Is factiality real? (On the Nature of Factual Properties)
This is version 1.0 of the Thread that used to be known as "On the Nature of Factual Properties". I've not deleted the first version of this Thread, you can find that in this OP at the end.
Title: On Meillassoux's concept of factiality in After Finitude.
Question: Is factiality real?
Quentin Meillassoux introduced the term "factiality" in his book After Finitude. He says that it's the speculative essence of facticity.
Why you should care about the question
The question is controversial because if factiality is real, then the Principle of Sufficient Reason is false. This being so, Meillassoux effectively claims that in the absence of the PSR, the most bizarre things could indeed happen. For example, a squid might pop up into existence in your living room, for no reason. Why doesn't that actually happen? For no reason. That things can change for no reason does not mean that they will necessarily do so. At least that's what Meillassoux argues. As he says:
Thesis
My own position is that there is no such thing as factiality, as Meillassoux understands it. As far as I can see, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true. This does not mean that the PSR, by itself, terminates in an entity (i.e., God) in such a way that the entity in question is self-sufficient in terms of Sufficient Reason. For it is possible to maintain that the infinite regress that the PSR leads to, is not necessarily a consequence that one should avoid. Not every infinite series is absurd: just think of the infinite series of the set of natural numbers, for example.
Lead in
One should attempt to refute the claim that there is such a thing as factiality. However, Meillassoux does seem to get something important out of that concept, since it allows him to answer the Question of Being (Why is there something rather than nothing?) in a particularly straightforward way:
So, a dilemma looms. If we believe in factiality, that leads to nonsensical results (i.e., entities can pop in and out of existence, for no reason, and yet somehow they don't). If we don't believe in factiality, we miss out on a particularly interesting answer to the Question of Being.
What, in your opinion, is the best strategy here? What is factiality, anyways? Is it really the same thing as hyper-Chaos (also known as the Principle of Unreason), as Meillassoux understands it? Could there be factiality without hyper-Chaos? Could factiality be the concrete, essential property of every fact, in such a that way the fact itself is contingent but its essential property (factiality) is necessary? For example, it is a fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985. What is the nature of such a fact? What is a fact, anyways?
Thanks to @MrLiminal, @Corvus and @Bob Ross for their comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve this OP.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(This was the original Thread)
On the Nature of Factual Properties
by Arcane Sandwich
Question
Why is my existence as a person (and as an "Aristotelian substance") characterized by the factual properties that I have, instead of other factual properties? The perplexing thing here is that factual properties are contingent (in a modal sense), even though I experience them as necessary (in a modal sense).
Why you should care about the question
The origin of the preceding question is the following one: It just feels odd (to my mind) to have no good reason, other than brute facts, to explain why I have the factual properties that I have had since birth, especially since I didnt choose to be born. But what intrigues me the most are the details of this problem: Not only did I not choose to be born, I didnt even choose to be born in this place instead of that place. My place of birth is just a brute fact thats been imposed on my existence, the same goes for my chromosomes. I didnt choose these chromosomes, especially not these chromosomes (as in, the ones that I actually have), just as I didnt choose my skin color. These are just brute facts that have been imposed on my existence, without my consent, so to speak. The same goes for my biological sex, as well as the language that I eventually had to learn how to speak (and eventually write). Still more intriguing (to me, at least) is that its just a fact that I was born sometime before the beginning of the 21st Century. Why not the Middle Ages? Why not the Renaissance? Why not "The Future", for example the year 2125?
From a modal point of view, all of the aforementioned brute facts are contingent (they have the modality of contingency). But the odd experience, if you want to call it that, is that I (in particular, as an individual) experience their logical modality, so to speak, with such a violent, steamrolling force in my ordinary, everyday, day-to-day life, that from an ordinary perspective, those very same brute facts about my existence dont seem contingent, they seem necessary (and to me, particularly, this is an enormous source of philosophical perplexity. I experience it as such, in some yet-to-be-defined way).
Perhaps I am deluded. Thats surely among the possibilities. But its the oddness of this whole situation, if you will, why Im asking the Question in the first place. Perhaps more importantly: what do you make of it, dear reader? For I am at a loss here, and I say that as the author of these very words.
Is my perspective, my First-Person Point of View of the World, somehow wrong, from a theoretical standpoint? And if so, does that entail that my morals and ethics (to say nothing of my political philosophy) are also wrong, in some yet-to-be-specified sense? To be truthful (if only for the sake of rationality), Im not even sure that these last questions make much sense, they barely make sense to me, and Im the person that has written them.
I would sum up the preceding in the following aphorism:
The Joy of Philosophizing, or at least one of the joys that philosophy brings us, is that it allows us to consider the possibility that oddness can be experienced, not merely thought about.
All the best,
-Arcane Sandwich
P.S.: By the way, how would you even define the term factual properties? And what is the Nature (if you will) of such properties? Are they real? Are they empirical? Are they ideal? Are they "material"?) And so forth, down the Rabbit Hole we go...
Explanation for this whole thing: This is my "Love Letter" to Speculative Materialism, especially as developed by Quentin Meillassoux (particularly in his first book, After Finitude). Which is not to say that I agree with him on every topic, but sometimes his statements just leave you wondering...
Title: On Meillassoux's concept of factiality in After Finitude.
Question: Is factiality real?
Quentin Meillassoux introduced the term "factiality" in his book After Finitude. He says that it's the speculative essence of facticity.
Why you should care about the question
The question is controversial because if factiality is real, then the Principle of Sufficient Reason is false. This being so, Meillassoux effectively claims that in the absence of the PSR, the most bizarre things could indeed happen. For example, a squid might pop up into existence in your living room, for no reason. Why doesn't that actually happen? For no reason. That things can change for no reason does not mean that they will necessarily do so. At least that's what Meillassoux argues. As he says:
Quentin Meillassoux:If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power -something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm. We see an omnipotence equal to that of the Cartesian God, and capable of anything, even the inconceivable; but an omnipotence that has become autonomous, without norms, blind, devoid of the other divine perfections, a power with neither goodness nor wisdom, ill-disposed to reassure thought about the veracity of its distinct ideas. We see something akin to Time, but a Time that is inconceivable for physics, since it is capable of destroying, without cause or reason, every physical law, just as it is inconceivable for metaphysics, since it is capable of destroying every determinate entity, even a god, even God. This is not a Heraclitean time, since it is not the eternal law of becoming, but rather the eternal and lawless possible becoming of every law. It is a Time capable of destroying even becoming itself by bringing forth, perhaps forever, fixity, stasis, and death.
Thesis
My own position is that there is no such thing as factiality, as Meillassoux understands it. As far as I can see, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true. This does not mean that the PSR, by itself, terminates in an entity (i.e., God) in such a way that the entity in question is self-sufficient in terms of Sufficient Reason. For it is possible to maintain that the infinite regress that the PSR leads to, is not necessarily a consequence that one should avoid. Not every infinite series is absurd: just think of the infinite series of the set of natural numbers, for example.
Lead in
One should attempt to refute the claim that there is such a thing as factiality. However, Meillassoux does seem to get something important out of that concept, since it allows him to answer the Question of Being (Why is there something rather than nothing?) in a particularly straightforward way:
Quentin Meillassoux:Thus the solution to the problem is as follows: it is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else. The necessity of the contingency of the entity imposes the necessary existence of the contingent entity.
So, a dilemma looms. If we believe in factiality, that leads to nonsensical results (i.e., entities can pop in and out of existence, for no reason, and yet somehow they don't). If we don't believe in factiality, we miss out on a particularly interesting answer to the Question of Being.
What, in your opinion, is the best strategy here? What is factiality, anyways? Is it really the same thing as hyper-Chaos (also known as the Principle of Unreason), as Meillassoux understands it? Could there be factiality without hyper-Chaos? Could factiality be the concrete, essential property of every fact, in such a that way the fact itself is contingent but its essential property (factiality) is necessary? For example, it is a fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985. What is the nature of such a fact? What is a fact, anyways?
Thanks to @MrLiminal, @Corvus and @Bob Ross for their comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve this OP.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(This was the original Thread)
On the Nature of Factual Properties
by Arcane Sandwich
Question
Why is my existence as a person (and as an "Aristotelian substance") characterized by the factual properties that I have, instead of other factual properties? The perplexing thing here is that factual properties are contingent (in a modal sense), even though I experience them as necessary (in a modal sense).
Why you should care about the question
The origin of the preceding question is the following one: It just feels odd (to my mind) to have no good reason, other than brute facts, to explain why I have the factual properties that I have had since birth, especially since I didnt choose to be born. But what intrigues me the most are the details of this problem: Not only did I not choose to be born, I didnt even choose to be born in this place instead of that place. My place of birth is just a brute fact thats been imposed on my existence, the same goes for my chromosomes. I didnt choose these chromosomes, especially not these chromosomes (as in, the ones that I actually have), just as I didnt choose my skin color. These are just brute facts that have been imposed on my existence, without my consent, so to speak. The same goes for my biological sex, as well as the language that I eventually had to learn how to speak (and eventually write). Still more intriguing (to me, at least) is that its just a fact that I was born sometime before the beginning of the 21st Century. Why not the Middle Ages? Why not the Renaissance? Why not "The Future", for example the year 2125?
From a modal point of view, all of the aforementioned brute facts are contingent (they have the modality of contingency). But the odd experience, if you want to call it that, is that I (in particular, as an individual) experience their logical modality, so to speak, with such a violent, steamrolling force in my ordinary, everyday, day-to-day life, that from an ordinary perspective, those very same brute facts about my existence dont seem contingent, they seem necessary (and to me, particularly, this is an enormous source of philosophical perplexity. I experience it as such, in some yet-to-be-defined way).
Perhaps I am deluded. Thats surely among the possibilities. But its the oddness of this whole situation, if you will, why Im asking the Question in the first place. Perhaps more importantly: what do you make of it, dear reader? For I am at a loss here, and I say that as the author of these very words.
Is my perspective, my First-Person Point of View of the World, somehow wrong, from a theoretical standpoint? And if so, does that entail that my morals and ethics (to say nothing of my political philosophy) are also wrong, in some yet-to-be-specified sense? To be truthful (if only for the sake of rationality), Im not even sure that these last questions make much sense, they barely make sense to me, and Im the person that has written them.
I would sum up the preceding in the following aphorism:
The Joy of Philosophizing, or at least one of the joys that philosophy brings us, is that it allows us to consider the possibility that oddness can be experienced, not merely thought about.
All the best,
-Arcane Sandwich
P.S.: By the way, how would you even define the term factual properties? And what is the Nature (if you will) of such properties? Are they real? Are they empirical? Are they ideal? Are they "material"?) And so forth, down the Rabbit Hole we go...
Explanation for this whole thing: This is my "Love Letter" to Speculative Materialism, especially as developed by Quentin Meillassoux (particularly in his first book, After Finitude). Which is not to say that I agree with him on every topic, but sometimes his statements just leave you wondering...
Comments (171)
Can you elaborate on this further? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
Great question, thanks for jumping in. In response to your question: what I meant to say in the passage that you quoted, is that I have a subjective "experience" (I'm not even sure if "experience" is the technical term here) for the phenomenon that I describe in that same quote. As in, that is how my "mind works", so to speak. To use a metaphor, I'm just "hardwired" like that, or at least that's how I would describe it in a non-literal way.
Does that make sense? I feel like I'm not being very collaborative. My apologies. I genuinely don't know how to tackle this problem, let alone solve it.
I'm just having a hard time grasping the experience you seem to be having. Can you describe it another way?
Sorry, I derailed my own Thread. Ok, so, back on track, no, I cannot describe it any other way. I'm sorry. Perhaps if you ask me some other questions, I might.
Enough, back on track. Right, regarding "the experience that I am having". The question was, "is that experience something like a disconnect"? Let's start with that, before getting into the discussion about the reality of the external world. Let's just focus on the formal part here. Is it, formally, like a disconnect? Hmmm... Yes, I think you're right. It is indeed like a disconnect, because it's a mismatch of modalities: your are somehow "experiencing" (we'll get to that in a moment) two different modalities at the same time: contingency and necessity. It's as if you're aware that the "Facts of Life" are contingent, like, you got what you got, those are the cards you've been dealt, so now deal with it. But you see? As soon as you start to explain it (at least, that's what happens in my case, subjectively) they suddenly have this "wavey" oddness, eerie-like quality. I don't know, I'm just playing the harp at this point. So, let's sum this up: yes, it's a disconnect, as you said.
Next point: is it a disconnect between the reality that I'm experiencing and my sensory perceptions of it? I'm not entirely sure that those are the semantic choices that I would make. We would have to agree on some sort of basic, ontological definition of some of these terms. "Reality", for example. To me (and I may be wrong here) the word "Reality" has an external referent. What is the referent of the term "Reality"? A good candidate is "The Universe". Another good candidate is "The Laws of Physics, or whatever physicists actually study". So, unless we can define some of the terms that you're using (and I agree to use them), I'm afraid I can't answer this specific question that you have.
Last point: Am I experiencing my life from "outside" somehow? I guess you could say that, but it's not exactly that. I mean, it's not an "out-of-body experience" (I don't know what that even feels like, I've never left my own body, and I don't think that I even could, merely because I can't leave my own brain).
Have you read Mikhail Bahktin's 'Toward a Philosophy of the Act'? ... I think that it surveys much of what you are pondering. ... Here is an excerpt from it that you might interesting. ...
"All of modern philosophy sprang from rationalism and is thoroughly permeated by the prejudice of rationalism (even where it consciously tries to free itself from this prejudice) that only the logical is clear and rational, while, on the contrary, it is elemental and blind outside the bounds of an answerable consciousness, just as any being-in-itself is. The clarity and necessary consistency of the logical, when they are severed from the unitary and unique center constituted by answerable consciousness, are blind and elemental forces precisely because of the law inherent in the logical-the law of immanent necessity. The same error of rationalism is reflected in the contraposition of the objective qua rational to the subjective, individual, singular qua irrational and fortuitous. The entire rationality of the answerable act or deed is attributed here (though in an inevitably impoverished form) to what is objective, which has been abstractly detached from the answerable act, while everything fundamental that remains after that is subtracted, is declared to be a subjective process. Meanwhile, the entire transcendental unity of objective culture is in reality blind and elemental, being totally divorced from the unitary and unique center constituted by an answerable consciousness. Of course, a total divorce is in reality impossible and, insofar as we actually think that unity, it shines with the borrowed light of our answerability. Only an act or deed that is taken from outside as a physiological, biological, or psychological fact may present itself as elemental and blind, like any abstract being. But from within the answerable act, the one who answerably performs the act knows a clear and distinct light, in which he actually orients himself."
? Mikhail Bakhtin
If I had to explain it in simpler terms, in simple English, I would say the following: think of the problem that I'm talking about in my first post in this Thread, as if it was a professional philosophical problem that people discuss at different Universities.
I think I may be understanding you now. It reminds me of something I brought up in another thread, the question of "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Where as your question seems to be "Why am I this and not something else?" if I understand correctly?
Great reference, thanks for jumping in. I have not read that book that you mention, though I know a few things about the author's Literary Theory. As in, very few. I'll definitely check it out. Thanks! Judging by that quote that you shared, and just going on intuition, Bahktin's "prose" lacks a bit of the scientific language that you can find in papers from the natural sciences, which is something that I personally gravitate towards. And it sounds more like a "process philosophy" in Whitehead's sense, whereas I'm a realist, mine is a "thing philosophy".
@MrLiminal: I couldn't have said it better myself. It's exactly like that. It seems to be at that level of generality, or of universality, or of importance, or however you want to call it. But it's comparable to the Question of Being: "why is there something rather than nothing?" It's Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason, but applied to What There Is in the Question of Being. And this other question that I'm asking (yes, I'm delusional in that sense, I know) is comparable: "Why am I this and not something else?" But here's the fun part: that question can be asked by anyone. So, it's universal in that sense. Is it as universal as the Question of Being?... Maybe, maybe not. It depends. Hence, this discussion: it's just an odd thing to talk about. It just feels odd to begin with. And I have no idea why that is. I understand that the experience itself is not universally shared, as in, I'm aware that other people are not necessarily having this experience, or even could have this experience. I want to know why I have it myself, in my case, and what is causing it. Perhaps I should talk to a shrink, and I actually do, but I've found out that they're not very good at philosophy, they just kinda take a few courses here and there, maybe read a couple of philosophy books, but not much more than that. And I get it, philosophy is not their job, they're shrinks, they have a different profession. I've had much better dealings with phenomenologists, neuropsychologists, metascientists and metaphysicians in the Analytic tradition.
Sum ergo sum. I am, therefore I am. There is something instead of nothing because something is there. You are what you are because that's what you are. On some level I think it's hard to mentally tackle because it's such a foundational truth, though maybe that's just me.
Although another direction to come at that question is, "What defines what you are? Where do you stop and other things begin? Are experiences you have but don't remember still a part of you?"
My impression is that it's not just you, it is indeed a foundational truth. Because, as I said in my initial post, this discussion is something of a "Love Letter" to Quentin Meillassoux's book "After Finitude". He was the first professional philosopher to raise this problem, and it's quite recent. His book is from 2006 I think, it was published in French before it was translated to English almost immediately.
