I think therefore I am whatever I think. — unenlightened

Hmmm... are you sure this is correct? It doesn't seem to be. I can think that I am a fish. That doesn't mean that I am a fish.

Edit:

Will you say, "There exists an x, such that x is identical to a named hurricane."? — unenlightened

Sure, why not? Humans and hurricanes have something in common: both of them are event-based objects, in Carmichael's (2015) sense of the term.

Edit 2:

The problem with formal logic is that it cannot deal with time. — unenlightened

Not really. Take a look:

∃x(Cxm ∧ Bxt) - There exist an x, such that x was a caterpillar on Monday, and it is a butterfly on Tuesday. You just need to treat Monday and Tuesday as individual constants, and "being a caterpillar" and "being a butterfly" as two-place predicates that relate an individual to a moment in time.

:up:

Well now I can't take you seriously. :rofl: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why not? Think of the word "carnivore". It applies to some animals, and it also applied to some plants. Now think of the word "sheep". It applies to some animals, and to some humans. Just as it is possible to determine how carnivorous a certain diet is (i.e., how much meat does an animal or a carnivorous plant consume), it is also possible to determine how sheepish a certain life has been (i.e., how much does an animal or a human conform to a flock).

Because he has abandoned himself, and he wants to know why. He is asking himself that question. In the philosophical literature, this is known as the death of God. Hegel, among other philosophers, had already pointed out this issue, before Nietzsche and before Zizek discussed it.

Chaotic Latin joyfulness??? Ah, the wonderful national stereotypes. — ssu

How can it be a national stereotype, if Latin is not a nation? The nation is Argentina in this case, Latin is simply a language that no nation speaks. It's not even spoken in Europe anymore. There is nothing Latin about me, or about the language that I speak, just as there is nothing acorn-like about the tree that once used to be nothing but an acorn : )

What would be more fitting than this one for you, my friend. Notice how the crowd sings along: — ssu

Quite a boring song, if I'm being honest. I prefer this other one:

Same with "catholicity simpliciter." I'm not sure what you mean. It's a property, I don't think it can "exist simpliciter." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If it exists, it cannot exist independently of a thing, of a res, precisely because it would be a property, like you said. I just don't think that it's a property of reason, because reason might not be a res to begin with. It makes more metaphysical sense to say that I am a res cogitans, I am a thing that has reason, so catholicity (if it exists) is a property of a thing (the thing that I am), not of the reason that this thing (myself) has. By "catholicity simpliciter", I meant "catholicity in general", not just the purported "catholicity of reason". For one could argue that there could be a catholicity of opinion (doxa), instead of just a catholicity of reason.

I just don't see it. Or your use of "blind faith," is perhaps anachronistic. I have a friend who is a very skilled mechanic. I know he's good with cars, I've seen the cars he's rebuilt. If I trust his authority on automobiles I don't see how this is necessarily "blind." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, then I don't know what to tell you, other than the fact that many goddesses are blind. Justice is blind, so is faith. That you can "mix it up" with reason doesn't mean that they're not fruits from different trees.

Presumably you have a lifetime of experience walking. Again, I am not seeing how this is blind. This is like saying it's "blind faith" to assume that you'll get wet when you jump in a pool. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is. When you assume that you'll get wet when you jump into a pool, that is blind faith. You could question it, philosophically, if you wanted to. But there's no point to that sort of questioning. Things cannot be philosophy all the way down, I would say.

Where does Kierkegaard ever say Abraham isn't being tested? I don't think he does. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He doesn't. He just thinks that "having his faith being tested" is not the moral of the story here. The moral of the story is that Abraham made the deliberate, conscious choice to obey God's order, while fully understanding that the order in question was contrary to what any father would do if someone told such a father to sacrifice his son. In other words, deep down, Christianity is irrational, according to Kierkegaard. That's the moral of the story of Abraham and God. That particular story cannot be explained in a Thomistic way.

In any case, this view is right in Scripture, you can't appeal to literalism and deny the interpretation.

Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He had received the promises, yet he was ready to offer up his only son. 11:18 God had told him, “Through Isaac descendants will carry on your name,” 11:19 and he reasoned that God could even raise him from the dead..."

If you're committed to the literalist view you're committed to Abraham reasoning in this case. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Am I? What language was that quote originally written in? If one is to be a literalist about this, then one has to take into consideration the fact that the passage in question was not really written in English. And whatever word was originally used there, it most certainly was not etymologically related to the Latin word Ratio.

