Indeed it is. But we agreed:

You cannot answer the question: "in virtue of what does 'anything not go' given we have already said that we do not possess the truth?

The rest is just an example. Feel free to ignore it. Surely you have some criteria in mind by which it isn't "everything goes?" Or do you? Is it sentiment? Another appeal to democratization?

That was the question. I cannot see why it requires me explaining my conception of wisdom, and my understanding of principles (in formal logic even), in order for you to answer a question about how you determine "acceptable/correct/true narratives" and discard "unacceptable/incorrect/false narratives," or if correct/acceptable/true narratives can contradict one another? Can they contradict each other? That was one of the questions.

Of course there are truths, and we can "have" them.

Ok, but you were the one who made "I have truth" a claim of hubris. Instead we need: "something to sit between "I have the truth" and "Anything goes." (Your words).

What is that "something?"

You often accuse arguments of being "merely rhetorical," but what exactly is it that such arguments lack once logic is determined by usefulness and "I have truth" is off the table?

Here you have it again. I don't see that you have explained how "wisdom" (our present example) is a vacuous term

I didn't claim wisdom was vacuous, I merely said it cannot be the standard by which accepted narratives are judged if it is vacuous. Likewise, the love of wisdom would be the love of nothing, or nothing in particular, if wisdom doesn't mean anything. I don't think that's that difficult a point. No need for formal logic. Vacuous terms don't do anything. Wisdom has to signify "something" in that it cannot signify "absolutely nothing."

When you say apprehension comes prior to judgment I can't help but think of Kant whose whole project can be read as "Judgment is the single fundamental unity to Reason in all matters philosophical" :D -- I'm not sure there's such a thing as apprehension prior to judgment at all.

In Kant? Isn't there apprehension prior to judgement? There is intuition/understanding/reason, which is clearly influenced by the three acts. He takes quite a bit from Aristotle. That's sort of Hegel's critique. "Oh look, I started presuppositionlessly and just happened to find Aristotle's categories." (I never found this critique of Hegel's strong, maybe the categories have held up because they are themselves strong).

Kant would deny truth as the adequacy of thought to being in the strong sense, or the idea of form coming through the senses to inform the intellect. I suppose the response here is that he rejects this because he presupposes representationalism and he has no good grounds for doing so (totally different subject). I'm also pretty sure he falls into identifying falsity with negation. So there would be other differences. I just don't know if the differences hold up without also accepting the fundamental axiom of "we experience only ideas/representations/our own experiences, not things," and of "knowledge of things in themselves," (as opposed to things as revealed by acting, actuality) as a sort of epistemic "gold standard" to aspire to.

More that our ideas give us an idea about what's important to consider, and this is a learned kind of judgment, and there was no such thing as apprehending before learning how to judge -- it was just ignorance.

I think this is perhaps missing the point. To judge "x is y," predication, one must first understand x and y. Now if we are talking about a judgement of something newly experienced in the senses, it seems clear that "x" must be there for "x is y." How could one even say y of x without specifying x in at least some way?

In the state of ignorance we lack any sort of notion of either truth or falsity.

This is fair. I think this is consistent with both Aristotle and Kant in a way. A notion of truth as truth does require judgement. Aquinas has it that truth is most possessed when we know something and we know that we know it as true. Obviously, simply being aware of something, does not represent this sort of grasp. So, the priority of truth in the mind hinges on the idea that truth is the adequacy of the intellect to being, but that we can also speak analogously of truth. Hence, sentences can be true. Speech can be true in several senses (e.g. lying vs truthful speech, truth vs falsehood), models can be more or less true to life, and there must be truth in the senses to some degree, as well as in things (as the measure of truth). The truth that is prior to judgement is not as fully truth. Likewise, judgements that are known as true judgements are even more fully the realization of truth.

But if a duck is the measure of true things said about a duck, and a tree is the true measure of judged of the tree, then truth is first in the measure, and only later in judgement. Man is not the measure of all things. Kant tries to preserve this, even as his representationalist assumptions make this difficult for him. So this is another sense of priority. That is, it does not become true that the duck has wings when we judge it to be so. It was already true prior to our judgement (when the possibility of falsity enters the picture).

Sure, but falsity is not related to truth as negation (contradictory opposition), but as a contrary.

Aristotle has a distinction that I think holds up:

-Asytheta: truth as the conformity of thought and speech to reality (whose opposite is falsity); and

-Adiareta, truth as the grasping of a whole, apprehension (whose opposite is simply ignorance)

We can also consider the "three acts of the mind:"

1. Simple Apprehension, "What is it?" (produces terms - deals with essence)

2. Judging, "Is it?" (produces propositions - deals with existence)

3. Reasoning, "Why is it?" (produces arguments - deals with causes, or we might say "reasons" today because "causes" has been butchered).

All of these related to the adequacy of thought to being. Now apprehension must come prior to judgement or else there is no content to make judgements about through predication, composition, division, concatenation, etc. And there must be an analogous sort of "sense knowledge" prior to any intellection about what is conveyed by the senses. So, positive apprehension, i.e. some content (adequacy of the intellect) must be prior to the judgement stage where falsity enters the picture.

Likewise, nothing can be known as false without knowing at least something as true already, because no inference, to truth or falsity, can be made from nothing. Hence, falsity is posterior.

Consider the limit case. There is only God, who is omniscient, and the seven spheres He has created. Now, that the spheres exist is true. It is true because truth is convertible with being. If they exist, it is true that they exist.

There is arguably logical convertability as well. To say "a man is standing," is to say "it is true that a man is standing," (assertoric force), which is also to say "one man is standing" (unity).

God knows everything that is, so there is adequacy of the intellect to being. But there are no false beliefs, since God is the only intellect. Yet God knows and knows that He knows, fathoms and understands.

No thanks, C.S. Peirce is my go to American. Pragmaticism, not pragmatism, thank you :grin:.

Now, that's just co-occurrence to demonstrate a dyad between the two to the standards you laid out. But I think that "...is true" and "...is false" presuppose one another to be made sense of. That is, there is no "...is true" simpliciter, but rather its meaning will depend upon the meaning of "...is false", and vice-versa.

So there is no prioritizing one over the other.

While they are contrary opposites, on the view of truth as a transcendental property of being, falsity is parasitic on truth for the same reason that evil is parasitic on good—it is an absence. If truth is the adequacy of the intellect to being then its lack is a privation. Likewise, without ends, goods, the entire concept of evil makes no sense, since nothing is sought and so no aims are every frustrated.

Banno, I asked:

...in ruling out, "anything goes," you are denying some positions. So, considering that you are also ruling out: "I have truth," in virtue of what are you ruling out all those views which, according to you, "don't go?" What's the standard?

It's a question. Surely you have some criteria in mind. I just offered wisdom as an example.

You are treating "wisdom" here as an individual, and making an existential instantiation? That is,
∃(x) (x is wisdom) ⊃ (a is wisdom) were "a" is a new individual constant.

That's inconsistent with your claim that wisdom is not a thing:

You are once again conflating "something" and "some thing." You seem to be making the same mistake you accused Plato of re the Forms. Yet my point is merely that a vacuous term (or one that is indeterminately mutable) cannot be the criteria for "what goes," (i.e. which "narratives" are accepted) else "anything goes." This is merely the observation that if a term applies equally to everything, it lets everything in. If the term is meaningless, then it cannot keep anything out. If it is unlimited in its mutability, then it can let anything in.

I'm not going to respond to the rest because it's the same mistake.

Instead, what we might do is map out how we find people using the word "wisdom" in various situations, noting the similarities and differences and so developing an open map of the ways the word functions in our community.

But if "wisdom" were the standard by which "not anything goes" and wisdom judges between "narratives," then this would effectively be an appeal to the democratization of knowledge, no? What is true is what the many believe?

Except that, for terms like beauty, wisdom, true, good, etc., you would also end up encountering many mutually contradictory theories.

It seems obvious that this would be a poor method for trying to inquire into many terms. For instance, if you want to understand "quantum indeterminacy," you ask the physicist, not the many; if you want understand "pseudoexfoliation glaucoma," you ask the opthalmologist, not the many, etc. Nor did these people come to know what they know by asking the many, but rather the opthalmologist studies eyes, the historian studies history, etc.

It's an interesting framing because I think sophia would have implied something like knowledge (maybe "gnosis" is better). "Wisdom" has taken on a much more amorphous meaning in English, more "practical," less "theoretical."

I don't think wisdom can ultimately mean "believing what makes you happier though." I know you weren't necessarily implying that. I think praxis is part of wisdom, but so is theoria. That is, the sage knows why he acts. And not just from a narrow, self-interested point of view.

That's a crucial difference. I think this has to be the case, because we seek wisdom, in part, because of the sort of self-determination, self-government, and liberty it brings. It's a liberty from ignorance, in a sense, but not really in terms of gaining "episteme" (scientific-like knowledge). Plus, I think wisdom also implies having overcome weakness of will, such that one knows what to do, why one should do it, and then actually does it, even if it means drinking the hemlock.

No, I just had in mind the idea that "wisdom" cannot be vacuous or apply to everything equally.

Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular."

So:

...in ruling out, "anything goes," you are denying some positions. So, considering that you are also ruling out: "I have truth," in virtue of what are you ruling out all those views which, according to you, "don't go?" What's the standard? Apparently it cannot be truth. Is it wisdom?

If it's wisdom, it would have to be something. Otherwise "anything goes." But then what is wisdom, or any other criteria that you'd liked to recommend, that stops "everything from going?"

and quite another to get the barest glimpse of Kant or Aristotle or Wittgenstein and then believe you're in a position to refute some key point. This is especially egregious when the refutation is scornful, implying that K or A or W must have been really unintelligent because you have shown them to be wrong! Such arrogance.

