/lit/ - Literature

F*ck you I won't do what you tell me!

>>20342024
I can't. Every premise that founded the modern world is false and the past few hundred years of history has basically just been people coping with this fact they don't want to accept.

>Whig History has no predictive power
>Liberalism is inherently unjust and immoral
>Liberalism is totally reliant upon petroleum and no amount of squirming or whining will change that
There you go.

>>20342024
provide the argument he puts forward

>>20342066
The march of Liberalism is inevitable, and without turning to Aristotle (who is also Aquinas) we won't be able to sustain it in order to achieve Communism.

>>20342024
I choose Nietzsche, not Aristotle.

philosophers are not relevant to real life.

>>20342024
What did he mean by this?

>>20342083
What? It it's inevitable then you can't avoid it. Also I don't want communism.

>>20342192
Then there's zero point in caring what neocons like MacIntyre think.

Nietzsche destroyed him

>>20342157
>>20342225
he destroyed Nietzsche who was just another product of the same decay he criticized

>>20342209
Well I heard him being referenced by Christians so he's on my to read list, but I'm not sure what's his argument.

>>20342024
Vatican II

>>20342261
Exactly what was stated. He's a neoconservative (this is where the Christianity comes in). He's making a quibble within the broader Liberal tradition by arguing that virtue ethics are necessary to maintain Liberalism, because we can only achieve Communism (in the "post-scarcity no one has to work" sense) by maintaining and continuing Liberalism.

This sounds absurd if all you're going off is vague terms but let's remember that Christianity is the grandmother of Bolshevism. All Marx really did was remove Yahweh from Hegel, and Hegel was very deeply Christian. "The End of History" is just Christian Eschatology but without Jesus. All MacIntyre (and the Neocons who aren't Jewish) is really doing is just putting Jesus back into that materialistic Hegelian framework.

>>20342189
Is it really that controversial? He ultimately advocates being virtuous and shitting on the current retarded post-modern zietgeist. Basically the end state of 90% of functioning adults over 25

>>20342431
MacIntyre isn't even a Neocon, he's all-but still a full-on Communist even after converting to Catholicism. But he's a professor so it's to be expected.

>>20342249
Nietzsche agrees and claims to be a part of the decay he criticized.

Do people ever actually read Nietzsche?

>>20342474
I'm saying that's the reason that MacIntyre doesn't see him as a solution to anything and rejects him as having a destructive impact on history

>>20342448
I'm giving Catholarpers the benefit of the doubt here and just pre-emptively doing
>implying that anyone except the pope can be both a communist and a catholic
But if you are stating that the arc of History and Progress is guided by a deity and not just ~abstract forces~ and ~dialectics~, I think it is fair to call your Communism into question (hence why I say he's just a religious materialistic Hegelian).

>>20342516
There's a whole clique (leftcaths) out there now that basically attempts to reconcile Catholicism with Communism - the USSR was the most moral society to exist thus far, but it would be even better if they had banned abortion, the Pope only condemned certain aspects of Stalinism but check out this Orthodox Stalin icon, etc.

Actually, I think this sort of thinking will catch on more in the future - if we take seriously the idea that Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism, we ought to expect a degree of reconciliation between these traditions like eventually happened between Catholicism and various Protestant sects. Post-war morality indirectly draws on Nietzsche quite a bit to attempt to ground emancipatory political thought, however, it's difficult to see how Nietzsche's thought can do this if we're honest about it. In short, if you emancipate yourself from Christian values, don't be surprised if society also emancipates itself from concern for the weak, poor, marginalized, ethnic minorities etc. in the long run.

>>20342479
There’s nothing to be solved or saved

>>20342083
So, he's yet another Liberalism shill. Discarded.

>>20342189
I don't get it. So we don't have the same understanding of morality we did in the past. So what? What reason do you have to think that morality was correct in the past and not now? This is just the same tradition is better crap christcucks have been preaching forever(or at least since they became the dominant religion).

I don't understand how to reconcile MacIntyre's historicization of morality, and emphasis on its fundamentally social nature, with his Catholicism (in which case God literally declared what the moral law is for all time). If Catholicism is true morality is not social or historically contingent, it is what God says it is.

>>20342042
these are his points in the book?

>>20342684
No.

>>20342024
Aristotle not Aquinas

>>20342024

Analytical philosophy is inherently self-refuting and is unambiguously inferior to dialectical traditions. I still recommend this book since it manages to use the wrong methods yet reach a relatively truthful answer.

>>20342584
If anything, it seems to prove that morality is entirely relative, since we’ve been operating just fine with an entirely different understanding of it.

If we lost all knowledge of physics, with careful observation and experimentation, we could reconstruct that older understanding. If we can’t do that for morality, that suggests it isn’t something eternal and objective.

>>20342737
>If we lost all knowledge of physics, with careful observation and experimentation, we could reconstruct that older understanding.
Even better modern physics has lost the ancient understanding of a lot of it's terms and is better for it. Matter, force, vacuum, and energy all had different meanings for the Greeks that are scientifically inferior to what we now mean by them. His comparison with science is bad for his argument.

