6th poll: the most important metaphysician in all times
Let's discuss the most important metaphysician in all times.
There are 37 options.
Note:
Anselm was omitted in the poll of philosopher of religion, so he is now included in the list.
Wittgenstein is closer to philosopher of language than metaphysician, but due to his early philosophy, he is included here.
Hume is omitted due to his rejection to metaphysics...
There are 37 options.
Note:
Anselm was omitted in the poll of philosopher of religion, so he is now included in the list.
Wittgenstein is closer to philosopher of language than metaphysician, but due to his early philosophy, he is included here.
Hume is omitted due to his rejection to metaphysics...
Comments (111)
I voted for Dummett. I like the way he turns traditional metaphysical disputes into disputes about truth.
I voted for David Lewis, anyway.
True
Wittgenstein applied Kant's critique to the presuppositions of thought, language
Schopenhauer platonised Kant
Spinoza is Aristotle sneaked into the form of Cartesianism
Aquinas is an improved Aristotle
Hegel tries to Aristotelianize Kant
Plotinus is an appendage of Plato
David Lewis - fuck, are we even putting that guy on the same level with those previously listed?
St. Augustine is Plato by another name
Kierkegaard - is he even a metaphysician?
Russell - The Hume copy-cat
Wilfried Sellars - a recast of Kant, except of a transcendental realist kind
Plantinga - a latter-day St. Anselm coming up with novel, but ultimately petty theological arguments
St. Anselm - the result of when you put too much Plato in your philosophy, and too little Aristotle
Dummett - doesn't even appear on my radar.
Really - all of philosophy can be reduced to three words - Plato, Aristotle and Kant. These are the well-springs that have given birth to almost everything that philosophy has to offer. There are exceptions like Kierkegaard (although you could argue that here lies a Platonist in hidden clothes), Nietzsche (although again you could argue that here lies an Aristotelian who disparges anything that has to do with Platonism in the modern world), and their ilk, but they are always merely reactions against the mainstream of Plato/Aristotle/Kant, and thus ultimately also defined by the triumvirate.
So who is the greatest in terms of the three? I'm not sure - it depends whose metaphysics you find more cogent. Personally, I lean away from Plato, and towards Aristotle and Kant. Plato spends too much time in the sky, and too little on the ground, Nietzsche was right. He's lost in his own mind, Plato. Perhaps if I had to make a choice between Aristotle and Kant - I'd pick Aristotle, because he was extremely pragmatic and his expertise was so wide ranging that he literarily was all the science that existed for more than a thousand years - no one was ahead of him. Kant sometimes, however, does have deeper ethical insights than Aristotle, and it's very difficult to "clash" their two different metaphysics, because they proceed from different presuppositions entirely. When I study Kantianism on its terms, I am a Kantian, when I study Aristotelianism, I'm an Aristotelian. I can't really see significant internal criticisms that would crumble either one, and therefore it's difficult to choose objectively. So at this point, I will unashamedly rely on my ethical bias, and cast my vote with two arms and two feet on Aristotle.
David Lewis is famous for several things in metaphysics: counterfactual theory of causation, Humean supervenience, possible world realism, reformed analysis of dispositions, metaphysics of holes, and so on. If you don't know about him, you aren't smart enough...
'Everything is possible' means 'everything has its counterparts'. Have you ever read his counterpart theory? I think that your accusation is not justified.
Obviously because by the principle of contradiction, nothing can be eliminated, and every A has a ~A. But again that's saying nothing significant. It's lazy. Every fact has a counter-fact. So? Do I need to postulate an infinity of possible worlds in order to describe reality? That's nonsense.
Your interpretation of Lewis is not standard. Maybe you don't understand Lewis.
What you criticize Lewis are all that Lewisian philosophers respond like "what the fuck is that guy talking about?"
>:O The problem with Descartes is that he got almost nothing right. His ideas are the absolute worst that probably any philosopher has had. Cartesian doubt, the homunculus, substance dualism, mind-body problems, etc. Absolute disaster! Philosophy would have been better off if it had been spared of the tragedy that was Descartes. That's why philosophers after Descartes, like Spinoza, tried to dress Aristotelianism as it was passed through Averroes into the clothes of Cartesianism which was gaining popularity, merely to save philosophy from a great sophistry. And after the likes of Spinoza, Hume et al. laughed at Descartes!
However, Descartes is smarter than you.
