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 — Gregory

I was speaking with a person who claimed to have done post-doctoral work on Hegel, he claimed to be well-versed and knowledgeable on the subject. He also claimed to be well-versed in Plato and Aristotle, so much so that he claimed they were superior to Hegel in terms of dialectic. This means he should be familiar with Hegel's analysis of Aristotle. It is quite clear in the Logic. Hegel does not merely assert what you call a "tautology," he draws out the contradiction from the very being of identity itself. Further, he proves that Aristotle's formation is a "tautology."

I feel helpless to help that person. — Metaphysician Undercover

Metaphysician heal thyself!! lol

No doubt you are upset that you got called out, — JerseyFlight

You're very good at misjudging people. You've demonstrated this masterfully.

Why do you feel the need to make such judgements?
"I know for a fact that you are speaking out of your backside."
"What you have asserted merely manifests your blatant ignorance."
On and on, while asserting things like, "I am not merely posturing here" without providing anything to justify you assertions. You're a very strange sort of hypocrite.

Hegel does not merely assert what you call a "tautology," he draws out the contradiction from the very being of identity itself. — JerseyFlight

OK hypocrite, maybe you might present this claimed contradiction, since you're so certain of it.. As I explained already, in the Aristotelian conception of "identity", change and therefore difference, is inherent within a thing's identity, due to the fact that any identifiable thing has temporal extension, and a thing changes as time passes. Therefore difference is an aspect of the same thing, and there is no contradiction in saying that the same thing has differences, due to a thing's temporal extension. Since matter is the underlying aspect a thing which remains the same as time passes, while the thing's form is changing, sameness is assigned to the matter of the thing.

Can you show me where he assigns "sameness" and "identity" (difference through dichotomy) to the evolving object? This is very strange indeed. — JerseyFlight

It's called the law of identity, stupid. "A thing is the same as itself". Do you not comprehend that a thing necessarily has temporal extension, and also that a thing changes as time passes? Therefore we can conclude that change and difference are inherent within the identity of the thing, as an aspect of its sameness. There is no contradiction here, just a feature of temporal existence being accounted for.

Metaphysician heal thyself!! lol — fishfry

Thanks fishfry, but I feel that JF has already heeled me.

Dichotomy means division. Difference thru division would be making one wooden board into two. For me, Aristotle gets into too much trouble defining what a thing is. Is a pond one thing? Questions like this lead me to Hegelianism. I know a lot of Aristotelians though. My younger brother is one

in the Aristotelian conception of "identity", change and therefore difference, is inherent within a thing's identity — Metaphysician Undercover

You mean these are the same? No difference needs to be drawn in order to make a distinction, which would indeed imply, as Hegel says, going beyond the principle of identity? How can you contain identity and difference in the same instance of identity? Further, how can you identify something as being the same which is itself beyond the "inert imagine" that identity strives to cast? Of course, you should have worked through all these questions and many more doing post-doctoral work on Hegel? Unless of course, you just focused on his aesthetics? Unless of course, you haven't actually done any post-doctoral work on Hegel? Your replies are a good indication that you've never even read him.

It's called the law of identity, stupid. "A thing is the same as itself". Do you not comprehend that a thing necessarily has temporal extension, and also that a thing changes as time passes? Therefore we can conclude that change and difference are inherent within the identity of the thing, as an aspect of its sameness. There is no contradiction here, just a feature of temporal existence being accounted for. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is part of Hegel's discovery, identity and difference are part of being, but Hegel did not stop there, but of course, you already know this, so I don't have to tell you. More importantly, you have refuted the very principle you claim to champion without even realizing it. Change is not the same as sameness, identity is not the same as difference. This means identity cannot contain difference in order to be equal to itself, must not presuppose it in order to make itself intelligible. If a thing is identical to itself, which I take to be the proper formation of the concept, then the "self" you point to at the moment of identification, vanishes in the next instance. You have, as a matter of fact, gone beyond the image you propagated, so boldly and mightily tried to assert was "itself," but now it is not. Quite accurately then, you are dishing out a tautology to thought, you are in the business of asserting "inert images" as reality, most of all, you do not even realize your own negation. Sorry my poor fellow, but you must choose, you cannot have it both ways, either take being as it goes beyond Aristotelian logic, or live your life in the error of a tautology. Do you start with being or do you start with identity? It seems to me the evidence is clear; for you identity is and must be secondary to being, very hard to see how this doesn't cause problems for your view of identity?

What is most striking is that you seem to think you can simply class identity with difference without going beyond the claim of identity itself. It is a mere assertion on your part, a loaded premise, hoping you don't get caught by a more careful thinker. This is ignorant and proves you don't comprehend the necessary literalness of the concept. Now I know you will insist and demand that you have the right to pack being (with all its difference) into the concept of identity, or to interpret the concept through being, but the concept itself will not permit it, which is proven the very instance you make a distinction between identity and difference. Yours is merely an attempt to retain the abstraction of identity against the reality which negates it. The real question is how you can identify anything through the identity principle, once you admit that being supersedes it? (Notice, you are not qualifying being with identity, but as you must, you are qualifying the nature of identity through the authority of being. Your solution is merely to assert and pretend that this has no effect on the concept of identity).