Sure, it's a test of faith. Even if it was a test of wholly irrational faith, that wouldn't make the test or the person giving the test irrational. The test is not given "for no reason at all." — Count Timothy von Icarus

But Abraham did not know why the test was given in the first place, he had no reason to believe it to be a benign order. He instead had every reason to believe that it was a malevolent order instead (i.e., how did Abraham know that he wasn't being fooled by an Evil Genius (an Evil Genie, for example, or a demon)? How does he know that the order is being delivered from God, and not his impostor, Lucifer? He doesn't. He has no reliable way of knowing that. All he has, is blind Christian faith. Or are we to say that Abraham was not a Christian? Someone born before Christ cannot be a Christian? Why not? Was Jesus not with God in the beginning (John 1:2)? If so, then why couldn't Epicurus be a Christian? No one will dispute the fact that Epicurus did not use the word Ratio. But he did use the word Logos. How is he not as holy as Jesus, then, if we are to believe John 1:1?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
"The Word," a translation of the Greek λόγος (logos), is widely interpreted as referring to Jesus, as indicated in other verses later in the same chapter.[5] For example, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14; cf. 1:15, 17). — Wikipedia

Anyhow, fideism is not the view that faith is important, or even most important (although St. Paul puts love above faith). Lots of people affirm that. It's the view that religious beliefs are entirely based on faith alone. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And they are. Religious beliefs are, at the end of the day, entirely based on faith alone, not love.

One cannot know God's essence — Count Timothy von Icarus

Mystics would disagree.

One can only approach the divine essence through apophatic negation — Count Timothy von Icarus

That was a trend during the Middle Ages, I'm not sure it's the only path to the Christian God understood as that which, among other things, transcends human reason.

Which is what Kierkegaard also ends up affirming, he basically works himself painfully towards Dionysius (painfully because his blinders stop him from referencing all the relevant thought here). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's a legitimate way of doing Christian philosophy.

Were the followers who abandoned Christ after he told them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood because they thought he was advocating cannibalism in the right (John 6)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

One should be able to say, in all seriousness, that this ritual (consuming the flesh and blood of Christ) is indeed Holy Cannibalism. There is simply no other way to best describe it.

Why does Christ himself primarily teach in parables and allegory? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because Christ was a man. And he was a man even if he was also God. Men speak in parables and allegories, on account of the fact that they are men. But God requires no metaphor, nor figure. God is literal through and through, if He exists. Metaphors are for creatures, not for their Creator.

Or did Christ come to save livestock (the lost sheep of Israel) and will the Judgement really be of actual sheep and goats? — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Yes" to both questions.

Is St. Paul breaking the rule of faith when he interprets Genesis allegorically in Galatians 4? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, he is.

"The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” John 6:63

"He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” II Corinthians 3:6

The Gospels are full of references of Christ fulling OT prophecies, often in counterintuitive ways that would be completely lost in a literalist reading. So, to at least some extent, a hyper literalist reading is self-refuting. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Humans need the concept of Spirit, because we are finite creatures. God, if He exists, has no need for Spirit, because he would be the Literal Truth. A hyper-literalist reading of the Bible is not self-refuting. It only places the word of the Bible at odds with the word of science. And in that conflict, I am on the side of science: I am an atheist. My atheism, however, does not mean that I cannot understand the Bible, or any other spiritualist reading of Biblical scripture specifically, and of any scripture in general.

On the Christian account, because those who have had faith come to understand, as the Apostles did, that Christ is God and Epicurus, if Christians are correct, is badly deluded. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why? Was Jesus not with God since the beginning, as John (1:2) says?

The idea of an absolute truth for us is self-refuting. — Janus

Not necessarily, for if the subject-object correlation is absolute, then the idea of an absolute truth for us is not self-refuting, precisely because it is a thing-in-and-for-itself.

Whatever we say about what we are will not be an ultimate truth but will be merely an interpretation of the human condition based on human experience and will thus be a relative statement, true or false only in some context or other. — Janus

As North Americans like to say: what you just said there is an opinion, not a fact. Can you prove that what you're saying is true? If so, then it is self-refuting. That beetles existed before mammals is true in a way that does not depend on any interpretation, nor on any human experience. It is, in that sense, a literal truth.

An ultimate truth would be context-independent. — Janus

Yes, it would.

How could there be any such thing (at least for us) — Janus

There can be such a thing, at least for us, because we are precisely that thing ourselves, insofar as we are something, and not merely someone.

So, you say we are merely "pattern-following objects" and that may indeed be true from some perspective. — Janus

It is absolutely true, because otherwise you would not be affected by the force of gravity in the same sense that a stone is.

just as we being subjects is true from a certain perspective. — Janus

It is absolutely true, because otherwise you would have died by now, and so would have I.

they are matters of faith. — Janus

Uncontaminated by human reason. In that sense, they are matters of pure, unadulterated blind faith. It's uncompromising fideism, it is the complete sacrifice of reason. And as stupid as that may sound, that is exactly the sort of blind faith that I have in my own two feet. I don't need to think how to walk, I just walk. I trust my feet and my brain enough to do that on auto-pilot, it is strictly a-rational, as you call it. That, according to Kierkegaard, is what distinguishes the knight of faith from the Thomist-minded masses. And my argument is that Kierkegaard personally transcended Protestantism, and in the process of doing so, he became an existential Christian instead. What I'm try to prove to @Count Timothy von Icarus is that one can be an existential Catholic in the same sense. Just as Kierkegaard fought against the Danish Church, so too the existential Catholic can fight against the Catholic Church.

But it seems to me that he doesn't believe that my thesis holds up, for some reason. I could be wrong, though.

It is surprising how much interest these kinds of strictly ambiguous and undecidable questions generate. — Janus

Because these are questions about what we ultimately are. These are questions about our own ultimacy. What are we?

