All I am asking of you is to read what people have actually written before you go off. I'm fine if you disagree with me, or even think I'm an idiot. — The Great Whatever
Yeah I don't agree with the "extra-mental" part, which is extra-rational, simply because it doesn't make much sense to me what that would be or could be. So that's why I would agree with Hegel that everything that is Real must be Rational.I think your memory is pretty good. That sounds like something I would have said. Perhaps the end of history can be equated with the completion of the dialectic. Steiner claims that this is the completion of rationality, but not of what he calls "extra-mental" understanding; in fact it sets the stage for the latter. Of course, Hegel, would not have agreed with this, since he thought the "Rational is the Real". — John
It's altogether too fashionable these days to indulge in Descartes-bashing — John
So for being an idiot, he gets called a genius? :Pby being spectacularly wrong about it with his substance dualism which highlighted the 'interaction problem' — John
Kant wasn't as revolutionary as you and Wayfarer make him sound like, I lean towards TGW here. Of course I don't agree with TGW, because I think Kant was actually a genius, but certainly not as great as you guys make him out to be. As TGW said, a lot of Kant is prefigured in earlier thinkers. However, I do admire Kant and I've taken a few insights from him - the Kingdom of ends, treating others as ends in themselves (persons) instead of means to ends (objects), the a priority of space/time/causality, the co-dependence of subject and object.the great revolutionary solution offered by Kant (which sees neither mind nor matter as prior, but something (discursively at least) unknowable which manifests as a world consisting of bodies and minds). — John
Not only it could be said, this is actually the case.Although it could be said that Spinoza's system is a neutral monism that achieves the same outcome — John
No, priority isn't given to extension... I don't understand where you're taking this from. Also you misunderstand what Spinoza means by absolute necessity... Certainly he doesn't mean absolute necessity as it would be empirically understood.absolute necessity to deus sive natura, tends to objectify it and give priority to material existence — John
No, Spinoza doesn't understand mind as epiphenomenal if that's what you mean to say.mind understood as a secondary function, or even, really, as a phenomenal parallelism — John
No, this doesn't follow. Absolute necessity is not incompatible with freedom. Absolute necessity is a metaphysical postulate of one reality - because it is one reality, it is absolutely necessary. Freedom exists because one has the power to cause other things, being an element within the causal chain, with its own powers. Determinism doesn't mean that there is no freedom - determinism isn't fatalism. Determinism simply means that the causal agent is embedded within the causal chain - within the same reality and hence not transcendent - this is the absolute necessity. But because the causal agent has powers which determine other things, he plays a role, and to the extent that he plays a role in determining what happens, he is free.It also involves an ultimate denial of the possibility of genuine freedom — John
How can God be a person? How can the ground of person-hood be itself a person, except perhaps analogically in order to say that personhood merely emerges from it? Can the eye see itself? Can the conditions which make any experience possible be found within experience or must they be a priori? Can that which makes personhood possible be a person, or must it be prior to personality?Spinoza's denial of person-hood (which is so essential to a proper understanding of mind) to God — John
This doesn't follow, as I showed above.leading to seeing it (person-hood) as a kind of illusion. — John
But this isn't knowledge at all - merely finding a way for one to live in the world. Finding what to do with one's time until that time is up and death comes knocking on the door. That's a personal choice - something that is inherently subjective indeed. There's nothing objectively that has to be done. But since one has this time anyway, and suicide is pointless precisely because death is inevitable, what is one to do with their time, and how are they to choose this? That's the "art" that you speak of. But that's not theoretical knowledge, but practical application.But the 'wisdom of the human' can never become a science; it must rather become, as Berdyaev contends, a fully developed art. The reason it can never become a science is that the 'knowledge' obtained mystically can never be subject to intersubjective strategies of corroboration; verification and falsification. — John
So for being an idiot, he gets called a genius? — Agustino
a lot of Kant is prefigured in earlier thinkers. — Agustino
That's the "art" that you speak of. But that's not theoretical knowledge, but practical application. — Agustino
But because the causal agent has powers which determine other things, he plays a role, and to the extent that he plays a role in determining what happens, he is free. — Agustino