I am not interested in playing these games with you merely to appease your wounded ego. Metaphysician Undercover, you need to go under the covers and brush up on your Hegel.

So are you saying Heidegger was wrong to posit being as most prior? And are you saying that identity (self-sameness) comes before being in Hegel's works?

I've been trying to reconcile those thinkers actually..

I see potentiality as first, prior to every thing Hegel wrote of. It's pure yang (with a small y) passing through yin (with a small y) to make the world of actuality, which is Yang\Yin

If someone wins a race by an infinitesimal, she has won by potentiality. Hegel said Being and Nothing sublate themselves AND each other to make the world. This all happens in the mind for him. Thought is prior to matter for him. He thought Aristotle got it backwards. I want to see the forest for the trees though, not the trees for the forest. Before (in all ways) being or nothing is pure potentiality

So are you saying Heidegger was wrong to posit being as most prior? — Gregory

Not at all.

What's most interesting is that I don't think I called you any names? — JerseyFlight

You might not have specifically called him names but you certainly were extremely obnoxious and rude.
Even a total noob like me can see that MU dealt with substance in his post to which you responded with statements without any justification. You refrain from arguing your points or quoting source material but you expect another to do so? You might very well be right in everything you claim. I haven't a clue. But surely you ought to argue and show why it is true rather than citing books? Which I don't mind if you add more on top of that.

Out of a past interaction with you it seems that you only like to discuss with people who hold the same views as you. And seemingly call people who do not (yet?) hold these views insincere thinkers?

You mean these are the same? No difference needs to be drawn in order to make a distinction, which would indeed imply, as Hegel says, going beyond the principle of identity? — JerseyFlight

I am not talking about making a distinction, I am talking about a difference which exists whether or not any one distinguishes it. That's why I said that the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself", puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself. Therefore identity is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction.

Human beings make such distinctions through reference to the form of the thing. But the human capacity to abstract the form through sensation is deficient, as we abstract what is called essentials, and miss the accidentals. The accidentals however are an important part of a thing's identity. Therefore the identity of a thing cannot be dependent on human distinction.

How can you contain identity and difference in the same instance of identity? — JerseyFlight

This is quite simple, as I've explained to you a couple times already. A thing has it's own identity. A thing changes as time passes. Therefore a thing's identity contains difference. This is made comprehensible by Aristotle's hylomorphic physics. A thing is a composition of matter and form, therefore it's identity consists of both its matter and form. When a thing changes, its form is what changes, while the underlying matter remains the same. Therefore there is both difference (changing form with the passing of time) , and sameness (continuous existence of the same matter) within the same identity.

Further, how can you identify something as being the same which is itself beyond the "inert imagine" that identity strives to cast? — JerseyFlight

I am unfamiliar with your term "inert image". But since inertia is a sort of substitute term for "matter", and "image" is something created in the mind, it appears like you have created some sort of contradictory notion here. What is imaged within the mind is forms. Matter itself cannot be imaged. So any attempt to cast an image of matter as an "inert image" of identity, would be an attempt to do the impossible, like trying to image a square circle.

Of course, you should have worked through all these questions and many more doing post-doctoral work on Hegel? — JerseyFlight

Who said anything about having done postdoctoral work on Hegel? I'm beginning to see you as a master of the straw man. Just look at the false representation of Aristotle's "identity" which you have proposed. A masterful straw man!

Yes, that is part of Hegel's discovery, identity and difference are part of being, but Hegel did not stop there, but of course, you already know this, so I don't have to tell you. — JerseyFlight

I would disagree with you here. Hegel recognized the distinction between the logical determinations of being/not-being, and the real physical world of becoming, just like Kant distinguished phenomena from noumena. And, within his dialectics, as I said earlier, being/not-being is subsumed by becoming. Therefore, since identity is handed to the thing itself, we cannot say that identity and difference are a part of being, they are a part of becoming. We could only make such a claim If we blur the distinction between becoming and being, as some philosophers like Heidegger are prone to do.

More importantly, you have refuted the very principle you claim to champion without even realizing it. Change is not the same as sameness, identity is not the same as difference. This means identity cannot contain difference in order to be equal to itself, must not presuppose it in order to make itself intelligible. — JerseyFlight

Common JerseyFlight, you demonstrate seriously flawed logic here. That something is not the same as another thing (change is not the same as sameness, or identity is not the same as difference), does not indicate that one cannot be contained within the other. There is nothing here to indicate that one might be a category which contains the other two. Identity might be a category which contains both sameness and difference, like temperature is a category which contains both hot and cold.