Here's an example. North Americans sometimes talk about taking a solitary trip to somewhere just so that they can "find themselves". And here's my humble opinion on that. If you want to find out who you really are, you've no idea what's in store for you once you seriously begin to question what you are instead of who you are.

You think it's simple, but it isn't. Because what you are has nothing to do with you as a subject. It has everything to do with you as a mere, pattern-following object. You need to become a subject if only for the sake of your own survival as a human.

EDIT: Or is someone here going to argue with me, that we are not affected by the force of gravity just as much as any physical object, like this stone on the floor? Now ask yourself this: why is that? The answer is simple: because you are an object, a physical object in the world, in the same sense as that stone. In addition to that, you have to become a subject. Otherwise, you'll die. Reality itself is not a Fairy Tale. Wanna live? Become a subject. Or perhaps even a Rogue Object.

@Mapping the Medium

Reasonableness is the Peircean Ultimate.

Why are they the ultimate truth? — Corvus

Here is a good place to start for philosophical discussions about the concept of the Ultimate. It's not perfect, but it's something:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-ultimates/

Here's another way to look at this, @Moliere and @unenlightened. Descartes famously said Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am.

I am something, and I am someone. To be one is to be something. But it does not follow from there that to be something is to be someone. For a stone is something, yet it is not someone.

And I am not everyone. I am only someone. Am I no one? I am someone. I cannot be everyone, and I cannot be no one. I will always be someone, not less, not more. But in being someone, I am something. I am something in the following sense:

∃x(x=a) - There exists an x, such that x is identical to Arcane Sandwich.
∃x(x=x) - There exists an x, such that x is identical to itself.

There is an "itselfness" to what I am, in addition to there being a selfness to who I am.

Of course, Brand Nubian were inspired, in part, by Boogie Down Productions.

@Jack Cummins Here's a song by Earth Crisis.

Ok, let's see.

Metallica's self-titled "Black Album" for First Place? Ok, I can respect that. You seem to be the kind of metalhead that likes to see just how far metal can actually go, if we just dump a ton of resources and energy into it. Or maybe I'm wrong.

"Master of Puppets" in second place, and "Ride the Lightning" in third place. And "Kill 'Em All" didn't make your list? Some odd choices right there. I see what you're getting at, but I would have listed "And Justice for All" in Second Place if that's where you wanna take that line of reasoning. Again, I could be wrong in my reading of you.

Blue Öyster Cult in fourth and fifth place. Ok, I see what you're doing here, you're mirroring what I did with Earth Crisis and Sabbath. Ok, that's cool.

Let me ask you this, @Count Timothy von Icarus, to connect with one of the points that @Joshs's approach seems to suggest (to my mind, anyways).

Bruno Latour, as you already know, was not a realist. He was, quite literally, a philosophical relationist. Not a co-relationist, mind you, just a good, old fashioned relationist, at the end of the day. Like Hegel, in a sense. He was also a professional anthropologist, and he specialized in sociology of science. He was also a devout Catholic. How is that rational? It isn't. Therefore, Bruno Latour was a fideist.

Here's the question: in your honest, theological opinion: was Bruno Latour a good Catholic?

Nope. I just try to stick to the actual topic of the thread. — ssu

Ah, but you are too Lawful, my dear. You lack a bit of the Chaotic joyfulness that I have : )

Besides, music has much to do with the issues that the OP raises. How could it not? Think of military marches, for example, or prison songs, for that matter. Songs to inspire moral, songs to record an event. I think you underestimate the role that music has played throughout history. There is no reason to think that this is any different in our times, unless you think that History ended some years ago, and this is "just politics" now.

In that sense, but then again this is also talk between two people who are interested in philosophy. — ssu

Well, yes. We are also two Animals (Primates, specifically) engaged in conversation. We also happen to be two physical bodies, composed of some of the elements of the Periodic Table (most notably, carbon). And we also happen to be two physical entities that emerge from subatomic particles. In that sense, we have something in common. Something that runs deeper than nationality. Something that runs deeper than biology. Something that runs deeper than chemistry. See what I mean?

Again, it's about the topic of the thread, that starts with the opening paragraph of Bob Ross, which is on intent quite provocative. Imperialism isn't reciprocity, it doesn't start from mutual benefits as peaceful engagement does. Looking at World history from the viewpoint of Great Power competition hides or forgets a lot what happens in peacetime. — ssu

Or just look at this brief exchange, between you and me.

Not actually so different, if you take the 19th and 20th centuries. Both have had civil wars. Both have gotten independence from an Great Power. Both have fought the British (Finland as a Grand Dutchy of Russia then, but still). Where the difference is from being on different continents: Finland never has had a military junta and has had no extermination campaigns. Finland has stayed as a democracy and has prospered rather well, still being poorer than Sweden or Denmark, but still. — ssu

Plus we have very different native languages. I speak Castilian ("Spanish"), you speak Suomi ("Finnish"). And yet we are using English to communicate. In that sense, English is our Common language. It is "The Language of this Empire", if you will, except that there's no actual empire to back it up. Hence, it's just one of the Common World Languages by now, 2025.

