remanens capax mutationem ? - I need to go and think about it for a while to see what it actually means. — Corvus

It's a phrase from Being and Time. Ask @Joshs about it, he thinks it's an important phrase for some reason, and I would agree, but I think that my reasons for considering it important are different from Joshs'.

Heidegger invented the phrase "remanens capax mutationem". No Latin author from the Middle Ages, and no Roman author from Antiquity, has ever used that phrase. There is no evidence for its existence, prior to Heidegger's Being and Time.

I didn't know Latin and Spanish had the same root. — Corvus

They don't. Latin itself is the root of the Spanish language. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, etc., are Romance languages. They are like dialects of Latin. English, on the other hand, has nothing to do with Latin. It's more similar to German.

We are the victims of an age when men of science are discredited, and only a few remain who are capable of engaging in scientific research. Our philosophers spend all their time in mixing true with false and are interested in nothing but outward show; such little learning as they have they extend on material ends. When they see a man sincere and unremitting in his search for the truth, one who will have nothing to do with falsehood and pretence, they mock and despise him. — Omar Khayyam

The essence of God is incomprehensible to human reason. — Arcane Sandwich

Does God understand His essence? If so, then God's essence is also comprehensible to humans. — MoK

The Christian dogmatist claims to know (because he has supposedly demonstrated it) that our existence continues after death, and that it consists in the eternal contemplation of a God whose nature is incomprehensible from within the confines of our present existence. — Quentin Meillassoux

Imagine a world independent of the mind… — JuanZu


Now there’s an oxymoronic phrase! I’m forming the view that ‘the world independent of mind’ is precisely and exactly what the ‘in itself’ refers to. — Wayfarer

We can make things clearer by considering the following example. Let us suppose that two dogmatists are arguing about the nature of our future post-mortem. The Christian dogmatist claims to know (because he has supposedly demonstrated it) that our existence continues after death, and that it consists in the eternal contemplation of a God whose nature is incomprehensible from within the confines of our present existence. Thus, the latter claims to have demonstrated that what is in-itself is a God who, like the Cartesian God, can be shown by our finite reason to be incomprehensible for our finite reason. But the atheist dogmatist claims to know that, on the contrary, our existence is completely abolished by death, which utterly annihilates us.

It is at this stage that the correlationist comes along to disqualify both of their positions by defending a strict theoretical agnosticism. All beliefs strike her as equally legitimate given that theory is incapable of privileging one eventuality over another. For just as I cannot know the in-itself without converting it into a for-me, I cannot know what will happen to me when I am no longer of this world, since knowledge presupposes that one is of the world. Consequently, the agnostic has little difficulty in refuting both of these positions - all she has to do is demonstrate that it is self-contradictory to claim to know what is when one is no longer alive, since knowledge presupposes that one is still of this world. Accordingly, the two dogmatists are proffering realist theses about the in-itself, both of which are vitiated by the inconsistency proper to all realism - that of claiming to think what there is when one is not.

But then another disputant intervenes: the subjective idealist. The latter declares that the position of the agnostic is every bit as inconsistent as those of the two realists. For all three believe that there could be an in-itself radically different from our present state, whether it is a God who is inaccessible to natural reason, or a sheer nothingness. But this is precisely what is unthinkable, for I am no more capable of thinking a transcendent God than the annihilation of everything - more particularly, I cannot think of myself as no longer existing without, through that very thought, contradicting myself. I can only think of myself as existing, and as existing the way I exist; thus, I cannot but exist, and always exist as I exist now. Consequently, my mind, if not my body, is immortal. Death, like every other form of radical transcendence, is annulled by the idealist, in the same way as he annuls every idea of an in-itself that differs from the correlational structure of the subject. Because an in-itself that differs from the for-us is unthinkable, the idealist declares it to be impossible.