How can God be a person? How can the ground of person-hood be itself a person, except perhaps analogically in order to say that personhood merely emerges from it? — Agustino
Well see, this is what I don't like about Hegel personally. I don't view history as having a direction - as being a dialectic headed somewhere. It's not headed anywhere - we and the rest of the world are going absolutely nowhere. I mean there's so many strange things that occur in history - so many unexpected twists and turns. It's always easy to read some story into the past if we don't look in detail... if we look just in big brushes... but then we eliminate the sea of differences and twists and turns which don't actually fit our story - we reject them, as anomalous points, and thus we truncate reality.In any case, looked at dialectically he was not so much wrong, as the first to realize and actualize a particular phase of dialectical possibility. For that he should be despised and belittled? :-} To see him as "wrong" is simply another of the many conceits of modernism. — John
I see you're spying on what I'm saying in other threads :PI disagree though, that what is done makes no real difference to the spirit; what is done is 'objectively' right or wrong, 'objectively' conducive to spiritual development or not, just as great works are 'objectively' more or less great, only in this sense. I must say you seem to be slipping back into a kind of nihilistic slumber with this talk of killing time until you die. — John
Yes, just like my birth is determined by things that aren't in my control. So? "My control" enters into the world through those things which give birth and power to it. I am given power from the outside. I don't give power to myself - I don't pull myself out of the water by my own boot straps - but that doesn't mean that once given power, I do not have that power, and I do not use that power to cause things around me. So yes, my powers aren't ultimately determined by me. But that doesn't make me a slave to those causes - for once I have the power, I can use it to cause other things, in accordance to my own nature (and hence my own freedom). There is only determinism, not pre-determinism.The powers of the "causal agent" are determined by other powers that are not under his or her control, according to Spinoza — John
No he didn't believe freedom to be an illusion. He attacked the traditional metaphysical idea of freedom and replaced it with another. Our freedom is limited - it's limited by the powers we have acquired and been bestowed with. But we do have freedom in-so-far as we have power. The rock also has freedom, but a lot less freedom than we do. Sure it is true that that power is ultimately not ours, and will in the end be taken away. But this isn't to say we don't currently have it.That's why he makes the analogy with the stone rolling down the hill that would, if it was sentient, feel itself to be free, Spinoza believed that freedom is an illusion due to our inability to be aware of all the forces acting upon us to determine our every action, just as the stone feels itself to be the free source of its own movement. — John
Absolutely no - Spinoza is against predeterminism. Predeterminism means that we are puppets - we have no power at all, we're not causal agents at all. Things are settled regardless of what we do. This means that all we can do is watch what happens, but not influence it - we're not even causal agents within the chain, we're just observers. This was anathema to Spinoza - this is the homonuculus in the brain - Spinoza would be horrified by this (mis)interpretation.To be consistent Spinoza must believe that every single action is an absolutely necessary and actually predetermined manifestation of the absolute necessity of God's nature — John
Yes - God cannot create arbitrarily - by free will - he necessarily creates as a result of his infinite and overflowing nature. Contingency (creation) necessarily exists in other words. The only necessity is the necessity of contingency. That's what you're missing when you accuse Spinoza of absolute necessity - yes, it is a metaphysical and logical absolute necessity, which grounds the empirically real contingency. You treat his metaphysical and logical absolute necessity to be equivalent to empirical absolute necessity.Spinoza specifically says somewhere, if I remember aright, that God does not have free will — John
No, for Spinoza freedom consists in being true to one's self - being determined by one's own powers, instead of by powers external to oneself. If I wear a red hat because others wear a red hat, I'm not free, because my actions are determined by causes outside of myself. If I wear a red hat because I want to wear a red hat, and doing so is me being true to myself, then I am free - I am determined to act so by my own nature and powers.I understand that for Spinoza a kind of freedom consists in absolute acceptance of one's nature — John