This means identity cannot contain difference in order to be equal to itself, must not presuppose it in order to make itself intelligible. — JerseyFlight

It is not "identity" which is the same as itself, it is the thing which is the same as itself. And being the same as itself means that it has an identity, and it cannot be other than it is. This is what the law of identity says. And if we allow it to be violated, allow that a thing is other than it is, we allow that the world is unintelligible to us, because one thing could be an infinity of different things, all at the same time, and there would be no reality or truth to what is existing at any given time.

If a thing is identical to itself, which I take to be the proper formation of the concept, then the "self" you point to at the moment of identification, vanishes in the next instance. — JerseyFlight

This is not true, and there is a very important ontological principle underlying this, understanding which is a key point to understanding the law of identity. A thing, or an object, what you refer to here as a "self", necessarily has temporal extension. Without temporal extension there is no thing (nothing). Temporal extension is therefore a defining feature of "self", it is essential to any "self". Therefore the fact that the self which is pointed to at one moment is always in some way different from the self which is pointed to at the next instant, cannot be used to negate the identity of the self. This would be to deny the empirical evidence that the self continues despite changes to its form, merely for the sake of placing the identity of the thing within the form of the thing. But the empirical observations demonstrate that the self remains the self despite such changes to its form. Therefore we must conclude the opposite, that the identity of the self, as that which remains the same, is proper to the matter of the self, and the identity of the self does not vanish with each moment of changing form, while the differences of the self are proper to its form.

Sorry my poor fellow, but you must choose, you cannot have it both ways, either take being as it goes beyond Aristotelian logic, or live your life in the error of a tautology. Do you start with being or do you start with identity? It seems to me the evidence is clear; for you identity is and must be secondary to being, very hard to see how this doesn't cause problems for your view of identity? — JerseyFlight

Again, you appear to be conflating being with becoming. I suggest you go back to reading Hegel's logic with the intent of making a firm distinction between his use of "becoming" and "being", prior to continuing on this venture of making a fool of yourself.

What is most striking is that you seem to think you can simply class identity with difference without going beyond the claim of identity itself. — JerseyFlight

Excuse me master of the straw man, I have not classed identity with difference. I have classed difference with same, in the category of identity. So quit with the straw man and address the issue. If you have a difficulty with this category "identity", then bring it out.

Yours is merely an attempt to retain the abstraction of identity against the reality which negates it. — JerseyFlight

Again, you display a complete ignorance of Aristotle's "identity". As the law of identity states, a thing's identity is proper to itself, and itself alone. Identity cannot be an abstraction. That is the purpose of the law of identity, to prevent sophists from asserting that a thing's identity is a human abstraction, and proceeding to produce absurd conclusions from this premise. The human abstraction is deficient, failing in abstracting accidentals. And accidentals are essential to a things identity, but not essential to the abstraction. Therefore identity cannot be classed as abstraction. As you continue with your masterful straw man.

Metaphysician Undercover, you need to go under the covers and brush up on your Hegel. — JerseyFlight

Ha ha ha, and now you continue with you comedic entertainment. I'm sorry JerseyFlight, but I don't know why hypocrisy is so amusing to me, I must have a twisted sense of humour. But this is quite the statement coming from someone who cannot even distinguish between Hegel's use of "being" and "becoming".

Hegel was not always the best interpreter of others works, but I want to read his early piece comparing Schelling and Fitche. To my knowledge, Schelling is best understood as a panentheist. Fitche was a simple idealist, either a subjective or objective idealist. I don't know which. Hegel gave clear lip service to God in order not to be attacked, but he implies all over the place that he is an objective idealist (we are God and create the world). Very Hindu of him. With a German slant to it. I have nostalgia for Germany of that period

I am not talking about making a distinction, I am talking about a difference which exists whether or not any one distinguishes it. That's why I said that the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself", puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself. Therefore identity is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction. — Metaphysician Undercover

Identity is exactly dependent on a human being drawing a distinction, this takes place in every instance of identity. There is great confusion in your speech, what you mean to say is that being is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction. This is accurate, the other is not.

You are indeed making a distinction, you just sophistically claim not to be "talking" about it. Further, one cannot distinguish without the aid of difference, and to determine a difference is to make a distinction. Do you qualify "identity" by the concretion of the "thing" or do you qualify the "thing" by the abstraction of identity? (The problem here is that we can already see the answer). When you say, "the law of identity puts the thing within the thing itself," this is false, it is also ignorance. Identity does not allow this. By all means, do tell how identity puts the thing within the thing itself -- because this is not 1) what identity is and does and 2) not what you are doing; you are putting "the thing" into the concept of identity! And this is no doubt because you must, you have no choice but to take this road, precisely because being is not identity! Identity is a formal premise that states A = A, it does not contain information, it is just a tautology regarding the "inert image," which, as you should know, was Hegel's term.