The question now is under what conditions the correlationist agnostic can refute not only the theses of the two realists, but also that of the idealist. In order to counter the latter, the agnostic has no choice: she must maintain that my capacity-to-be-wholly-other in death (whether dazzled by God, or annihilated) is just as thinkable as my persisting in my self-identity. The 'reason' for this is that I think myself as devoid of any reason for being and remaining as I am, and it is the thinkability of this unreason - of this facticity - which implies that the other three thesis -those of the two realists and the idealist - are all equally possible. For even if I cannot think of myself, for example, as annihilated, neither can I think of any cause that would rule out this eventuality. The possibility of my not being is thinkable as the counterpart of the absence of any reason for my being, even if I cannot think what it would be not to be. Although realists maintain the possibility of a post-mortem condition that is unthinkable as such (whether as vision of God or as sheer nothingness), the thesis they maintain is itself thinkable - for even if I cannot think the unthinkable, I can think the possibility of the unthinkable by dint of the unreason of the real. Consequently, the agnostic can recuse all three positions as instances of absolutism - all three claim to have identified a necessary reason implying one of the three states described above, whereas no such reason is available.

But now a final disputant enters the debate: the speculative philosopher. She maintains that neither the two dogmatists, nor the idealist have managed to identify the absolute, because the latter is simply the capacity-to-be-other as such, as theorized by the agnostic. The absolute is the possible transition, devoid of reason, of my state towards any other state whatsoever. But this possibility is no longer a 'possibility of ignorance'; viz., a possibility that is merely the result of my inability to know which of the three aforementioned theses is correct - rather, it is the knowledge of the very real possibility of all of these eventualities, as well as of a great many others. How then are we able to claim that this capacity-to-be-other is an absolute - an index of knowledge rather than of ignorance? The answer is that it is the agnostic herself who has convinced us of it. For how does the latter go about refuting the idealist? She does so by maintaining that we can think ourselves as no longer being; in other words, by maintaining that our mortality, our annihilation, and our becoming-wholly-other in God, are all effectively thinkable. But how are these states conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist. For I think myself as mortal only if I think that my death has no need of my thought of death in order to be actual. If my ceasing to be depended upon my continuing to be so that I could keep thinking myself as not being, then I would continue to agonize indefinitely, without ever actually passing away. In other words, in order to refute subjective idealism, I must grant that my possible annihilation is thinkable as something that is not just the correlate of my thought of this annihilation. Thus, the correlationist's refutation of idealism proceeds by way of an absolutization (which is to say, a de-correlation) of the capacity-to-be-other presupposed in the thought of facticity - this latter is the absolute whose reality is thinkable as that of the in-itself as such in its indifference to thought; an indifference which confers upon it the power to destroy me. — Quentin Meillassoux

We are the victims of an age when men of science are discredited, and only a few remain who are capable of engaging in scientific research. Our philosophers spend all their time in mixing true with false and are interested in nothing but outward show; such little learning as they have they extend on material ends. When they see a man sincere and unremitting in his search for the truth, one who will have nothing to do with falsehood and pretence, they mock and despise him. — Omar Khayyam

Comrade sounds more spiritualistic. — Corvus

That's why I said it. We can't speak too much in Spanish, in this Forum, even though this Thread is called Ontology of Time.

Think of it like this: Heidegger said "remanens capax mutationem". That's Latin. And Spanish, unlike English, evolved from Latin.

Here's the top 3 Australian movies of all time, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Mad Max
2) Outback Vampires
3) Crocodile Dundee

Australia is not a continent, the continent is Oceania.

Argentina also has a large beef cattle industry. — Wayfarer

I'm against the oppression of cattle, even as an Argentine. At some point, we all stop being adolescents and we become men and women instead. It is not ethical to oppress non-human beings that are capable of suffering.

87. We gave Moses the Scripture, and sent a succession of messengers after him. And We gave Jesus son of Mary the clear proofs, and We supported him with the Holy Spirit. Is it that whenever a messenger comes to you with anything your souls do not desire, you grew arrogant, calling some impostors, and killing others? — The Qur'an

Does this mean that the Qur'an declares that Jesus is God, yes or no? Open question for everyone.