Why do you think this freedom is irreducible? And why do you think moral responsibility must be grounded in such a freedom as this?but this is not the Christian understanding of freedom, the kind of freedom that can coherently ground the idea of true moral responsibility. That freedom is irreducible, though; a discursive account of it cannot be given, because such an account would necessarily be in causal terms as all our accounts are, and that would deny the very freedom it is giving an account of. The greatness of Kant is that he was the very first to recognize this. — John
We are in "His image" because he is the source of our personhood.Where does personhood really exist except as a characteristic of persons? Sure you can say there may be a part of God that is absolutely unknowable, like the Kabbalistic notion of the 'ein sof', but how can the world of persons have their existence in God in His image, if God is not also a person. — John
I honestly don't know to tell you the truth :-O That's a theological, not a philosophical question. As I said before, I'm not very big on those things. I never think about them. The way you phrase these issues sounds very Barfield/Hegel like. I don't like it much lol O:) :PHow is the personal relationship with Christ-as-God, as conceived in Christianity, possible, if Christ is not a person? — John
I see you're spying on what I'm saying in other threads :P — Agustino
Finding what to do with one's time until that time is up and death comes knocking on the door. That's a personal choice - something that is inherently subjective indeed. There's nothing objectively that has to be done. But since one has this time anyway, and suicide is pointless precisely because death is inevitable, what is one to do with their time, and how are they to choose this? — Agustino
Ah I see, okayActually, I was just referring to this — John
Well yes, objectively it doesn't matter. Imagine for a moment you are Bill Gates, you are so rich, you don't need to work for another day in your life, and there's nothing that you have to do. What would you then do? Would you sit around doing nothing, just staring blankly at what is in front of you? Why wouldn't you? Likewise you probably wouldn't sit on the couch watching TV all day long day after day. Why not? Because you found something better to fill your time with. So we all have some limited time until we die that we fill in with whatever we deem and judge to be worth filling it with. Objectively, it doesn't matter. It only matters to us. Objectively, we're all just wasting time.Sounds to me that you are saying it doesn't matter what we do, and therefore we are just killing time until we die. Perhaps I misinterpreted your meaning? — John
To add a bit more about this - I think some thinkers were fundamentally right - maybe not right in the details, but fundamentally right, regardless of the time when they wrote. I think for example that Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer (to name just a few that come immediately to mind), were fundamentally right. So I disagree with Hegel - there is no world-historical dialectic going on. Plato/Aristotle are fundamentally right, and Descartes is fundamentally wrong, regardless of the fact that he came long after them.looked at dialectically — John
Well see, this is what I don't like about Hegel personally. I don't view history as having a direction - as being a dialectic headed somewhere. — Agustino
There is only determinism, not pre-determinism. — Agustino
I am determined to act so by my own nature and powers. — Agustino
I agree to this.it unfolds creatively — John
I don't agree to this, and I think this is Spinoza's point with regards to absolute necessity - existence necessarily is creative.or uncreatively — John
I think every age re-appropriates the truth for itself, and hence re-appropriates it under terms that are usually somewhat different than the terms used by the previous age - the symbolisms change. But it is one and the same truth - we aren't more developed today (not speaking of technologically now, but in terms of philosophical knowledge), than we were 2000 years ago. Our knowledge can always be complete. Indeed, Spinoza makes this point in one of his letters, can't remember which, in which he says that there could be another philosophy different from his and yet saying the same thing. Concepts and symbols change, but what those concepts and symbols point to remains the same. What they point to is generally muddled up in every age - for example in our age reductive materialism is a giant confusion, just as dualism was a giant confusion in the time of Descartes.When it comes to ideas, though, do you not think there is a (more or less inexorable) logic inherent in the ways in which they develop historically? — John
A large share of canonized history has to do with what works happened to survive, and with what works happened to be emphasised or available for political and social reasons at different times.I mean, we are speaking about the history of ideas here, as it has been canonized, we are not concerning ourselves with the immense complexity of actual historical contingencies. — John