ITT: people arguing about a book none of them has read

>>20342779
This
I’ll admit I’ve never read the book and I’m just browsing the thread.
/lit/ would be so much better if people actually read the books they discuss before talking about them.
However here’s a piece of advice that might help both the OP and the anons on the board:
Read the book in its entirety and make notes, writing down its most important points and ideas. This will help you memorize and absorb what it read.
Then, if you want to make a thread about that book, make sure to post a picture of the cover (or something related to the book, like fan art. Just avoid unnecessarily distracting pictures like soft core porn)
Share the notes you wrote with other anons so even those that are unfamiliar with the book can get an idea of what it’s about.

>>20343056
Anon already did that >>20342189

>>20342779
welcome to /lit/

>>20342431
all of this is nonsense. where do you people get these ideas.

WELCOME TO /LIT/

>>20342431
Pseud: The Post

>>20342617
I think MacIntyre is talking about the historical character of moral interpretations of societies more than morality itself. He is talking primarily about the justifications for moral theories as theories of what behavior is required.
If the justified morality is the one that allows man to realize his telos in the worship of God, we cannot say that it evolves in its finality and in this sense it cannot be historical, but we must agree that the particular rules of ethics that allow to touch such a telos are dependent on the social structure which is itself a historical construction, and it is perhaps in this sense that we can call morality historical. MacIntyre's point is above all the historical development of moral philosophy.

>>20342042
i think you may have a somewhat inaccurate idea of what "after virtue" is about, anon

What do I need to read before this to achieve full understanding? I have Utilitarianism by Mill and Metaphysics of Morals by Kant

>>20343372
>If the justified morality is the one that allows man to realize his telos in the worship of God, we cannot say that it evolves in its finality
What is this finality? Define it. What allows us to best worship God and how do you know? The issue I have is the total vagueness as to what telos even means concretely.

>>20343231
I thought it was a pretty good description of Macintyre's politics.

>>20343597
Based on what? Certainly nothing in After Virtue, where the basis of liberalism and conservatism is criticized throughout and marxism at certain points as well. The writer of that post has never read the book. He probably "reads" only youtube videos by other illiterates.

>This critique of liberalism should not be interpreted as a sign of any sympathy on my part for contemporary conservatism. That conservatism is in too many ways a mirror image of the liberalism that it professedly opposes. Its commitment to a way of life structured by a free market economy is a commitment to an individualism as corrosive as that of liberalism. And, where liberalism by permissive legal enactments has tried to use the power of the modern state to transform social relationships, conservatism by prohibitive legal enactments now tries to use that same power for its own coercive purposes. Such conservatism is as alien to the projects of After Virtue as liberalism is. And the figure cut by present day conservative moralists, with their inflated and self-righteous unironic rhetoric, should be set alongside those figures whom I identified in Chapter 3 of After Virtue as notable characters in the cultural dramas of modernity, that of the therapist, who has in the last twenty years become bemused by biochemical discoveries, that of the corporate manager, who is now mouthing formulas that she or he learned in a course in business ethics, while still trying to justify her or his pretensions to expertise, and that of the aesthete, who is presently emerging from a devotion to conceptual art. So the conservative moralist has become one more stock character in the scripted conversations of the ruling elites of advanced modernity. But those elites never have the last word.

Hegel is also very clearly not a believer of christianity but a borrower and manipulator of its traditions and formulas. He was influenced by Böhme who was an actual christian though.

>>20342024
he refuted himself later by going full retard Thomist

>Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition

None of you have ever read the book please stop speaking in this thread.

>>20342779
I dont get that impression at all reading the posts

How about you contribute your wizened interpretation instead of being a smug dickhed.

>>20344102
Because you didn’t read the book you faggot.

>>20344102
I showed how the retard who thinks he's a neocon and communist is wrong here >>20343878.

This >>20344094 is also a representative statement of MacIntyre's argument in the book. This >>20342617 is a pretty good question. The implications of his historicization are not fully worked out in After Virtue and its compatibility with catholicism hardly touched on.

>It scarcely needs repeating that it is the central thesis of After Virtue that the Aristotelian moral tradition is the best example we possess of a tradition whose adherents are rationally entitled to a high measure of confidence in its epistemological and moral resources. But an historicist defence of Aristotle is bound to strike some sceptical critics as a paradoxical as well as a Quixotic enterprise. For Aristotle himself, as I pointed out in my discussion of his own account of the virtues, was not any kind of historicist, although some notable historicists, including both Vico and Hegel, have been to some greater or lesser degree Aristotelians. To show that there is no paradox here is therefore one more necessary task; but it too can only be accomplished on the larger scale that the successor volume to After Virtue will afford me.

He does indicate that not just virtue but rationality itself is based in practices, the narrative order of human life, and traditions, so it's not like he gives no reason for finding this kind of historicism plausible. But he's covering a lot of ground in this one book, and I haven't read his others yet.

>>20344180
It's compatibility is touched on more in pic related.

>>20342189
he said literally nothing in those words. Is it that difficult to convey your ideas clearly and straightforward? It is unnecessary to create an imaginary world and to avoid explaining your hypothesis. Can't he say "i think that because this and that"?

>>20344239
This board isn't for you.

>>20344222
I do intend to read his others. I appreciate how he avoids the reflexive historicism of many historians, among others, and the antihistoricism of say Strauss, and academic philosophers generally.

>>20342779
Speak for yourself. It's a very well-known philosophy book. It shouldn't be a surprise that many people on /lit/ have read it.

