The thing with chapter 1 of Difference & Repetition, though, is that, in it, the concept of selection isn't just a matter of metaphysical methodology. It makes the more radical move - and correct me if you disagree - of making selection ontological, of painting being itself as a kind of continuous process of selection. — csalisbury
I guess, if you wanna go whole-hog immanentist, that the metaphysician's act of selection must itself be ontologically explicable. & so this is how you avoid the perspicuous concern that @Moliere raises about metaphysics bleeding into epistemology - you make being itself a process of 'laying claim' or 'selecting', so that the metaphysican's act is but one instance of a universal process.
Out of sincere, non-rhetorical curiosity, is your current reading of D&R especially colored by any particularly secondary source or interpretation? — csalisbury
Wilfried Sellars' definition of philosophy (which helps one understand philosophy's methodological approach): "The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." — Terrapin Station
Recently, I've been drawn - thanks to my reading of Gilles Deleuze - to thinking about metaphysics as a matter of selection: to 'have a metaphysics' is to have a way to 'select' among the kinds of things that 'exist'. — StreetlightX
Finally, in Aristotle, it is a matter of 'selecting' what falls under a particular genus and a particular species: Being is 'distributed' according to what categories they fall under, and it is a matter of selecting between what falls where. — StreetlightX
My working definition for a while was metaphysics as being that which relates to the 'first and last things': where things come from (origins), and where things are going (ends/teleology). ....
.... to 'have a metaphysics' is to have a way to 'select' among the kinds of things that 'exist'. — StreetlightX
There's always a kind of 'hinge' which sorts out what belongs where (what does the selecting - a kind of metaphysical Laplace's Demon). — StreetlightX
grave doubt about whether any philosophy can reasonably bottom out (forgive me) at a discipline like physics that has largely given up on talk of the causal and can barely bring itself to think much of time's arrow — mcdoodle
I have begun by showing that tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology, in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products of growth, and to a Schelling-fashioned idealism which holds matter to be mere specialized and partially deadened mind. — C S Pierce
Metaphysics anticipates the general structures of reality by formulating the way our knowing operates. Science actually works out the explanation of the data by a never-ending process of research.
Physics, however, does make a declaration about what is considered a valid object of analysis, namely, something which can be physically measured, something which registers on an instrument or plate or bubble-chamber. — Wayfarer
And again, I question whether C S Pierce sought to ground his metaphysics in what we take to be 'the physical'. — Wayfarer
Even though 'the way our knowing operates' seems to be more the subject of epistemology, — Wayfarer
Probably all wrong, but anyway it's striking that your own model is clenched and curled up super tight brooking only those findings and ideas which will reinforce (or add subtle shading to or furnish new examples of) a set and sedentary framework. — csalisbury
Do you think quantum physicists can believe in the reality of "stuff" anymore? — Apokrisis
but then you say you're a physicalist, — Wayfarer
I know this is not the topic of the thread, but I don't agree with this characterization of Aristotle (I think he's a much better reader of Plato). I don't think he was much concerned with "genus" and "species" (these are latter terms), this concern being much more the product of Porphyry (who was a neo-Platonist). Rather, I'd say that he was much more concerned with what is essential and what is inessential; in the case of living organisms, this distinction is rooted in the form of life of that particular organism (so he's very distant from current taxonomical paradigms, which focus more on anatomical features; for Aristotle, anatomical features are something to be explained, not what does the explaining). In other words, essential features of an organism are those which actively contribute to the organism's way of living, whereas inessential features are those which are a mere byproduct of the essential features.
This is not just nitpicking, because Deleuze's argument against Aristotle (in the first chapter of DR) depends on his Porphyrian reading of Aristotle (and here I think he may be operating under the influence of Le Blond), and I'm not sure if it can be patched once Aristotle's subtler points are in view. — Nagase
Of course, that doesn't detract from your general point, namely that metaphysics is concerned with selection. I think that's an interesting thought, specially since you presumably select something for some purpose, and one could ask what purpose this is (I think Deleuze's reading of Plato is especially nice in this regard). But I'm not sure if I agree. Generally, one would say that one doesn't select one's metaphysical picture, but rather that that picture is somewhat forced upon one. — Nagase
Why 'alternatively'? I don't understand the natural sciences in their broad sweep, but I'm open to the idea that you may. Whatever leads to the model, the model itself is remarkably stable, quite satisfyingly fixed. What I'm interested in is your understanding of the status of this model in relation to all the other fragile, tenuous structures out there. Is the model itself of their kind? But how could something as fragile as they consistently and truly explain such a diverse range of phenomena? It's as though the tenuous, ephemeral, doomed dissipative structures were able to construct something quite-fixed.Alternatively, this is what all the possibilities distill down to. If you understood the natural sciences in their broad sweep, this is where we are at.
What I'm interested in is your understanding of the status of this model in relation to all the other fragile, tenuous structures out there. Is the model itself of their kind? — csalisbury
Let's get romantic and non-crisp and quote yeats: — csalisbury
But is your model that kind of non-natural enamel bird? or is it of a piece with nature? — csalisbury
Aristotle 'selects for' specific difference, while ruling out, as ontologically illegitimate as it were, generic difference — StreetlightX
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