Everything is put in motion by something else. — Devans99

There's no way to know whether that's the case or not.

Those all have promises with their premises, such as "Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another"

There are proofs in the sense of:

(1) If P, then there is a first cause.
(2) P
(c) Therefore, there is a first cause.

Which goes to show us just how much value proofs are.

A lot of postmodernists, by the way, are going to object to being characterized in any particular way, as either supporting or attacking anything (re your " These are all the things post-modernism attacks"), and most even reject being characterized as postmodernists. They're certainly not going to accept anything resembling an idea that they belong to a "school of postmodernism."

That was also the case with most philosophers who wound up categorized as existentialists (which often includes Heidegger).

It's similar to how most folks won't accept being called a hipster or SJW--they try to "decharacterize" any characterization of those categories, etc.

Anti-labelists basically . . . who certainly wouldn't like being labeled as anti-labelists.

No, it doesn't. Not if the "obvious" conclusion is intended to be the "logical" conclusion. For logic mandates that our conclusions should be justified, and justification requires evidence. There is no evidence - none at all - and therefore logic dictates that we must stop short of a conclusion. So, not only is there no "obvious" conclusion, but there can be no (logically-justified) conclusion at all. — Pattern-chaser

Logic doesn't have anything to do with empirical evidence, it only has to do with formal implication/inference. That's even the case with so-called informal logic. It's just that there we're dealing with logic in natural language rather than a strictly formal language.

But continental philosophy is not the same as postmodernism. — philosophy

And indeed I said nothing like that. That should have been obvious to you by the fact that I used the phrase "and more broadly continentalism." "And more broadly continentalism" wouldn't make any sense if I were saying that postmodernism and continentalism were the same thing.

Postmodernism is a subset of continental philosophy. I mentioned continental phil and not just postmodernism because (a) they tend to be assessed similarly by the analytic philosophers in question, and the issues they have with postmodernism they see as an outgrowth of problems with continental philosophy in general, and (b) you mentioned Heidegger, who is not conventionally seen as a postmodernist. I wasn't interested in bickering with that, so I just broadened things a bit.

On the flipside of (a), the folks who embrace Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, etc. tend to embrace Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, etc. as well. It's not the New School for Social Research, UT Austin, etc. who made Derrida guest lecture under the literature department.

One problem with this is that "surprise" seems to be used in two rather incompatible ways. One is the sense of an emotional reaction that someone has based on not expecting something. That doesn't necessarily have anything at all to do with logic. An individual can expect (and so not be surprised) or not expect (and so be surprised) any arbitrary thing, for any reason imaginable, or even for no reason--it can just be purely intuitive. Of course, in this sense of surprise, we can't predict, with any certainty, whether anyone will be surprised by anything or not.

"Surprise" also seems to be used here in the sense of whether a better-than-chance prediction is possible using some logical metric.

The problem with the supposed conundrum on this end is that the ONLY situation where we could make a better-than-chance prediction is once noon has passed on Thursday.

For example, say that whether the prisoner is going to be hanged on any given day (M-Th at least, since otherwise Friday is set) is determined by an "ideal coin," so that the flips are really random. Well, on every day, Monday through Thursday, there's no way to predict, better than chance, whether the prisoner will be hanged, because on every one of those days, the answer is literally determined by chance. The only way we can make a prediction better than chance at some point in that process is once noon has passed on Thursday.

I think you're vastly overstating the premise. Postmodernism and more broadly continentalism aren't very popular among certain analytic-leaning philosophers and philosophy departments, but that's by no means every philosopher or department. I wouldn't say the balance is necessarily even--I have no idea just what the balance would be, really, without doing some sort of survey--but continentalists/postmodernists/etc. get plenty of attention and respect in philosophy. And I say this as someone who is definitely analytic-leaning and not at all fond of contintentalism/postmodernism.

Also, although it's difficult to know just what the academic background might be of most folks on the board, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, etc. are WAY more popular on this board than any analytic philosophers.