>>20343550
Just read it and supplement your reading with articles and secondary literature if you're really struggling. If you intend on reading every author's influences before reading their work you'll never end up reading their work. Plus you can always go back and reread it once you're older and more learned. If you're too systematic about your learning you'll become bored, lose the curiosity driving you, and hardly anything you read will stick.

>>20342024
I refute it

I have provided you with a refutation, now where's my cookie?

>>20344288
Judging from this thread maybe one person read past the first chapter.

>>20343550
Genaology of morals

>>20344418
Are you including yourself or do you not count as part of /lit/?

>>20342024
Shits gay yo

>>20343597
Nah, check out the essay on human dignity that he delivered last November. Near the end he pretty specifically lays out some of his political goals.

>>20344457
>

>>20344579
I'm not able to watch the essay right now so I'll just go off of Feser's (ugh) summary for now, but I felt the need to remark on this bit:

>MacIntyre says that this conception of human dignity became prevalent only after World War II, and that it is reflected in documents like the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in various post-war European constitutions. And its vagueness, he suggests, was deliberate, because it was designed to secure rhetorical agreement among people who did not agree on substantive matters (Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, atheists, conservatives, liberals, etc.).
Does MacIntyre really think like this, and not get that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is reacting to Nazism first and foremost? The problem with the pre-WW2 tradition from the point of view of the post-WW2 tradition is that the former no longer has moral standing. The Holocaust constitutes a new moral revelation that invalidated the Christian tradition as a practical matter. We're now called to see the generalized Jewish victim in others whether they be actual Jews, Afro-Americans, LGBTQs, and who knows what other official victim groups that have not yet been named - as opposed to following Christian ethics. Indeed, taking a Catholic position on sexuality today is considered evil by many, not so much due to it being a restriction of freedoms, but due to it being an Imitatio Hitlerii.

Anyway, I could be misinterpreting him and I haven't watched the video yet.

>>20342024
I don't think MacIntyre is wrong, I'm just not sure that Aristotle is right.

>>20344239
Bro it's really not that hard to understand. You may disagree with it but all he's saying is that our moral language reflects precepts we've long since forgotten. So we now use the same language in ways that differ from the context in whivlch those ideas made sense.

>>20343589
I had written a paragraph on the notion of finality in Aristotle's thought, so let me copy it here:

>There is an idea of directionality in Aristotle's finalism. The final cause is defined in the Metaphysics as the goal for which the being whose cause it is is made. This is why we have a qualitative approach to forms in Aristotle: forms are characterized by finalities that condition the behavior of the things of which they are forms. If the plant grows when it is sown in fertile ground, it is because it is this behavior that it must adopt if it wants to achieve its end, or reach its entelechy, which is to grow to give a mature plant. The entelechy of the acorn is the oak tree. What is remarkable is that, for Aristotle, most natural beings possess their own end, which is therefore immanent. It is therefore in a way accidental that man is a moral being, and this proceeds from the fact that man is an intelligent and rational being. Since man's immanent purpose is to realize himself fully as a man, he must fully realize his potential as a reasonable, political and contemplative being, and morality is precisely a corpus of rules that allow man to move from the being he is to the being he could be if he fully realized his telos.

In MacIntyre's case, we have to look at the post-Aristotelian developments that came to reinterpret the Aristotelian teleology. After the advent of Christianity, which brings a personal, good and charitable God, philosophy will integrate that creation is a consequence of divine love, and the finality of the creature will be decentered from its Aristotelian immanence to form a great teleological chain which brings every being, or at least the human being, to a transcendent finality founded in God (which was inconceivable in antiquity). The characters of the human telos understand therefore not only that man is a political, social, contemplative, and tutti quanti being, but also that he is a spiritual and essentially religious being, whose ultimate finality is therefore the accomplishment of the thing for which he was made (in the same way that the finality of a tool is to accomplish a specific action), that is to say the worship of the unique God. To know the means and the object of worship, which are not known to us naturally, because they are beyond our intelligence in touching the mystery, we must necessarily refer to a divine Revelation, and this is the meaning of the coming of the prophets in the Old Testament and (in part) of the coming of Christ.

>>20342742
>>20342584

>>20342541
> leftcaths
How are these guys any different than proponents of liberation theology or the Jesuits? I've never heard the term before today.

>>20345369
Isn’t that basically what he already said? WW2 encouraged liberals to become virulent internationalists and increasingly grant rights to groups they considered marginalized and victims by their own tradition. This is why progressive ideology dominates today. Everything stems from liberalism and he acknowledges this

>>20342038
This but unironically

>>20342066
How about you not try to partake in a thread about a book you havent read.

>>20343117
That would be After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre.

>>20342431
>hasn't read the bible
>hasn't read Hegel
>hasn't read Marx
>hasn't read MacIntyre
>makes commentary on all of the above anyway

>>20347057
They aren't. "Leftcathism" is just Jesuitism for the laity, and Jesuitism was about unifying the world under an Ottoman Empire ruled guided by the Pope, a goal achieved by stuffing the Vatican with Jews.

>>20342584
So much of philosophy revolves around grammar and laguage. Particularly greek grammar and language. What MacIntyre argues is that we use terms like virtue, or causality, or society in extremely different contexts than the greeks did. So when we read Greek philosophy we actually project our concepts onto their writings instead of absorbing their own ideas. One of his biggest arguments is to critique the is/ought distinction which is only possible when accepting the language of the scientific revolution.

