Well up until recently there was no wheel either. What is, is limited by what can be thought. — Tobias

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not.

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4

Of course it is, or did they found some sort of sign saying "macroscopic world" when human kind first emerged? The division is human, the classification of one thing as different from another is a human made distinction predicated on the way humans perceive their world. That is the whole point of the identity thesis. Not accepting it in fact leads us to 'metaphysics' of the worst kind, the postulation of all kinds of things that are unthinkable.

Interesting is though that you consider the flaw of the argument to be the acceptance Parmenedian claim, while I think the flaw of the argument is not heeding it. :smile:

The division is human, the classification of one thing as different from another is a human made distinction predicated on the way humans perceive their world. — Tobias

The divisions are a way of referring to things that existed prior to anyone thinking such things exist. Whether you think the very small and the very large are the same thing or not has not bearing on the fact that such things as neutrinos and neutron stars exist.

What is, is limited by what can be thought. that is the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. — Tobias

Thinking presupposes being like tides presuppose the ocean – nonidentity (e.g. Adorno, Levinas, Zapffe, Rosset, Meillasoux, Brassier). "What is" is the horizon – unthought – of thought. In other words, thinking does not include, or reach, the greatest (final) number.

The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4

:smirk:

The divisions are a way of referring to things that existed prior to anyone thinking such things exist. — Fooloso4

So the division between the macroscopic and the microscopic always existed without anyone making the distinction? In who's mind, God's?

If your interest is in being argumentative, I am not interested. If your interest is in trying to understand views that differ from your own then you should begin by not misrepresenting what I have said.

What is at issue is not the division but that there are these very small and very large things that were unknown and unthought.

Thinking presuppose being like tides presuppose the ocean – nonidentity (e.g. Adorno, Levinas, Zapffe, Rosset, Meillasoux, Brassier). — 180 Proof

Yes, but being equally presupposes thinking. When I say something is, it means it is at issue for me. A rock, a grain of sand, an ocean does not care one iota about its being. An ocean is not in fact something different from a rock, but for someone for whom the difference matters. Materialists and idealists are just birds of the same feather they absolutize a certain an call it absolute.

"What is" is the horizon – unthought – of thought. In other words, thinking does not include, or reach, the greatest (final) number. — 180 Proof

I do agree with this. We know there is so much more than we can now fathom. "is this all", "there must be more to it" and there always is. However it is thought that makes this distinction. It creates its own horizon.

If your interest is in being argumentative, I am not interested. If your interest is in trying to understand views that differ from your own then you should begin by not misrepresenting what I have said — Fooloso4

Do not be condescending or tell me what I should be doing. It is impolite.

What is at issue is not the division but that there are these very small and very large things that were unknown and unthought. — Fooloso4

Yes of course there are. No one took germs and viruses into account before... and now we do. However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of thought, there is nothing new to it. the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably.

I edited out the wheel argument though, because I thought it would lea us astray and it did. However, I like the discussion about where the paradox in fact comes from. I think it comes from equating reality with the sum total of things. What o you think.

However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of though — Tobias

You have got this backwards. They do not conform to a priori categories of thought. It is, rather, that thought was forced to change to accomodate what did not fit existing categories.

the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably. — Tobias

Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change.

.. being equally presupposes thinking — Tobias

Ocean is the independent variable, tides are a dependent variable that 'makes explicit' a dynamic aspect of the ocean. "Equally presuppose" makes no sense here. Feuerbach suggests (as I read him), it's merely an anthropocentric bias (blindspot) to reify – project, literalize – our thoughts (e.g. distinctions) and then thereby conclude 'maps = territory' (even as maps are made by / from aspects of the territory and used to make explicit other aspects – yet never 'the whole' – of the territory). :chin:

You have got this backwards. They do not conform to a priori categories of thought. It is, rather, that thought was forced to change to accomodate what did not fit existing categories. — Fooloso4

Well they have to, unless you want to go back to pre-kantian days. We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. We do not stumble into the world as tabula rasa.

Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change. — Fooloso4

Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. Indeed he was puzzled with the notion of change. He had to deny it as real based on what he could logically fathom. It took Herclitus to clear it up to some extent, in the same river we step and do not step. What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. He was not right, I am a Heracleitian, but what he got right was the notion that what is real has to be able to be thinkable. He thought change was logically impossible, that was a mistake.

So you may have a complete system theory, but not a complete explanation. — Possibility

Correct. The argument shows that the somethingness that does exist is organised in this fashion. And thus what we can conclude is that it all starts with an everythingness - an Apeiron or vagueness - and not a nothingness. (Although an Apeiron or vagueness is in fact also a “less than nothing” as well.)

But the “existence” of that Apeiron or vagueness is not explained in any immediately obvious fashion. However you could then wonder what could rule out the “existence” of naked possibility itself.

If nothingness is so easily taken to need no cause to be the case, why wouldn’t the same apply more strongly to that which is less than nothing?

I get that - but surely ‘everythingness’ is not the same as ‘everything’? Sorry, I’m being pedantic, but I would have thought “everythingness is possible” to be more accurate.. — Possibility

The different terms denote the possible vs actual distinction. So everythingness is the state of possibility, everything would be its (impossible) realisation in actuality.

Perhaps you are reifying what can “exist” as only the unbound potentiality for “all things”? So this is a linguistic trap here rather than a problem for the logic of the argument.

Remember also that this bootstrapping argument works it’s way backwards from the physical world as we know it. So the prior potential can be framed in terms of infinite GR dimensionality and infinite QM fluctuation. Or a QG unbound view.

We can explain donuts no problem from the Big Bang on. And we can explain the gauge symmetries that impose a mathematical-strength shaping hand on any initial Planck-scale QG potential.

So the notion of this everythingness has physicalist parameters. It is tied to what are already our notions of fundamental simplicity and not some naive realist or modal notion of the everythingness of a world of “medium sized dry goods (and torus-shaped confectioneries)”.

We can distinguish what is necessary being from what is merely contingent, and so greatly reduce the explanatory load that the argument must bear.

Feuerbach suggests (as I read him), it's merely an anthropocentric bias (blindspot) to reify – project, literalize – our thoughts (e.g. distinctions) and then thereby conclude 'maps = territory' (even as maps are made by / from aspects of the territory and used to make explicit other aspects – yet never 'the whole' – of the territory). :chin: — 180 Proof

Well, I wonder why I have to accept that the territory is real and somehow the map is not. The whole distinction is a map making exercise, done in order for us to navigate better, but reifying this distinction as something that is a really really real distinction is actually what you are warning us against doing.

It may be useful to do in some instances and to say, well this is real and unchanging and this is a changing aspect of it. At least I think that is where I think you are going with your distinction between tides and sea, but I might be wrong of course. It may also lead us astray if one holds on too firmly to these distinctions/ The problem with the paradox, at least from my perspective, is that it reifies a certain concept, namely 'reality', and then compares it to certain 'res' all things that are.

We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. — Tobias

Do we see things differently according to a priori categories or did difference become a category as the result of seeing differences? Kant claims the former. This is not the prevailing view today.

Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. — Tobias

That supports my point. They are not invariant a priori categories. Or, more generally, it is not the case that thinking and being are the same if thinking leads to the denial of change.

It took Herclitus to clear it up — Tobias

The relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is an open question. Some maintain that Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides and others that Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus.

What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. — Tobias

It not that he did not realize it, he just thought that becoming is a false opinion. His monastic thinking led him to reject change and difference. This is a good example of why we should not accept the premise that thinking and being are the same.

I see all kinds of things, but I never see a thing I call 'reality'. — Tobias

Where do the laws of nature or the constants of nature fit into your notion of reality as mereologically the sum of all things?

Aren’t you looking at this from the point of view of the current “world of medium sized dry goods”, whereas physics suggests that laws and constants - the absolutely general - are all that constitute our reality at its beginning?

3. Reality is not part of everything — Tobias

So therefore reality is the wholeness of every thing, because - as you say - it aint’t the mereological sum?

