I fear that communist psychology is just a gateway to Islam

Plato thought philosophers should be cultivated and free from distractions of work. I feel like he was a perfectionist who didn't see the philosopher in everyone. Dietrich von Hildebrand said that most people are not capable of any philosophical speculations. I think this is systematic of extreme traditionalism

He is using the word "essence" to describe thoughts because he thinks the world is literally in his head thru the forms

Mormons tried to convert me twice over the past few years. One of them said "I don't see how someone could have just made this up". But Christians say exactly that about The Book of Mormon. Dooesnt dawn on them that first century Jews might have had an agenda in writing the Gospels. Like the take over of Rome and the West. And isn't that exactly what happened

I'm talking about the Gospels. They have much historical detail, so they have historical value. The question is about the resurrection. My argument is that although they have four well written accounts, someone can compile a record of 100 other alleged resurrections that each, individually, might not have much authority, but taken together presents a case that resurrection happens outside Christianity.

Then I ask the Christians: are we really unreasonable to say that resurrection just don't happen so the records are flawed? Are we not within our rights then to reject the Gospels?

Aquinas said he could prove a simple all powerful all good ect God exists and that anyone who disagrees is irrational. Disciples of his, like Edward Feser, are obsessed with proof and think atheism should be considered a mental illness

Two arguments against Aquinas

1) he said Being is added to form and matter as they unite in order to actualize them. But as Saurez and his school pointed out, form and matter must first exist to be in that triad. So Aquinas was wrong

2) Descartes says our reason IS our soul. He is right. Hold up, says Aquinas. Reason is a power of the soul, and will is a power of that power, he says. But this leads to contradictions. Aquinas says the greater is prior to the lesser. The will does greater good than the reason, so if will is dependant on the "power" of reason, than the greater is posterior. This a contradiction in his system. Therefore Aquinas was wrong

Do you mean "wrote more words" or made more sense? Aquinas is a clear writer and useful for people learning philosophy. But his main points are not proven no matter how much ink he would waste on a question

Big post, no proofs

So alteration causes half of the object to completely change? New forms every second since QM says everything is changing? You can't see that your stuck in Plato's world and that Aristotle was medicine for that, not objective truth

I don't like Thomistic Aristoteleans because they don't say "here's a neat alternative way of thinking" . Instead they say "I can unfailingly prove this" and they never ever can

Pure potentiality for Hegel is also pure freedom. Every thing is constrained in his system until the realization of the Absolute idea. Tielhard tried to use Hegel and incorporate the historical person of Jesus as the Omega Point of the "after" of the Big Bang. I don't agree with this, but lots of thinkers spin off from Hegel. All fascinating

Duns Scotus thought it was important to see "thisness" in objects. Thomists don't see "thisness" as a proper category, but Scotus did and I find it interesting

Hegel loved mysticism as a youth and often saw objects as Platonic Forms in the flesh. Since experience was logic which in turn was metaphysics for him, Hegel thought Universals played a role in the dialectical movement he recounted for us. There is room for the indeterminate (vague) and the clear. Yet every truth along the path is only partially right. It's almost a game of statistics to read Hegel and understand what is more true than, say, another passage of his. But this organism of a universe evolves into Absolute truth that cannot be spoken for now because it is the Ultimate Idea.

We learn to think dialectically thru the Spirit (the Ultimate Idea in the form of the Holy Ghost) and through the Notion (which is the Logos of the Idea, it's word to be more precise).

There is no consciousness higher than ours for Hegel. No father divine in the sky. We are all of reality he wrote

Ditto

Interesting.

Many philosophers in Germany, England, and the USA were Hegelian at the beginning of the 20th century. I'm thinking Peirce had read some Hegel? Certainly he brought his own ideas to the tradition

So Kant seems to be saying

1) we can know nothing about the real world because we create phenomena

2) thoughts of the world are even founded on contradiction because of Antimonies

3) yet we can be sure the world will remain orderly

Doesn't 1 and 2 contradict 3?