You ask: what defines what I am? What one is? And I would say, these are Deep Ontology questions. Like, metaphorically speaking, we're in the "Ontology Room" when we talk at this "level" of Reality, I don't know how else to describe it in terms of ordinary language. It's "Deep Ontology", if that's even a thing.
You then ask: "Where do you stop and other things begin?" My reply: Yeah, that one is brutal, I've wrestled with that one myself a few months ago. Again, it's Basement-Level Ontology. Like, imagine Descartes' metaphor of philosophy, he said that philosophy is like a building, first you lay down the foundations. Well, I think these discussions are below the foundations. It's like we're in a Cave, or something. It just feels that way to me. I'm somewhat of an instinctual creature, I will admit that freely. But I blame my chromosomes for that. So, maybe we could draw the line there, at least hypothetically.
You then ask: "Are experiences you have but don't remember still a part of you?" Hmmm... I honestly don't know. I mean, I can see solid reasons for, as well as, against. I've no idea.
Could it be space and time which makes every objects and events in the universe unique and contingent? There can be no object which can share the same points of space and the moment of time physically.
Being in different space and different time as different objects necessitates every events ever taking place in the universe contingent and unique. It is the principle of the physical nature of space and time which limits the facts, experiences, events and properties of the objects. If we were the particles in QM space and time, then the situation might be different.
If you can swap your particles of the body with someone else's, then you could experience multiple factual properties.
>Like, literally, what are they talking about when they talk about electrons
My understanding is that electrons are electricity. A/C and D/C just describes the way the electrons "flow."
>But then, I face an ethical dilemma: is it ethical for me to do "Deep Ontology", if I can't even understand the science that talks about the base of Reality itself
I dont think the human mind is equipped to fully understand those things generally, and tbh I'm not entirely sure even quantum physicists really totally understand it. Just keep your humility and it should be fine, I'd think.
My reply: In a sense, yes, because I have control over my current spatio-temporal location. I can choose to be in the kitchen, or the living room, or I can go outside, etc. That's under my control, it's something that I'm free to choose. What's not under my control is the fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985. That's just a fact about my existence, it's one of my "factual properties", to use one of the main technical terms of this discussion. I can't change the fact that I was born in Argentina (space) in 1985 (time). Could have I been born in some other spatial area, in some other time? Yes, I could have. Therefore, those facts (place of birth: Argentina, date of birth: 1985) are contingent. But since I cannot change them, I "experience" them as necessary facts. Actually, "experience" is not the right technical term to use here. It's more like an "awareness". It's like I have a "double awareness": I'm aware that I could have been born somewhere else, and in some other time, but at the same time I'm aware that I can't change "where I was born, in a spatial sense", just as much as I can't change "when I was born, in a temporal sense."
Does that sound like nonsense to you? It kinda does to me. It just strikes me as odd. Not necessarily "wrong" from a theoretical standpoint, but just plain odd from the POV of plain and simple English.
Hi again Mr. Liminal, thanks for continuing to discuss this topic of conversation. Electrons are electricity. OK, I can kinda see how that would work. But what's a quark? If an electron is electricity, is a quark... quarkiness? Quirkyness? What is it? Is it like a tiny marble? How do I even picture it? I can imagine an atom like a bunch of red marbles (protons) and gray marbles (neutrons) all clumped up together, forming the atom's nucleus. Somewhere around it, there's an electron. How do I picture it? Is it a tiny green marble, orbiting around the nucleus? Is it like a green cloud instead? Is it more like a green storm around the nucleus? Is it more like a hurricane than a calm, peaceful cloud? How do I even picture it? I've talked to a few physicists about it, they basically just told me "forget about the picture, just try to understand the math part". And the same goes for quarks, and for other fundamental particles, apparently. And I find that somehow disappointing. Like, I've looked at the math. It doesn't make sense to me. Granted, I'm not a mathematician. But I kinda do "get it", at least some of the more basic equations. But then you have people talking in a sort of kookish way about "the collapse of the wave function" (as in, the wave function collapse) and whatnot. Like, just explain it to me in plain and simple English, please. And they couldn't. They tried (my physicist friends) but they just end up saying (to my uneducated ear, at least) a bunch of nonsense.
But anyways, you said in a previous comment: "now that I'm on the same page I think we can kick up some fun topics around this subject."
My reply: Please, kick up one fun topic around this subject, perhaps that will help us steer this discussion in the right direction (whichever direction that might be, I'm at a total loss here).
My, admittedly limited, understanding is that electrons are a negative energy particle that functions like a wave. Obviously this is hard to picture mentally, but the closest thing I can think of is imagine that the earth is the protons and neutrons of the molecule and the moon is the electron. From our perspective, the moon is in one place moving very slowly. But imagine if the moon moved really really fast, so fast that it caused a gestalt optical illusion that made it seem like instead of a single rock, it was more like a solid dome around the earth. If you stopped the moon at any point, the dome would disappear and you could see where it was, but without stopping it, you can't tell where the moon is in the illusory dome it creates around the earth. Hence Heisenberg's uncertainty principal. Because of the way electrons and subatomic particles work, it's almost like a cloud of potential that collapse upon observation, at least as I understand it. Perhaps the experience you're describing is an awareness that although you are what you are, there was potential for things to have been different before that cloud of potential facts collapsed into permanent reality.
To elaborate with an example I cooked up myself, I refer to this kind of thing as the Rock and Peak Theory. My thought is to picture a rock on top of the very peak of a mountain. Time started when the rock tipped over and started tumbling down the mountain, and time will end when it eventually reaches the bottom of the mountain. The flow of time we experience is limited by the path the rock has already taken down the mountain, but is still allowed some randomness by the bumps and diverging paths we have yet to take. Then, one day after the rock has reached the bottom, the earth will eventually erode away beneath it, becoming a new mountain, and the rock will tip again, starting the whole process over.
In response to your first post:
Wow, I've never head of that analogy. Thanks for sharing it. It kinda does make sense. Like, I can certainly picture the scenario that you describe: we look at the Moon, we then imagine it moves really fast, so it creates an optical illusion, it looks like a Moon-colored dome (what color would that be? White? Gray? Beige? I'm just going with "Green", if it's a green Moon, then it would be a green dome). Yeah, I can kinda picture all of that, like what happens if we stop it, then the optical illusion of the dome ceases to be, etc.
About the experience that I'm describing, I'm not sure if it's an experience, now that I think about it. It's more like an awareness. Does that make sense? Experience and awareness, it seems to me, are not exactly the same thing. This "experience" that I was telling you about is more like a state of mind. It's an awareness.
I would phrase it like this, in simple terms: you're aware that your existence is under your control (in one sense) but at the same time you're aware that there are some features of your existence (your factual properties) that are not under your control. They are necessary components of your identity, because you can't change them, and you didn't even choose them, but they're contingent in the sense that you could have been dealt other cards, so to speak. It's just strikes me as being strange, weird, and odd, that's all.
In response to your second post:
I'm thinking about it. It's a good picture, a really good one. I'm not sure that I understand it entirely. Let me ask you some questions, if you don't mind. The rock is at the peak, because that's the highest it can go and still be in physical contact with the peak? If so, the analogy would be that there's a point in time in which you can't go further into the past, because then time itself would not be in physical contact with space itself? Does that question make sense to you? Let's start with that.
Ah ha, you've hit on the foundation point of it all. Time and space are the same thing. Time can only be measured by movement in space: the ticking of a second hand on a clock, the decay of an isotope, the expansion of the universe, etc., So the rock at the top of the peak represents a moment of ultimate potential, before time began. The tipping point, when it started to move was when time started, because time *is* movement. When it reaches the bottom is when all potential has been exhausted, and it reaches a state of stillness. However, it's important to remember that the earth will eventually give way to a new peak for the process to start again, which implies that the mountain our rock is rolling down was once the earth at the bottom of a previous mountain that has long since worn away.
But here's the thing: physicists haven't figured out yet how to combine Einstein's theories of general and special relativity, with quantum physics. They came up with something trendy called "Quantum Field Theory", and I think that's the most legit thing they have going on (way more legit than, say, String Theory). Man, I'm being really reckless with my language here, excuse me, please.
Of course, you can also exit the planet without leaving the south pole, so that means that your spaceship will not be in physical contact with planet Earth anymore.
It sounds wacky, I know, but I can picture it, and that's no small feat. A good metaphor is like a good wine: they're hard to craft. Agree or disagree?
You're good, it is still one of life's great mysteries. Speaking of reckless, I had a thought a while back that started off as a joke, but I can't help but feel like might have some truth to it. It's essentially that the grand unified theory boils down to 0 = 1 = infinity.
Essentially: Infinity is endless and has no boundaries. 0 is endless and has no boundaries. Therefore, 0 is infinite. Things that have boundaries are not endless. Things that are not 0 are defined by their boundaries and therefore cannot be 0 or infinite. If 0 is infinite, then everything is both part of 0 and infinity, including my individual sense of self, the 1.
Not sure if any of that made sense.
>It sounds wacky, I know, but I can picture it, and that's no small feat. A good metaphor is like a good wine: they're hard to craft.
Agreed :up:
Hmmm... Let me play Devil's Advocate here. I would say that, technically speaking, Zero is not equal to One. It's a different number, and we use different symbols for them. And neither of them is equal to infinity. For all we know, infinity might be just a concept, not an actual number. Or would you argue that? I'm aware that there's some good arguments to the contrary, for example the one that starts with the premise (they all start with this premise, oddly enough) that Infinity itself is not just a concept, it's an actual number. And they can prove it, mathematically. And you and me can prove it as well. It takes a bit of studying and thinking abstractly, but it's definitely something that non-mathematicians can comprehend.
Quoting MrLiminal
Do I agree with this? "Infinity is endless and has no boundaries." I'm not sure. What do you mean by that?
Then you say: Zero is endless and has no boundaries. Again, I'm not sure what that means. Can you explain it to me in simple English?
Then you say: Things that are not Zero are defined by their boundaries (I'm not sure that I agree with that), followed up with ("if so, cannot be 0 or infinite", I don't get that part either).
Lastly, you say: If Zero is infinite, then everything is both part of Zero and infinity (not sure what that means), including my individual sense of self, the 1 (not sure what that means either)
Can you explain all of this to me as if I'm uneducated, and as if I lack a sense of humor? Like, I'm genuinely struggling to grasp what the underlying concept is here.
When it comes to Bakhtin, it helps to focus on dialogue as a dynamic, reciprocally recursive, action, and as a sort of embodied medium that brings in all of the cultural and biological influences of those engaged in it. ... On the surface, it may resemble 'some' aspects of Whitehead, but Whitehead was more nominalistic than Bakhtin, and Bakhtin actually covered more 'breadth' of what the momentum of a lived existence entails. ... He is another one than takes time and study to understand, but I think the reward is worth it.
Thank you for your having taken the time to consider and respond to my thoughts.
How could I not? It would be un-philosophical of me to not consider and respond to your thoughts. At least that's one of the things that I personally believe.
About Bakhtin, I'll just say it: when people explain Bakhtin to me, I feel like I'm not understanding even half of the things that people are trying to explain to me. Like, there's some parts that I get, there's other parts that I even agree with, but then there are some parts that I just don't understand. Can you please clarify, in simple English, as if I was uneducated, what is the philosophical importance of Bakhtin's work?
Yeah, like I said, it started off as kind of a joke, so I'm not sure it really makes much sense to anyone but me. To quote the Beatles though, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
It's basically saying we are all connected to everything (infinity) but also connected by death (0), while also maintaining our own individuality (1). Everything dies (infinity becomes 0), and from death new potential is created (0 becomes infinity).
Hmmm... "I am he, as you are he"? I mean, if we take that literally, then it's an analogy. But an analogy (I might be wrong about this, though) is a comparison between two things: A and B. The analogy is "Thing A is like thing B because they have something in common, called C." In the case of "I'm him, just as much as you're him.", I would interpret that as a mutual conditional: if p, then q, and if q, then p". In other words, p ? q. And the truth value of that statement, from a logical point of view, is contingent. It could be false, it could be true. Under what conditions would it be false, and under what conditions would it be true? What does the world have to be like, in order for it to be true? If that part can't be solved, the rest of the Beatles' quote can't even be taken into account, let alone interpreted correctly from the POV of propositional logic.
Quoting MrLiminal
"We are all connected to everything (infinity)"... Are we? Why? I'm not sure that we are. I'm not connected to my table. Maybe I'm connected to the planet, except when I jump. I'm not trying to be funny or amusing here, I'm just trying to picture it.
"We are also connected by death (0)" Are we? In what sense? In a poetic sense, for example? Or in a literal sense? Because, in a literal sense, I would need to know what that means, because I can't even picture it.
Everything dies (Here I would qualify: every living organism dies, not literally everything: stones don't die, for example). And then you say: "Infinity becomes 0". And I ask: How so? Mathematically? Physically? Ontologically? Or how else?
I'm genuinely sorry if these questions come across as defiant or confrontational, or aggressive in some way. I just don't know how to ask them any better.
No you're good. Let me try explaining it another way.
You are one person. You experience life from one perspective.
Your family is made up of several people, including you. Your family is one unit, but the unit experiences multiple different perspective in time and space. The information collected by each unit can only be shared when the parts of the unit are together. But the unit is always 1 family.
Your family is part of the greater whole of humanity, humanity being one unit.
Humanity is part of the greater whole of life, life being one unit.
Your body is 1 unit, but it is made up of several organs, which are each individually their own unit. Each organ is likewise made up of multiple cells, which each cell being its own unit.
So 1 thing can be made up of an infinite number of smaller things. And eventually everything will die, the one will become 0. When I say "die" I mean, cease to be the thing that it is. Rocks don't die, but they erode away or break down into not rocks eventually. The rock ceases to be and becomes something else.
Ok, let's see if there is a disagreement between our POVs (there is a factual disagreement, as in, you're inside your own brain, I'm inside my own brain). So let's see if we agree on everything that you said:
First point, I am one person. I experience life from one perspective. Yes, I agree with both of those claims. Let's proceed.
"My family is made up of several people, including me." Yes, I agree.
"My family is one unit" Hmmm... I'm not so sure. My family is just a plurality of individual people. For example, think of a pack of wolves. How many "Aristotelian substances" (to use a philosophical term) are there in this example? If you think that "the pack of wolves" is something over and above the six individual wolves, then you should count at least 7 "substances": the six wolves, plus the pack of wolves itself. But that would be wrong (I have a paper published on this topic in case you're interested). So, to get back on track: I am an individual, I am quite certain of that. And it is my belief (one among several) that I, as an individual, am quite literally not a mereological part of a larger "substance" or "whole" insofar as I myself am a "substance" (in the philosophical sense of the term) as well as a "whole" (in the mereological sense of the term).
So, it seems that our baseline disagreement is there. Would it be possible to reach an agreement? Can we "work it out", or "squash the beef", or whatever manner of speaking people use outside the Ontology Room? Or is all of this factual, not up for debate, as in, it's factual that I was born in Argentina in 1985, that's not up for debate. Or is it? How could it be? I can't change those facts about my existence, I didn't even choose them, etc., we have stepped out of one Rabbit Hole just to jump inside of it again. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not easy to discuss "things" at this level, or using this particular language (some professional philosophers call it "Ontologese". Like, Portuguese, but we're speaking Ontologese when we're inside the Ontology Room.
You and many other people. He is notoriously difficult to understand (and especially for a nominalistic culture!), and it doesn't help that for so long there was confusion about who within the 'Bakhtin Circle' actually wrote what. But when it comes to 'Toward a Philosophy of the Act', Bakhtin definitely wrote it.
Bakhtin's concept of dialogism is an influencing aspect in my development of Evrostics. ... Dialogue, and the interaction of the multiple voices brought in by any being's genetics, culture, and biological environment (epigenetics) is an expression and extension of semiosis by way of utterances, developing and creating meaning that is more than the sum of its concretized word 'parts'. This influences us personally, socially, and culturally. In Evrostics, I highlight dialogue as a catalyst in the recursive and reciprocal nature of understanding. Dialogue isn't just a medium for exchanging ideas but an active process that shapes and transforms our perceptions and relationships. ... As for literary theory, Bakhtin worked to explain how this is expressed in the written word.
Whitehead was more inclined toward nominalism in that his process philosophy emphasized the particular, concrete experiences (actual occasions).
Bakhtin, on the other hand, leaned more toward a holistic and integrated view that goes beyond nominalism. His focus on the interaction of different voices and perspectives highlights the emergent, interconnected nature of reality.
I hope this explanation helps.
I suppose my larger point is that all of these questions are rooted in the fact that we experience life as a singular experience, and I am questioning if it is possible for larger, gestalt consciousness to arise from the collection of individual minds. A family is made up of individual people but can act as one. Army units and sport teams can be trained to act as one, despite being many. Is that so different from our own personal biological experience, where so many different organs and chemicals make up what we consider our singular self? Is it possible what we experience as a single point of view is itself a gestalt of smaller, disparate processes?