It's anti-religious in parts, but that makes it to have a Biblical flavor, too, plus it has the Theory of Everything in it, as surpassing the Biblical. — PoeticUniverse

Sounds like the Qur'an.

Pangea forms and disperses every now and then. It's done it several times in the past. The craziest thing though is that New Zeland has its own (sunken) continent, called Zealandia if I recall correctly.

the greatest book ever made — PoeticUniverse

Do you say that as a Sufi, or as an atheist, or simply as a fan of Omar Khayyam?

I would argue that no atheist book can be as good as a theist book, be it polytheist, monotheist, or pantheist. That, is Ibn Arabi's point. And that, is why such a book must be gifted.

Well I mean, there's Australian Paraguayans. We've been over this, in this Thread. And some (not all) of my Goddam neighbors want to call themselves "Australian Argentines". Like, really? What do I care that your granddaddy or whoever came here from Australia? This isn't Australia, you say so yourself whenever someone criticizes those stupid Eucalyptus trees that your stupid family brought here in the first place. They're drying up the neighborhood, you unpatriotic crook. If you really cared about those Eucalyptus for anything other than lumber-milling, you'd at least know their biological role in the Australian ecosystems.

Phew, sorry, had to vent in order to explain why I'm furious about these trees even being here.

Are you familiar with this website? — Arcane Sandwich


Yes, it's mine. — PoeticUniverse

:roll:

It was a rhetorical question, mate. I already knew it was your site. Why do you think I even linked to it?

I'm almost done with an 8 volume set on the Rubaiyat and my extensions to it — PoeticUniverse

Impressive task. Clearly, Omar Khayyam is to you what Mario Bunge is to me.

then I guess I'll put PDFs of it there — PoeticUniverse

Good. I support that.

since no one could afford to buy it. — PoeticUniverse

You don't understand Ibn Arabi's , then.

Was there marsh/swamp/wet lands, that it was "decided" had to be removed, where the Eucalypts were planted in your town? — kazan

Nah mate. Just some families that were into the lumberjack business. Their idea was: plant a ton of Eucalyptus, chop em, sell them, repeat. This isn't Australia, these trees are not a native species to Argentina, and they feel no pain. That's the justification here. They are not sacred to the indigenous populations of Argentina. Well, maybe they're sacred in some way to Australian Agentines. Bunch of unpatriotic crooks if you ask me.

We are the victims of an age when men of science are discredited, and only a few remain who are capable of engaging in scientific research. Our philosophers spend all their time in mixing true with false and are interested in nothing but outward show; such little learning as they have they extend on material ends. When they see a man sincere and unremitting in his search for the truth, one who will have nothing to do with falsehood and pretence, they mock and despise him. — Omar Khayyam

(edit: the previous videoclip is from a Turkish series. The character there, is Ibn Arabi)

Could that be because the idea of a single unique essence is incoherent? — Janus

There's nothing incoherent about the idea of a single unique essence. It's called pantheism. Spinoza was a pantheist, unlike Descartes, for example.

I think of essences as sets of specifying characteristics. — Janus

Ok.

So, I would say that we have a set of specifying characteristics for God, which is it is an imaginary entity are understandable. — Janus

Perhaps.

If God is a real entity, then there may well be real essences, which would presumably be the ideas of things in God's own understanding of them. — Janus

Perhaps.

In that case it would seem though, to echo Spinoza, that God would have infinite attributes, of which we can comprehend only extensa and cogitans. — Janus

Descartes also spoke of a third substance, a res divina. So, you have: res cogitans, res extensa, and res divina.

