think Tegmark is like this, but such thinking has left the empirical scientific spirit behind. It's bad metaphysics drunk on its close association with good physics. — plaque flag
So the crux is apparently that scientism is realist, and can be resisted by the anti-realism of your OP, but I would prefer resisting scientism by way of an alternative realism. — Leontiskos
Seems to present a kind of Pythagorean idealism, although I've barely started reading it yet. — Wayfarer
I would prefer resisting scientism by way of an alternative realism. — Leontiskos
How so, if you mind my asking ? — plaque flag
Questions I might ask: is color real ? is sound real ? are feelings of love real ? To say that the world is 'really' numbers doesn't make much sense. — plaque flag
4. Transcendental Thomism: Unlike the first three schools mentioned, this approach, associated with Joseph Marechal (1878-1944), Karl Rahner (1904-84), and Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), does not oppose modern philosophy wholesale, but seeks to reconcile Thomism with a Cartesian subjectivist approach to knowledge in general, and Kantian epistemology in particular. It seems fair to say that most Thomists otherwise tolerant of diverse approaches to Aquinas’s thought tend to regard transcendental Thomism as having conceded too much to modern philosophy genuinely to count as a variety of Thomism, strictly speaking, and this school of thought has in any event been far more influential among theologians than among philosophers. — Edward Feser, The Thomistic Tradition, Part I
For Leibniz there is a "master monad" who coordinates all the rest: God. — Janus
My view is that they're real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're inherent in the way the mind categorises, predicts and organises its cognitions. — Wayfarer
And as 'the world' and 'experience' are not ultimately divided (per non-dualism) then this is why mathematics is uncannily predictictive. That, I think, is the thrust of McDonnell's book. — Wayfarer
1.1. The Death of Ontology and the Rise of Correlationism
Our historical moment is characterized by a general distrust, even disdain, for the category of objects, ontology, and above all any variant of realism. Moreover, it is characterized by a primacy of epistemology over ontology. While it is indeed true that Heidegger, in Being and Time, attempted to resurrect ontology, this only took place through a profound transformation of the very meaning of ontology. Ontology would no longer be the investigation of being qua being in all its variety and diversity regardless of whether humans exist, but rather would instead become an interrogation of Dasein's or human being's access to being. Ontology would become an investigation of being-for-Dasein, rather than an investigation of being as such. In conjunction with this transformation of ontology from an investigation of being as such into an investigation of being-for-humans, we have also everywhere witnessed a push to dissolve objects or primary substances in the acid of experience, intentionality, power, language, normativity, signs, events, relations, or processes. To defend the existence of objects is, within the framework of this line of thought, the height of naïveté for objects are held to be nothing more than surface-effects of something more fundamental such as the signifier, signs, power or activities of the mind. With Hume, for example, it is argued that objects are really nothing more than bundles of impressions or sensations linked together by associations and habits in the mind. Here there is no deeper fact of objects existing beyond these impressions and habits. Likewise, Lacan will tell us that “the universe is the flower of rhetoric”, treating the beings that populate the world as an effect of the signifier.
We can thus discern a shift in how ontology is understood and accompanying this shift the deployment of a universal acid that has come to dissolve the being of objects. The new ontology argues that we can only ever speak of being as it is for us. Depending on the philosophy in question, this “us” can be minds, lived bodies, language, signs, power, social structures, and so on. There are dozens of variations... — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant
I'll let their ghosts debate that issue with you, since neither system is my own. Wittgenstein basically states my own current position in the TLP and early notebooks. Mach gives a powerful, more detailed presentation. James is also there in Does Consciousness Exist ? None of them hammered home the implied perspectivism, though, which gives me something useful to do.The problem is their systems fall apart when the lynchpin is removed, which raises the question as to how we might think their systems are important when they are in a shambles. — Janus
plaque flag, I was reading your thread, "Rationalism's Flat Ontology," and so far I'm on the third sentence. — Leontiskos
Ontology would no longer be the investigation of being qua being in all its variety and diversity regardless of whether humans exist, but rather would instead become a"n interrogation of Dasein's or human being's access to being. — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant
I'll let their ghosts debate that issue with you, since neither system is my own. — plaque flag
Just to clarify, you mean @Wayfarer ? I don't know if he embraces the term. But, for the record, we can do without the subject before we can do without the world. [The empirical subject is part of the world, albeit a central part.] [The world is just 'Being' --- how it is, all that is the case in all its sensuousness, etc. ]Good to know. I figured as much, even though you both consider yourselves correlationists. — Leontiskos
I am then led to wonder whether that possibility of perception, when engaged, effects an actualization of perception, such that we are really encountering a perception/image rather than the thing itself. For me the possibility of perception is derivative on the thing that exists in itself. The thing is more than a possibility of perception, even though we always know by means of perception. — Leontiskos
Even just their importance as members of the canon relies on their system being accepted as a whole. — Janus
The new ontology argues that we can only ever speak of being as it is for us. Depending on the philosophy in question, this “us” can be minds, lived bodies, language, signs, power, social structures, and so on. — The Democracy of Objects, Chapter 1, by Levi R. Bryant
Transcendental Thomism is more conciliatory towards modern thought — Leontiskos
On further reflection, it occurs to me that an Aquinas would not endorse the notion of a 'mind-independent object'. Why? Because in his philosophical theology, particulars derive their being from God — Wayfarer
I think you are working above your pay-grade at this point. — Leontiskos
The timebinding [ scientific ] philosophical Conversation is the actual protagonist — plaque flag
Your thinking, applied to physics, would reduce Newton to dust -- as if we weren't basically still Newtonians. To be sure, we aren't pure Newtonians anymore. — plaque flag
Because in his philosophical theology, particulars derive their being from God - that they are created and maintained in existence by the divine intellect. Not only does God grant existence initially (through creation), but He also continuously sustains all things in existence. Without the continuous causal activity of God, things would cease to exist. In this way, God is not just a distant first cause; He is intimately involved in maintaining the existence of all particulars — Wayfarer
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