The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4
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
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.What is, is limited by what can be thought. that is the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. — Tobias
:smirk:The wheel is a human invention, the micro and macroscopic world is not. — Fooloso4
Thinking presuppose being like tides presuppose the ocean – nonidentity (e.g. Adorno, Levinas, Zapffe, Rosset, Meillasoux, Brassier). — 180 Proof
"What is" is the horizon – unthought – of thought. In other words, thinking does not include, or reach, the greatest (final) number. — 180 Proof
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
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
However. tiny slivers of matter that make us ill are thinkable, they conform to our categories of though — Tobias
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
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:.. being equally presupposes thinking — 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. — Fooloso4
Parmenides "categories of thought" exclude change. — Fooloso4
So you may have a complete system theory, but not a complete explanation. — Possibility
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
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
We need the category of difference to account to perceive things as different to begin with. — Tobias
Well Parmenides did not have the categories of thought, or the 2000 whatnot years of philosophical development that came after him. — Tobias
It took Herclitus to clear it up — Tobias
What he did not realize is that becoming is a category of thought as well. — Tobias
I see all kinds of things, but I never see a thing I call 'reality'. — Tobias
3. Reality is not part of everything — Tobias
Just analyze the phrase 'reality in total'. Is a 'reality in part' thinkable? — 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. — Fooloso4
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
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
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
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
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
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
Well physics does divide reality - as the bounding wholeness of concrete actuality - into the two parts of laws and constants. — apokrisis
To fix that dichotomy, you then need a systems logic that can find the unity in such opposites — apokrisis
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
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
Isn't physics part anymore of philosophy? — EugeneW
No, I hold reality to be a metaphysical concept, not a physical one. — Tobias
Reality is a concept by which we refer to all that is real for us, or all that is the case. — Tobias
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
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
So you don’t hold to metaphysical naturalism? Are you arguing for dualism or something? — apokrisis
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
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
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
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
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
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
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