order is prior to the brain and thus the eye, and if this were not, it would be impossible for parts to become synthesized into wholes for a purpose. purpose implies reason, reason implies order — TheGreatArcanum

This is convoluted. You deny the reality of irrational numbers, and thus don't believe in imaginary time as Hawking called it? "The spiritual" is nothingness because truth is nowhere. How much truth have you touched?

This is convoluted. You deny the reality of irrational numbers, and thus don't believe in imaginary time as Hawking called it? "The spiritual" is nothingness because truth is nowhere. How much truth have you touched? — Gregory

I deny the existence of numbers in themselves that do not denote either a qualitative or essential aspect of being. in my philosophy, logic denotes being, math necessitates logic, and thus both being and logic precede mathematics. They have a contingent reality in the sense that they are mental abstractions, or rather, objects of memory and present awareness.

I don't know what imaginary time is. but I conceive of time as both relative and absolute.

The spiritual is not "nothingness," but identical to the unchanging structure of absolute being. The absolute makes its presence known at all times within me; never would I say something so blasphemous and ignorant experiencing the truth directly by means of the mystical union.

The first principle of philosophy is that philosophy has a first principle.

(That ought to be right.) — god must be atheist

Why 'ought' it to be right?

You can claim it as an assumption if you want.

each truth is contingent upon a higher truth — TheGreatArcanum

Why are you starting with truth? What is meant by 'truth'?

You are making more implicit assumptions here.

You have never heard of anyone bigger than life?

A person greater, smarter, and more beautiful than himself?

Then you haven't met me yet.

But to be serious:
A principle is not a truth... it is a principle. a truth is inherent in a statement, a principle is a guide. Guides are imperatives, not statements. Statements have truth values; principles can't.

So... "each truth is contingent upon a higher truth" is (as much as it is not up for debate) does not contradict having a first principle.

The first principle as stated by me was not an assumption. It was dead on. It may have been circular, but it was spot on. "A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name is a rose." if something has a principle, it has to have the principle to be in possession of principles. so why not make the principle into an ability to have principles.
There is no assumption needed here. I think this was brilliant. And I don't mind saying so myself.

Good points on all sides. I say substance is being in a certain shape and so can only be about the world. Truth is a different question. To say Spirit has substance is to be a pantheist

Hegel never said the world doesn't exist. He simply pointed out a paradox about thought and matter. Descartes didn't understand it, or wouldn't have

Statements have truth values — god must be atheist

Statements don't have truth values, but some have truth labels.

Descartes didn't understand it — Gregory

Aha.

Statements don't have truth values, but some have truth labels. — A Seagull

Stop right there. This is misinformation on your part.

A giraffe has a long neck.

A giraffe has a short neck.

Would you call the corresondence to truth a value, or a label? Why? This is not a rhetorical question. I don't know why you would call them labels instead of values. So please explain.

Maybe giraffes should have short necks and once did. Reason is more of a stage than a faculty. Hegel wanted to see himself in objects and the objects as Forms, and thus himself as the forms. But that's not the last note of the song

Hegel wanted to see himself in objects and the objects as Forms, and thus himself as the forms. — Gregory

Gregory, you just proved that Hegel was God. The Pancosmic god.

I imagine (in imaginary time, which I ruled by an imaginary number) Hegel looking as his snuff box thinking "I am snuffboxness".

I recommend people skip his Preface and Introduction in phenomenology of spirit. It gets right to the meat quickly in the first chapter

Take a truth, any truth, and then ask yourself, what must first be true for it to be true, — TheGreatArcanum

That it be true and that "true" be meaningful (as opposed to meaningless). That means some set of criteria under which this particular true is established as true. Once established in this way, then eternal - how not? Truth then is an accident of philosophical inquiry, a waypoint, if you will.

One can then look at criteria. Maybe more truths will emerge. But inquiry gets to a point - not a ground or foundation - but to a question that cannot be answered in terms of the criteria. If the criteria are actually a model, then the model breaks either partly or entirely. But even broken it still may be the preferred tool for some purposes. Newtonian physics provides an example in that it is still good enough to get a lot of work done.

