But when you say "to speak of Identity you have too pressupose Identity is not Difference" you are stating a tataulogy, NOT an argument of any kind. To be successful of this forum you need to be kinder, clearer, and. more thoroughal — Gregory
I feel helpless to help that person. — Metaphysician Undercover
No doubt you are upset that you got called out, — JerseyFlight
Hegel does not merely assert what you call a "tautology," he draws out the contradiction from the very being of identity itself. — JerseyFlight
Can you show me where he assigns "sameness" and "identity" (difference through dichotomy) to the evolving object? This is very strange indeed. — JerseyFlight
Metaphysician heal thyself!! lol — fishfry
in the Aristotelian conception of "identity", change and therefore difference, is inherent within a thing's identity — Metaphysician Undercover
It's called the law of identity, stupid. "A thing is the same as itself". Do you not comprehend that a thing necessarily has temporal extension, and also that a thing changes as time passes? Therefore we can conclude that change and difference are inherent within the identity of the thing, as an aspect of its sameness. There is no contradiction here, just a feature of temporal existence being accounted for. — Metaphysician Undercover
So are you saying Heidegger was wrong to posit being as most prior? — Gregory
You might not have specifically called him names but you certainly were extremely obnoxious and rude.What's most interesting is that I don't think I called you any names? — JerseyFlight
You mean these are the same? No difference needs to be drawn in order to make a distinction, which would indeed imply, as Hegel says, going beyond the principle of identity? — JerseyFlight
How can you contain identity and difference in the same instance of identity? — JerseyFlight
Further, how can you identify something as being the same which is itself beyond the "inert imagine" that identity strives to cast? — JerseyFlight
Of course, you should have worked through all these questions and many more doing post-doctoral work on Hegel? — JerseyFlight
Yes, that is part of Hegel's discovery, identity and difference are part of being, but Hegel did not stop there, but of course, you already know this, so I don't have to tell you. — JerseyFlight
More importantly, you have refuted the very principle you claim to champion without even realizing it. Change is not the same as sameness, identity is not the same as difference. This means identity cannot contain difference in order to be equal to itself, must not presuppose it in order to make itself intelligible. — JerseyFlight
This means identity cannot contain difference in order to be equal to itself, must not presuppose it in order to make itself intelligible. — JerseyFlight
If a thing is identical to itself, which I take to be the proper formation of the concept, then the "self" you point to at the moment of identification, vanishes in the next instance. — JerseyFlight
Sorry my poor fellow, but you must choose, you cannot have it both ways, either take being as it goes beyond Aristotelian logic, or live your life in the error of a tautology. Do you start with being or do you start with identity? It seems to me the evidence is clear; for you identity is and must be secondary to being, very hard to see how this doesn't cause problems for your view of identity? — JerseyFlight
What is most striking is that you seem to think you can simply class identity with difference without going beyond the claim of identity itself. — JerseyFlight
Yours is merely an attempt to retain the abstraction of identity against the reality which negates it. — JerseyFlight
Metaphysician Undercover, you need to go under the covers and brush up on your Hegel. — JerseyFlight
I am not talking about making a distinction, I am talking about a difference which exists whether or not any one distinguishes it. That's why I said that the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself", puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself. Therefore identity is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction. — Metaphysician Undercover
dentity is exactly dependent on a human being drawing a distinction, this takes place in every instance of identity. There is great confusion in your speech, what you mean to say is that being is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction. This is accurate, the other is not. — JerseyFlight
Can you understand that? The relation a thing has to itself, and nothing else. This means no human beings drawing distinctions, or anything like that is required for a thing to have an identity.Numerical identity is our topic. As noted, it is at the centre of several philosophical debates, but to many seems in itself wholly unproblematic, for it is just that relation everything has to itself and nothing else – and what could be less problematic than that?