There is an irony here in that many of the "great names" do this to each other. Nietzsche is obviously offender #1, because he calls out people by name or obvious reference, and is quite scornful, although he is, in at least some of the cases, not very well informed. Russell's history is a standout example as well (Grayling's is as bad on medieval thought and suggests people were involved in councils while dead/not yet born). But it happens to everyone. Kant thought the new critical philosophy cut deep enough to brand the bulk of what came before "twaddle" (although I think that's in a personal letter), and the idea that all (or most) of the problems philosophers have spent their lives on are just a failure to use language correctly requires at least a bit of hubris (particularly if one has not studied them). Hume recommending consigning the bulk of all prior thought to the flames.

I think that's just a trade-off for swinging for the fences. You're more likely to hit a home run, but your batting average goes down. Sometimes you also need the courage to say something stupid.

I'll just add that charity is tricky. Sometimes people's idea of charity seems extremely uncharitable, like when religious claims are reinterpreted as "not truth-apt." I would rather say we should try to interpret people as they themselves do, but trying to save their ideas from their own interpretation is also a great philosophical art. That's how we got Hegel and Fichte.

Why must wisdom "have some determinate content"? There's the idea again that if it has no "determinate content" then it is nothing, but that doesn't follow. The assumption is that without determinacy—without clear, specifiable content—“wisdom” is vacuous. But this is not a necessary conclusion. The leap from indeterminacy to meaninglessness is unwarranted.

Yes, it absolutely does follow. At least, as I intended "some determinant content."

How are you reading that? Are you advancing the claim that a term can lack all determinant content (i.e. possessing not even "some" content), and thus refer to nothing more than anything else," and not be vacuous? "Lacking any (i.e. not even 'some') determinant content" sounds to me like a definition of a vacuous term Banno.

But this is not a necessary conclusion. The leap from indeterminacy to meaninglessness is unwarranted.

"Possessing at least some determinacy" doesn't suggest "it must lack all indeterminacy," rather it suggests "it must have at least some determinacy," i.e. not none at all.

So, I won't respond to the rest, because it's all based on this misreading. I was hoping you would reply to the substantive points and not make the entire reply about reading "must have some determinant content" as being equivalent with "must be absent of all indeterminancy."

Or, to add another quote, from Plato's seventh letter: "There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject [of metaphysics]. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself... Again, if they had appeared to me to admit adequately of writing and exposition, what task in life could I have performed nobler than this, to write what is of great service to mankind and to bring the nature of things into the light for all to see? But I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic-except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty."

Or, as Saint John of Damascus puts it: "neither are all things unutterable nor all utterable; neither all unknowable nor all knowable. But the knowable belongs to one order, and the utterable to another; just as it is one thing to speak and another thing to know. Many of the things relating to God, therefore, that are dimly understood cannot be put into fitting terms, but on things above us we cannot do else than express ourselves according to our limited capacity."

Difficulty arises when the order of being is reduced to the order of knowing, or the order of knowing reduced to the order of speaking, or the order of speaking to the order of justification. For, in the order of justification alone, understanding of what is being justified is excluded.

That's just what jumped out at me. It has been a while since I read C&P, but it makes sense to me.

I think one thing to recall is that horses were still primarily "beasts of burden" at this point. They were a means, like a car. But obviously, people also knew they had feelings, "personalities," etc., and some treated them more like pets. I think one of the points here is that, without any orienting telos, no truly better or worse way to live a human life, everything becomes instrumental. You beat the horse if it gives you pleasure, because, in the end, everything should be viewed through the lens of maximizing pleasure. There is nothing else to seek.

So, to the earlier question: - it reminds me a bit of Achille's shield in the Iliad. Why is it too terrifying to look at? Well, going back to antiquity, a common answer is that it shows the meaninglessness of life. The shield is incredibly detailed and shows "the city in war" and "the city in peace." In the former, there is opportunity for glory, thymos. In the latter, there is time for pleasure, epithumia. But there is no greater logos orienting things. The shield is a circle, and the world it depicts an endless cycle where all, even those of the greatest glory and virtue ultimately go down to the grave to become gibbering nothings (in the Odyssey, when Odysseus goes to the underworld, Achilles tells Odysseus he'd rather be the slave of a poor man than "lord it over all the exhausted dead"). There is no purpose to anything. It is, perhaps reminiscent of Ecclesiastes, and it recalls the Aeneid in that Virgil does add a higher logos and historical dimension to his world, even if it remains bitterly pessimistic.

Dostoevsky is seeing the same thing returning with the "death of God." So, in this post I go into why so many people oriented towards the classical tradition see nominalism as "demonic." This goes back to the Desert Fathers, and other early influential Christian thinkers, who tended to see a life led seeking advantage (reason become wholly instrumental and without telos) as essentially a "diabolical" way of thinking. I know the Patristics have always been quite big in the Orthodox tradition, because they are all over the liturgy, so Dostoevsky might well be familiar with these ideas since they were transmitted down the ages.

And, as you point out, the way people wallow in sin is a big focus of Dostoevsky. Also their attempts to hang on to some shred of dignity, and how this often backfires because their thymos is misdirected, all out of balance with the purpose of life. Katrina Ivanovna in the Brothers Karamazov is a good example too. This goes with the Patristic idea, still big in Orthodoxy, of man's mind being clouded in the fall, his nous fundamentally malfunctioning and in need of "Christ the physician."

A well-constructed, nicely written essay, which for me, however, only showed that older concepts of reason incorporated what we would today class as the creative imagination. The notion of 'intellectus' or intellectual intuition, basically conjectures that the creative imagination is a reliable source of metaphysical and ontological insight. That is what is denied, or at least questioned, by the modern secular mind.

I think this is a pretty major misunderstanding of the concept. Intellectus has nothing to do with the creative imagination, which is its own faculty in medieval psychology (and roughly parallels what we tend to mean by the term today). Perhaps you meant to say that you think the faculty of intellectus is just creative imagination? That would make more sense.

Although, this still has very large difficulties if it is to be a total rejection, because acknowledging nothing but ratio would essentially commit us to something like eliminitive materialism and behaviorism (i.e. understanding would be illusory, or at least "theoretically uninteresting" as Dennett put is re Nagel's "What is It Like be a Bat.") For anything more robust, ratio needs to take on some of the properties of intellectus vis-a-vis cognitive understanding, else reason would simply be rule following devoid of content.

C.S. Lewis explains this pretty well:

We are enjoying intellectus when we 'just see' a self-evident truth; we are exercising ratio when we proceed step by step to prove a truth which is not self-evident. A cognitive life in which all truth can be simply ' seen' would be the life of an intelligentia, an angel. A life of unmitigated ratio where nothing was simply ' seen' and all had to be proved, would presumably be impossible; for nothing can be proved if nothing is self-evident. Man's mental life is spent in laboriously connecting those frequent, but momentary, flashes of intelligentia which constitute intellectus.

When ratio is used with this precision and distinguished from intellectus, it is, I take it, very much what we mean by 'reason' today; that is, as Johnson defines it, 'The power by which man deduces one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences'. But, having so defined it, he gives as his first example, from Hooker, 'Reason is the director of man's will, discovering in action what is good'.

There would seem to be a startling discrepancy between the example and the definition. No doubt, if A is good for its own sake, we may discover by reasoning that, since B is the means to A, therefore B would be a good thing to do. But by what sort of deduction, and from what sort of premises, could we reach the proposition 'A is good for its own sake' ?

This must be accepted from some other source before the reasoning can begin; a source which has been variously identified-with 'conscience' (conceived as the Voice of God), with some moral 'sense' or 'taste', with an emotion ('a good heart'), with the standards of one's social group, with the super-ego. Yet nearly all moralists before the eighteenth century regarded Reason as the organ of morality. The moral conflict was depicted as one between Passion and Reason, not between Passion and 'conscience', or ' duty', or ' goodness'. Prospero, in forgiving his enemies, declares that he is siding, not with his charity or mercy, but with 'his nobler reason' (Tempest, v, i, 26). The explanation is that nearly all of them believed the fundamental moral maxims were intellectually grasped.

Lewis focuses on moral reasoning, but the same would hold true for theoretical reasoning. Ratio alone cannot justify any inference rules without already having decided on some inference rules. There are an infinite number of possible logics and one would have no way to pick between them without some starting point. Likewise, there is a qualitative, first-person experiential element to understanding, the grasp of the quiddity (whatness) of things, that must be moved over to ratio if intellectus is denied (or else one of the more narrow forms of eliminitivism will follow).

These problems have not been missed in contemporary philosophy. They represent some of the most significant theoretical puzzles occupying current thought. The Chinese Room gets at these issues, as does Mary's Room, the question of "what it is like to be a bat," and the Hard Problem, Symbol Grounding Problem, etc. The Chinese Room and Symbol Grounding Problem are more specific to intellectus, the Hard Problem encompasses a more general problem with first person experience, of which intellectual knowledge is particularly difficult for reductionist theories to explain.

The idea of intellectus cannot stand on its own it seems―it requires the belief in God, the human-inspiring Divine intellect, to support it.

This is not the case even in medieval thought. There are illuminative explanations of noesis, which Mark Burgess covers well in his dissertation, but there is also the Aristotlian conception of "natural" noesis, which is a biological function. It flows from the basic idea that:

1. Things exist as some definite actuality prior to preception.
2. For perception to be "of things" it must involve to communication of some of this actuality (form) through the senses (even through sensation is "of" the interaction between the sense organ and the surrounding media, form travels through the media in the form of light, sound waves, etc.)
3. The senses inform memory and intellect.
4. The active intellect is able to abstract the form communicated through the senses, and thus the form of what is known is partially in the knower.