Some final or absolute truth? All the time. Just not in the sense that I think that you mean.

But is there not some underlying unchanging aspect that grounds it all? — TheGreatArcanum

If you think that there is, go for it; make your case.

Why are you starting with truth? What is meant by 'truth'? — A Seagull

I am not starting with truth, but with the undeniable fact that I am self-aware, which is simultaneously an object of awareness and a truth. This is because truth and being are identical. Truth does not necessitate language, otherwise, the necessary truth "mind is necessary for language," is false.

To say Spirit has substance is to be a pantheist — Gregory

this is not true, substance need not be spatial. to say that spirit is a substance is not to say that spirit is spatial, but this is what pantheism implies.

A giraffe has a long neck.

A giraffe has a short neck.

Would you call the corresondence to truth a value, or a label? Why? This is not a rhetorical question. I don't know why you would call them labels instead of values. So please explain. — god must be atheist

It is to do with the process by which one chooses which statements, if any, merit the label of 'true'

It is a somewhat haphazard and mystical process and so one cannot claim that a statement has the 'property' of truth, only a label, which is typically allocated on a subjective basis.

Why are you starting with truth? What is meant by 'truth'? — A Seagull
I am not starting with truth, but with the undeniable fact that I am self-aware, which is simultaneously an object of awareness and a truth. This is because truth and being are identical. Truth does not necessitate language, otherwise, the necessary truth "mind is necessary for language," is false. — TheGreatArcanum

Well there are lots of assumptions implicit in your assertion, and that is fine.

It is to do with the process by which one chooses which statements, if any, merit the label of 'true' — A Seagull

I guess the labels are for applying reality to logic.

Peter is John.
John is Paul.
Therefore Peter is Paul

The conclusion is right in logic. The last sentence has a truth value of "true" if the first two statements are also true.

In reality, assuming everyone only has one first name, and these are first names in the example, Peter can't be Paul.

So the truht label is "false".
The logic is not violated, because the first two statements or sentences are also "false".

-------------------------
A Seagull, is this the difference between truth values and truth labels? A value of "true" can be assigned only to a logical statement, and it assumes that the logic is right and the premises are true. The truth label is an application of reality, inasmuch as truth, as an approximation of reality, is questionable; so the "true" statement earns only a label of truth, not a value of truth, to say that we believe it's true, but we would not swear on our mother's grave that it is actually true.

This is what I got out of your explanation and objections. Am I anywhere close to how your system would view it?

Does your system have a special name to it? If I guessed your system correctly, and it has a specific name, would you please give it here? If I am off the mark,then I'm off the market, for names, too. Thanks.

Peter is John.
John is Paul.
Therefore Peter is Paul

The conclusion is right in logic. — god must be atheist

Well there is 'logic' and then there is other logic.

I prefer the logic whereby logic is the manipulation of symbols according to specific rules. So in logic for your example 'is' would have to be defined perhaps something along the lines of 'can be substituted for'
and the names eg 'peter' would be treated as alphanumeric strings. But the whole of it would be treated as an abstract deduction, with no particular relevance to the real world.


If a person accepts that the first two premises are an accurate representation of their model of the world then they would be likely to accept the conclusion as also being a representation of their model of the world and hence label it as 'true'.

Does your system have a special name to it? If I guessed your system correctly, and it has a specific name, would you please give it here? — god must be atheist

Yes, it is called 'The Pattern Paradigm'; you might find it interesting.

Thanks. And I agree with your analysis of how logic works. I would call the two types you described as analytical logic and applied logic. But only becasue I am old skool. I like descriptive names that mean what they say. User-friendly naming conventions.

If being IS truth, then crude pantheism is true. A cup is just a cup until consciousness comes into play

As we have two cranial hemispheres, so we have a materialist and a mystical side. You are computerness as you read this, and you are humanness when you fear.