What is there to talk about, then, if not music? Perhaps film? Painting? Poetry?

Is it? — ssu

It is, yes. You're extremely Lawful, On Topic. I'm far more Chaotic in that sense.

Individuals talking about philosophy is a reason itself, as we can get new insights from each other and can improve ourselves with the discourse. I'm all for that. — ssu

Then let's do it. Is there a philosophical reason that you have for avoiding music as a topic of conversation? Or is it that don't find music to be a particularly interesting thing to talk about, from a philosophical standpoint?

Nation states and the people acting as their representatives, it's a bit different. They talk as representatives and usually have a political domestic agenda, which foreign policy should implement and help. — ssu

Well, what am I then, and what are you? Notice that I'm not asking who am I, or who are you. I'm asking what are we. Are we not members of our respective nations? Am I not an Argentine? Are you not a Finn? This talk between you and me is a talk between two different nations in that sense. Furthermore, no one is representing me in this conversation, and no one is representing you.

For nations to engage each other there is this need of recipocity and something for the leadership to show for. — ssu

But no nation is identical to its leadership. So, what is the need of reciprocity here, between you and me? Do you want to talk about Argentine wines? Finnish investments? Why would we do that? We have representatives for that, as you so eloquently pointed out. Let them talk about the wines and the investments. We can talk about that as well, if you like, it's just that I don't find it to be a particularly interesting thing to talk about. I'd rather talk about music, for example.

At the start of the 20th Century, Argentina was far more wealthier than Finland with far higher GDP / per capita. — ssu

Well, during the 19th Century, Argentina declared its independence from the Spanish Empire, fought a War of Independence, followed by a Civil War, and later by an extermination campaign in the Pampas and the Patagonia. That was followed by five military dictatorships during the 20th Century, including a War with Britain in Malvinas. A very different history than the one that characterized Finland during the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps that's why the communication between you and me is so incredibly difficult, even though it might look perfectly normal to other people.

My biggest doubt with respect to the existentialists is the emphasis on authenticity, and with respect to Heidegger especially, his use of "authentic" with respect to a metaphysical existence. — Moliere

It's "Nazism for Philosophers", at the end of the day.

I definitely see the fascism in Heidegger -- it's really only because of Levinas that I take him seriously. I've said it before on this forum but I consider Levinas to be like the baptizer of Heidegger. — Moliere

Because Levinas is a Husserlian before being a Heideggerian. And Heidegger himself is, at the end of the day, just one among many of Husserl's students. The most famous one, sure, not necessarily the best one.

Would you accept that this is the entire point of a metaphysics? — Moliere

Maybe, maybe not. Could there even be another metaphysics? If you mean that in the sense of "Well, Nietzsche had a metaphysics, Aristotle had a different metaphysics, Plato had his own metaphysics, etc.", then sure. Metaphysics are a dime a dozen.

But if you mean metaphysics in the Bungean sense, as general science, then I would say no: just as there is one biology, one chemistry, and one physics, there is also one metaphysics. And there is no reason to believe that the same is not true of the social sciences and the humanities, because if they become Deuterosciences, then there will be one history, one geography, one economics, one sociology, and so forth.

I see metaphysics as subordinate to ethics — Moliere

I see it the other way around: ethics is subordinate to metaphysics. This is exactly the topic that I had hoped to discuss elsewhere in this Forum, but there was no interest : P

one chooses a metaphysic that fits with an ethical stance — Moliere

I choose the Ethical stance that fits with my metaphysics.

at least historically speaking. i.e. Plato wrote a metaphysics that got along with his philosophy, as did Aristotle and Epicurus etc. — Moliere

Good for them. Doesn't mean that one has to do the same thing.

Cool. Glad that I understood you. "The dao that can be said is not the eternal dao" definitely popped to mind in asking my question. — Moliere

Yeah but Laozi's entire point is that you shouldn't follow the Dao. Instead you should follow what the Dao follows: "what is natural".

Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and Earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name
Call it Tao.
For lack of a better word, I call it great.

Being great, it flows
I flows far away.
Having gone far, it returns.

Therefore, "Tao is great;
Heaven is great;
Earth is great;
The king is also great."
These are the four great powers of the universe,
And the king is one of them.

Man follows Earth.
Earth follows heaven.
Heaven follows the Tao.
Tao follows what is natural. — Laozi

Thank you for your time and energy, @Count Timothy von Icarus, and for such considerate responses to my questions. That being said, I'm afraid to say it seems that we can't reach an agreement on some of these points, even though we're both genuinely trying.

Is this what you call "the catholicity of reason"?


No, perhaps I should have specified since the word is uncommon. I mean it in the original sense, as in "all-embracing and unified, one." This is the sense in which the Orthodox and many Protestants still affirm: "I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church," at every service, when they recite the Nicene or Apostles' creed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is not how I would phrase the issue myself, but I "get your point", so to speak. What I would say, is that if the catholicity of reasons exists (and if catholicity simpliciter exists), then it pre-dates the foundation of the Catholic church. Catholicity, if it exists, existed before the Catholic church existed. That's what I would say. And if this is so, then it follows that the Catholic church does not, and cannot, have a monopoly on catholicity. Which is why one can be a catholic outside the Catholic church. Agree or disagree? I feel like you disagree with me on this specific point, among others.

