using philosophical language in terms of value, structures, benefits, crossover into epistemology (with education) — Shwah

Using terms that sound philosophical does not make it philosophy. Education is not the same as epistemology. For instance you equate sexuality with begetting children. That assumptions should be examined first. Moreover, your examples are sociological, for instance the question of a possible correlation birth rate and sexual orientation or the historical use of marriage and intrafamilial marriage. What I can make of your proposal comes down to a kind of regulation of sexuality and the question whether that is favorable. However, it makes so many questionable assumptions and flies in the face of our social order that it boils down to an outlandish fantasy. It is most certainly not anything like a philosophy of sexuality. Lastly, know though that your proposal is authoritarian and violates human rights.

What's the best sex structure? Are sex revolutions beneficial? What are the sex agents? What different sets of value are developed from it? What crossover does philosophy of sex have with other subjects like politics, economics etc? — Shwah

I think a philosophy of sex is very interesting and I think the sexuality of philosophy is even more interesting, but the questions you ask are more sociology of sex than philosophy of sex. Interesting too but a different kettle of fish.

I also wanted to mention that the benefits of monarchical sex may seem less obvious to us now, especially given all the republican (anti monarchical) propaganda, but it's effective at controlling power. — Shwah

Oh, but why would this be a philosophical question? Marriage was a tried and tested method of the ruling European houses to consolidated power, yes. That does not say anything about any normative implications.

but were rabid in intra-marriage sex (this is still carried on by amish today). — Shwah

How do you know this?

We can create new structures which have different value outputs. One would be to create a class structure by a (revamped) education system where the lowest, only high school education, has basic rights economically and sexually, and doctorates have more economic/sex rights. — Shwah

Why on earth would we want that? Sure, let's create an unfree under class, great idea. Problem is that it violates basic human rights, but who cares right?

By allowing doctorates to have more children it creates natural incentives for value to necessarily increase (the only axiom here is that good education necessarily increases value in any work or operation anyone gets a hold of). — Shwah

Even if that is true, which it probably is not, the question is why we would all want these doctorates.

It puts a top above and promotes education in all classes (I'm firmly of the belief that anyone can become a doctorate) — Shwah

Your belief does not make it so.

The puritan sex is interesting because their population growth is insane and makes them set to take over America in population in 200 years. Clearly value is developed/derived from it even if criticism may be there. — Shwah

Your whole proposal has nothing to do with a philosophy of sexuality but more with an outlandish and bizarre program of eugenics. It certainly will not get you your cherished doctorate.

The forum is presently dominated by fools with little to no grasp of basic philosophical or logical notions and yet with thoroughgoing confidence in their opinions; by those who have failed to learn how to learn. — Banno

I am not sure... I actually like many of the posters and I learn a lot from them, though maybe I am easily bewitched by the language of quantum physics, I do not know. Maybe it is just that Kant is forgotten or refuted when I had my guard down.. I do not know. Maybe I am milder at my ripe old age.

IIRC, there's nothing in Berkeley's speculation that says 'to be is to be self-perceived'. And even if so, that's mere solipsism, which I suppose pertains to the function of Berkeley's "God" as the Ur-perceiver (i.e. arbitrary terminus à la "unmoved mover" or "first cause" or "necessary being", etc). — 180 Proof

To be is to be self perceived... that is interesting no? Being iis purely abstract, it means nothing, I agree. Then the question becomes what does 'being talk' do? I think it is a question, an 'anspruch', it is a limit, how abstract can we go and therefore at the same time a demanding puzzle, can we articulate it? It (en)lights the one that asks this question and points to the one who asks the question of being. For who is it an issue? I would say it is an issue of human being, at least only human being dwells on being. That is basic Heidegger actually. However, even for an ardent physicalist, this points to something, namely, the characteristic of that being that questions its being. So being, the way we use it in metaphysics, is it really so odd to say that being is in the end self perception? Being, is nothing per se, being is an openness or a riddle with which self perception vexes itself. It is a look at the world, a look at the world in which our own face becomes visible. So being as self perception in practice says this: everything in the world we categorize in the same way as we see our own living body.

I've admitted to the unspeakable sin of being a physicalist, yes. But that's not the point. Idealism is just another version of physicalism. It renames the transcendent from "matter" to "mental". That's all. Until the truth can be proved one way or the other, physicalism is not invalidated by idealism.

I am amused by the contempt which idealists hold toward physicalism on TPF. — Real Gone Cat

Ahh probably a defensive reaction... I am always puzzled by the heaps of scorn idealists here receive... You see, it is after all a matter of perspective... :razz:

Don't be silly. The point is that idealism is unnecessary. It adds nothing to understanding. Does it render science moot? Count Tim doesn't think so. — Real Gone Cat

Who said that science is moot under either physicalism or idealism? Perhaps idealism adds nothing, but you simply accept physicalism as the default position. That is an unphilosophical approach, as philosophy engages and critically examines presuppositions. From my post it shows I think that I find the whole question whether the world is made of matter or made of mind rather moot as any investigation into the 'real' nature of things harps back to premodern metaphysical times. It brackets the subject, but the subject cannot be bracketed since any metaphysical speculation is limited by our human perspective. That does not make metaphysics moot in my opinion but any categorical assumption about what the real actually is, seems to me A. idle because it does not matter to us what it is and B. unprovable.

