Zeno of Elea's Philosophy
Zeno of Elea is a well know Parmenidean follower; he's the guy who caused much bewilderment among lay people and philosophers alike with his eponymous paradoxes. He was the Zen master before Zen even existed, merrily blowing people's minds gratis, giving 'em much-prized Zen moments.
One paradox that's going to matter is this one: I'm at the start of a racetrack 1 m long, I must reach the finish line. Before I get to 1 m, I must get to 0.5 m(half of 1), but before I get to 0.5 m, I must get to 0.25 m (half of half of 1), and so on :vomit: (ad nauseum).
Conclusion: I can't even begin my run, let alone finish it. I'm at the starting line and I'm stuck, I can make not an inch of progress.
Has philosophy made progress? Are all philosophers frozen at their respective starting positions?
Bertrand Russell is said to have remarked that philosophy is (only) about understanding the questions well, answering them comes later, much, much later, assuming it's even possible to do so.
One paradox that's going to matter is this one: I'm at the start of a racetrack 1 m long, I must reach the finish line. Before I get to 1 m, I must get to 0.5 m(half of 1), but before I get to 0.5 m, I must get to 0.25 m (half of half of 1), and so on :vomit: (ad nauseum).
Conclusion: I can't even begin my run, let alone finish it. I'm at the starting line and I'm stuck, I can make not an inch of progress.
Has philosophy made progress? Are all philosophers frozen at their respective starting positions?
Bertrand Russell is said to have remarked that philosophy is (only) about understanding the questions well, answering them comes later, much, much later, assuming it's even possible to do so.
Comments (54)
He did some good blow jobs indeed. Indeed, philosophy seems stuck. Never able to bridge that last gap. On every arrival a new distance to cross appears. That's why all that's left to do is forget the question and just take a last non-philosophical leap of faith and the final answer will be uncontradictably self-evidently true.
Quoting EugeneW
That made me laugh. Thank you.
Unless we understand the movements of our limbs as answers. Life throws us hungry into a mess. We enact beliefs all the time. Philosophy can change the beliefs we enact, the way we live.
Perhaps you think of obtaining consensus when suggesting the answers are far away or impossible? But why should consensus be authoritative? Or perhaps you invoke an ineradicable logical possibility of being wrong. Fair enough. But we have to act, and we move more in faith than in an exceptional and troubling state like doubt.
:rofl: Good one!
Quoting lll
Solvitur ambulando.
Quoting lll
Dust!
My question is, has philosophy made progress? It's a simple question. Dare I think it has a simple answer?
Thou ought knot door such impiety, sewer ! For the gods are jealous of end-sores in the gobs of their sorry apes.
Yet progress, yes, I do incest on it.
Are infinite jest is poof!
Could Zeno have intended to throw late on the smoke machine noun as lung-wrench? Maybe not the motion of legs but rather that of jaws was his target ? Alung whiff the senescent theophagy of grammar mistaken for the Obsolute ?
I like your style sir/madam, I hope there's substance too in there somewhere! :smile:
Thanks for the kind words. My monikor is Whit Farder, and my pieces is mail.
I do try to encode actual substance within the playfulness. Above I suggested that our infinite jest is proof of the progress of philosophy. I can't speak for you (though your sense of humor suggests it), but I live (in my own eyes anyway) a much better life than I did when I was younger. Some individuals learn from philosophy, I say.
Of course the same old muddy ponds remain as stepping stones for new generations.
If you stare at a particular mud-aphysical pond and ignore the frogs, it looks like no progress. But take Wittgenstein, for instance. I think his later stuff is a break-through and even a kind of implicit apocalypse (one keeps going in 'his' direction beyond what he in his mortality could get around to, relaying 'his' brightening torch that he also got from others.) (So the torch is really a community possession, associated conveniently with prominently swift relay racers.)
You're on a roll, that's for sure. Does Democritus resonate with you at any level?
Wittgenstein: I like where he intends to take us, but I'm skeptical of his ability to do so! Bear with me: me, tenderfoot!
Good luck, good person!