Is all deference to authority "blind faith," — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, it is. At the end of the day, it is. Or, as North Americans like to say: it is what it is. You can defer to authority for other reasons, though, for example if you fear punishment. But you only tolerate that punishment because you have blind faith in the idea that this is your best or even only option: to tolerate such punishment under those circumstances.

is there proper deference to authority that is rational? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, there is. You can try to harmonize reason and faith all you want, since most of the time you will succeed. At least in trivial matters. For example, I have blind faith in my feet, in the sense that I completely trust them when I absent-mindedly step up and walk towards the kitchen. I don't need to think "now I place the right foot, and now I place the left foot, etc.". I just have blind faith that my feet work and that the part of my brain that controls my feet works as well. I fully trust them. Now, do I have philosophical reasons to justify this blind faith that I have in my own feet? Of course not, why would I need one? I'm a fideist about ordinary things like my feet, or this stone on the floor, or my hands. Why would I even doubt their existence? Because some philosopher said so in a book? That's not sound reasoning to me, that sounds like an appeal to authority. Suddenly I have to take Descartes' word "just because"? Sorry, I don't trust Cartesian philosophy as much as I trust my own two feet, or my hands, for that matter.

We might also consider that not all the acts of the Biblical heros are supposed to be good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't solve the problem that Kierkegaard points out. It's still a problem even if Abraham is not a hero or even if his acts are not supposed to be good. The order itself is irrational. Even if God gives it. It is not rational for a father to sacrifice his son to a deity, even if that deity is the Christian God. It just isn't, it's not a rational thing to do.

Yes, particularly your earlier point that the order itself was "irrational." That is not how the story has generally been read, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I feel like that's not sound reasoning on your part. It seems like you are appealing to the majority. Kierkegaard is in the minority here, sure. But that doesn't mean that he's necessarily wrong. Majorities can make mistakes, especially interpretative mistakes. That's why there is a literal use of the language to begin with: so that there are no interpretative mistakes, you just read what it says. Besides, even if the mainstream interpretation is in fact the following:

The most common purpose offered up is to test Abraham (e.g. St. Athanasius). — Count Timothy von Icarus

then I would ask: What is God testing here in the first place, if not Abraham's faith? Do you see my point? Fideism, by its very nature, isn't exactly a difficult case to make, friend. I think you are having a much more difficult time articulating faith with reason. I have it much easier. When a fisherman catches a fish, how did he do it, if not because the fish had blind faith that the bait was organic instead of plastic?

Is God less trustworthy than a board certified physician though? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is He? What do you think? I'll tell you what I think Kierkegaard might have said: he might have said that God is more trustworthy than a board certified physician, and this is precisely with the better Christian is the one who blindly believes, not the one who tries to rationalize what God is, or even if he exists to begin with. FYI, at some point this discussion sort of "degenerates" into the discussion about the literal interpretation of the Bible. And that is exactly the sort of discussion that I point to, when I say that things cannot be metaphors and figurative language all the way down.

And the point is that one believes in order to understand, whereas fideism tends towards "you cannot understand, but you must have faith and obey." Yet Christ tells the Apostles: "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you," (John 15:15) and "the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend," Exodus 33:11. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Then why should anyone listen to Christ instead of Epicurus? For Epicurus also had a concept of friendship.

Once again thank you very much for your time and consideration, @Count Timothy von Icarus

I am any centre anywhere. — unenlightened

Not really. When you move to one of the corners in a room, you're not a the center of the room. So, you're not the center of the room. But you could be. The problem in this case, is that the notion of center, in this context, is a relative notion: your centrality is relative to the room's centrality in that sense. They need not co-incide, they need not be co-located. One's centrality is therefore relative to one's surroundings or circumstances. But if there is a relative centrality, there can be an absolute centrality. And I would say, if only for the sake of argument, that one is not absolutely central, in any way, shape, or form.

Well, let's all settle down, shall we? No need to get so personal among total strangers. Let's get this thing back on track. Here's something to consider: there are many US-born Muslims, and there have been, for many generations. It's not just "a thing in the Middle East". In that sense, I would like to share a music video that I happen to like, and I would like to hear your honest thoughts about it, even if they're negative. Deal? Here goes:

Well, I have to teach Heidegger to my students at the Uni every semester, so there's that. I don't have much use for Heidegger's philosophy, to be honest. There's too many points of philosophical disagreement. For example, in relation to One: he says that's just "impersonal existence" (das Man), it's not "authentic existence". Like, what's the actual argument here? Some phrases taken from ordinary language, such as "One must pay taxes as a good citizen should"? That kinda misses the mark. I thought we were talking about ontology here, as in metaphysics. What One is cannot be reduced to what people say about One, because One is not only a person, but also an animal, a collection of chemical elements, and a bunch of subatomic particles, without being reducible to any of these. The entire point of metaphysics is that one emerges in a way that is not reducible to the upper layers of Reality itself, precisely because one emerges as a physical object in Reality itself before emerging as a social subject in Reality itself.