This is given more semiotic explanations as well. Many medieval theorists subscribe to both these conceptions, and Aquinas and Dante would fall under this category. Now, God is involved in everything for them, but that does not mean all intellection is illumination.

It's fun to approach Dante as a philosopher instead of just a Poet. At the same time, the Divine Comedy is not a systematic treatise. Is the author over interpreting what he/she sees as philosophical claims rather than poetic symbolism that have varying interpretations? I'm not knowledgeable enough to tell but I do wonder.

Dante is most explicit about the philosophy in the Paradiso, but he has other texts and letters that give us a pretty good idea about his personal philosophy. He is not particularly innovative, but he is extremely well-educated on the philosophy and science of his era, and brings them in quite a bit. For instance, he has Virgil citing Aristotle to him in a number of places.

After dealing with Hume; shouldn't the writer have spent some time on Kant's practical reason that seems to be a reformist model of reason? There may be other more modern writers who made similar attempts.

The longer version does address Kant a bit more in the section on Limbo at the end.

Those in Limbo are different. It seems that they might even have attained what Dante has as he reaches the summit of Mount Purgatory. If we were to look for a parallel to their case in modern thought it might lie in paired back, “secular” versions of ancient ethics, or perhaps in the deontological ethics of the “good will that wills itself.” Such a conception of reason and its role in human life allows that we may pursue knowledge of the Good for its own sake. However, it denies the possibility of any true union with this Good. Indeed, the deontological focus on duty, and on a sui generis “moral good” that is divorced from the sensuous goods that dominate everyday experience, seems to suggest that this knowledge is always at arm’s length. It is in some sense sterile. An isolated “moral goodness” of sheer duty lacks the fecundity of the pre-modern Good, which brings forth all finite goods through its very infinite nature, a sort of overflowing abundance.

This difference should not be surprising, given the different conception of knowing at work in theories subject to the deflation of reason. On these views, ever if we attain proper knowledge of our duties, it is often not clear that this will be “good for us,” or enjoyable, let alone that it will result in beatitude. Such “knowledge of our duties” remains in the realm of ratio, it is not thenuptial union and knowing through becoming of Dante’s vision. Dante’s vision ultimately rests on the hope of a beatific union after death, but it’s important to note that he also thinks this union and “knowing by becoming” is possible for us to some degree in this life. Indeed, this is why those who were contemplatives in life occupy the highest sphere of any mortals in the Paradiso. The erotic ascent is not something that must wait until after death, with only the cold comfort of duty to guide us until then.

To be sure, in a philosophy centered on the pursuit of an infinite Good that we shall never attain (symbolized by Limbo) we are still able to transcend current belief and desire, and so to attain some degree of self-determining freedom. Yet this is a motion that never ends in rest. It is ultimately futile. To that extent, it is a movement that is every bit vain as Satan’s kicking, and so, in some sense, less than fully rational. T

This is why Limbo is a place of “sighs of untormented grief.” This is the state of of human reason (Dante’s ascent led by Virgil) if it cannot be joined to its love (the hand-off to Beatrice, divine illumination). Finite, discursive human reason can never attain to an infinite Good or Truth for the same reason that one can never traverse an infinite distance at a finite speed, in a finite amount of time. Indeed, this mathematical analogy is apt, for, no matter how rapid one’s pace, and how long one continues one’s journey, the share of an infinite distance covered by such a traverse will always be infinitesimal.62 Dante’s final vision must culminate in a “great flash of understanding str[iking] [his] mind, suddenly [granting his] wish” to know.63

And yes, I know that isn't much. I didn't have room for Kant, except in a longer end note. IMO, this captures the main essence though. Knowing by becoming is essential for Dante. It's why the saint also has the greatest and most secure happiness (e.g. St. Francis happy in a hovel with nothing, St. Ireneus sublime facing a gruesome death; Socrates as well). Kant at least represents a move that is far from this sort of 'knowing as union.' Indeed, the mind seems to become a sort of barrier between the soul and being, like Aristophanes' myth in Plato's Symposium, we are forever separated from our other half by the mind, or more recently, "language." And he also represents the cleavage between a "moral good" of duty and all other goods, and a practical reason that is forever separated from aesthetic and theoretical reason, rather than ultimately being oriented towards one thing, like a light that has passed through a prism.

Philosophy is not intended to answer questions, but to ask them. The question enters the domain of science when it becomes testable, and it is here where we end up answering the question. I would just end with another quote from Confucius:
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones".

I don't agree with any strong distinction between science and philosophy, but let me ask: can we (ought we) ever ask questions about ethics or aesthetics? Would these fall under the category of "science?"

Second, it seems to me that the arts must answer at least some questions. For, if we did not have grounds to believe any particular historical narrative, or a grasp of historical facts (including recent events), we'd have no reason to have faith in science.

At the same time, it seems that there are at least questions about what makes science a good way to know things that must be prior to science, and which tend to fall into the common box of "philosophy."

Of course, the line between "philosophy of biology" and biology, or "philosophy of physics," and physics, is always quite blurry. So too the line between philosophy of science and epistemology and foundational questions of evidence and the role of mathematics and logic in scientific discourse and models. That's why I actually think the art/science distinction is more useful than philosophy/science.

To the Christian theists, sin is characteristically tied to the divine command. The divine command theorist associates that any evil deed is one that God condemns, and the fear of sin, and guilt that come from this divine-moral relation, is in the presence of divine moral law.

What is normally called Divine Command Theory is Protestant innovation born of volanturist theology. Certainly, it has echoes in some earlier thinkers, but I think that it's key to distinguish this. The Orthodox have tended to stay even further from this sort of vision (although, there are always exceptions).

I've read a good deal of Dostoevsky's corpus, had a class on him, and a bit of secondary literature, but I'm no expert. However, I don't think he would qualify under this label. He seems solidly Eastern Orthodox in many respects. And I am not bringing this up to nitpick, it's very important.

Ivan Karamazov is obviously not meant to be an exact mouthpiece for Dostoevsky, but Dostoevsky obviously does have the concern that: "if there is no God, anything is permitted." Yet this doesn't imply a framework where "good" is just whatever God proclaims, according to his inscrutable will though, nor a framework defined by command and obedience.

So to:

↪PartialFanatic As an atheist I didn't understand why the absence of divinity would necessarily lead to a world without righteousness

The problem is a lack of telos, and a lack of hope that man can ever fulfill his innate, infinite desires. The cosmos is no longer an ordered whole animated by love. You lose the great Eastern thinkers (e.g. Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Gregory Palamas) vision of a cosmos moved by love to union in love, the process of exitus et reditus whereby everything in the cosmos is sacramental, a revelation of God, and history a path towards theosis.

David Bentley Hart uses Dostoevsky as his main source for his book on theodicy, "The Gates of the Sea," and this is at least his reading too.

Gotcha.

Though reading some of your comments, I've wondered whether you shouldn't be developing a Greek sense of balance - it would help when considering issues of safety and such.

Well, that you think:

One might be tempted to conclude that the best option is to return to the belief that tradition is good and reason omnipotent. But there is a third possibility, to recognize that tradition has good and bad elements and that reason has its power, but also its limitations.

Needs to be said to me suggests a rather dramatic misreading on your part. What part of "liberalism has difficulties with thymos-phobia and logos-skepticism/phobia" suggested to you: "traditional is always good and reason is omnipotent?" was remotely on the table?

Where has anyone suggested anything like that? This has sadly been the norm throughout this thread. That all critiques of liberalism tend to get reduced to Stalinism or theocracy is actually something Fisher spends a lot of covering. "There can be no alternative, the solution to the problems of liberalism is always more liberalism."


Second, a concern for safety would motivate a proper acknowledgement and orientation of thymos to logos. Without this, liberal societies are subject to the decay of the state and norms we currently observe. This does not promote safety. Instead, it tends towards radical destabilization, e.g. active duty military forces being sent into major cities, a general support of lawlessness whenever it is "right," etc.

This is exactly what Tacitus and Juvenal say about their own epoch of republican decline. The citizens, desiring safety over justice and the arduous work of self-governance (agony in the Greek sense), ended up going down a path where they got (and deserved) neither.

Why should we limit wisdom to being either a particular, or a thing?

"Something in particular," not "some particular thing." Which is just to say, the term wisdom has to have some determinant content or else philosophy, the love of wisdom, would be the "love of nothing in particular."

And see how even here, at the first step, so much is presumed?

We need not assume the dilemma that either there is one true narrative, or else all philosophical positions were equally wise.

Hubris, to presume on has access to the one true narrative. That, and a certain deafness. One might cultivate a sustained discipline of remaining open to what calls for thought. One might work with others on developing a coherent narrative while not expecting to finish the job. Something to sit between "I have the truth" and "Anything goes".

Well, in ruling out, "anything goes," you are denying some positions. So, considering that you are also ruling out: "I have truth," in virtue of what are you ruling out all those views which, according to you, "don't go?" What's the standard? Apparently it cannot be truth. Is it wisdom? How can wisdom be a standard by which some positions are excluded lest it be determinant?

Second, by rulling out some positions, you have already committed yourself to a "true narrative." Is this hubris? You've said in clear terms in the past that the "true narrative" cannot contain Plato's forms, metaphysical notions of truth, Aristotle's essences (however you understand that), the "view from nowhere," opposition to abortion, etc. You seem to have lots of comments about the true narrative you feel comfortable making. But what are they made in virtue of given that a grasp of truth is denied?

Further, you might ask, can truth contradict truth? Claiming to know that "truth cannot contradict truth" is not claiming to know everything. It's a fairly limited position. But supposing any reasonable confidence in knowing any truths, these truthswill necessarily rule out contradictory truths (or else require finer distinctions).