Unfortunately, even taking into account my meagre intelligence, I doubt that's the case >:O
Yes, or maybe what Lewis says is useless bullshit.
Quoting mosesquine
Why does Lewis' metaphysics matter? He has no way to prove there exists even another single possible world. All his framework is empty sophistry, and it is completely useless. Who, in their right mind, would create an infinity of possible worlds in order to explain this single reality that we experience... that's nuts - it is crazy! Has he forgotten to shave with Occam's Razor?
I think it's enough that you never read Lewis really. You proved that you don't understand Lewis.
Lewis is the philosopher who can say about you: The head of Agustino has 100 holes.
Lewis can cut holes in your head.
Yeah in some possible world, I'm sure it does >:O
Quoting mosesquine
In this world, Lewis is dead, so he can't do anything. He can only do stuff in the possible worlds in which he still exists... >:O
Your information about Lewis is 100% incorrect. What are you attacking? Even Wikipedia entry is better than you.
Then present the correct view, stop sitting there doing nothing except pointing fingers.
Quoting mosesquine
Let's see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lewis_(philosopher)
It says: "very few philosophers accept Lewis's particular brand of modal realism" - exactly as I expected. Relegated to the dust bin of history.
Very few philosophers accept modal realism, not because it is useless, but because it is extreme. Many philosophers endorse that modal realism contributes to metaphysics.
You merely show that you hate Lewis. Lewis is smarter than you, anyway.
Good for him! >:O
Quoting mosesquine
Yeah, a small picayune and insignificant contribution to metaphysics, I too agree.
Many philosophers think that modal realism significantly contributes to metaphysics.
Your attack on Lewisian modal realism has no specific content. You're just saying it is useless. You're just saying it is insignificant. I don't think that it is useless. I don't think that it is insignificant. You just hate Lewis because you don't understand him.
Actually I gave quite specific criticism.
Quoting Agustino
Which is fair - because modal realism wants to create an infinity of unnecessary entities - the possible worlds - which it actually claims exist.
Quoting Agustino
The fundamental distinction that Lewisian modal realism relies on is empty of content - it doesn't state anything about reality precisely because it states everything.
You on the other hand have done nothing except point fingers and claim I don't understand Lewis or modal realism. When I pressed you to stop pointing fingers and explain/justify modal realism, you ignored it. That's no philosophy.
We can think about the way things could have been. Anything thinkable can exist. Possible worlds (= the ways things could have been) are thinkable. Therefore, possible worlds can exist. This is a summary of the reason for modal realism. I think that your objection to modal realism is not about it above.
Okay.
Quoting mosesquine
How do you know this?
Quoting mosesquine
Okay.
Quoting mosesquine
Okay.
Quoting mosesquine
In what sense is this realism? From "they can exist" to they DO exist is a long way.
I say "the reason for modal realism". You say every premise above is okay, and you accept modal realism.
No i haven't. Have you not seen the question?
Quoting Agustino
And this isn't modal realism by the way. To be modal realism you have to prove to me that possible worlds not only CAN exist, but actually do exist. If they merely can exist, then I don't give a shit about them.
It's logic. Conclusions follow from premises. Good arguments are formally valid arguments. My argument is formally valid. You say that the premises and the conclusion are all okay. Modal realism wins.
Your attack is not on modal realism, but on the reason for modal realism. I defended the latter. Modal realism won.
First, the conclusion is inconsequential, even if the premises are true (for the conclusion to be consequential you have to show me that not only CAN the possible worlds exist, but that they actually do exist - Lewis doesn't only claim that the possible worlds CAN exist. He claims they DO exist). Second of all, I disagree that whatever is thinkable necessarily can exist.
Yeah sure, you can disappear from the Earth and appear on Mars tomorrow as well. Does that mean anything? No. Logical possibility doesn't tell us anything. So all you will have proven - if you settle the premise that I questioned - is that possible worlds CAN logically exist - in other words, they are not logically incoherent. But neither is you flying to Mars today. Does that mean you'll fly? No. Likewise, your argument doesn't mean that possible worlds do, in fact, exist.So you're not even talking about modal realism, in fact, you have no clue what you're talkin' bout.
You are a stupid idiot. Therefore, you are a stupid idiot. This argument is better than your objection to modal realism.
So, what's your argument against modal realism?