And thus reality speaks to the maximally general. Which in physics-speak is laws and constants.

Just analyze the phrase 'reality in total'. Is a 'reality in part' thinkable? — Tobias

Well physics does divide reality - as the bounding wholeness of concrete actuality - into the two parts of laws and constants.

To fix that dichotomy, you then need a systems logic that can find the unity in such opposites.

So the structure of the challenge is familiar.

Do we see things differently according to a priori categories or did difference become a category as the result of seeing differences? Kant claims the former. This is not the prevailing view today. — Fooloso4

Well I would not know how you can perceive 'difference' without a mind wired to see 'difference'. It is also very binary, right, it is the same thing or a different thing. This binary view of things to me seems to belong to the human condition.

That supports my point. They are not invariant a priori categories. Or, more generally, it is not the case that thinking and being are the same if thinking leads to the denial of change. — Fooloso4

Why would it lead to a denial of change? Only if you assume that thinking cannot handle change. I don't see why it would not be able to. I conjecture that it is because one considers thinking to be mere logic or 'quantity', but dialectical thinking is very dynamic. I realize that I am the same person I was yesterday and that I am different from the person I was yesterday.

The relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is an open question. Some maintain that Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides and others that Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus. — Fooloso4

Ok, but I think we both agree there is more to thinking than monolithic 'sameness' or identity. In your view though it seems like we first have to experience non-identity in order to be released from our slumber that thinking prioritizes identity. I think that assumption, that identity and sameness is the default and change modifies our thinking is not warranted.

It not that he did not realize it, he just thought that becoming is a false opinion. His monastic thinking led him to reject change and difference. This is a good example of why we should not accept the premise that thinking and being are the same. — Fooloso4

No, it is a good example of the dawn of philosophy. He held on to assumptions, namely that 'real' thinking deals with the unchanging, which we questionable.

Where do the laws of nature or the constants of nature fit into your notion of reality as mereologically the sum of all things? — apokrisis

I do not hold reality as the sum of all things, it is exactly the opposite I would say. Rasmussen, the author of the paradox seems to hold that idea.

Aren’t you looking at this from the point of view of the current “world of medium sized dry goods”, whereas physics suggests that laws and constants - the absolutely general - are all that constitute our reality at its beginning? — apokrisis

No, I hold reality to be a metaphysical concept, not a physical one. I would therefore also think that 'reality at its beginning' is a square circle. As if there was no 'reality' and will at some point not be a 'reality'. Reality is a concept by which we refer to all that is real for us, or all that is the case. It is an abstraction referring to the most general state of affairs.

So therefore reality is the wholeness of every thing, because - as you say - it aint’t the mereological sum?

And thus reality speaks to the maximally general. Which in physics-speak is laws and constants. — apokrisis

I have no idea what physics would say, I am not a physicist. If when physicists speak of reality they actually speak of 'laws and constants' that is well possible. That does not mean anything though in a metaphysical discussion. though when physicists and metaphysicians speak to each other they will first have to clear away such mutual understandings of a concept.

Well physics does divide reality - as the bounding wholeness of concrete actuality - into the two parts of laws and constants. — apokrisis

Ok. than they run into a paradox. Poor physicists. I do not see though why you would give the keys of metaphysics (conceptual analysis) to physicians (analysis of the physical world).

To fix that dichotomy, you then need a systems logic that can find the unity in such opposites — apokrisis

I recommend dialectics ;)

Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding. — Fooloso4

The best way to understand them is imagining what it is to be a quantum particle or a cosmos. Quantum particles have properties were not familiar with from everday life, but it's still possible to sympathize with them.

I have no idea what physics would say, I am not a physicist. If when physicists speak of reality they actually speak of 'laws and constants' that is well possible. — Tobias

The laws and constants are secondary. It are particles, their interactions, and their collective behaviors, that matter. Democritus told us that already.

The laws and constants are secondary. It are particles, their interactions, and their collective behaviors, that matter. Democritus told us that already. — EugeneW

There must be a 'The Physics Forum' where such issues are vehemently discussed.