Yeah that's brutal... It's like the discussion that I was having with @MrLiminal about a question that he asked, (I'm paraphrasing what he asked) "Where does one end and other things begin?" Hypothetically, it could be at the level of chromosomes. At that level or layer of Reality itself. Like, you can draw "the line" there, between determinism and free will, but I'm asking something different in my original post. Again, MrLiminal phrased it better than me: "Why am I this, instead of that?" Like, why this, specifically? And this ties in with the Question of Being: Why is there Something (the Universe) rather than Nothing?
And the other question, at the end of the day, is:
Why is there This Universe, instead of "Some Other" Universe? Why is the world the way it is, and not some other way? Why are we in the Milky Way, instead of the Andromeda Galaxy? Why do Galaxies form spirals? Why do black holes exist? Why is there a force of gravity? Could the Universe have had different physical laws? If not, why not? Are the Laws of Physics factual in the sense that they're just as contingent as the fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985, yes or no?
I wouldn't use the term "Gestalt" since I don't agree with one of the premises of the Gestalt school: the one that says that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Technically speaking, from a metaphysical or ontological POV, some things compose something, and some things do not compose a further thing. It depends on what's your answer to van Inwagen's Special Composition Question (SCQ): When do objects A and B compose a third object C? There are only three possible answers to that question: never, sometimes, and always. I believe that "sometimes" is the correct answer in this case, but feel free to disagree. There's also plenty of room for you to agree with me that the answer is "sometimes", and you're free to disagree as far as the technical details go.
Quoting MrLiminal
Yes, I believe it is, but feel free to disagree. Here's my argument, it's a modus tollens:
1) If the Supreme Court is a single unit composed of nine justices, then the Supreme Court is a single fleshy object that has nine tongues and eighteen elbows, among other parts.
2) It is not the case that the Supreme Court is a single fleshy object that has nine tongues and eighteen elbows, among other parts.
3) Therefore, it is not the case that the Supreme Court is a single unit composed of nine justices.
If you wish to resist the conclusion, you have to deny either the first premise or the second one. Due to how the truth table works for conditional statements, you can't deny both at the same time. If you deny one of those two premises, you must accept the other one, and vice-versa.
As for myself, as a substance in the philosophical sense of the term, I am indeed a fleshy object composed of different organs and chemicals, that make up my singular self as an individual in the biological sense, as an individual in the chemical sense, and also as an individual in the physical sense of the term.
I think you could argue this is true, they are just not all necessarily connected physically. Think of a Man-o-War jellyfish. It is one creature that is actually made up of a colony of different creatures that act together as a single living organism or other hiveminded or generally composite organisms in nature. The mitochondria in your cells was once a completely separate organism and still maintains its own unique mitochondrial dna. So my question then is, does it not simply become a matter of what frame of reference you are looking at a thing through? Is it one thing, or many things working together, or a part of a larger whole? It's all relative to the context, which makes the answers both yes and no, depending on what level you view it at.
Right? Or would you like to push back on whatever point it is that I'm trying to make?
Considering what we have just discussed, about Bakhtin's process philosophy, or philosophy of the act, or however you want to call it (sorry, I'm kind of reckless when I speak like this, I do it for the sake of clarity).
Considering also what is under discussion in the case of the part-whole relation, from a mereological as well as a metaphysical point of view.
Let's address a question, to paraphrase Mr. Liminal: What defines what one is? As in, myself? What am I, insofar as I am One in a mereological sense as well as a metaphysical sense? What does the fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985 have anything to do with it? And why were you, dear reader, born where you were, and not some other place? Why where you born in the year that you were born, and not some other year? The only scientific explanation (without getting kooky) is that there's just a bunch of brute facts that explain all of that. But then, here's my question: is the fact that I was born in Argentina in 1985 contingent, yes or no? And this is where it gets odd. There are good arguments both for and against those positions. So what should I make of that? How should I "take it", to speak in common parlance? I just have to "deal with it", as folks from the United States say? "Those are the cards that I've been dealt, deal with it"? But then there's this ominous quality to those words, they sound like poetry to me. Like, they sound eerie, magical. And I, being a scientific materialist, believe in no such things. So what do I make of that? And so on, and so forth, and I can't get out of this Rabbit Hole, God damn it. That's what I meant when I originally said that I "experience" such things. It's like, it starts as a state of awareness, but then you somehow "experience" it in your mind, like intellectually. I don't know if I would call that "intellectual intuition". I'm not sure that I believe in such a thing. What are your thoughts on that?
No, they are not nonsense at all. We all had such questions and ideas at some point in our lives for sure. It is an interesting point, and this is what I think about it.
The reason that you cannot be born in any other place at any other time is because every particle of your physical body is bound in space and time. Time never allows any physical objects to travel to the past. Hence you are always heading to the future by the law. If you can travel to the past in time, then you could change all the factual properties of you any way you want. But you are bound in time to the present in time heading to the future just like all of us in the universe.
While your physical body is bound by space and time, your mind is free. Your mind can clock back to the past ancient Greek and Roman empire, meet Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, go to a pub, and have some philosophical chats while drinking beer. But you can only do that in your imagination. When you wake up from the imagination or dream, you will find your body still bound in the space where you were physically, and time which is the present heading towards the future.
Hmmm... Do I agree with this? I'm not sure. It sounds reasonable and easy to understand, but I "feel like" something's missing from the picture. I could be wrong, of course.
Quoting Corvus
Hmmm... Are we (as in, the entire scientific community of planet Earth) sure of this? Are we really sure of this? It's not even possible at the level of theory? It's not even possible at the level of wild speculation? I'm not sure.
Quoting Corvus
Yes... this sounds reasonable... but again, my "instinct" just tells me that something about this is... "off"...
Quoting Corvus
Hmmm... but my mind is simply what my brain does, just as my digestion is simply what my gut does. Right? Or do you disagree? Feel free to disagree.
Quoting Corvus
I don't think they would be good drinking partners, if I'm being honest. I think I'd rather talk to Willard van Orman Quine, for example, while I'm drunk. I figure he was a rather odd man in his thinking. Did you know that he says that Pegasus does not exist, but that the very reason for why that winged horse does not exist is because, -and these are Quine's literal words- "nothing Pegasizes". There is no object or creature in the world that "Pegasizes". Now what does he mean by that, "Pegasizing"? I can't even imagine it. Someone smarter than me ridiculed him on paper, asking him if the reason why president Truman exists is because "something Trumanizes". I figure Quine was an odd intellectual, is what I'm saying.
Memory, isnt it? And the consequences of all of the preceding acts that gave rise to your particular existence?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Hindus and Buddhists believe otherwise. And all of the specifics you mention a consequence of karma.
By the way, enjoying your contributions thus far.
You are welcome to disagree. That is what philosophical debates are about. But it would be better if you could explain why you disagree, rather than just saying you disagree from your "instinct".
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Your mind is simply what your brain does? I don't get that at all. Brain is needed for mind to operate, but brain does ??? something? Brain is just a biological organ of physical body, which makes mental events possible. Not sure if it does something.
Your mind has all the mental events perceptions, feelings, reasoning, thinking, memorizing, willing ... etc. I am not sure if it makes sense your mind is just what your brain does. Because there is a hard gap, the gap between the biological brain and your mind. Perhaps you could explain how your brains tells your mind to have all the mental events and operations, it would be helpful, and then I could decide whether to agree or disagree with your explanation.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Sure, Quine would be an interesting guy to have drinks with. He spoke a few foreign languages, and traveled the world extensively. He wrote many interesting Logic books. And I agree with most of what he said.
If all is 'Mind', and matter is effete mind, and all returns to from where it came, 'Mind' needs to generate and express what it cognizes via causality of semiosis. .. One aspect of Thirdness is 'habit'. Your genetic and epigenetic history carries habits that are combined in new ways. Add in some new information from the previous events and interactions of signs, and you become the unique sign that you then express to the world. ... All that I am, and all that I carry in genetic and epigenetic memory is an expressed sign to other living beings, and encountering otherness is as crucial as my participation. ... As they encounter me, and I encounter them, utterences or not, the experience is yet another sign to feed into the generating momentum of 'Mind'. Yes, events and participation are crucial, but with no more emphasis on 'individual' beings and events (as is the individualism of nominalism) than what is cascadingly and eventfully accomplished for the whole. ..... The cascading events in gradient levels of consciousness are a current focus of neuroscience.
Consciousness does not arise from the 'collective'. 'Collective' is a nominalistic word. A collective is merely a 'collection" of separate individuals, with no overarching narrative. How can there be no overarching narrative when you carry all of that genetic and epigenetic history?
You mentioned that you have no relationship to your table, but don't you? As effete mind, it still serves a purpose in your life. It is a sign of where you dine, where you work, the place and space it takes up in your home. Your memories of who gathered there with you. The time you bumped your leg on it and learned to be more careful. Someone designed it. Someone either built it or the machinery that crafted it. It carries all of that and more, and you choose to have it in your home. When others come to your home and see it along with you and your other possessions, the signs communicate to them more about who you are.
You are important on a grand scale, but you cannot be all that you need to be for that 'grand scale' if individualism is so nominalistic that it detaches you from the narrative.
. Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind. It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion .
What do I make of it? The subject matter herein merely illustrates that not much has changed in 3-4,000 years of documented human thought.
Well, this question confirms that the PSR is false, and nonsense. There is no reason on some facts. If you still insist that you need answer for your question, then what you will get would be an answer of tautology in nature - because your parents have given birth to you.
You may feel that is not the answer you were looking for, and it is not an intelligible answer to accept. In that case you must resort to the religious system for the answer. They will give you the answer quite easily and resolutely - well you were destined to be born as you, and it was the act of God, something like that.
You have to either be religious and accept their answers based on fate or God's will, or you have to accept the fact that some events in the universe have no reasons, or we don't know the reasons why they happened and are happening.
I'll admit this may be my own bias here. As my name suggests, I have a tendency towards thinking about liminality. I have just often wondered if the physical separation between bodies is as important as we think it is from our first person singular perspective. Things like quantum entanglement and hiveminds fascinate me, so I sometimes get a bit abstract with these things.
But that's what I'm saying, all of that is factual. And what is factual is contingent. However, from my personal POV they don't seem to be contingent, because I can't change those baseline facts about my existence. I was born in Argentina (space). I can't change that fact. I was born in 1985 (time). I can't change that fact. That's just part of my "essence", if you will (pardon me Heidegger and all of the Heideggerians). I mean, how could I not have essential characteristics, if I can't change them, and especially if I didn't even choose them to begin with? They're factual and essential at the same time, because they're contingent and necessary at the same time. It's a very odd modal experience to become aware of this, and to become aware of this, is to experience it (in my case) as an oppressive force. It is a very unpleasant feeling, to put it in aesthetic terms.
Quoting Wayfarer
They are free to believe whatever they want. Are they willing to discuss their beliefs from a philosophical point of view? If yes, then it's a discussion that genuinely interests me.
Quoting Wayfarer
But (and I ask this genuinely, no offense meant) is there any scientific evidence that karma exists? I don't think there is. Which means that if you wish to convince me that karma exists, you will have to do so by way of reason, not of poetry. Logos instead of Mythos, if you will.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, I can "play the harp", so to speak. I know how "to muse", if that's even a verb. But I'm here because I want to learn how to be more rational. You are clearly more rational folk than me here at this forum.
Cheers.
I know, I'm sorry. But sometimes I just genuinely don't know, so all that I'm left with is basic instinct, or "intuition", so to speak. I'd like to have a reason for some things, but I don't always have one.
Quoting Corvus
Think of the mind more like a process instead of a "res cogitans", if that makes any sense. It's Bunge's psychoneural identity hypothesis: every mental process is a brain process. The brain, on the other hand, is not a process, it is indeed a thing. But you don't have two things here, a brain and a mind, instead what you have is a thing (a brain) and a process (a mind). The confusion here stems from the very word "mind", which we tend to treat as a noun, but should instead treat as a verb. As in "to mind", as in "I am minding my own business, you should mind your own business, etc." It's unfortunate that the word "mind" is a noun and not a verb, is all I'm saying.
Quoting Corvus
But you just said it yourself. The brain is just a biological organ of the physical body, which makes mental events possible. That is what the brain does. It makes mental events possible. And a mental event is something that happens, because an event is literally "something that happens". What is it that happens? A series of processes in your brain, which quite simply are your "mind", so to speak.
Quoting Corvus
You brain doesn't "tell your mind" anything, you brain is what minds, so to speak. For example, when you tell me to "mind my own business", you are giving a direct order to my brain, not to my mind. Does that make sense?
Quoting Corvus
A very interesting individual, no doubt about it.
I did not gather that, no. I don't even know what you mean by that, honestly. What is an "expressed vehicle of communication", exactly? And what do you mean when you say "by the whole"? I think that the very concept of a "whole" is at the same time a mereological notion and a metaphysical notion. It's a concept that has "ontological import", if you will.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Is it? Are you speaking of Thirdness as Charles Sanders Peirce understood it, as Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
See, I was somehow (I have no idea how) agreeing with you up until there (though I did not entirely understand everything that you said), but it's this last part that's the "deal breaker", for me (and I'm not even sure what I mean by that. Is this a situation of negotiation or not?).
You speak of "consciousness". I would speak instead of simple awareness. I have a theory about this (not that the mere fact of "having a theory" is proof of anything, it isn't). Here is my theory, it's quite simple. Consciousness does not exist. It's a made-up word. It fails to refer. There is no such thing as consciousness, it's not a Cartesian res cogitans. There is a res extensa (the brain), and then there is a process: a brain process, which we mistakenly call "consciousness". It's a process, not a thing. Think of it like this: Process Philosophy gets it right as far as the topic of "mind" goes, but it gets it wrong as far as the topic of "brain" goes.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
That's an excellent point, and I never even thought of it that way. You're absolutely right, I agree with you 100% here. Maybe I would disagree on some of the aesthetic choices that you're making with those words, but I more or less agree with the underlying concept here. Even though I'm struggling to understand what that concept actually is, from a metaphysical point of view. Can you explain it to me as if I was an uneducated, simple person?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I don't understand this either. Can you explain what you mean here, in plain and simple English, and as objectively as you possibly can? Try to be as charitable as possible to my intellect here, I'm having a really difficult time understanding some of the more abstract notions that you are speaking about.
Here are a few articles you might enjoy reading....
https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2020/1/niaa010/5856030
https://scitechdaily.com/mit-scientists-shed-new-light-on-the-critical-brain-connections-that-define-consciousness/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31365-6
https://www.ovid.com/journals/nebior/abstract/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104810~turings-cascade-instability-supports-the-coordination-of-the
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Yes.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I cannot 'can' any of this, but I hope you will consider learning a little more on your own about semiosis. Without engaging in dialogue with you in person, I am unable to meet you where you are and effectively explain all of this to you in the way that you say you need it explained. ... Your intellect seems to be functioning just fine.
Well but it's an odd thing to talk about, innit? (Hold up while I put on my best "King's Slang", if that's even a thing). How on Earth could the Principle of Sufficient Reason be false? That just makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to anyone. And if the PSR is actually false, as you say it is, then what do we make of it? Can my table turn into a swan, for example? Can a squid pop up into existence in my living room? I mean, if there is no reason for anything, then literally anything can happen at any moment? How does that make even a sliver of sense, ey?
Quoting Corvus
And that is exactly the correct answer. Contrary to Quine, I don't exist simple because "something Arcane-Sandwich-izes" in the world. What would we be saying? That there is an object or creature in the world that "Arcane-Sandwich-izes"? What would what even mean, ey? I don't get it, it's impossible to understand as a concept, innit? And if for some reason (yes, I believe the PSR is true), then suddenly it turns into an odd thing to talk about, doesn't it?
I don't know if there is 'scientific evidence' for karma, but the principle is, in essence, that all actions have consequences. The Biblical maxim 'as you sow, so shall you reap' adds up to the same, although the word itself is of Indian origin (from the root word 'kr-' 'to do'.) Obviously a stumbling block for Western culture is the implicit entailment of karma accumulating across lifetimes, which is not something I would try and persuade anyone to believe. But even as metaphor, the fact that all actions shape your life surely is a sound basis for an ethical philosophy.
Other than that, I think @Mapping the Mediums response is pretty good. One of the topics Ive learned a ton about on this forum is biosemiotics (ref), from a one-time contributor here with expert knowledge in the subject. Its as good a perspective as any through which to pursue such questions.
//
Quoting Mww
and then it joins a Forum.
Liminality is quite the odd state. The metaphor that I have for that is from Macedonio Fernandez. Imagine the state of waking up, but not fully rid of dreams. It lasts barely a second, maybe even less than that. But in that state, -the physical state of waking up from sleep-, some of the contents of the diurnal life are mixed with some of the contents of the last dream that you had before fully waking up. Now imagine if you were to take that fleeting state and make an entire literary genre out of that. I argue that this is precisely what Macedanio Fernandez did throughout his literary career.
We seem to have difference in the opinion or ideas whatever you call it, but it is OK. I still don't think the biological organ brain is mind. It is like saying your stomach is hunger, and your eyeballs are the sight. The bodily organs do things for you, so you would keep living biologically, but they are not the functions they carry out themselves.