That is why I would find it more interesting to investigate the assumptions behind something like "esse est percipi", the central role given to perception over action for instance. The hierarchies embedded within the history of ideas says something about our being in the world, but speculation does not.

The problem with Esse Est Percipi is that it is too passive. One also acts upon the world. While jgill's look shows that others exist, it's what you do that makes you who you are. — Banno

I do like this notion... "esse est percipi" prioritizes an observer over and above the inner life of the observed. It also prioritizes a detached look at things. What if we just transform the sentence a bit. "To be is to be used", or "to be is to be of use". Is a broken cup still a cup?

Not having read this work yet, I wonder if you might shed a little more light on this idea. Is it just another attempt to rename "matter" as "mental"? — Real Gone Cat

What is this matter you speak of? I find it ridiculous to elevate the way we think about the world (as consisting of wood, steel and dirt) and somehow proudly proclaim that that must be how the world is apart from us. Come to think of it, such a claim is the height of idealism. "I experience the world as such and such and therefore it is such and such".

What I also find interesting is that these kind of metaphysical questions, "what is really really real? as opposed to what is real", seems to be all the rage on TPF these days. Why would you want to affirm the real reality of wood steel and dirt, over just its reality whether it is in the end mental or physical? The only reason I can think of is to make the claim that a third person analysis is a more accurate description than taking into account first person experience. I have the hunch this metaphysical gambit is played to be able to argue some sort of reductionist move. I doubt that works though.

Really? Can there be thinking without something that is thought? Even if thinking about something there is still an object of thought, that which is thought. — Fooloso4

Well in the whole thread we discuss the question what is real. Reality is a category, yet there is no such 'thing' as reality. Thought can be discussed in the same way, without a reference to thinking something concrete. Just like walking can be discussed without taking into account that walking is always to somewhere.

Do you mean thinking thinking itself or thinking itself? If the former then there is something thought, some object of thought, that is, thinking itself. If the latter then it refers to the activity of thinking rather than the activity. We do not walk by examining walking. — Fooloso4

Yes, the former, but what is than being thought is equally empty, the same emptiness you object to. That thinking that is being thought has itself as its object, so without something concrete being thought. Thinking that is thinking about itself, is not thinking about thinking that has an intentionality, but thinking that thinks itself thinking, pure self referentiality. We do not walk while we examine walking, but we think while we examine thinking.

Splitting the nucleus of an atom was the result of several scientific discoveries. It was the result of the development of scientific thought, of changes in thought. — Fooloso4

No it was the result of us thinking about different things. The activity of thinking is still qualitatively the same. It uses the same concepts, just applies them differently. Or do you think there is some qualitative jump, now not with QM but the emergence of the scientific method? And if so, was not the scientific method itself the result the result of some prior event or development? Or is, in your view, thinking different from every moment to the next? Does thinking ever recognize itself as such according to you?

So when we think of nuclear war, do we do the same thing as we are doing when we think about QM or are we doing something completely different?

You found your answer. — Fooloso4

Yes, but that does not mean that being is not for Hegel. It is the same and not the same as nothing. Logical, because they are both empty concepts, denoting the same 'no-thing'. Yet, they are by their very definition antthetical to eachother.

But you make the distinction:
Being is not the same as 'beings',
— Tobias — Fooloso4

Yes an neither are they the same for Hegel. 'sein' is not the same concept as 'etwas'.

Heg does not thematize the concept of sein as Heidegger does and therefore also not the distinction. Something appears quite early on the Logik but after being has been aufgehoben.

Here is why:

We think differently about things — Fooloso4

Trivial. Every day we think differently about things. Does walking also change according to you when we walk to different places?

Thinking without what is thought is an empty concept — Fooloso4

Well, Hegel tries to articulate thinking, thinking itself. Such a conception can also be found according to some by Aristotle. Hegel's analysis is conceptual and perhaps indeed empty. I persist that you look with a pehnomenological lens at Hegel.

We did not think about QM at all until the 20th century. We did not know that the quantum world existed. Our thinking is changing in order to understand what is still inadequately understood about what is going on at the quantum level. Old concepts, old ways of thinking don't work at this level. — Fooloso4

No we did not. Neither did we think about nuclear weapons. So? Suddenly the way we thin changed because of nuclear weapons? And the remote control, did that have such an impact as well? black sewing thread too, or is it just QM?

Are you claiming that Hegel made the Heideggerian distinction? He distinguishes between pure being and determinate beings. Pure being is not. — Fooloso4

What do you mean by 'pure being is not'? Hegel does not thematize the Heideggerian distinction. In fact 'being' is prety quickly 'aufgehoben' into becoming in Hegel's Logik.

