Apparently unlike you MU, I already know what living and eating are, I do them every day. I also have ideas about what it means to eat and live well, but I admit it is an ongoing, open-ended enquiry. I think I am well on the way, but I also think that if I had begun with your assumptions then I could never have set foot on the road.

You haven't presented the examples I asked for, either.

Well we can count the changes, can't we? Or is "sequence" a notion alien to you? — apokrisis

When we count a repetitive change, to provide us with a notion on passed time, there is an assumption that each repetition takes the same amount of time.

But you don't seem to get that spacetime relativity is God's way of preventing everything happening all at once. It creates the separation between events that is ontically essential for there to be anything interesting in the form of a "world". If forces acted instantaneously and without dilution across any span of time and distance, where would we all be, hey? — apokrisis

To represent the cause of separation as "spacetime" is what I affirm is a mistake. This doesn't properly distinguish the role of time from the role of space. In other words we neglect the principles which differentiate (temporal) "order" from (spatial) "relation". Order already assumes separation, and relation already assumes order. So separation must be first, then (temporal) order, then (spatial) relation. Notice that the primary separation is therefore not a spatial separation.

The Peircean or systems view is that possible difference becomes actual difference as it is regularised by constraining habit. The further category of repetition makes sense once there is sufficient similiarity (in terms of the freedoms that have been suppressed) to talk of the the freedoms that concretely remain in play. What incompossibility weeds out becomes the definite variety that compossibility enforces.

And (tricky ain't it?) this compossible variety is itself dualised into the purposeful and the accidental. There are the acts that are desired by telos - even if it is the dilutest possible form of constraint in the being the second law's desire to entropify. And then there is - by mutual definition - all the other compossibilities that are beneath the notice of any such active law or constraint. I can buy a blue car or a red car. It makes no real difference to anything really.

Anyway, can we make any sense of the Deleuzean project to reduce existence to bare difference? Clearly - as a self-proclaimed inversion of Plato - it as least foregrounds the "other" to constraining sameness. And so it is going to sound Peircean in at least also taking difference or development as fundamental.

SX is hopeless at explaining the actual machinery that might link virtual differencing (this frozen sounding multiplicity) to actual "almost repeating" difference. It is dangerous for him to even to attempt an explanation of course as the whole metaphysic project will immediately unravel. He will start to have to talk about the dichotomous othering that is used to achieve a reductionist monism. And once you start talking openly about dichotomies, well that leads to the inevitable triadicity of a hierarchically organised relation. Holism has arrived and your dreams of monistic finality have just gone up in smoke.

So how do others handle this. I'll look at Todd May's "Gilles Deleuze, Difference, and Science" - www3.nd.edu/~hps/May=Deleuze.doc

We start - as is PoMo convention - with wisdom as paradox. We know we are really being deep when our very words contradict themselves.

...seeking to understand what Deleuze means when he says that “difference is behind everything, but behind difference there is nothing.”

Then fair enough, the issue is to get away from tales of transcendent perfect order to talk about the "imperfect" immanent order that can arise via self-differentiation (and self-integration of course). For Deleuze, this is achieved in Spinozian univocity (noting Peirce was also a big fan of Duns Scotus for the same reason).

What is the significance of embracing the concept of a single substance and thus the univocity of Being? It lies in the abandonment of transcendence. Here we might recall Nietzsche’s critique of transcendence, a critique with which Deleuze is in sympathy. The effect of positing any form of transcendence (of which the transcendence of the Judeo-Christian God would be the prime example) is to set up a tribunal, a judge that is not of this world but that nevertheless evaluates it and always finds it wanting. The transcendent is always the more nearly perfect (or the Perfect itself). It is always pictured as higher, above this world. It is the ideal toward which this world must strive through self-denial but which, because of some inherent flaw—be it the existence of the flesh or the finiteness of its creatures—it can never fully achieve.

Now note two bum notes in this reading of univocity. Already we are lapsing back into substance talk - the ontology of form materially actualised. And we are setting up an illegitimate grounds for rejecting the eternal "other".

Dichotomies are being read as always having to generate a good guy and a bad guy as thesis and antithesis. But it is a bad dichotomy that does that rather than producing two generalities that are of equal (because necessarily complementary) status. Instead of focusing on what makes a good dichotomy (as I do), this is clearing the ground to reject dichotomies in toto.

Then the sensible question...