As you no doubt no Spinoza thought the highest function of reason was a kind of intellectual intuition— to see things "sub specie aeternitatis", and that intuition may well be ineffable, or only partly effable. — Janus

It's possible. Kant didn't believe in intellectual intuition, yet Meillassoux does. In After Finitude, he says:

Thus, in order to interrupt this see-sawing between metaphysics and fideism, we must transform our perspective on unreason, stop construing it as the form of our deficient grasp of the world and turn it into the veridical content of this world as such - we must project unreason into things themselves, and discover in our grasp of facticity the veritable intellectual intuition of the absolute. 'Intuition', because it is actually in what is that we discover a contingency with no limit other than itself; 'intellectual' because this contingency is neither visible nor perceptible in things and only thought is capable of accessing it, just as it accesses the chaos that underlies the apparent continuity of phenomena. — Quentin Meillassoux

I'm afraid it doesn't really work that way, there's too many glitches. At the north pole for example, every direction is south. Adding dimensions into your representation is not a simple translation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Inwards and outwards: inwards towards the center of the Earth, outwards towards outer space.

↪Arcane Sandwich
I don't much care. Physicalism suits my purposes. You can phrase it how you wish. — Banno

But the rest of the Universe is under no obligation to share your purposes.

I'll use materialism for newtonian philosophies and physicalism for the doctrine that physics is the only ontology, others may do as they please. — Banno

But physics is not the only ontology. Geology is ontological, just as physics is. If you say that you believe that physics is the only ontology, then you don't believe in geology. We've been over this, Banno, when we spoke of tables. Now I'll say the same thing, but for stones. A stone is not identical to the collection of atoms that compose it. It is a new, emergent object in its own right. It is not reducible to the collection of atoms that compose it. This follows from the contrapositive of Leibniz's Law, together with some other premises.

Thanks for the explanation, although I'm hard pressed to understand how he can maintain that position viz a viz physics, and still claim to be a materialist. — Wayfarer

Because physics is not the only materialist science. Geology is materialist, Biology is materialist, Sociology is materialist, etc.

I looked at the book abstract, and it says 'Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged.' I do address that problem in The Mind Created World, although if you would like to discuss it further, that would probably a better thread for it. — Wayfarer

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

I'd sort of agree, although Marxist materialism is a different kettle of fish. — Wayfarer

It's "overmining materialism", to use Harman's technical terms. By contrast, physicalism is "undermining materialism". Both of them ignore the mid-level, the mezzanine level, of objects themselves.

Physicalism is not the same thing as materialism — Arcane Sandwich


But isn't it a difference only meaningful within academic philosophy? I mean to all intents and purposes, they're synonyms, or rather, physicalism is rather more sophisticated term for materialism. — Wayfarer

Nah mate, physicalism is the crass version of scientific materialism. I've a paper on this as well, though it's not been published yet (it will be published later this year, in a Bungean journal that I contribute to).

I'll just quote Bunge himself:

I am a materialist but not a physicalist because, as a physicist, I learned that physics can explain neither life nor mind nor society. Physics cannot even explain phenomena (appearances), because these occur in brains, which are supraphysical things; nor can it fully explain machines, as these embody ideas, such as those of value, goal, and safety, that are nonphysical. Physics can only account for matter at the lowest level of organization, the only one that existed before the emergence of the earliest organisms some 3,500 million years ago. Hence physicalism, the earliest and simplest version of materialism, cannot cope with chemical reactions, metabolism, color, mentality, sociality, or artifact. — Bunge (2010: vii)

That's from his book Matter and Mind, from 2010. He was around 90 years old, more or less, when he published it.

EDIT: And here's some more Bungean wisdom for you:

These recent developments have vindicated the original goal of the quantum program, namely the derivation of classical physics from the quantum theory. Does this entail that we will eventually be able to dispense with such classical concepts as those of friction, heat, temperature, viscosity, vorticity, elasticity, magnetization, surface tension, or wetting? These concepts will continue to be needed because they stand for objective bulk properties and processes that emerge from myriads of quantum facts. Likewise, the neuroscientific explanation of cognitive and affective processes does not allow us to dispense with such words as “fear”, “imagination” and “love”. Explained emergence is still emergence. — Bunge (2010: 77)

True, the proponents of the thesis that the quantum theory is universal write symbols said to designate state functions for cats, observers, measuring instruments, and even the universe. But I submit that these symbols are fake, for they are not solutions of any equations containing Hamiltonians: they are just squiggles. — Bunge (2010: 77)

↪Wayfarer
If you like.

