Revealing comment.

So, you add it to the ledger of your disaffection.
Trump said that while thinking he was alone with his interlocutor. It was never a slogan.

Do you include "grabbing by the pussy" in that category?

Are you past that? Do you condone Trump's behavior in that regard?

Your brand of libertarian ethos does not engage with such questions on a personal level. Are you living the Trump life?

That portion of the story plays a part in the Republic.

The paragraph states that it is the meaning of "actual", that we learn by analogy, not the meaning of "potential". — Metaphysician Undercover

It does not say that. It includes both terms in relation to each other. It goes out of its way to make that clear.

In Book 2, the trio begins sorting the poets into different baskets. Adeimantus says:

“Fathers, when speaking to their sons and offering them advice, and indeed anyone 363A who cares for anyone, speak to them presumably about the need to be just, by praising not justice itself but the good reputation derived from it, saying that by seeming to be just, from the reputation alone, they may secure positions of authority, and marriages, and whatever else Glaucon listed just now, all from having a reputation for being just.

“Yet these people have more to say on the subject of reputation. For when they throw in good reputation in the eyes of the gods, they describe a whole host of goods that, they declare, are given by the gods to holy people, just as noble Hesiod, and 363B Homer too, declare in one case that for the just people the gods make oak trees

Bear acorns in their topmost branches with swarms of bees below.

“And he says,

Their woolly sheep are weighed down with fleeces.[4]

“And there are many other good things connected to these. In the other case, Homer says something similar:

… as of some king who, as a blameless man and god-fearing,

and ruling as lord over many powerful people,

363C upholds the way of good government, and the black earth yields him

barley and wheat, his trees are heavy with fruit, his sheep flocks

continue to bear young, the sea gives him fish…[5] — Plato, Republic, 363A, translated by Horan

It is odd that Adeimantus puts such an emphasis upon reputation when it seems the virtuous are receiving actual benefits from the gods themselves, not just looking cool to other people. This oddity is continued in the talk immediately following of succeeding generations getting a benefit from virtuous living.

In any case, Simonides probably belongs in the first basket rather than the ones about to be introduced in the dialogue. The Thrasymachus thing is more obviously presented in the subsequent baskets. So, what to make of Socrates pulling this particular beard?

I don't understand what you are saying here. Parmenides is Eleatic. And then you say "Pretty darn Parmenidean", as if you are confirming that Parmenides was sophistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was referring to Aristotle's comments in Sophistical Refutations. The formulation of Plato in that case references statements influenced by Parmenides' language. Aristotle charges the Eleatics of being 'eristic' more often than Plato does. It does not always mean something is 'sophistical.' I think it is safe to say that Aristotle does not hold Parmenides in the same high esteem expressed by Socrates in Theaetetus.

There is much said about "potential", and "potency" in Aristotle's Metaphysics, especially Bk.9, and most is not said by analogy. — Metaphysician Undercover

What we wish to say is clear from the particular cases by induction, |1048a35| and we must not look for a definition of everything, but be able to comprehend the analogy, namely, that as what is building is in relation to what is capable of building, and what is awake is in relation to what is asleep, |1048b1| and what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed but has sight, and what has been shaped out of the matter is in relation to the matter, and what has been finished off is to the unfinished. Of the difference exemplified in this analogy let the activity be marked off by the first part, the potentiality by the second. |1048b5| But things are said to actively be, not all in the same way, but by analogy—as this is in this or to this, so that is in that or to that. For some are as movement in relation to a capacity [or a potential], and the others as substance to some sort of matter. — Aristotle, Metaphysic, Theta 6, 1048a34, translated by CDC Reeve

There is more in Book Lamda drawing the same distinction, but I remember that you have excluded that from your canon.

I disagree with your depiction of the Eleatics as sophists. Plato wrote the Sophist having a student of Parmenides overturning a critical tenet of his teacher. Aristotle (almost reluctantly) confirms Plato's descriptions of sophistry as a way to "say what is not." Pretty darn Parmenidean.

What strikes me about Aristotle's Physics is how his rejection of the Eleatics makes no reference to Plato's objections to them in the Sophist (or Plato's Parmenides). That makes it likely there is some portion of the work he likes well enough to make his own.

Your version of 'being' and 'becoming' gives a place for "potential" to hang out in between times of actuality. That does not fit well with Aristotle speaking of potential as something we can only apply by analogy. We need experience to use the idea. In a parallel fashion, I read the tension created in Metaphysics Zeta 13 to point to the complexity of causes beyond being able to recognize "kinds" (genos).

So, is that to say my version of the story is an error?

As a production of written text, the results point to a detachment from speech. The compilation of generic explanations was long vapid filler including seemingly reasonable speech before a player piano did the work for one.