>>20347811
Yeah, that is really odd, idk what all of these fags defending him in this thread are doing. He's pretty open about his politics. Is it just edgy contrarianism?

>>20342779
I read half of it

>>20347811
i read him back in 2014 when /lit/ was gushing about how BASED he was for defending bush using aquinas. jesuitism was gay then and its gay now

>>20347833
>One of his biggest arguments is to critique the is/ought distinction which is only possible when accepting the language of the scientific revolution.
You mean he wants to pretend that the final causes of Aristotle exist. They don't and are as subjective as any moral statement. I have never been able to get a straight answer on how to determine a final cause out of an Aristotelian besides what they feel the final cause is.

>>20347879
>I have never been able to get a straight answer on how to determine a final cause out of an Aristotelian besides what they feel the final cause is.
That's because there are precisely zero (0) Aristotelians, just Thomists who cling to Aristotle as an idol so that you are forced to humor the idea that they have a serious philosophy.

In Aristotle's thought the Earth is surrounded by 47-55 Planets, which are the Gods. These Gods "cause" causality by in truth being the end point of a chain that actually moves up from stuff below them, but it's a lot easier if we just view them as sending causality down. In short, they beam down teleology. Because there's multiple of them though, things can have "mixed" teleologies. For example, you can pound a nail into a piece of wood with a saw. Why? Because the "cutting" teleology is stronger than the "pounding" teleology, yes, but it is still there.
>But wait, that means that there might be multiple ends to something!
True.
>but that means that there can be multiple ends to something!
True.
>so how do we determine what the multiple ends (47-55, but we could also argue that they interact and refract or something so maybe more, maybe less) are?
Philosophy. The point of philosophy in Aristotle, in brief, is figuring out what the final causes are. Aristotle's empiricism plays a role in this in that it allows us to actually figure out what the final causes of some given thing are by examining it, which prevents the problem that Plato runs into when divorcing the mind from the material world where two people can have radically different ideas of what a Form is: the Gods have given us a referee, the world around us.

Al-Kindi proposed a materialistic version of this by arguing that the Planets weren't actually intelligent, they were just a part of the universe that Allah put in place.

>>20347879
>>20347911
>In Aristotle's thought the Earth is surrounded by 47-55 Planets, which are the Gods. These Gods "cause" causality by in truth being the end point of a chain that actually moves up from stuff below them, but it's a lot easier if we just view them as sending causality down. In short, they beam down teleology. Because there's multiple of them though, things can have "mixed" teleologies. For example, you can pound a nail into a piece of wood with a saw. Why? Because the "cutting" teleology is stronger than the "pounding" teleology, yes, but it is still there.
Teleology was a mistake.

>>20347911
>Philosophy. The point of philosophy in Aristotle, in brief, is figuring out what the final causes are. Aristotle's empiricism plays a role in this in that it allows us to actually figure out what the final causes of some given thing are by examining it
Again what type of empirical examination reveals what the final cause of something is. The common examples of a seed sprouting or a rock falling are clearly just subjective judgements. In fact most seeds don't sprout and most rocks don't fall since they're floating in space. Even if they didn't is the final cause of something just the observed behavior of the majority of instances of thing in question? When said that way final causation doesn't seem remotely meaningful

>>20347911
>In Aristotle's thought the Earth is surrounded by 47-55 Planets, which are the Gods. These Gods "cause" causality by in truth being the end point of a chain that actually moves up from stuff below them, but it's a lot easier if we just view them as sending causality down.

Why does anyone take this shit seriously? Ancient people were retarded.

>>20347927
You can strike a match, but instead of the match lighting you instead break it. We know the purpose of a match is to light, but we can also acknowledge that causal factors can impede the fulfilment of it's act. That a seed doesn't sprout does not mean it is not its end to sprout.
Aristotlieans/Thomists accept a direct realism. We see things function in a consistent way and can accurately ascertain that the function is natural to it. The argument I read from Feser is that efficient causes make no sense without final causes. An efficient cause actualizes an implicit final cause. If it were not the case that there were final causes then there is no good reason to expect any kind of effect tied to its cause. Which brings us back to Hume's ideas regarding causality.

>>20346945
Cool, so you basically answered by not answering the question at all. In the entirety of your post all I can scrape out of it is some vague sentiment that the finality, the telos, of human kind is itself having a transcendent end.
What that end actually looks like .... crickets. ... Seems like a circular and useless concept. At most all you have said is that the telos is "to worship God" but like most religious people you can offer no justification or anything real as to how you know that this is a real objective thing that exists rather than just your feeling. Boring, next.

>>20347936
>>20347925
Most people don't. Aristotle was a really clever empiricist, and his writings have a lot of stuff that is, quite frankly, shockingly rational given what we know about the world now in comparison to the dumb shit in the Medieval era (like the entire theory of Homunculi). But the simple fact is that he's >2,000 years out of date and so people who only care about the empiricism leave him behind. Thomists, as already mentioned, use Aristotle as a fetish to wiggle around so that they can pretend like they're serious, but they don't really care about him. That leaves a small group of people who want to take his metaphysics and separate them from his actual empirical claims. This is an incredibly fruitful group (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are two members of it), but there's very, very few members.