No, that's not an argument, that's called begging the question. Furthermore could an idiot be "intelligent"? >:O
Quoting mosesquine
The burden of proof is on you to prove that modal realism is the case. Not that it COULD BE the case, but that it ACTUALLY is. Do you understand that simple difference?
As for what my argument against modal realism is - quite simple. First, there is no need to postulate an infinity of ontological entities (the possible worlds) - it doesn't help in anyway, hence why do it? (Occam's Razor). Second, the existence of possible worlds is inconsequential to this world by definition, hence pragmatically unimportant and uninformative.
Quoting Agustino
In other words, the mere fact that we can think about unicorns does not (by itself) entail that unicorns can exist in some world other than our own, let alone that they do exist in such a world.
It's an argument. The structure goes as follows:
A
Therefore, A
It is proved by natural deduction as follows:
1. A
// A
2. asm: ~A
3. A (from 1, reiteration)
4. A (from 2; 2 contradicts 3, reductio ad absurdum)
Q. E. D.
The argument is formally proved as valid.
Logic lesson
1. Arguments don't have a single premise. Arguments always involve more than one premise. Premises in arguments cannot be proved, because, if all premises had to be proven, then no arguments could be proven because every argument would require further arguments to prove its premises, which would require further arguments to prove the premises of those arguments and so on ad infinitum.
2. A proposition of the form "A, therefore A" is a tautology - a repetition. Tautologies do not prove anything, nor do they form parts of arguments.
If a motorcycle runs, then Agustino is an idiot.
A motorcycle runs.
Therefore, Agustino is an idiot.
This argument has two premises. The proof goes as follows:
1. (?x)(Fx & Gx) ? Ha
2. (?x)(Fx & Gx)
// Ha
3. asm: ~Ha
4. ~(?x)(Fx & Gx) (from 1 and 3, modus tollens)
5. Ha (from 3; 2 contradicts 4, reductio ad absurdum)
Q. E. D.
Here's an example of one-premise arguments:
Agustino is a stupid idiot.
Therefore, Agustino is an idiot.
The structure goes as follows:
A & B
Therefore, B
You should look into logic textbooks.
Quoting mosesquine
Yes this argument is formally valid, however it isn't sound, because premise 1 is false.
Quoting mosesquine
No - that's called begging the question, merely re-stating what is already in the premise(s) in the "argument's" conclusion. In any case - that doesn't qualify as a fucking argument, but as a logical fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Quoting mosesquine
Yeah, I think you should look outside of logic textbooks - you've clearly been looking there so much that you have lost all reason.
Every formally valid argument is not begging the question.
I think you should maybe have a look in the mirror. I never said this one is begging the question:
Quoting mosesquine
But rather this one is begging the question:
Quoting mosesquine
Now I suggest you follow that link and figure out what begging the question means, so next time you are aware of it.
And I never claimed that "every formally valid argument is begging the question". Just your second argument is (and by the way, to beg the question, an argument always must be valid - otherwise it has much bigger problems than just begging the question). I advise you to close your mouth and keep it closed, or otherwise you'll just be humiliating yourself even more.
'P, Therefore, P' Without Circularity by Roy A. Sorensen
Possibly.
>:O
Ha!
:-! I would rather not be mentioned at all, than be mentioned in jest
Not quite. The point about possible worlds is they do not exist. Rather than a state of the world, they are a logic truth, necessary and unaffected by what exist in the world. To pose the question: "Can possible worlds exist?" simply doesn't make sense. Since they never exist, there is no question of doubt or possibility to consider.
And thus modal realism is false, which is my point.
It wasn't your point. You were more or less trying to use metaphysics to take out (the necessity) of radical contingency. In your argument, you treated logical possibility as if it was like a state, almost like we needed to observe those logical possibilities actualised if it were true they were logical possibilities.
Everything and anything is, indeed, possible. Whatever Lewis's mistakes, it is not wrong to say that. What you are trying to do here is use metaphysics to constrain the world. The reason you think it's the lazy answer is it means metaphysics don't necessitate anything in the world.
If "everything and anything is possible" is true, we can't use metaphysics to judge anything, we will be left only with disruptions of the actual world, rather than being able to rely on metaphysics to guide us (radical contingency, for example, takes out Aristotle's metaphysics). Rather than identifying what laziness in this context (trying to logical possibility when descriptions of the actual world are relevant), you are deny the necessary truth of logical possibility to keep metaphysic relevant for dealing with the actual world.
