And nothing wrong with that! The trick is to keep in mind what one is doing. Good sense can come from gazing at the ineffable; Kant showed that. The Greeks showed that. Even the Egyptians to some degree showed that. It seems that all sensible peoples arrive at that. The problem with most - all? - western religions is that they take the first and every spur line in to the dead-ends of the supernatural and ultimately the absurd and the ridiculous - and that's a shame because it need not be that way, and should not be that way.On a serious note, I've always been drawn to the ineffable. — TheMadFool
Through simple engineering formulas for say the design of a building, aircraft, xcetera, as well as computing the laws of gravity, relativity, xcetera. — 3017amen
What puzzles me is that if the One possesses no attributes at all, — TheMadFool
Infinity has an attribute - boundlessness. Plotinus' One has none. — TheMadFool
in our quest for ultimate answers it is hard not to be drawn in one way or another to the infinite. Whether it's an infinite tower of turtles , and infinity of parallel worlds, an infinite set of mathematical propositions, or an infinite creator, physical existence surely cannot be rooted in anything finite. Otherwise how do things-in-themselves exist? — 3017amen
Have you given any further thought to the video and how something that's absolute wouldn't require any outside/external data? — 3017amen
Early Christian thinkers such as Plotinus — 3017amen
Critical Thinking and Innate Feelings. — Gnomon
Later, their Christian descendants, began to imagine the human Jewish Messiah as the super-human Christ, and eventually fragmented the One God of Monotheism into a Polytheistic pantheon : Father, Mother, Son, Holy-Spirit, and a panoply of Saints. So, it's obvious that an abstract absolute unitary notion of deity does not appeal to the average person. — Gnomon
The Enformationism thesis — Gnomon
As we Are, our knowledge of the One is deficient;
But through our deficient knowledge of the One, we know that it Is in some "higher" Existence (?) - Meaning (?) Purpose (?) Idea (?); — Gus Lamarch
Next step? — Gus Lamarch
And nothing wrong with that! The trick is to keep in mind what one is doing. Good sense can come from gazing at the ineffable; Kant showed that. The Greeks showed that. Even the Egyptians to some degree showed that. It seems that all sensible peoples arrive at that. The problem with most - all? - western religions is that they take the first and every spur line in to the dead-ends of the supernatural and ultimately the absurd and the ridiculous - and that's a shame because it need not be that way, and should not be that way — tim wood
Plotinus says that the One is "beyond all attributes". Therefore, it contains something that is seen as an attribute and is the attribute. Quoting Plotinus: "We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one." What attribute is this, that can be seer and seen, is beyond our contemporary metaphysical knowledge - if by chance, the One exists -. — Gus Lamarch
It must contain something, however, in the act of trying to abstract this "something beyond all attributes" we - according to Plotinus - have already introduced defects, simply because we are in and with existence. — Gus Lamarch
The only solution I see for this question is one where we "transcend" the boundaries of language. But still, we would be conceptualizing a flawed idea, as we still would "Be". — Gus Lamarch
There are no boundaries intrinsic to language, it is inherently boundless. — Metaphysician Undercover
Language itself is all about bounds and boundaries as limits that establish first the possibility of meaning, and then the particular meaning. — tim wood
And what sense does it make to aver that language is boundless, but at the same time bounded in that it cannot even gesture towards something like the ineffable - apparently cannot even name it. "It makes no sense to talk about something as 'ineffable.'" — tim wood
Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty. When you find you've screwed yourself tight into something, just remember to try turning the other way to loosen up. — tim wood
there isn't an attribute that each and every object in the universe possesses. — TheMadFool
Could you clarify how you are using the word object here.
E.g., Are you referring to physical objects - chairs, planets? Are you going more granular down to atoms, electrons, sub-atomic particles? Photons? etc. — EricH
Experience it. — praxis
High is relative to low, meaning is relative to meaningless, purpose is relative to purposelessness, — praxis
Any attempt to define the universe in terms of attributes is doomed to fail ergo, the One, the universe, is "beyond all attributes". — TheMadFool
Could you really experience something absolute, or just your deficient version of it in existence? — Gus Lamarch
My question is about how to abstract the One, without the deficiencies caused by our finitude. I came to the thinking that we could arrive at the conception of the One, through the division of concepts. - Ex: We would (?) describe (?) part (?) of the One by mathematics, another part by language, another by metaphysics, reason, emotion, etc ... — Gus Lamarch
Your definition of language might be interesting; I'd like to see it. I'd provide mine, but I'm finding it not-so-easy to comprehensively define on short notice. You? — tim wood
The best I can do is language as that in which and by which communication happens. Communication to language as message to media, cargo to cart. Or another way, if a message is received, then communication occurred, carried by some language. Outstretched arms and a smile, then, are communication, so too the forbidding aspect of a remote mountain peak, each in and by its own language.
Agree? Disagree? Provide your own? — tim wood
there isn't an attribute that each and every object in the universe possesses. — TheMadFool
Perhaps I'm totally misunderstanding what you're saying, but given your definition of object don't all objects posses the physical attribute of having rest mass (among other properties) — EricH
Could you clarify how you are using the word object here. — EricH
Yes, I'm referring to objects at the human scale - things we can, well, bump into. — TheMadFool
Perhaps I'm totally misunderstanding what you're saying, but given your definition of object don't all objects posses the physical attribute of having rest mass (among other properties) — EricH
Thoughts don't have mass. Radio waves don't have mass. Photons don't have mass. — TheMadFool
I'm OK working with however you choose to define your terms - but you gotta pick a usage/definition and stick to it. When you use the word objects? Are you including thoughts & photons in your usage/definition? — EricH
"It is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God." — Gus Lamarch
I am not sure which argument is being referred to here. — Valentinus
Looks like we have to go here. Communication: any message; the contents of any message.which are not properly communication. — Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not interested even a little bit in your preferences. This is a question of what something is, or is not, and not at all what you would prefer it to be.And, I would prefer to define — Metaphysician Undercover
Could you clarify how you are using the word object here. — EricH
Yes, I'm referring to objects at the human scale - things we can, well, bump into. — TheMadFool
Perhaps I'm totally misunderstanding what you're saying, but given your definition of object don't all objects posses the physical attribute of having rest mass (among other properties) — EricH
Thoughts don't have mass. Radio waves don't have mass. Photons don't have mass. — TheMadFool — EricH
I'm not interested even a little bit in your preferences. This is a question of what something is, or is not, and not at all what you would prefer it to be. — tim wood
Communication: any message; the contents of any message. — tim wood
If they're hopeless, say so and offer your own. — tim wood
Actually, you have not. Try to find where you define it. It's not there. Also:I already offered you my preferred way of defining "language", — Metaphysician Undercover
Have you never received a communication? There is the act of communicating, and there is the thing communicated, and there is the media that carries the, carries the what? The message, the thing communicated. Again, acceptability to you or what you consider anything to be is out-of-court as a standard. You shall have to come out of your warren if you want to play.Communication: any message; the contents of any message.
— tim wood
This definition is completely unacceptable to me. I consider communication to be the act of transmitting, not the contents of the transmission — Metaphysician Undercover
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.