For Hegel 'Concept' 'Begriff' has both an overarching sense of the movement or working out of spirit and concepts as in the concepts of mathematics or physics. It is this latter sense that both enables and impedes knowledge. For example, QM does not fit within the division of the concepts of 'wave' and 'particle'. Here thinking had to change to get more in line with being, that is, with what is. — Fooloso4

I o not see why 'thinking' has to change. We think differently about things, thinking itself did not change at all. It casts the concepts of QM in the same mold it always casts theories in. It uses identity, difference affirmation, denial etc. Our understanding of the world around us changed, yes. Not because something is in a different way, but because we conceptualize what is in a different way, based upon theoretical reflection or on empirical observation or both. QM probably better accounted for the things we saw than did earlier theories of physics. Or what is also possible QM is based on theoretical reflection only, I do not know. However, the jump from we think about things differently now and that is because they correspond now to what we think about them and not then, is a leap of faith. The leap is I think unnecessary.

nature before humans existed — 180 Proof

What is this 'nature' you speak of? When I think of nature a host of images, assumptions and juxtapositions come to mind. Nature as a pristine state, nature as green leaves on trees and unspoiled brooks, nature as opposed to culture etc. What characteristics did nature before humans have and which did it acquire only after humans came on the scene?

"A shadow is cast wherever he stands, stacks of green paper in his red right hand".

I am thinking of the song in the context of radicalization, polarization, propaganda, the attraction of violence on anxious minds.

I don't see what this is supposed to show. One might argue that if thinking and being are the same then we should be able, a priori, to deduce all that is.

I should add Tobias that the identity of thinking and being for Hegel is based on the aufheben of the difference between thinking and being. It there is no difference there cannot be an identity. — Fooloso4

That last part is true, of course. thinking and being are not the same thing, yet they are identical, one finds upon reflection. Yet, it takes time for this insight to break trough.

The first part is interesting. I think you have a too phenomenological reading of the "phenomenology". Being is not the same as 'beings', thinking for Hegel is not the thinking qua intentionality that the phenonologists seem to me to support. If something is to be an object for us, ('Gegenstand', standing opposed to us, against us), it must be thinkable for us in so far as it fits within our web of conceptual relations. Of course we might discover new things, we will discover new things until the end of time. However for it to be discoverable as a 'new thing' it has to fit within the conceptual makeup of 'spirit' that whole of rational relations in which 'we' dwell.

That insight, the insight that there is such a realm in which we articulate ourselves (maybe close to Heideggers Seinsverständnis, though that has much more realistic connotations) broke through with Hegel. Not only the emergence of this realm though 'appeared', our relation to it appeared as well, which is a dialectical relation. I always see myself as different from reality, as a perspective on reality, but at the same time I know I am part of this greater whole. We are 'being the same in difference'.

Actually, the idea that everything is deducible is very un-hegelian I would say, because it would fall into some sore of transcendental subject an all knowing mind. The whole dialectic would be unnecessary. However, we 'find ourselves thrown into a world which seems to be not-mind, which seems totally different. It remains different, just also the same as thought in the sense that it must be understandable for us, we assume it can be understood, the world is not totally alien in the end.

I agree. However, I think "the relation" is factual (Witty) and not just virtual (Bergson). — 180 Proof

... and in order to show the fly the way out of the Kant-Fichte-Hegel fly-bottle, this break follows:
Thought comes from being, but being does not come from thought [ … ] The essence of being as being (i.e. in contrast to the mere thought of being) is the essence of nature.
— L. Feuerbach, Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie — 180 Proof

I am still struggling with the following: to what extent did Hegel also want that relation to be real and to what extent did he succeed? He prioritizes 'life' sometimes he feels rather naturalistic. I do think he was looking for this actual relation. When 'my' prof explained the absolute to me, he hit his hand on the table, and said 'this, this is absolute'. I feel he is right, yet, what Hegel does in his work is all conceptual, on and on, spiral after spiral, circle after circle. He does try to be bodily but it is a very abstract, conceptual 'bodyliness' if that makes sense. Does he succeed in making the break on through to the other side? I am not sure.

I feel that is why one of the reactions against him is the phenonological, more realist approach leading to a reappraisal of the body, seen in the French thinkers, Merleau Ponty, Foucault to a lesser extent, perhaps even Nietzsche. If he can not, if his system cannot account for nature or life, because it is in the end one sided, then there resides the 'more', the abundance of life over and above the concept. The price for that is high though. We rescue some sort of abundant 'physis' but what is our place in it? We are essentially drifting never knowing whether we are at home in nature. It is by all means the prevailing view though. Hegel's enlightenment homeliness has lost its place to ecosophical estrangement.

Great discussion by the way. Even if do not react I am keenly reading what you write. If it starts to involve QM, I am out because I simply do not know enough of it. Back in the day Hegel was almost not studied at all and no one on the PF was really into a discussion. Now we have a number of perspectives... :fire:

This reminds me almost too much of 'Dreydegger' and some interpretations of Wittgenstein. I guess I'd understand the softer version of absolute knowledge as a kind of introjection or ingestion of that which was previously projected as an external trans-human or non-human authority or indigestible kernel 'behind' appearances. — lll

To my shame I must say that I know too little of Dreydegger to really comment but from what I do remember it does sound similar. The wiki quote is also how I would see it, but better articulated than I could. I do not know if the appearance of this insight is anti-climatic, I do not think it is. With the ' Phenomenology' (appearance) of spirit (a necessarily assumed horizon of meaning) we realize that we ourselves are not some free transcendental subject as Kant would have it, but that our self actualization takes place within a larger whole, later to be called horizon or maybe even 'episteme'. I must be careful here though, Hegel assumed continuity, the later emphasis on discontinuity is a reaction (in dialectican fashion) to Hegel. I think 'absolute knowledge', is an even stronger realization than that though. With its procedural way of thinking the 'Pheno' is an introduction to and vindication of the method employed in the Logik, his truly metaphysical work of conceptual analysis. The dialectical process also proves itself as the ground structure of thinking (logos/ logic) and from this ' absolute' standpoint the conceptual analysis proper may be undertaken.