EDIT: So I guess my point is, I don't agree with Heidegger in characterizing One as "impersonal exsistence" as opposed to "authentic existence". If anything, I'd say it's the other way around: One is better characterized as "authentic existence", while Dasein is just "impersonal existence". I'll say it even more recklessly: To be One is to be a stone, to be a Dasein is to be a Nazi. I'd rather be a stone, thank you very much.

I don't know what I am, at bottom. — Moliere

Neither do I, that's the problem. I don't think anyone does, actually. I mean there's like, some guesses, but that's basically it: just guesses.

At the end of the day, this is what I call "political ontology". The term already exists, of course, I didn't invent it. But this is the only way that I can make any sense of such a notion.

One is a person. — Moliere

I'm not so sure that being a person is the end of the story here. One is an animal, I would argue. One is a subject. One is a creature. One is an organism.

But even more generally: One is something composed of subatomic particles. One is not reducible to those particles, but One is something that emerges, in a purely physical sense, from them. This is the part of One that is not social (I am not just a person), it is not biological (I am not just an animal), it is not chemical (I am not just a bunch of elements of the Periodic Table). I am all of that, but in a more fundamental sense, in a physical sense, I am something composed of subatomic particles. And so are you. And so are they, whatever they may be, even if they are just ordinary stones.

Ok, let me ask you this, then. What would you answer to those questions, from your POV? If you were the one asking them, what would you say?

Well, then what you do make of it, then? The poem that I just shared, that is. What human experience does it record?

a transcendent orientation towards the Good — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is this what you call "the catholicity of reason"? What evidence do we have that this is not just the secular universality of human reason?

Are there many sui generis, potentially contradicting truths or just one truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say: there are many truths, they are not sui generis, and they are not potentially contradicting truths. In Henological terms: There are Many Truths, and none of them contradict each other. Contradictions only arise in Opinion (Doxa), not in Episteme.

Kierkegaard is a Christian, and so he should recognize that there is one "Way, Truth, and Light," (John 14:6) and one Logos (John 1). Yet he is also the inheritor of Luther, who told Erasmus:

"If it is difficult to believe in God’s mercy and goodness when He damns those who do not deserve it, we must recall that if God’s justice could be recognized as just by human comprehension, it would not be divine.”

...opening up an unbridgable chasm of equivocity between the "goodness of God," and anything known as good by man. Calvin does something similar with his exegesis of I John 4:8, "God is love," such that it is [for the elect, and inscuratble, implacable hatred for all else]. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Kierkegaard also pointed out (and rightly so) that God gave Abraham a fideist order when he ordered him to sacrifice his son. Do you disagree with that?

I already gave you a Dante allusion, so here is another. In Canto IX, Dante and Virgil are barred from entering the City of Dis by the demons. Virgil is a stand-in for human reason. The furies who taunt Virgil irrationally claw at themselves, as misologes also strike out without reason. Then they threaten to call for Medusa, to turn Dante to stone.

Virgil is so scared of this threat that, not trusting Dante to keep his eyes closed, he covers the Pilgrim's eyes himself. Then Dante the Poet bursts into an aside to the reader to mark well the allegory here.

There are a few things going on. The angel who opens the gates of Dis for them is reenacting the first of the Three Advents of Christ, the Harrowing of Hell (all three show up), but I think the bigger idea is that one risks being "turned to stone" and failing to progress if one loses faith in reason after it is shown to be defenseless against the unreasoning aggression of misology (D.C. Schindler's Plato's Critique of Impure Reason covers this "defenselessness" well).

The very next sinners Dante encounters are the Epicureans, who fail to find justification for the immortality of the soul and so instead focus on only worldly, finite goods. It's an episode filled with miscommunication, people talking over one another, and pride—exactly what happens when reason ceases to be transcendent and turns inward, settling for what it already has. This is the Augustinian curvatus in se, sin as being "curved in on oneself." Dante himself was seduced by this philosophy for a time, and was seemingly "turned to stone" by it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Things cannot be poetry and figurative language all the way down.

Anyhow, one would misread St. Augustine's "believe that you might understand," if it was taken to be some sort of fidest pronouncement of blind faith. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why? That's exactly what it is. Believe, so that you might understand. It's a conditional statement: if P, then Q. In this case, the antecedent is Believe, just that, Believe, and that is 100% fideist. It's absolute blind faith, without an ounce of reason to it.

Post-Reformation anti-rationalists glommed on to Tertullian because of "a plague on Aristotle," and "what has Jerusalem to do with Athens?" but fundamentalists would do well to note that two paragraphs after this part of Prescriptions Against the Heretics he says: "no word of God is so unqualified or so unrestricted in application that the mere words can be pleaded without respect to their underlying meaning," and that we must "seek until we find" and then come to believe without deviation. Also worth considering, the things they like most about Tertullian seem like they would be precisely those things that made him prey to the Montanist heresy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know what this last paragraph means. Can you explain it to me in simpler terms, please?

Do any of these record human experience?

