as possible. — apokrisis
what are you actually trying to say? — Janus
And so this is like the Buddhist notion of co-dependent arising. — apokrisis
Something that you never understand. — Wayfarer
But without Nirvāṇa, for the sake of which pratītyasamutpāda is taught in the first place. — Wayfarer
you cannot say anything sensible (in any propositional sense) about the mystical (or ethics) — Janus
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value -- and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
Yes, this makes sense, except that I think the final cause Wayfarer is looking for must, according to him, lie outside (be transcendent to) the system, which really makes no sense. So, I tend to think that Buddhist philosophy and Hegelian dialectics are not in any sense philosophies of transcendence in the way Wayfarer seem to conceive it, quite the opposite in fact. — Janus
This is a really interesting point. At the heat death, thermally speaking, there would be the ultimate degree of order, which is changelessness. But in terms of the spatial distribution of (dead, cold) matter it would be the ultimate disorder or lack of order. I've long thought that is a kind of weird paradox about entropy. Wayfarer also refers to it with his "I'm not sure which". — Janus
Wittgenstein is merely saying that what humans feel value in, what we really care about, is the human side of things, which is not part of the sheer happenings and states of affairs that can be captured in propositional statements and which constitute the (empirical) world.
All of this other, human side of life includes poetry, the arts, religious feeling and faith, love and friendship, trust, care, compassion, respect and so on. None of this says anything at all about the nature of any metaphysical reality; that is the point. — Janus
He thought that the arts, religion, ethics and other deeply important human concerns lay outside the purview of science. — Janus
The part played by a prime mover would be the thermodynamic imperative or least action principle. — apokrisis
But, Quine and his ilk are not representative, in that they’re philosophers, and are sufficiently educated to realise the difficulties inherent in abandoning realism with respect to abstractions. But as a rule of thumb, most nowadays believe that the human intelligence is an evolved adaptation, and that therefore the basic explanation for it is - and can only be - biological in nature. — Wayfarer
This point is basically the same as that which underlies the ‘argument from reason’ - which is that reason itself is a faculty for which there is not a physicalist or naturalist explanation. — Wayfarer
I am quite sympathetic to the idea that the operation of the intellect cannot reduced to physical processes, but I am also open to considering proposals to the contrary. — Esse Quam Videri
'm sure that there are many nuances in the maths that I am glossing here, but does that capture the basic idea? — Esse Quam Videri
I read the tail end of this discussion here and thought just your pragmatism is harder to apply to value theory. — schopenhauer1
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