Further, "intuition" is not what lies beyond logic, being, comprehended through dialectics, is what lies beyond logic. — JerseyFlight

Marxist? Hegelian? Bravo. But you made a claim far in excess of available evidence. You wrote down an opinion, not a fact.

But you made a claim far in excess of available evidence. You wrote down an opinion, not a fact. — fishfry

That being is more than a dead image or fragmentation of time, is not an opinion.

Then you should easily be able to provide an example of two things that are exactly the same? — JerseyFlight

This seems like a logic trick. If two things are the same, they're only one thing. If they're two things they're not the same. In fact it is not possible to give an example of two things that are not the same.

This is the heart of my ongoing argument with @Metaphysician Undercover. He thinks 2 + 2 and 4 are two things. I say they are two representations of one thing.

That being is more than a dead image or fragmentation of time, is not an opinion. — JerseyFlight

I don't know enough Hegel or Marx to discuss dialectic. I do know that dialectic is a historically contingent idea of humans; and that therefore it can't be true in any absolute sense. That's what I meant by your statement being an opinion. You said: "Further, "intuition" is not what lies beyond logic, being, comprehended through dialectics, is what lies beyond logic." That is an opinion, not a fact.

it can't be true in any Absolute sense. — fishfry

If you can establish the existence of this thing I will agree to it as a negative criteria.

If you can establish the existence of this thing I will agree to it as a negative criteria. — JerseyFlight

If there's no absolute truth, that also is an opinion and not a fact. I'm not up on this dialectic stuff, can you toss me a lifeline here? Tell me exactly what claim you are making. It seemed to me that you are making a claim about how the world is; and I believe that any such statement is necessarily an opinion and not a fact.

Hegel is a way to learn about philosopher. He is not the be all or end all. If you had read, in a poetical mood, a poem that said "time is a fragmation of time" you might think it was true. So that would be a "negative", meaning movement in Hegels mind

I do know that dialectic is a historically contingent idea of humans; and that therefore it can't be true in any absolute sense. — fishfry

How you use the term absolute matters quite a bit here. One must be wary of the false criteria of a radical skepticism. Why is it false? Because it stacks the deck, just like religion does, demanding the highest possible level of exactitude in terms of justification -- which is a violation of its own existence. (None will ingest a gallon of cyanide unless they want to die, but according to radical skepticism they cannot know it will kill them, there is then no reason not to drink it). However, mathematics does not get to play the lesser game of knowledge because of what it claims for itself.

If there's no absolute truth, that also is an opinion and not a fact. — fishfry

I think the problem here is one of mere formality, logical abstraction void of any concretion.

I do not deny that words can lead to logical mazes, but reality is not merely a word.

Hegel is a way to learn about philosophy. He is not the be all or end all. — Gregory

I did not say this, I said he was the gateway to dialectic. But I will say more about him, he was, very possibly, very possibly, the greatest human mind to ever live. These are not merely my feelings, my conviction is based on the objective power of his thought. No philosopher did what he did, but many were able to do much more because of what he did.

Your posts are neat but unnecessarily convoluted. For Hegel, the positive stays, the negative moves. That's how the dialectic worked. I think he was brilliant like Aquinas, but not a genius like Einstein or Hawking

I do not deny that words can lead to logical mazes, but reality is not merely a word. — JerseyFlight

I take your point about the cyanide; and if you say reality is not merely a word, then we are in agreement.

For Hegel, the positive stays, the negative moves. That's how the dialectic worked. — Gregory

With all due respect, I am not going to expound Hegel's dialectic here on this thread, but it is not simply explained by the movement and stagnation of the positive and the negative. Dialectic is, to be brief, a living approach to understanding, which accompanies being through movement, in order to ascertain its essence. The point of dialectic is comprehensive comprehension. I could cite more examples from Hegel himself, but I have other ventures besides this forum and am not going to spill all the beans in this format.

I've read the Phenomenology of Mind (or translated Spirit) twice. He gets tired and falls into holes. The mazes he then makes are amazing but he lost his concentration because he was not a genius.