Do you think nothing happened before there were humans or something else that was able to discern change? — Fooloso4

Indeed if it wasn't for the appearance of a mind able to discern 'change' nothing happened. It is only by abstraction that we say something must have happened before the emergence of us. We discern change so we cast the universe before our onset in the same terms. However we can only do so from our own standpoint and in our own categories of explanation. Had we or anything else discerning change not been here, nothing would have changed.

There is no color grue because 'grue' is a word that was made up that does not name a color. — Fooloso4

The grue word denotes a color we cannot discern and because it cannot be discerned we cannot say whether it is or is not there.

What happens and an articulation of what happens are not the same. Something must happen in order to articulate it as something that happens. — Fooloso4

Something takes place, certainly, at least something appears to us. That is what we know. What exactly, we cannot know. We cast it in terms of change and happening. They are exactly the same until we find out our articulation of it was somehow inadequate.

It is not a question of "thinking as such" but of what is thought, and that changes. — Fooloso4

No, it is exactly of 'thinking as such'. What is thought always changes of course, but we are dealing with the categories in which we think. They remain the same. Of course, the contents of my thoughts at a present moment can never encompass being as such. Metaphysics is about being qua being, not a kind of being or a certain being.

But for Hegel the identity of thinking and being is realized, made actual in time. Prior to this they are not the same, and it is only through the dialectic of difference that thinking and being become the same. How does your interpretation differ? — Fooloso4

Hegel's thinking is circular. the identity of thinking and being is always there. Substance is always subject in the language of the pheno. However it is not realized it is such. We always spent our time within this horizon of meaning, yet, Kant for instance did not realize it yet and posited a free subject. Spinoza also did not realize it yet and proposed a substance without rationality, a godlike unbound substance. Only with Hegel did substance realize itself as subject, in other words, it came to self knowledge, reflexivity.

Beautiful. Do you mean that 'he' realizes that this 'he' or 'subject' is another piece of the 'map,' and that even the 'map' metaphor depends on everything else for its significance? 'He' makes the 'map' according presumably to his desires, themselves historically generated, but only according to the map that makes him along with itself. A whirlpool of traces. — lll

What I do see, in this discussion with you and Fooloso4 is that I am using those two notions of subjectivity, the Kantian one and the Hegelian one and that does not bode well for consistency. In my boat and captain story I relied on the Kantian version, but that indeed spells trouble from a Hegelian perspective, so I am thankful for the life buoy you threw me III ;)

I like your articulation, of what I in fact stated very incompletely... yes the Captain realizes this. Also in answer to @180 Proof I would not call one variable independent, the other dependent, both map and map maker exist within this horizon of conceptualization in which the map and territory metaphor also has its place and from which it derived its meaning. I would not give any metaphysical priority to one or the other, I think it is not needed to commit oneself to either a materialist or idealist metaphysics. Yet, maybe it is me though. I like and feel at home in a world where nothing but the relation is real.

Neither the dogs or us need the categories to taste the difference. — Fooloso4

indeed, that is what I responded above.

Change happens whether we are able to think change or not. That is the point. It points to the separation of thinking and being. — Fooloso4

No, if we would have no ability to discern change from sameness it would not happen. Just like there is no color 'Grue' because we do not have the ability to discern it. You need the conceptualization of it in order to articulate it as happening. Perhaps a dog's life is just for us different every day. I do not know what it is like to be a bat.

Change happens whether we are able to think change or not. That is the point. It points to the separation of thinking and being. — Fooloso4

No, we articulate it as 'happening whether we can think it or not' , but without a mind for which change is an issue change does not 'happen', just like nothing really 'happens'. Also a happening is somehting that is an issue for someone, an object for a subject.

So, thinking changed but thought did not. — Fooloso4

Thinking as such did not change, we just managed to articulate the process more richly.

Right. So they are not hardwired. And dogs do not share in the history of spirit that realized in western culture. — Fooloso4

They are, they are already present 'in itself', just not 'for itself' in Hegelian terms. In dogs they are perhaps also present in themselves however, the chance they are also actualized for themselves is very questionable. In Western culture they have become 'for themselves', at least according to Hegel.

I agree, but I see that insight in terms of becoming, history, and culture. Not the realization/actualization of spirit in history, the concretization of thought, and the overcoming or aufhaben of the difference between subject and object. — Fooloso4

I also do not, like I told you. My Hegel interpretation does not follow that rather traditional path.

