Focus on the essential. Logic & math are also found elsewhere but the empirical is an exclusively scientific feature. — TheMadFool
I've provided a little background here in order to move the conversation in a perhaps a more fruitful direction. — Xtrix
And what law is that? My point should be obvious, and made more-or-less explicitly by Hume: you don't see laws. You observe what you suppose to be event, and maybe craft up an account of the event that seems to work. The distinction runs deep into what concerned Kant in Hume's own account. That is, the law is a creation of mind, and there's no law that says that what we think of as a law, is the way anything actually works. And indeed, across history people have composed different and differing laws concerning similar events. Aristotle himself is an example of such a person. — tim wood
Whatever allows any of this to show up, that's essentially being. Any understanding of it -- and we all have an understanding, theoretical or "pre-theoretical." Therefore, everything that shows up within this understanding (whether pre-theoretically, or theoretically as in "interpretation" or a "system of beliefs") -- behavior, science, customs, a shared worldview, morality, a class system, gender norms, etc., is going to make sense within this context. In the Greek world, for example, "saints and sinners" wouldn't have made any sense. In the Medieval world, they certainly did. So an understanding of being is arguably as fundamental to culture as religion or language is. — Xtrix
Together with Dilthey, Yorck was the first philosopher to elaborate the specific concept of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as a defining characteristic in the ontology of human beings. In particular, Yorck emphasized the generic difference between the ontic and the historical, i.e., the difference between what is seen or conceptualized (and aesthetically contemplated) as permanent nature, or essence, or idea, and the felt historical rhythm of life, i.e., life's immersion in and belonging to the overarching and always changing waves of history. In contradistinction to Dilthey's epistemological endeavors to clarify the foundations of the historical sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences, Yorck aimed exclusively at the ontology of historical life, particularly the historical band (syndesmos) and effective connection (virtuality) that unites generational life. Based on the primacy of historical life, Yorck adopted a decidedly anti-metaphysical stance, rejecting all claims of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. — link
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpintrob.htm#B1aBut men do not at certain epochs, merely philosophize in general, for there is a definite Philosophy which arises among a people, and the definite character of the standpoint of thought is the same character which permeates all the other historical sides of the spirit of the people, which is most intimately related to them, and which constitutes their foundation. The particular form of a Philosophy is thus contemporaneous with a particular constitution of the people amongst whom it makes its appearance, with their institutions and forms of government, their morality, their social life and the capabilities, customs and enjoyments of the same; it is so with their attempts and achievements in art and science, with their religions, warfares and external relationships...
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The Philosophy which is essential within Christianity could not be found in Rome, for all the various forms of the whole are only the expression of one and the same determinate character. Hence political history, forms of government, art and religion are not related to Philosophy as its causes, nor, on the other hand, is Philosophy the ground of their existence - one and all have the same common root, the spirit of the time. It is one determinate existence, one determinate character which permeates all sides and manifests itself in politics and in all else as in different elements; it is a condition which hangs together in all its parts, and the various parts of which contain nothing which is really inconsistent, however diverse and accidental they may appear to be, and however much they may seem to contradict one another. — Hegel
But if Philosophy does not stand above its time in content, it does so in form, because, as the thought and knowledge of that which is the substantial spirit of its time, it makes that spirit its object. — Hegel
Where is this "elsewhere"? What are you implying? If the empirical is exclusively scientific, it doesn't mean science is exclusively empirical. It includes, therefore, logic, mathematics and theory. These are usually considered "cognitive" or "mental." Is this "elsewhere" not science? Is the study of linguistics not science, for example?
There is a theoretical component to the activity we call science. There's a "mental" component to all conscious experience, empirical or otherwise. I'll assume you're not denying this.
Therefore, with this taken as a truism, we're already within a traditional conception: that of the "mind" and the "body" (Descartes) or perhaps the "subject and object" (more in Kant). This is the philosophical basis for modern science, including contemporary science.
What was the notion of "nature" in the 16th and 17th centuries? Take Principles of Natural Philosophy, Descartes' rarely-read but arguably most important work (according to him), or Newton's Mathematical Principles for Natural Philosophy, as two important examples. Take even Galileo's Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences. In the latter, he starts off discussing, to no surprise, Aristotle's Physics. The very titles of the former examples indicate that "natural philosophy" is presupposed as a very definite domain of philosophy (here meaning"thinking" in the broadest sense, perhaps).
Ask yourself what these three men's conception of "nature" was. Whatever it was, it will give us a major clue into the intellectual foundations for modern philosophy and science. So the question isn't a trivial one. You agree that Galileo, Descartes, and Newton weren't imbeciles; it's therefore important to actually read what they said. We may have more knowledge now, based on new discoveries, and in this sense we have gone "farther" than these thinkers. But any progress has been won on the tracks they laid.