In daily life, brain is hidden away from your living. You never perceive the brain itself while you are living ever. That doesn't mean brain is nothing to do with your mind of course. It just is logically not sound to say the physical brain is your mind i.e. feelings, thoughts, imaginations and desires, just like your stomach is not the hunger you feel. You feel hunger because you have a stomach. You have mind because you have a brain.
This is reflected well in our culture and daily life too. You say, mind your business, but you don't say, brain your business. You say, mind your steps, you never say brain your steps. I never heard of someone saying, open your brain. I heard saying open your mind.
In here, you seem to have misunderstood what I said. I never said that there are no reasons for everything in the universe. What I meant was, there are some events and happenings that you don't know the reasons. And there are SOME events and objects happening and existing in the universe with no particular reasons or unknown reasons.
Not quite. The brain is not identical to the mind, and the mind cannot be reduced to the brain. The mind (as a series of events, and as a series of complex processes) is itself a series of events and processes that a living brain is undergoing.
It is not like saying that your stomach is hunger. It would be more precise to say that it's like your stomach and the process of digestion: your stomach is comparable to your brain (both of them are things), while your mind is comparable to your digestion (both of them are processes).
It is not like saying that your eyeballs are the sight. It would be more appropriate to say that your eyeballs are things (like your stomach, like your brain) and that sight itself is a process (like your digestion, like your mind).
Does that make sense to you?
I read your saying brain tells mind what to do. That sounded like your brain does everything, and even orders your mind to do all the things for you. Your point was not clear at all.
I have never seen or heard of a brain with mouth and tongue and tells & orders its mind what to do.
But you could, and you would not be wrong: for it is indeed the brain that "minds its own business" when it is thinking anything. You don't "have" a brain, you are your brain, plain and simple. Now, I understand that this is a controversial thing to say, and I don't say it lightly. But I say it truthfully and honestly. Does that mean that I'm correct? Not at all. If there is scientific evidence to the contrary, then I will change that specific, allegedly wrong belief that I have.
Quoting Corvus
They're metaphors. You can't literally "open your mind", no matter how you define "mind". The phrase "open your mind" does not have a literal meaning, it's just poetic advice. You could say open your brain as poetic advice, not as a literal thing that you would want to do.
Quoting Corvus
Fair enough, but then I will say that I find that notion, scary. It's a frightening thing to contemplate, innit?
Well, then allow me to clarify it to the best of my ability. Your brain is a res extensa and a res cogitans at the same time, to phrase it in Cartesian terms. The fatal flaw of Modern Philosophy ever since Descartes was to simply suppose, without further ado, that the mind is a res cogitans but not a res extensa, and that the brain is a res extensa but not a res cogitans. The brain is quite simply both. It is a physical thing that has an extension in space and a duration in time. It has a certain chemistry, it is connected with various chemical systems, and it is made up of specialized cells called "neurons", which fire off different signals, such that there is a series of events and processes that such object, -the brain-, is undergoing when it is engaged in any cognitive activity, including what you call "consciousness". I don't like the word "consciousness" myself, I prefer the word "awareness".
Sure, everyone knows that. But problem is what part of the chemistry and neurons in the brain represents your reasoning Socrates is mortal? and under what forms?
You're asking a question that falls within the domain of one of the most cutting-edge sciences of today, cognitive neuroscience. I am not a neuroscientist. I cannot answer that question myself. And I'm not even sure that cognitive neuroscientists have figured that out yet, but there might be some promising research programs in that sense.
Yeah, well, you know .its a bitch not being able to find any decent gymnasia these days.
Nah. Just join a book reading club or something, mate. Or play a tabletop game of some sort.
Well, you posited brain as mind saying that brain tells your mind to do things, hence my point is that if you go to that direction, then that is what you are facing. As you say brain as a biological organ is for the neurology and biology, and their interest of the study is different from the philosophical point of view.
But Philosophy can still examine on all the subjects and topics under the sun, to investigate what they claim to be true is making sense from logical point of view.
Thank you. I seem to remember our own discussions from long ago as being quite fruitful. ... Funny, how some us old-timers circle back around and land here again after venturing out into the wilds to gather more for all of us to chew on.
No Corvus, brain does not tell mind what to do. Brain does mind. Brain undergoes a process, and that process is mind. And that is what my brain is telling your brain, right now. You are free to disbelieve it. But I am just as free to believe it. Right?
Quoting Corvus
Yes. Exactly. That is what philosophy does. At least, that is how I practice it.
When you claimed your mind is simply what you brain does. It was not clear. It sounded like,
1) Your mind is your brain, or
2) Your brain does something to the mind, or
3) Your brain tells your mind to do all the things, or
4) Your mind is simply what your brain does.
5) So you have your brain, and also the mind which sounded like the Cartesian dualist.
6) But then you say, your mind is your brain.
Anyhow, you brought in brain into the discussion, hence my point was we get very little philosophical juice out of brain, because it is not really the central topic of the subject, and also even in the neurology and neurocognitive science, the researches on the hard gap between mind and brain is ongoing without resolute answers yet. Recall what you said on your previous posts?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I am more interested in the discussions of perception, consciousness, reasoning, propositions, belief, truth and logical proof in philosophy. Not really into biology or neurology at all.
It's option (4). I am effectively saying that your mind is simply what your brain does, because the mind is a process (a neuro-cognitive process) that the brain undergoes.
Quoting Corvus
Fair enough. Is that what you would like to talk about? Explain your point of view to me, then, if that's what you would prefer to discuss.
I am not sure if it is that simple. I also wonder if it would be much point to say mind is what brain does, when we don't know any details about the "does" part of brain. I mean when you say 2+2=4, what exactly is happening in the brain with which chemicals, which links to what cells.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Those are just my main interests, but I would talk about anything if it is philosophical and interesting topic. Not limiting my self to just talk about certain topics at all.
But my point was that talking about brain as a biological or neurological point of view wouldn't get us very far trying to find out what mind is, and getting back to the OP - answering what the factual properties of a person are, and why the factual properties cannot be altered. Science will simply not be able to answer the questions.
There's scientists working on those sorts of problems, that's all I can say about that, honestly. We don't know the exact, detailed mechanisms of such processes. But scientists do have more or less a general picture of what's going on. We know what parts of the brain are responsible for language, which parts are responsible for memory, which parts are responsible for feelings, etc.
Quoting Corvus
I disagree, and not because I want to fight. I disagree here because I think that science does give the answers to those questions, but those answers are "unsatisfactory". As you correctly said, the reason why I have the factual properties that I have, is because of my two biological parents. That's the scientific explanation. But it's unsatisfactory. Why was I born in 1985 and not the Middle Ages, or the Future? It just makes no sense to me, from a First Person Perspective.
That's interesting. If you would open a new OP for that topic, and analyse what the details of their findings are, I would be keen to read and jump in.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
If you are happy accepting the answer as the best answer available even if it is unsatisfactory, then I think we have arrived at somewhat meaningful point of the discussion. And I am happy with that.
But as all philosophical discussions has dialectical progress side, it might keep continuing for searching and finding better answers.
For your why question, you could ask first, why do you find the question compelling too i.e. what made you to ask the question first place. If you could answer that, and I am sure, only you could answer that question, then maybe it would help finding the answers for the other question? Just guessing. :)
Honestly, I don't want to monopolize the Main Page of the Forum. I already started three OP, and I'm actively discussing in about half a dozen or so. So, I'm reluctant to open a new OP, about anything. Besides, why not start that OP yourself? It might be better, since you can start it with your own question, and ask for the best answer to it. I can then contribute to the best of my ability.
Quoting Corvus
A feeling of oddness, is what made me ask the question in the first place. It's just an odd thing to talk about, it's an odd thing to even think, and even more so it's very odd to become aware of it, to experience it "in the flesh", so to speak.
Quoting Corvus
Science says that the answer is my parents. That's not enough for me. Again, I ask myself this question: why am I aware now, in the 21s Century? Why wasn't I aware in the Middle Ages? "Because I didn't exist in the Middle Ages", science will say. And science is right. But why? In principle, in theory, I could have been born in the Middle Ages. Science will say "no, because your parents were not born in the Middle Ages, they were born in the 20th Century". Right, but they could have been born in the past. Right? See where I'm getting at with this? There is a modal conflict here, there is a conflict of modalities. There are two modalities that are directly clashing with each other, and those modalities are: contingency, on the one hand, and necessity, on the other hand.
I am too lazy. :D
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
If you talk about modality, that's interesting. I did some experiments with modal thinking before. I concluded that all modal thinking is only practical for the future applications in life. Once the event has passed, and becomes past, modal thinking just becomes imagination. Even if there were good conclusions from the modal thinking, it was only useful for the lessons for future applications or situations.
When we are all locked up and bound by space and time and heading forward to the future in a linear universe, doing anything about the past events is not an option.
What if thinking and stories are not meaningful for human lives once it has passed the event. Even God cannot intervene.
But modal thinking could be useful for perhaps the other applications such as planting trees, or cutting grass - what if an apple tree was planted instead of birch, what if grass was left uncut for the whole year? It could be done in real life, and the result will be available in reality.
But why was I born in 1985 instead of 1700? Why was I born in South America instead of Australia? These What-If, and Whys will never be altered no matter how you tried (for the reason you are a physically bound being into space and time, I have already told you), and the why questions could only be answered either by Science in the most commonsensical way, or by the religion in the esoteric way. These are some of the factual properties and events in the universe that the PSR doesn't apply by another principle.
That is just my opinion of course, which might be not true. Whatever the case, I think this is an interesting topic, and we could keep thinking on until the best answer was found and mutually agreed. I am sure someone in the forum will have more to contribute for coming up to better answers for your questions.
Are scientists sure about this? Time travel is not possible at all? Like, imagine a professional physicist, who understands theoretical physics to the utmost degree. Time travel is not even possible at the level of theoretical physics? Maybe it would be technologically impossible to fabricate a time-travelling machine, but are we really sure that it's completely impossible from a theoretical standpoint?
Quoting Corvus
But that's what I'm saying. God, if He (or She, or They, or whatever) existed, that (divine) Being could indeed intervene. Think of God like a character in a novel. God is not really a character, but the author. The author can do anything with the novel (with the fictional world that such a Being has authored). I don't believe in God though, I'm an atheist. But is there no scientific equivalent to the notion of "something", whatever that may be, that makes physical time-travel possible?
Quoting Corvus
And that means, technically, that they are necessary. But at the same time, since they could have been different, they are contingent. That's what I'm saying. And it's an odd thing to contemplate, from a philosophical POV.
Quoting Corvus
And that's the scary part. The Principle of Sufficient Reason, it seems to me (I could be wrong, though), is an "all or nothing" deal. Either it applies to everything, or it applies to nothing. It cannot apply to some things, but not to other things. That just makes no sense to me. It just strikes me as an odd thing to say, from an ontological POV.
Or can it (apply to some things but not to others)? What is your opinion on that?
But that's my point. How can there not be? A past, that is. There was a past just yesterday. It was December 29, of the year 2024. That's a fact. How can there not be continuous time? Today is December 30, of the year 2024. There's a continuum of time between those two days.
I don't even know what I'm saying at this point. Do I believe in time travel? I've no idea. It sounds like a purely Sci-Fi notion. Is it?
Thanks. I look forward to reading your contributions to threads here.
This OP seems littered with opaque concepts. Dare I say, I think you will find answers for yourself if you disambiguate your questions.
If you want to be able to work through your thoughts here, then you will need to come up with a definition of what a factual property is itself. To me, it makes no sense (and no offense meant): a factual property implies the possibility of a non-factual property. A non-factual property would just be any property, to wit, which a thing doesnt have (viz., it is non-factually the case that a cat has laser beaming eyes); which would entail that a factual property collapses into the normal meaning of a property simpliciter .
If you are just asking why one is defined into terms of the properties they have instead of what they dont, then it would be because, by my lights, a property that isnt attributed to a thing cannot possibly be a part of its nature. E.g., thats like saying a cat can be defined in terms of having laser beaming eyes while equally admitting that a cat does not need to have laser beaming eyes.
The other point worth mentioning, is that the essence, nature, and Telos of a thing are separate concepts; and depending on which one you mean by characterized by, the answer differs. E.g., I am characterized by having extreme introvertness, but this is not a part of my essence nor my Telos but is a part of my nature.
I havent read that book, so if I am just completely missing the point of the OP then just ignore me (: .
A brute fact is any statement about reality which agrees appropriately with reality (with respect to what it references) and itself has no sufficient reason for why it is the case. The fact that you were born, is not a brute fact: you were born because, e.g., your parents wanted a child, they had sex, etc. Theres is a sufficient reason (or are sufficient reasons) for why you were born, so it is not a brute fact.
You seem to think that biological facts, historical facts, etc. are brute facts when none of them are (although it is possible, technically, for one to be). The color of your skin, e.g., is not a brute fact: you have that color pigmentation because of the biological makeup you havewhich provides the sufficient reasons for why you have it. Theres nothing brute about it.
A brute fact cannot be contingent: thats baked into the concept. If a fact is contingent, then it is contingent upon other reasons (and presumably other facts); and so it must have a sufficient explanation for why it is truethusly it is not a brute truth.
A brute fact would, perhaps, be Gods existence; or the Universes existence; or a set of Platonic Forms; or a set of natural laws; etc.
If I am allowing myself some leniency in my interpretation of your OP, then I would say, and correct me if I am wrong, you are fundamentally questioning why your identity is shaped by the historical and biological context in and of which you live and are. The answer, to me, is simple: you cannot escape what you are. Nosce te ipsum is the beginning of wisdom for a reason...
Hi @Bob Ross, thanks for joining the Thread that I started. Forgive me if I answer point-for-point, or tit-for-tat, in what follows. Try to read it like a Platonic dialogue, if you will.
Quoting Bob Ross
But that's not an easy thing to do. Really, honestly, I don't think it is.
Quoting Bob Ross
You're quite right. It makes no sense to me either.
Quoting Bob Ross
Exactly, I'm with you, still.
Quoting Bob Ross
Exactly. More or less, that would be one of the most solid counter-arguments, so far. No offense taken, by the way.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm...
Quoting Bob Ross
No, I will not ignore you, I am speaking (unofficially, of course) for Speculative Materialism here, more or less as Quentin Meillassoux understands it. It's good that you stopped by. Let's continue.
Quoting Bob Ross
This, this right here, is the deal breaker as far as I'm concerned. I don't think it's necessary to quote you any further (but I do wish to continue to engage in conversation with you on this point). Meillassoux says exactly what you just said there: that The Principle of Sufficient Reason is, at the very least, not universally applicable. But how could it not be? That just makes no sense to me. Or, take the other, more extreme claim (which is Meillassoux's very own personal claim) that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is false, tout court. That, to me, is an insane thing to say, in addition to being false. I believe in the PSR. How could I not? I mean, if the PSR is false (let's suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that it is) does that mean that a squid can suddenly pop up into existence in my living room? I mean, if there is no reason for anything, then how could we rule out such insane-sounding possibilities?
Well, I wasnt commenting on which version, if any, of the PSR one should accept: I was noting that in the OP you referenced a plethora of facts which are not brute as if they are. This leaves me a bit confused, because you are now defending some (presumably strong) version of the PSR when in the OP you said many things are just brute facts (such as where you were born or your race). Perhaps that was just an outline of this Speculative Materialism that you dont quite agree with but want to discuss.
No, that is not what I was saying. I was saying two things with regard to brute facts:
1. The kinds of facts you spoke of (such as biological facts) are not brute facts, although you referenced them as such; and
2. Brute facts cannot be contingent.
Whether or not brute facts exist is a separate question, which I will go ahead and address since you brought it to our attention.
If the PSR is not universally applicable, then there is at least one thing which has no reason for it being the way it is; and if the PSR is universally applicable, then every thing has a reason for the way it is.
It is important to understand, that this is tantamount to saying that a strong version of the PSR results in all entities, and there properties, being contingent (upon other entities and there properties); and a weak version allows for at least some entities which are necessary.
To answer your question, someone that believes in a weak version of the PSR and believes that there are brute facts fundamentally (ontologically) will say that something about the way reality is that is fundamental to it just is that way with no further explanation. This could be God; it could be some set of natural laws; some set of Platonic Forms; etc.
Lets take God for example: if classical theism is correct, then God exists necessarily and has, therefore, always existed without any reason for why God exists. If there was a reason for Gods existence, then that would mean that something else is more fundamental than Godwhich undermines the whole idea that God is God in the first place. So if God exists, then God must be a necessary being; and so Gods existence is a brute fact.
Personally, I find essential equal credence in the idea that there are an infinite regress of things just as much as there are fundamental, necessary things. I think reason makes us search for a reason for why everything is the way it is; and I have no clue why we should believe that it really is the case that everything is causal. What reasons do we have to believe that no where in the universe, or beyond the universe, there is something which exists without being caused by anything in any manner? We dont; just as much as we dont have any good reasons to believe they do exist.