There are also not an insignificant number of philosophers who have argued that an analytic/continental distinction is nowhere near as black & white as it's often made out to be.

Does the Empire State building exist? In our everyday experience at human scale the practical sensible answer is obviously yes. But if we look closer at what physics tells us a more accurate answer seems to be that 99.99% of Empire State building doesn't exist according to our definition of existence. — Jake

Doesn't this rather completely dismiss relations and processes?

The Empire State Building doesn't exist as anything like the Empire State Building if the matter in question isn't in particular relations, undergoing particular processes. Relations and processes do exist, by the way. It would be misconceived to say that 99-point-whatever of the Empire State Building doesn't exist while only point-zero-whatever of it does exist. The properties that make it the Empire State Building supervene on not only the exact matter in question but the relations and processes of that matter. Properties of anything are a factor of all "three" of those things, with "three" in quotation marks because nothing really seems to be able to exist sans matter, relations or processes--so those "three" things are all really just different sides of the same coin.

Does the space which makes up most of the Empire State building exist? — Jake

On my view space isn't something that exists "on its own" per se. It's definitely nothing like a substance, a container, etc. Space is rather another way of talking about relations of matter. Or we could say that space supervenes on the fact that matter can be relationally separated from other matter (via extensional relation more specifically).

So what we can learn using only observation of reality led by scientific experts is that the question of existence is no where near as simple as almost all God debates assume it to be. Most of reality can not be neatly filed in to either an "exists" or "doesn't exist" box. — Jake

I don't agree with that, actually. It's rather that our concepts and beliefs often don't match up with the world very well, but we don't want to let go of those concepts/beliefs. They're at least pragmatically useful to us/it would be too much work to let go of them (and thus have to develop alternate concepts/theories). An example is the rather baffling beliefs that people have about meaning (in the semantic sense) being something other than an activity that our individual brains do (of course often in response to many environmental and social things, but nevertheless the phenomenon in question is something that our individual brains do).

The idea of a fallacy in philosophy/logic is a very targeted idea. Fallacies pertain only to arguments, which are sets of premises with conclusions that ostensibly follow from the premises. Fallacies occur when an argument follows a course that doesn't guarantee validity. Validity is defined as impossibility that premises are true and a conclusion false, where that "and" is conventionally treated as an inclusive "or."

What you're describing is simply people interpreting something different than someone intended it. There's no generalized way to always avoid that, and it's bound to happen more often when we're talking about behavior that's not common--which could include someone intently gazing across a street from a particular vantage point. We simply need to explain the difference between interpretation and intent in an understanding manner.

That's an interesting perspective. It might actually help me understand Heidegger a bit.

Thanks for answering. I can't make much sense of the answer, unfortunately, but it's too much to get into, because we'd basically have to have a conversation on every Heideggerian phrase, lol

If you have opinions to share...share them. — Frank Apisa

At the moment I'm only interested in exploring your views as I have been attempting to do. If you don't want to respond to the questions I'm asking, then okay, there's not much we can do about that.

So would you say that something is a guess if it has evidential support, even if it's not certain?

Heidegger said us he wants, 'in a confrontation with the tradition', to rethink logic, to "revolutionarily shake up the notion of logic" from the ground up. — Joshs

Did he suggest what he was going to replace it with?

Not sure if you are kidding with me...or just not thinking for the moment.

Let the P of your question be "Will science find a cure for most cancers during the next two decades?"

For an answer of "YES" try these out:

Either it is certain...or it is an estimate.

Either it is certain...or it is an informed opinion.

Either it is certain...or it is a wish.

Either it is certain...or it is an approximation.

Either it is certain...or it is close enough to certain for government work.

Either it is certain...or it is not. — Frank Apisa

Say what?

I'm not saying that it's a fact that either something is x or y.

I'm asking you if it's the case that you use the term "guess" so that either something is certain or it's a guess. Either you use the term that way or you do not use the term that way. (or if you think there's a third option aside from either it being the case that you use the term that way or you do not use the term that way, you could explain what the third option is maybe)

So that (your question) is binary?

