If you consider “being” as "something”, but not permanent, how are you able to give it a name, which is, the word “being”? — Angelo Cannata
It seems to me that we can use names only if we consider that something remains unchanged over time. For example, if what I call “sky” today is a “horse” tomorrow, it is completely impossible to me to give it a name, I cannot even figure what I am thinking about. — Angelo Cannata
But you call it “being”, which means that, in this something that you call “being”, something remains the same over time, so that today and tomorrow you can still call it “being”. This seems to me that actually you are not conceiving “being” as something really completely changing, really not permanent. — Angelo Cannata
I think we need to shake the traditional views of Parmenides and Heraclitus. This "being versus becoming" is a false one. Why should we presume that "being" means something opposed to "becoming"? This essentially equates being to permanence. — Xtrix
Briefly this is Russell's way of saying that science does not even define what physicality is:
— Jackson
Sure. A physicalist has no objection to that. Metaphysics as the philosophy of physics.
But your example was
If all my thoughts are physical,
— Jackson
Which appears to argue for the non-physics of mind. — bongo fury
If we think that 2+2=4 is an eternal truth, indesctructible, unassailable, impossible to question, then you are thinking of it in a metaphysical way. As such, this kind of thought has the defect that not only tomorrow 2+2 might give a different result, but also our thoughts about it might change, because ideas are subject to time, change, becoming, as well as anything else. — Angelo Cannata
The multiverse is new age pseudo science on the same level as the god of the gaps to explain unexplained phenomena. "Purportedly" is a sophistry way to put it. — Haglund
The multiverse is new age pseudo science on the same level as the god of the gaps to explain unexplained phenomena. "Purportedly" is a sophistry way to put it. — Haglund
I think that metaphysics, whatever meaning you give to it, has the defect of being bound to being: in certain contexts it is almost a synonim of ontology. The consequence of being bound to being is that it ignores time and subjectivity. Along history metaphysics was criticized by historicists, because, by trying to understand how things are, it looses sight of the fact that things, rather than being, are becoming (Heraclitus). As a consequence, about any metaphysical system of ideas, we should never forget that it is itself conditioned by its own being immersed in the flowing of becoming, changing.
The problem raised by subjectivity is similar, because the fact that anything we think of is conditioned by our subjectivity makes our thoughts dependent on the variability, unreliability of subjectivity.
In other words, the defect of metaphysics is its intention to reach a system of ideas that is expected to be stable, definitive, ultimate, objective, reliable, solid. — Angelo Cannata
Because he uses it it's no fake science? Scientists use fantasies too. There is no evidence to support many worlds. — Haglund
Then where is the direct evidence? I can just as well state that our universe inflated in a stationary 4D space with the right properties. — Haglund
So if tomorrow we call the sun "horse," it won't change that bright ball in the sky — Xtrix
if what you say is true, and we cannot assign a name to anything that changes -- then we can't name anything, including change itself. — Xtrix
it is impossible to envisage a world where there are no necessary facts. — Wayfarer
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