I already anticipated your reply: 'Now I know you will insist and demand that you have the right to pack being (with all its difference) into the concept of identity, or to interpret the concept through being, but the concept itself will not permit it, which is proven the very instance you make a distinction between identity and difference.'

You have been true to form.

When you speak of being and becoming you are mistaken, being is becoming, the way you try to artificially divide being from "itself," to use your own term, merely displays more confusion and ignorance on your part. For you are trying to say that the law of identity contains both being and becoming within itself because the term "thing" encompasses the movement of being (this is a loaded premise not a proof). What you fail to see is that you are no longer talking about identity but have gone beyond it! A = A contains nothing but the assertion that the image is equal to the image. IN THE REALITY OF BEING THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A = A. You have been arguing this all the while, ignorant of the ramifications it has on identity. This is why you give supremacy to the "thing" and not the abstract tautology! What identity means to say is that A is the beginning of -A, but it never gets there, it repeats the image of itself, thereby distorting reality.

Being familiar with Hegel you should have known all of this, the fact that you don't only adds further weight to what I said:

You neither understand Hegel's dialectic, or for that matter Aristotle's position on identity. What you have repeatedly displayed is that you are posturing with your own, juvenile and idiosyncratic formations of the concept of identity, totally oblivious to the concrete ramifications. This is, and cannot be, an example of skilled thinking.

"In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialize; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself." Hegel

The

Great Hegel quote, but MU does seem to really understand Aristotle and i'd also say he won't be moved by such a quote from Hegel. Hegelians and Aristotelians are in different camps. They can learn a little from each other and I encourage study of both sides to people. But fundamentally they have different brain waves. An Aristotelian tutor of mine in college said you have to have a twisted psychology to enjoy Hegel. I enjoy Hegel and enjoy being "twisted". I'd like to ask an Aristotelian: when you are welding two pieces of metal together, at what point does it stop being two forms and starts being one form?

I suppose, in a very broad sense, the fact that the Universe exhibits regularities is what makes it amenable to mathematization. After all, regularity is similarity - anything that happens regularly exhibits patterns and likenesses that can be grouped and, so, counted. And really, the Universe - “any possible world” - has to have regular patterns, because if everything was truly chaotic, then nothing would exist. What makes h. sapiens different is the ability to abstract and count, which means leveraging those principles of regularity, and exploiting the predictive power of mathematical logic in so doing.

Heraclitus allegedly thought his "fire" moves by some kind of rule. But I don't see why pure chaos would be pure absolute nothing however.

dentity is exactly dependent on a human being drawing a distinction, this takes place in every instance of identity. There is great confusion in your speech, what you mean to say is that being is not dependent on someone drawing a distinction. This is accurate, the other is not. — JerseyFlight

We are talking about "identity" as defined by the law of identity, not some peculiar non-philosophical, idiosyncratic notion of identity which you happen to hold. Look, "a thing is the same as itself" does not indicate the requirement for a human being to name the thing, point to the thing, or otherwise notice the existence of the thing. Here's what Stanford Encyclopedia says on identity:

Numerical identity is our topic. As noted, it is at the centre of several philosophical debates, but to many seems in itself wholly unproblematic, for it is just that relation everything has to itself and nothing else – and what could be less problematic than that?

Can you understand that? The relation a thing has to itself, and nothing else. This means no human beings drawing distinctions, or anything like that is required for a thing to have an identity.

You are indeed making a distinction, you just sophistically claim not to be "talking" about it. Further, one cannot distinguish without the aid of difference, and to determine a difference is to make a distinction. Do you qualify "identity" by the concretion of the "thing" or do you qualify the "thing" by the abstraction of identity? (The problem here is that we can already see the answer). — JerseyFlight

So all this is irrelevant. Identity, as defined by the law of identity, has nothing to do with human distinctions.

When you say, "the law of identity puts the thing within the thing itself," this is false, it is also ignorance. — JerseyFlight

Straw man! Gee Jersey, I'm beginning to think that your straw manning is associated with a lack of reading skill rather than intentional. I wrote that the law of identity "puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself", and you quote it as "the law of identity puts the thing within the thing itself". Please, slow down and relax in your reading. Think about what the person has actually said, not what you expect the person to be saying.

Identity is a formal premise that states A = A, — JerseyFlight

This is not identity, it is a representation of the law of identity. Do you understand the difference? The law of gravity is not gravity.

I already anticipated your reply: 'Now I know you will insist and demand that you have the right to pack being (with all its difference) into the concept of identity, or to interpret the concept through being, but the concept itself will not permit it, which is proven the very instance you make a distinction between identity and difference.' — JerseyFlight

This is what i mean about your reading skills. Please, read what the person actually writes, rather than anticipating what the person will write, and automatically assuming that the person has written what you thought would be written. Until you grasp the concept of "identity" as dictated by the law of identity, and rid yourself of that other vernacular, there is no point in discussing how this concept relates to other concepts.

