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TheWillowOfDarkness

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No. I'm making a logical point. The infinite set has members (... a,b,c,d...). Take any particular member, let's say "a", which is the mode of John's ...
February 23, 2017 at 00:27
Um, modes. Things are self-defined in Spinoza's philosophy. It doesn't use the correlationist account where everything must be logically defined by so...
February 23, 2017 at 00:13
...you say the opposite, that God (activity) is the modes, in the next clause. God is activity and NOT the modes. God, the activity, is over and above...
February 23, 2017 at 00:06
That God has infinite modes does not mean God is the modes. This is the point you are missing. God is not the modes (including experiences like ours)....
February 22, 2017 at 23:40
When you claimed God created unification-- that specifies God changes, turns from someone who has not created something to someone who has. God become...
February 22, 2017 at 00:25
...the point was your account violates that. Where God has a beginning, a "how," is a causal actor (causing unification), God becomes a limited finite...
February 22, 2017 at 00:06
The point is God is everywhere. Since the "whole" is necessary, the expression of all knowledge, all experience, all things, etc., God cannot have a b...
February 21, 2017 at 23:52
For sure, and it's that point of tautology which most metaphysics doesn't understand. In the traditions of metaphysics, the necessity of self-defintio...
February 21, 2017 at 01:40
Aside from the metaphysical point itself, to understand self-defintion and avoid the metaphysical errors thinking otherwise produces, there is no reas...
February 20, 2017 at 23:48
I know that. It's that very point which is gravely mistaken. It's just the opposite. There is no finite state which is defined in terms of another. Se...
February 20, 2017 at 23:30
No-one said otherwise. We've never claimed to be Substance. If Substance matters to us, it is a state of our experience, it is a mode we care about. W...
February 20, 2017 at 23:17
Alas, I cannot pus an image in front of you that can do the work of your intuition or imagination. What else would self-defintion be? Defining someone...
February 20, 2017 at 23:10
That's what you are getting wrong: we do know what it means for something to define itself. Rather than "meaningless" because it doesn't specify a phe...
February 20, 2017 at 22:59
For Spinoza, thought is not existing experiences. It's logical meaning. Without experiencing entities, it is still around. Thought can be around witho...
February 20, 2017 at 22:54
That's wrong. We do know what the activity is: self-definition. The activity is comprehended. Metaphysics for us (or anyone else for that matter). You...
February 20, 2017 at 22:43
The question of "domain" of knowledge or logical doesn't make sense. The infinite allows no such distinctions. If there was a split between "human log...
February 20, 2017 at 02:17
That's just missing the point. To even ask whether the logical has existence doesn't make sense. It doesn't. Logic is true regardless of existence. Yo...
February 19, 2017 at 23:35
More or less the opposite. The infinite is Real, rather than the world. It's sort of an inversion of how we usually think about things. Usually, we th...
February 19, 2017 at 00:24
Spinoza's point is that God is outside the world. God cannot be part of the world nor inhere in the world without being, on God's own terms, finite. (...
February 18, 2017 at 23:48
Your objection to the analogy relies on misreading it. Agustino isn't claiming that existing dreams are real and that modes (which includes existing d...
February 18, 2017 at 23:11
In the sense you are asking, none. Substance is not a state of the world or presence of a transcedent realm. Rather it is a necessary expression of ex...
February 18, 2017 at 22:22
That's the common misreading of Spinoza as a pantheist, where God is misread as the world. It's drawn from taking Spinoza's talk of necessay self-defi...
February 16, 2017 at 22:46
There is no difference between those forms of necessity. Independennce of everything places something outside existing states. God cannot be "personal...
February 16, 2017 at 03:33
I don't think so. More like when pleasure is detached from anything else, where the goal is pleasure, as opposed to doing something which is pleasurab...
February 15, 2017 at 04:56
Yes. It was some time ago though. But I'm contextualising Kant with respect to others and wider metaphysical issues here, not arguing as Kant does. Th...
February 13, 2017 at 05:12
Not the idea of causality per se, but the definition of our world. Kant treats the necessity of our world as if it were finite, as if its states depen...