Ya mean there are no other choices? — Frank Apisa

Correct. Otherwise, what would you suggest as a third option?

Where is this coming from? — Frank Apisa

It's just a question. Either you see things that way or you do not.

I am not asking for certainty. BUT the fact that I am not...does not mean I will accept a guess as being anything other than a guess. — Frank Apisa

Do you see the only options as "Either P is a guess or it's certain"?

The problem is that you can thrive by making others' lives worse, by crippling them/putting them out of business, etc. It's possible to keep things competitive and even greed-oriented if someone wants to be greedy, while making the competition focused on making others' lives better (per their subjective assessments).

I don't think the modern world is perfect, by any means, but I'd probably not prefer to live at any other time. Whatever its faults, the modern world has a ton of advantages that weren't available previously. And re creativity and art, I do that stuff for a living.

That's unfortunate, but it did seem like he/she would probably likely continue to quickly get nasty with people, including you moderators.

Throughout Heidegger's corpus, there's a heavy sense of nostalgia and forlornness for peasant life, associated with individual craftsmanship and pre-industrial agricultural communities. — fdrake

It's extremely dubious that previous the previous eras he was "nostalgic" for wouldn't have had just the same issues regarding the "art" and "techne" distinction he made.

Your explanation of it makes some sense of it, even if I think the distinction is both oversimplistic--it's far too black & white--and mythological.

Factually, or as a goal?

So how would we apply the distinction to living in general in your view?

The distinction is about how materials are thought about, what intentions are, etc. with respect to making things like chairs and paintings.

That has nothing to do with waking up and going to the bathroom and going to the grocery store, etc.

I think that Collingwood's art/craft distinction makes sense with respect to aesthetics (which isn't to say that I agree with the distinction he makes, but I think it makes sense), but how would we apply that to living in general?

to be sure of being correct." — Frank Apisa

I want to focus on this first. Isn't this a reference to certainty?

But you wrote "I was reading Collingwood, who distinguishes between three types of living, which are either merely functional, creative (I think this is similar to the idea of genuine Being) or both. "

So now you're saying that he doesn't actually use those terms? His three types of living are something, art, or both?

How does your theory account for the fact that only distant galaxies appear to move FTL and closer galaxies do not? — Devans99

I don't think we know exactly why that's the case yet. We'd simply describe it (primarily mathematically, since that's the preferred language of physics). The thing to do is not to just make up stuff that's incoherent to explain it.

I actually spent 10-15 minutes trying to research how Collingwood uses the terms when I first asked, but I never did find anything that explained it. So if the terms are important or common in Collingwood, there oddly doesn't seem to be much mention of them in writing about Collingwood. Even the SEP page about Collingwood's aesthetics had no mention of "creative" or "creativity."

No, you're right. We strictly enforce no challenges, no skepticism, etc. to anything on this philosophy board.

What is your counter theory? — Devans99

That if we have evidence that things are moving faster than the speed of light, then "Things can't move faster than the speed of light under any circumstances" is obviously incorrect.

I have absolutely no idea of what you were attempting to ask me here. — Frank Apisa

You have no idea what I'm asking when I ask how you'd define guessing? lol

“Creativity is dead,” says Lacan. However, according to Hanfkopf , it is not so much creativity that is dead, but rather the economy, and some would say the paradigm, of creativity. In a sense, the example
of the neodialectic discourse of functional living which is a central theme of Baudrillard's The System of Objects emerges again in post-structuralism. However, Debord would see 'functional living' as a subcultural formalism that denotes the difference between functional identity and class.

It's making up incoherent nonsense so that we can theory-worship.

Why do we need money to do things? — Andrew4Handel

Money arose because directly bartering for stuff you want/need was a lot less convenient.

Maybe you could clear this up. What does "creative(ly)" refer to re living?

But we have an explanation - space is expanding. — Devans99

You just said that space is nothing. But it's doing something.

Well, or I can comment here as I have.