The ultimate goal here is to learn something about phusis and, more importantly, about Greek thought. If we agree with Heidegger that these first thinkers (Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus) were more concerned with "being" than most philosophers since (as the question has gone largely unasked in its own right), then our question is also about being -- our particular, "Western" understanding of being -- our "ontology."
We can't study "being" in the scientific sense perhaps -- if science is more narrowly defined -- but whatever "it" is that allows the very things science studies (physical, chemical, biological beings) to show up for us in the first place -- THAT can be considered "being." No matter the mode we're in when things appear to us. By "no matter the mode" I mean not only our theoretical mode (in our Western,present-favoring understanding of beings as "substance" [[i]ousia[/i]]), what Heidegger called "presence-at-hand," but also our "practical" mode, seen in our everyday actions, interactions, routines, and habits -- most of which is not consciously chosen and of which we're not usually constantly aware of. He calls this the "ready-to-hand."
Heidegger says the latter (everyday activity and habit) tells us more about where our usual "theoretical" ontological interpretation comes from in the first place (and also our interpretations of human nature, the "world," time and space). He concludes that our current, unquestioned and tacitly assumed interpretation (when doing philosophy and science) has its origins in the Greeks, and is due to them favoring the present, which is only one aspect of our "lived time" of everyday life (he calls "temporality"), which is an experience of all-three-at-once.
Whatever allows any of this to show up, that's essentially being. Any understanding of it -- and we all have an understanding, theoretical or "pre-theoretical." Therefore, everything that shows up within this understanding (whether pre-theoretically, or theoretically as in "interpretation" or a "system of beliefs") -- behavior, science, customs, a shared worldview, morality, a class system, gender norms, etc., is going to make sense within this context. In the Greek world, for example, "saints and sinners" wouldn't have made any sense. In the Medieval world, they certainly did. So an understanding of being is arguably as fundamental to culture as religion or language is.
Heidegger wants to get "under" or perhaps "outside" of the traditional ontology by flushing out these "everyday" experiences and analyzing them philosophically -- but without the "baggage" of the tradition's (ultimately Greek) vocabulary and semantics. This is the topic of Part II of Being and Time, which never came but which he published in other volumes.
I've provided a little background here in order to move the conversation in a perhaps a more fruitful direction. — Xtrix
The translation is enough. You have referred, for example, to infinite divisibility. It's by no means clear to me that Zeno or any other Greek had anything at all like any modern understanding of the concept of infinity - keeping in mind they were hard pressed to write large numbers or do calculations. You said Zeno stipulated divisibility of space. News to me that he did. He implied very reasonably that given a distance, you could think in terms of lesser distances within that distance. — tim wood
. Achilleus manifestly in all cases completes the course and beats the tortoise. — tim wood
The flaw is in the idea that he takes a distinct increment of time at each point on the course, meaning that there is a discreet constant interval of time during which he is at that and only that point. — tim wood
And you have ignored the question of the tortoise. If Achilleus can't proceed, how can the tortoise? — tim wood
Are you able to comment from your experience what the ancient Greek understanding was with respect to what we translate as being, or to be? My limited experience is that they don't use the word. They have it, to be sure, but unless it qualifies or answers something particular about what or how something is, they leave it implied or they use some other more concrete or descriptive verb. Almost as if being in the general sense was not something for them, possibly because it usually was not in question. I never find in the Greek sentences of the form X is Y, except as some special qualification. (Doesn't mean they aren't there; I just have not noticed any, and for several reasons I would.) — tim wood
Imo, the ancient Greek understanding of nature – or of the physical – would be direly incomplete without an ancient Greek understanding of logos. — javra
I'll leave you to more fruitful discussions with others. Thanks. — TheMadFool
To me this gels with phenomenology as a making explicit of what is tacitly already dominant. — jjAmEs
If you want to understand the ancient Greek meaning of "Being", read Parmenides — Metaphysician Undercover
Both Achilles and the tortoise are moving at constant speeds, there is no stops, or pauses, and it is not the case that Achilles can't proceed. Achilles always proceeds (constant), just like the tortoise always proceeds, but Achilles cannot catch up to the tortoise, for the reason explained above, as presented by Zeno. — Metaphysician Undercover
If you want to understand the ancient Greek meaning of "Being", read Parmenides, and the other Eleatics, among whom Zeno was one. — Metaphysician Undercover
"λογοσ as "discourse" means rather the same as δηλουν: to make manifest what one is 'talking about' in one's discourse. Aristotle has explicated this function of discourse more precisely as αποφαινεαθαι. The λογοσ lets something be seen (φαινεαθαι), namely, what the discourse is about; and it does so either for the one who is doing the talking (the medium) or for persons who are talking with one another, as the case may be. Discourse 'lets something be seen' απο ... : that is, it lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about. In discourse (αποφαναισ) so far as it is genuine, what is said is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in what it says, makes manifest what it is talking about, and thus makes this accessible to the other party. This is the structure of the λογοσ as αποφαναισ." —