That 'is' the answer perhaps, if it's understood as an insight into the limitations of the smoke machine of language. The 'and of history' is something like a state of infinite jest that no longer needs a Foundation and is satisfied with a plurality of models. There's a book clawed Crownless Clowns that tickles this aria. It is merrily run among others. James Joyce tries the same thing in literature, to sanctify or appreciate the so-called 'ordinary.' He thought the exceptional was muck for journalists.
Yeah, the laughing philosopher. Great dude.
Quoting Agent Smith
I do think W is great, but I also try to avoid the too-common off-putting my-big-hero-daddy thing that sometimes happens on forums. He is 'run among others' but ends up functioning as an abbreviation or avatar for the dissolution of metaphysics. I also like Derrida (who is tough to read and sometimes annoying) for similar reasons. Derrida will make grand statements, which can be charming or annoying depending on your mood. Wittgenstein is (perhaps you'll agree) sometimes even boring in his plodding understatedness. But then he'll pop a buddy in the month for forty none scents and 'give some good blow job' as @EugeneW might say.
Quoting Agent Smith
Thank you, friend!
It's a good one. I'm sure there are others that are just as good, but I can vouch for that one. I like that two philosophers with very different styles are placed side-by-side so that they illuminate one another. (Hume is also brought in for a little playdate with the boys).
Are you James Joyce?
[quote=J J FW]And Gemellus then said to Camellus: Yes, your brother. Obsolutely.[/quote]
The paradox is applicable to atoms. The front hook of the hooked sphere has to cross half way first, than 1/4, then 1/8, etc. The conclusion it can never reach its goal is not true.
Quoting 180 Proof
Planck didn't do that.
Quoting 180 Proof
But not for the mill, i.e. us.
Convergence in calculus is thought to have long solved this. But before that, the classical solution was the Aristotelian solution in the form of potential and actual infinity. Some would say that it's inadequate.
Also, you can alternatively reject mereological descent which is a prerequisite for the argument, in the form of space and time, but some would say that spawns worse problems (i.e. Ibn Sina's distance function argument) with regards to discrete geometry and the success of physics.
Not everyone is sold on the calculus solutions to Zeno's paradoxes or so they tell me.
I like Zeno of Elea. I like paradoxes. I recommend them to you too You look like a guy who'd enjoy transcendence every now and then, paradoxes (contradictions) provide one of the best ways for the mind to catch a glimpse of the next level of reality (beyond-mind).
I'm reading him, and I took 'obsolute' from the buttockbefriending bard, as the brick fit perfectly wall in the whole I was building, abbreviating an up-so-late we-solute.
I'm a bit unsettled by your confidence on the matter! Is it wise to be so cocksure? I thought skepticism was good for the soul (Orcale of Delphi: Surety, then ruin).
Anyway, your proposed solution to Zeno's paradox (infinitely divisibility of space has to be rejected) is fine by me.
Zeno proposed four different paradoxes, permuting the possibilities: Time / Space vs Continuous / Discrete. He showed that he can create a paradox for each of the four cases.
https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2011-12/20229/handouts/3%20Zeno.pdf
A worthy tribloom to shame's choice which must even diddle us.
There are good reasons to doubt, metaphysical reasons (necessity and possibility): appearance vs. reality. Buddha (maya), Plato (the allegory of the cave), Descartes (deus deceptor), basically some strain of skepticism.
Nevertheless you make an excellent point! Like certainty, doubt too needs justification.
He assumed time and space were discrete and have minimal 'parts' which cannot be broken up any smaller. He also assumed they are continuous and are infinitely divisible. Further, he assumed that time might be discrete and space might be continuous - and vice-versa. That is why he needed four different paradoxes, not just one.
Whale sud, front ! Drink you for not asking me to spore you my hypnopontificatory solemnitease ! I was afraid I'd be asked to stop spanking my nine scents.
A book by a genuine supporter of the Eleatic school, not those who were against it (even if respectable, as Platon was in Parmenides). And the interesting bit would be the paradoxes, that Zeno had described, but have now been lost to history.
Wanna see something really crazy?