I've heard songs that were both ugly and beautiful. Lots of Platonists out there it seems

If a tree was just form, then with every passing moment that the form of the tree changed, it would be a hew object. We could not refer to it as one continuous, existing "tree" because every new moment it becomes something different, with change. So Aristotle posited "matter" as the underlying thing which stays the same, as the form changes, — Metaphysician Undercover

So it's a new form every time a color dims on an object? That's what you are saying. Aristotle got the idea of Plato that any change whatsoever would change the whole object. Plato was scrupulous about change, even thinking it weird to say 6 is big compared to 4 but small compared to 8. Everything had to be exact for him, the Da Vinci of philosophy. Realize that it was this weak system of Plato that Aristotle tried to remedy. Most of us have no problem seeing something as the same even though parts change, without positing an underlying principle under another one that changes. Aquinas argued "One universe, so one God", therefore I say "One tree, so one principle". It's just as valid.

Ideas on this subject are speculation from all sides. We're here to share what we think is cool

Thomists are blind to alternative ways of thinking. How do they know prime matter is so unintelligible that it can't exist in its on? I liked Duns Scotus because he challenged Aquinas whenever he could.

Will to know? You just happen to like Aquinas and don't recognize that other people feel just of must truth from other thinkers. He made you dogmatic.

Two principles are not required to explain change. A tree is instantiated treeness. The treeness can change in different ways but remain the same tree. No problem there. This is oh too easy!

1) are you a positivist?

2) have you read Heidegger on the metaphysical foundations of math and logic?

No, Aquinas is one out of thousands of interpreters of Aristotle. Aquinas was a genius only of coming out with thousands of faulty arguments. Those under his spell failed the test of being impartial.

Also, Aquinas said existence is added to form and prime matter to actualize it. But they must be actualized to be actualized. Therefore Aquinas was wrong

See, that's how an argument goes. Aristotle and Aquinas proved nothing about "forms" and what not. Aquinas gives up arguing there and talks dogmatically, as if his mind is the only mind there is

I encourage people to read Aquinas vs Hegel. But neither really proves anything

I also want people to notice how MU dogmatically says that prime matter is unintelligible. He provides no evidence, no proof. Aristotelians never have evidence for claims on this subject

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Followers of Duns Scotus thought that prime matter can exist on it's own.

Also, when it comes to arguments for God, Aristotelians try arguments. They try arguments, but they all fail. But at least they have arguments. The bizarre thing is that when it comes to "forms" followers of Aquinas and Aristotle will talk endlessly about it without providing a single argument. Yet in their minds they are "proving" their position . It's weird.

Please provide a real argument that a tree is composed of two principles instead of one. Why not just the treeness principle instantiated?

We sense discrete things within the flow of the continuous. If the past exists eternally and the machine doing the moving is in the future (as Aristotle thought), then the continuous, again, is first (prior). So this idea is in ancient and modern physics. How the continuous can form the discrete is what this thread is really about I think

I like the way you said that. Did you know Stephen Hawking, in his no boundary hypothesis, put the continuous fundamentally prior in the formation of the universe? That is, time goes back through descending fractions but never has a first discrete start. To say what is south of the South Pole, you would have to be there and look up. For Hawking, the "up" is time fragmenting into space, into infinitesimals

Heidegger might have said that Parmenides was doing phenomenology when he wrote his poem. Parmenides found the Being/One behind the world, the noumena. Heraclitus found the same in the form of fire instead of as a marble. Parmenides rejected senses for reason. Heraclitus rejected reason for senses you might say in a way. Hegel and Heidegger saw these two paths to the source and made new systems. I think we can all agree Heideggers system was unique and will take time to see in the context of history

Everything starts out continuous and ends discrete. Even consciousness. You need a subconscious mind before you can awaken to your ego. The omega point of the universe is an Universal Absolute. Parmenides was right and Zeno (not with an X by the way) helped prove his point