With the embrace of the univocity of Being, however, two questions arise. First, how is it that the perceived world exists as a manifold of differences in continuous evolution when there is only a single substance that comprises them? How can the univocity of Being be reconciled with the manifoldness of existence? This, of course, is the traditional philosophical question of the One and the Many. The second question, bound to the first one, is,What is the relation between the single substance and the manifold of existence? As Heidegger might put the question, what is the relation between Being and beings?

Yes indeedy. Where is the mechanism that connects? (In Peirceanism, it is semiosis.)

And here the beginnings of a bad answer.

The first question presents no insurmountable conceptual barrier if we jettison the idea that a single substance implies some kind of identity. For Deleuze, the single substance of Spinoza must be conceived not in terms of identity but in terms of difference. Substance, Being in its univocity, is difference itself. “Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself.” Difference is behind everything, but behind difference there is nothing. If substance in some sense contains or comprises the differences that manifest themselves in the world, then there is no difficulty reconciling the One and the Many. The One is many; it is difference, difference itself, or, in the later term used in the collaborative works with Guattari, it is multiplicity.

So now we are talking from the point of view of actuality - already formed materiality, or substance.

Yes, it does make sense in the usual Aristotelean fashion in that substance is actuality with attributes and properties. A dog has the characteristics of its species. It has that family resemblance than means it is quite liable to chew your shoes, piss on your fencepost, slobber on your carpet.

But this is metaphyics and the question is how does substantial being itself become? How does it develop as informed or constrained materiality? And therefore, how do we account for the sameness that is form, the difference which is material haecceity?

Peirceanism explains them by putting them at opposite ends of the spectrum. Materiality is brute firstness or potential. Form is the regularity imposed by the seiving necessity of compossibility. Each is placed at sufficient distance from the other for them to have a formally inverse or reciprocal relation. (Remember, form = 1/material, and material = 1/form.)

Anyway, this indicates why SX wants to treat the virtual as itself a species of substance. Which is also then why he cannot in fact explain anything in terms of some actual developmental relation. Difference becomes just a property of a higher level notion of substantial being. Repetition is as repetition does.

Luckily May is alert to these issue. An urgent paradox arises....

For if Being is difference, doesn’t it collapse into beings themselves? If Being is as manifold as the beings that it comprises, doesn’t Being just reduce itself to nothing more than the manifoldness of our particular world?

The day is saved by capitalisation - or dichotomisation that conceals its "othering" by using the same term, just discretely denoting generality by using a big B (while continuing blithely to undermine generality's ontic connection to formal cause by treating Being as already formed Univocal Substance!).

Deleuze denies this reduction, claiming instead that the kind of difference associated with substance or Being is distinct (different) from the kind of differences associated with beings.

Then follows a Bergsonian analysis of time vs space which we can skip as I sort of agree. Let's get on to where there is some attempt to account for an interaction between virtuality of differencing and actual substantial differences. ;)

The relation between the virtual and the actual is, however, very different from that between the possible and the real. As Deleuze uses these terms, the real is the mirror of the possible; it has the same structure as the possible, with the sole but ontologically crucial exception that it is real and not merely possible. So there are two ontological realms, a realm of the possible and a realm of the real. By contrast, the virtual does not lack the reality; it is part of the real. There is only one reality, comprising aspects that are at once virtual and actual. The virtual actualizes itself in order to become actual, but in actualizing itself it does not gain in any reality it had lacked before, nor does it stand outside or behind the actuality that is actualized. It is not part of the actual, but it remains real within the actual.

OK. So does this work, anyone?

The virtual contains the structure that produces difference. Then material difference is what gets actualised.

So far, so Platonic.

But then the virtual is a substance. It "actualises itself". So not only is the virtual the general form or the general structure of difference-generation, it seems to possess its own material means too.

Where I would have a more traditional conception of the virtual as a principle of formal necessity - expressing the telos of the least action principle in interaction with the material restriction that is the complementary principle of generalised compossibility - Deleuze wants simply a tale of a "ground difference" that substantially exists as a generating mechanism (a hopper complete with the materiality to fulfil its desires) and only needs to be turned on so that it starts spitting out actual instances bearing a family resemblance to the originating seed (or - snort - rhizome).

So we see why SX strains so hard to find a generating seed difference in calculus. Materiality is the obvious issue for this Deleuzean scheme (as it is for all metaphysical schemes I agree - even Peirceanism). If you duck into maths - the science of patterns, the conjuring with pure immaterial forms - then you can simply sideline the very issue that your metaphysics must address. You can appear to be speaking about substantial actuality when really - in shifting into the register of the model - you most definitely ain't.