Thus "phenomenology" means [...] that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. This is the formal meaning of that branch of research which calls itself "phenomenology". —
Now to study the morphing of this understanding in the time between Parmenides and Aristotle is especially fascinating. — Xtrix
But in reality, as Zeno well knows, Achilleus passes the tortoise PDQ. — tim wood
It's for us, then, to find the mistake, which is the assumption that there is a discreet moment, & etc, as described just above. — tim wood
It's not only the emphasis on "practical" behavior which is novel, as overlooked as that has been in academic philosophy - but a way in which to analyze it without invoking the use of traditional concepts (I.e., "phenomenologically"). This is why people unjustly accuse Heidegger of being a charlatan, as he had to essentially invent words in order to discuss the topic. — Xtrix
You're not getting it. Zeno doesn't say stops, but that's what he means; that's all he can mean.The discrete moments you described consist of stops. There is no such thing in Zeno's presentation, there is constant, continuous motion, with infinitely divisible time and distance. So your interpretation is very clearly wrong. I suggest you read up on that paradox and get a clear understanding of it before you make any further attempts to discuss it. — Metaphysician Undercover
"as presented in the paradox," there you've got it. Outside the paradox, no problem. The problem is in the paradox.therefore the notion of continuous, constant motion, infinitely divisible, as presented in the paradox is faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover
But consider this edited quote of yours: is this what you're saying? That without regard to anything of Zeno's that continuous constant motion, infinitely divisible (again, not to be confused with infinitely divided), is wrong?therefore the notion of continuous, constant motion, infinitely divisible is faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover
According to Yorck, in Ancient Greece consciousness displayed a particular configuration of the primacy of cognition. For the Greeks, the stance of consciousness towards the world is pure looking. It is through looking that reality is understood. Affectivity (feeling) and volition are not countenanced as functions that disclose the world as such.[18] Truth lies in the beholding eye alone; contemplation, theoria, and intuition take centre stage.
It is as if the clear-sighted eye is expressed in words. On the basis of this condition of consciousness, the function of looking [Anschauung], ocularity [Okularität], becomes the organ of all free work of the mind, particularly of philosophy. (ST, p. 30)
Yorck finds evidence for the prevalence of ocularity or the aesthetic attitude, which is centred on plasticity [Gestaltlichkeit], in Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, among others.
Form and content constitute the aesthetic dichotomy which governs Greek thought in its entirety, the result of the liberation of ocularity from all other sensuality, the aesthetic liberation, which strikes a chord in everyone who has entered the threshold of Greek life. Looking is the essential comportment; hence, Gestalt or Form [qualifies as] ousia or substance.[19] (ST, p. 31)
That Greek metaphysics seeks the unchangeable and impassable is the result of the relative suppression of feeling and willing that is latent in all cognition, which abstracts from feeling and temporality, as well as objects of human desire (ST, p. 42). Put differently, the structural timelessness of thought as such is intensified in metaphysical thought where it becomes “absolute” (ST, p. 42). Yorck emphasizes that “negation of temporality” marks “the decisive metaphysical step” (ST, p. 66). Metaphysics constitutes the counter-move against the feeling of temporality (that everything passes away), as well as the liberation from the dependence on objects desired by the will. According to Yorck, the escape from temporality and attachment determines the entire metaphysical tradition up to and including Hegel (because even Hegel “ontologizes” life) (ST, p. 83). — link
Next, Yorck also claims that “time originates in feeling” (ST, p. 135). But as feeling is non-projective, it follows that, originally, “temporality” is not “objective”[13] (ST, 146). Yorck distinguishes between the feeling of transitoriness, i.e., that everything passes away [Vergänglichkeitsgefühl] (ST, p. 33), and the feeling or awareness of one's own mortality [Sterblichkeitsgefühl][14] (ST, p. 90). Acquiescence into one's own mortality constitutes the opposite pole to self-affirmation, “self-renunciation” [Selbsthingabe] (ST, p. 14), which is thus distinct from and even antithetical to the ethical impetus in philosophy and science. Yorck argues that the inversion of volitional and cognitive projection in feeling and its concentration in pure, passive interiority amounts to a “religious comportment” and the feeling of dependency (ST, 121). To the extent that the religious concentration of life in interiority is inversely related to projective representation, Yorck understands religious life in terms of its “freedom from the world” or Weltfreiheit (ST, p. 81 & 112). Psychologically, freedom from the world is the precondition for the consciousness of a world-transcendent God, or the consciousness of transcendence (ST, p. 105). Yorck only hints at the projection sui generis involved in transcendence. But it is a projection that has no cognitive or volitional content, such that God is intended without becoming “an object,” and willing becomes a “non-willing,” albeit without loss of energy (ST, 104).