Neither Hegel nor Aquinas can prove their position. For Hegel, we start with nominalism and sense certainty. The practical. Then we move philosophically into the realization of Becoming. A thing is both itself and it's opposite. Not transformed yet into a third thing, like grey from white and black. But a grey contradiction nontheless. Things are both themselves and something else, however this doesn't mean there is no rest in truth at the end for Hegel. The organic and his discussions of it point to another space, the realm of Absolute truth. Contradiction starts the movement but does not define the destination. Consider the use of the Universal in the dialect

How to interpret Aristotle is highly contentious. You indoctrinated yourself into a Thomistic take on this, which says existence is a thing added to form. But form must exist to have existence added to it. Again, things exist, they don't "have" existence as a property. This was Descartes great realization about Aquinas. Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle is legit. After all Aristotle though God only the final cause. Aquinas thought it obvious that God creates, to the contrary. Aristotle has a more modern take on this.

Descartes kinda tried in The Passions of the Mind but it's all too subjective

1) you only assert all this. You have no evidence

2) there is no way to know Hegel was wrong to say something can be both itself and it's opposite

3) a thing exists, it does not "have evistence". Descartes was right about that, Aquinas wrong

4) are you aware there are humans who are essentially half woman and half man? The adult industry pays money for these individuals. People who are more one gender or who are changing there gender is what people usually know about. But not to know that a human can be 50\50 man and woman is just ignorance.

5) A\T leads you to praying to a God who will never answer your prays

You should clarify that by "idealist" you mean A\T (Aristotle and Aquinas) and not Hegel's objective idealism. Hegel thought they had a false idealism, as did Descartes

I would have loved to ask Hume to pick up a chair and deny to my face that he feels the causality. He was right though that I cant prove the wind causes the chair to rip over. And without causality, what happens to physics as a whole?

I don't feel like it is a good question to ask why the universe is orderly to our eyes and perceptions. That's like asking why you have two eyes instead of one. It's too big a philoosophical question to even have meaning. The world is mathematical in the sense that if I put two knives in someone, it is certainly true that there are two knives in him instead one. No denying that. But that may be practical knowlege. Think of Yablo's paradox. Does the series descend or really ascend although you are seeing the series backwards? Truth, theoretical truth that is, may be out there somewhere. It may not be here. It might to close, closer than you are to yourself, or far far away in another galaxy. You can always play the game "no truth? Then that's true! !" . The affirmations and denials go to infinity. That is true. But what IS a mega-truth? ". That is a more interesting question for me.

Modern physics is an attempt to combine theoretical and practical truth in a unity by the use of "creative imagination" to use Napolean Hill's term

I would not say the world is necessary. It's more likely contingent, and even more likely neither contingent nor necessary. I understand what people mean when they say God exists but it's really meaningless. I don't understand what people mean when they say the world exists, but it's meaningful. Search for what matters

First you say it's non-sensical to ask if nothing exists, then you do just that. Also, nothing in the English dictionary does not say that nothing is kinda something. Your post is non-sensical.

I don't get why people think it's esoteric to wonder what it means to say "the world exists" but don't think it's esoteric to posit a super necessary being as the explanation of the world. As Roger Penrose told William Craig, saying there is a super being explains uh what?

historyofphilosophy.net/nagarjuna-change

In an existential sense we believe the universe exists, but what that means ontologically is a separate question

Wasn't Heideggger's entire (uncompleted) task to try to explain what existence even was? You're assuming it's obvious

Some notes:

1) zero is useful, but nothing

2) Aristotle did not like OP question because for him God was only the final cause of the eternal universe, not the efficient cause of a temporally finite one.

3) randomness can bring about patterns and life if the dice are thrown often enough. When thinking of something as huge as the universe and doing so in the universe and thinking with the matter of the universe, we have to be humble before the possibility of a lot of dice throws

4) what something is, what matter is... is a hotly debated subject in philosophy