Kant, because he took out its false teeth.

And so many since have desperately (and futilely) tried to put them back in.

A few of the actual top guys missing. Aristotle makes it on, but not Anaximander or Peirce. Heraclitus should get a mention. And no atomists??

Peirce would turn over in his grave at being called a metaphysician. :D

Yeah. The first rule of Metaphysical club is that you never talk about Metaphysical Club.

If you believe that anything and everything is possible what would you say that logical possibility even refers to?

anything and everything is possible — Terrapin Station

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.

You couldn't say, "Well, anything and everything possible," because that would obviously be vacuous in this case. — Terrapin Station

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

If you have a complain about modal realism, then provide citations. — mosesquine

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.

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. — TheWillowOfDarkness

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.

Logically, one cannot say "anything is possible" and be referring to contradictions. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yeah, you'd say that one can only be referring to the possible things that are possible.

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).

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). — TheWillowOfDarkness

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.

God doing the healing is how one relates to the world though. It's a description of one's relationship with the world. For example, someone who has an incurable disease, and whose disease goes into remission and thereby achieves a cure. Such an event is a break - a fracture, occurring in the world. It is like the discontinuity originating from blinking that links up two moments of visual perception. It is a direct connection with the eternal which breaks through in time and alters the predetermined course of history. This fracture is eternity breaking through the world - the eternity that has all along been a condition for the possibility of the world (for the eternal moment is always a presupposition of the differentiated, flowing time). It is effectively the world coming anew once again - a new birth, a new beginning of time.

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".

The regret of not being plants brings us closer to paradise than any religion. One is in paradise only as a plant. But we left that stage a long time ago: we would have to destroy so much to recover paradise! Sin is the impossibility of forgetfulness. The fall - the emblem of our human condition - is a nervous exacerbation of consciousness. Thus a human being can only be next to God, whereas plants sleep in him the sleep of eternal forgetfulness. The more awake we are, the greater the nostalgia that sends us in quest of paradise, the sharper the pangs of remorse that reunite us with the vegetable world — E.M. Cioran

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).

Leibniz --

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/leibniz1714b.pdf

Compared to Plato/Aristotle? No, I don't think so.

Only if you are accepting the incoherent argument that contradictions are possible. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So your claim is that most people wouldn't read "anything and everything is possible" any differently than "all possible things are possible"?

I don't understand your points here. God healing someone is not a logical contradiction, for example. And what does "falsification of incoherence" mean? — John

It is when there's no God doing healing. — TheWillowOfDarkness

??? That wouldn't make it a logical contradiction.

So your claim is that most people wouldn't read "anything and everything is possible" any differently than "all possible things are possible"? — Terrapin Station

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.