Maybe he wanted too be

Thank you

I saved a link to my email on Einstein, GR, SR, and Zeno. The link doesn't work anymore. No!! I wanted to learn about science's perspective on how logic applies to reality

Metaphysician Undercover has posted numerous times on this issue. He should chime in. — jgill

I kind of got bored of the subject, so I moved on.

He thinks 2 + 2 and 4 are two things. — fishfry

This is a fine example of the boredom. If someone cannot see that 2+2 is something different from 4, and continues to deny this after months of discussion, I feel helpless to help that person. Clearly 2+2 are different symbols than 4. And, if "2+2" really represented the same thing as "4", we would be inclined just to use "4=4" instead of "2+2=4", because it's so much simpler. But obviously "2+2" is not commonly used to represent the same thing that "4" is used to represent, because the "+" in 2+2 has a special meaning which is not represented in "4"..

Hegel is the gateway to dialectic. — JerseyFlight

Actually Plato provides a much more useful dialect than Hegel. After reading Plato and Aristotle, you'll be able to see where Hegel goes wrong in his dialectics, leading people like dialectical materialists into a violation of the law of non-contradiction.

Actually Plato provides a much more useful dialect than Hegel. After reading Plato and Aristotle, you'll be able to see where Hegel goes wrong in his dialectics — Metaphysician Undercover

My guess is that people respect you on this board, well, I am not a respecter of persons, I am a respecter of thinkers. I am calling you out right now, because I know for a fact that you are speaking out of your backside. I would like to make it clear, unlike you, I am not merely posturing here. What you have asserted merely manifests your blatant ignorance, not only for dialectics, but also toward the philosophy of Hegel. Admit that you have never studied 1) Hegel or 2) Dialectics. (I suppose you might think you have studied dialectics because you have read Plato and Aristotle, but these are 2000 year old formations, we have come vastly beyond these architectures). If you have merely studied Plato and Aristotle then you have not studied dialectics, you have merely studied the dialectics of Plato and Aristotle. This would be like studying the Ptolemaic models, and saying because of this, that you have studied science.

My guess is that people respect you on this board... — JerseyFlight

Is that supposed to be a joke?

Admit that you have never studied 1) Hegel or 2) Dialectics. — JerseyFlight

Ha ha, make my day, tell me another funny one. Try telling that to the professor of my post-graduate course on Hegel's Dialectics of Being. Of course, he didn't like my interpretation of Hegel either, just like you seem to be insulted by what I said about Hegel. Hmm, that's interesting. Hegelians seem to be very funny that way. There's a certain clique, defending a way that one is 'supposed' to interpret Hegel, and if you slip outside of those needless and unjustified boundaries, I guess you are headed toward a Marxist interpretation or something. And this is flatly wrong.

Try telling that to the professor of my post-graduate course on Hegel's Dialectics of Being. — Metaphysician Undercover

All the better, then we can actually discuss the work of Hegel. How did you retain Aristotle's position on Identity after Hegel clearly demonstrated that it collapsed in on itself, precisely because, to speak of Identity, one must presuppose that Identity is not Difference, which is itself a violation of the principle? (As I'm sure you know, dialectics comprehends contradiction emerging from being itself). I would love to hear your refutation? And as you well know, having done "post-graduate" work on Hegel, this is only one small portion of his argument against Aristotle's position.

Hegel simply has a different solution to the apparent incompatibility between being and becoming demonstrated by the ancients, from the one proposed by Aristotle.

The incompatibility is laid out by Aristotle in a way like this. If the world is describable completely in terms of what is, and what is not, then we cannot grasp change because at one moment the world is like A, and the next moment it is like B, and we need to be able to understand what happened in between, which is the change itself. If we can say how the world was in between, as C, then we still have to deal with the change between A and C, and C and B. Of course this produces the appearance of an infinite regress, as we always need to posit another determination of how the world is and is not, as the medium between any two different states, to account for the change. And, since this proposed medium state is always a different state, we still need to account for the change in between the one state and the other, ad infinitum. Therefore we need to allow a separation between the world as described by the logical dichotomy of being and not-being, and change itself, as becoming.