Now, if truth can contradict truth, when and how is this so? An answer to this question is needed for anyone who countenances dialtheism, because if there is no limit then it follows that "anything goes" (and "doesn't go").


Finally, I would just point out that an embrace of pluralism or the claimed undecidability of "metaphysical" questions doesn't stop people from making strong metaphysical claims. Instead, because any opposing positions cannot be "wrong" it merely shifts the discussion over towards declaring the opposing view a "pseudoproblem," "not truth-apt," or else accusing opposing positions of being "meaningless" or "incoherent." Now, positions might be based on pseudoproblems, or they might be incoherent, but this charge is hardly a panacea and often seems to lead to bad faith argument. For, what makes something a "pseudoproblem" that cannot even be engaged with tends to depend heavily on epistemic and metaphysical presuppositions, and the move to focus on identifying pseudoproblems certainly seems to trend towards making these presuppositions transparent, since they are no longer a focus (indeed, they are assumed not to exist). And so you get broad, cursory dismissals of vast areas of philosophy as dealing in pseudoproblems. Rorty, for instance, in his chapter on Wittgenstein pragmatism, swipes away millennia of philosophy in a few sentences as a non-issue.

Less dramatic, but much more reasonable

"Reasonable" as in "known as true/good by reason," or "reasonable" as in the procedural, safety-centered sense of Rawls and co.?

As Benkei knows, it does resonate with me and my own thinking about the erotic as unity.

You might really like Byung-Chul Han's "The Agony of Eros" then. It is very much a "continental philosophy" text in its style, but I think it is a fairly straightforward read for the genre (and also not very long, which makes the style less of an issue).

It looks at a sort of "crisis of Eros" in modern culture, but its expressed very powerfully. It reminded me a lot of D.C. Schindler's "Love and the Postmodern Predicament," even though they are totally different "camps," Schindler being a Catholic philosopher who tends towards Thomism (although he is obviously deeply read in the continental tradition). That one gets pretty technical though and is a little dry.

Indeed, the erotic took a more prominent place, but reason still was, as far as I understood the ancients, still a rather ethereal cerebral faculty. It was the higher passions leading the lower ones, love for the body of the lover was surpassed by the love of love itself, as in Plato's Diotima.

I think this is generally true. The courtly love tradition that Dante is a part of actually tended to look down on the physical consummation of love (some exceptions not withstanding). A common motif is the lower born knight who pledges lifelong service to a lady who he knows he will never wed (or bed).

But the Christian tradition tended to have a more open view towards both the body and the irascible appetites (the spirited part of the soul, thymos). It saw all of these as good, if properly used and ordered. For instance, many of the Desert Fathers appeal to just anger having a proper use in chasing away the demons and other passions.

Early in the Inferno, Dante learns from Virgil how the beatitude of the blessed will increase once they have their bodies, and the punishment of suicides is to never return to the bodies they rejected (notably, Cato, a pagan suicide is seemingly among those destined for beatitude in Purgatory, so the sin seems to have more to do with the type of suicide then the act itself). That lust and gluttony must be purged on Mt. Purgatory suggests that the proper ordering of bodily appetites is essential to beatitude (and the explanation of the diaphanous bodies of the shades shows how the body has made itself part of the soul, like a wax imprint).

Virgil is sort of relevant here. Even in the Aeneid, we can see the idea of the cannibalistic thymos of the arete culture of the Greeks giving way (in the ideal hero) to pietas, i.e., thymos in service to logos, particularly the divine will and the unfolding of history (maybe even the telos of history embodied in Rome). But Virgil gives plenty of indications that he is skeptical of this working in the long run. I think Dante would probably agree, but for Christ acting as the physician of souls.

To this extent the deflation of reason is an emancipatory move making space for the body.

In some sense, yes, because there is definitely a "body-skeptic" thread in ancient and medieval Christian thought (although there is also a lot of sensual poetry, the focus on the Song of Songs, the cult of bodily relics, etc.). I think this is much more pronounced in ancient Christianity (e.g. Origen or Evagrius). However, in other ways, Charles Taylor's buffered self marks a further retreat of the body.

Yet I think some of the later thinkers who "bring the body back" are more a return towards appreciation of the body in early-antiquity (e.g. Homer) than the particular way in which medievals celebrated the body (bound up in the Incarnation, relics, etc.). Thymos too has been much reduced, particularly within the context of liberalism (Nietzsche is a trend bucker there too). The irascible appetites and the role of hope and fear get reduced in a lot of anthropology, which tends towards a dialectic of pleasure and pain alone, with reason as instrumental and procedural.

It's a fine line to walk. Health, strength, agility—these are all devalued vis-á-vis classical culture, as is honor, wealth, etc. But these are never bad in themselves, except as temptations. I think Boethius would be a paradigmatic example here. And, the warrior cultures of the Middle Ages don't allow the body to disappear in the way it did for the aristocracy of the late-Empire, nor did the particular focus on the Eucharist as the center of religious life.

Carnality could redeem itself as carnal knowledge, but the rider 'knowledge' was necessary. The carnal in and of itself, devoid of rhyme or reason, the orgasmic, the 'pornographic' for lack of a better word, was still feared and subjugated.

Indeed, the lustful are the first of the damned Dante meets in Hell proper. Interestingly though, the last sphere in heaven that lies "within the shadow of Earth," (which marks the blessed souls who suffered some deficits) is Venus, the heaven of redeemed lust. Cunizza da Romano's speech there is particularly interesting. It isn't a rejection of physical love so much as its sublimation to something better (we meet one of her former lovers in the Purgatorio too).

She says:

and I shine here
for I was overcome by this star’s light; [lust]

but gladly I myself forgive in me
what causes my fate, [i.e. fornication] it grieves me not at all—
which might seem strange, indeed, to earthly minds...

But we do not repent, we smile instead:
—not at the sin—this does not come to mind—
but at the Power that orders and provides.

For the classical mind, evil is nothing, so that sort of makes sense. Nothing is positively evil.

Also interesting, Dante has it here that Rahab the Prostitute was the first of the blessed set free from Limbo during the Harrowing of Hell, not Adam or Moses.

However, I presume (not having read it) that he would maintain sanctions against pre- or extra-marital sex.

Oh absolutely. This is couched in the language of marriage as a sacrament. The famous St. Maximus quote to the effect of "food isn't evil, gluttony is; childbearing isn't evil, fornication is—nothing is evil in itself, only in its misuse," is the sort of standard idea here.

Interestingly, marriage is a sort of "natural sacrament," in that it is recognized outside the Church. Previously married non-Christians have not needed to get remarried within the Church. Or at least, I've never heard of such a practice.

Non-material entities don't have parts in the way material entities are composites of parts. But we can make distinctions within them. The stuff on the intellect is open to a lot of interpretation though, which is why Islamic commentators ran in quite different directions with it (Averoese being a particularly interesting one).

Aristotle is in many ways a philosopher of quiddity. His main question is: "why are things what they are?" and not "why are things at all?" He thinks the cosmos is eternal. Hence, existence is not a question for him. That's what makes Aquinas, while very similar in some respects, quite different. He adds an existential twist that changes a lot

Aristotle throws out the idea of a number of pure actualities moving the world in the Metaphysics, although whether this speculation is actually consistent with the entire corpus, or just a dialectical suggestion, or a stray note is another question.

For Aquinas, there is no difficulty here. Angels and demons are only form, but they are not sheer existence. Only God is subsistent, pure being.

Actually, it's a debate in Thomistic studies whether matter is still the individuating principle or if it is the "act of existence," (and whether this is really a difference, and what it entails).

The focus on the act of existence is something I find very useful, in that it helps avoid conceptualizing form and universals as calcified logic entities. Ultimately, we have a process philosophy grounded by infinite being, which is something that comes across well in St. Maximus as well (who takes much from Aristotle).

I'm cautious about 'things possessing being', bearing in mind the term given here as 'thing' was originally 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'being' that what we think of as 'substance'. The expression in medieval philosophy was 'creatures' i.e. 'created beings', hardly synonymous with 'things'.

This has come up in a few threads. I think the difficulty is that "substance" gets used in two different, but related ways in ancient and medieval logic and metaphysics/physics respectively (the two being deeply related at that point). "Being is said in many ways," as Aristotle says. It is predicated analogously in science, while it must be used univocally in logic, on pain of equivocation.

In metaphysics and natural philosophy, it is organisms (and intelligences) who are most properly beings. There is further the notion, developed through Plotinus and Proclus and on into the Middle Ages, of the "Great Chain of Being," or the notion in Islamic thought of Tashkik al-Wujud, by which we can speak of different beings' greater or lesser unity, freedom, and hence full reality or "perfection." The knowing intellect can reach the highest degree of perfection because it, in a way, can "become all things."

However, in logic, we are up against the fact that we should like to predicate terms of things with weak or even artificial principles of unity. "The cloak is red." "The rock is heavy." "This volume of water is boiling." Surely these can be true propositions, terms predicated of "cloak" and "rock" as if they were substances to which accidents can attach.

Yet only certain things can be the bearers of predicates in a non-parasitic fashion. You cannot have just a "fast movement" with "nothing at all" moving. There is not redness without something to be red. We do not have just "roundness" with nothing that is round (at the very least, not in the physical world), but some thing that is round.

"Substance" here simply means "some thing (relative unity ) capable of bearing the predicates of the other categories (e.g. location, relation, etc.). There must be something for predicates to inhere in.

If one considers this from the perspective of a deflationary information theoretic process metaphysics, where all of the universe is a changing "code," it can be helpful. That this is too deflationary is no problem for the example. Within the universal code are subsections of "code" that are more or less intelligible in themselves and self-determining. These are beings/things. There are also accidents, actions preformed by things, properties like color, "being to the left of," etc. The accidents that are not "substance" and so cannot appear except as embedded in some other "thing-unit" of code. They need a substrate to inhere in. The thing-units more fully have essences, in that they do not have a wholly parasitic existence in the way the accidents do. But accidents still have some sort of "essence," in that all instances of roundness, redness, rapidity, etc. will share some sort of morphisms by which they are the same (on pain of equivocation).