You are indeed making a distinction, you just sophistically claim not to be "talking" about it. Further, one cannot distinguish without the aid of difference, and to determine a difference is to make a distinction. Do you qualify "identity" by the concretion of the "thing" or do you qualify the "thing" by the abstraction of identity? (The problem here is that we can already see the answer). — JerseyFlight
When you say, "the law of identity puts the thing within the thing itself," this is false, it is also ignorance. — JerseyFlight
Identity is a formal premise that states A = A, — JerseyFlight
I already anticipated your reply: 'Now I know you will insist and demand that you have the right to pack being (with all its difference) into the concept of identity, or to interpret the concept through being, but the concept itself will not permit it, which is proven the very instance you make a distinction between identity and difference.' — JerseyFlight
When you speak of being and becoming you are mistaken, being is becoming, the way you try to artificially divide being from "itself," to use your own term, merely displays more confusion and ignorance on your part. — JerseyFlight
But if we focus for a moment on the definitions of Being and Nothing themselves, their definitions have the same content. Indeed, both are undetermined, so they have the same kind of undefined content. The only difference between them is “something merely meant” (EL Remark to §87), namely, that Being is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be presence, while Nothing is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be absence. The third concept of the logic—which is used to illustrate the speculative moment—unifies the first two moments by capturing the positive result of—or the conclusion that we can draw from—the opposition between the first two moments. The concept of Becoming is the thought of an undefined content, taken as presence (Being) and then taken as absence (Nothing), or taken as absence (Nothing) and then taken as presence (Being). To Become is to go from Being to Nothing or from Nothing to Being, or is, as Hegel puts it, “the immediate vanishing of the one in the other” (SL-M 83; cf. SL-dG 60). The contradiction between Being and Nothing thus is not a reductio ad absurdum, or does not lead to the rejection of both concepts and hence to nothingness—as Hegel had said Plato’s dialectics does (SL-M 55–6; SL-dG 34–5)—but leads to a positive result, namely, to the introduction of a new concept—the synthesis—which unifies the two, earlier, opposed concepts. — Stanford Encyclopedia, Hegel's Dialectics, 2
For you are trying to say that the law of identity contains both being and becoming within itself because the term "thing" encompasses the movement of being (this is a loaded premise not a proof). What you fail to see is that you are no longer talking about identity but have gone beyond it! A = A contains nothing but the assertion that the image is equal to the image. IN THE REALITY OF BEING THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A = A. You have been arguing this all the while, ignorant of the ramifications it has on identity. This is why you give supremacy to the "thing" and not the abstract tautology! What identity means to say is that A is the beginning of -A, but it never gets there, it repeats the image of itself, thereby distorting reality. — JerseyFlight
"In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialize; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself." Hegel — JerseyFlight
If I cut an apple ( ) in half, is it now two forms or still one? I do want an answer to this MU. — Gregory
It's relevant because form becomes dependent on how cohesive "two" things are to each other. — Gregory
You say a metaphysical "spook" (not to be derogatory) was replaced by something else. Was the prime matter replaced too? This line of questioning tends to show that there is something arbitrary about Aristotle's system — Gregory
Look, "a thing is the same as itself" does not indicate the requirement for a human being to name the thing, point to the thing, or otherwise notice the existence of the thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
See, the "movement" referred to here is an instance of "becoming". The "being", an abstraction, is represented as A, which cannot be understood without reference to not-A. — Metaphysician Undercover
Let me try this. Suppose, for WHATEVER reason, that a pen glued to a table means something to an aboriginal culture. To you it is two things, or three if you include the glue. But to them it's one. So how many forms does it objectively have??? — Gregory
"Thing" is a word used by humans to demarcate objects of being. Further, the word 'thing" is itself insufficient to encompass the reality of being, this is why you must use other words to demarcate the nature of being. — JerseyFlight
The kind of identity you are talking about is precisely the idealist identity, the mysticism, that Hegel disposes of. Further, all that you are distinguishing here, does require, as your articulating presence proves, a human to make the distinction. This is because the abstract formation that you are putting forth is not the object, it is a characterization of the object invented by humans. — JerseyFlight
Now I agree that objects exist beyond words, but what you are trying to do is equate essence as being synonymous with your concept of identity. But essence and identity are not the same. — JerseyFlight
It is agreed that matter exists beyond concepts. It is not agreed that your concept of identity explains or contains the essence of matter. It is too narrow and one-sided to even come close to accomplishing this purpose, enter now Hegel's dialectic. — JerseyFlight
Once again, we are beyond identity, which states, A = A, are you saying this is false? Hegel's point is that identity never makes it to reality precisely because it never makes it to -A, which is actually the concrete reality of what occurs in being, the essence of being. — JerseyFlight
The real trick to your sophistry, and every last ounce of your philosophical leverage, is achieved by trying to smuggle in a loaded premise; you are trying to say that identity embodies negation, but the concrete problem is that it has no negativity in it, the formation is entirely positive! — JerseyFlight
This is undeniable, A = A does not say, A = -A, and this proves you are distorting and twisting the position, no doubt, because you know you cannot get the content you need for essence from the empty tautology of identity. — JerseyFlight
Where your mysticism arises is that you are trying to claim that your concept is the most basic representation of reality, thus attempting to fuse it with the highest philosophical authority. — JerseyFlight
One more thing can be mentioned here. When you make use of this concept in discourse, you most assuredly do not, and will not, use the form you are here trying to assert for reasons of posture, A = -A. Instead you will assert the positive image against the negation. On all fronts then you are defeated and exposed as a practical negator of the position you espouse. — JerseyFlight
Ok, I easily see how, if we have two rocks made of the exact same material and one is twice as big as the other, the bigger one should weigh twice as much. There certainly is something mathematical about this place we live in. — Gregory
I often see physicists say things like "we discovered some math that helps with problem so and so" and stuff like that. I have a hard time putting my finger on what they are saying. It often seems like that are taking math a priori and assuming that the world must accord with it. That would be a Pythagorean position though. It would need defending. Anyone willing to help me reason through this issue?
So long as I maintain the separation between what is said about the object's identity, and the object's real identity, there is no problem. — Metaphysician Undercover
Just because the abstract formation I put forward, describing the identity of the object, is not the object itself, does not mean that there is not an object, with its own identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, you continue to assert that Hegel demonstrated "identity" to be faulty, or contradictory, but you have yet to produce the argument. The argument you have here does nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover
I know I'm in the minority on this, but IMO, the fact that we can do math, and make good predictions about the external universe doesn't prove that the universe is mathematical. — Mijin
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