This framing presents substance as nothing more than individual objects, like particular dogs - or even stones or marbles, we would be entitled to think —whic is an oversimplification that loses sight of the deeper point that 'substance' is not mere particularity, but what something is in virtue of its form and actuality. Again, it is nearer to think of it as what of being it is, than what kind of object. And there's a difference! — Wayfarer
Do you conceive of possible worlds as sharing an actual, existential timeline? Such that event A in world W literally happens at the same time as event B in world Y? — J
The two events, being distinct, can't share the same space, so why would we imagine they could share the same time? — J
Not as Kripke understands "same object" -- and I would argue that this is the common-sense understanding as well. You've read Naming and Necessity, I suppose? In his example, "Richard Nixon" is a rigid designator; thus, Nixon remains Nixon -- the "same object" -- regardless of whether he wins or loses the 1968 election. For this to violate some law of non-contradiction, you'd have to maintain that every single property, action, and attribute of a given object is essential to its being what it is. Do you really want to do that? — J
I think you've hit the nail on the head. — Jamal
Now, you'll notice that Adorno will refer to objects, using concepts, while also implying that the concept doesn't quite fit, which in your terms implies that the object is imposed and means that he cannot legitimately use that concept to refer to the real, or that the purported object is entirely ideal. But he has no choice. He will say things like "objects exceed the grasp of their concepts," and applying this to one object, say the working-class, this is a way of showing that we must refer to it as an object but must also remember that its very object-hood is partly a product of thought and does not precisely capture what it's trying to capture (and what's more, no object concept can capture it). — Jamal
But for Adorno the identity of being and thought is the result of the idealist prioritization of the subject. — Jamal
Partly for my own benefit I'd like to work out exactly what is lost, what is misleading, in this over-simple formulation. — Jamal
Now you are misrepresenting what I have said. — Banno
What it comes down to is (a) I am nevertheless ready to move on and don't think this is the right time to tackle the issue (though I intend now to keep it in mind), and (b) there is a real antagonism in Adorno's thinking, which goes right down to the bottom of idealism vs realism, which I hope will become, maybe not clearer, but more explicit as the reading goes on into ND. — Jamal
Good stuff, but here is the thing: the bolded conclusion isn't justified. It begs the question. From the fact that we impose artificial boundaries on hurricanes it doesn't follow that hurricanes don't exist apart from those boundaries. — Jamal
I think he states it openly in the first lecture:
We are concerned here with a philosophical project that does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity. — Jamal
You keep repeating this absurdity. PWS logic is consistent with a=a. End of story. The rest is in your imaginings .
Further discourse is only encouraging your confabulations. Cheers. — Banno
Are you familiar with Taylor's work on this, and DF Wallace's response? — J
Could you say what you have in mind by something being in a different world "at the same time"? The same time as what? It's a different world, isn't it? — J
Or, more charitably, you're a hardcore idealist who cannot accept Adorno's materialism. — Jamal
But what you're saying does go to the heart of the subject-object relation, which is a central part of his thinking; and there is in fact a dialectical antagonism in his thinking between objects as non-conceptual and objects as ineluctably mediated—so I'll try responding. — Jamal
The thing produced being a philosophical system such as Kant's transcendental idealism or Fichte's Science of Knowledge, yes? Well, why not both? They're part of the same deal. I don't think Adorno makes an important distinction between the activity of making a system and the resulting philosophical system itself, or if he does it's along the lines of the systematization/system distinction. — Jamal
Well, which interconnectedness are we talking about? Adorno is saying there is an interconnectedness beyond thought, not only beyond philosophical systems but obscured by philosophical systems. — Jamal
We should be careful. Adorno has an interesting theory of bodily experience, and tends to use "somatic" when he is talking about sensation, because he believes the concept of "sensation" is implicated in the subjectivization characteristic of idealism, i.e., the concept of sensation takes something physical and relational and unjustifiably turns it into something mental and private. This idealist pressure of thought is demonstrated by your own way of wording things here, I think. — Jamal
identity is world-bound; talk of “Socrates in another world” means “someone like Socrates.” — Banno
That's just a misunderstanding of what it is to be an individual. — Banno
In rigid designation (Kripke), names refer to the same individual in every world where that individual exists. Identity is preserved; variation in properties does not threaten self-identity, so long as essential properties remain fixed. — Banno