"Essence" is another one of these terms. Organisms most properly have essences/natures, but there is a sort of "essence" to roundness, yellow, etc. recognized as well.

Just an interesting side note. Here is might not be fully relevant because if truth is primarily in the intellect then it is clear that sentences, which lack an intellect, cannot be the primary bearers of truth, although obviously true and false can be predicated of them by analogy.

Suggestive of Diotoma's ladder of divine ascent in the Symposium. But doesn't a distinction need to be made between the erotic and the (merely) carnal? After all, in Plato, reason is the faculty of the soul which harnesses and subordinates the appetites and spiritedness. While I appreciate the deployment of the term ‘carnal knowledge’ to highlight the intimate, transformative aspect of knowing in Dante, in our cultural climate, the word 'carnal' carries associations that are far removed from Dante’s theologically infused vision of eros.

In some sense, yes. The image of love reproduced above all others was the Madonna and Child. However, in defense of "carnal" I'll throw out Dante's verses at the climax on his visit to the Heaven of the Sun (wisdom):

Then, as the tower-clock calls us to come
at the hour when God's Bride is roused from bed
to woo with matin song her Bridegroom's love,

with one part pulling thrusting in the other,
chiming, ting-ting, music so sweet the soul,
ready for love, swells with anticipation

We could also consider here the medievals (and ancients) great love of the Song of Songs (St. Bernard, Dante's last guide's main exegetical focus, but also a focus since Origen), which imagines the soul/search as the bride/lover of God.

But the sacred is the opposite of the profane, and there is nothing profane here. The idea that has to be kept in focus here is that nothing is evil in itself, it can only be used for evil. Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body actually draws a comparison between the Holy Trinity and marriage and the procreative act for instance. When "everything is sacramental," romantic love must also reveal God.

Everything created is a revelation of the creator. So the erotic (even in our modern sense) is not to be despised. Christians tended to be far more open to the goodness of the body and embodiment than their Pagan counterparts, and by the High Middle Ages this led to a fairly sensuous (and also cosmic) aesthetics.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular, and it would seem that not all philosophical positions are wise.

This is not the same thing as "interesting." Hume and Nietzsche are interesting. I am not sure if they are wise.

But, supposing that one thought that all philosophical positions were equally wise (and unwise), that there were no ethical, metaphysical, aesthetic, etc. truths, and thus that "understanding" should replace critique and argument—wouldn't this itself be the demand that everyone else conform to the beliefs/preferences of the skeptic/anti-realist? That is, a sort of declaration of "victory by default?"

It does often seem like there are people here who are trying to understand what others think, and others who want everyone to think like them.

I don't think these are mutually exclusive categories. If truth is preferable to falsity, wisdom to being unwise, then obviously one will want to lead others to the possession of whatever wisdom and truth they have. Wisdom and knowledge are not goods that diminish when shared, but goods that grow the more people partake in them. Hence, the motivation for "conversion" (as Rorty puts it).

But note that someone seeking conversion still has motivations for understanding other's positions. First, because believing one is likely correct is not the same thing as thinking oneself infallible or in possession of the total picture. Hence, in fearing error, and in wanting to round out their position, they have reason to understand other positions. Indeed, where different, disparate traditions agree, there is something of a "robustness check" on the underlying ideas.

Second, conversion requires understanding opposing positions, both for translation and counter argument. Indeed, I can see how it might be the case that these might be some of the stronger motivations for understanding. If one believes positions are undecidable, more something akin to a matter of taste then truth and falsity, I don't see how this wouldn't, at least potentially, lead to being more close-minded, not less. Afterall, if one is challenged on one's own position, one can simply say that all positions have their own inconsistencies. Why learn about another position when all positions share a sort of equality? If you're enjoying your Flaming Doritos just fine, and you cannot be in error in enjoying them, why try to Extreme Nacho variety in the first place?

Now there are difficulties here. Commitment to any one tradition necessarily takes time away from others, and it is difficult to become conversant in many different traditions, particularly when some are very (perhaps intentionally) obscure. Yet it is worth the time, if only because all traditions tend to rely on at least some implicit presuppositions. These are often inherited, a sort of historical residue, and knowing their source is informative. Within a tradition itself, these sorts of presuppositions tend to be transparent.

Just for example, from 400BC to 1600AD a lot of philosophy was done. A lot of skeptical philosophy was advanced. Yet no one introduced a skeptical position all that similar to that of Descartes. St. Augustine had reason to formulate the Cogito before him, but it was in response to a quite different type of skepticism. The idea that all we know are our own ideas, and that even other people might be figments, hadn't occured to anyone. One might suppose from this then that other changes were necessary to pave the way for such a thesis.

This is important in that, for many people, this has become the philosophical issue: securing the "external world." A lot of contemporary thought is based around resolving this very issue. But, stepping behind it helps to reveal some of the common assumptions in play, even if one remains convinced that it is not a problem that can be "dissolved" because the presuppositions in play are valid.

Likewise, any philosophy of history that includes the history of ideas must traffic in the unfolding of such ideas. This is why Hegel's philosophy of religion must at least try to understand all religions, even dead ones.

Thank you for confirming my suspicion that my point was not impenetrable and too unclear to understand. I thought it was clear enough, at least clear enough to address.

Aesthetics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Ethics entails a metaphysical standpoint.
Which is why threads starting along those lines, like this one, when placed in the hands of the Wittgensteinians, end up in this same conversation about language and not the thing language is speaking about (whatever the thing is). Sparring for the most consistent use of language instead of saying something about the world that another person might also say about the same world.

Well, this is the great sin of anti-metaphysics, right? It ends up being a sort of metaphysical position. It can hardly do otherwise. Indeed, in terms of recent history, it has been arguably the most dogmatic and overzealous, with a huge negative effect on quantum foundations up through the 2000s. Its practitioners still want to interject in metaphysical discussions, and still serve up their own metaphysical positions.

Which is fine. The difficulty is that, if one goes in assuming all problems are pseudoproblems, it lends itself to a tendency to ignore argument in favor of appeals to having "unmasked the pseudoproblem." Because the anti-metaphysician assumes that their position is somehow "non-metaphysical," it is taken to be immune from metaphysical scrutiny. Hence, threads like: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15218/wittgenstein-and-how-it-elicits-asshole-tendencies/p1

Why is that the question?

Because you have denied the priority of not only Beauty, but of Being itself to language. So, if I want to move on to Beauty, wouldn't it make sense to demonstrate that Being and Truth are first prior to language?

Now, your earlier ad hominems said I offered nothing but rhetoric, so I set my and responses out in clear premises. You haven't responded them at all (despite claiming all I offer is rhetoric and not the vaunted "dissection" of argument you claim to prize). I have dissected your argument.

All you have offered in response is that this is now "off topic" and that now "knowing" is also too problematic of a term to use. So now "being," "exists," "prior," "posterior," (and so presumably "cause" and "effect") and "knowing" are out as problematic.

To be sure, these terms are difficult and could require unpacking, but do they really require much unpacking for my particular example?

My point is that things are prior to their being spoken of. Existence precedes speech. The order of speaking is not the order of being; the world is not "in language" as you put it. One does not need to "step outside language" to point out that this priority must exist.

Do we really need to unpack "know" here? I don't think so. Swap out "grasp of being" for "know" or put in "experience." The same thing will apply.

Do dogs have "experiences," or is "experiences" also a "loaded term?" If dogs have experiences, they presumably do not have them "within language," but presumably they are experiencing something actual that exists, else they would not have any reason to respond to their experiences one way and not any other. Likewise, infants either experience (or "grasp") being prior to knowing language, or they do not have experiences prior to having language. If it is the latter, how do they learn language without experiences?

Is it too problematic to say that infants experience things before having language? Do the disabled who lack language lack experiences? It would seem not. Are their experiences of "what is?" It would seem so. Presumably, their experiences aren't self generating and causeless. If they were, there would be no reason for them to be one way and not any other. Hence, what exists is prior to experience.

But if things exist prior to language, what of truth? If it is the case that things exist as determinant actualities prior to language, then surely "what is the case" is also "true."

This means that the world is not "in language." One never needs to "step outside language" to experience being. Infants are born experiencing without language. One does not need to step outside language to speak of ontological priority. If something can be experienced prior to language, it clearly exists prior to language. One does not need to step outside language to speak about what is not language. Again, you haven't backed up the need for this "stepping outside," you've just asserted it.



See below again, in line with your stated preference for dissection:


P1: We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.
C: Therefore, it is impossible to speak of anything being prior to language, or for language to refer to what exists outside the context of language itself.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.


P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, "being isn't a content to be grasped outside language" (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).

This also doesn't follow.

P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language).
P2: Language is not a container.
Conclusion: Any attempt to step outside all language to describe being as such is suspect.

This also doesn't follow, and as noted before, for the conclusion to be relevant it would have to be the case that one must "step outside" language to describe being, which would be an additional thesis that needs defense.

As I noted earlier:

You need additional premises like "knowing/experiencing something in any way requires language," and "what something is must be posterior to human speech about it" or "nothing can be actual prior to human speech about it," as well as "language only ever speaks about language and linguistic entities, never about what exists outside the context of human language." That is, you need to actually support a metaphysics of language that concludes that language cannot ever refer outside itself, else you are just engaged in question begging.

I don't really disagree with what you said here; but then isn't the arrangement of parts the form and the matter is just the parts themselves?

