Comments

  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    You have the same resources I have on the site. Use them if you are genuinely curious about past interchanges.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    I could do that sort of thing, given what you have said in the past.
    Your lack of interest in supporting any of that stuff for the sake of forcing me to repeat it is not the mark of a gentleman.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    That is not what I said. You have said the state is an illusion..
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    Your often repeated idea of the "state" is that it is a shared misconception rather that an existing thing. You are now asking that illusion to perform better.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    How do these problems fit into your libertarian vibe that nothing can be done by the state?
  • Philosophers in need of Therapy
    With the "not wanting to spare anybody from thinking", there is introduced an element which my teachers of Wittgenstein emphasized. The benefit from the way out is only helpful for those who sincerely have the problems, If we can stand outside of the circle and express superiority over the poor fucks who suffer that sort of thing, then that would be a kind of psychology.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    The Trump team plays both sides of that:

    Trump FEMA Claim Debunked: Agency Not Running Out Of Money Because Of Migrants.

    In the report:

    Congress determines how much money goes to FEMA’s disaster fund, and the fund faces issues after lawmakers declined to allocate additional funding for FEMA’s efforts in the stopgap funding bill it passed last month, only extending FEMA’s existing funding level and allowing it to draw from $20 billion in funds more quickly.

    It was the MAGA minions, of course, who pushed for that.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    False. It was taken up as a slogan by a rather detrimental portion of the male populace of the USA for a short period.AmadeusD

    I had no idea. I must be using the wrong locker rooms.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay

    Your reading overlooks the role of analogy as a response to what cannot be defined. The Greek of 1048a35 is:

    καὶ οὐ δεῖ παντὸς ὅρον ζητεῖν ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ ἀνάλογον συνορᾶνTheta 1048a35

    The ἀλλὰ sharply separates the 'seeking the boundaries of all things' from 'being able to see through analogy'. The separation is reiterated at 1048b10:

    But things are not all said to exist actually in the same sense, but only by analogy—as A is in B or to B, so is C in or to D; for the relation is either that of motion to potentiality, or that of substance to some particular matter. — Translated by Hugh Tredennick, Loeb Edition

    Not being able to define actuality and potentiality more precisely echoes Aristotle wanting to move past Empedocles in Delta:

    Of nothing that exists is there nature, but only mixture and separation of what has been mixed; nature is but a name given to these by men. — ibid. 1015a1

    Hence as regards those things which exist or are produced by nature, although that from which they naturally are produced or exist is already present, we say that they have not their nature yet unless they have their form and shape. That which comprises both of these exists by nature; e.g. animals and their parts. And nature is both the primary matter (and this in two senses: either primary in relation to the thing, or primary in general; e.g., in bronze articles the primary matter in relation to those articles is bronze, but in general it is perhaps water—that is if all things which can be melted are water) and the form or essence, i.e. the end of the process of generation. Indeed from this sense of “nature,” by an extension of meaning, every essence in general is called “nature,” because the nature of anything is a kind of essence.

    From what has been said, then, the primary and proper sense of “nature” is the essence of those things which contain in themselves as such a source of motion; for the matter is called “nature” because it is capable of receiving the nature, and the processes of generation and growth are called “nature” because they are motions derived from it. And nature in this sense is the source of motion in natural objects, which is somehow inherent in them, either potentially or actually.
    — ibid 1015a6, emphasis mine

    Aristotle yokes together these two senses of natural being without reducing them further. Notice that it is the same pair of terms which get used analogically in Theta 6.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    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.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    Do you include "grabbing by the pussy" in that category?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    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?
  • Poets and tyrants in the Republic, Book I

    That portion of the story plays a part in the Republic.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    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.
  • Poets and tyrants in the Republic, Book I

    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?
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    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.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay

    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).
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay

    So, is that to say my version of the story is an error?
  • ChatGPT 4 Answers Philosophical Questions
    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.
  • What are you listening to right now?
    I am not here, this isn't happening

  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    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.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    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?
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    (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.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay

    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.
  • The relationship of the statue to the clay
    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.
  • What is love?

    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.
  • The World of Post-Truth

    I am not site admin but I think that should be okay since a place for websites is provided in the profile.
  • The World of Post-Truth
    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.
  • Scripture as an ultimate moral dilemma

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

    [parenthesis added]
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    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.
  • Scripture as an ultimate moral dilemma

    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.
  • Scripture as an ultimate moral dilemma
    Consider someone declares they are God and that this statement is the absolute/fundamental truth or "the word". They then offer you a trinary choiceBenj96

    Where in the Scriptures does someone declare this?

    There are those who claim that such a person exists. Big difference.
  • Why should we worry about misinformation?
    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.
  • Why should we worry about misinformation?

    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.
  • Why should we worry about misinformation?
    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?