I think most people would agree that the Nature in which we live has shown herself to abide by the PSR, but more fundamentally we arent so sure. Its not that a squid will pop into existence all of the sudden; but more about if there are any fundamental aspects to reality which just always have been. However, technically, what reasons do we have to believe that at the quantum level things dont just pop into existence and back out for no reason at all?
One can reject that the PSR applies universally without accepting that the PSR doesnt apply at all.
Exactly. In technical terms, I'm asking what is the relation of metaphysical grounding, here. What grounds the facts about, or of, my existence? For example, why was I born in 1985? "Because your parents had sex the year before, mate. Are you stupid or what?" Ok, so that fact (that I was born in 1985) is metaphysically grounded by another fact? Yes? no? Aristotle would say that my parents are my efficient cause. But efficient causes are contingent. And yet the fact that I was born in 1985 can't be changed. So it's not contingent, it's necessary. And this is where it gets odd, because you can more or less start to say whatever bullshit you feel like saying if some restrictions aren't placed here. Who puts those restrictions? The Principle of Sufficient Reason? How could it not? How can the PSR work for physics but not for cultural, moral matters? Do you see what I'm saying? And if there is no PSR at all, then what do we make of that? Again, can a squid, technically speaking, pop up into existence in my living room?
Time travel had been discussed before in the forum, but I am not sure what the conclusion or agreement on the topic was. My thought was that time travel is not possible physically. Theoretically anything is possible, but to prove it is meaningful you must prove it physically. As far as I know, no time travel has ever been conducted physically since the beginning of the universe. Hence my idea on it was, inductively not a possible or feasible concept.
But more importantly, my stance is that time is an illusion i.e. it doesn't exist. Time is like numbers. It is only in the mind of folks, not in the real world. In the real world, there are only motions, and some motions are regular and constant like the sunrise and sunsets. From the motions, folks made up the concept of time i.e. the calendar. Outside of the earth in the other planets, the sunrise and sunsets motions have different intervals, hence they will have different length for 1 year, month, and hours, if any folks lived there.
Out of the solar planetary space, in the other stars and galaxies, the sunrise and sunset motions won't be available, hence there is no such thing as time.
Therefore time doesn't exist. Time is an illusion, hence it would be sound to conclude that you cannot travel in time.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
If God existed, why do you believe he/she must intervene? It is like saying, if God existed, he must make everyone on the planet, lottery jackpot winner. Why shouldn't? - Well why should he/she? But the point is that God may not exist. Even if he existed, there is no reason why God has to intervene for anything. Especially if God existed, he would have known (being omniscient) time doesn't exist. He would know it would be a total waste of time even talking about time travel.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
The PSR is not something that comes with every event in the universe. That is what the PSR believers seem to believe, which is a groundless and irrational belief.
When events happen, folks would perceive them, and think about the reasons. That is how reasoning works. It is not the case that reasoning happens and then the corresponding events happen afterwards.
If we accept that, then you know that on some events in the universe, we know the reasons because we have enough data for the events for us to reason. But in some cases, there is no data available for us to reason such as the beginning of the universe, because no one was standing on the earth observing the event. But we see the universe existing solidly, and things happening in space. We infer on the beginning of the universe suggesting various theories, but none are concrete. We have many reasons for the universe's existence, but at the same time, none are definite reasons. We can only conclude that some events have no reasons.
Likewise why you were born in 1985 not 1700, has no reason apart from your parents having given birth to you at the year, which is just so obvious. If you accepted that answer, then maybe you were not seeking philosophical answers.
The squids might suddenly jump and dance in your room. You ask what is the reason for that? Under no circumstances would such an event happen unless someone secretly placed some lively caught squids from the sea, and placed them in your room while you were asleep. This event definitely has reasons, and can be verified by investigation. While the reasons for the beginning of the universe, and birth of you in 1985 cannot be found apart from the fact that some events have no compelling reasons.
What you are.
The fact and the explanation for why what factually happened happened are separate things.
The proposition You were born in 1985 is true IFF you were born in 1985. That you were born in 1985, is what ontologically grounds the truth the statement You were born in 1985. The truth of the claim You were born in 1985 is not relative to the facts which explain why it is the case. Either you were born then or you werent. Why you were born in 1985 is a separate question; and your parents having sex will, in part, be the explanation.
Thats because it is in the past: that has no bearing on the fact that your parents were the physical cause of your creationnor that that fact is contingent on other facts (like them falling in love, etc.).
What you are saying here, is that if a fact about the past cannot be changed then it isnt a contingent fact: that doesnt make sense.
It is true that I stubbed my toe yesterday and that that only happened because I was busy walking with my head glued to my phone and that I cannot change that it is true that I stubbed my tow yesterday, and yet your conclusion is false that me stubbing my toe was necessaryI could have not stubbed my toe if I wasnt glued to my phone.
The more important issue, is that you are confusing necessary existence with brute existence. Some things could be necessarily the way they are but yet have an explanation for why they are the case; thereby being necessary but not brute.
E.g., if you deny the possibility that I could have done otherwise by not being glued to my phone, then it is necessarily the case, ceteris paribus, that I stubbed my toe (yesterday); but yet that is not a brute fact, because the sufficient explanation of why I stubbed my toe is still there: I was glued to my phone.
This is the opacity in your OP that I was alluding to earlier.
Sure, and it's a great observation. I agree with you. But allow me to make a methodological claim, to see if you agree or not. Think of opaqueness or opacity from artistic POV, if that makes any sense. Imagine that an opaque OP is comparable, metaphorically speaking, to a sketch. The discussion that follows, in the series of posts, is an attempt to clarify and correct the opaqueness of the OP. We add some things, we erase others, we reformulate what needs to be reformulated. We then add some tonality, like dark grays and light grays in the case of an illustration, and finally we add some color, as if it were a painting. You don't paint a painting perfectly from the get-go, unless you're extremely confident in your skills and in your understanding of the subject matter that you're painting.
Do you agree or disagree with me, up until that point?
Earlier you said:
Quoting Bob Ross
And I said:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
So, we agree on something here: that some things make sense, and some things don't. And by "things" in this case, I mean the things that people sometimes say. But the problem with our view (yours, mine, and anyone else that agrees with us) on this topic is that some folks will tell you that we're appealing to the stone, and that's a fallacy. And those folks are right: technically speaking, it is a fallacy. Now, there are some instances in which it isn't. If someone who takes solipsism seriously were to ask me "How do you know that you're not a disembodied brain in a vat that is hallucinating?", I would simply reply in the manner of Moore: here's a hand, mate. Why should I take your nonsense seriously to being with?
So, I take it that you and I believe in good common sense, yes? I know I do. How about you?
I disagree with this, honestly. I think that there are things that are not possible even at the level of theory. I'm a realist about modality: some things are metaphysically impossible. For example, it is metaphysically impossible that demons exist. The same goes for unicorns, basilisks, ghosts, etc. Scientism, to me, is not just a series of epistemic claims, it is also a series of metaphysical claims, and some of the latter use the language of modal logic (i.e., terms like "possible", "impossible", "contingent", "necessary").
Quoting Corvus
I'm an atheist. I hold that it's metaphysically impossible for beings of a divine nature to exist. But if such beings, or such a being, existed, then we would be debating theology: does God have the moral obligation to intervene in reality, in every act? That's what the occasionalists believed, in matters of theology.
Quoting Corvus
Of course it's a groundless and irrational belief. But to abandon it is to say that a dragon or a squid can suddenly pop up into existence, anywhere, at any time, for no reason whatsoever (since we've abandoned the strongest version of the PSR, which is the only version of the PSR that "makes sense", and yes, the appeal to good common sense is a fallacy, it's an "appeal to the stone").
Quoting Corvus
Why not? Why do you say that it would not happen? The circumstances of the case, of every case, become irrelevant if you abandon the PSR in its strongest form. And that's the only way to sensibly deny it. You can't have a weak version of the PSR and still expect to be able to explain some things but not others. Because, why do some things have a sufficient reason, but others don't? Either everything has a sufficient reason, or nothing does, because why would you arbitrarily "draw the line" somewhere in these matters? Here's a parity argument to that effect (inspired by Dan Korman's version of the argument from vagueness against restricted composition):
(AV1) If some things have a sufficient reason and others do not, then it is possible for there to be a sorites series for the universality of the PSR.
(AV2) Any such sorites series must contain either an exact cut-off or borderline cases of sufficient reason.
(AV3) There cannot be exact cut-offs in such sorites series.
(AV4) There cannot be borderline cases of sufficient reason.
(AV5) So, either everything has a sufficient reason, or nothing does.
Whoever wishes to resist this argument must deny one of the premises. @Bob Ross which premise would you deny, if any?
Thats fine, but I think it is still worth noting that the problem being addressed in the OP is due to the ambiguity in what it describes remove that ambiguity and theres no issue anymore. This is not the case with standard philosophical disagreement: when two philosophers converse, they are conversing about who has it correctproviding two different theses if you willwhich each is perfectly clear in their own right.
Thats not to say you are doing anything wrong by asking peoples opinions; but the OP ideally should be clearer IMHO (no offense).
Nothing I have said is a blunt assertion; so it is not an appeal to the stone fallacy.
That is appealing to the stone, so to speak, and is a bad argument. I think Moore was right to posit that there are purely intuitional primitive concepts; but the proposition My hand exists is not even a concept .
The reason solipsism holds no water is because it egregiously unparsimonious: my repetitive experience of my hand, as confirmed by everyone else, is evidence that my hand actually exists; and my experience of the world whereof I am in a transcendent reality is evidence that there is such a reality. All hard skepticism is deeply rooted in conflating the possibility of something with its probability.
Pure intuition, yes; common sense, absolutely not.
I dont see how this follows. A thing which has a sufficient reason for its existence and one which doesnt isnt analogous to concepts which refer to gradations (e.g., short vs. tall, shades of colors, etc.): it is analogous to non-gradations like being a circle vs. not being a circle, and so it is not subjected to the problem of the heap.
Even if I grant AV1, it does not follow from the possibility of something that it is required; which is exactly what you implied in your argument. You seem to be trying to argue that if the PSR is like a sorites series, then it must either apply to everything or nothing; but your first premise only demonstrates the possibility of it being a sorites series. A person could just say well, it is possible; but I dont think it is a sorites series. Viz,:
This assumes that the PSRs application is like a sorites series, which AV1 doesnt even purport.
If it were a sorites series, then this would be true; but, like I said, either a fact is brute or non-brute: theres no degrees to it.
Again, these are both correct: the problem is that you provided no reasons for us to believe that the PSRs application is a sorites series. AV1 doesnt even claim that it is: it just admits of its possibility.
I would suggest writing your argument out into proper syllogisms just to ensure the logic is sound.
Mate, I say this with no ill intent: it genuinely doesn't make sense (to my mind) for you worry so much about etiquette, to the point of saying "no offense" when you give your honest opinion about something, especially considering the fact that you jumped into this Thread without even saying "hello". Like, relax mate, you're not offending me by stating your opinion on something.
I'll consider your feedback tomorrow, thanks for taking the time and energy to contribute it.
Happy New Year.
Sure you can disagree. But if you explain logically and understandably where the disagreement comes from, that is perfectly understandable.
It sounds like you seem to emphasize theoretically demons and ghosts can't exist metaphysically. I don't exactly understand what you mean by that. Why suddenly metaphysically? What does metaphysics have to do with the existence of demons and ghosts?
Why are they not possible to exist metaphysically? What is your definition of metaphysics, and what and which objects do you mean by demons and ghosts?
I would like to clarify this point of yours first before progressing further down the line.
I find it a bit difficult to follow the flow of your argument and point here i.e you deny God's existence, but you suggest God has the moral obligation to intervene your time travel to the past world mentioning the claims of the occasionalists. What is this about?
I would like to clarify your points one by one instead of so many added up into one large sheet of message with loads of quotes, because it seems to make the points and flow of the arguments unclear and conflated at times. I hope it is OK with you. Thanks.
Somethings have causes and reasons, but some other things in the universe don't. Hence the PSR doesn't qualify as a principle. A principle means it must work for all the incidents, events and objects. When it is the case for some, and not the case for the others is not a principle.
It is not total abandoning as you try to make out. It is a modification of the PSR. We could say the principle of possible reasoning instead of the principle of sufficient reasoning. So the new name of the PSR must be the PPR.
Some events and objects in the universe have reasons for its existence, but some don't. Yeah we managed to induce a new concept from the old nonworking wrong concept of the PSR.
The new more flexible and logical concept is called the PPR i.e. the Principle of Possible Reason. Hows that?
I believe in both. I don't know if I'd call it "pure", in any sense of the term. Just intuition. What is your reason for calling it "pure"? Are you somehow suggesting that as human beings we also have an "impure" intuition? Or am I way off here? I any case, can you explain why you said "pure intuition" and not just "intuition"? Thanks in advance.
Quoting Bob Ross
Think of AVI in the following way. Some philosophers (such as Plato) believe that existence comes in degrees: a shadow has less existence, and less being, than an ordinary object such as a table. And the idea of table, as a perfect concept, has more existence and more being than an ordinary object such as a table. So, in such scenarios (i.e., Platonism) it makes sense to say the sort of thing that AV1 is saying: In Platonism, the PSR has less "strength", if you want to call it that, in the case of paintings, it has more "strength" in the case of an ordinary object such as a stone, and it has even more "strength" in the case of an Idea, such as the Idea of The Stone. If you deny AV1, you have to explain why our ordinary life is not like Platonism.
Quoting Bob Ross
I agree, it's good advice. Believe it or not, I'm really lousy at syllogisms. I mean, I know how modus ponens and modus tollens work, instinctually, as a matter of habit at this point in my life, but I'm just not a good "artist" when I try to craft a rarer kind of syllogism. And there's a lot of them.
But to tell you the honest truth, I'm just not as passionate as you about proper syllogisms. As far as Logic goes, there's other areas of Aristotle's logical legacy that I'm interested in. That's on me, though, because what I just said there is technically an excuse. And it is. An excuse, that is. I mean, I just don't love Western culture enough to even care to be proficient at classical syllogisms in general. I like modus tollens, sure, and modus ponens not so much, and I'm proficient in both of those. But the rest? It's just too "Western-ish" in a stereotypical sense, if you will. And I don't consider myself a "Westerner". What does that even mean? That I was born in the western hemisphere? That doesn't mean anything to me, it carries no moral nor ethical value by itself. I'm a South American before being a "Westerner". Like, what are Australians, then? Easterners? And if they are, how much "stock" do you want to put on that fact? Like, it's meaningless. You're an Oceanian before being a "Westerner", is what I would say in that case.
For the reason that you just said: it has to do with the existence of such and such (i.e. stones, tables, trees, dogs, people, computers, the Internet, numbers, mathematical objects in general, fictional objects like Pegasus or Sherlock Holmes, demons, ghosts, poems, songs, music, sports, theater, history, Nature, philosophy itself, etc.). Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the topics of Being and existence. It also deals with other concepts, such as Nothing or Nothingness. So, demons and ghosts are "within the province", "within the domain", "within the realm", of what metaphysics studies. They are "elements of itself as a set", so to speak (poetically, not Platonically, of course).
And what I'm arguing is that ghost and demons do not exist. They do not have the property of existence, because in my personal philosophy, existence is a property. Ghosts and demons do not have that property, therefore they do not exist. I did not invent this idea myself, this is simply something that I took from Mario Bunge's philosophy.
OK, I see what you mean. But I was under the impression that Metaphysics allows us to discuss the objects we can imagine, contemplate, and conceptualize but has no material existence such as God, Souls, Demons and Ghosts etc.
When you said, even in Metaphysics, those concepts are impossible to exist, I was not sure if you were talking about a different Metaphysics from the traditional classic Metaphysics.
I think this is what Kant had been talking about in his CPR - if Metaphysics was possible as a Science, when it deals with the topics of non material existences such as God, Souls, Freedom etc.
When you are talking about God, Souls, Freedom, and even Demons or Ghosts, we are not saying they do exist in the external world. But rather what Metaphysical inquiries are asking is, how is it possible for us to think about those concepts when they are not existing in the external world, and what if they do exist. If they don't exist in the external world, then could it be possible that they might exist in our mind? And how do we form such immaterial concepts which are not in space and time?
These are perfectly reasonable questions to ask and discuss, and especially if you are a Modalist, I would have thought you would embrace the possibilities for the inquiries and discussions, rather than rejecting it.
That, is an extremely important question, and, to the best of my knowledge, has not been solved as a genuine scientific problem. Is it one? Is it a scientific question to begin with? Or is it a Meta-scientific question, if you will?
Quoting Corvus
This is a "Gnoseological" question in the Spanish sense of the term, in English it's called an "Epistemological" question. I don't what more I can answer on this point, sorry.
Quoting Corvus
This is an ontological question. And it's a good one. This is the type of problem that interests me as a philosopher.
Quoting Corvus
Am I? Yes, I guess you could call me that. See, my philosophical hero, Mario Bunge, was not a modalist. So, this would be a difference between our philosophies (there are many other differences as well). And not only am I a modalist, I'm also a modal realist (I figure if Bunge had been a modalist, he would have identified with the other camp, the "modal fictionalists". Is that even a thing? Hmmm...)