(How does Peirceanism answer the foundational question of materiality or primal action - the question of "why anything?". Well as I say, it doesn't in the final analysis. But it does make it explicit that it is a different kind of question and does not try to subsume in into a substance ontology like SX/Deleuze. Instead, it set it out apophatically - it approaches it via a model of vagueness or firstness.)

OK, so having emphasised some differences, let's look for some reconciliations....

In his discussion of Spinoza, Deleuze utilizes the term “expression” to indicate the relationship between the virtual (substance) and the actual (attributes and modes). In contrast to medieval creationist or emanative theories of causality, in which God is said to cause the beings of this world either by explicit authorship or by emanation, Spinoza holds an expressive view of causality, in which that which is expressed is not ontologically distinct from its expression. Attributes and modes may explicate, involve, and complicate substance, but they do not emerge from it on a distinct ontological plane.

Again, this is utterly wrong ( :) ) from a fully holistic point of view - the synchronic view of a development of regularity out of vagueness. But it is - in Aristotelean hylomorphic fashion - quite reasonable once understood diachronically as a slice across temporal development (so as a slice not across a moment in time, as such, but across the transition from vague to crisp "coming into being").

Once substantial being arises, it can of course host further development in the usual hierarchically complex fashion. Physics - in closing off one set of possibilities or differences, as it does with describing some universal telos like entropification - then itself creates the further possibility of its own counter-action. In the case of life and mind - or even just dissipative structure in general - that reaction is of course negentropy as a counter-telos.

But anyway, this hierarchical logic holds as a generality. It is precisely the system's take of constraints and the further freedoms they can't help but create. In - via compossibility - imposing a limit on free variety, that produces the now far more definitely defined freedoms which can start to do their next level of interacting and habit formation.

So yes. Examine reality at any particular level (look at it either side of some "singularity" or symmetry breaking critical point) and you will find that substantial being is "intrinsically" dual. An object is both a species of a genus (it has attributes due to a context), and it itself possesses further properties or freedoms of actions (as that is why we would indeed distinguish it as a concrete object - it has been transformed into the context for new happenings, or novelties.)

But what do you do when faced with the need to make substantial Being univocally fundamental still....

First, the virtual is not a mirror of the actual, as the real is of the possible. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze marks this by saying: “We call the determination of the virtual content of an Idea differentiation; we call the actualization of that virtuality into species and distinguished parts differenciation.”

...you quietly change the spelling of the word just a little bit to hide how big an explanatory gap you want your fanboys to vault.

A proper dichotomy is one that openly proclaims the absoluteness of its reciprocal transformations.

If you invert the continuous, you bloodly well get the discrete. You don't just get the discontinuous, let alone the continious, or some other rat-swallowing circumlocution. You get an upfront assertion of a proper categorical difference.

In contrast to the possible/real distinction, the virtual/actual distinction involves three kinds of difference. First, there is the difference in itself of the virtual; second, there are the specific differences of the actualization of the virtual; finally, there is the difference between virtual and actual difference, between differentiation and differenciation.

Oh hold up! Not triadicism to the rescue?

Does this sound like 1) vague difference - the raw possibility, 2) reactive difference - actual particulars now having actual reactions, and 3) habitual difference - the stably broken asymmetry of a hierarchically developed organisation between globalised or general differencing vs localised or particular differences to you?

Well yes indeedy. Got there backwards, but that is now where this line of thought has arrived.

I think we can leave it there for the moment. SX - being the tough samurai kid he is - is probably doing the honorable thing of self-evisceration right about now.

When we count a repetitive change, to provide us with a notion on passed time, there is an assumption that each repetition takes the same amount of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. And....? (I mean if that's how we design a clock, then what else do we expect?)

To represent the cause of separation as "spacetime" is what I affirm is a mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I said that the requirement for separation is the cause of spacetime.

So separation must be first, then (temporal) order, then (spatial) relation. Notice that the primary separation is therefore not a spatial separation. — Metaphysician Undercover

We've been through this a thousand times. Separation does come first. Time and space (or change vs stasis) is then what separation looks like.

You are just doing the very thing you complain of in reducing your notion of "separation" to "not being spatial separation". Your attempted apophatic definition of temporal separation in terms of not being "a spatial separation" ends up resting on a spatialised notion of separation as its primary distinction.

That is why I prefer to make vagueness primary. In immanent fashion, it avoids that error of metaphysical reasoning.