No you don't get it. The point isn't that they are logical possibilities - which they could be for all I care. The problem is that according to modal realism, there really and actually exist other possible worlds. Like those possible worlds aren't just possibilities - they are actual. That's what I have a beef with.
[quote= Hegel]
Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a Theodicaea, — a justification of the ways of God, — which Leibnitz attempted metaphysically in his method, i.e. in indefinite abstract categories, — so that the ill that is found in the World may be comprehended, and the thinking Spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil.
[/quote]
Ah Deleuze is even missing from the list...You should've picked Deleuze's Prince of the Philosophers maybe :D
Kant, because he took out its false teeth.
And so many since have desperately (and futilely) tried to put them back in.
Peirce would turn over in his grave at being called a metaphysician. :D
If you believe that anything and everything is possible what would you say that logical possibility even refers to?
When he says this though, I think he means that everything that obeys the principle of non-contradiction is possible.
That wouldn't be anything and everything though. Anything and everything includes contradictions. You couldn't say, "Well, anything and everything possible," because that would obviously be vacuous/circular in this case.
Which is the point I made initially with regards to modal realism.
If you have a complain about modal realism, then provide citations.
Provide citations for having a complaint? LOL
You're a joke man >:O I can't be bothered so much with you, honestly.
I am 100% sure that you never touched Lewis's books. Your opinions about Lewis are formed by secondary sources.
It's worse than circular. It would be incoherent-- the logic expression of non-contradiction entails that contradictions aren't possible. The supposed argument of "anything being possible, including contradictions" is incoherent.
To argue, for example, that it's possible that an non-existing state exists, contradiction itself would have to be rejected.
Which is why I didn't bother clarifying "anything is possible" with "except contradictions." Contradictions are excluded from the possible by definition, so it doesn't make sense to treat them like they are something that could be true.
To say: "Might it be that a contradiction is true? Isn't something that could be? is just incoherent.
But you'd be saying that anything is possible . . . as long as it's possible. Which isn't saying anything insofar as "anything is possible" goes.
That question is based on a logic error. It assumes that "anything is possible" can include contradictions.
By the definition of contradiction, this is not the case. Logically, one cannot say "anything is possible" and be referring to contradictions. In other words, the question is posed by those who are ignoring what contradictions are.
It's a sort of "magical thinking" if you will. It's a bit like belief in the supernatural or "miracles"-- a logic error made to say something can occur when it cannot happen at all.
I think it's a bit unjustifiably rude to lump the supernatural and miracles in with contradictions.
Which is true-- one can only describe a possible outcome if it is a possible.
This is not a "circular" argument. One is not "deriving" that a "possible outcome" is possible becasue its possible. It describing what it takes for someone to be talking about a possible outcome.
If I'm to talk about a computer then I need to be referring to a computer. I can't talk about a rock and be referring to the computer. Possibility is similar-- I can't talk about a possible outcome without referring to a possible outcome.
In your question, you are trying to say that talking about a impossible outcome (contradiction) can amount to talking about a possible outcome (such that a contradiction is a possible state).
Actually, I'm just saying that "all possible things are possible" is a lot different rhetorically that "anything and everything is possible." Even though it turns out that you'd be saying the same thing in both cases.
As states of the world, something the world does, the events classed under both are possible-- a entity that cures disease, creates life, hurls lighting bolts or talks to people is perfectly coherent; any of them might be. It's just that they are all states of the world, all nature acting.
I'm referring to the logic of "miracles" and the "supernatural." The problem is with the misuse of "possibility" to appeal to" mystery" to claim something can be, even in the face of falsification of incoherence. "Contradictions are possible" is how this line of thought works. When the world doesn't show the event claimed (the acting God, the ghost, a magic spell, etc.,etc.), it's still understood to be possible outcome, to avoid the realisation it's false--i.e. God is not there healing anyone, but's that okay, for the contradiction of God healing someone without the presence God healing someone is a possible outcome; it still might be true.
Only if you are accepting the incoherent argument that contradictions are possible.
To someone who is thinking in terms of logic, "anything and everything is possible," just means any outcome that's not a contradiction is possible. The mention of possibility has already excluded contradictions from the question.
I don't understand your points here. God healing someone is not a logical contradiction, for example. And what does "falsification of incoherence" mean?
It is when there's no God doing healing.