But to note that a dog can taste the difference between cheese and carrot does not mean it's mind:

mind wired to see 'difference'.
— Tobias — Fooloso4

I do not understand. It certainly notices difference or it would eat everything, but it does not. It does not articulate the difference. Indeed, dogs do not engage in metaphysics.

You got here by arguing that things:

... conform to our categories of thought
— Tobias

You now expand our categories to include dogs. But a dog does not need the conceptual category of 'difference' to taste the difference between carrot and cheese. — Fooloso4

Dogs are not categories of thought. The categories of thought (as Kant articultaed them) represent necessary distinctions the mind makes when it perceives the world. Dogs do not need to articulate the category of difference, neither do we, to taste the difference. That does not mean that the category of difference is not a necessary category, without which our world would be vastly different from what it is now. It is odd, because I think you and I disagree because of a misunderstanding. Our thinking conforms to the world and vice versa, yes, but that does not mean that the moment we become self conscious of a certain mental operation, our world changes. You seem to impute that on Parmenides as well, who articulated something like the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. However, it is not because we found the possibility to incorporate change in our conceptual apparatus, magically change happened in the world. Or that when we could not articulate it, thinking was somehow not identical to being. We simply did not comprehend how it could be an later we learned. I wonder if we are actually far off or not.

Do you mean according to Hegel and contrary to or pace Parmenides? If so, it is odd that on the one hand you argue in favor of Kantian categories and on the other Hegel, who rejected them. — Fooloso4

Hegel rejected them because he thought Kant's table of categories is too static and too 'formal', based on some kind of luminary self understanding which we do not have. For Hegel we come to realize the categories of thought through a dialectical process in the course of practical history and not through a process of clear introspection. this insight opens up the historical nature of our way of thinking. I applaud that.

If you are arguing in favor of Hegel then it is only at the completion of history, with Geist's self-knowledge, with the realization/actualization in time of the real being the ideal, that it is true, for him, that subject and object are unified. But none of this means he was right. Many consider it metaphysical overreach, wishful thinking, or idealist fiction. — Fooloso4

Sorry, pro Hegel, contra Parmenides. Yours though is is a very thick, metaphysical reading of Hegel and I think a much lighter reading is possible, based on Robert Pippin and Walther Jaeschke. 'Absolute knowledge' amounts to no more than the realization that thinking progresses dialectically. Only after this realization is it possible to engage in the 'Science of Logic', the dialectical articulation of the different concepts, or, in terms used throughout this post, the categories. With Kant 'Geist' opened up the possibility of self knowledge and Hegel completed Kant's project (or so he hoped).
Overrreach in a sense yes, there is a lot to say about Hegel's claim that with him a fundamental insight broke through in philosophy and also a lot to say about what results the dialectical method brings us, but that would take us far out of bounds. For now, I do not see at all why it would be necessary to read Hegel in the light of some cosmic world spirit, that would reach some sort of historical endgame as Fukuyama or Kojeve seem to hold. That is more Schelling than Hegel and perhaps late Hegel when his pride and fame got the better of him.

My dog can see difference and smell difference and taste difference. Is her mind wired with Kant's categories or some other a priori categories? — Fooloso4

I guess a dog's brain is hard wired too yes. Actually in dogs we tend to find it much easier to believe and call it ' instinct'. What a dog does not have and mankind does, is self reflection. At least there is no evidence that the question of being is an issue for dogs, but it is for humans.

Parmenides denied change. It did not fit his thinking. — Fooloso4

Yes, he denied it, because he considered only static relations to be really thinkable. I think that is not true. Being is indeed a fixating concept, but it itself can only be thought in relation to nothing, leading to the concept of becoming, pace Hegel.

So, his thinking was questionable. Do you think that thinking has now progressed to the point where thinking and being are the same but in thinking they were the same he was wrong based on his thinking? — Fooloso4

They always were the same. They are analytically the same. To be is to take part in a state of affairs (free after Wittgenstein). Their identity is not based on empirical findings but on conceptual analysis. That is why the identity of thinking and being is a metaphysical proposal and not a physical one or a psychological one. That is the whole difference between philosophy and physics for me. Philosophy is self referential, a conceptual analysis of only itself. It leads to self knowledge but not knowledge of the world.

I explained the cause of the Ukraine war to my daughter of six as the weakness of old men as being incapable of compromise. — Benkei

"How can I save my little boy, from Oppenheimer's deadly toy"

Russians - Sting

I'm wondering though what place unadulterated fun has in competition. Some people just love what they do and become incredibly good at it. So they might like the competition but the only reason they can really compete is because they love archery, running, skating etc. — Benkei

I think unadulterated 'fun', aka love, lays at the heart of our being in the world. The world is extraordinarily meaningful to us. And yes, sex is a lot of fun as well. That is why is is often referred to as playing. Someone who wants it is often described as 'naughty'.

And it's not as if women don't compete, just in other ways. So I'm not convinced it's just a male thing (which is worrying if true, because that means there's no clear way to avoid wars). — Benkei

Me neither. Women are sexual beings to exactly the same level as men, at least as far as I know. The sexual by the way, does not have any base connotations for me. I think it is rather exalted actually. It shakes the world. So for me it binds the most serious, 'le petit mort', with the most innocent ' playing'. Giver and destroyer of life.