When you speak of being and becoming you are mistaken, being is becoming, the way you try to artificially divide being from "itself," to use your own term, merely displays more confusion and ignorance on your part. — JerseyFlight

It's becoming overwhelmingly clear that you are not familiar with Hegel's dialectics. As a staring point, let me refer you to the Stanford Encyclopedia again.

But if we focus for a moment on the definitions of Being and Nothing themselves, their definitions have the same content. Indeed, both are undetermined, so they have the same kind of undefined content. The only difference between them is “something merely meant” (EL Remark to §87), namely, that Being is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be presence, while Nothing is an undefined content, taken as or meant to be absence. The third concept of the logic—which is used to illustrate the speculative moment—unifies the first two moments by capturing the positive result of—or the conclusion that we can draw from—the opposition between the first two moments. The concept of Becoming is the thought of an undefined content, taken as presence (Being) and then taken as absence (Nothing), or taken as absence (Nothing) and then taken as presence (Being). To Become is to go from Being to Nothing or from Nothing to Being, or is, as Hegel puts it, “the immediate vanishing of the one in the other” (SL-M 83; cf. SL-dG 60). The contradiction between Being and Nothing thus is not a reductio ad absurdum, or does not lead to the rejection of both concepts and hence to nothingness—as Hegel had said Plato’s dialectics does (SL-M 55–6; SL-dG 34–5)—but leads to a positive result, namely, to the introduction of a new concept—the synthesis—which unifies the two, earlier, opposed concepts. — Stanford Encyclopedia, Hegel's Dialectics, 2

See, "Becoming" consists of both Being, and its defining opposite, Nothing, unified in synthesis, as I tried to tell you earlier, when we first engaged. So it is false to say as you do here, that "being is becoming".

For you are trying to say that the law of identity contains both being and becoming within itself because the term "thing" encompasses the movement of being (this is a loaded premise not a proof). What you fail to see is that you are no longer talking about identity but have gone beyond it! A = A contains nothing but the assertion that the image is equal to the image. IN THE REALITY OF BEING THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A = A. You have been arguing this all the while, ignorant of the ramifications it has on identity. This is why you give supremacy to the "thing" and not the abstract tautology! What identity means to say is that A is the beginning of -A, but it never gets there, it repeats the image of itself, thereby distorting reality. — JerseyFlight

None of this makes any sense. It just demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what I said, and of what Hegel said.

"In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialize; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself." Hegel — JerseyFlight

Good quote. See, the "movement" referred to here is an instance of "becoming". The "being", an abstraction, is represented as A, which cannot be understood without reference to not-A. Are you beginning to see the difference between "Being" and "Becoming"?

Now let's see if we can make some progress here. You want to assign "identity" to the abstraction, the "Being", which is called A. But the law of identity disallows this, saying that the identity of a thing is in the thing itself. But under Hegelian dialectics, the thing itself is a movement, a becoming, and there is no basis to assume a thing. So we now have no "thing" to assign identity to, only "Becoming". Do you apprehend this dilemma? There is no "thing" in the thing itself, only a becoming, so nothing in this world of becoming can have any identity.

You might be inclined to dismiss the philosophical definition of "identity" and go back to your vernacular form of "identity", but then what could ground truth?

Relaxed thinking is hardly Hegelian. "With a quickness". Hegelian thoughts on movement are coded in Hegelian's empirical thinking. They take these matters seriously. To us, you are just sitting around speculating. If I cut an apple ( ) in half, is it now two forms or still one? I do want an answer to this MU. And how many forms are in a pool?

If I cut an apple ( ) in half, is it now two forms or still one? I do want an answer to this MU. — Gregory

Of course two. How could you say one, when by your very description you have made one thing into two? But I don't see how this is relevant.

It's relevant because form becomes dependent on how cohesive "two" things are to each other. All we did was cut an apple. You say a metaphysical "spook" (not to be derogatory) was replaced by something else. Was the prime matter replaced too? This line of questioning tends to show that there is something arbitrary about Aristotle's system

It's relevant because form becomes dependent on how cohesive "two" things are to each other. — Gregory

Two things are two things, and therefore two distinct forms, it makes no difference how cohesive the things are. This is why Aristotle placed identity in the thing itself, rather than in the way we describe the thing. We might describe the same scenario, the solar system for example, as one thing, or as a group of distinct things, depending on the purpose. The truth of the matter though, whether it is one thing or a group of things, is a feature of the thing itself (or things), regardless of what humans believe.

You say a metaphysical "spook" (not to be derogatory) was replaced by something else. Was the prime matter replaced too? This line of questioning tends to show that there is something arbitrary about Aristotle's system — Gregory

I don't know what you mean by "spook" here, but placing identity within the thing itself ("a thing is the same as itself") was actually meant to remove the arbitrariness from identity, a step toward objectivity, by denying the arbitrariness of the sophist's claims of identity, that a thing's identity is what we associate with the thing.