There must be a 'The Physics Forum' where such issues are vehemently discussed. — Tobias

Isn't physics part anymore of philosophy? Or only metaphysics? About physics, that is.

Isn't physics part anymore of philosophy? — EugeneW

I do not think so. Neither is law, art or construction. However, there is philosophy of art, philosophy of physics (a sub branch of philosophy of science) and philosophy of law.

Though of course one can argue a question is actually not a philosophical question, but a question of physics. That is a philosophical discussion too, because it is about the limits of philosophy.

No, I hold reality to be a metaphysical concept, not a physical one. — Tobias

So you don’t hold to metaphysical naturalism? Are you arguing for dualism or something?

Reality is a concept by which we refer to all that is real for us, or all that is the case. — Tobias

Those could be two different things.

Certainly from my Peircean approach to metaphysical naturalism, I recognise the potential and the necessary to be real along with the actualised, So all that is the case in terms of the brew which could result in a “real material world” includes the tychism of quantum potential and synechism of mathematical symmetry.

Thus metaphysics and physics wind up singing from the same hymn sheet. Talk about the origins of reality are informed both by the dialectics of metaphysics and the pragmatics of science.

That does not mean anything though in a metaphysical discussion. though when physicists and metaphysicians speak to each other they will first have to clear away such mutual understandings of a concept. — Tobias

Why wouldn’t physics and metaphysics be prioritising this merged approach?

Peirce has already done it. Ontic structural realism takes it seriously enough. I don’t see a problem for the metaphysical naturalist given physics used to call itself natural philosophy for just this reason.

But it used to. 19th century physicists (and before), combined them happily. Mach, Bolzmann, Einstein, Planck... Where are the likes of them nowadays? They are rarities instead of the rule. Luckily there are exceptions, for the better of physics, I might add. Rovelli, Smolin, etc.

the identity of thinking and being stipulates that the categories of thought necessarily mirror that which we find in our world. That is at least what I take to be Parmenides' point, read charitably. — Tobias

I think this also fits with what is perhaps my own misreading of 'the real is rational and the rational is real.' Our shared lifeworld is structured by our social symbol slinging. The intelligible 'spine' of reality is our quilt of maps which functions for the most part as the territory itself, since most interpretations are so shared and automatic that they count as facts.

So you don’t hold to metaphysical naturalism? Are you arguing for dualism or something? — apokrisis

Does me referring the question to a certain type of analysis say anything about my metaphysical commitments? But no, I am not a metaphysical naturalist.

Thus metaphysics and physics wind up singing from the same hymn sheet. Talk about the origins of reality are informed both by the dialectics of metaphysics and the pragmatics of science. — apokrisis

That is the difference (for me at least) between philosophy and science. Science departs from absolute presuppositions about the nature of what it is looking for. Philosophy examines which absolute presuppositions are being held when people discuss the 'origins of reality'. For me they do different things.

In order to discuss the natural world and everything within it from a third person detached perspective, I would take recourse to science. Why would a philosopher speculate about that? I will not in fact, because I am not a scientist. This: "So all that is the case in terms of the brew which could result in a “real material world” includes the tychism of quantum potential and synechism of mathematical symmetry." is enigma to me. Or maybe it is the current analytic vogue, that is possible, but then equally I will have to fold because I have no idea what this means. But indeed if the claim is that 'the material word' somehow is the world as it is, qua metaphysical position, then no, I do not hold that. I think it is reductionist and well... metaphysical in the pejorative sense of the word.

Why wouldn’t physics and metaphysics be prioritizing this merged approach? I don’t see a problem for the metaphysical naturalist given physics used to call itself natural philosophy for just this reason — apokrisis

They can, they just have to be on the same page conceptually. If one is a metaphysical naturalist maybe. However, then is it nor more likely that the physicist will come to a better understanding? I stand in the continental tradition rather squarely.

I would therefore also think that 'reality at its beginning' is a square circle. — Tobias

Could you elaborate?