"Secret Side" - Nico

You don't. I don't. As I say above 'maps are aspects of the territory used to delineate, or make explicit, other aspects of the territory', so they are real too, though formally (i.e. abstactions) and not as the concrete (empirical) facts to which they refer.

Again, to my way of thinking, being is the independent variable and thinking is a dependent variable (ergo, 'the being of thinking' (whereas 'thinking of being' makes no more sense than 'map = territory' or 'solipsism')) – and these "distinctions", or ideas, are thinking-dependent-dependent variables. — 180 Proof

The problem, the way I see it at least, is that both are dependent on each other. Thinking ' is' , certainly, We encounter it among all kinds of phenomena and give it a separate name, we refer to it as thinking. Therefore it seems that in this vast ocean of being, there is a tiny ship setting course, and perhaps making a map of this sea, we call this ship 'thinking'. Quite naturally it sets itself apart from the sea it is navigating, the stars it is mapping and the winds it gauges. It does not give it a pause ordinarily on its voyage.

However while far away from home, at a time the Captain cannot sleep and he stares over the ocean at night, something occurs to him. Why does he maps the things he maps? Why does he rwrite 'ocean' on one side of the paper and 'land' on another. "Because they are different" he tells himself. However, something keeps nagging. He notices and sees so much more differences, the water is dark blue on the ocean, light blue in some bays. He does not make note of it. He thinks, perhaps all these drops of water, each and everyone of them, they might all be different from each other. There might be differences we aren't even aware of. Or, perhaps, there might be similarities we are not even aware of. How would God discern between land and ocean? Would he? Or is the distinction as trivial to an omniscient mind as the minute differences between two drops of water are for us?

The captain of the ship of thought realizes that all the differences we make are based upon itself. Het is after all making the map. He realizes that the ship is from the same matter as the land is and as the ocean is, but that all the differences made within this matter are made by thought. He realizes that even him referring to matter, invokes the history of philosophy, wasn't it Aristotle that called it such, he wondered. So yes, he realizes, all this mapping, all this thinking, it is based on the history of it, what we have considered important, what we have considered all this stuff to be. He goes to sleep, feeling puzzled and slightly confused,, but not out of place. He realizes, he is not different at all.

Gotcha. (But I thought that had taken its own turn towards systems science with enthusiasms for things like Prigogine’s far from equilibrium thermodynamics.) — apokrisis

Probably, I am just way more old fashioned. It never was in my curriculum. If anything I subscribe to a perspectivist or constructivist world view. In metaphysics I use the dialectical method and m view of being in the world is phenomenological.

It is a checkable theory, like all metaphysics ought to be … to avoid being word salad. — apokrisis

I think that is impossible, because it would require another meta-theory from the vantage point of which you would have to check it, meta-metaphysics. (see pataphysics). What I think you do is simply conflate metaphysics and physics. Physics indeed needs to work with testable theories. I think though that it is a reductionist view. Metaphysics examines the assumptions with which we relate to the world. It is therefore introspective.

I had to google her... I do not think she would take kindly to my steak loving ways.

I take more to Donna Harraway and Simone de Beauvoir. I should also still undertake a reading of Camille Paglia, but she is on my list for ages so do not know whether it will materialize.

Well if there is a beginning to reality, there must have been a state that is defined as 'unreality', coming before reality came into being. However, at that point that was the state of affairs and therefore that was reality. It is simply the same problem as that of the first cause. It is simply a matter of definition / conceptualization, but that is the whole point of reality, it is itself nothing real.

So you don’t hold to metaphysical naturalism? Are you arguing for dualism or something? — apokrisis

Does me referring the question to a certain type of analysis say anything about my metaphysical commitments? But no, I am not a metaphysical naturalist.

Thus metaphysics and physics wind up singing from the same hymn sheet. Talk about the origins of reality are informed both by the dialectics of metaphysics and the pragmatics of science. — apokrisis

That is the difference (for me at least) between philosophy and science. Science departs from absolute presuppositions about the nature of what it is looking for. Philosophy examines which absolute presuppositions are being held when people discuss the 'origins of reality'. For me they do different things.

In order to discuss the natural world and everything within it from a third person detached perspective, I would take recourse to science. Why would a philosopher speculate about that? I will not in fact, because I am not a scientist. This: "So all that is the case in terms of the brew which could result in a “real material world” includes the tychism of quantum potential and synechism of mathematical symmetry." is enigma to me. Or maybe it is the current analytic vogue, that is possible, but then equally I will have to fold because I have no idea what this means. But indeed if the claim is that 'the material word' somehow is the world as it is, qua metaphysical position, then no, I do not hold that. I think it is reductionist and well... metaphysical in the pejorative sense of the word.

Why wouldn’t physics and metaphysics be prioritizing this merged approach? I don’t see a problem for the metaphysical naturalist given physics used to call itself natural philosophy for just this reason — apokrisis

They can, they just have to be on the same page conceptually. If one is a metaphysical naturalist maybe. However, then is it nor more likely that the physicist will come to a better understanding? I stand in the continental tradition rather squarely.