Drawing on Dilthey and Schleiermacher, Yorck argues that immediate and indubitable reality of life is exclusively “guaranteed” through volition and affectivity alone. Yorck writes: “That which opposes me or that which I feel, I call real,” because I cannot doubt what resists my will or affects my personal life, whereas it is always possible to doubt objects neutrally represented in space outside me (ST, p. 89). What is thought and grasped as an unchanging, stable and self-same object in the space of thought does not affect me or solicit a desire. For Yorck, cognition, in abstraction from feeling and volition, is the realm of pure “phenomenality,” which is always open to doubt in virtue of its being merely represented or thought (ST, p. 88). Because “the category of reality is a predicate of feeling and willing” alone (ST, p. 128), Yorck concludes that it is an “utterly uncritical” and self-contradictory undertaking to attempt to prove “the reality of the world” by means of the understanding (ST, p. 129). What Yorck writes to Dilthey in a more general vein is also applicable to this particular problem: — link
This idea of "being" can be contrasted with the "becoming" of Heraclitus. — Metaphysician Undercover
What would be interesting would be to see how both "becoming" and "being" get unified into the one Latin concept of "existence". I believe it its done through the Aristotelian matter and form, but this would be a complex research project. — Metaphysician Undercover
Zeno doesn't say stops, but that's what he means; that's all he can mean. — tim wood
But consider this edited quote of yours: is this what you're saying? That without regard to anything of Zeno's that continuous constant motion, infinitely divisible (again, not to be confused with infinitely divided), is wrong? — tim wood
No. As Heidegger points out, and quite rightly, Heraclitus and Parmenides are saying the same thing. They're both discussing being. "Being and becoming" is the first "restriction" discussed in his Introduction to Metaphysics, in fact. — Xtrix
Again I return to the question of phusis. It's here that we find clues to the Greek conception of being. Parmenides and Heraclitus are interested in exactly this question. — Xtrix
To argue being is distinct from becoming and pit these two thinkers against one another may be something we learn from philosophy books and in most school rooms, but it's just a mistake- in my view. — Xtrix
But consider this edited quote of yours: is this what you're saying? That without regard to anything of Zeno's that continuous constant motion, infinitely divisible (again, not to be confused with infinitely divided), is wrong?
— tim wood
Yes, Zeno demonstrated that. — Metaphysician Undercover
Let's refine this. Two things. Are we to say that according to MU continuous motion is impossible? And that it is not possible to assign numbers that are arbitrarily small that each represent a unique point in the progress of that motion (if you do not like this way of expressing infinite divisibility, provide your own version). — tim wood
Are we to say that according to MU continuous motion is impossible?
— tim wood
That's right, — Metaphysician Undercover
f it's not continuous, what is it? Non-continuous? Discontinuous? — tim wood
Is the object in motion actually at all times under acceleration? (And there is the concept of continuous acceleration - the derivatives of speed - they cannot be continuous either.) How does it work? — tim wood
And to be sure, if the motion from A to B cannot be continuous, then certainly the motion from A halfway to B cannot be either - or for any other distance. It would appear that any motion at all cannot be continuous. I think you have a problem here - how will you resolve it? — tim wood
Wasn't asking them, asking you; it's your claim.Yes, I'd say some form of "discontinuous". The physicists haven't figured that out yet, — Metaphysician Undercover
Not talking about Achilleus; we set hi aside, remember. The question was to your and your claim.Take a look at Achilles, — Metaphysician Undercover
Then how is it you claim to know?Acceleration is a very difficult problem which no one has come anywhere near to figuring out. — Metaphysician Undercover
You ignore the question.It's not a problem for me — Metaphysician Undercover
Yep, some people. When the question is to you and what you claimed, why are you talking about "people"?and people like to represent — Metaphysician Undercover
Again non-responsive.But that's just a convenient falsity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Remember the qualification above? No running away to the voodoo of QM.And now that physicists have started dealing with extremely short periods of time, that falsity has manifested as quantum uncertainty. — Metaphysician Undercover
According to you continuous motion is impossible, based on your understanding of Zeno, which you endorse. — tim wood
Being asked how you resolve manifold problems associated with your claim, you completely evade the question. One more time only: — tim wood
Give an account for what motion is, such that it is impossible for it to be continuous. — tim wood
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