"Reason is the certainty of being all reality. This it's inherent nature, this reality, is still, however, through and through a universal, the pure abstract of reality. It is the first positive character which selfconsciousness per se is aware of being, and ego is, fherefore, merely the pure, inner essence of existence, in other words, is the Category." Hegel

The first principle of philosophy is that philosophy has a first principle.

(That ought to be right.) — god must be atheist

:up: :smirk:

(B) the principle of insufficient reason (PIR), or random (i.e. acausal) events occur and are ineluctable (i.e. unbounded);
— 180 Proof

How is it that you think teleology and acausality can co-exist? — TheGreatArcanum

I don't.

"Teleology" is an artifact of antiquated folk epistemology (pace Aristotle) refuted handily by the advent of Galilean-Cartesian-Newtonian mathematical physics, etc.

Is not all chaos, controlled chaos, and thus bounded by order?

"Chaos" =|= randomness; the quote above refers to the latter not the former.

Aren't all infinities bounded by some a priori set, or concept?

Non sequitur.

In a world of infinite randomness, how is that things in the world never become anything other than what they have the a priori potential to become? A seed can become a tree ...

I don't know what "infinite randomness" pertains to; my point is that there are random events and, as such, they are not bounded with respect to - encompassed by - reasoning (i.e. causal explanations (e.g. scientific modeling)), and therefore reason is, while indispensable, nonetheless insufficient (pace Leibniz, Hegel).

How is [it] that you reconcile the [a p]riori orderliness and limitedness of Nature with the notion that all events are "unbounded" and "random?"

I don't.

I've neither claimed nor implied anything about "all events". Again, my point is that there are a class of events - random - that are unbounded with respect to reason (i.e. ineluctable).

"Teleology" is an artifact of antiquated folk epistemology (pace Aristotle) refuted handily by the advent of Galilean-Cartesian-Newtonian mathematical physics, etc. — 180 Proof

I don't believe that they had the technology by in Galileo and Newton's day to prove that the will is contingent upon the Laws of Nature. Even still, it has not be shown empirically that the will is nothing but a mere effect of mechanical causes inside the brain.

Is not all chaos, controlled chaos, and thus bounded by order?

"Chaos" =|= randomness; the quote above refers to the latter not the former. — 180 Proof

What is randomness but controlled chaos? that is, chaos that possesses, not infinite possibilities, but finite possibilities only, that is to say that it is defined by some abstract a priori limited context.

Aren't all infinities bounded by some a priori set, or concept? — 180 Proof

eluctab — 180 Proof

Non sequitur. — 180 Proof

your non-sequitur is a non-sequitur

In a world of infinite randomness, how is that things in the world never become anything other than what they have the a priori potential to become? A seed can become a tree ...

I don't know what "infinite randomness" pertains to; my point is that there are random events and, as such, they are not bounded with respect to - encompassed by - reasoning (i.e. causal explanations (e.g. scientific modeling)), and therefore reason is, while indispensable, nonetheless insufficient (pace Leibniz, Hegel). — 180 Proof

How do you distinguish, logically, between that which is bounded by reason and that which is not?

Again, my point is that there are a class of events - random - that are unbounded with respect to reason (i.e. ineluctable). — 180 Proof

Can you show that this random class of events has infinite possibilities as opposed to only a finite number? That which is truly random cannot be limited in its randomness, otherwise it would then be presupposed by limitation, and since each entity is limited in a different way, that which limits on behalf of reason, right? Or are we operating under the presupposition here that randomness is eternal and existing necessarily? Do you have empirical proof for this assertion?

Order, patterns, and chaos have mostly to do with consciousness, instead of with the cosmos. Cosmology is expressed by the saying "that which was not may be what it was".

"that which was not may be what it was" — Gregory

That which comes into existence, comes into existence by means of a bridge between potentiality and actuality. The question is whether the bridge between potential and actuality in our minds has the same essence as the bridge between potential and actuality in the world.