I don't think history can form a whole - history is always perennially incomplete, simply because it always repeats itself, but fails to close itself - nothing is stable and everything is contingent, and hence truth cannot reign supreme through time, and it must be obscured at points, and then show itself once again, and so forth. All we're doing is rediscovering the same old truth anew - we cannot discover anything new - but we must certainly rediscover it anew, because it is only by rediscovering anew - by appropriating - that we can learn.We are always dealing with the "broad brush" in either case, because the arbitrary details are so many and and so irrelevant to the whole, and hence uninteresting. — John
A plan is a model of the garden, so yes, the real garden is always different than the model - the model never approximates it perfectly. The model is useful at achieving certain particular things at the neglect of others (these are the things that people happen to be interested in because of whatever purposes they have) - for example the model allows one to predict how much earth has to be removed, how much fill needs to be placed and where, what trees/flowers/arrangements are to be placed, where they will be placed, in what quantities, what irrigation/watering system if any the garden will use, etc. . But it obscures a lot of other things which are part of reality - how big will this individual tree exactly be? How many leaves will it have? (etc. - these questions are not addressed by the model - indeed they cannot be addressed - because they are not of interest).There is an overall plan, and the way in which the garden is constructed will probably never I insofar as it is a complex garden) turn out exactly to plan. — John
With regards to history yes - if there was some plan, then where would be the place for creativity? Creativity is precisely that which goes unplanned. There's other things which also play a role - such that the truth is one, and always available at each point in time. So there cannot be a plan, because where would it be going? History by being history (and thus in-time) is bound to go up and down, sometime closer to that truth (which is always available) and sometimes further away.The Spinozistic conception of God is that there is no overall plan. — John
Then I will clearly not interpret the Revelation and the Christian story as a story occuring in history - it is a spiritual truth, which is always and at all ages accessible. We're not empirically headed towards the Kingdom of God on Earth - that I disagree with. Like Voegelin, I think that's just immanentizing the eschaton.The Christian conception of God is very definitely that there is an overall plan; so the two are incompatible; they contradict one another. Now I am not a believing Christian, I have only been labouring this point because you have identified yourself as such, and yet claim to hold to a Spinozistic conception of God, and I am trying to understand how you resolve the contradiction. — John
But that isn't just determinism, that is already pre-determinism and fatalism.Determinism, in the sense of Laplace's Demon — John
Spinoza is a Cartesian <=> a wolf in the sheep's clothes. Spinoza, due to Descartes tremendous success, took over his terminology just like one would take the wine bottles of a popular brand, and then placed his own wine inside. He de-constructed Cartesianism from the inside, and returned to the old Scholasticism of old - of people like Avicenna and Averroës.I believe is the way that Spinoza conceived of it. Descartes also conceived of nature this way, and Spinoza was very much influenced by Descartes. He studied him very closely and departed form his philosophy, for sure, but I cannot see how his departure has any bearing on the question of determinism. — John
But according to Spinoza res extensa and res cogitans aren't dependent on one another either - that's what them being parallel entails. There is no causality between each other.IN fact it was the way that Descartes conceived res cogitans, as being different from, and not dependent upon, and even prior to, res extensa, that allowed for genuine freedom. — John
Yes - everything necessarily happens, but this particular thing doesn't necessarily happen. The former is a statement of metaphysics and logic, the latter a statement of what is actually the case in the world.Spinoza say every being and event, every detail of everything that happens is an absolutely necessary unfolding of Deus sive natura. — John
Right, it's not. That's why Laplace was really advocating pre-determinism.Think of Laplace's Demon; according to Laplace the demon, by knowing the position, momentum and direction of every particle could calculate precisely all future events. Now in this thought experiment all future events are precisely and rigidly determined by present conditions (there is thus not necessarily any God in this picture, but there is a Nature; which amounts to the same thing). How is this different than saying that future events are always predetermined by present conditions. — John