Ooooh nooooo! You grabbed a random paper off the internets and critiqued it! Whatever will I do??? Wait, nothing lol.

Poor SX. Not waving but drowning.

So, yes, you're always going to be right, because you've defined what right is, and defined yourself out of possibly being wrong — csalisbury

I missed this. You're wrong because the Peircean system is a hypothesis set up counterfactually. If it fails to accord with nature, then nature will make that plain.

So for instance a prediction of Peircean metaphysics is that the universe and its laws evolve. Peirce actually suggested experiments to measure the curvature of space as Euclidean flatness shouldn't be taken Platonically for granted. And his whole philosophy - based on a metaphysics of propensities - foreshadowed the current quantum probabilistic conception of nature.

So sure, the metaphysical model has pleasing completeness in comparison to other schemes. It is much more mathematically definite in what it claims. And by the same token, that makes it empirically testable. It could be wrong - where the majority of metaphysics ought to be dismissed as the "not even wrong".

Apparently unlike you MU, I already know what living and eating are, I do them every day. I also have ideas about what it means to eat and live well, but I admit it is an ongoing, open-ended enquiry. I think I am well on the way, but I also think that if I had begun with your assumptions then I could never have set foot on the road.

You haven't presented the examples I asked for, either. — John

As I said, the fact that you do something doesn't produce the logical conclusion that you know what you're doing. The cold temperature makes the water freeze. It really does this. But that doesn't mean that the cold knows what it is doing, So I think that you and I are on distinctly different roads. And, please look back, because I've already given you the examples you've asked for.

Yes. And....? — apokrisis

Well, if we assume that there is consistency in the amount of time that it takes for the repetition to occur, then the "amount of time" is something other than the repetition itself. Therefore time is something other than the repeated change, it is derived from it.

But I said that the requirement for separation is the cause of spacetime. — apokrisis

Actually you very distinctly said that spacetime is God's way of causing the separation.

Your attempted apophatic definition of temporal separation in terms of not being "a spatial separation" ends up resting on a spatialised notion of separation as its primary distinction. — apokrisis

How would you conclude this? If the temporal separation is only determinable by us through the means of a spatial separation, how does this produce the logical conclusion that a temporal separation is necessarily a spatial separation?

So we see why SX strains so hard to find a generating seed difference in calculus. Materiality is the obvious issue for this Deleuzean scheme (as it is for all metaphysical schemes I agree - even Peirceanism). If you duck into maths - the science of patterns, the conjuring with pure immaterial forms - then you can simply sideline the very issue that your metaphysics must address. You can appear to be speaking about substantial actuality when really - in shifting into the register of the model - you most definitely ain't. — apokrisis

Isn't this exactly what you do, "duck" into the symmetries necessitated by the general theory of relativity?

A proper dichotomy is one that openly proclaims the absoluteness of its reciprocal transformations. — apokrisis

I've said this numerous times already in this thread, what is required here is a description, not a dichotomy. We can only proceed to the dichotomy after we derive the description, because we first need to make a designation of what it is , before we can determine what it is not. Any random designation of "it is not this.." could be wrong if we have not first made a designation of what it is. So the description "what it is" is prior to any dichotomy. Therefore if you are looking for any sort of "absoluteness" it will be found in the description rather than in the dichotomy, which is a function of the description.

I missed this. You're wrong because the Peircean system is a hypothesis set up counterfactually. If it fails to accord with nature, then nature will make that plain....It could be wrong

Maybe I've misunderstood you, but I had the sense your model includes not just the world, but thought itself. Indeed, the two are inextricably bound together. The only we can think or make reasonable statements is is because thinking and reason are very precisely constrained, by the same whirling hierachical recriprocally-constrained processes and principles that govern everything.

So the very process of registering something as falsifying would operates according to those rules. But to integrate the falsification, to see that the model is wrong, would be to try to think outside of the very constraints necessary to thinking/reasoning, in other words it would be to not think at all. It would be as senseless as trying to think becoming without thinking being.

Do you see what I mean?

It was neuroscience/philosophy of mind that led me to biosemiosis as the best ontic model. So it is the empirical support that convinces me.

It explains things like the very fact that our models of the world are not driven by the kind of philosophical completeness that you hold up as the only criteria. Modelling is Pragmatic.

And so right there again is the counterfactuality. You may not have framed your opinions in that fashion, but I have.

It could be the case that brains evolved to faithfully re-present the noumenal. So phenomenology becomes some sort of knowledge failure.