Let me try this. Suppose, for WHATEVER reason, that a pen glued to a table means something to an aboriginal culture. To you it is two things, or three if you include the glue. But to them it's one. So how many forms does it objectively have???

Look, "a thing is the same as itself" does not indicate the requirement for a human being to name the thing, point to the thing, or otherwise notice the existence of the thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Thing" is a word used by humans to demarcate objects of being. Further, the word 'thing" is itself insufficient to encompass the reality of being, this is why you must use other words to demarcate the nature of being.

The kind of identity you are talking about is precisely the idealist identity, the mysticism, that Hegel disposes of. Further, all that you are distinguishing here, does require, as your articulating presence proves, a human to make the distinction. This is because the abstract formation that you are putting forth is not the object, it is a characterization of the object invented by humans. Now I agree that objects exist beyond words, but what you are trying to do is equate essence as being synonymous with your concept of identity. But essence and identity are not the same.   

It is agreed that matter exists beyond concepts. It is not agreed that your concept of identity explains or contains the essence of matter. It is too narrow and one-sided to even come close to accomplishing this purpose, enter now Hegel's dialectic. 

"

See, the "movement" referred to here is an instance of "becoming". The "being", an abstraction, is represented as A, which cannot be understood without reference to not-A. — Metaphysician Undercover

Once again, we are beyond identity, which states, A = A, are you saying this is false? Hegel's point is that identity never makes it to reality precisely because it never makes it to -A, which is actually the concrete reality of what occurs in being, the essence of being.

You are doing here with Hegel, exactly what you are trying to do with Aristotle, distort the position to suit your idiosyncratic formation, falsely attributing your own confused ideas to Hegel and Aristotle.

The real trick to your sophistry, and every last ounce of your philosophical leverage, is achieved by trying to smuggle in a loaded premise; you are trying to say that identity embodies negation, but the concrete problem is that it has no negativity in it, the formation is entirely positive! This is undeniable, A = A does not say, A = -A, and this proves you are distorting and twisting the position, no doubt, because you know you cannot get the content you need for essence from the empty tautology of identity. Hence, you are trying to argue that the law of identity states, A= -A =A = -A. This was in fact Hegel's point, "the movement returns to itself." And I must confess, it is nearly beyond belief that you would be so bold as to assert that the law of identity states A = -A. While this is an accurate presentation of what occurs in being, this is not the law of identity, this is a step in the direction of dialectics, as Hegel demonstrated, it is a step beyond identity.

Where your mysticism arises is that you are trying to claim that your concept is the most basic representation of reality, thus attempting to fuse it with the highest philosophical authority. This turns identity (because it is not a representation of reality) into an ideology that is wielded against reality, it literally becomes a form of tyranny that leads to tyranny.

One more thing can be mentioned here. When you make use of this concept in discourse, you most assuredly do not, and will not, use the form you are here trying to assert for reasons of posture, A = -A. Instead you will assert the positive image against the negation. On all fronts then you are defeated and exposed as a practical negator of the position you espouse.           

I hope it is clear to those who are reading this that you are not only distorting the concept of identity, but also distorting and misrepresenting the position of Hegel. [Please do not listen to this man, read Hegel for yourself.] There is one simple question that proves this, where is the negativity in identity? You have no choice but to bring it in from the outside by going beyond identity, then turning back to the concept in an attempt to correct its error by adding the negation which it does not contain! Your fallacy is the lie that states: identity is equal to essence.  

You Sir, have not studied Hegel, which was my original point. You are merely dealing with a straw-man-caricature of his position. Intellectuals like yourself are not liberators of the minds who read them, but you cast them into confusion and error because you are after praise and validation as opposed to truth, a kind of polemical power that champions itself by preying on ignorance.

Ladies and gentlemen, take it from his own lips:  "The "being", an abstraction, is represented as A, which cannot be understood without reference to not-A."

And yet, this -A is not contained in the law of identity! The refutation is complete. 

To be fair, he was talking about the world. For him it has actuality mixed with potency (and a host of other things). He believes in God as prime mover, who would be identical to himself with no movement or negativity. So ye, remember he is speaking only of the universe in his posts

Let me try this. Suppose, for WHATEVER reason, that a pen glued to a table means something to an aboriginal culture. To you it is two things, or three if you include the glue. But to them it's one. So how many forms does it objectively have??? — Gregory

The point is that human intelligence is deficient.

"Thing" is a word used by humans to demarcate objects of being. Further, the word 'thing" is itself insufficient to encompass the reality of being, this is why you must use other words to demarcate the nature of being. — JerseyFlight

You are trying to give "being" a meaning which is not consistent with the meaning that it has in its status when opposed to not-being, or nothing, in Hegel's logic. We need to adhere to the meaning of "being" as used in Hegel's dialectics to avoid equivocation. "Being" refers to the abstraction, the human determination. I already explained to you the incompatibility between the world of becoming, and the logical determinations of what is and what is not, being and not-being. Now you want to talk about "the reality of being" as if being is really becoming, but all this does is confuse the issue, making it difficult to distinguish the incompatible categories which were disclosed by the ancient Greeks.