Quoting Corvus
What do you mean?
Well you said that the demons and ghosts don't exist in the external world, so it is impossible to explain about them theoretically, and even metaphysically.
I was saying they are the perfect topics in Metaphysics, and why is it impossible to explain or discuss. That was what I mean.
Right, but here's my question, as a professional metaphysician (I think I've earned the right to call myself that, I have enough metaphysical publications in professional journals to qualify as such),
why is that?
I mean, since they are indeed the perfect topics in Metaphysics (I agree with you on that), I ask, as a metaphysician myself: why is it impossible to explain or discuss? What is the reason for that? Is it just ignorance? Is it superstition? Like, consider my own case: I'm a professional philosopher, I dabble a bit in Metaphysics (my forte, so to speak, is in Philosophy of Science, but that's beside the point).
The preceding being the case. Why can't I explain or discuss them? Why is it impossible for me, specifically, as an individual human being? Are there people out there, in the world, that are somehow under another impression? I'm extremely curious about that. I'm a bit of an amateur anthropologist, you could say. What do you think? What is your opinion on the Metaphysics of ghosts and demons?
So you are a professional Metaphysician. Cool.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I think Metaphysics could discuss such topics e.g. Demons, Ghosts and God, Souls and Freedom etc. That is what Metaphysics is about. No one would suggest to discuss these topics under Physics or Chemistry. If you say, even Metaphysics cannot discuss them, then what is the point of Metaphysics?
I mean it is not the whole topic of Metaphysics of course. It has the other topics too. But I would have thought Metaphysics can discuss the entities which are in the out of the boundaries of normative reason.
If you still deny that freedom and authority of Metaphysics, then I would say you are limiting the scope of Metaphysics unreasonable and unnecessary way, and it would be stripped of much of its attraction.
I agree. I already said in another thread, that whoever proves that the existence of the Evil Demon is modally impossible, should win the Fields Medal. Why? Because, in order to prove that, you would would have to prove that logic itself cannot be doubted. And that is the reason why the recipient of the Fields Medal should receive such an outstanding award.
Sadly, that person won't be me.
Quoting Corvus
That's an excellent argument in defense of Metaphysics as a profession, as a specialized area within professional, academic philosophy. The problem is, if you publish a paper on the metaphysics of demons, people laugh at you. But if you publish a paper on the metaphysics of Pegasus, people at least have the basic decency to tell you why your ideas are wrong.
I just do it to be kind and considerate: for our discussion, it is duly noted that we do not need to do that. I will refrain (:
You too!
Common sense is just whatever one has been sociologically conditioned to believe is obvious; whereas intuitionin the philosophical senseis an intellectual seeming. What is intuitivein this sensemay NOT BE obvious (e.g., 1 + 1 = 2 is not obvious to a tribal member); and what is obvious may not be intuitive (e.g., a society where all cats are considered to always green).
An intuition is a seeming based on purely intellectual grasping of the evidence; whereas common sense is based off of what society or an individual has been conditioned to believe. This is why intuitionsin the philosophical senseare defined usually something like An intuition is a seeming a reasonably rational person would have if they grasped the entirety of the evidence. Therefore, 1 + 1 = 2 may not be obvious (and thusly not common sensically true) to the tribal man, but if one were to convey the concepts behind it to that man in a way that they understand; then they would intuit that it is true.
A pure intuition is any intuition which has no basis in any conveyable evidence; and an impure intuition is one which is based off of, at least some, conveyable evidence.
The grandaddy of examples for pure intuitions is beingness. There is nothing one can convey to another person that allows for an understanding of what it means to be nor anything they can convey themselves to themselves; but yet any reasonably rational person who grasps readily their own experience knows what to exist means. It is pure exactly because one just grasps it as a result of something deeply ingrained into their existence. to be is so undefinable exactly because it is a pure intuition.
An example of an impure intuition is cars cant fly. Only by conveying what a car and flying is, and how it relates to the physics or common understanding involved, which can be done, can one intuit that yeah, cars cant fly. It is based off of conveyable evidence because there concepts involved are complex (as opposed to absolutely simple).
I see what you are saying, but I disagree. Being does not come in degrees, just as much as the PSR doesnt. I am a monist about being: theres too many problems with it to me.
If the PSR has degrees to it, then I would need to know exactly how that works to re-assess your view. Give me example of two things which the PSR applies whereof one has the PSR more weakly associated with it.
I'm not sure that I can do that. The whole point of the OP is that this is "uncharted territory", so to speak. Think of it like an actual geographical map. What we're talking about right now is like, I don't know, an island that has never been explored yet, but we can see it from afar. That's the metaphor here.
The best that I can do right now, is to compare AV1 to its equivalent in the literature on ordinary objects. Specifically, the argument that I presented above is structurally similar to Korman's version of the argument from vagueness against restricted composition:
Quoting Daniel Z. Korman
My argument is structurally similar to Korman's. The only difference is that he's talking about an Argument From Vagueness (an A.F.V., if you will) against restricted composition (i.e., the idea that some objects compose a further object and that some other objects do not). My argument is similar to his not only due to how the premises are stated, but also due to the fact that it's an A.F.V. against what you might call "restricted reason" (what that would be, is the idea that some objects have a sufficient reason for their being while some other objects have no sufficient reason for their being).
I'll now switch back to Korman:
Quoting Daniel Z. Korman
So, here is where I would offer a new argument, in support of my version of AV1:
1) If the A.F.V. against restricted composition is logically valid (but not necessarily sound), then the A.F.V. against restricted reason is logically valid (but not necessarily sound).
2) If so, then (AV1) is True: If some things have a sufficient reason and others do not, then it is possible for there to be a sorites series for the universality of the PSR.
So, (AV1) is True: If some things have a sufficient reason and others do not, then it is possible for there to be a sorites series for the universality of the PSR.
Wouldn't it depend on what the definition of demon is? In the ordinary folk's mind perhaps demon means some evil with horrible looking face and body destroying and doing bad things to people. That's just a vulgar idea from the movies or comics.
Rise above from that, and you could define demon as a negative side of God, humans or anything really. There are always positive and negative sides of everything. The positive side of the world, life, mind, pleasure etc could be defined as the angelic property, and the negative side of these objects such death, war, pain, hatred ... etc could be branded as the demonic properties of the existence.
In that system, there is nothing to laugh about, but it could be a good topic to have discussions or thoughts on.
Anyhow my point is, you could make anything possible theoretically, because theoretically means you are presuming, supposing or assuming such and such might be the case. You are not claiming anything true or false here. In the modal situation, anything can be made possible or impossible.
But physically, many things would be impossible to implement and prove. There is a difference.
I honestly don't think that it would depend on what the definition of what the word "demon" means, or even what a demon is in the sense of vulgar ideas from movies or comics. Metaphysics should be able to talk about both: the word "demon" and the vulgar idea of what a demon is, as portrayed in movies and comic books. Why? Because if it can't do that, then it's not Metaphysics, it's something else, like Psychology, or Phenomenology, or Linguistics, or Anthropology. It would not be Metaphysics. But I think that Metaphysics can speak coherently about any topic, up to a certain point, and that certainly includes demons. Think of it like this: from the POV of Metaphysics, it's easier to talk about ghosts and demons than to talk about Being, God, Cosmos or Chaos.
Quoting Corvus
What you said there is an example of what I call "Ying-Yang Metaphysics". It is metaphysics, done in the style of the ying-yang. But it is not the same thing as having a philosophical discussion about the image and the concept of the Ying and the Yang. But my colleagues that are actively working and publishing in the academic discipline of Western Metaphysics usually don't believe me when I say these things.
Quoting Corvus
I feel the same way about that idea.
Quoting Corvus
And that's where I humbly disagree. Some things are impossible theoretically. For example, the idea that there might be a living, fire-breathing dragon somewhere on planet Earth, right now, in the year 2024, is an idea that is theoretically impossible, in the literal sense: it is incompatible with the body of knowledge that modern science currently has. Technically speaking, they do not co-here, there would be no coherence within a theoretical system that accepts, at the same time and in the same sense, the idea of a living, fire-breathing dragon in the world and the body of knowledge of modern science.
That sort of theoretical impossibility has a modal "ring" to it, but I haven't fully figured out that part yet.
:chin: :grin:
1) It has to be alive.
2) It has to breathe fire.
Those two ideas, taken together, are incompatible with modern science.
In the example of the video that you showed, the "dragon" only meets one of the two criteria: it breaths fire, but it is not alive. And, technically speaking, it doesn't breathe fire either, because only living beings (only some of them, not all) can breathe.
I know that you posted the video because it is humorous, but there is truth in humor. Some truth, not all the truth.
But what makes something alive? What do you mean by "alive"?
Can machines be not alive?
Life, as biologists understand the term, is a list of criteria that any entity has to have, in other for it to be alive. Among those criteria, the most important ones are the following ones:
1) It must have genetic material (i.e., DNA and/or RNA)
2) It must have cellular organization (i.e., it must be a single cell, like a bacteria, or multicellular, like an animal)
There are other criteria, like maintaining homeostasis, but if it does not have the first two, then it is not alive. So, for example, a stone is not alive. Why not? Firstly, because it does not have genetic material (stones do not have DNA and/or RNA), and secondly because they do not have cellular organization (stones are not composed of cells, they are not "made" of cells).
Quoting Corvus
No. They cannot be alive, because they are like stones in that sense. A machine is not alive (i.e., it does not have genetic material, it does not have DNA and/or RNA, and it is not composed of cells, it is not "made" of cells).
That's my answer to those questions.
Does it mean that no one was alive before DNA RNA and body cells were discovered?
Thats a big problem, though; because you are arguing that the PSR applies in degrees. If you cant give any example of it or the reasons why you believe it, then why do you believe that it does apply in degrees?
I have been clear with my position: something either has a sufficient reason for its existence or it does not. This is binary: it would make no sense to say that this thing right here has 8% of a sufficient reason for its existence and this other thing has 45%.
I am not familiar with Korman to speak adequately on it; but it sound equally implausible to me. I have no clue how AV5 (of their argument) is implied from composition being incapable of being a sorites series. I agree it isnt like a sorites series; and yet nothing about that implies that there cant be one thing over here which is absolutely simple (in composition) and another thing over there which is composed of an infinite amount of smaller things.
Does it have to do with the cross-interaction between those types of things? I could see it getting weird thinking about an object composed of an infinite of things as it causally interacts with a thing that is absolutely simple; but I dont see how that lends support to your claim.
I have no problem admitting that the map is NOT the territory; and that reality cannot be reduced to thought. This does not mean that we cannot meaningfully talk about the composition of objects, nor the reasons for why a thing exists.
If reality is an infinite of collections (or something like that), then everything would be applicable to the PSR; but you havent demonstrated that this is the case. The fact that the application of the PSR is not like a sorites series, does not entail that it applies to everything.
For example, imagine a particle that pops in and out of existence in nanoseconds: it would be plausible that it might not have a reason for why it existed at all.
How can be unsound if it is logical?
This doesnt make any sense. I would envision that you could make an argument from composition though, like:
P1: If an object is divisible, then it must have a sufficient reason for its existence. [ Divisible
P2: All objects are infinitely divisible. [ ?x (Object
C1: Therefore, every object must have a sufficient reason for its existence. [ ?x (Object
Ill already tell you the problem with this though: it makes no mention of how the infinitely composed object relates to other infinitely composed objects. If there is no reason for why they relate to each other than that would be an area where the PSR still wouldnt apply (even if this argument above holds).
Indeed. That is indeed what I seem to be arguing. And, here is my humble opinion on that: it's not a topic that's usually discussed in the literature, on anything. It's a fringe topic in the world of Academia. Like, if I use Google Scholar for this kind of investigation, I don't exactly get many results, and the ones that I do indeed get, are of dubious quality.
So, I'm just doing the type of research here that's usually called "exploratory investigation". It's a type of investigation in which, since not much has been said, you go in anyways without having even a working hypothesis. It's like, you're not even putting a presumably false hypothesis to the test, you don't even have a hypothesis to begin with. Karl Popper said that every scientific investigation starts with a question, and that question is to be answered by the hypothesis to be put to the test. In an exploratory investigation, one doesn't even have a working hypothesis to begin with, because what one has, initially, is not a scientific question. It is instead a proto-scientific question (not to be confused with a pseudo-scientific question):
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
You seem to be suggesting that the very question is objectionable. What I'm saying, literally, as objectively as I possibly can: Yes, you are right in one sense, and wrong in another sense.
So, if I am saying that, then:
1) there is a sufficient reason to your words in one sense (otherwise, you could not be right)
and
2) there is no sufficient reason to your words in another sense (otherwise, you could not be wrong).
Your freedom, your very freedom (not in a political sense, but in an ontological sense) is only possible if it is possible for you to be right and wrong about something, thought in different senses. Sometimes you "get it right", sometimes you "get it wrong". What's important is the following:
1) If you get it right, try to make sure that you're right about something that is indeed a big deal.
2) If you're wrong about something, try to make sure that you're wrong about something trivial.
Man, I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm just "harping away", as in, I'm just "playing the Classical harp" at this point. It's Aesthetically unpleasing. And this is why you jumped into this thread in the first place:
you don't like it.
But who says that you have to like a certain style, or a certain way, of doing philosophy? Unless you think that my OP is non-philosophical.
Is it? Honest opinion, please.
(note: I edited this comment for the sake of clarity -Arcane Sandwich)
No, it does not. DNA, RNA, and body cells already existed before they were discovered. And so did people, and those people were indeed alive, because they had DNA, RNA, and body cells, even though they did not know that specific fact about themselves and about the world in general. They were, I guess you could say, ignorant of that fact.
This isnt science: there are no tests; there are no proofs in philosophy. What we do in philosophy, is determine the plausibility and probability of theses being true based off of weighing the evidence.
I did not follow this part at all; and I am not sure how it related to anything we were talking about before. Can you re-word it?
Yeah, I think you derailed a bit here. I have no clue what you are trying to say here.
I am not here because I dont like what you are doing: I recognize that it needs help being thought outin sharpening the concepts involved and the methodologyand so I do my best to try to help you.
It is unphilosophical in the sense that the concepts and arguments are not well drawn out; but the topic (about the PSR) is an area of philosophy.
You did not provide a response to my response in your response; nor have you provided any reasons for why we should believe that reality is a web of infinitely inter-connected things which would require the a sufficient reason for why they are the way they are.
Hmmm... could be.
However, you also said this: Quoting Bob Ross
So let me see if I'm following your lead, here. You're saying, that the OP is unphilosophical. You also say that philosophy is not science. Let me ask you this, then: is philosophy unscientific, in the sense that the OP is unphilosophical? Because there is a third sense here that could be the case: that the OP is unphilosophical and unscientific, the worst of both worlds.
If that's the verdict, then I'll accept my fate, as a poet should. Tell me then, what is the OP to you? If it is not philosophy, and if it is not science, what is it? Honest question.
Hmmm... do I agree with this? No, I think not. That is not what reality is. Reality is the Absolute, in the Hegelian sense of the term.
Quoting Bob Ross
Would they require a sufficient reason for that? That's my point, dude. That there's three options here. And those options are, logically, the same ones that are available for answering van Inwagen's Special Composition Question, aka SCQ:
Option 1) Never. If you choose this option, you're a mereological nihilist.
Option 2) Sometimes. If you choose this option, you're a mereological particularist.
Option 3) Always. If you choose this option, you're a mereological universalist.
What I'm saying is that in the case of modality, you have the same structure, at least in principle:
Option 1) Never. If you choose this option, you're a modal nihilist.
Option 2) Sometimes. If you choose this option, you're a modal particularist.
Option 3) Always. If you choose this option, you're a modal universalist.
And this is what we're currently investigating, in page 4 of this Thread.
So I ask you, as if I was a "detective": do I have a "philosophical lead" here, so to speak? Or am I "way off"?
Hey Bob, I didn't want to leave you hanging on this one. Here's the answer to this specific question, since it's a good question.
An argument can be formally valid (what you call "logical") and still be unsound (in the sense that at least one of the premises is false).
Here's an example of a logically valid but unsound argument:
1) If ghosts exist, then Paris is the capital of France.
2) Ghosts exist.
3) Therefore, Paris is the capital of France.
This argument is logical, it is valid. Why? Because it has the logical structure of a syllogism, in this particular case, it is a modus ponens (which is technically classified as a mixed hypothetical syllogism). Take a look at its structure, using Propositional Logic:
1) p ? q
2) p
3) q
It is a deduction. However, as valid as the argument may be (and it is), it's unsound. Why? Well, lets replace each propositional letter with the truth value of each statement that was made:
1) F ? T
2) F
3) T
You see, the conclusion, which is True, has been logically deduced from a series of premises in which the second one, in this case, was False.
The moral of the story here is that it is logically possible to deduce True conclusions from False premises (and yes, there are examples that show how this can even be the case for all of the premises).
What cannot happen, of course, is a case in which you have a series of True, and only True premises, and yet somehow you want to logically deduce a false conclusion from them. That, my friends, is not valid reasoning.