Wouldn't this represent an additional supposition along the lines of reductionism? I.e. that all wholes are just the sum and arrangement of their parts?

I think it's to its credit that Aristotle's system avoids this.

I think I see what you are saying here, now: I was conflating formality with 'structure of being'. The form of a thing provides the structure of a thing, but is not identical to it. Otherwise, you are right that what the thing is would not exist: it was just be 'that which it is' and this would change when its parts change.

Right, I think this is very tricky and I had to go over it with a professor pretty closely to clear it up for myself because I had similar questions. Obviously, the whiteness of Socrates' hair is something actual, and if something is actual it must be something, and so it must be form and not matter. But the form/matter distinction isn't rigid in that being white must be a property of Socrates or his hair. We can predicate accidents of Socrates attributable to his matter. The properties of what we consider matter vis-á-vis some whole would be considered form if we were analyzing the substrate in isolation.

Form is always actual, but there can be potential that isn't matter. The biggest example comes from De Anima. The intellect is immaterial, but there is distinction between the active (agent) intellect, and the potential (possible) intellect. The intellect can obviously change. We can merely potentially know French and then learn it, and actually know it. We actually get a gradient of first and second actuality.

Yet the intellect is not a composite of form and matter (although some Islamic commentators unhelpfully call the possible intellect the material intellect). It is immaterial, the idea being that it does not have a substrate in the way "material objects" like a statue do. Indeed, the mind is "potentially all things," making is strangely like prime matter in this respect. This is not to say the body doesn't affect the soul; Aristotle isn't anything like a Cartesian dualist. But the intellect is not simply composed of body. It can be, in a sense, anywhere its thoughts are. When we see a tree across the road, we see a tree across the road. The senses are not "in the head.' We don't see the tree "in our head" or know trees as a universal "within our skill," but rather where there are trees. I think this is a huge benefit of Aristotle, because he doesn't confuse physical dependence with some sort of containment.

This use of "material" has to do with what we might call "physical things." They have some definite location, and matter carries the potential to have location, dimension, etc., as well as the limitation of having some specific location, dimension, etc. Angels, being immaterial, do not occupy space, which is why they can all "dance on the head of a pin." In medieval thought, this capacity to occupy physical space was generally thought of as a limitation, rather than something like a power. Matter, at least as informed substrate, always carries with it an actuality such that it is here and not there, and never everywhere.

Confusingly though, people also speak of material causes in geometry, but this is because we are speaking of shape as abstracted from material bodies.

Also, consider that all of the atoms in a man's body are replaced very many times in his lifetime. If something just is its parts, then in virtue of what is a man the same man even as every part is replaced? If you say a man isn't his parts, but is rather a particular arrangement of substrate-like parts, that sounds identical to the form/matter distinction, just recreated. Whereas, if things just are the particular parts they are made of, then they go out of being as their parts are replaced and rearranged.

They cannot be just the parts, or the replacement of parts makes them cease to be. They cannot be just the current arrangement, or else when the arrangement changes (when Socrates breaks his nose) he ceases to be and becomes something else. Rather, things must be composites with some form accounting for identity and some underlying substrate accounting for change. We might call this "actual parts with potency" instead of matter, but it seems to be effectively the same thing. And it will still involve "real potency." If there were only illusory potency, things could not really change.

I don’t see why we would need to posit a real potency in the sense of a substrate of potential as opposed to positing that ‘real potency’ is merely the ways something that is actual can be affected relative to what it is (i.e., it’s form as received by its parts).

Let me see if you accept this rephrasing.

"We don't need 'real' potency because it is merely the ways in which something actual has the potential to be affected relative to what it is (i.e. a potential to change)."

I don't see how this is a real difference. You are still positing that things have a determinant actuality (what they currently are) and a potential to become something else. So you still need two principles: currently actual form , and the potentiality of form. But matter just is the potentiality underlying of form.

It's what allows us to distinguish substance from accidents. Being snub-nosed is not attributable to the substantial form of Socrates but to his matter; it is an accident (although obviously actual). You seem to risk collapsing this distinction and making all predication essential because all predication is of "form all the way down." If Socrates breaks his nose and becomes snub nosed, you now have to say that his form has fundamentally changed, because form is nothing but the arrangement of actual parts, and "snub nosed" is a new arrangement (or else else you need to somehow make a substantial form/matter type distinction, which again, then you aren't changing anything).

I am not sure what 'real potency' is supposed to denote in this case either, because you are still positing the idea that determinant, actual things "really" have the potential to change, which seems to me like a "real potency."

(i.e., it’s form as received by its parts).

Right, this is just the idea of matter as determinant substrate. The form of flesh is form as flesh and matter as the matter of a man. The form of the substrate determines its potential. So, a seed can become a plant. Ground seed cannot become a plant, but it can become bread. There are different potencies at play.

I don't get why you refer to "magical potency," but then form possessing both actuality and potential is somehow fine and, at any rate, this still makes form into two principles, one of which is a "real potential."

Further, if everything is simply an arrangement of subsistent parts that are completely actual, then you have basically just recreated early-modern corpuscular materialism. But this is a position rife with problems that Aristotle avoids.

If one acknowledges that things really do have the potential to change, I don't know why "real potency" is problematic or "magical."

You might be interested in what Aquinas says about angelic beings and intelligences. These are said to be pure form. However, they are not pure actuality, that would make them God. They have potentiality. They can rebel for instance.

But the analysis is instructive because it shows the problems that show up in denying matter. For instance, every angel must be its own species because it lacks matter to individuate it. Hence the form is always unique. But if every form is unique for material things, then there will be difficulties in explaining abstraction and universals.

You would need some other individuating principle and some other principle for determining species.

To my eye, and I'd supose to the eye of many who have given it some thought, this use of "being" is fraught. The question as posed seems to depend on a very specific and perhaps equivocal sense of "grasping being," without clarifying what that would amount to. As such much of what you say here has a merely rhetorical quality.

The verbage of "grasping being" is yours Banno. You wrote that "being cannot be grasped outside language". Now it is "bad argument" and "merely rhetorical" to respond to someone's exact words? Was your statement that:

Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language

also "merely rhetorical" and an equivocation?

I might have said something like "knowing," although I think "grasping being" or "grasping truth " is fine. It's good enough.

The question is: can animals know anything? Can infants or those who have lost their language production and comprehension capacities? It would seem so. There seems to be a sort of sense knowledge that animals and infants are capable of, which implies a grasp of truth, i.e.., what is the case. It would seem that they can know what is without language. Hence, your claim that "being cannot be a content grasped outside language" seems false. Sense knowledge would seem to be a "grasp on being" if anything is.

However, per your previous claim that truth is a property of sentences, there would be issues here. If committed to this idea, we would have to say that either infants, the disabled without language, and animals somehow grasp or possess sentences, or else cannot understand if their beliefs or perceptions are false (which, based on research, seems false).

That is, you seem to have missed the point entirely.

Now It's clear that the picture you see before you makes sense to you. Uncharitably, you seem to think that God made the world in discrete pieces ready for the Greeks to name.

But that's a very suspect view.

Another ridiculous strawman mixed with bigotry. I said nothing about Greeks or God. Very briefly, the issue is that:


A. if the actuality of things is not prior to language, why would language "about things" be one way and not any other?" Likewise, if "meaning is use" this just brings up a similar question: "what determines usefulness?" Either something determines language or usefulness, and is thus prior, or nothing does. If nothing prior determines language or usefulness, why are they one way and not any other?

Aside from this difficulty, the idea that language or what we find useful can be "any which way," is deeply contrary to experience.

B. if the being of what is being interpreted is not prior to an interpretation, how could an "interpretation" actually be "of" anything? If being lacks determinant actuality prior to interpretation, then interpretations are "of" nothing in particular (nothing determinant).

You would have me respond to sentences such as that quoted above, but "being" is not a term I would choose to use, let alone defend. That we "grasp being" strikes me as verging on a nonsense expression. That I use the term at all is by way of showing how problematic it is.

You make metaphysical claims all the time. Then when challenged, you claim, without supporting argument, that every term involved in metaphysics is simply unusable (even though you yourself use them to make the claims you favor).

This is a non-argument. Stop making metaphysical claims like "the world is always already in language," if you're going to turn around and say "I cannot defend anything I am saying because all metaphysical language is too problematic." You're rejecting even basic terms like prior and posterior (actually, you claimed, with no supporting argument, that one needs a "view from nowhere" to discuss priority).

You say things like:

Of course being is not contained in language. Being is not contained in anything, and neither is language a container. Hence any any attempt to step outside of all language to describe being “as such” is suspect

This presupposes that language is something that must be "stepped outside of" to know or refer to the world. That is a metaphysical/anthropological claim.

But now "being" is in fact a nonsense term. This is reminding me of when you claimed that "correct logic" was also a "loaded term" in a discussion of logical pluralism, and I had to point out that it's a term in every major article on the subject, including the one you were citing (in the first sentences), and in the first sentences of the SEP article on logical pluralism.

Terms can be unclear. It is not good argument to just claim that all the basic terms of a field are "unusable" especially if you yourself keep using them to advance your own position. You have to show why a term is unclear.

Truth doesn't reflect the mind's grasp of being, it is the minds grasp of being. “Prior” suggests an ontological gap that can’t be made coherent. We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.

I can't see how to make sense of your attempt to foreclose on this. You bold "Nothing about this priority requires any claim about stepping outside of all interpretations" only to then say " The truth itself is grounded in being, and hence is already actual prior to any interpretation." You appear to just be smuggling back in the scheme/content distinction you reject.

This is the same old, tired false dichotomy. Either there is a "view from nowhere" or linguistic turn philosophy must follow. I already pointed out how your conclusion has no clear relation to your premises in other instances, and it is the same here:

P1: We don’t grasp being by representing it from the outside, but are embedded in a structure of interpretation, where belief, truth, and world hang together.
C: Therefore, it is impossible to speak of anything being prior to language, or for language to refer to what exists outside the context of language itself.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.