Or it could be the case that phenomenonolgy - the world reduced to bare signs - is precisely the way that minds ought to work. That is, semiotically.

Given two sharply contrasting paradigms, my approach can positively compare itself to others - even the shrill hermeticism of the circle SX is won't to form wiith himself. :)

Well, if we assume that there is consistency in the amount of time that it takes for the repetition to occur, then the "amount of time" is something other than the repetition itself. Therefore time is something other than the repeated change, it is derived from it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Amazing, clocks and rulers measure space and time and yet only take up some interval of space or time. One would almost think that signs of things were not the things themselves. What inspired insight.

Actually you very distinctly said that spacetime is God's way of causing the separation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was very distinctly being facetious. Its an old joke in physics.

If the temporal separation is only determinable by us through the means of a spatial separation, how does this produce the logical conclusion that a temporal separation is necessarily a spatial separation? — Metaphysician Undercover

Who said it was a spatial separation. Isn't it an energetic one? Doesnt quantum physics take time and energy as the two complementary operators of an uncertainty relation for that reason? Doesn't time stop for a body travelling at light speed while its energy density goes reciprocally to infinity?

Isn't this exactly what you do, "duck" into the symmetries necessitated by the general theory of relativity? — Metaphysician Undercover

But as I say, I don't pretend that this explains the material side of the deal, only the ontic structure of reality. Of course suitably advanced physics might even explain matter by maths. But everyone who does even string theory knows the matter fields still have to be inserted into the compactified dimensions by hand. They don't fall out of the maths as yet.

.

Any random designation of "it is not this.." could be wrong if we have not first made a designation of what it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again this is just you not getting the logic of a dichotomy - what if means to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

As I said, the fact that you do something doesn't produce the logical conclusion that you know what you're doing. The cold temperature makes the water freeze. It really does this. But that doesn't mean that the cold knows what it is doing, So I think that you and I are on distinctly different roads. And, please look back, because I've already given you the examples you've asked for. — Metaphysician Undercover

True, you can do something and be totally unconscious of doing it, as the cold temperature presumably is when it freezes water. But I am conscious of living at least some of the time, therefore at those times I know I am living. Undoubtedly we are on very different roads, mine is a road I know I have set foot on, yours apparently is not a road you do not know you have set foot on.

Also I don't believe you have given me the examples I asked for. Perhaps you didn't know what it means to give examples, perhaps you need to know what it means before you can do it, and certainly before you can do it well. If you really have given the examples, though, please cut and paste them for me to peruse.

Amazing, clocks and rulers measure space and time and yet only take up some interval of space or time. One would almost think that signs of things were not the things themselves. What inspired insight. — apokrisis

I believe that's an improper representation. Clocks and rulers do not measure space and time, human beings measure space and time using clocks and rulers as tools. The abstracted ideas "space" and "time", exist within the human minds. This is what you continually neglect, and overlook in your semiotic descriptions, the necessity for a human mind. So until you can demonstrate how these acts of measuring can occur without a living creature which is actively measuring, your semiotic explanations are unintelligible and most probably simple fictions, produced in an attempt to support an untenable position, just like Whitehead's prehension and concrescence are.

Doesnt quantum physics take time and energy as the two complementary operators of an uncertainty relation for that reason? — apokrisis

No, there is no time operator in quantum mechanics. The time-energy uncertainty relation is neglected by quantum physics in favour of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. Von Neumann could not find a way to make time an observable, which was necessary in order to make time an operator. This means that quantum mechanics is inapplicable in the domain of a very high energy in a very small space, due to an inability to deal with the time-energy uncertainty.

But as I say, I don't pretend that this explains the material side of the deal, only the ontic structure of reality. — apokrisis

So what kind of an ontology is that then, if you have no approach to the material aspect of existence? If all you are doing is describing physical existence in terms of structures or forms, then all you are doing is physics. And since you've strayed outside the institutional discipline of physics, what you are doing is bad (undisciplined) physics.

The op specifically directs us toward the primacy of becoming. If the material aspect is apprehended as primary, then we must approach that material aspect as active in "becoming". If your approach can only bring us toward an understanding of structures which have become, then we need to find a new approach, for the sake of the op, which wants to get at the primary becoming.

