But it can't turn up that we don't perceive mediated by space/time/causality. That is certain. — Agustino
Yeah, it's all about human beings... :s This is just anthropomorphism at its best, at least you should recognise that... — Agustino
Okay, but when I judge things I tend to judge by what the philosopher has written, not by what I could get him to agree on. Undoubtedly Berdyaev has a lot of insights, especially in ethical and political matters that I've found valuable. His metaphysics though doesn't appeal to me much, but maybe I don't know it well enough yet. There's still a lot to be read by Berdyaev.Berdyaev's point, as i interpret it, is that being shows itself at all only when there is subject. It is obvious that, understood analytically, being reveals itself only as object, as beings. I doubt Berdyaev, or any thinking person, could disagree with this. — John
Well animals may not have concepts, but they perceive reality as well. Dogs, cats, etc. can be surprisingly intelligent, compassionate, and so forth. It seems to me that they have a spiritual life as well, although it clearly isn't conceptual/discursive, the way our human spiritual life can be.Truth and reality are conceived only by spiritual beings like us. If other animals have the linguistic, conceptual and spiritual capacity to conceive of truth and reality, then there would be truth and reality for them too. Are you denying this is so? — John
Ok, I don't disagree with this - we have whatever faculties animals have and reason in addition. Although there are some animals having faculties of perception that we don't have - bats for example.Being appears in it fullness with human experience ('human experience' taken here to mean the experience of a rational, conceptualizing language using being). — John
But they can understand the meaning, that much is obvious. To understand the meaning of something does not necessarily require to put it into concepts. But because animals don't have concepts, they don't have access to meta-cognition. That's what reason is - a form of meta-cognition, seeing yourself from the outside as it were.The sentence you cited makes no claim that meaning is present only to humans. It is obvious that natural signs would have meaning for animals, but they cannot posit that meaning if they are not capable of conceptual language. — John
What about Existence? What do you conceive existence through, if not through itself? What about God? Is God to be conceived through another?Spinoza's definition says literally nothing, because nothing can be "conceived through itself" — John
How so? You can conceive God or substance apophatically - by analogy - but Spinoza would say this isn't the highest kind of knowledge.Even God or substance must, at the very least, be conceived apophatically, through what it is not. — John
I think I do. Something exists in itself if it doesn't need something else to exist. I don't exist in myself, because I need a lot of other things to exist.Do you know what it means for something "to exist in itself"? Of course you don't, you only know what it means for things to exist for you. — John
But what more would you expect it to be discursively? This is what puzzles me. You obviously expect it to be something more. Why?So, sure, as a negation of what it means to exist for us, we can conceive the merely logical idea of something existing in itself; but it cannot, discursively at least as opposed to poetically,intuitively or mystically, be 'something more" than a merely logical formulation. — John
What if there was no distinction between appearance and reality?IT would be illogical to say that there is an appearance and yet that there is nothing that appears. — John
Well, for me it is the same :P lolI depends on what you mean; to say that we perceive mediated by space, time and causality is not necessarily the same as to say that we perceive spatially, temporally and causally. The latter is perfectly obvious and absolutely unarguable. — John
This - this is the core of your disagreement. The point is your position, transcendence + immanentism is incoherent. It just is contradictory, you cannot uphold both. God cannot be both transcendent and immanent, that is nonsense. So in order to argue for yourself you have to explore antinomies - what are antinomies, and how are they different than paradoxes? You can prove your position apophatically only if you can prove with equal rational validity both immanence and transcendence. Then you can claim that me and Willow and everyone who adheres to only one position is being dogmatic and refusing to see the other half. Then you'll have to drop both transcendence and immanence as ultimately meaningless (on a rational level at least) - the slumber of reason - reason's inability at moving beyond this point.Of course conceptual and linguistic difficulties will inevitably arise when we try to talk about the in itself. — John
This could have been the case - however - all attributes are necessarily parallel to each other. This is similar to the performance of music and the musical score - they are parallel to each other - the same thing seen from two different perspectives. More attributes would just mean more perspectives, but they'd be perspectives over the same fundamental thing - much more, they'd be parallel perspectives.To draw an analogy from your beloved Spinoza, according to him there are only two known attributes of God; extensa and cogitans, but God has infinitely many attributes which are unknown and presumably unknowable, since we are not capable of knowing anything which does not fall into one of the two categories; extensa and cogitans. Following this to its logical conclusion extensa and cogitans could be considered as immanent aspects of God, because they are intelligible to us, but the infinitely many unknowable attributes must be considered as transcendental, because they are beyond any possibility of human experience and understanding; we just know, according to Spinoza at least, that they are real attributes, but we cannot know what they are. So, if God can have just two attributes knowable to humans, and infinitely many unknowable, then tell me why you still think God cannot be rightly considered to be both immanent and transcendent. — John