February 13, 2017 at 00:03
Hume doesn't think of causality, in the "aprioi"sense, is emprical. What he does is make the distinction between the states that cause (emprical) and ...
February 12, 2017 at 23:30
Indeed, it is necessary. In that case, we are talking about us and the world in which we live. No pre-dated causality required, nothing is needed to e...
February 12, 2017 at 23:01
A Rationalist claim limited to intelligibly is actually right. To say causality is a precondition treats it like an empirical state. Supposedly, befor...
February 12, 2017 at 22:35
The apparent equivocatiion occurs because, at some level, the maths say something about physics we observe. I mean potential energy equations aren't a...
February 10, 2017 at 23:24
I would venture to say no-one. In this sense, it's one's own act, the habits one is compelled to do, where one drifts with their free time. Am I motiv...
February 08, 2017 at 05:51
I read "self-esteem" to be less about image and more about personal confidence and motivation here, a sort of doing, living or habit. It's seems more ...
February 08, 2017 at 04:15
Not in the context of the criticism of Trump's actions. There it amounts to equivocating America (press freedom) with Russia (suppressed press). As mu...
February 07, 2017 at 23:07
I think you're actually worried about moral truths Trump is terrible or wrong. Your posts have been mostly directed at downplaying the moral oppositio...
February 07, 2017 at 22:39
It's a base claim of his philosophy- he doesn't distinguish between meaning (the infinite of thought) and the existence of experiences (existing minds...
February 07, 2017 at 22:15
The interactions problem is born of Descartes thinking of thought as only physical. He takes what is physical, our existing experiences and proclaims ...
February 07, 2017 at 22:07
NO... it asserts just the opposite. The point is thought not a physical event at all. It's not finite. It's unchanging. By the nature that is more tha...
February 07, 2017 at 21:41
Actually, we do. The causal relationship of "thought" presupposes extension. Someone's thoughts causing events is entirely possible. What matters thou...
February 07, 2017 at 21:31
Substance. Reality itself. This move distinguishes Spinoza from most other Western metaphysics. In Western metaphysics, most have tried to eliminate p...
February 07, 2017 at 21:21
In substance dualist terms, half of what they call "mind" is of extension. Our existing experiences are states of the world, are "material," part of a...
February 06, 2017 at 22:14
To make a point about Spinoza's Substance in relation to Kant's philosophy, how you misunderstanding Spinoza's philosophy because of the Kantian defin...
February 05, 2017 at 22:45
That's why it not dumb. The split between our knowledge and the it-in-itself is rejected. Under Spinoza, the problem you assert isn't present because ...
February 05, 2017 at 22:17
For Kant, no doubt. Not for Spinoza. His point is to say the it-in-itself is "not for us" is mistaken. The argument is Kant's defintion is mistaken. I...
February 05, 2017 at 21:50
The it-in-itself is no less "for us" than anything else. Our knowledge and experiences is not just empirical or logical relationships expressed by the...
February 05, 2017 at 21:32
The problem is it makes the Ideal dependent on us-- the infinite becomes dependent on human experience. Without experience, there is nothing to know o...
February 05, 2017 at 01:53
I was talking about Spinoza's God full stop, not just whether there's a body in the world-- i.e. Spinoza's God is not any sort of bodily distinction o...
February 05, 2017 at 01:46
I was talking about Spinoza's God. My initial post in full, where the first paragraph mentions Spinoza by name twice. Which was in a direct response t...
February 05, 2017 at 01:01
I said: To which you said: And then I said: To which you the claimed: You were the one to bring-up Hegel in comparison to Spinoza. Then, when I clarif...
February 05, 2017 at 00:44
I know... but the point is Spinoza does talk about "spirit" (unity, infinite, Substance). When I referred to the expression of Substance, you then com...
February 05, 2017 at 00:34
On the contrary, that's why "faith" is incoherent as knowledge. "Faith" treats knowledge as empirical. Supposedly, what we need to know anything prope...
February 05, 2017 at 00:18