Dead bodies also have DNA. So having DNA is not the right criteria for being alive.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Ok, fair point. But it is still possible to talk about non-alive objects such as the fire breathing dragons and demons. Because many people know about them, and like them obviously from the video.
It means the dragons and demons exist in their mind and imagination. Therefore they exist in the mind as mental objects. With the mental objects, they made up the physical objects which look like fully living dragon. It gives fun and realistic experience to the viewers.
Therefore it is possible to discuss about the mental objects which exist in the mind from metaphysical point of view. Rejecting that sounds rejecting Metaphysics itself, because after all Metaphysics means going beyond physical existence.
Hmmm... You know, that's actually a really good philosophical point that you just made there. By Gods, mate, I've never even thought of it that way. I'm not even sure what I should even say to that. I would have to think it. Hmmm...
Quoting Corvus
You think? I'm not so sure myself. Calling someone "ignorant" is just rude. Maybe I should retire that word from my personal vocabulary, but I'm not sure. What do you think about that? Is the word "ignorant" somehow insulting? I think it is, but I could be wrong.
Quoting Corvus
Sure. But then I can talk about how those people talked about those objects. And how do I do that? First, I study what they said, then I study what those objects are. It's a case-by-case approach, there is no general rule or principle here. I'll share one of my favorite quotes by Dan Z. Korman on that point:
@Wayfarer have you read that book by Daniel Z. Korman that I just quoted? It's called "Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary", and it was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.
Philosophy is outside the purview of science; and so it is unscientific only in that sense.
Your OP is unphilosophical, as I said before, in the sense that, although it addresses a philosophy subject, it does not provide sufficient clarity and argumentation for it to be considered formally philosophical (by my lights).
Like I said before, it is philosophy in the sense that the subject matter which you wish to discuss is a part of philosophy.
Then your argument doesnt make any sense: the PSR would only be universally applicable if reality were an infinite set of things.
Which means what, exactly?
You are getting lost in mereology, and I already addressed this with no response (on your end).
Modality is about possibility, necessity, and contingency: none of that made any sense.
Why does that matter? Wouldnt you rather come up with a good argument for why your position is true?
I get what you are going for here; but thats not what the terms traditionally mean. Unsoundness is when the logic is invalid. What you are talking about is internal and external coherence.
And that is fair. That you make such a judgement. It is fair.
Quoting Bob Ross
No Bob, please don't do that. You just said that my OP is unphilosophical, and I said that I'm fine with that. Now, out of pure intellectual curiosity, I want to know: what is it? The OP. What genre of writing does it belong to, in your honest opinion? Because that would help me in a a purely methodological sense. It doesn't matter if you give me the "wrong answer", for example "I think it's the literary genre of garbage pseudo-philosophy" or something like that. I promise I won't take any offense at your honest answer to the question that I'm asking.
I already said this twice now: the subject belongs in philosophy. That doesn't mean that your OP is a valid philosophy OP formally. I am not saying it is some toto genere different topic.
I think if you wrote the OP in a manner that was sufficiently clear, well-organized, and had legitimate argumentation for the conclusion; then it would be a good philosophy OP.
Sure, but I don't even have a position to begin with, that's the problem that I've been alluding to. There isn't much work that's already been done in this specific, uncharted area of the philosophical map.
Quoting Bob Ross
Call it whatever you like, I simply share the viewpoint of my colleagues in the Analytic Metaphysics of Ordinary Objects on that topic.
Bob. Honest question. How could I even do that, if the topic of the OP is literally unexplored, at least in a purely bibliographical sense?
This is what a good OP looks like: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15131/the-breadth-of-the-moral-sphere/p1 .
A good OP doesn't require that you pick a side on a topic: agnosticism is fine too. A good OP in the case of suspending judgment is to be openly convey your agnosticism, elaborate in detail on the topic you want to discuss, elaborate on the various solutions you are aware of, and ask for the forum's input.
Re-reading the OP, I just find it confusing and lacking clarity on what is going on: what's the agenda? Perhaps I am just missing the point.
What are you exploring? It isn't very clear what exactly is going on in the OP (to me). If I am being honest, it reads to me like you don't really know what you are exploring but you know you are exploring something.
Briefly re-reading it, you didn't even mention the PSR; which, as far as I can tell, is what you really want to talk about.
I mean, that's a bit of a brutal assumption to make in the first place, Bob. I don't have an agenda to begin with. Why would you assume that I have "an agenda"? What do you even mean by that? What is your intent when you ask such a question? Think of it as a Phenomenologist would, please. That would be very helpful for my investigation and thus, for the topic that the OP proposes to explore in this Thread.
Quoting Bob Ross
I don't think that you are. If you were, I would have told you. Or, if I was a very rude person, I would have "kicked you out of the Thread", or some nonsense like that. I mean, you are somewhat of a rude person, but that tells me nothing about your actual thoughts and opinions.
In other words, Bob, the bet that I "got for ya" here is a proposal, to look at how Korman himself proposes to resit the Argument From Vagueness against Restricted Composition. That is the only "philosophical lead" that I have found that could solve the problem of the OP.
Deal or no deal?
Yes, that is exactly what is going on. This discussion that we're all having here, ever since the Thread started, is an attempt to clarify what is unphilosophical about the OP, for the purpose of turning it into a legitimate philosophical question.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not quite. It's something else. What I want to talk about is factiality as such, which is related to, but not identical with, the PSR.
Every OP has an agenda, just like a meeting does, or else it is just a tangent.
Lol, you are the one that told me to chill out being so kind.
So this is what I would suggest focusing on, instead of exploring. Your point of departure is the real issue here.
What I am suggesting to you (although you can do as you please) is to accept the challenge of refining the OP to remove the ambiguity in your own thinking. That will help you tremendously. The OP is littered with vague concepts. So here's what I challenge you to do: think about what actually the problem is that you are wanting to address, what solutions you are aware of, and what position you hold (if any). Convey that to me in clear terminology, and I can help sort through it. Right now, there's too much confusion for me to even know what to do.
Would the following part qualify as the agenda?
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Then you say:
Quoting Bob Ross
Of course I did. I'm glad that you complied with that request.
Quoting Bob Ross
And all that I am humbly saying, is that I lack the knowledge, as a professional philosopher, to accomplish the task that you are suggesting that I perform. I need to tackle the problem of the OP step-by-step. It begins with a sketch (the OP itself), it continues as a progressive discussion throughout the Thread (the blacks, whites, and grays of the eventual painting), and finally it becomes a full-colored painting in the form of the comment that I personally choose as the comment that has solved the problem that the OP presented. Here's the trick: due to how good forum etiquette actually works, the "winning comment" in that sense cannot be mine. I cannot answer my own question, simply out of courtesy. Someone else, some other forum member, has to be the winner, and this is by definition.
So, again, can we please focus our attention on Korman's argument about composition? You're under no obligation to agree or to even contribute anything in that sense, you are obviously free to do as you please.
Not in any meaningful sense. An OP is supposed to ask something of the audience: what about your Love Letter has to do with us? Are you asking us to critique it as a work of literature? Are you asking about a specific aspect of Speculative Materialism? Do you see how this is an incredibly vague agenda.
You dont need to be a professional philosopher to be able to clearly identify what problem you are trying to address. Using a discussion to learn is perfectly fine; but what I am saying is that your OP betrays itself with its opacity.
I already did, and you never addressed them. You keep skipping around and selectively responding. I will refer you back to my response on Korman: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/957671 .
Ok, let's start with that. Let's make a better agenda. Agree? Don't mind if I just assume that you do, for the sake of expediency. Let's invent an agenda. I'll tell you my premises, and I'll tell you what my agenda is, taking those premises as mere "starting-point hypotheses" in the epistemological sense.
My premises, the premises of my personal philosophy, the ungrounded statements that I simply accept, for no other particular reason than the mere fact that I actually believe them to be true, are the following five terms.
1) Realism
2) Materialism
3) Atheism
4) Scientism
5) Literalism
From there, I can deduce, as a conclusion (due to a series of logical deductions that I will simply omit for the sake of expediency) that, the OP itself, which is literally my "Love Letter" to the book After Finitude, IS the agenda of the OP, not "the agenda" of me, Arcane Sandwich, as a person, or citizen, or what have you.
In the methodological recognition of the fact that Speculative Realism has already been discussed in this particular Forum in the past, the OP is simply an instance of a research activity that begins in media res. I am effectively charting new conceptual territory with Speculative Materialism itself in the OP, and I do so as a fan of Quentin Meillassoux and also as an informed, critical reader of After Finitude. If you do not agree even to these very basic terms of the discussion itself (i. e., the methodological decision to begin in media res), then I ask you to "look at this thing" from a more Medieval perspective, instead of the Classicist perspective so eloquently displayed as an image in you Forum avatar.
Catch my drift, Bob?
Note: I have edited this message for Clarity's sake. Who is Clarity, anyways?
No, I honestly am not: everything you just said is way too high-level and vague. An OP has to be concise, clear, and well-organized.
Let me try to help. It sounds like you want to discuss Speculative Realism. What specifically about it are you wanting to discuss? Kormans mereological argument? Be specific (:
Unless it is an exploratory investigation in the methodological sense, unlike an OP which represents another type of discussion, such as the pros and cons of certain moral standpoint.
Quoting Bob Ross
Thanks for the help, it is much appreciated. Yes, I want to discuss Speculative Realism, but more specifically After Finitude, and more specifically the meaning of the term factiality, because that is what undercuts what I wrote in the OP.
Consider the first comment of the OP, from now own, "Version Zero" of this document (this Public Thread, which is now at page 5).
Henceforth, we will begin with "Version One" of the document from now on. I have the authority to make that call (as in, I am legitimized in my capacity to make that decision), for I am the author of the OP of this Thread.
Question of this Thread: What is factiality?
Why you should care about the Question of this Thread:
(this part needs to be completed. Can you please help me with this part, @Bob Ross? Just share your thoughts, think of it like a brainstorming exercise. Don't worry if your words become too "rambly", we're not at the "Painting stage" yet.
It can be insulting to someone, but the ancients are all dead, and the deads won't mind being called "ignorant". Or maybe they might mind, but they won't know that you called them "ignorant". :D
Sure interesting point. You will find different people have different ideas on what being alive means. You have claimed that having the biological body cells, DNA and RNA in the body is the condition of being alive. But the ancient people must have thought that the dead are as alive as the living.
After physical death, soul travels from the mundane world to the heaven or hell or the world of idea, if they were platonians.
Most of them believed in Gods, Demons and Ghosts for sure. So physical bodies were not the only existence.
The moderns rejected souls, Gods, demons and dragons as unfounded superstitions due to lack of evidence on the claims and beliefs. But then there are many claims made by Science with little or no evidence. People tend to believe anything no matter how superstitious it may sound.
If the claims were under the name of science, then they would believe them blindly. So there is no much difference between scientific or religious claims in their superstitious nature.
DNA RNA are only meaningful for those who works in the labs with the white gowns. They mean nothing me. No matter how closely I inspect my hand and fingers I cannot find a trace of DNA or RNA.
For me being alive means being able to eat, drink, sleep well, and enjoy the pleasures from the daily routine.
100%, that is True. Sting theory for example, has very little (if any) evidence. Some specific aspect of the theory of the Big Bang are mere speculation without good evidence (for example, the idea that there was nothing before the Big Bang. Perhaps there was something. For example, there could have been another Universe before the Big Bang, with its own spacetime)
Quoting Corvus
I'm not so sure about that. Some people today seem to believe very wild things, even when presented with good evidence to the contrary. The most extreme example would be the people that believe that the Earth is flat. Not people of ancient times, but some of the people of today, of the 21st Century. They believe that the Earth is flat even if science says that it is not. So, those people simply don't believe what science says. That is just one example (it's the most extreme one), and there are other, less extreme examples, as well.
Quoting Corvus
100%, that is a very good point. All that I would say is that in other senses, science is not like religion, because science is atheist (or at least agnostic). Individual scientists can be religious, but that is a private matter. Science, in the public sense, is not religious (it cannot be, by definition).
Quoting Corvus
Hmmm... that's a really good point. You seem to be a very good metaphysician.
Thank you sir. I am grateful to be able to discuss these topics with the renowned professional Metaphysician. :pray:
Well, I'm not renowned, but I'm actively working in the area of the Metaphysics of Ordinary Objects, so that must count for something (I hope!).
So this is good: we are getting somewhere. A good OP, I would say, about this would say exactly this; viz., an investigation into factiality as understood in After Finitude. That, in itself, paves a clear beginning path the discussion.
For example, right now, your OP asks a question which doesnt reference factiality: it just asks about factual properties as it relates to the identity of yourself. With the clarification above, my response that factual properties make no sense may be misguided since I have no clue how factiality is being understood and used in After Finitude.
Good. What is factiality? would be a superb discussion board title for this OP.
So, although you could mention why it matters, I would say that, first and foremost, an elaboration on what you mean by factiality and what you want to know about it would be essential to the OP. When someone reads What is factiality?as the titlethey get an inkling into something about factiality but since is a coined termI am presumingby the author of After Finitude it is critical to elaborate (at least briefly) on what the term refers to. It could be as brief as I would like to get everyones take on factiality as understood in
Then, I would suggest elaborating on what exactly about it you would like to discuss. I cant offer help meaningfully on this part because I have no clue what factiality means in that book because I have no read it nor am I acquainted with it in any significant sense.
Do you see what I mean?
Now you've got me curious! Would you be willing to share a link to one of them with us?
Yes, of course. I've been seeing it ever since you joined this Thread (without even saying hello, as I've already pointed out. You see, you are rude, objectively speaking. I mean that simply as an objective description of your moral character (which I do not claim to know) from the point of view of mere etiquette. And this, what I just said in this paragraph, is what I call "rambly talk". I prefer to avoid it, but sometimes that is not the wisest course of action. So, let us "carry on", so to speak.
A motion of order.
@Bob Ross has suggested that the title of this Thread should be changed. The new title will be:
Quoting Bob Ross
Moving on, you then say:
Quoting Bob Ross
I have already addressed this point, Bob. See above. For reference:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Carrying on, you say:
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm... But you seemed to suggest another title: "an investigation into factiality as understood in After Finitude.". That would be the title. Instead, "What is factiality" is the question of the OP. I am using the Forum suggestion for this format, Bob, specifically the Thread titled How to Write an OP.
Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, I think you're exactly right about that. I will write such things afterwards, in this discussion, and if they "look good" to you, then (and only then) I will edit the original OP, so as to incorporate all of the changes (such as the change of title, the change of question, etc.)
Quoting Bob Ross
This part will be incorporated as well into the original OP once we approve the suggested changes throughout this discussion. And by that point, you will have a full understanding of the concept of "factiality". And once you do, we can begin the "real talk", so to speak.
Hmmm... I don't know. However, I will say this: I've left enough "clues" throughout this Forum, since I joined a few days ago. If you look for them, you'll be able to piece everything together, in such a way that you will arrive at my publications. If this is too much of a hassle, then just send me a Private Message, and I'll happily share some links. Sound fair?
The guidelines you linked is essentially what I am advocating here for.
I am going to kill you with kindness :kiss: ; and, since you have mentioned this at least twice, I am disregarding your request for me to be less kind.
Again, this is the wrong way to do it; but, alas, I remove my hat from the ring (since I have nothing more of use to say).
Let me know once you change, and I can take another look at the OP. Right now, I dont know what factiality means, I havent read the appropriate works (to this OP), and have said everything noteworthy about the form and methodological approach (in this OP). I fear, there is nothing else I can contribute at this point; unless you want to explain to me what factiality means.
Yes, I choose this option of the dilemma that you are presenting me. I already gave you a link to the dictionary definition for the word "factiality". I will quote the definition of that word:
And here is Meillassoux's own definition, in After Finitude:
Those are the literal words, Bob. Tell me what you think of them, please.
Of course Science is not religion. No one would argue about that. My point was, that the way that Science can mislead the ordinary folks' perception at times is the same as religion.
Ok, so this sounds like factiality has nothing to do with facticity; since this definition tells us that the former is a principle about the modality of states of affairs (namely, that reality could be different).
This sounds like merely the negation of necessitarianism.
Just working with what Ive got hereadmitting full well I havent read the d*** bookthis sounds completely incoherent with the other definition you gave; since this definition does link factiality to facticity and the above merely notes that at least some parts of the world are properly contingent (i.e., anti-necessitarianism).
Lets break it down a bit more though.
What does this mean?!? What is a speculative essence?!?
What?!? Thats just jibberish. Facticity is the noun for anything pertaining to facts; and so everything that pertains to facticity pertains to facts. Give me example where the facticity of a proposition cannot be thought of as a fact or non-fact.
Likewise, what theory of truth does this Meillassoux accept? How do they define facticity and fact?
Quoting Bob Ross
We (as in, Meillassoux's typical readers) honestly don't know. I don't think Meillassoux ever defines what he calls "speculative essence". Not as far as I'm aware of, anyways. And in the interviews that Meillassoux has given, I don't think he ever clarified that point.