Yep. MU right. Humanity wrong. Sounds legit. — apokrisis

Is this meant to be insulting? Concentrate on the principles, understand them for yourself, that is what the discipline of philosophy is directed toward. Don't accept the lazy man's attitude of "if everyone says so it must be the case". Until you recognize the weakness of this attitude, you will never recognize how often it is that "everyone" is wrong. See, the vast majority are followers, the leaders are few and far between.

Again this is just you not getting the logic of a dichotomy - what if means to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. — apokrisis

Actually, I think this is you not getting it. The primary description must be prior to any logic of dichotomy. The logic of dichotomy must be applied to something, material content, and this material content is the primary description. The primary description is not confined by any logic of dichotomy, and that is why we can have competing descriptions of the very same thing. "Competing descriptions" is a function of perspective, "point of view". The principle called "relativity of simultaneity" demonstrates this very well, the importance of the point of view. If the point of view were dichotomous, then it would be impossible to establish compatibility between multiple points of view, different points of view would be mutually exclusive. Each point of view would exclude all others. However, experience has indicated to us that we can establish compatibility between multiple points of view, and this indicates that different points of view are not mutually exclusive. Therefore the point of view is not to be understood as dichotomous. So it is clearly a mistake to insist that the primary description must be restricted by the logic of dichotomy. It is only when we seek compatibility between multiple points of view that the logic of dichotomy is applied. It is applied to determine what is not proper to a point of view, i.e. to exclude what is impossible, as not proper to any point of view. But this cannot be done from one point of view. Therefore it would be mistaken to produce a dichotomy from a single point of view.

The primary description, as derived from a point of view is something passive though, a described state, as observed from a particular point of view. To understand the primary becoming, we need to see the point of view as active.

True, you can do something and be totally unconscious of doing it, as the cold temperature presumably is when it freezes water. But I am conscious of living at least some of the time, therefore at those times I know I am living. Undoubtedly we are on very different roads, mine is a road I know I have set foot on, yours apparently is not a road you do not know you have set foot on. — John

Consider what I just wrote to apokrisis in the preceding paragraph, concerning points of view. When we as human beings develop compatibility between what is evident from one's own particular point of view, and that of others, this is called justification of our beliefs. In common epistemology, justification is a necessary requirement for knowledge. So you being "conscious of living" is not sufficient for your claim, "I know I am living", by common epistemological standards. What you are conscious of must be justified before it can qualify as knowledge. This is to mitigate the fact that we can be mistaken in our own interpretations, of our own experiences, in our unified quest for knowledge. So we seek corroboration. That is why I say that before we can say that you know you are living, we need some determination of what it means to be living. Otherwise "living" could refer to anything, and you're simply making things up.

Also I don't believe you have given me the examples I asked for. — John

So what kind of additional thing do you think we would need to know about what it means to live, in order to enquire into what it means to live well? Can you give some examples of the kind of thing you have in mind? — John

You can make an example out of any activity. Suppose you want to describe what it means to behave well, don't you need to define what it means to behave first? How about eating? Suppose you want to say what it means to eat well, don't you need to make some specification as to what "eating" is first? — Metaphysician Undercover

In other words, you need to know what "living" is before you can determine what living well is, just like you need to know what "behaving" is before you can determine what behaving well is, or you need to know what "eating" is before you can determine what eating well is. That is the "additional thing" you need to know, what exactly do these terms refer to. For example, how you define "eating" dictates what "eating well" means. If you define it as putting food in your mouth and swallowing it, then the person who is capable of doing lots of this will be eating well. If you define eating as providing your body with the nutrients required for subsistence, then eating well means something completely different. Likewise, depending on how you define "living", "living well" will have a variety of different meanings.

You can make an example out of any activity. Suppose you want to describe what it means to behave well, don't you need to define what it means to behave first? How about eating? Suppose you want to say what it means to eat well, don't you need to make some specification as to what "eating" is first? — Metaphysician Undercover

I was asking for an example of the kinds of additional things you imagine we might come to know, such that we could then know that we did not previously know we had been living, and that we now know we are living and also know that we know that we are living.

If all you want are "specifications", as with your example of eating, then we can already do that with living just as we can with eating. You know, we are living when we have been born, are breathing, our hearts are beating, we are experiencing sensations, feelings, even emotions, desires and thoughts and so on. What other different kind of knowledge do you imagine we could possibly have that would tell us more about our living, or more extremely, enable us to know we are living, when according to you we don't currently know this?

. The abstracted ideas "space" and "time", exist within the human minds. This is what you continually neglect, and overlook in your semiotic descriptions, the necessity for a human mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah. So why do I/semiosis call it a "sign"? In what way is that ignoring observers rather than invoking them?