[quote=Sherlock Holmes]A good cyclist does not need a high road.[/quote]
But still. Time can't be stopped and space can't be cut. How can spacetime intervals exist?
Time can't be stopped, yup. Time, in physics, is defined with clocks in mind. Smash all the clocks, stop playing the drums, digitalize your heart and let it go thump-thumpity-thump-thump, and Chronos will die (a noble death).
Space can't be cut, true. We can bend it though, when you bend too much, you undergo mitosis.
I'm trying something. :smile:
Good try! Will time still exist if we ban all clocky things, including mind clocks and hyperclocking? :chin:
Why didn't we evolve into wheel-rolling creatures?
His opponents thought that. He thought the world was one metaphysical thing, like Spinoza
Ah yes! Thanx for the link. Indeed I read about an indestructible indivisible reality (I dont agree with changeless). So they argued from contra, so to speak?
According to modern physics, motion is relative, not absolute. See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR1lU6DmLy6m9a1IBbs2NKx5XBaUIaBkcjQ984b_s_4O23ZX31OGYn7uAB0&v=a205YJsbBSQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0L0G064ucS76BpWhJd2rchmww1f64bu5CNooLkdBOKDB3Jk2VXvr-8_08&v=FdWMM6aXpYE&feature=youtu.be
But how can I not know the string goes around the marble if I move it around a marble? It's very tricky, but they say it's about B-time and the unified nature of the world, something both Zeno and Spinoza were getting at
Zeno said that the world can't be infinite yet it's infinitly divisible, and it can be finite because the division of nature goes on forever. String theory and quantum loop gravity speculate about discrete pieces of space, which would solve Zeno's paradox. The conflict between general relativity with it's singularities and quantum mechanics has partially to do with this question
Observations on arrival times of distant star photons show that space is not quantified (different wavelengths show no different arrival times, which would be the case if space is quantified). How could it? What determines when the Planck time is over? If everything is frozen for a Planck time, how can it continue? I think measurable time, like distance, is limited. If spacetime is quantified, how can a particle move from A to B in the first place? Which is not to say that the metric can't be quantified, like in quantum gravity, by gravitons informing it (explaining how spacetime gets its curvature, which general relativity doesn't explain)
Didn't the Eleatic philosophers thought space is undivisible (in the link)?
Yes. Zeno, Parmenides, and Mellisus thought the world one unity, one form
Quantified means discrete, right? If there is a series of discrete spaces with the spaces between them being meaningless then motion is getting stepping accross the path. But if space is infinitely divisible, then we have a distance that is finite from one point of view and infinite from another point of view. They say calculus solves this, but math has never been my strong suit
An observer moving relative tò you sees your space contracted,. Space doesn't seem infinite to some.
:lol: Sabrá Mandrake!
How do you envision discrete space? Say a discrete 2d one.
As one that self loops and so stays finite. Something discrete is an infinitesimal. It infinitely gets close to zero but never reaches it. Whether this solves or merely repeats Zeno's paradox has not be settled in science
What you mean by self loops? How does a particle move in it?
Aint the paradox resolved in science?
The theory of loop quantum gravity, along with string theory, propose that matter is not infinitely divisible but they could be wrong. I'm not a mathematician so there's only so much I know about this. Those theories want to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics in favor of quantum mechanics where there are discrete quanta instead of singularities
I don't think string theory quantizes gravity by quantizing space and time. Spacetime is treated classically and is treated as flat. That's called background dependent. Gravitons move in this flat space. Loop QG quantizes spacetime itself. It's kind of difficult to perceive a quantized space. That's why I asked for 2d. Or 1d even. A quantized 3d space isn't made up of small 3d cubes (or 2d squares). In LQG you often see interlocked loops but that's not how to look at it either. How can discrete time know when to move on one Planck time?
Michio Kaku says strings are one dimensional yet discrete. There is no easy way out of these issues without advanced math
He means that strings are just the same as discrete 0d particles. But 1d. Small line pieces. Ridiculous. Particles are made from 6d space of which 3 large dimensions are curled up to Planck-sized circles, an Cartesian product S1xS1xS1.