That was my initial reason for using poetry as a record -- because we have nothing better than poetry to capture human experience. Novels, poems, bank-statements, government records, attendance sheets, newspaper articles, reports, letters, oral interview are the records of human experience, and this is what history deals in.

It's because history is perspectival that there isn't one way to tell it. You only get the full sense of history by hearing all the sides, some of which contradict.

Human experience is contradictory. — Moliere

Ok, then I'll just copy and paste what I just posted in another thread, so that we may take a look at it here, from the point of view of your storytelling theory. I submit that the following text, which I just wrote a few minutes ago, can be classified as a poem as well as a short piece of philosophical text:

I am.
Therefore, something exists.
What am I?
What is one?

Why am I this, and not that?
Why am I one, and not many?
Can one be many?
Can many be one?

How do you know, what one is?
What are you, and what am I? Why am I not you? Why are you not me?
Why are we not them? Why are they not us?

What are they? What are we? What is one as many? What is many as one? — Arcane Sandwich

Will you accept this as an example of a poem, yes, no, or sort of?

If there is a reason for it, if the cooperation would be mutually good for all countries involved, why not? There has to be a reason. Otherwise it's just empty talk, handshakes and the usual photo opportunities. — ssu

And if the reason is just to talk about philosophy between a Finn and an Argentine on an Internet forum? Is that sort of cooperation mutually beneficial for all countries involved? If you say "no", then why are we talking here, you and me? If you say "yes", then here is my next question: would it be just empty talk, handshakes and the usual photo opportunities? In other words, is this conversation between you and me, just empty talk? If you say "yes", then my next question is: why are we talking then, you and me? If you say "no", then my other question is: if it's not just empty talk, what is it about this conversation that makes it substantive in any way? I mean, I tried to talk to you about the topic of music, but it's not a subject that you're interested in, apparently. Do you like ABBA, for exampe? Or Roxette? Is that it?

Neither, because dividing a thing into parts creates distinct objects with distinct identities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Think of it this way. Imagine that you have a watch. Suppose that you disassemble it. Has the watch ceased to exist? Some metaphysicians say "yes": there is nothing there, other than the parts of a watch, which used to compose it, and now they compose nothing at all. Other metaphysicians say "no": the watch itself has not ceased to exist, it has merely ceased to be unified: it now exists as a scattered object.

No matter what position you take in that debate, in the example of the watch, the problem with the Ship of Theseus still stands: it is not self-evident that when you divide an object into parts, the original object ceases to exist, even if new objects with distinct identities are created in such a case.

@Moliere here's another angle to consider, in relation to the topic that you and I are currently discussing (physics and history): positivism and scientism are not the same thing. Postivism is a 19th century thing, it's the sort of sociology that Comte favored. Scientism, as Mario Bunge understands it, is way, way, waaaaay past that point by now. The analogy here would be: Think of Positivism as if it were comparable to Marxism. If that's so, Scientism is comparable to Post-Marxism. Scientism is, in a way, Post-Positivism.

Is it Popperian, in the sense of Karl Popper? Of course not. It's Bungean, in the sense of Mario Bunge. So what does Bunge have to say about that? The following, among other things:

Developmental stages of science

Bunge stated that protoscience may occur as the second stage of a five-stage process in the development of science. Each stage has a theoretical and empirical aspect:

1. Prescience has unchecked speculation theory and unchecked data.
2 Protoscience has hypotheses without theory accompanied by observation and occasional measurement, but no experiment.
3. Deuteroscience has hypotheses formulated mathematically without theory accompanied by systematic measurement, and experiment on perceptible traits of perceptible objects.
4. Tritoscience has mathematical models accompanied by systematic measurements and experiments on perceptible and imperceptible traits of perceptible and imperceptible objects.
5 Tetartoscience has mathematical models and comprehensive theories accompanied by precise systematic measurements and experiments on perceptible and imperceptible traits of perceptible and imperceptible objects. — Wikipedia

With that in mind, I would say that physics stands today as Tetartoscience (Stage 5). History, I would say, stands today as a Protoscience (Stage 2). It has already surpased Stage 1, it is no longer a Prescience.

In other words, the "science of science" which you speak about already exists. It's called Metascience. And I quote:

Metascience (also known as meta-research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research while reducing inefficiency. It is also known as "research on research" and "the science of science", as it uses research methods to study how research is done and find where improvements can be made. Metascience concerns itself with all fields of research and has been described as "a bird's eye view of science".[1] In the words of John Ioannidis, "Science is the best thing that has happened to human beings ... but we can do it better." — Wikipedia

That being said, I believe that I've made quite a case for:

-History as one of the Sciences
-Some differences between the Art Room and the Science Room
-Marxism and Post-Marxism
-Positivism and Scientism
-A Stage-Theoretical Philosophy of Science, and
-An explanation of what Metascience is.

So, what other questions might you have about these topics?

EDIT: And another thing, what you're trying to do, when you connect History with Poetry (with Emily Dickinson, for example) is a semi-conscious (perhaps even "unconscious", if one were to believe in such things) attempt to turn History into a Stage 3 Science: a Deuteroscience, a True Science.