I'm referring to the misuse of "possibility" to then claim it might still be God who did the healing. The supposed "mystery" of how the world works, to keep alive the claim about the world which has shown to be false, so even when the absence of a healing God is shown, it's still considered possible.
It was meant to be "falsification or incoherence"-- just a typo I missed.
It is like a general who has trapped his opponent and his army within a valley surrounded by flammable material, and thereby starts firing burning arrows at him. And when all matters finally look settled, and victory certain, a pouring rain commences which puts out the fire and thereby places him at a grand and unexpected disadvantage. From his point of view - God has ruined him, and saved his opponent. It's a way of relating with what happened. When God causes the rain, he doesn't cause it in the same way a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball causes it to move at such and such a speed in such and such a direction. It is rather a metaphysical event.
This isn't God used in a political sense. It's deeper than that, it's a way of relating with what happened, with the primal ground of existence. This isn't God used in the sense of "Uhh you're a woman, time to go to the kitchen where your God-given place is" - that is the incomprehensible (and incoherent/unethical) mysterianism that you criticise. There are roughly two different notions of God at play. The God of politics - which is used as a reason to enforce certain norms of behaviour upon people who aren't educated enough to otherwise understand and obey, and who is misused by some to enforce their tyrannical whims and fancies upon those close to them upon whom they wield direct power. And the God of the world - which is a description of the relationship of man with the eternal as it shines through in the fractures and breaks of history. This is also the logic of miracles.
In fact - if the world wasn't broken - if the world was, as per Hegel, an Absolute Spirit - then God wouldn't exist. It's only because the Absolute is broken and never absolute that God exists - or rather that God shines through the cracks in the sphere of the world. The world sub specie aeternitatis is the condition for the possibility of the world sub specie durationis, and shines through it.
And politically, this is what the socialists, POMO, etc. (and other such "last men" as per Nietzsche) don't understand. The world can't be made unbroken, can't be made whole, and in the very process of trying to make it whole we break it - God is dead and we have killed Him - the crisis of nihilism (and Nietzsche isn't merely describing the empirical loss of belief in the God of religion and its replacement with, say, the God of socialism - he's describing a metaphysical loss). Democracy, institution after institution - to what end? We go around sealing the cracks in the world. But this very sealing gives rise to its destruction - to Trump for example. The levelling down - the flattening of the earth that pomo attempts - reducing the virign to just the same as the slut - the eschatological attempt to bring the end of history within history - instead of realising that the end of history is the escape from history, and hence time, and thus it can never be an event in history. The democratic instinct par excellence gives birth to totalitarianism - to the loss of being. That's also one of the meanings of original sin. Another one is the paradise we experience outside of time, and the infinite loss we incur as we fall into time. Paradise -> Paradise lost is what we all experience. To be innocent is to live in Paradise unburdened by "it has been".
Aquinas and Aristotle believed something of extreme importance. Evil exists only in-so-far as being is lacking. The criminal isn't evil in-so-far as his pure being is in question, he's evil only in-so-far as he lacks compassion, he lacks virtue, etc. The fall into time is sin because it chips away at being. Thus, being is always already beyond good and evil - beyond the class of distinctions, which becomes possible only under the flow of time - of becoming. To become is the very essence of time - it is to be directed towards what one is to become - and hence to have the distinctions of future (what I will be - the goal), present (what I am), and the past (what I have been).
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/leibniz1714b.pdf
So your claim is that most people wouldn't read "anything and everything is possible" any differently than "all possible things are possible"?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
??? That wouldn't make it a logical contradiction.
I don't think they would, unless they're in some special philosophical mood such that they will even think about logical contradictions. When I tell someone "anything is possible", they think that any imaginable empirical event is possible - but any such event is always already constrained by the PNC.
It's not a contradiction because God healing someone; and 'no God being there anywhere" exemplify two entirely different and hence incommensurate contexts.
Contradictory beliefs are only possible in scenarios where something can be shown to someone that they were previously unaware of that contradicts a belief they are holding. There is no possibility of showing someone "the absence of a healing God", so there can be no contradictictory belief in a healing God.
Yeah, I don't know what the heck Willow was thinking on that one.
What Willow was thinking is simple. He (or she) believes that some things are not logically possible because, when one tries to work them out (work out their implications), one finds that it is impossible for them to be worked out. This is similar to how Spinoza proceeds to justify his moves in his Ethics.