Isn't physics part anymore of philosophy? — EugeneW

I do not think so. Neither is law, art or construction. However, there is philosophy of art, philosophy of physics (a sub branch of philosophy of science) and philosophy of law.

Though of course one can argue a question is actually not a philosophical question, but a question of physics. That is a philosophical discussion too, because it is about the limits of philosophy.

The laws and constants are secondary. It are particles, their interactions, and their collective behaviors, that matter. Democritus told us that already. — EugeneW

There must be a 'The Physics Forum' where such issues are vehemently discussed.

Well, not to give the game away too much... — Amity

Because of my line of work I am offered a PhD thesis, nicely bound and printed, quite often. They are usually an uneventful read, not limited to and most certainly including, my own. Literary quality or nail biting subject matter are just not high on the priority list in general. However, if every page is as poetic as the previous post, then a masterpiece looms and I just have to get my hands on your book Amity. Tomorrow I will dive deeper and see if I can put the pieces of the puzzle together and explore more of that triple D work.

What philosophers are said to do.
No. Not navel-gazing.
'Willy-waving' :blush: — Amity

Of course philosophy is nothing exceptional. It is just performed by people who hope the penis mightier than the sword, or more likely, who have no other option. The language of philosophy is tinged with sexual metaphor as well.

Where do the laws of nature or the constants of nature fit into your notion of reality as mereologically the sum of all things? — apokrisis

I do not hold reality as the sum of all things, it is exactly the opposite I would say. Rasmussen, the author of the paradox seems to hold that idea.

Aren’t you looking at this from the point of view of the current “world of medium sized dry goods”, whereas physics suggests that laws and constants - the absolutely general - are all that constitute our reality at its beginning? — apokrisis

No, I hold reality to be a metaphysical concept, not a physical one. I would therefore also think that 'reality at its beginning' is a square circle. As if there was no 'reality' and will at some point not be a 'reality'. Reality is a concept by which we refer to all that is real for us, or all that is the case. It is an abstraction referring to the most general state of affairs.

So therefore reality is the wholeness of every thing, because - as you say - it aint’t the mereological sum?

And thus reality speaks to the maximally general. Which in physics-speak is laws and constants. — apokrisis

I have no idea what physics would say, I am not a physicist. If when physicists speak of reality they actually speak of 'laws and constants' that is well possible. That does not mean anything though in a metaphysical discussion. though when physicists and metaphysicians speak to each other they will first have to clear away such mutual understandings of a concept.

Well physics does divide reality - as the bounding wholeness of concrete actuality - into the two parts of laws and constants. — apokrisis

Ok. than they run into a paradox. Poor physicists. I do not see though why you would give the keys of metaphysics (conceptual analysis) to physicians (analysis of the physical world).

To fix that dichotomy, you then need a systems logic that can find the unity in such opposites — apokrisis

I recommend dialectics ;)

Do we see things differently according to a priori categories or did difference become a category as the result of seeing differences? Kant claims the former. This is not the prevailing view today. — Fooloso4

Well I would not know how you can perceive 'difference' without a mind wired to see 'difference'. It is also very binary, right, it is the same thing or a different thing. This binary view of things to me seems to belong to the human condition.

That supports my point. They are not invariant a priori categories. Or, more generally, it is not the case that thinking and being are the same if thinking leads to the denial of change. — Fooloso4

Why would it lead to a denial of change? Only if you assume that thinking cannot handle change. I don't see why it would not be able to. I conjecture that it is because one considers thinking to be mere logic or 'quantity', but dialectical thinking is very dynamic. I realize that I am the same person I was yesterday and that I am different from the person I was yesterday.

The relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is an open question. Some maintain that Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides and others that Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus. — Fooloso4

Ok, but I think we both agree there is more to thinking than monolithic 'sameness' or identity. In your view though it seems like we first have to experience non-identity in order to be released from our slumber that thinking prioritizes identity. I think that assumption, that identity and sameness is the default and change modifies our thinking is not warranted.

It not that he did not realize it, he just thought that becoming is a false opinion. His monastic thinking led him to reject change and difference. This is a good example of why we should not accept the premise that thinking and being are the same. — Fooloso4

No, it is a good example of the dawn of philosophy. He held on to assumptions, namely that 'real' thinking deals with the unchanging, which we questionable.

Feuerbach suggests (as I read him), it's merely an anthropocentric bias (blindspot) to reify – project, literalize – our thoughts (e.g. distinctions) and then thereby conclude 'maps = territory' (even as maps are made by / from aspects of the territory and used to make explicit other aspects – yet never 'the whole' – of the territory). :chin: — 180 Proof

Well, I wonder why I have to accept that the territory is real and somehow the map is not. The whole distinction is a map making exercise, done in order for us to navigate better, but reifying this distinction as something that is a really really real distinction is actually what you are warning us against doing.

It may be useful to do in some instances and to say, well this is real and unchanging and this is a changing aspect of it. At least I think that is where I think you are going with your distinction between tides and sea, but I might be wrong of course. It may also lead us astray if one holds on too firmly to these distinctions/ The problem with the paradox, at least from my perspective, is that it reifies a certain concept, namely 'reality', and then compares it to certain 'res' all things that are.