The difference is that in pre-determinism knowing the conditions at time X is sufficient to predict the conditions at time Y while in determinism the conditions at time Y are an effect of the conditions at time X (which is their cause), but they cannot be predicted or known - they are necessarily contingent. Epicurus has this idea through the swerve of the atom - the atom swerves - indeed it NECESSARILY swerves. God cannot but create this contingent (and hence creative) empirical reality - reality cannot be uncreative. It is determined that the atom swerves, and the swerve itself is, empirically, contingent.What is the difference that makes a difference between this understanding of determinism and pre-determinism; and what is the difference between this and Spinoza? — John
The knowledge you refer to doesn't exist though. Reality is necessarily creative. Spinoza doesn't deny contingency, he places it in its right place - below necessity. Contingency is logically and metaphysically grounded in the necessity of God. Indeed Spinoza would have quite a false philosophy - as would everyone else - if they deny aspects of reality, such as either necessity or contingency.We feel free because we don't know what all the forces are determining our actions. For us our actions are thus not rigidly determined; not pre-determined; but this is so only on account of our ignorance. — John
Lightning gets all of its powers from a source external to it, and the powers confer it no capacity of self-determination. Humans - by virtue of the rational part of the mind - are able to restrain their passions - humans are self-reflective, their powers reflect back on themselves and can alter themselves. Imagine this by analogy to the body. If the heart does something its not supposed to - such as go into atrial fibrillation - the brain initiates certain processes which generally cause the process to become self-limiting. Who determined you to stop yourself from so and so? You have - through a different part of yourself. But all of that is nevertheless determined.And yet we do not hold the lightning morally responsible if it kills someone. — John
The nature of persons is self-reflective - the natures of spiders isn't (largely speaking - also there's no point of judging spiders. When we hold people morally responsible, it's always with the intent of judging them). There are cases when outside forces destroy or severely limit this capacity for reflexivity though - in such cases people are no longer held to be morally responsible, or at least they are held to be less morally responsible. For example, in many countries it is illegal to shoot an intruder in your house with a gun and kill him, if he attacks you with a knife (say). And yet someone could end up shooting them accidentally in the head (instead of in the foot) out of being overwhelmed by fear - their action will still remain immoral and they will still be judged, but a lesser sentence will be given than to the man who intentionally shot in the head the intruder in his home even though the intruder made no sign or intention of wanting to hurt them.If persons can only act according to their natures in the same way that spiders, snakes, tigers and lightning do, then we can be no more justified in holding a person morally responsible for his or her actions than we can hold a spider, snake, tiger or lightning morally responsible. — John
I fail to see how this is anything more than a distinction without a difference. Whether something is an error because of a transcendental illusion, or something is an error because of the failure of thought, that seems merely two different ways of conceptualising the same underlying reality...Late to chime in, but with respect to Kant, his most significant contribution, it seems to me, is the doctrine of the transcendental illusions: those illusions internally engendered by the operation of thought itself. Whereas previously, error was taken according to a model of the failure of thought, in Kant, error becomes internal to thought as such, such that one can speak of the 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' employment of Reason. — StreetlightX
Don't we also conceptualise the nature of that which is doing the conceptualising? :s That which conceptualises also conceptualises its own nature. I don't see anything revolutionary here... That we look at errors as being internally engendered by the operation of thought itself, or we look at them as being the failure of thought - that really is the same thing to me, I can see no difference there. Perhaps I just don't understand what you mean, but that's how I see it anyway...It's a question of the nature of that which is 'doing the conceptualizing'; it's the reflexive impetus of the critical philosophy. — StreetlightX
But wasn't the model of the failure of thought produced by thought itself, and hence error was still internal to thought? :s This is absolutely puzzling and incoherent, precisely because there is no difference between the two.Whereas previously, error was taken according to a model of the failure of thought, in Kant, error becomes internal to thought as such — StreetlightX
That which conceptualises also conceptualises its own nature. I don't see anything revolutionary here... — Agustino
But again, how does this change anything? — Agustino
There is no difference between those forms of necessity. — TheWillowOfDarkness
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