So In recognizing that becoming is completely incompatible with the logical dichotomy of being and not-being, Aristotle proposed a distinct category called "potential". As distinct, it can neither be described in terms of being nor not-being, and is a violation of the law of excluded middle. The concept of potential is validated, substantiated or justified, by Aristotle with reference to future events which are still undecided. Such events cannot be assigned any value of truth or falsity. In his Physics, the concept of "matter" substantiates the real existence of potential, allowing for what may or may not be, in the future, i.e. the potential for change.

We can see that Hegel takes a different approach in his dialectics. Under his principles, the logical dichotomy of being and not-being is subsumed within becoming, instead of the Aristotelian approach of separating the two as incompatible. Negation is a process of becoming which envelopes both being and not being. So instead of separating becoming, and matter (as logically unintelligible aspects of the world), from that dichotomy of being and not-being, and insisting that the supposed dichotomy is incomplete because it leaves matter and becoming in violation of the law of excluded middle, Hegel places the dichotomous terms of being and not being together, in a violation of the law of non-contradiction. Now the concepts of matter and becoming violate the law of non-contradiction.

How did you retain Aristotle's position on Identity after Hegel clearly demonstrated that it collapsed in on itself, precisely because, to speak of Identity, one must presuppose that Identity is not Difference, which is itself a violation of the principle? (As I'm sure you know, dialectics comprehends contradiction emerging from being itself). I would love to hear your refutation? And as you well know, having done "post-graduate" work on Hegel, this is only one small portion of his argument against Aristotle's position. — JerseyFlight

I see no such demonstration of a collapse, just a straw man collapsing. Hegel specifically avoids Aristotelian terms like "potential, and "matter", leaving the reader to make any comparisons to Aristotelian conceptual structures on one's own, so there is really no such demonstration. Your presupposed concept of "identity" is unfounded, demonstrating a misunderstanding of Aristotelian identity.. If a thing is only the same as itself, there is no problem with the conjoined premise that it is different from everything else, and even different from what it was, itself at a different time. Sameness is assigned directly to the thing itself, allowing difference to be a feature of sameness, instead of being dichotomously separated, such that the same thing is changing. This is simply the way we speak about an identified thing, it can change and be different from one minute to the next, while it maintains the status of being the same thing. "Sameness" and "identity" therefore is assigned to the evolving object, and difference is not excluded dichotomously from sameness. Since this is the way we speak about an identified object, as remaining the same object despite changes to it. it is dialectically correct, and Hegel's proposed dialectical argument is unwarranted.

And your premise, that "dialectics comprehends contradiction emerging from being itself", is just an expression of Hegelian biased dialectics, grounded in the false premise displayed above. In reality, "being" like "not-being" is a logical assignment, a human determination, so these are what emerge from becoming. These logical principles are designed to establish an artificial separation from becoming, in an attempt to understand becoming. The need for this separation is grounded in strong metaphysical principles. The Hegelian proposal, to throw these ideals of being and not-being back into the obscure, mysterious, and vague realm of becoming, instead of crystalizing the separation in understanding, just renders the world of material existence as unintelligible. . .

The Hegelian proposal, to throw these ideals of being and not-being back into the obscure, mysterious, and vague realm of becoming, instead of crystalizing the separation in understanding, just renders the world of material existence as unintelligible. . . — Metaphysician Undercover

If you had actually read Hegel on identity, which I am highly skeptical of given your exposition, then you would know that Hegel does exactly the opposite! He removes the idealism from identity (the mysticism) by specifically drawing out its concrete components, which Aristotle was not able to do.

(The only reason I am not quoting Hegel directly is because I have zero respect for intellectuals like yourself, masters at posturing, masters at playing the superiority card, simply because you are good at articulating yourself. It makes me feel like I am merely giving you more ammunition to bully people.)