It comes down to the juxtaposition of idealism and realism against physicalism, realism against antirealism, in which you tend to the idealist persuasion. It might be possible to give an account of the debate in which both are correct. ↪sime
's mentioned of McTaggart went ignored.

Edited for ↪Arcane Sandwich — Banno

Physicalism is not the same thing as materialism. Do I need to spell it out for you with symbols?

Old posts on the roots of American "fascism" ... — 180 Proof

I prefer these other Roots:

Hindsight bias is completely. uninformative. — 180 Proof

I'm saying that the Declaration of Independence was a necessary (but insufficient) condition for the Constitution, as well as the first US elections. Why? Because of what you said here:

Different histories and legal traditions 'require' different ways of addressing their respective Empires. — 180 Proof

Are you assuming that God exists? — Janus

No, I am not. Fictional entities have essences, just as much as real entities do.

Because if God is merely a human idea, something imaginary, it seems strange to say that it is impossible to understand it. — Janus

No essence can be understood.

You know what my country did in 1776, instead of declaring independence? We created a Viceroyalty.

The US Constitution of 1787 was ratified in 1788. Prior to that (1783?) the Articles of Confederation governed the (former British colonies of) 13 separate states. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was not ratified by a popular election and predates the US Constitution (i.e. founding of the Republic), and therefore, is not controlling in American law. — 180 Proof

But without the Declaration of Independence (1776), there would not have been a Constitution (1787), nor a ratification of it (1788). And without a Constitution (1787), there would have not been the first US elections (1788).

but the Declaration of Independence is from 1776, right? Doesn't that "trump" (pardon the pun) the first US elections?

Or, as Heidegger would say:

Remanens capax mutationem — Heidegger

It comes down to the juxtaposition of idealism and realism — Banno

Yeah but you're leaving out materialism there. I'll explain it to you:

It's well known that Aristotle coined the terms "matter" and "energy". The former, hyle, is potentiality, and this is what Meillassoux is referring to when he speaks of "the capacity-to-be-other". The latter, energeia, is what Aristotle called "actuality", which is form-in-motion. By the same token, potentiality would be matter-in-motion.

Bunge would disagree. He defines energy, not matter, as the capacity to change. Matter itself is that which has this capacity, instead of being that capacity. That's why it's false to say that matter is identical to energy. It isn't. Energy is a property of matter, in Bunge's view. And this doesn't contradict Einstein's famous formula, E = mc², because in that formula, "m" doesn't mean "matter", it means mass. Matter is not identical to mass. Matter has mass, because mass is a property. — Arcane Sandwich

Es bueno saber que hay muchos grandes filósofos en los países de habla hispana. Leer y estudiar sus obras nos brindará perspectivas interesantes y alternativas sobre muchos temas filosóficos difíciles. — Corvus

Indeed, comrade. Indeed.

I'll leave you to explain that, if you feel the need. — Banno

Sure. Every object needs to have an essence, because this is what guarantees their multiplicity. If objects had no essences, there would be no multiplicity, there would be univocity instead.

So far as I can see the notion of essence is either a nonsense or a tautology. — Banno

Think of it like a property that an object has, as it it were length, height, or duration, or mass, or energy. Or any other physical property.

Es un nombre nuevo para mí en filosofía, pero parece ser un gran filósofo, especialmente para los estudios de Heidegger. Gracias de nuevo mi amigo. — Corvus

Aun mejor es Carlos Astrada, buen hombre.

If you agree with Graham Harman when he says that every object has an essence, and that in every case, every essence is incomprehensible to human reason, then the picture looks quite different from theological discussions.

gracias — Corvus

No hay de qué, caballero. Lea José Ortega y Gasset.

i remain unconvinced that the notion of god can be made coherent. — Banno

The essence of God is incomprehensible to human reason.

Proudly Voting rich, Living poor since 1788! — 180 Proof

Why 1788? What's so special about that specific date? For Oossians, I mean. I know why it's important to other folk, beyond the borders of your country.