>>20347927
And this is one of the biggest problems that people have: it's not that the idea of Teleology is itself unreasonable, it's how you can find a Telos in a world that is so thoroughly atomistic and mechanistic. You also bring up another radical problem with Aristotle: Aristotle believed in motion and rest. We now know that there is no such thing as rest, there's just motion in relation to something else (the Earth is rocketing through space, and so is everything on it).

Aristotle's answer ultimately relies on appeals to the soul and its unique properties, which we can at best say "link up with" the teleology. This is not at all a satisfying answer.

>>20347949
>We know the purpose of a match is to light, but we can also acknowledge that causal factors can impede the fulfilment of it's act. That a seed doesn't sprout does not mean it is not its end to sprout.
That's the purpose of the match FOR US. No humans exist, is that still the purpose of the match?

>>20347949
>You can strike a match, but instead of the match lighting you instead break it. We know the purpose of a match is to light, but we can also acknowledge that causal factors can impede the fulfilment of it's act
We know the subjective human purpose assigned to the manufacture of matches is to light them. What does that have to do with a supposedly objective final cause?
>That a seed doesn't sprout does not mean it is not its end to sprout.
Again the same question. How do we know what the final cause or end of the seed is?

>The argument I read from Feser is that efficient causes make no sense without final causes. An efficient cause actualizes an implicit final cause.
If the final cause is just the result of a chain of efficient causation then sure final causation exists. But in this case it is impossible to violate final causation and any morality derived from it would be impossible to act against.

>>20347972
Humans don't assign the teleologies, the Gods do. The answer is yes.

Also, interestingly, Aristotle rejected the idea of extinction and evolution. If you killed every human, more would eventually spontaneously generate.

>>20347981
>Humans don't assign the teleologies, the Gods do. The answer is yes.
So we've moved away from an objective teleology to a subjective purpose assigned by the Gods. Objective teleology doesn't make sense.

>>20347981
hhahahhahha . This is some comedy gold. Does my shit have a telos too?

>>20347954
>Aristotle's answer ultimately relies on appeals to the soul and its unique properties, which we can at best say "link up with" the teleology.
But the real question is, do we sneed it or feed it?

>>20347997
Firstly, the antonym of objective is not subjective, it is relative. The antonym of subjective is not objective, it is absolute. Secondly, no, there is a limited amount of teleology in an object. Thirdly, it is absolute and objective. The point of philosophy is to find the teloses of a given thin and understand their ratios. This is objective because it exists independent of humans, and it is absolute because it's the same for all humans and all humans can agree on it. Fourthly, the Gods are engaged in their endless self-contemplation, so nothing can be subjective with regards to the Gods because they aren't subjects.

Now, the conditions for that agreement have to be right, but all humans can agree upon the teloses and their ratios if they apply philosophy.

>>20348017
I completely fucked up the thing about subjective-objective and relative-absolute, fuck me.

>>20348017
>Firstly, the antonym of objective is not subjective, it is relative
Google objective antonym and you get.
>objective:
>not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.
>opposite subjective

>This is objective because it exists independent of humans, and it is absolute because it's the same for all humans and all humans can agree on it.
Objective applies to all persons not just humans. Are you going to let Musk's AI dictate morality too you as objective? The God's opinions are not objective, they are subjective by definition

>>20348002
Your poo has the telos of going in the loo, unless you are Indian. So there is some ambiguity in the final cause of poo.

>>20348032
>The God's opinions are not objective, they are subjective by definition
And this is the problem: you personally believe in a radical subjectivism and reject the possibility of objectivism. It's been demonstrated that Aristotle's philosophy adheres to an absolute and objective model.

>>20348037
>It's been demonstrated that Aristotle's philosophy adheres to an absolute and objective model.
It's been demonstrated by redefining objective so that it doesn't apply to God's opinions. Here look I can come generate an objective morality too. Redefine objective so that my subjective opinions are objective then do what I say. That's objectively moral. This is not a new observation it's just Euthyphro

>>20347954
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/homunculus
>The origin of the homunculus concept of a pre-existing fetus is usually credited to Dutch telescopist and microscopist Nicolaas Hartsoeker. He receives this credit largely because it was his sketch in the 1694 Essai de Dioptrique of a homunculus in a sperm cell that illustrated the concept most clearly. However, the Italian anatomist Marcello Malpighi proposed in 1673 that the entire structure of the embryo was present in the egg from the very beginning, and that the gestation period involved the growth and unfolding of that pre-existing structure. Around the same time, the French metaphysician Nicolas Malebranche discussed the idea of emboîtement, meaning encasement, for which preformationism is infamous. Emboîtement describes not just a homunculus in the egg cell or sperm cell, but an infinite train of homunculi stretching back to Adam and Eve.
Malebranche's theory is interesting, here.

>>20348032
>2400 years on
>still hung up on Euthyphro

>>20347953
I say exactly what the classical notion of finality is, if you don't have the culture or flexibility of mind that allows you to understand it, you are the one who is defective here.
The main thing is that in order to have a notion of finality, one has to understand the world in a way that is resolutely different from the way of modern thought, a being is not only the product of a set of efficient causes, among the causes there are also among others the formal cause, which is the essence of this being, and the final cause, which is the thing for the purpose of which this being has been realized.
If you walk in a garden, you will see that the dandelion seed tends to germinate, to grow and to bloom, it is that the dandelion in order to realize its essence at its best must follow these steps because they are the ones that lead it to the full realization of what it was made for, this is why Aristotle says that the final cause is often confused with the formal cause. In a classical reading of the world, each being tends to the realization of what its essence makes it tend towards, it is that which you do not understand, to realize its telos is thus to realize itself in its full potentialities. The essence of the man, contrary to the dandelion, it is to be a social, intelligent, contemplative being (and religious in a post-aristotelian perspective), for who realizes his finality, it is thus necessary that he realizes fully of what he has of social potential, intellectual and contemplative potential, and this is what makes him a good man, because goodness in the classical perspective is to achieve what one is made for, in the same way that a good tool achieves the function for which it was created.