Yeah, but that would make them logically incoherent, not logically impossible.
If they are logically incoherent, then they are impossible.
Yeah I should have qualified that I meant 'logically incoherent to us'. It's always logically possible that something might not seem logically coherent, but be possible nonetheless.
Then the onus is on you, or any other metaphysician, to prove how it might be possible. It's absurd to claim "Hurr Hurr it might be possible you know! >:) " without even being able to show how it might be possible. The proof is in the doing.
You are misunderstanding. I am suggesting that what is possible for metaphysics does not reflect the totality of what is possible. What the mystics speak of cannot be explained by the metaphysicians; they will always become bogged down in aporias and antinomies, as Kant clearly showed.
I don't think of myself as a metaphysician, in any case. I don't think that highly of it as a discipline at all; it's really just an arcane intellectual exercise in explicating what is imaginable to us, and how we might think the imaginable relates to what is. Metaphysics produces only models or maps; and we all (should) know the map is not the territory, right?
That is nonsense. Metaphysics is the science of Being/Existence itself. If something is metaphysically impossible, then it is impossible and full stop.
I disagree; I would say there is no science of being; but there is an art of being. If metaphysics is a science, then why do all the metaphysicians disagree with one another? Are you saying that if metaphysicians think something is impossible then it is impossible?
Because some of them are wrong? Because metaphysics has political ramifications, and thus certain truths can't be recognised without thereby recognising their political implications?
Quoting John
No - because it's possible that the metaphysician is wrong, but this would have to be shown.
I don't think metaphysics can be an exact science, because its 'truths' cannot be intersubjectively confirmed or disconfirmed by observation. Only the kind of a priori analysis that Kant undertook may be confirmed by all as self-evident, but even here heaps of philosophers disagree.
Quoting Agustino
I don't believe it is possible to "show" such a thing.
This is still a metaphysical question.
Quoting John
Ehm... in what sense can Kant be confirmed by others as self-evident? And what does that have to do with his method?
Kant made a foundational assumption. That assumption is that the faculties participate in perception and give structure - or form - to the perceptions. We impose the forms on reality, not the other way around. Once that assumption is in place, of course everything runs smoothly. Just grant him that little (actually big) point. This was all of Kant's imaginative leap. Then he renders traditional metaphysics to result in antinomies - and no wonder! If we impose the forms on Reality, then we have access only to appearances and not to things-in-themselves. And hence when we try to reach things-in-themselves we reach the antinomies. Woah! What a grand discovery! >:O You put the rabbit in the hat, and you take the rabbit out. It's simple. The rest of Kant is the working out of the logical implications of his central thought. But has Kant ever asked himself, perhaps by chance, what happens if our faculties are not, in fact, the source of the forms of space, time, causality and the rest? What then?
So what? Even if that is so, it doesn't follow that metaphysics is a science?
Quoting Agustino
He considered his method to be an a priori method. If this is true then his conclusions would be self-evidently true to all unbiased rational minds. I say "if this is true" because it is by no means uncontroversial. Think of Quine's rejection between the a priori/ a posteriori distinction, for example. Quine was an arch empiricist, though, so i obviously would not agree with him. It is this very possibility of genuine rational disagreement between thinkers that ensures that metaphysics cannot be a science.
No but it follows that if you're interested to talk about this, you should try to show why it isn't - or rather can't be - a science.
Quoting John
Bullshit, address the specifics:
Quoting Agustino
Kant was faced with a problem. How to explain the fact that mathematics models the world so well... well let's see, how to explain it? (he even asks, for example in the Prolegomena - How is science at all possible? >:O How is mathematics at all possible? >:O ) Simple! The structure of the world, which mathematics models, is created by our mind - it's the form of space and time. So something imposed by the mind, can of course be modelled and understood by the mind. That explains why mathematics is so powerful - except it doesn't. But Kant didn't know about non-Euclidean geometry. He tried to do metaphysics by starting from science and going the other way around. Bullshit - Aristotle illustrated why Metaphysics must always be first philosophy. And it is first philosophy for Kant too - he just doesn't realise it, and sneaks in a critical assumption to explain science, which is never, afterwards, metaphysically assessed and judged. If you attempt to do metaphysics not as first philosophy, but instead make its foundation in, say, science, then you fall or climb with science. But science isn't apodeictic - thus neither will your metaphysics be. Instead of heeding Kant's system as Kant requests them, anyone who henceforth wants to engage in Metaphysics would better heed Aristotle:
"Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions"
It’s an incoherence. What you are describing understands God to be an existing actor. This is the logic of “miracles.” The existing actor, all powerful and amazing, literally does the impossible, performs the action the world could never do itself. No doubt it is a relationship to the world, an understanding of events that have occurred,but it’s one which lacks understanding and imagination. From the first instance, they were wrong to think the world couldn’t being anew. The fracture is only between what the expected the world to be and what it did. God didn’t ruin the general. The world did. And it always could. Nothing in the world is has the power of precluding the possibility of its destruction. The general is ignorant by his own hubris. He mistakenly thought it was impossible for him to loss. History is broken in the way the general thinks. It’s just the history the general thought was so was never there. Nothing in the world is pre-determined.