Still, 10% tariffs and the 30% tariffs on Chinese goods do have some effect... not of an embargo, but still something. — ssu
PWS avoids fatalism because it doesn't allow semantics to determine what will be ontologically true. — J
Like Adorno, I don't accept the antecedent. Things are really connected, before a system is applied to them. Indeed we could think of that as his main point, since the problem with philosophical systems is that they forget the real interconnectedness in their drive to cover everything with their own schemes. — Jamal
Now, if you are looking for some kind of foundational argument justifying the claim of interconnectedness, I think you will look in vain, because negative dialectics is demonstrative and anti-foundational, rather than progressing in a linear fashion from, say, a proof that the world exists. I'm not quite clear: is that the kind of thing you're expecting he should do? — Jamal
I don't think so. Possible Worlds Semantics (PWS) avoids fatalism by allowing multiple possible futures, each with fixed truths, whereas Aristotle avoids fatalism by denying truth values to future contingents, preserving the openness of time. — Banno
The difference lies in how each treats truth, time, and modality: Aristotle’s logic makes metaphysically assumptions of essence and potentiality, while PWS is a formal, model-theoretic system that treats possibility as quantification over worlds. Aristotle’s modal logic is limited to syllogisms, lacks a general semantics, and relies on essentialist assumptions. PWS, by contrast, provides a precise, neutral, and flexible framework for reasoning about modality. — Banno
Right, but it's worth pointing out that this is sometimes denied (i.e., there is no truth about "what a thing is") and people still try to do ontology with this assumption. — Count Timothy von Icarus
IMO, this mostly comes down to the elevation of potency over actuality. When the order is inverted, then one always has limitless possibility first, and only after any (arbitrary) definiteness. Voluntarism plays a large role here. It becomes the will (of the individual, God, the collective language community, or a sort of "world will") that makes anything what it is through an initial act of naming/stipulation. But prior to that act, there is only potency without form and will. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Presumably though, you need knowledge of an object in order to have any volitions towards that object. This is why I think knowing (even if it is just sense knowledge) must be prior to willing, and so acquisition of forms prior to "rules of language," and of course, act before potency (since potency never moves to act by itself, unless it does so for no reason at all, randomly). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Edit: I suppose another fault line here that ties into your post (which I agree with) is: "truth as a property of being" versus "truth solely as a property of sentences." In the latter, nothing is true until a language has been created, and so nothing can truly be anything until a linguistic context exists. That might still require form to explain though, because again, it seems some knowledge must lie prior to naming. — Count Timothy von Icarus
As things stand, I think I have presented very good reasons not to make use of forms in any worthwhile ontology, but instead to look at how we make use of words. — Banno
The trouble here is that modal logic subsumes propositional logic. They are not inconsistent. — Banno
But this interconnectedness is by means of system. The issue is, if we reject system philosophy, what would maintain interconnectedness. If there is nothing other than system philosophy which produces interconnectedness, then it is still needed, and cannot be replaced by the inverse. The question is still, how is thought unified.Isn't there? Is this a Thatcherite point, i.e., there's no such thing as society? — Jamal
And from Adorno's point of view neither the myth nor the smorgasbord are good options, on their own. — Jamal
Do you disagree with this summary:
1. Philosophy should treat phenomena as interconnected within an organized whole
2. This is possible without system in the traditional sense
3. And this takes what is good about system rather than merely abandoning it dismissively
4. Imposing one's own scheme on the phenomena from the outside is to take what's bad about system---the phenomena should be allowed to speak for themselves — Jamal
But this is ambiguous. He promotes the need for a system, in that he thinks there is something important in this need that can be redirected into "blasting open the phenomena with the insistent power of thought". But I don't think he's saying he wants to actually do a philosophical system. — Jamal
This means – and I am not
embarrassed to say that at this point I feel a certain emotion – that
the path on which system becomes secularized into a latent force
which ties disparate insights to one another (replacing any architectonic
organization) – this path in fact seems to me to be the only road
still open to philosophy. Admittedly, this path is very different from
the one that passes through the concept of Being, exploiting en route
the advantages provided by the neutrality of the concept of Being.