I am not here, this isn't happening

What I'm wrestling with are two senses of 'form'. There's the Aristotelian sense of morphe which informs matter. That is the classical view, which to all intents became absorbed into Christian theism. As such it's a kind of no-go for a lot of people, if it suggests anything like intelligent design or the 'divine intellect'. — Wayfarer

For Aristotle, moving away from the idea of 'participating' in forms involves the particular individual coming into being as an event of ousia that the universal or genos cannot provide a sufficient explanation for. The issue is at the center of the disruptive quality of Metaphysics Zeta 13. Here is an SEP article that puts it in a nutshell:

Ζ.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in Aristotle’s metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters. Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:

(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance. — SEP Aristotle's Metaphysics

The authors of the article make some reasonable arguments to resolve the issue. I tend to look at it as an ongoing issue of how to understand the role of all the causes needed for particular creatures to come into being. Since the forms don't have their own real estate outside the convergence of causes, a new concept of the soul is needed.

There is a parallel consideration taking place in Plato's Sophist, where the sharp division between Being and Becoming is brought into question. It is interesting that Aristotle's Physics (nature) spends so much time and effort into pressing a thumb into the eye of the Eleatics.

The different role of matter in Plato and Aristotle is difficult to fully draw out but the expression "morphe which informs matter" is a product of later Platonism where matter is the empty husk that Soul attempts but fails to completely fill. Aristotle rejects that view in De Anima when he dispenses with the Pythagoreans' concept of soul.

It's also part of the One, though apparently the part where Plotinus explains this is squirrelly. — frank

Does this source quote from a specific text from Plotinus?

(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.) — Wayfarer

This is an issue where Aristotle's argument about the inseparability of form and matter comes into play. The call for a comprehensive causality means not being able to choose who shows up for the party.

I am lucky enough to live in the house I remade for myself. So, both made and found. The 'made' is also a matter of finding in regard to what I could afford. I regret some of those choices but I cannot cohabit the place of the one who made them.

As a worker in the trades, I have diligently attempted to carry out designs and fell short to varying degrees. People still live in those places, living with my work. When I visit extremely designed spaces, I see the shadows of my life in peculiar details another investigator might miss.

I have encountered those who have a different relationship to their work than I have developed. I will not opine upon that. I am pretty sure it is different.

I don't think the Greeks shared the conception of self-organization that is associated with modern biological theory. — Wayfarer

Aristotle considered the matter through developing different ideas about seeds. That some bits of material were ready to become something else is in direct opposition to the Pythagorean idea of forms impressing themselves into matter like a seal pressed into wax.

I like the way Kierkegaard talks about it. Love builds up. Beyond forms of affection (or the seeming absence of such), love assumes the presence of love. Looking for proof of it is to step away from it a certain distance.

Fidelity in marriage is more than not committing infidelity. Love builds up. If one or the other completely stops doing that, a light does go out. In my mind, that is different than the struggles that cause much of the friction of relationships. Honesty suffers a lot of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

I am not site admin but I think that should be okay since a place for websites is provided in the profile.

I hope my post does not violate the forum's rules. — Linkey

It does. From the Site Guidelines:

Advertisers, spammers, self-promoters: No links to personal websites. Instant deletion of post followed by a potential ban.

Quote the sources.

Are you withdrawing the claim that first person claims to be God (other than God) can be found in the Scriptures?

[parenthesis added]

The rate of homelessness in most places is significantly proportional to the cost of housing. Real estate markets are strongest in "blue" states because of the influx of capital that permits very high paying jobs. The curve is flatter where the wealth gap is not as exponential. That is one of the reasons why "red" states receive more from federal funding than they pay out in taxes. Nice work if you can get it.

The problem with mental health care is a part of the deconstruction of the hospitals and other state institutions that has been done under the idea that such work could be redirected to community level support. This process has been under way for decades. The fallout is perhaps now forcing itself into a wider public awareness. To be clear, this does not resolve into any particular political agenda. It is an intellectual failure of our society as a whole.

The use of the "Son of God" and the "Son of Man" have different roles in the writings before the Christian era. Something to be pursued in a different conversation, perhaps.

Putting aside the various folk who presume to speak for God, that is different from a human being saying: "I am God." If that rebuttal is of no interest to you, the difference is very important to other people.

Consider someone declares they are God and that this statement is the absolute/fundamental truth or "the word". They then offer you a trinary choice — Benj96

Where in the Scriptures does someone declare this?

There are those who claim that such a person exists. Big difference.

So you agree it's a reasonable infringement on free speech, because it can cause damage. — Relativist

What I am arguing is that laws against harmful speech are not an infringement upon free speech as defined by the First Amendment. The First Amendment did not overturn the laws against fraud, libel, based upon harm that was inherited from English Common Law and developed in U.S law. We are expected to speak without harming people. The point of tort law is that such harm becomes something legally actionable when it can be reasonably proven by rules of evidence and procedure.

Free speech in the First Amendment deals specifically with whether the 'Government', the acting power of the state, can protect itself from speech for the sake of preserving that power. Each of the ten Bill of Rights directly addresses ways 'Government' becomes too powerful. Casting these restrictions as "infringements" of otherwise infinitely unencumbered potentialities weakens their utility as protections against tyranny.