>>20348818
>In a classical reading of the world, each being tends to the realization of what its essence makes it tend towards, it is that which you do not understand, to realize its telos is thus to realize itself in its full potentialities
Right again, how do you not see how circular and meaingless this is. You're just saying the final end is the realization of the end. Still no real substance to what that end is beyond the realization of itself. Lmao you're full of nothing. You should go realize your potentiality by hanging yourself. Godspeed.

>>20348836
The final cause is the realization of the thing to which our nature tends, and it is not by repeating it and adding buzzwords that it will become more circular. If you can't accept that beings tend towards something by nature you are voluntarily placing yourself outside the framework where the discussion has a meaning.

>>20347833
>Particularly greek grammar and language. What MacIntyre argues is that we use terms like virtue, or causality, or society in extremely different contexts than the greeks did. So when we read Greek philosophy we actually project our concepts onto their writings instead of absorbing their own ideas.
Yes. We know that. The Greeks themselves were doing that already, half the fucking Platonic dialogues are literally about that.

>>20348873
What if our natures are wrongheaded, e.g. licentious, or if our natures compel us towards something that is insufficiently excellent or even destructive to the self and others?

>>20349640
Just give into them and live your best life. That's what Aristotle would have said. It was ordained by the 47-55 prime movers of the universe.

>>20349640
Nature must tend towards its most absolute end which is the love of God, if it does not do so spontaneously, for a Christian it is that it is damaged, and if a human has an inclination which opposes it it is advisable to contain it and to concentrate on its absolute end.

>>20349119
Yeah well the anon I replied to didn't know that. Should be noted that Macintyre talks about how those terms changed even within Greek culture.

Bump

>>20348873
>If you can't accept that beings tend towards something by nature you are voluntarily placing yourself outside the framework where the discussion has a meaning.
Tend towards something, woah.. . The beings tend towards the realization of their own being. What is the realization of their being to which they tend? The realization of their own being is the end towards which they tend. The end towards which they tend is the realization of their end. Truly insightful, this "end" seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

ok but watch the whole thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuTjweoIzBs

>>20349640
That can't happen, that's not how a Nature works.

>>20348873
The problem that he's running into is that he's defined the subjective-atomism of Modernity as axiomatically correct in order to get upset when he runs into people who don't do that.

>>20352192
>The problem that he's running into is that he's defined the subjective-atomism of Modernity as axiomatically correct in order to get upset when he runs into people who don't do that.
What does subjectivity have to do with atomism? Subjective means a personal opinion. When you tell me in your opinion something is wrong that is subjective and my first question is why should I care what your opinion is? That's the criticism of subjective morality why is your opinion more moral than mine. Someone telling you to do something because they want you to is subjective morality not objective morality whether it's another person or God.

>>20352192
>That can't happen, that's not how a Nature works.
Could you expand further please?

>>20352192
>The problem that he's running into is that he's defined the subjective-atomism of Modernity as axiomatically correct in order to get upset when he runs into people who don't do that.
No the problem is that none of you niggers can even define telos beyond just saying it's vaguely the end towards which all things tend.

>>20351277
>>20352470
Stop talking about circularity, if A implies B, we can well say that B is implied by A without there being a justification of A by B.
The whole thing is quite clear if you want to put some good will into it: the finality of a being is the reason why it exists, and it happens that it is often confused with the formal cause because often it is what its nature tends towards. One cannot make it simpler.
As for the particular final cause of such and such a being, we know it by studying the said being.
The seed tends to germinate and grow, the bird tends to grow, to make a nest, to migrate when the good days are gone, the human tends towards wisdom, political life, contemplation.

>>20349640
A nature cannot possess an act like licentiousness, because nature is basically essence, licentiousness is a disposition which is actually in the subject as substance and opposed to its opposite, continence. Essence in a way is potency in that it provides the subject with the possibility of developing both licentiousness or continence, or whatever its opposite is considered to be, or a mixture of both. One could not be "licentious" without having an essence to demarcate the opposites. Licentiousness -could- be an essence of something by the standards of mankind, but it would no longer be a man, and it would not be "licentious" by its own standard. An example I suppose would be a male dog. As for destruction, if an essence were in itself destructive (not destructive qua other thing, like fire), it would not exist, because it could not manifest itself at all.

The subject can, after birth, possess certain vices or virtues "by nature", which is that they simply possess given virtues or vices by default. Some people are born very strong, some cowardly, some stupid, etc. That's why Aristotle made the distinction between "virtue/vice by nature" and "virtue proper", the latter being the result of reflection and deliberative choice or lack (of reflection/deliberation). There is the difference between virtue in accident and virtue in essence.

>>20353819
>the human tends towards wisdom, political life, contemplation.
Except in all the cases where it doesn't. Oooopsies, lets just ignore that.
Monks don't live a "political life"
Drunks don't live a contemplative life.
And the average person certainly doesn't live a life of wisdom.