The kind of identity you are talking about is precisely the idealist identity, the mysticism, that Hegel disposes of. Further, all that you are distinguishing here, does require, as your articulating presence proves, a human to make the distinction. This is because the abstract formation that you are putting forth is not the object, it is a characterization of the object invented by humans. — JerseyFlight

Yes, you continue to assert that Hegel demonstrated "identity" to be faulty, or contradictory, but you have yet to produce the argument. The argument you have here does nothing. Just because the abstract formation I put forward, describing the identity of the object, is not the object itself, does not mean that there is not an object, with its own identity. So long as I maintain the separation between what is said about the object's identity, and the object's real identity, there is no problem. That is, until you deny that there are any real objects.

Now I agree that objects exist beyond words, but what you are trying to do is equate essence as being synonymous with your concept of identity. But essence and identity are not the same. — JerseyFlight

No, clearly I am not trying to do this. I have said that an object's identity consists of both its matter and its form. I never said anything about "essence", another confusing word with multiple meanings, just like "being". Again, I request that you read clearly what I say, and do not try to distract in this way, by saying that I am talking about something I haven't even mentioned.

It is agreed that matter exists beyond concepts. It is not agreed that your concept of identity explains or contains the essence of matter. It is too narrow and one-sided to even come close to accomplishing this purpose, enter now Hegel's dialectic. — JerseyFlight

No,no,no, this is totally confused. Essence is formal, and matter is a completely distinct category from form, so it doesn't even make sense to talk about the essence of matter. Furthermore, we haven't discussed matter enough to have any agreement as to whether it is more than conceptual.

Once again, we are beyond identity, which states, A = A, are you saying this is false? Hegel's point is that identity never makes it to reality precisely because it never makes it to -A, which is actually the concrete reality of what occurs in being, the essence of being. — JerseyFlight

I don't know what you're talking about. The law of identity is represented as A=A. There is no need to reference -A. Of course A would never make it to -A, that would violate the law of identity. The relation of A to -A is what is called "becoming". It is not being! And you cannot represent it as "the essence of being". That is an incorrect interpretation of Hegel. It is a movement, a becoming. If you think that becoming is being, in Hegel's dialectics, you are simply wrong. Read the Stanford article I referred for you. Being is the abstraction, there is no such thing as the the concrete being. This is why identity doesn't make sense to Hegel. There are no individual beings in the concrete reality, only the process of becoming, Therefore identity, which is what Aristotle gives to individual things, beings, makes no sense. Individual things are what a mind distinguishes in the act of individuation, but in reality the thing vanishes into not that thing as fast as time passes, so identity makes no sense.

The real trick to your sophistry, and every last ounce of your philosophical leverage, is achieved by trying to smuggle in a loaded premise; you are trying to say that identity embodies negation, but the concrete problem is that it has no negativity in it, the formation is entirely positive! — JerseyFlight

You are completely neglecting predication. The subject is A. What is predicated of A, may be negated. and this represents change to the thing. Clearly, identity embodies negation when the object which is being represented as A, changes yet maintains its identity as A. What may be predicated of A at one time is negated and cannot be predicated at another time. There is no need for A=-A, for identity to embody negation. You are just making this unwarranted claim without considering the nature of predication.

This is undeniable, A = A does not say, A = -A, and this proves you are distorting and twisting the position, no doubt, because you know you cannot get the content you need for essence from the empty tautology of identity. — JerseyFlight

Why do you keep bringing up "essence" as if it has some relevance? As I said last post, stick to what I have written, and please try not to read your straw man presuppositions into what I write. Essence is something completely different from identity. I have no desire to discuss essence here. So unless you can show how essence is relevant, just leave that term alone. But please, don't pretend that it's my desire to discuss essence.

Where your mysticism arises is that you are trying to claim that your concept is the most basic representation of reality, thus attempting to fuse it with the highest philosophical authority. — JerseyFlight

Did I ever claim that? Stick to what is written! Please.

One more thing can be mentioned here. When you make use of this concept in discourse, you most assuredly do not, and will not, use the form you are here trying to assert for reasons of posture, A = -A. Instead you will assert the positive image against the negation. On all fronts then you are defeated and exposed as a practical negator of the position you espouse. — JerseyFlight

Burn the straw man! When did I say A=-A? The law of identity states that a thing is the same as itself, and this is sometimes represented as A=A. As time passes, the thing which remains the same as itself, represented as A, changes. So the properties we predicate of A, may be negated, while A remains A. Therefore negation is contained within identity. How you can possibly interpret this as me saying A=-A baffles me. Your capacity to produce straw men is simply amazing.