We do know, that's why we established the reality of the One Substance. The attributes cannot but be two parallel perspectives, since underlying them is One Substance. The attribute parallelism is derived by Spinoza from the One Substance metaphysics. To use the example from the video - serotonin in the brain just is a feeling of happiness. One doesn't cause the other, rather they are always correlated with each other, because they are simply two different perspectives on the same underlying reality.I don't think we can understand even how extensa and cogitans can be "perspectives over the same thing". — John
I think Spinoza would say we clearly do understand this, as there is no mind/body problem at all. The mind is the body seen under the attribute of extension, and the body is the mind seen under the attribute of thought.We don't really understand at all how they ultimately 'fit together' (Mind/Body Problem). How much less could we understand how the infinitely many other attributes of God could fit with our experience when we cannot experience them. — John
Well to me, One Substance means immanence.But if you are using 'transcendent' and 'immanent' in some different way than I am, then we could, for sure, just be talking past one another. — John
Nothing is unknowable according to Spinoza, only unknown. Unknown simply because we can never know every empirical thing that is possible for God.Either way the fact remains that there is much (an infinite amount according to Spinoza), which will always remain not only unknown, but unknowable, to us. — John
I think Spinoza would say we clearly do understand this, as there is no mind/body problem at all. The mind is the body seen under the attribute of extension, and the body is the mind seen under the attribute of thought. — Agustino
Nothing is unknowable according to Spinoza, only unknown. Unknown simply because we can never know every empirical thing that is possible for God. — Agustino
How can we know anything from a perspective that are not possible for us? — John
Rather, he is saying that some perspectives (God) have knowledge we do not, and that we cannot ever access that amount of knowledge because we only have a finite viewpoint. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I have no idea what this means. It seems like empty word play to me. Can you explain it to me? — John
You could take a million examples. Feeling happy is serotonin released in the brain seen under the attribute of thought. Serotonin released in the brain is feeling happy seen under the attribute of extension.I think Spinoza would say we clearly do understand this, as there is no mind/body problem at all. The mind is the body seen under the attribute of extension, and the body is the mind seen under the attribute of thought. — Agustino
You don't know anything more by knowing the feeling of happiness than you do by knowing serotonin is released in the brain and so and so organism behaves in so and so a way after that. You know the same thing from two different perspectives. Another perspective on top of that would add nothing to your knowledge - it would just be another perspective on what you already know. Sure you don't know that perspective - but that's only an empirical matter, because metaphysically you do know the substance underlying it, since it's just the same substance that underlies what you already know through thought and extension.How can we know anything from perspectives that are not possible for us? — John
So then, what are you doing around here trying to speak of them?We know what happiness is intuitively by feeling it, Deep truths are deeply felt; if you deny this then you deny the reality of the non-discursive truths inherent in poetry. music, in aesthetic, ethical and religious experience. If you want to deny the importance of feeling truth, then that is not something we can really argue over; it comes down to personal taste. As Wittgenstein said the most important things lie outside the world, they consist in that of which we cannot speak and must remain silent. I take him to mean that we cannot speak of these 'things' and must remain silent about them only in the discursive or propositional sense of 'speaking', he is not referring to poetry and the other arts. — John
Why are they correlated?That the two are often correlated is what we know. That happiness just is seratonin in the brain is merely an inference. — John
What is your explanation for the correlation between serotonin in the brain and happiness. Why are they correlated?Again, what do you mean? I don't understand what you are asking. — John
Well it seems to me that you want to talk about precisely what Wittgenstein says cannot be spoken of.What do you mean? I'm here speaking about my own take on these matters. I don't see your point. — John
What is your explanation for the correlation between serotonin in the brain and happiness. Why are they correlated? — Agustino
Well it seems to me that you want to talk about precisely what Wittgenstein says cannot be spoken of. — Agustino
Yes - they are two perspectives of the same thing, so they are necessarily correlated. They couldn't be two perspectives of the same thing if they weren't correlated. That's why the perspectives are parallel - you cannot have element X from one without having element Y from the other.I don't have an explanation for it. I don't believe any one does. Do you have an explanation for it? — John
Substance. Substance being a metaphysical category cannot be an empirical one - thus you cannot ask what is it, the way you ask what a chair is....As I see it you are just playing with words; you haven't explained anything. What is the the "same thing" they are two perspectives on? — John
And indeed they don't cause it - that's precisely the point!! Thought cannot affect extension.then happiness could not cause release of serotonin, and release of seratonin could not cause happiness. — John
No there is no causation, just the pure correlation. Why do you move from the obvious truth that they are always correlated to the falsity of a cause? Their correlation has to be explained, nothing else.Release of seratonin may cause feelings of happiness as, for example, when you take certain drugs or feeling happy may cause release of seratonin, as, for example, when you are in love. — John
And indeed they don't cause it - that's precisely the point!! Thought cannot affect extension. — Agustino
No there is no causation, just the pure correlation. Why do you move from the obvious truth that they are always correlated to the falsity of a cause? Their correlation has to be explained, nothing else. — Agustino
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