In my first response to you in this thread, I began by agreeing with you that:

Censorship is not the only way to deal with disinformation. — Relativist

The laws we have regarding fraud and libel are not censorship. A secular life of individual autonomy without them is the war of all against all. The life of the secular also requires a willingness to speak honestly for the sake of the life it makes possible. That willingness is the element that cannot be legislated or put in a company manual. That is an element absent from Nos4atu's peculiar brand of solipsism.

On that basis, I think the problem of deep fake images is a profound one which should be and will be addressed in all sorts of exchanges beyond the political. As a matter of participatory politics, maybe nothing more can be done in the near future than inculcate a skepticism shared by enough people of what the images are reporting. This includes imagined scenes of eating cats. There is an inflationary aspect to it all. It becomes less meaningful with each use. At some point, it is up to the citizen whether to keep purchasing it.

The damage of fraudulent speech, as demonstrated through Common Law, is measured by its demonstrated result. The level of criminality that may be involved concerns the question of malicious intent. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote an excellent book about it. Those issues are different from the freedom from 'Government' as spoken of in the First Amendment. The Government cannot legislate against speech directed against itself. That is the meaning of the other ways listed such as the freedom of the press, the peaceful assembly of protest, or the petition of grievances.

It is a country mile from being permitted to pull anything one pleases out of their hind parts.

So your answer is just give the elitists more power to control the people? — Harry Hindu

Not at all. The importance of education as it engages what each person and family consider most important is what shapes what gets to be public. The simple dichotomy of 'elites' and 'people' overlooks the desire to raise children as one deems best.

For example, I don't want to dismantle the Department of Education because it helps develop universal literacy and objective knowledge and keeps alive the difficulty of sharing history from many different stories of history. On the other hand, I don't want them to replace my role as a parent. And to do that, I accept that my autonomy means other parents will exercise the same right, even when their choices are wrong from my point of view. The matter of when other peoples' choices infringe upon mine is where the matter gets sticky and difficult to solve with a list of restrictions. Who shall guard the guardians?

I understand the differentiation you wish to apply from your previous comments. My comment hoped to express my doubts that such should (or could) be applied directly as a measure of law.

Censorship is not the only way to deal with disinformation. — Relativist

Yes, to have the collision between 'truth and falsity' as described by Milton requires a shared secular space where the autonomous person is allowed to persist within. The freedom from authority is not a self-evident condition because authority has different dimensions. Consider the language of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — U.S. Constitution

This list of what cannot be legislated starts off with a powerful source of authority in its own right. This permits different groups of people to teach their children as they please. If this process is not to dissolve into the despotism the amendment struggles to avoid, there must be a countervailing agency of education that will preserve secular freedom. How to do that without establishing another tyrannical authority is the fundamental challenge of democracy in our Republic. The secular is not an order that replaces all others but is a form of participation that stops when enough people stop participating. As Eliot said: "We are the music, while the music lasts."

In our short history, the 'Government' has given plenty cause for the petitions of grievances. The possibility for a democracy is the possibility that the secular spirit is still alive amongst those who serve it. Keeping open the space for personal autonomy is a continual struggle.

Over the years, the author of this OP has maintained that the existence of "states" is not the result of a process of human development within the dynamic of many conflicting agencies. It is, instead, an idea that infected the world when enough people started sharing it. By the criteria of the First Amendment, this makes the entity essentially theocratic. This is a withdrawal from any shared secular space where the causes of speech do not have to be adjudicated by abstruse logic. The imagined theocracy also abnegates the voice of the press. All appearances of culpability are washed away by gesturing to the dark cabal huddling just outside of the sensorium. The withdrawal from the space makes it impervious to any contradiction observed coming from it. Elvis has left the building.

Agreed. I think Rousseau agrees.

For sure, I don't want to celebrate the quality in that way. And hard-core assholes do not regret anything.

But I do not feel triumphant.

Property is the result of the luck of inheritance or the gains of conquest. Rousseau described the initial move as the result of calling a certain area "mine." That would seem to fill the bill of "legitimate control." Can such an idea be free of competing interests?

I view the matter as starting with the tyrannical and learning better.

I regret many episodes of what I did while parenting. As much as I don't like the quality, it is a part of me as it is with the people who I oppose.

Instead a thief is considered to illegitimately deprive the owner of control.

So ownership cannot be about control. — Banno

if you have got it right in the first sentence, how does the 'acquisitive' spirit featured in the second type differ from the original desire?

Having spent the last ten years in the midst of the 'cultural war' up close and personal, the freedom to lie is a component of the desire to disrupt a certain kind of conversation while establishing particular narrative as facts. The method combines the power of received ideas with fictional narratives. Maybe the best example is when Trump discounted the severity of covid. He asked his followers to discount evidence as he does. Whatever goals are entertained by the believers, it is the freedom to not be concerned with evidence that is most appealing. And yet the group keeps producing "evidence." They are immune from contradiction.

Those questions are interesting to me as a reader of Aristotle because of the emphasis Aristotle put upon only being able to speak of potential by means of analogy. He expressed more confidence about other things.

So theft results in the thief owning what has been stolen. — Banno

That was Marx's argument

And folk hereabouts think this a good argument? — Banno

What?