"Sameness" and "identity" therefore is assigned to the evolving object, and difference is not excluded dichotomously from sameness. Since this is the way we speak about an identified object, as remaining the same object despite changes to it. it is dialectically correct, and Hegel's proposed dialectical argument is unwarranted. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is only further proof that you have not read Hegel. Further, your idiosyncratic formation is here very likely your own. Now that is all fine and well, but you seem to be attributing it to Aristotle as though this was his position. Can you show me where he assigns "sameness" and "identity" (difference through dichotomy) to the evolving object? This is very strange indeed. Allow me to clarify Hegel's position against your false, intellectual posturing: one cannot assign "inert images" to living objects if they are concerned about comprehending reality, this is the whole problem that Hegel exposed and refuted in Aristotle and thought in general!

The fact that your entire exposition doesn't even contain a trace of this awareness in terms of Hegel's dialectic, is proof for me that you either haven't read him, or you have failed to comprehend him. Your formation of Aristotle is also exceedingly suspect. I don't want to have any more interaction with you, but I want people who read this to know that you are not an authority on Hegel, and likely Aristotle as well, you are making stuff up in order to posture yourself as being knowledgeable.

No one has to take my word for it, all they have to do is read The Science of Logic. To further add weight to my position, because I admit it is unorthodox that I am not quoting Hegel, but I have my reasons, one can also read the masterful text by Thomas Hoffmann, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, A Propaedeutic.

1) his post was good, yours was not

2) pride is a mortal sin

3) you are a newbie here. Speak tentatively

4) you remind me of a Christian fanatic I know named Robert Wood and threatened to kill me

(The only reason I am not quoting Hegel directly is because I have zero respect for intellectuals like yourself, masters at posturing, masters at playing the superiority card, simply because you are good at articulating yourself. It makes me feel like I am merely giving you more ammunition to bully people.) — JerseyFlight

OK, so instead of actually discussing the philosophical issues, because that would be too "intellectual" for you, you'd prefer to just hurl insults. Greatt! I'm game.

I don't want to have any more interaction with you.. — JerseyFlight

Fuck off then, you ass hole!

...I admit it is unorthodox that I am not quoting Hegel, but I have my reasons... — JerseyFlight

Yes, your reasons are that you are just a smart ass piece of shit, who'd rather engage with petty insults than address the issues, because you haven't even approached the issues, let alone apprehended, or comprehended any of them. I hope you were sincere when you said you don't want any more interaction with me. You can be assured that I'll test you on that, ass hole.

Yes, your reasons are that you are just a smart ass piece of shit, who'd rather engage with petty insults — Metaphysician Undercover

What's most interesting is that I don't think I called you any names? I was trying very hard not to do that, but I did accuse you of things based on your performance and approach. I tried to draw accurate conclusions off of the information you provided, as it is quite clear, that you are indeed, talking out of your backside. No doubt you are upset that you got called out, and exposed for posturing. But this is good because I think you have likely dominated many people with this technique. You could always just fight back and provide the links to Aristotle, instead of calling me names. (Moderators please do not remove these posts, they truly manifest some very important things, and they really stand to prove my point.)

It's an empirical fact that most strict Hegelians are egoists

Let me get this straight, you had to "try very hard" not to throw insults at someone who knows more Aristotle than you and simply explicated the issue reasonably? You got major issues. And, your right: Marxists are outnumbered. And you're wrong: you are going to lose

Marxists are outnumbered. And you're wrong: you are going to lose — Gregory

I am not a Marxist. It is intellectuals, those who use words to solve problems, that are outnumbered against systems of violence. Sadly, we are not smart enough to see ourselves as a class, and so we will divide until they conquer.

And thus we finally learn why we assume the world is mathematical. It's been a long journey, but we have reached the end and may celebrate. :roll:

Fair enough. I don't see how Hegel is THE answer though. He's cool, and maybe you are too idk. I've read the Phenomenology twice, his Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Mind. Now I am in the middle of the lesser Logic. So I can speak on this. You proposed that Aristotle was wrong because he brought idealist thoughts to nature. I agree. I also agree Hegel's super-idealism is better. But when you say "to speak of Identity you have too pressupose Identity is not Difference" you are stating a tataulogy, NOT an argument of any kind. To be successful of this forum you need to be kinder, clearer, and. more thoroughal