The “metaphysical” relationship of “miracles” is the mistake of logic. It maintains God acted, even in the face of a world that does otherwise, because it thinks itself concerned with the metaphysical rather than the empirical. It mistakes the metaphysical (necessity, an imagine image of the world) for the empirical (what the world does), and thinks becasue it speaking about “logic” it can say stuff about the world without reference to the world, in turn generating the schism of “miracles” and “broken history” when the world defies their expectations.
Nietzsche only left God somewhat dead. While he identified separation, killing the idea of unity, he did not escape the expectation of unity. For Nietzsche, the crisis of Nihilism appears precisely because he cannot see beyond the expectation of unity. Ethics and value supposedly turn from something eternal to only an finite whim, all because unity it lost. In effect, Nietzsche is making the same ransom found in many proselytisers (religious or otherwise)— “Value requires unity (God), else it is all meaningless.” And so do the “last men” who follow him. For many a modernist and even post-modernist, God is not really dead. To some of them, we will finally have unity through science, through technology or social acceptance. Nietzsche said we killed God, but many of us only killed religious tradition, including him to a large extent. The metaphysics of God, the confusion of metaphysics for the empirical, notions of a predetermined world of unity, all carried on strongly. In the modern world, many say their is separation, but a lot of them don’t think it’s true.
God only dies when the world becomes the locus of possibility. Where the world sub specie durationis is finally understood to besub specie durationis, rather than being considered a pre-determined outcome of the world sub specie aeternitatis. It’s an understanding where there are no “miracles” because no-one has the hubris to think the world is predetermined to their expectations, be that winning a battle, death or solving a social problem. The world is known to have the power to form a new state of system that destroys what we expected or desired. In it, we understand not only is history broken (separated), but that all are actions are put towards to building a broken history (some state of a separated world) and this is where the infinite of ethics and value are expressed— with any question of ethics or value, our goal is not to bring unity to the world, but rather defend its separation, to protect important states of sub specie durationisfrom destruction or destroy instances of sub specie durationis which are vile. Politics doesn’t seek unity. It defends separation.
The virgin isn’t the same as the slut. Either is separation sub specie durationis, a distinct state, which is (sub specie aeternitatis) worth defending (to the postmodernist, who is right here- but that’s another argument). No-one is trying to make the world unbroken, to give the world unity. Everyone is defending a separation and that’s important. The only question is whether one realises that or is still deluded into thinking the world can be unified.
You are still deluded. You read politics as if its goal was unity, as if our institution were made to progress to unity, to a pre-determined world in which there were no loss or problems. Democracy isn’t made for an unified or eternal end. It serves the present, to defend particular sub specie durationis states, to avoid a totalitarianism government in its presence. That’s why it’s important, not some ultimate end where we get to sit in a world where totalitarianism is impossible. Our choices and actions may always erode or overturn democracy. Electing dictators is not new. Erosion of democratic systems is not new. It’s happened many times before all over the world. The world is always destroying its own. Sometimes this follows an institution created to solve a problem. Indeed, sometimes it even a response of result of solving a problem (e.g. cane toads in Australia, the impacts of DDT on the environment, etc., etc.). That’s what it means to live in a world of possibility. Nothing ensures we will get what we want. History (or rather the predeterminate) gives us nothing.
The crisis of Nihilism is the failure to accept this, a pining for the predetermined world immune to destruction and change. The world without Sin is not expressed or even sought in the death of God. Indeed, such an idea is the fantasy of God, the unified world in which there is no loss, in which Sin is impossible, where the world is predetermined to be as expected and just, a fantasy which views ethics not as a question of world action defending separations that matter, but one in which the world has no value or significance or ethics (i.e. “without God, there is not meaning, value or morality”). In this respect, it far precedes Nietzsche and the modern world. We might say the crisis of Nihilism is the belief in and expectation of the unified world.