You need additional premises like "knowing something in any way requires language," and "what something is must be posterior to human speech about it" or "nothing can be actual prior to human speech about it," as well as "language only ever speaks about language and linguistic entities, never about what exists outside the context of human language." That is, you need to actually support a metaphysics of language that concludes that language cannot ever refer outside itself, else you are just engaged in question begging.

"There is no view from nowhere," does not entail any of those additional premises. Indeed, since you're not making a skeptical argument i.e., "we can never know if anything is prior to language," but rather a positive one "nothing is prior to language and it is meaningless to claim otherwise," I think you'll need all of those premises.



Here are your previous arguments:

P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, "being isn't a content to be grasped outside language" (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).


The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.


Likewise:


P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language).
P2: Language is not a container.
Conclusion: Any attempt to step outside all language to describe being as such is suspect.


The conclusion doesn't follow here either. Nor have I argued for anything like the position that is dispatched by the conclusion in the first place. I have said that we can use language to speak of things that exist prior to language. That's not the same thing as "stepping out of language." It is using language. You need an additional premise:

P3: To ever speak about anything's being outside the context of human language, or ontological priority, requires not using language while you speak about it.

But P3 seems obviously false.


Are these merely rhetorical objections?

It’s a different description from Aristotle’s; it takes society into the consideration of individual character and posits an innate potential

Yes, but in some ways it is surprisingly similar. Also, if you consider that for Aristotle man is also "the political animal," the society part is definitely a major theme too.

I'd consider the wide appeal of virtue ethics, in not all that dissimilar forms, in Europe, the Near East, India, and China, throughout most of history, to be a sort of "robustness check" on the idea. It only really gets opposed by a late movement in the West that is explicitly trying to tear down everything about the old order.

This article is presented quite well. I will point out three things:

1.

Emergent properties are known to be partially independent from their grounds because they have attributes and functions not present in their grounds. Chief among these distinct attributes and functions is intent. Intent is a function of the designing mind that thinks strategically about “that which is not yet but will be.”

Are they known as such? This is a topic of huge debate. The author might be interested in Jaegwon Kim's monographs. He is considered to have offered a devastating critique of the idea of anything like "strong emergence" under a supervenience metaphysics. But this article avoids the problem of "how do chemicals interacting cause first person experiences, emotions, intentionality, sensory experience," with this appeal to emergence, while still seemingly embracing a substance metaphysics of supervenience. This would be something to address to make the argument tighter. Process metaphysics is often suggested as a potential avenue around this, but process metaphysics rejects supervenience (and might not be considered "materialism" in the normal sense).

Weak emergence is pretty much just data compression, so it doesn't solve the problem here at all.

Second, as a number of authors have pointed out, whatever emerges from strong emergence is in some sense fundamental because it cannot be accounted for by what it emerges from. So, even if the mental is a product of strong emergence, it would not seem to be the case that it could be adequately explained in terms of neurons. It would rather be the case that neurons, etc. are a prerequisite for mental phenomena, but cannot fully explain them. That is, physical sciences couldn't fully explain mental life. Would that still count as what the author means by "materialism?"

This is a tension, since arguably this is exactly what people mean by "non-material" many times, right? This leads to...

2. Material and non-material are never defined. This makes it difficult to understand what exactly is being argued against or for. The main explanation of what the non-material must entail sounds like substance dualism. This is a popular punching bag, but not a popular position. It might be good to take on some more popular positions as a means of clarifying what the positive position is, or just clarifying the positive position. That the body is a cause of experienced isn't really denied by many metaphysical theories, so the basics that get outlined don't clarify this much.

3. The brain in the vat example seems to actually stress the idea that brains don't cause consciousness on their own. Any brain locked in vacuum will be a dead brain. Brains only ever produce consciousness in bodies, outside of sci-fi situations bordering on magic. They need a constant exchange of energy, information, and causes across their boundaries to produce any experience at all. Bodies also only produce experience within a very narrow range of environmental conditions. They won't do so on a star, in space, or at the bottom of the sea. So it's really a much larger physical system that is required to account for even tiny intervals of mental life. And these include elements outside the body.

The author sort of gets at this, I just think it undermines the early framing of things largely in terms of neurons. Neurons are important, necessary, but apparently not sufficient for experience. You always need a body and an environment. These can just be more variable, but still must comport to a very narrow range in the grand scheme of things.

Finally, some views of "materialism" rolled out by physicists are so thoroughly mathematized that they seem more like idealism. This is just another reason why 'materialism' needs to be defined. Otherwise, it seems vulnerable to Hemple's dilemma and the charge that " material" is just a vague term for "real."

This goes along with the idea that you cannot change a rabbit into something like a frog. Being a frog is not a potential of rabbits. This is an act of sorcery. What it would amount to is replacing a rabbit with a frog, not change, but substitution.

But the body of a rabbit can be broken down and become a frog. A thing's potential is not the same as its composite parts. Likewise, flesh and bones cannot speak lest they be part of a living man.

Removing this distinction risks destroying formal (and thus final) causes because a thing's form now lets it be any other thing. How can it have a proper end then? And if modality is to rely on potentiality, it also causes all sorts of problems there (e.g. a man is no longer necessarily not a cat, etc.) Everything is now potentially everything else in virtue of its form. But then, as pointed out earlier, you still need potentiality (or "possibility"), and so the reduction from one principle to two hasn't been accomplished either.

Also, prime matter is arguably not anything at all. Check out the Timaeus and then consider that Aristotle himself identifies the chora with his notion of matter.

Matter isn't conceived of as just prime matter. That's a key distinction. For example, man is made of flesh and bone. Each substrate has some form and some matter, some potential/powers, and dispositions to change in certain ways through interactions. Flesh is made up of cells. Cells are made up of organelles. These are made up of molecules. You have layers of form and potential all the way down, and parts ordered to different wholes. Turning all matter into just prime matter, and then ascribing the function of this prime matter to parts seems to collapse this distinction. It would seem to make it hard to say how something complex, like a man, is made up of so many other complex things that are also wholes.

Now perhaps this is what you mean by "composite," but then you really aren't changing anything.

More importantly, Aristotle thinks there is substantial change, that beings come into and out of existence. Men are generated (conceived) and corrupted (die). A dead man is not really a man but a corpse, substantial change. So now the parts you have been relying upon are no longer parts of a whole. They aren't a "composite." The whole has ceased to be. But the body of dead Achilles is still the body of Achilles. There is a persistent identity here that matter explains.

Whereas, if there is only Form A, which is caused by Form B, then there's nothing in between.

But what receives form in generation without matter? When a new organism is generated for instance? Without matter, we would have to say other forms combine into a wholly new forms (apparently one of their potentials). Yet everything physical is capable of becoming anything else given enough steps. The same atoms might be now rain, now part of a cow, now part of a bridge, now part of a dinosaur, now combined into plastic. The same proton can be part of any element. Without the structured hierarchy of matter as substrate, everything has the potential to become everything else. Each part has every potential at all times.

Yet an ant never becomes an anteater without first being reduced to its material substrate and then incorporated into the anteater (i.e. the matter is there to receive form). However, this process also does not reduce the protons in the atoms to hydrogen ions. The breakdown all the way to prime matter never occurs. Hence, the substrate distinction is important and always in play.

Another way to put this is that removing matter risks collapsing logical possibility and metaphysical possibility by making everything possibly anything possible. That a man requires a certain substrate, particular matter, is part of what delimits what man can become. The potential of the substrate is not identical to the potential of the substantial form, but neither is it identical to prime matter. My body could be heated to 10,000 degrees. I could not. That sort of thing.

As Aquinas points out, form also denotes a particular substrate. The substantial form man does not require particular flesh and bones, but it does require flesh and bones. It's part of what it is to be man. But flesh and bones can also just be slabs of meat. So we cannot say that substrate is only a part of a whole, it can exist on its own too.

Now, depending on how you massage all that, maybe you could just say that substrate is actually "parts." But again, then you aren't changing anything.


But I think this is the kicker: efficient causes always involve something actual acting on something potential. If everything was actual, change would be impossible. Form explains formal cause. I suppose that if you add potency to form you can explain efficient cause with just form, but now form isn't really one principle. Your reduction hasn't worked. You still need *just form* to explain formal causes and *form's potential* to explain efficient causation.


So, rereading your post, you seem to just have recreated matter, except now form is two principles instead of one.

This situation is an example of a problem, particularly acute in the US, but seemingly at issue across developed nations, of legislatures being unable to govern. The issue of immigration should have been settled by Congress. But, because any action would have been unpopular, and non-action allowed for a solution that was preferable to the most important classes, nothing was done (i.e. it increased the labor supply, bringing down wages and disrupting unions, and increased the number of renters, while creating a large population who could not challenge employers and landlords on their rights, and who also would not be eligible for welfare state benefits, keeping taxes down).

Immigration has often been a top issue for voters, so it is hardly that it was a low priority for the populace. Rather, inaction and lawlessness became preferable to any difficult action.

Because lawlessness is allowed, the executive ends up having ultimate discretion over policy, because they decide whether or not to enforce the laws, now that doing so is optional (e.g., not making marijuana legal, but simply refusing to enforce existing laws).

Both Biden and Trump won fairly close elections with unclear mandates. Trump didn't even win a majority of all votes cast. Yet both now had the authority to make massive shifts on immigration. Biden massively increased immigration as the pandemic waned, allowing for more net migration in the last two thirds of his term than Obama and Bush had in their two terms. Trump radically reversed this.

Certainly, events since Trump took office give lie to the idea that it was simply impossible to deter border crossings.