You think you're doing storytelling, but you don't realize that the very attempt to optimize your storytelling indicates that what you are doing has something in common with science, for the sciences also seek to optimize. However, here you go astray when you compare physics or history to shopkeeping, just because all of them use math. Yes, they all do, but to do science is to do basic and applied research. The shopkeeper is just running a business. And science is not a business.

Controversial statement at the end, I know. I kinda have that style. I think it suits me. What do you think?

I don't think it's a ruse. It's a legitimate philosophical problem. And I think that the correct answer is that the Reconstructed ship is identical to the original ship. This solution, however, does not work for organisms though. In the case of a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, you arguably need spatiotemporal continuity of form under a sortal.

That doesn't solve the problem, though. Which of the two resulting ships is identical to the original one? The Mended ship, or the Reconstructed ship? Both? Neither?

The matter is what persists through the change, as does the thing's identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you solve the problem of the Ship of Theseus, then? Unlike an inorganic object, the identity of an organism arguably requires the spatiotemporal continuity of form under a sortal.

Latin America is a good example of this. In the 19th Century there were a lot of very bloody wars between the countries (like the war of the Confederation) and still you have borders wars like between Peru and Ecuador or Venezuela threatening annexation of large parts of Guyana. This means that the relations, even if better than earlier, are still a bit tense. But they could be better. — ssu

Well, but it's an odd thing, you see. The French Guiana, for example, is not an independent country. It's literally a French colony, still to this day. They never declared independence. So it's technically part of the European Union. Yet it is located in the continent of South America.

So, what is my take on that? Well, I honestly don't know much about the French Guiana to begin with. I just know that it's technically European Union presence on South American soil. And in that sense, the French Guiana is just one example among others.

I'm not sure that the concept of blocs are the solution to the underlying problems here, at least not all of them. For example, would it make sense for Argentina and Finland to form a bloc, with a few other countries? What would be the purpose of that? A more efficient trade? I'd say that we don't need a bloc for that.

But I'm also pretty unimpressed with Antony Albanese. He spends too much time trying to be Mr Nice Guy, every voter's friend. — Wayfarer

And what's wrong with that? Is that 'Orid Stuff, to use a phrase that I read just here, about some beer?

Let's look at this from another angle if you don't mind, @Moliere.

I notice that you give quite a lot of importance to events. Why? Events are arguably just the crest of the wave, as Fernand Braudel used to say. Histoire événementielle, as he liked to call it, "history of events". But events are not the wave itself. Historical phenomena that occur more slowly, which have a longue durée, are far more "structural" than mere, ephemeral events. From a scientific standpoint, I don't care about the poem that some French intellectual wrote months prior to the French Revolution. I want to know what the price of bread was, among other sociological variables. That doesn't mean that I don't care about the poem in question at all, it might be an awe-inspiring work of poetic brilliance, but history is not storytelling. We're not at the literary café or the art museum when we're doing history. We're at the "history lab", if you will. I'm aware that sounds dry, and cold. Well, what can I say? Welcome to the world of scientism. Warmth is for the Art Room. When we're in the Science Room, we're cold, heartless, down-to-earth tax lawyers.

True, there's been a lot of Theory done after Braudel, by historians such as Jacques Le Goff, or Roger Chartier. And I'm aware of the theoretical contributions of the British Marxist historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Palmer Thompson. And I'm aware of the post-structuralist critique of structuralist historians like Braudel. Still, it makes no sense to me, in 2025, to say that Montaillou and The Cheese and the Worms are somehow historiographically preferable to what Braudel did in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II.

I take 20th century philosophy of science has having demonstrated the failure of a science of science: without an answer to the problem of the criterion there can be no way to ascertain if what we're talking about is scientific proper, and thereby we can never classify a knowledge which is the knowledge of knowledge: science is more a thematic unity than a methodological unity which leads one closer to truth. — Moliere

We're not in the 20th century anymore, are we? A lot has happened ever since Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the like. The refreshing originality of such approaches to philosophy of science and history of science has worn off by now, and their epistemological relativism has, pun intended, gotten really old by the epistemic (and even political) standards of 2025.

If it's not story-telling, then what is it? — Moliere

It's science. It's no different in kind than physics. That's why there's no conceptual hierarchy to begin win. The only hierarchy between physics and history currently, is that the former is more scientific than the latter. It's not as if physics and history had different essences. They are indeed branches of the same tree, not fruits from different species of plants.

What else is research than the telling of stories? — Moliere

The telling of information. To tell a story is not the same thing as to tell information. They are different "speech acts", if you will.

even in science, when you communicate your findings, the important part -- and the part that often gets fought over -- is how the story gets told. — Moliere

That beetles are arthropods is a fact even if there were no human beings to communicate stories. If humanity went extinct tomorrow, it would still be true that the French Revolution happened in the 18th century. How a story gets told, how any story gets told, has nothing to do with history. It has to do with politics. But history is not politics, and politics are not history.

Controversial thing to say at the end, I know.

(Slightly edited)

The OP asks: How can one know the Ultimate Truth about Realty?

And I ask: How can one realize the Ultimate Truth about Knowledge?