>>20353878
Also the fact that something tends to often act in a certain way does not provide justification for why someone ought to live that kind of life. If 99% of humans tended to act insane would you believe that the telos of humanity were insanity?

>>20353819
Aristotle's original assertion in De Anima is that the basic final cause of every living thing is to partake of immortality to the greatest extent it can, in other words aspiring to be as close to the immortal gods as possible. And this is also the final cause for reproduction, because by producing offspring we are able, as mortals, to partake of immortality in a limited sense.

>>20342024
>Provide a refutation
Why?

>>20342083
This is hilarious as a shitpost, but unfortunately it will now enter /lit/'s consciousness as the actual representation of the book's contents.

>>20353954
Sounds like Aristotle peddled the first deathcope.

>>20347927
>Again what type of empirical examination reveals what the final cause of something is.

>>20347954
>how you can find a Telos in a world that is so thoroughly atomistic and mechanistic

You need to be careful not confuse methodological assumptions of science with conclusions derived from science. What exactly qualifies something as a scientific theory is hard to nail down precisely, but a fairly general framework is attempting to falsify predictions. This is a methodology that we use to evaluate the quality of a theory: If a theory does not predictions, we can't evaluate it, and if it does make predictions, they need to be "accurate" in the relevant sense.

It may seem like I'm spelling out the obvious, but there's an important point: scientific theories must be theories that predict the future given the present, and this is a constraint of the methodology itself--it is *not* something that is demonstrated within the methodology. Any teleological theory by definition cannot be evaluated by this methodology, because it explains the present in terms of the ends, rather than the other way around. The point is that science has not demonstrated teleological explanations to be false, but rather that it excludes the possibility of teleological explanations before it even gets started. We haven't proven things don't have purposes, rather we have adopted a method that in principle could never identify such purposes.

At this stage it's important to notice that there are other theoretical virtues than predictive power. The most basic is rational consistency, which perhaps doesn't even need to be pointed out, except that scientific theories can and sometimes do (tentatively) admit contradictory elements if it improves predictive power. Another virtue is parsimony. One could have extravagant theories that suffice to explain literally everything, but these usually strike us as ad hoc and lacking in a quality that makes a theory valuable--the reduction of complex phenomena to simpler ones.

We could go on. The point is that 1. Science hasn't given us evidence that teleological explanations are inadequate, it has excluded them by assumption, and 2. there are broader considerations than scientific explanation that enter into our judgments of a theory's quality. So we should not so flippantly discard teleological theories by pointing to something like physics.

>>20355519
I didn't point to science or physics. I claimed that teleology and final causes were subjective judgements and then someone claimed that empirical examination could reveal what the final cause of something was. I wanted to hear what possible empirical examination could reveal the final cause of something so I could ridicule it as arbitrary and subjective like the seed and rock examples commonly brought up. No predictive power invoked I wanted to make fun of people acting like their opinions were reality.

>>20355542
You refuted the seed and rock examples by pointing out that "most seeds don't sprout and most rocks don't fall". I understand the implication here to be that the purported telos fails to explain the behavior. But that's literally the scientific criterion that excludes teleology. If that's not the critique you had in mind, then what do you mean to say when you point out that "most X don't fulfill the purported telos of X"? Why is that statement a problem for a teleological theory?

>>20355596
I pointed out how arbitrary the supposed teleology for the rocks and seeds were no science involved. The question is how do you empirical determine the final cause of something without just giving your opinion on how it should wind up? I gave a different possible final cause for seeds and rocks. How do you say mine is wrong and yours is right without invoking your opinion?

>>20355612
It's not a straightforward question to answer, because it involves the more fundamental question of how, when I observe some particular thing, I judge it to be "the kind of thing it is." One question that you guys argued about what whether a match has a purpose, and you asked us to consider whether a match still has a purpose if there are no humans around to judge its purpose. But this challenge seems a lot stronger than you might realize, because it may apply to all kinds of properties of the match, not just its purpose. Does the match have a color, or does it have a color "for us"? Color is certainly not ontologically basic, and certainly depends on physiological facts about the human eye in addition to facts about the reflective qualities of the match's surface, plus ambient light conditions, etc. "Color" thus seems to be not a property of the match per se, but a kind of ceterus paribus property that hinges on the context in which the match is situated with respect to some observer. Or take solidity. Are objects solid, or are they merely "solid for us"? Solidity seems susceptible to the same kind of critique as color.

The issue here is that all of the properties that make a match what it is--or at least, a critical amount of them--may not have a mind-independent existence that you claim needs to exist for purposes. If that's the case, your position might actually reduce to "matches don't exist, they only exist for us". But if that's the case, and we're still comfortable talking about matches and their properties, why should we be particularly worried about purposes? What's unique to them?

>>20355645
It's not a straightforward question to answer because objective teleology doesn't exist.

>Does the match have a color, or does it have a color "for us"?
The color of a match can be empirically determined. It's teleology can't because the final cause of something is just an opinion.
>Or take solidity. Are objects solid, or are they merely "solid for us"? Solidity seems susceptible to the same kind of critique as color.
Again the solidity of an object is determinable by empirical examination. Teleology not so much.