What I think the are, the speculative essences (and this is just my interpretation) is something like "objective ideas", in the manner of the German Idealists of the 19th Century, especially Schelling. But I could be wrong about that, of course. I see Meillassoux leaning more towards Fichte or Hegel than Schelling, but again, I could be wrong about that.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm... so let's reconstruct your argument, a bit more formally. As far as I can see, these are your premises so far:
1) Facticity is the noun for anything pertaining to facts.
2) Everything that pertains to facticity pertains to facts.
Is that right?
As for the example that you ask, let me check After Finitude real quick. I don't know if the following words count as an example, but maybe they'll help clarify what Meillassoux is trying to say when he uses that word, "factiality":
Does that mean anything to you?
Yes. The ordinary folk should not be deceived, in any way. It would be immoral to do so.
**sigh**
Nothing about your reconstruction was formal. Heres a crude formal version:
P1: If A only pertains B, then everything about A pertains to B. [ (A ? B) ? (A ? B) ]
P2: Facticity only pertains to facts*. [ A ? B ]
C1: Therefore, everything about facticity pertains to facts. [ A ? B ]
Arcane: why are you asking me? I provided an informal argument (or more like explanation) of why it was jibberish, you copied and pasted what I said into numbered bullet points, and then asked me if it is correct???
No, because you arent actually engaging in the discussion. You are supposed to be the one who understands After Finitude: you are supposed to explain it to me. If you ask me about something I am familiar with, then I would be able to give a brief and basic explanation of the core concepts involved. You seem to keep failing at doing that with this book.
Let me just ask you: are you familiar with the book, or are you using this OP to familiarize yourself with it?
Hi Bob, thanks for your contributions to this Thread, they will be recognized in the edited version of the OP once we're done with the discussion throughout the Thread.
In response to your question, it is both, at the same time. I am familiar with the book. I have also published 6 or 7 articles about different aspects of Meillassoux's philosophy. I have praised what I felt needed to be praised, I refuted what I believed needed to be refuted. I then published a book about Meillassoux, in Spanish, with the Editorial of a National University of my country (Argentina). So, yes, I am quite familiar with the book. Still, I do not claim to understand all of the theorems (conclusions, if you will) of his axioms (his premises, if you will).
EDIT: If you would like to take a look at my publications about Meillassoux, or any publications of mine in general, about other topics as well, you're free to send me a Private Message, and I'll share some links with you.
Answer me this (in all honesty): how have you published multiple books on their works and yet cannot give me a simple explanation of what factiality is?
You have to be able to appreciate my frustration here. I haven't written anything on Transcendental Idealism nor Aristotelianism, and I can give you an in depth (an adequate) explanation of both views.
Let me try one more time: what is factiality? What would be mean for there to be non-facts about facts that aren't just non-objective dispositions?
Because the concept of factiality is a difficult one to understand, since Meillassoux never explained what he means when he speaks of "the speculative essence" of such and such. The best we've got so far (the Meillassoux scholars, that is) is a connection to the "objective ideas" of Fichte, and perhaps Schelling, or maybe even Hegel. Or, one might understand the "speculative essences" as something more or less comparable to Graham Harman's "real qualities", as he distinguishes them from "sensual qualities" in the context of Speculative Realism, of which both Meillassoux and Harman are pioneers and, you could say, "Founding Fathers", together with Ray Brassier and Iain Hamilton Grant.
Quoting Bob Ross
So what is it that would want from me at this point? A sort of crash course on Speculative Realism? A crash course on After Finitude? What?
Quoting Bob Ross
You have to understand that this is what we're currently investigating here. What is factiality, anyways? Not how the dictionary defines it, not how Meillassoux defines it in After Finitude, but more concretely, what would it be, if it were a "real thing", so to speak? A "real thing" like something that exists in your ordinary life, for example.
How am I supposed to discuss it with you, if you can't give a basic description of what the word refers to?
You want me to step through the door, when I can't until you tell me the password.
Ok Bob, let's say that's fair (I don't know if it is, but let's just pretend for a moment). I'll try to be more charitable to you, since you're making (to my mind, at least) a very specific request. You want me to just deliver some information, in an objective but brief way, in such a way that it makes sense to you, so that you can tell me if I'm right or wrong about whatever it is that I'm talking about. So, here's what we'll do:
I will attempt to explain to you (and to myself, BTW) what, if anything, the word "factiality" means for Quentin Meillassoux himself. I hope you can see why this is a tall order from you, Bob, and not "a mere request".
Factiality, to the best of my knowledge, and to the best of my understanding, is a word that the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, invented. He made it up. Now, his argument (let's see if it's even an argument to begin with) is that the word that he made up, "factiality", should be understood as a technical, philosophical term (comparable, to, say, the word hyle, meaning "wood", which Aristotle takes from the common language of his time and gives it a precise, technical meaning in his own philosophy: it is materia, matter.)
That's how Meillassoux intends the very word "factiality". In short: he want us to take him seriously.
Ok, so what does he mean, by "factiality"? Well, he says that it's "the speculative essence" of facticity. So what are those? The speculative essence, is basically "the essence of facticity". In other words, Meillassoux is an essentialist: he believes that essences are real. Which things have essences? Does an animal have an essence? Does a number have an essence? What is an essence? Is it a soul? Is it the most important property of a thing? In that case, the essence would be identical to the essential property, which means that the essence must be a quality, not a quantity, and certainly not a res in the Medieval Latin sense.
Well, which things have essences, according to Meillassoux? Apparently, just one: facticity itself. Nothing has an essence, except for facticity. In other words, there is only one essence in the world: it is the one that facticity has, and he wants to call that: "factiality".
Are you with me up to here, Bob? Or do you want to interrupt me and say something?
I'll just suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that this is our point of disagreement, @Bob Ross. I'm not saying that it is, I'm just imagining it as a possibility among others. It's a hypothesis, nothing more. That's how science works, Bob. You imagine a hypothesis, which is a claim about some thing or feature of the world, and then you investigate that claim to see if it's true. You don't have to believe the claim yourself. If you did, it wouldn't even be a hypothesis to being with. It would be something else, like justified true belief, for example.
Now, with that in mind, I'm not asking you to believe Meillassoux's claims. Stated differently, I'm not asking you to believe him when he says that factiality is the speculative essence of facticity. I'm just telling you to consider it simply as a hypothesis to be investigated. Why would someone investigate it, you might ask? To see if it's true or not. What more do you expect from philosophy, Bob? Honest question.
Let's proceed. I'm going to quote Meillassoux's definiton of facticity, Bob. Not of factiality, this time we're gonna take a look at what he has to say about facticity, which, so far, seems to be the "metaphysical substrate", if you will, of this other thing that he calls "factiality", which he claims is the "speculative essence" of facticity. I'm not asking you to take his word for it, ok? I'm just saying: entertain the thought, for a moment, if only for the sake of argument, even if you, personally, cannot picture it or cannot understand it. I'm just saying: if he's saying "A", and we know that "not B" is true, can we construct a modus tollens that shows that "A" is false? That's just one question among many that can be reasonably asked at this point. That's the sort of thing that would strike a fatal blow to Meillassoux's Speculative Materialism. The problem is, that no one, so far, it seems, has been able to construct that sort of coup de grâce argument yet, even though many have been attempted (I myself published a few good, decisive critiques of Meillassoux's Speculative Materialism, but nothing of the importance of a modus tollens style refutation of his concept of factiality). That being said, let's take a look at Meillassoux's definition of the word "facticity". He says:
The main takeaway there seems to be that facticity is to be understood (Meillassoux suggests) as the fact that the forms in question can only be described (as Kant would have), not deduced (as Hegel would have).
EDIT : Later on, he says:
EDIT 2: He talks about facticity throughout other sections of the book, but the only other "really important" snippet seems to be the following one:
He wants to refute strong correlationism, and he thinks that Speculative Materialism is the right tool for that task.
Ok, now we are getting somewhere. Why would facticity have an essence but a cat wouldnt?
Also, it seems like an equivocation is going on here; as the kinds of essences that abstracta have are not the same as the in concretoviz., the essence of truth, propositions, true, false, facts, etc. is not really the same as the essence of a tree, a cat, etc.
Philosophy is not science.
Sure, but science requires the scientific method; which, in turn, requires a positive verification of the hypothesis through strict experimentation. We are not doing that in philosophy; and we cant. In fact, science presupposes philosophical principles and ideas to begin with .
What you quoted was about how to properly understand the a priori forms of our understanding; and how that relates to things-in-themselves. It was not a description nor depiction of what Meillasoux means by a fact. I asked you what a fact is, and you gave me an instance where Meillassoux uses the concept of a fact to talk about Kant vs. Hegeldo you see the problem?
It sounds like Meilassoux might be claiming that facts are grounded, in part, in the a priori modes by which we cognize; and thusly is taking a Kantian approach.
My problem is that you clearly dont know what they mean by facticity; because you still havent given me a clear (or even vague) definition.
Here, Ill go first. A fact, by my lights, is a statement about reality which corresponds appropriately to what it references about reality; and thusly I accept a version of correspondence theory of truth. What do you mean by facticity? What does Meilassoux mean by facticity?
The use of hypotheses is not exclusive to science. Philosophers can utilize hypotheses as well. Philosophers don't need to have justified true beliefs about X (in which X is a set of premises) in order to see if X leads to contradictions or tautologies, for example.
Quoting Bob Ross
You're wrong about that, partner. Science does not verify hypotheses, it either corroborates or refutes them (the hypotheses, that is).
Quoting Bob Ross
And I'm supposed to just take your word for that, Bob? It's not possible to do philosophy in other ways? Philosophy can't utilize hypothetical thinking? I think that you, and others who think like that, are simply wrong. There is a place for scientific hypotheses in philosophy.
Quoting Bob Ross
Facticity, as far as Meillassoux is concerned, seems to be what all facts have in common, "what it takes, or what it is, to be a fact." The idea that the forms of the correlation can only be described, not deduced. Facts are not statements: a statement is what refers to a fact. For example, "the cat is on the mat" is a statement. If it is a fact that there is a cat on the mat, then the statement in question is true. If the cat is on the couch instead, for example, then it is false. And if there is no cat, the statement is also false. That is what the correspondence theory of truth is about. I'm also a correspondentist in that sense, and I think that Meillassoux is as well, though I'm not entirely sure. In other writings (not After Finitude) he seems to lean more towards coherentism as a theory of truth.
A personal side note about your character, Bob, if you don't mind. Of course I don't know you, so I can only judge you by what I'm reading here, on this Forum. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that you struggle a bit to find a healthy middle ground between being sheepishly meek and being as rude as the stereotypical Newyorker, lol.
EDIT: I mean that jokingly, Bob. If you'll allow me a bit more humor, this is what talking to you feels like, lol:
Quoting Site Guidelines
Now, as far as I'm concerned, you're not a racist, or a homophobe, or a sexist, or any of those things. You've exhibited no such conduct or behavior, and you've espoused no such ideas. You're not an advertiser or spammer, and you're not sockpuppeting. But, in my opinion, the way that you're responding to me in this thread has a little bit of "evangelism" going on, especially in regards to how philosophy should be done. I'm not saying that you're a full blown evangelist in that regard, just a little bit. You're also being just a little bit trollish. Not too much, just a bit. It seems (and I could be wrong) that you want to get some sort of emotional reaction from me, and I'm just not interested in having a discussion on such sour terms. Hope you get where I'm coming from here.
Understand that if I were to jump in a thread about, I don't know, let's say the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and I just jumped in without even saying "hello", and I started to throw around comments about how the OP is messy, unclear, vague, etc., I wouldn't exactly get the most welcoming reaction from the author of the OP, even if I was indeed right. One should be courteous even when one is right, and I would add: especially so, in such circumstances. You've shown none of that.
But that's OK, you can still participate here. I didn't flag your comments or anything like that, and I didn't report you for disruptive behavior, even though I could have. If you wish to engage with me, and with this Thead, you would obtain better results if you were genuinely interested and if you were genuinely charitable towards me. Right now, it feels like you're a State Trooper repeatedly asking some stranger if he has a driver's license or not. You can see why that wouldn't be the most productive attitude in the world for the type of discussion that we're having here.
You've said more than once that you haven't read After Finitude. Well, what's stopping you? Lack of interest? But then it kinda makes no sense for you to have such strong opinions about its content, and about me, a humble scholar, if you haven't even read the book. I mean, put yourself in my shoes, for a moment. Imagine if I just barged into a Thread about Thomas Aquinas, told everyone that I didn't read whatever reading material there was to read, and then told the author of the OP that they don't understand Aquinas if they can't explain to me in simple English some notoriously difficult part of his philosophy (such as, for example, his interpretation of Aristotle's concept of the "active intellect").
In short, it doesn't really sound like you're trying to help me. It sounds more like you want to prove some kind of philosophical point. What that might be, I have no idea. All that I can suggest is that if you genuinely care about this OP and this thread, you take the time to familiarize yourself a bit more with After Finitude, so that you can make up your own mind about it. I even offered to give you a crash course on Speculative realism and After Finitude, but you squarely rejected my offer because you wanted to double-down on your questionable attitude towards me. That's not what a charitable, genuinely interested reader does.
Why do you think that I have the obligation to fully understand one of the most complicated philosophical concepts (factiality) that has been advanced in the last 20 years or so? You're not exactly asking me to explain to you why the sky is blue.
I've quoted a dictionary definition of the word "factiality". I've quoted Meillassoux's own definiton in After Finitude. I've also quoted his definition of facticity, with additional text. I've even tried to explain it using my own words. If that's not good enough for you, then the only sensible thing that I can suggest is that you take a look at After Finitude yourself, and that you tell me what you make of it, including the word "factiality".
That's all I got for you, Bob. You're welcome to keep contributing to this Thread, as always. It just so happens that I find you a bit socially awkward, that's all. Try to be more constructive here, show more initiative, instead of incessantly hassling me over this or that, just to see if I snap.
All the best,
- Arcane Sandwich.
In accord with your response, I think it is best we agree to disagree and move on from this thread: this discussion is wholly unproductive (for the both of us).
I do want to clarify that nothing I have said is in any way violating the forum guidelines, I am not evangelizing anyone, and I have no intention of inciting an emotional reaction out of you. I cannot stress enough, that I was being properly polite at the beginning and you made fun of me for it; and now that I am being more plain, you charge me with impoliteness! Anyways, water under the bridge.
My original and main point in joining this thread despite knowing nothing about the book, is that the ideas expressed in the OP were not directedironicallyat the book and of which I can provide food-for-thought. It turns out, that the OP is so disorganizedwhich violates the very guidelines you mentionedthat it gives false impressions.
My biggest issue is not the informality of the OP (as weve all been there) but, rather, that you clearly dont understand the basic building-block concepts of your own OP; and, as I mentioned before, is the source of a lot of the issues you wish to resolve. I dont say that to be mean: it is easy to tell when someone is not very familiar with the subject because they give nothing but vague notions and muddied explanations. I suspect you appreciate to some extent what I am saying here; because you say this OP is for exploration.
I wish the best of luck for you in this thread; and hopefully by the end of it you will actually know what factiality means :wink:
Bob
It's just a sketch for now. I will edit the OP when this discussion advances a bit. You know what? I might just edit it right now. It's gonna take me a few hours, probably. It probably won't be the definitive version, but it will be an improvement.
Quoting Bob Ross
Let me phrase it like this: the fact that I was born in 1985, according to Meillassoux, is just that: a fact. But, contrary to what tradition says, he argues that facts are not contingent. They are necessary. Everything is contingent, -he argues-, except for the fact that everything is contingent. That is not a fact, it is an absolute necessity. Think of it like this: it's like when someone says "Everything changes". Under normal circumstances, that phrase would be self-refuting. A "Meillassouxsian" answer to that challenge would be to say that everything changes, except for the fact that everything changes. Change itself does not change. By analogy, everything is a fact, and that is not one more fact, it is an absolute necessity.
I don't expect you to understand this. Few people do, if any. But that doesn't matter too much. All that I want to see is if Meillassoux's philosophy holds up. If the claims A and B lead to a contradiction, C, then I don't need to understand what their actual content is: all I need to show is that C is a contradictory conclusion. I don't need to fully understand what factiality is in order to refute such a notion, if it is indeed the case that such a notion leads to a contradiction (no one has been able to prove this, BTW).
Quoting Bob Ross
Thanks! See you around.
No because their parents were not born then. It's an infinite regress of impossibility.
Perhaps.
@Bob Ross I've updated the OP (and the title of this Thread). You are welcomed to keep pondering these issues, just try to leave a bit your "scorched earth" strategy and tactics at the door. Not all of it, not entirely, just a bit, so that we can have a bit of a positive atmosphere in this Thread, instead of the usual "one of us will die here, and it won't be me" sort of tone.
Thanks for letting me know! Although I know you think I have not found the appropriate mean between niceness and meanness, the silver-lining to honesty is that you know I really mean it when I compliment you. The OP is much better than before.
I am going to refrain from commenting further on the OP because I do not think we will have any productive conversations in here.
If you ever do figure out what 'factiality' refers to, then let me know: I would be interested to hear what the concept is trying to get at.
I wish you the best of luck,
Bob
Thanks for all of your help, Bob. See you around!