Correct. The argument shows that the somethingness that does exist is organised in this fashion. And thus what we can conclude is that it all starts with an everythingness - an Apeiron or vagueness - and not a nothingness. (Although an Apeiron or vagueness is in fact also a “less than nothing” as well.)

But the “existence” of that Apeiron or vagueness is not explained in any immediately obvious fashion. However you could then wonder what could rule out the “existence” of naked possibility itself.

If nothingness is so easily taken to need no cause to be the case, why wouldn’t the same apply more strongly to that which is less than nothing? — apokrisis

Agreed. It is the ‘you could then wonder what could rule out’ that I was referring to. This process of energy from imaginative possibility to actuality is filtered through a limited logical and qualitative structure of potential/value/significance/knowledge: you.

The different terms denote the possible vs actual distinction. So everythingness is the state of possibility, everything would be its (impossible) realisation in actuality.

Perhaps you are reifying what can “exist” as only the unbound potentiality for “all things”? So this is a linguistic trap here rather than a problem for the logic of the argument.

Remember also that this bootstrapping argument works it’s way backwards from the physical world as we know it. So the prior potential can be framed in terms of infinite GR dimensionality and infinite QM fluctuation. Or a QG unbound view.

We can explain donuts no problem from the Big Bang on. And we can explain the gauge symmetries that impose a mathematical-strength shaping hand on any initial Planck-scale QG potential.

So the notion of this everythingness has physicalist parameters. It is tied to what are already our notions of fundamental simplicity and not some naive realist or modal notion of the everythingness of a world of “medium sized dry goods (and torus-shaped confectioneries)”.

We can distinguish what is necessary being from what is merely contingent, and so greatly reduce the explanatory load that the argument must bear. — apokrisis

Again, I get that - I can follow the logic of your explanation - but you’re assuming a qualitative understanding of QG (or the aesthetic idea of relating QM and GR). I’m not reifying anything - I’m merely noting your uniquely affected qualitative relation of ‘sign’ to your conscious and discerning language use as the particular ‘signifying’ device in your explanation. When you say “we can...”, you’re referring to your own qualitative potential.

The Tao Te Ching refers to this in its opening chapter, acknowledging that “The Tao which can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” The original ideographic language of the TTC is a qualitative logical structure, to which we as readers align our own qualitative logical structure (in a potential state ‘empty’ of effort), in order to relate to the unbound possibility of energy as a whole in absentia, and recognise the possibility of its unique path through our particular qualitative logical structure. It’s a different way of explaining the same structural relation you’re referring to here. The difference is that it incorporates its language structure wholly within its explanation, and excludes the one aspect of reality we have any hope of accurately isolating from a written representation: energy.

But all this is tangential to the OP, anyway.

1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU).
3. Therefore, there is no reality in total.
4. If anything exists, then there is the total of all that exists (reality in total).
5. Therefore, nothing exists. — lish

I think you and I, @apokrisis would reach tentative agreement in arguing against 3. You’re rejecting the second principle, but my view is that 3 does not follow necessarily from the first, regardless of the second. That ‘everything must have some explanation’ does not negate the notion of everythingness (reality in total) existing without any logical explanation. We can’t escape from the qualitative aspect of language use in logical assertions of reality. Even if the maths works. :wink:

Well if there is a beginning to reality, there must have been a state that is defined as 'unreality', coming before reality came into being. However, at that point that was the state of affairs and therefore that was reality. It is simply the same problem as that of the first cause. It is simply a matter of definition / conceptualization, but that is the whole point of reality, it is itself nothing real.

Well, I wonder why I have to accept that the territory is real and somehow the map is not. The whole distinction is a map making exercise, done in order for us to navigate better, but reifying this distinction as something that is a really really real distinction is actually what you are warning us against doing. — Tobias

I've also pondered the map-territory distinction as part of the map (which deconstructs the distinction.) A softer version interprets the 'territory' as the looming disutility or obsolescence of any given map. The map or the sign or structure itself is perhaps impossible to finally define. “The sign is that ill-named thing, the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: ‘what is...?’”