You have got this backwards. They do not conform to a priori categories of thought. It is, rather, that thought was forced to change to accomodate what did not fit existing categories. — Fooloso4

Well they have to, unless you want to go back to pre-kantian days. We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. We do not stumble into the world as tabula rasa.

Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change. — Fooloso4

Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. Indeed he was puzzled with the notion of change. He had to deny it as real based on what he could logically fathom. It took Herclitus to clear it up to some extent, in the same river we step and do not step. What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. He was not right, I am a Heracleitian, but what he got right was the notion that what is real has to be able to be thinkable. He thought change was logically impossible, that was a mistake.

How about starting a war for resources (the usual reason). They said it was the main reason, or one of them, I believe? You would have to do a better job of explaining why this is. I am not saying people are not driven to violence due to some ‘sexual malfunction’ or some such thing, just that I don’t see how it can be viewed as anything like a main reason for driving someone into war/violence.

I am open to a reasoned account of why this may be so (specifically as an item that majorly entwined with war/violence). — I like sushi

Well, it would take a book probably and I am not going to venture it. Wars of course are fought over resources, however there is always more to it than that it seems. In war more is involved than cold calculation, but also pride, competition. The whole terminology of war is tinged with competition, victory, valour, etc. Remember the parades and the statues, the decorations, and the monuments to people who were usually ruthless killers. Now I think at the heart of all this drive for competition, the show and spectacle one makes of oneself, is to show ones virility, if not individually than socially. The language of war, the movements of its pieces, the dancing of the protagonists, are all sexually tinged metaphors.

If your interest is in being argumentative, I am not interested. If your interest is in trying to understand views that differ from your own then you should begin by not misrepresenting what I have said — Fooloso4

Do not be condescending or tell me what I should be doing. It is impolite.

What is at issue is not the division but that there are these very small and very large things that were unknown and unthought. — Fooloso4

Yes of course there are. No one took germs and viruses into account before... and now we do. However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of thought, there is nothing new to it. the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably.

I edited out the wheel argument though, because I thought it would lea us astray and it did. However, I like the discussion about where the paradox in fact comes from. I think it comes from equating reality with the sum total of things. What o you think.

Thinking presuppose being like tides presuppose the ocean – nonidentity (e.g. Adorno, Levinas, Zapffe, Rosset, Meillasoux, Brassier). — 180 Proof

Yes, but being equally presupposes thinking. When I say something is, it means it is at issue for me. A rock, a grain of sand, an ocean does not care one iota about its being. An ocean is not in fact something different from a rock, but for someone for whom the difference matters. Materialists and idealists are just birds of the same feather they absolutize a certain an call it absolute.

"What is" is the horizon – unthought – of thought. In other words, thinking does not include, or reach, the greatest (final) number. — 180 Proof

I do agree with this. We know there is so much more than we can now fathom. "is this all", "there must be more to it" and there always is. However it is thought that makes this distinction. It creates its own horizon.

The divisions are a way of referring to things that existed prior to anyone thinking such things exist. — Fooloso4

So the division between the macroscopic and the microscopic always existed without anyone making the distinction? In who's mind, God's?

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4

Of course it is, or did they found some sort of sign saying "macroscopic world" when human kind first emerged? The division is human, the classification of one thing as different from another is a human made distinction predicated on the way humans perceive their world. That is the whole point of the identity thesis. Not accepting it in fact leads us to 'metaphysics' of the worst kind, the postulation of all kinds of things that are unthinkable.

Interesting is though that you consider the flaw of the argument to be the acceptance Parmenedian claim, while I think the flaw of the argument is not heeding it. :smile:

The problem is not with thinking that which is not, although more on that below, but with the assumption that what is is limited by what is thought. Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding.

As to non-being and indeterminacy see this discussion of Plato's metaphysics: — Fooloso4

Well up until recently there was no wheel either. What is, is limited by what can be thought. that is the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. What it holds is that we must hold that we can comprehend the world for it to be a world at all. It is metaphysics, not physics.

Based on what exactly? That sounds utterly ridiculous and I don’t really understand the obsession with the idea that sexual relations are somehow inextricably entwined with violence/war. — I like sushi

I hold the opinion that sexual encounters are entwined with pretty much everything we endeavor in, so amity's claims seems modest to me actually.

:party: :party: @Amity! That is a very joyous moment and an overwhelming feeling of freedom. It is off topic but may ask you what your PhD is about? I am interested. (Whether the subject matter is accessible to me depends of course, I tried reading a PhD on synthethic organic polimeres once and did not succeed, but those are exceptions).

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or given and account of. — Fooloso4

Not really, because saying that 'there must be something that exceed the limits of our thought' as you seem to do, is then still conceptualized as a certain something an therefore thought. Something that cannot be thought, for lack of a better description, since what we are dealing with is the indescribable, cannot be anything for us. Even being is a way of conceptualizing. That which 'is not', is not, as Parmenides indeed held.

The genius of Parmenides is, at least I feel this way, is that he articulated the limits of our thought and by that notion invented philosophy, an inquiry leading to the insight that 'the world' is 'our world'.