No, there is no time operator in quantum mechanics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? Or do you just mean that it doesn't completely work out because in the end, Newtonian continuous time is something QM has to assume as its backdrop. So the fact that there is indeed - empirically - an uncertainty relation is further evidence against the correctness of the Newtonian conception.

So what kind of an ontology is that then, if you have no approach to the material aspect of existence? — Metaphysician Undercover

How is a model of vagueness as unbounded action not an approach? I'm just not over-claiming about what in the end explanation might achieve.

Until you recognize the weakness of this attitude, you will never recognize how often it is that "everyone" is wrong. See, the vast majority are followers, the leaders are few and far between. — Metaphysician Undercover

Uh, yeah. Nah. You've given an accurate description of the typical crank.

The principle called "relativity of simultaneity" demonstrates this very well, the importance of the point of view. — Metaphysician Undercover

Who calls this an example of a metaphysical dichotomy apart from you?

The observer is making a judgement about a pair of events (so that's three things already). And the observer could now have "any" momentum - which is a new lack of constraint on "material content" that leads to the viewpoint being a "relative" variable.

So yes. You are showing you really, really, don't get it.

I can't see how anything in your post is at all relevant to anything I've said. In fact, I had a difficult time finding any relevance in your last post. Now it appears like you have interpreted what I've said in a way completely different from what I meant, and I believe that I may have interpreted what you said in a way completely different from what you meant, in order that such a confusion has been created. In any case it's obvious to me that we are now referring to completely different things. One, or both of us, is not making the required effort to understand the other. Disinterest is not conducive to good discussion.

I was asking for an example of the kinds of additional things you imagine we might come to know, such that we could then know that we did not previously know we had been living, and that we now know we are living and also know that we know that we are living. — John

I don't understand your question then. My point is that to know that you are living, you must know what "living" means. The "additional things" then are the necessary and sufficient conditions for "living".

You know, we are living when we have been born, are breathing, our hearts are beating, we are experiencing sensations, feelings, even emotions, desires and thoughts and so on. — John

But how are these the necessary and sufficient conditions for living? Plants live, but they are not born, nor do they breathe, they have no hearts, nor sensations, feelings, emotions or desires. How is it possible that these things are the things which indicate to you that you are living, when plants are living yet they have none of these things?

One, or both of us, is not making the required effort to understand the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Give me strength...

A dichotomy opposes generality against generality. So it is not about the other thing which is the hierarchical division between the general and the particular, or the universal and the singular.

So when it comes to viewpoints, the dichotomous contrast here would be between the notions of the one and the many, or the fixed and the variable.

The Newtonian view presumes one fixed spatiotemporal backdrop. The Relativistic view presumes as many variable backdrops as you like (because now, under relativity, local mass is what breaks the symmetry and fixes "some point of view").

So when it comes to viewpoints, the dichotomous contrast here would be between the notions of the one and the many, or the fixed and the variable. — apokrisis

So where's the dichotomy? If each one is the same as each other, then there is no dichotomy between the one and the many. We are talking "generality against generality", so you cannot make the one a particular and the many a generality to create your dichotomy. Consider numbers for example, let 1 represent the one, and 4 represent the many. How is there a dichotomy between 1 and 4? Now apply this to the following generality, a point of view. Whether there is one point of view, two points of view, or five billions points of view, how would you derive a dichotomous difference? The only potential dichotomy I can see here would be between something which is a point of view, and something which is not a point of view. But to create this dichotomy we need a description of what a point of view is.

Strewth. What's so difficult about seeing that "general" and "particular" are both names for generalities?

Then you have dissolved that supposed dichotomy so there is no dichotomy here. You haven't addressed the point.

Dissolved? Seriously, WTF?

But how are these the necessary and sufficient conditions for living? Plants live, but they are not born, nor do they breathe, they have no hearts, nor sensations, feelings, emotions or desires. How is it possible that these things are the things which indicate to you that you are living, when plants are living yet they have none of these things? — Metaphysician Undercover

Why should it be thought that the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for plants to live would be the same as those for a human? That seems obviously ridiculous! Are you seriously interested in sensible discussion? :-}

Dissolved? Seriously, WTF? — apokrisis

OK, if you're having difficulty with my English, I'll say that you've denied that there is a dichotomy between "general" and "particular" by saying that they are both generalities. Can you apprehend that? By say that the particular is a generality you have denied that there is a dichotomy between the particular and the general.

