"God as creator is then a kind of transcendent non-being above the being of creation.Gnomon
read these two paragraphs. Substitute 'to exist' for 'to be'. — Wayfarer
Yes, Laymen and philosophers mean something different by "cause". Most people think in terms of proximate causes (energy), while others look for ultimate causes (EnFormAction).No. The ancients meant something different to what we mean by 'cause' - they meant in a broader 'the reason why things exist'. — Wayfarer
It's a fine philosophical distinction. Of course, in the real world Potential & Actual occur in pairs : Voltage & Amperage. But, the voltage in a battery can exist unrealized for years, until a circuit is completed by the user (plug it into a device and close the on-off switch). So, in Eternity & Infinity, transcendent Potential could theoretically exist independently, until triggered by a choice, an intention, which completes a circuit from Ideal to Real and back to Ideal again. In this analogy, G*D is both battery and user, both potential and actualizer. The device is our universe.How can you say that a potential can cause something if you uphold the distinction between potential and actual and see that an act is required as a cause? — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. See the reply above. If G*D is only potential, nothing would ever happen. That's why I assume that G*D must also have Intention, Will, Telos. Of course I don't know how these things would work outside of space-time-matter-energy. It's a mystery. :smile:Sure, but do you see that possessing the power to cause a world to exist is different from actually causing the world to exist? — Metaphysician Undercover
Voltage is a description of what will happen in the future when a path between those two points is completed. Voltage is also Information in the sense of a "difference that makes a difference" : it causes change.No, voltage is a description, not a prediction. According to Wikipedia it is the difference in electric potential between two points. — Metaphysician Undercover
One of the coolest answers is Heidegger's: look around you now and in your mind, place a backdrop of nothingness behind it all. — frank
"A German friend of Heidegger told me that one day when he visited Heidegger he found him reading one of D.T. Suzuki’s books; ‘If I understand this man correctly,’ Heidegger remarked, ‘this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings’”. The truth of this story is unverifiable and irrelevant, but Barrett considers its moral undeniable.
There are two meanings for the word "structure". For most folks it's the physical posts & beams that a building is made of. But, for an engineer, the structure is a diagram of forces and reactions (vectors). Information is both concrete structure (things) and abstract structure (relationships between things). — Gnomon
The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real, —the object of its worship and its aspiration. The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities. — C. S. Peirce
It's a fine philosophical distinction. Of course, in the real world Potential & Actual occur in pairs : Voltage & Amperage. But, the voltage in a battery can exist unrealized for years, until a circuit is completed by the user (plug it into a device and close the on-off switch). So, in Eternity & Infinity, transcendent Potential could theoretically exist independently, until triggered by a choice, an intention, which completes a circuit from Ideal to Real and back to Ideal again. In this analogy, G*D is both battery and user, both potential and actualizer. The device is our universe. — Gnomon
My understanding may be erroneous or naturalists (e.g. scientists) may misunderstand what they doing. — 180 Proof
Do you consider, for instance, that merely assuming 'the natural world is explainable' is a "recourse to metaphysics"? — 180 Proof
That is why I reject the practice of metaphysics. — alcontali
You mentioned Popper. He considered metaphysics to be important, but just not a science. He considered it be, although not itself a science, indispensable to science. This is because creative imaginative thought is indispensable to science just as much as it is to the arts. — Janus
Do you know anyone who's actually tried to explain the natural world without recourse to metaphysics? — Metaphysician Undercover
No, there's not way to explain it without implicit or explicit metaphysics? Physicalism? well, it's right there. Natural laws? again right there — Coben
Collingwood writes that there are three kinds of physics, — alcontali
There is simply no such thing as "Kantian physics". — alcontali
and Bohr’s ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ is arguably Kantian in many respects. — Wayfarer
The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests that the Solar System is formed from the nebulous material. The theory was developed by Immanuel Kant and published in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels ("Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens"), published in 1755. Originally applied to the Solar System, the process of planetary system formation is now thought to be at work throughout the universe.[1] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis
He doesn’t say that, well at least not in the quote you provided. He said ‘knowledge frameworks’ and I think it’s a perfectly valid point. The Bohr-Einstein debates were basically metaphysical in nature, and Bohr’s ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ is arguably Kantian in many respects. — Wayfarer
Furthermore, I do not consider this question to be metaphysical at all. — alcontali
Kant never tested anything experimentally. — alcontali
Concerning the Bohr-Einstein controversy — alcontali
On what merits to you deny that the study of reality is a metaphysical issue? — javra
And I am of the view that philosophy requires no apparatus. — Wayfarer
but it's not an either or situation. Scientists often work(ed) with a certain epistemic knowledge justification method while at the same time having metaphysical assumptions about the world and reality. These may have biased them at times but also have been fruitful. One does not need to choose between metaphysics and having a rigorous method and no one does. Or, better put, no one with a rigorous method lacks a metaphysics.There is no knowledge possible without an epistemic knowledge-justification method; two of which, in the context of the real, physical world, are science and history. So, there we have two epistemically sound knowledge domains. — alcontali
They are not reading journals of metaphysics, but they have trickle down metaphysics.Unlike epistemology, there are no downstream practitioners who need any output from metaphysics.
What principle would force a bit of sanity in metaphysics? — alcontali
The same overall principle that forces sanity in mathematics: accord to our experiences of what is. No? — javra
Theoretical (pure?) mathematics can get a little disjointed from reality at times, last I heard. — javra
As to metaphysics, as an abstract principle to be ideally pursued, make its affirmations falsifiable via reasoning and/or experience. — javra
There is no knowledge possible without an epistemic knowledge-justification method; two of which, in the context of the real, physical world, are science and history. — alcontali
Seriously, if a claim is about the real, physical world, then it is not mathematics. — alcontali
Mathematics has nothing to do with real-world experience. It is completely divorced from it. — alcontali
There is no other mathematics left than pure mathematics. — alcontali
Mathematics does not compete with physics or with science in general. That is epistemically impossible. — alcontali
Note the reflexive equivocation of 'real' and 'physical'. You write from a perspective which assumes the reality of the sensory domain - as us denizens of a sensate culture are inclined to do! But what if the source, and the goal, of metaphysics is not within that domain at all? — Wayfarer
You keep repeating this, as a dogma, and oppose anyone who challenge it as 'constructivist heretics'. — Wayfarer
But the weakness of this claim is that we're utterly surrounded by devices and technologies which would not exist, were mathematics not applied to the physical world. — Wayfarer
1 + 1 = 2 is not pure mathematics. It is a fact that is thoroughly entwined with the reality in which we live. — javra
According to his learning, one can easily construct a coherent theoretical mathematics that blatantly contradicts everyday aspects of reality such as that of gravity. Axioms are what you want them to be and you simply construct from them. — javra
These are empirical patterns in which people detect some form of consistency. Mathematics is only about that consistency, and nothing else. It is not empirical. The language expression "1+1=2" is handled by math, because it is language. What you see in the real, physical world, is not handled by math. — alcontali
Of course. — alcontali
His disagreement was with the notion of 'observer dependence' which physics suggested. He was never reconciled to that. — Wayfarer
All the same, in a broader sense of language, how is mathematics - which is codified quantity and relations between quantity (right?) — javra
not an abstracted form of language employed by humans for various purposes? — javra
Therefore, if something consistently appears to you in a particular way, then you can proceed with the idea that they are in that particular way. — alcontali
For example, is a combinator or a function related to quantity? — alcontali
I don't think that, for example, category theory even ever mentions quantities. It is rather about structures, mappings between these structures, and possible preservation of structure. I don't think you'd ever see a quantity in that context. — alcontali
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