Is a stop sign one thing, one being? The sign itself is merely screwed into the pole. Yet we think of it as one thing. Turns out my arguments against Aristotle end up supporting Hegel

Is there a possible world where the laws of physics aren't mathematical? What would non-mathematical laws of physics be like in a physical universe?

I kind of disagree with the OP in both senses :razz:

Ok, I easily see how, if we have two rocks made of the exact same material and one is twice as big as the other, the bigger one should weigh twice as much. There certainly is something mathematical about this place we live in. — Gregory

I know I'm in the minority on this, but IMO, the fact that we can do math, and make good predictions about the external universe doesn't prove that the universe is mathematical.
Mathematics is a set of tools for rearranging data; deriving non-obvious facts from obvious facts -- essentially augmenting our reasoning process, and intuition. It works because it's self-consistent and the universe seems to be self-consistent, and for thinking beings like us, formally figuring out what can be inferred from what we know is of course a big deal.

I often see physicists say things like "we discovered some math that helps with problem so and so" and stuff like that. I have a hard time putting my finger on what they are saying. It often seems like that are taking math a priori and assuming that the world must accord with it. That would be a Pythagorean position though. It would need defending. Anyone willing to help me reason through this issue?

It's actually the opposite of what you're saying. They aren't assuming maths works. They are using maths to make predictions or inferences and finding that they work; they make good predictions.

At this point, there's such a long track record of applying maths usefully that it's the most promising place to first look. You're free to use mysticism to try to predict events, but humans have done that for thousands of years and come up with nothing. Or, if you have an alternative way of making predictions, go for it! No-one would be upset to discover another way of successfully understanding our universe.

This exchange started when you made the following claim:

"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."

This assertion has not been sustained throughout the course of this exchange.        

Hegel's position on being, as you seem to use the term, is that it is not only inconsequential, but dangerous insofar as it serves to distort essence: "For here we are not concerned with the object in its immediate form, but want to know it as mediated. And our usual view of the task or purpose of philosophy is that it consists in the cognition of the essence of things. By this we understand no more than that things are not to be left in their immediate state, but are rather to be exhibited as mediated or grounded by something else. The immediate being of things is here represented as a sort of rind or curtain behind which the essence is concealed. Now, when we say further that all things have an essence, what we mean is that they are not truly what they immediately show themselves to be. A mere rushing about from one quality to another, and a mere advance from the qualitative to the quantitative and back again, is not the last word; on the contrary, there is something that abides in things, and this is, in the first instance, their essence."  

You are free to insist that you are talking about the law of identity. You are also free to insist that your external imposition of negation doesn't imply a violation of the law, but the law of identity is an entirely positive formation. As soon as you bring in the negative you have gone beyond identity. You are free to pretend that Aristotelian logic deals with actual being, but it does not, it deals with abstract being, with dead images. Dialectic is thought suited to essence, Aristotle's axioms are principles suited to the creation of abstract categories, not the comprehension of reality.

Hegel commenting on Aristotle's logic: "Now if, according to this point of view, thought is considered on its own account, it does not make its appearance implicitly as knowledge, nor is it without content in and for itself; for it is a formal activity which certainly is exercised, but whose content is one given to it. Thought in this sense becomes something subjective; these judgments and conclusions are in and for themselves quite true, or rather correct – this no one ever doubted; but because content is lacking to them, these judgments and conclusions do not suffice for the knowledge of the truth."

So long as I maintain the separation between what is said about the object's identity, and the object's real identity, there is no problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

The object's identity and the object's real identity? Then what is the non-real-identity of the object that you are maintaining against the object's real identity? How is this not an exercise in abstraction? It proves that what you are talking about is nothing more than an idea, a stale and lifeless category.

Just because the abstract formation I put forward, describing the identity of the object, is not the object itself, does not mean that there is not an object, with its own identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

My position is not that the abstraction is not the object, but that it distorts our comprehension of the object, the actual being of being is its movement not its fragment. I am saying exactly what Hegel says, take your categories from the phenomena, do not impose them on the phenomena. I suppose you could assign multiple abstractions to an object if you so desired, but the danger is always the same: distortion of the comprehension of reality itself.    

Yes, you continue to assert that Hegel demonstrated "identity" to be faulty, or contradictory, but you have yet to produce the argument. The argument you have here does nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

In concise form, you will have to connect the dots through careful contemplation:

"Thus the principle of identity reads: "Everything is identical with itself, A = A'; and negatively: "A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time." -Instead of being a true law of thinking, this principle is nothing but the law of the abstract understanding. The propositional form itself already contradicts it, since a proposition promises a distinction between subject and predicate as well as identity; and the identity-proposition does not furnish what its form demands." Hegel

I know I'm in the minority on this, but IMO, the fact that we can do math, and make good predictions about the external universe doesn't prove that the universe is mathematical. — Mijin

Count me in that minority with you friend.