The problem with your metaphysical perspective is that you are claiming that "difference" must be fundamentally understood in terms of dichotomy. Then you make statements like that, which deny that there is a dichotomy, yet claim that there is a difference, and you leave yourself unable to understand what you have said. If you would allow yourself to understand difference in terms other than dichotomy, then you wouldn't have so much difficulty with Deleuze's "repetition".

Why should it be thought that the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for plants to live would be the same as those for a human? That seems obviously ridiculous! Are you seriously interested in sensible discussion? — John

Well if they are not the same thing, then when we say that a plant lives, and that a human being lives, we are talking about two distinctly different activities and using the very same word, "lives" to refer to those distinct activities. I'm not prepared to make that concession. I believe that living is something which plants and human beings have in common. That is what I learned in biology, and it is inherently tied to the theory of evolution. Therefore if we are going to state what it means to live, I think it should be something which both plants and animals do.

If you want to define "living" by referring to things which only animals do, then you deny plants from the category of the living. Then we would have to create a new definition of living, such as self-moving, or self-nourishing, or self-subsisting, so we can say that plants live too. But if animals do this as well, then why not just adopt this as the definition of "living", so that all things which are living are doing the same thing under that name? Then we avoid the ambiguity of "living" referring to something different for different species. Then the things which you mentioned could be specialized forms of living.

My position seems "obviously ridiculous" to you, but your position seems obviously ridiculous to me. Is it possible to reconcile?

By say that the particular is a generality you have denied that there is a dichotomy between the particular and the general. — Metaphysician Undercover

Idiotic. THAT particular is A particular, but THE particular is A generality. It's basic grammar - the dichtotomy of the definite and indefinite article.

It seems to me that under your way of consideration, living is an entirely abstract virtually empty concept. 'What does it means to live?' is an empty question unless it is given some context. 'What does it mean for a whale to live?', 'What does it mean for a bacteria to live?' 'What does it mean for a human to live?'. Obviously what it means for a human to live will have more in common with it means for a whale to live that it will with what it means for a bacterium or a plant to live. What it means for me to live and what it means for you to live will not be exactly the same but the two will have more in common than either will with what it means for a whale to live.

Is there one essential quality that all living things possess such that we can say that if we know that,we will know what it means to live, per se? Probably not. But why would we need to know such an abstract essence anyway in order to know what it means for a person to live well? And what use would it be? Although there would certainly be some general principles in common, what it means for me to live well and what it means for you to live well will not be the same. So obviously this must be determined by each for him or herself; it is not an abstract enquiry at all, which would seem to be what you are attempting to characterize it as.

But why would we need to know such an abstract essence anyway in order to know what it means for a person to live well? — John

Don't you see yet? To create any kind of moral standards, which I am assuming is what you mean by "live well", (to live ethically), we need to establish some principles of equality. What kind of moral ethics are you considering, if, for you to live well, is something different than, for me to live well?

Although there would certainly be some general principles in common, what it means for me to live well and what it means for you to live well will not be the same. So obviously this must be determined by each for him or herself; it is not an abstract enquiry at all, which would seem to be what you are attempting to characterize it as. — John

I do not think that this description of "to live well" would be acceptable to any moralist at all. Are you really claiming that each of us should determine for oneself what living well is? What about the thief, the rapist, and the murderer? Should all these people determine for oneself what living well is? If not, then why should you and I get to determine for ourselves what living well is, but these people should not?

You keep talking as if you think that I am looking toward some ridiculous ideality, some pie in the sky abstraction, but it's really just basic morality, the foundation of equal rights. You seem insistent on making morality unintelligible. Each person should determine for oneself what living well is? Come on, should we burn all the laws, demolish the courthouses, and disband all the police forces as well?

Obviously no one who wants to live well with others (and not as a hermit, for example) will do unwarranted harm to other members of his community, because it will cause them to hate him or her, and he or she will consequently be unable to live well. This is just commonsense.

On the other hand the details of what it means to live well must differ from person to person. I do not live well if I love playing music and hate football, and yet play football, and fail to play music. For you it might be the other way around. Again, this is just commonsense. To live well we must develop phronesis, the practical wisdom that enables us to know how to organize our lives to maximize our creative potential. It is not a matter of slavishly following moral rules. For many individuals there are unique needs for exceptions to moral rules.

This doesn't mean that laws or the justice system should be abolished. The law is one thing and moral rules are another; they should not be conflated.