And it is from this standpoint that I would ask you to understand
the concept of a negative dialectic: as the consciousness, the critical
and self-critical consciousness of such a change in the idea of a philosophical
system in the sense that, as it disappears, it releases the
powers contained within itself. — p38
We might say, then, that thought which aspires to be authoritative without
system lets itself be guided by the resistance it encounters; in other
words, its unity arises from the coercion that material reality exercises
over the thought, as contrasted with the ‘free action’ of thought itself
which, always concealed and by no means as overt as in Fichte, used
to constitute the core of the system. — p39
I would ask you to combine this
with an idea that I have hinted at in quite a different context, that
of the idea of the secularization of system or the transformation of
the idea of system, in other words, with the fact that philosophical
systems have ceased to be possible. — 39-40
Thinking would be a form
of thinking that is not itself a system, but one in which system and
the systematic impulse are consumed; a form of thinking that in its
analysis of individual phenomena demonstrates the power that
formerly aspired to build systems. By this I mean the power that is
liberated by blasting open individual phenomena through the insistent
power of thought. — p40
This means that something of the system can still
be salvaged in philosophy, namely the idea that phenomena are
objectively interconnected – and not merely by virtue of a
classification imposed on them by the knowing subject. — p40
He is saying there is value in the need for a system, but he is not promoting the project of a philosophical system itself. He is on board with the modern rejection of systematic philosophy, and makes that quite obvious. This is where he differs from Hegel and Fichte (and Kant, although it’s more complex with Kant). — Jamal
The way I'd put it is, philosophy should avoid both traditional system and systematization, but it should take the energy of the former. — Jamal
The provincialism he talks about can't just be a matter of systematization, because its problem is that it still acts like it's able to do traditional systemaic philosophy: — Jamal
And this very criticism, that of the aperçu-like
nature of my thinking, has frequently been levelled at me too, until
finally – simply because so many things came together and created a
context – it then lost ground in favour of other objections, without
my having had to put my cards on the table13 and without my having
had to show what joins up my various insights and turns them into
a unity. — 39
To me Adorno seems to be saying that we shouldn't be satisfied with a weak kind of philosophy that pursues restricted problems or else abandons itself to relativism, subject to "contingency and whim". We should want some kind of unity. — Jamal
He points out that Hegel contradicts himself, wanting to have his cake and eat it with a system that, like mathematics or logic, is one "gigantic tautology," yet is supposed to tell us something substantive about the world: — Jamal
He puts things differently by saying he wants to reject Spinoza's verum index sui et falsi, which is something like, the truth is an index of or standard for the false, meaning what is false can be just read of from what is true. He proposes the alternative: falsum index sui atque veri, the false indicates both itself and the true. — Jamal
...that this falseness proclaims itself in whether negative dialectics is possible what we might call a certain immediacy, and this immediacy of the false, this falsum, is the index sui atque veri.
The determinate negation of the negative conditions in
which we find ourselves provides a glimpse of “the only
permissible figure of the Other.”22 Amending Spinoza in his
essay “Critique,” Adorno argues that “the false, once
determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an
index of what is right and better.”23 Echoing this remark in his
lectures on Negative Dialectics, Adorno again rejects Spinoza’s
proposition “that verum index sui et falsi, or that the true and
the false can both be read directly ... from the truth.” Here
Adorno contends that “the false, that which should not be the
case, is in fact the standard of itself: . . . the false, namely that
which is not itself in the first instance–i.e. not itself in the
sense that it is not what it claims to be–that this falseness
proclaims itself in what we might call a certain immediacy, and
this immediacy of the false, this falsum, is the index sui atque
veri. So here then, . . . is a certain pointer to what I consider
‘right thinking’.”24
As well as the structure of a symphony, and the tension and resolution that lead to transformation, there's the way that the parts (movements and motifs) are shaped by the whole, and vice versa. — Jamal
Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further reflection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefined,
is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identification always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the α¸να′µνησις, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectified.
And truth to tell, this rectification in the act of identification is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses. — p30
And it's like he's saying that this insight is in Hegel already, or more like ... Hegel's dialectic "wants" to rectify the violence, but Hegel himself didn't allow it to. In other words, here's what Hegel should have done. — Jamal
Hmm... I still suspect this whole thing is just a play on words, where "possibly P" and "possibly not P" do not fit the desired format for the LNC and LEM to apply. I'll try one last example and then I'll leave it alone. — A Christian Philosophy
As per the LNC, we cannot have "P" and "not P" at the same time.
But we can have "the glass is half full" and "the glass is half not full" at the same time.
Does this example violate the LNC? Surely not; it is merely a play on words because the propositions "the glass is half full" and "the glass is half not full" say the same thing in different words. — A Christian Philosophy
I have explicitly pointed out why this is not the case. The speak about two different things, so could not, in theory, tell us hte same thing. — AmadeusD
I understand what you're saying though, as i noted - they tell us the same thing (in practice). — AmadeusD
But they say different things... Certain contexts will give us the same information from each, but they mean different things as explicitly set out above. Is that translation of the logic above wrong? — AmadeusD
P1: LEM says one or the other must be true when "P" and "not P" contradict.
P2: "possibly P" and "possibly not P" do not contradict.
C: Therefore, "possibly P" and "possibly not P" both being true does not violate the LEM. — A Christian Philosophy
I didn't realize that. — frank
Which of course, often tell us hte same thing but are do not mean the same thing. — AmadeusD