/lit/ - Literature

What exactly is the argument that Parmenides makes that there can only be one thing?

IIRC in the Fragments, it has to do with the falseness of change, as creation and destruction is impossible. Therefore, there could never have been zero things (nothing), and there could never have been a generation of things (creation).

But couldn't there be an argument that the world always had an ungenerated duality, a plurality, or something along those lines as a brute fact? What would the Eleatic counterargument be? As far as I know, that wouldn't violate any important Eleatic precepts (minus of course the assumption of monism.

How exactly did Parmenides retroactively BTFO Aristotle again when it came to potentiality and actuality? I've heard some hubbub about how
>arrangements are things
but doesn't that confuse the question of what it means to "be"?

For example, if I change my position by walking across the room, I have actualized a potential and caused change, but this new spatial arrangement didn't change the essence of any of the things involved. It was only an accidental change.

It seems like Aristotle runs circles around Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus by using potentiality and actuality as a way to speak coherently about the "presentist" POV that is relevant for human beings without completely erasing the "eternalist" POV.

Did Plato end up fixing Parmenides's problem with "non-being" by reconsidering it as "other than", making non-being a synonym for difference? Or does this not work? I forgot.

>nothing ever changes
He had a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset.

Let me get this straight. From the Fragments of Parmenides, Eleatics believe:
>Being is, not-being is not
And because of this (I hope I'm not missing anything important):
>partition is impossible
>differentiation is impossible
>creation and destruction are impossible
>change is impossible
But I've also seen that we cannot predicate Being, at least in previous threads, for predication of Being leads to description of Being leads to partition, differentiation, etc. I interpret this as the inability to speak of Being (predication = kategouremon = speaking of something).

So... if we can't speak of Being... doesn't Eleatic philosophy invalidate itself? For it attempts to speak about the nature of Being, but under its own rules, Being is rendered ineffable and ultimately unintelligible?

The last few thread about him and the Eleatics interested me a lot. What exactly is his shtick besides change being an illusion and the world having no parts? What's this deal about indetermination, determination, and dialectic?

Unfortunately, the previous thread was deleted, even though philosophy is topical to /lit/, has been part of board culture since its inception, and is discussed in the highest quality on /lit/ compared to any other board. I'll take it as the act of an inexperienced janitor, and I'll humor him by gently pointing out how the previous discussion was topical and clarifying its topicality for the future.

The former discussion was centered on the Fragments of Parmenides, translated by John Burnet, with the explicit excerpt now provided below:
>Come now, I will tell thee—and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away—the only two ways of search that can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the way of belief, for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be, that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all. For thou canst not know what is not that is impossible—nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.
Now that the thread has been remade to be 100% in compliant with /lit/ guidelines:
>Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.
The previous conversation can be found on the archive under the thread ID: 22401378. Refer there for context. We now may resume the discussion.

Can we solve the problem of change if we recognize that Being has multiple predicates?

As I understand it, the problem of change comes from the fact that Eleatics hold that everything that is, is, and that everything that is not, is not. Furthermore, they also hold that something cannot transform into nothing and vice versa. Therefore, nothing can be created or destroyed, so nothing can become, only "be."

Well, what if we recognize that Being has multiple predicates? It has at least possibility (in the Meinong's jungle sense) and actuality (arrangements of matter that have manifested in space and time). After all, Being itself both is possible and is actual. Everything "is" in the sense that infinite things are possible, and they have been that way eternally, but only some things are in the "actual" realm, and not always at the same time.

When things in the sensible realm are created or destroyed, all we are doing to these things is giving them the predicate "actual." However, since they always continue to "be" in some way, they are never destroyed. With this multi-faceted understanding of Being, we now have a framework where things can be and also become. Parmenides's challenge is met, and we can now comfortably say he has been overcome.