There is a broader sort of issue here where, unfortunately, where if one keeps to certain principles, one will invariably be taken advantage of. People will game these principles. You can see this in the way the Houthis will attack international shipping despite being incredibly reliant on aid shipments to feed their population. They know the West will keep sending aid even if they destroy some of their ships and murder their citizens. Likewise, Iran is comfortable firing mortars on US bases in Iraq because it knows it won't engage in dramatic responses.

So too, pro-migration groups are pretty out in the open about following caravans and telling people exactly the sort of stories they need to tell to qualify for asylum claims. Have gangs really been going up to families and saying: "we plan on killing your baby unless you flee the country!" Maybe, although it's not the sort of things criminal organizations normally do. But that these sorts of claims have become so common seems to have more to do with what sorts of stories qualify for asylum.

The Biden administration, rather than seeking for a change in the laws, used the asylum program as a way to increase migration, which caused applications to jump from 170,000 in Obama's last year to almost a million by 2023. This was a shift started under Obama and which continued under Trump. Claims were already up 10 fold by from 2009 to 2016 (and stable before that). There is little relationship between violence rates in Latin America and this giant increase.

This is simply gaming the laws, and whatever the good intentions of people who pushed in this direction, it's obviously jeopardizing the program.

Of course, those in favor of dramatic expansion don't see an issue with this because it's the right thing to do. People living in developing countries have a right to move to developed ones, on humanitarian grounds, or on a historical view that all the problems in developing countries are ultimately attributable to developed ones. Regardless of the merits of this, in practice, it seems to imply something like: "lawlessness for me, and not for thee."

Previously, this wasn't an acute issue because the GOP had neoliberal attitudes towards migration and was happy to use it as a political issue and then ignore actually doing anything about it. Now with Trump's second term, they are turning to the same lawlessness to pursue an opposite policy. Lawlessness begets lawlessness.

One party wants to not enforce immigration law. The other wants to not enforce environmental regulations, etc. Local governments openly state they won't enforce federal laws, and will indeed actively use resources to inhibit federal law enforcement in lawful activities. Apparently, as long as you think you're right, you can do what you want.

Obviously, duty to the law (including its spirit) is not absolute, but neither should it become negligible, with the law merely becoming an instrument in power battles. The pardoning of all January 6th rioters, even those on video commiting obvious crimes, who communicated their intent prior to the event, is another great example.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so when legislatures cannot give laws when needed, we either get an all powerful executive (against the principles of modern constitutions) or else lawlessness.

Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language—it’s not in language, but we can only talk about it within language.

BTW, let me try to break this down into premises:


P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language.
C: Therefore, being isn't a content to be grasped outside language (i.e. it lacks meaning outside language).

The idea of “stepping outside language” is incoherent, not because language limits being, but because thought and communication are what make talk of “being” meaningful in the first place.

This seems to be a formulation of the same idea.

I am not sure about how the conclusions is supposed to follow. That you cannot use language without using language is true, but that you cannot use language to refer to anything outside of language seems obviously false, since we refer to things that exist outside language all the time. One would need a very particular philosophy of language where it is hermetically sealed and cannot refer outside itself for this conclusion to make sense, but then that would also need to be included as a premise. Prima facie, language would be fairly useless if it only referred to itself. When I refer to trees, I refer to trees, not some linguistic entity, etc.

This is not unlike the position that we can never know anything outside the mind, because one always uses the mind to know anything. Indeed, it seems to me to be the same position applied to language. But such a position has a mistaken idea of how the mind and language grasp being (as well as the aforementioned issues with priority that make it impossible to justify the relationship between the non-prior "noumena" and the phenomena of mind or language).

“Being” isn’t a content to be grasped outside language—

We don't grasp being at all with the senses prior to language acquisition? So infants have no grasp of being? Animals as well? The disabled who cannot speak?

Being is either a content that can be grasped outside language or all those without language have no grasp of being (which presumably means something like: "they have no thoughts, beliefs, or goals vis-á-vis being")." This seems obviously false in terms of humans without a grasp of language and higher animals.

it’s not in language, but we can only talk about it within language.

Sure, you cannot speak about things without language. This amounts to "you cannot not use language while using language." This is a limit on the order of speaking and writing. It does not seem to be a limit on the order of knowing or being. Why would it be?

There seem to be plenty of counter examples, like the poor language user who knows what they want to communicate but cannot do so. Here, language is not the limit on their knowing.

To counter the priority of being, my argument, you need to support instead: "being isn't something that is outside language; things cannot be (or be known) without being spoken about; things need language to exist (or to be known)" That is what would show that being (or knowledge) is not prior to speech.

The idea of “stepping outside language” is incoherent, not because language limits being,

Again, it seems the senses must be prior to speech, and that man must first be before he can sense or speak. Your positioning of philosophy of language as first philosophy has you reversing the orders so that everything must collapse into the order of speaking as an absolute limit. But things are intelligible and meaningful in the senses prior to being so in speech, else how could we intelligibly speak about what is known through the senses?

Deflation, whereby reason (and so intelligibility) is simply reduced to rule following in "games" seems to be lurking here.

because thought and communication are what make talk of “being” meaningful in the first place

Right, this is the claim that "meaningfulness," i.e. intelligible content, form, or "being something determinant and actual," is posterior to language. All my prior arguments apply here.

First, riddle me this, if true interpretations "of something" do not convey something actual about that thing that existed prior to the interpretation, in what sense are they "interpretations of" anything in particular? In virtue of what are they "true?" By your claim, there was nothing meaningful vis-á-vis anything spoken of until after it was spoken of. Talk is what makes being "meaningful." The speaking generates all the intelligible content.

Yet if things were not determinant and actual prior to being spoken about there would be no reason to speak of them one way and not any other. That the sky is called blue has to do with something that is prior to human speech. Indeed, this seems obvious because, at the very least, things must have determinant actuality vis-a-vis the senses prior to being spoken of in any particular way. Else, everything is merely potential prior to speech, and so there is no prior actuality to explain why one thing is said and not any other, and "interpretations" are not really "interpretations of" anything definite, but rather nothing in particular. And it cannot be that "everything is always already spoken of," since language has not always existed, and we discover new things to speak about all the time (which presumably existed prior to entering language).

The obvious response is, why should we supose that there is a "sui generis source of beauty in the cosmos" at all?

Only man has language right? Didn't you just claim that all meaningfulness only exists within language? By your logic, it seems that to be beautiful, something must be called beautiful in language. No? So, if only man uses language, then man's language is required to make anything beautiful (or good, or true presumably). Indeed, if truth is only a property of sentences, and only man uses language, then man would also be the source of truth, since man generates language (language is posterior to man), and truth is dependent on sentences (is posterior to language).

For someone who accused me of making "no arguments," you don't seem to want to address the argument about priority at all. The priority issue applies just as well to "use" as well. Something prior needs to determine what is useful, else things would be arbitrarily useful (which is not what we encounter). Hence, use is dependent and cannot be appealed to as an unanalyzable metaphysical primitive.

You seem to be endeavoring to dismiss my argument by egregious extension

Showing that an argument terminates in absurdity is sort of a classic, hardly bad argument.

You're hanging a lot on "default' here. There is no reason not to have slaves, no reason not to exclude women, but we should tend towards the "default" because...? That doesn't seem very strong at all. Why is the default preferable If it is also just bias?

Second, if all of ethics is merely bias, I can hardly be acting "badly" by ignoring the default. I am merely choosing one bias over another. Why is that wrong? Is it irrational to not always prefer the default to anything else?

Plus, if not having slaves is also mere bias, but is the "default," why did slave taking seemingly exist in all human societies? If not raping is the default, why does rape exist throughout human history? If war were not the default, why has it existed throughout human history, or even in chimpanzee societies?

It looks to me like you have rendered all sorts of things mere "bias" through poor criteria, and now you are trying to bring back all you'd like through new terms.

No it wouldn't because there can be no purely rational justification for treating someone as a slave

Is there any purely rational justification for not doing it? Or not raping? Based on your standards, I would think not.

The important point in relation to the conversation at hand is that there are no metaphysical authorities

But there are. The Pope for instance. And there is practical justification for this.

That point is sort of ancillary though. Your standards make the whole of political theory "bias," and seemingly ethics and large parts of the study of history as well. Aside from being eyebrow raising, the fact that "bias" applies to so much seems to make the term mean little.

If the whole of political life is already mere bias, then I can hardly see how you can maintain your objection to religion being involved in politics on account of it also being biased.

↪Wayfarer It's funny how people thousands of years ago warned us about people like Trump. Truly there's nothing new under the sun. Regarding human behavior, that is.

We cut that part out of the curriculum because it was variously "not going to get the kids jobs and make them money like STEM," or because we need to "decolonize and deconstruct the classics."

Now we get to reap the benefits of raising even the country's elites for a tech-bro-ocracy, the reduction of politics and the common good to an engineering problem (just as plenty of contemporary political theory suggests we should). It's the Baconian mastery of nature turned inwards, without any thought as to whether mere "technicians" and "CEOs" would have the stomachs and hearts to take a stand against demagoguery when it would cost them something.

But, as a nation of primarily "consumers' and "workers" I suppose we don't really need a republic anyhow.



Politicians have plenty of incentives to downplay violence and vandalism. See January 6th. Photos can be misleading of course, videos too. I can't find it now but there is a great picture from Paris of the Yellow Vest protests where one shot looks like a giant fire in front of a line of police with a crowd pressed in on all sides and then the same fire is shown from further out and it amounts to a few newspapers worth of fire with like 12 people standing around it in front of the police.

But the damage here seems more extensive than that. The optics of burning cars and people waving foreign flags in front of them is obviously not great for building wider sympathy at the very least.