Not in the sense that I am an actor when I hit a billiard ball and it moves a certain way.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
As I said, God is a way of relating to the world. You put God as just some other thing standing besides the world.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You're not saying anything different - just using a different word for it. You're relating to it in a different way. Furthermore, by saying that, you're missing something. When the general says that, it's not his hubris that has defeated him. That's not what he's saying, I was too careless/arrogant and therefore I lost. He's saying I couldn't have done anything to win. Winning just wasn't in the cards. I did my best, but my best wasn't sufficient. I executed the best strategy I could, and I executed it in the best way I could. Still not enough.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nietzsche would have preferred that God wasn't dead. His whole secret ambition was always to revive God. The fact that God was dead was a problem for him - a problem to be solved, to be overcome.
And he was right.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I think he did. The idea of unity and expectation of unity (sub specie durationis) is anti-thetical to the idea of God.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes, those who seek to level down the world - they still think it can be unified within history. Those who seek to maintain the tensions of the world, understand, as Augustine did in his City of God for example, that the end of history isn't within history. Kant, and all the moderns misunderstood this. Especially Marx and Hegel.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
But you don't understand my point. My point is precisely this, that the world isn't immune to destruction and change, and can't be immune to them, and the more we seek to actualise those things in history, the farther we get from them. And Nietzsche understood this too. This is trying to bring the end of history - which is a SPIRITUAL happening - into empirical, physical history.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree. And Nietzsche does too. And perhaps Plato has foreseen this waaaaay before anyone else ;)
Which is why he has an expectation of unity. Rather than treat and accept the world as separated, he tries to pull it back together into unity, as is separation was a problem. Instead of realising separation and the value those states express (an infinite of value), he thinks it's a problem, that unity must be returned if their is to be meaning-- the absence of God isn't realised as how meaning is expressed (i.e. each separated state expresses meaning, which is why some things are important and other not) but thought to be the absence of meaning (the world must have unity to be meaningful).
You've missed mine. I'm saying that's an illusion born from the belief and expectation of unity-- the breaking of our philosophy from that tradition. History is full of people achieving changes they sought to make. It's also full of unintended outcomes and failures to meet expectations.
Things seem further away because we expect what we are seeking, even though it hasn't happen yet. We make the mistake of taking our eye off the world and only focusing our imagined outcome (which is frequently some notion of a unified world).
The reason "the more the more we seek to actualise" seems to result in goal further away is because it's an action in response to the world response the world pushing back against attempts to change it. As the number of rejections build, so do things like violence. A campaign for economic equality turns into a violent totalitarian action, with plenty of scapegoats, when the rich an powerful refuse to make any change, for example. The expectation of the unified world is so strong, that all manner of Sin becomes acceptable under the promise of achieving it. That's the cost of believing in God-- one's imagined world (unity, metaphysics) overpowers awareness of the world (separation, empirical), to a point where can no longer see what's being done in the name of progress or justice.
Wasn't my point. His hubris has him shocked at the outcome-- he thought it was impossible for him to loss-- and defines that he thinks that its a "miracle (the impossible)" rather than just the world doing what it might. The point is not about why he lost, but how he makes a logical error in reasoning about his loss-- the thought he was beyond the possibility losing. Rather than an issue with the world, it's a problem with his metaphysics.
But, I've already given the reason for thinking that. Philosophical ideas cannot be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed, and thus no intersubjective consensus is possible. People agree or disagree with phislsophical ideas on the basis of their own intutions.
That presumes that empirical confirmation is required for intersubjective consensus. Do you have empirical confirmation for the meaning of the look a girl gives you?! :-* And yet there seems to be intersubjective consensus between you two... Let me be a good Kantian as you like, and ask a great question! How is intersubjective consensus at all possible?
Sure, but in science there is determinate consensus. There is no determinate consensus in regard to smiles or artworks. For me, 'consensus' is the wrong term in human contexts; there I would use 'sympathy', 'empathy' or 'communion', instead.
I think intersubjective consensus is formalized, logical matter. Logically, if we are both looking at the same tree, then the existence of the tree must be independent of any and all individual perceptions of it.