>The issue here is that all of the properties that make a match what it is--or at least, a critical amount of them--may not have a mind-independent existence that you claim needs to exist for purposes.
So your answer to final causes not objectively existing is to claim idealism it true and make everything subjective? You realize how dumb and pathetic this makes you look. Teleology is fairy dust and wishful thinking. I can't prove it doesn't exist in the same way you can't prove it does.

>>20355663
>The color of a match can be empirically determined.
You claimed that the purpose of the match would cease to exist if the human didn't judge it to have a purpose. Show me how to empirically determine that the match still has a color in the absence of the human judging it to have the color.

>>20355676
>You claimed that the purpose of the match would cease to exist if the human didn't judge it to have a purpose.
That wasn't me but even so what you're claiming here is fucking stupid. Super Covid kills everyone tomorrow you're telling me that after that matches no longer have colors?

>>20355701
>Super Covid kills everyone tomorrow you're telling me that after that matches no longer have colors?
No, I'm claiming that conclusion follows from the argument that was used against purposes. The solution is either to 1. accept purposes at the same level as colors, or 2. to have some other standard that distinguishes colors from purposes, or 3. deny that colors exist independent of observers.

>>20355780
>No, I'm claiming that conclusion follows from the argument that was used against purposes.
No it doesn't because colors can be empirically examined. Final causes can't. The purpose someone has for something dies with them. I guess you can say someone had a purpose for this thing in the past but again this is just a historical subjective judgment.

>to have some other standard that distinguishes colors from purposes
Again after I've repeated this multiple times colors can be empirically examined and final causes can't. Give me a way to empirically examine a final cause or even better just give me the final cause of something that I can recognize as an objective empirical examination and not just a subjective judgement.

>>20355804
I am being very patient but you are really not getting it. What does "empirical examination" of colors consist in? Does "seeing" a color count as empirical examination, or do I need to have a theory of electromagnetism and reflective surfaces? Do I need a theory of rods and cones on the retina of the human eye?

>>20355812
>I am being very patient but you are really not getting it
I'm getting it fine. To deal with the obvious fact that final causes have no objective existence you're trying to cast doubt on anything having objective existence determinable by empirical examination. You've been asked repeatedly to give an example of final causation that's not just an opinion. You can't do it. Final causes have been discredited for nearly 300 years.

Is there any use of Final Causes today other than trying to link them to Catholicism via Aristotle and thus urging people to become Catholic thus eliminating the need for a teleological approach to morality in the first place?

>>20355829
No. Final causes are just a way to sneak morality past Hume and they fail at that. The is/ought distinction becomes the is/teleology distinction. How could you possibly determine the final cause of something from the facts of it's existence?

>>20355826
The final cause of a lawyer is to practice law.

Now for a question about "objective existence determinable by empirical examination". Is the fact that red and blue pigments make purple a fact that exists independent of humans?

>>20355841
Building on >>20355829, since we increasingly know that human personality traits are heritable and have a genetic basis, couldn't we just as well make teleological arguments for Eugenics or Darwinism (the eternal bugbears of Catholicism)? I genuinely do not see appeals to Final Causes invoked outside of Catholic appeals to ground opposition to homosexuality but again why is this needed under a framework of divine command ethics?

>>20355866
>The final cause of a lawyer is to practice law.
Again this is just your opinion. Is the final cause of a murderer to murder people? You're using traditional judgments embedded in the English language to claim objective morality. Is the final cause of a NEET to eat tendies and 4chan post all day?

>>20355878
Answer my question first

>>20355879
I already did here >>20355826
>To deal with the obvious fact that final causes have no objective existence you're trying to cast doubt on anything having objective existence determinable by empirical examination
Do you believe colors have an objective existence? I do. Teleology doesn't

>>20355893
Colors are literally defined in terms of human perception. Colors cannot be uniquely identified with electromagnetic wavelengths, nor can wavelengths be identified with colors. For example, some colors consist in a mixture of wavelengths, while others are associated with a single wavelength, and almost all wavelengths are perceived to be different colors under different ambient conditions. This can be easily explained by pointing at the constitution of the human being--there are three primary colors because of the structure of the human eye, for example. But that means that when we talk about "the color of an object", we are really talking about the fact that a human being (not some idealized "objective" observer) would perceive a color here under typical conditions.

>>20355913
>Colors are literally defined in terms of human perception.
Amazing so you're calling colors subjective then? And then comparing them with teleology? I've been saying teleology is subjective from the very fucking start.

>>20355921
I am saying that facts about colors are facts about the relation between humans and external objects. That does not make them "subjective". Facts about health are also facts about the relation between humans and external objects, but that does not mean that "smoking causes cancer" is subjective. Teleological facts could potentially be facts in the same category as health and color--facts about how humans are related to things in virtue of their constitution as humans. They would not be "mere opinion", unless you also think "this shirt is blue" and "arsenic is a poison" are mere opinions.

>>20355945
>Teleological facts could potentially be facts in the same category as health and color--facts about how humans are related to things in virtue of their constitution as humans
So for the hundredth time tell me how to make an empirical examination with human perception of a final cause. I can tell someone to tell me what color something is.

>>20355961
Without final causality we have no good reason to believe that any efficient cause should produce any particular effect. If there is no directedness, no potential to be actualized, than cause and effect have no intrinsic relationship. The entire principle of sufficient reason or principle of proportionate causality that underlies the entirety of understanding of the natural world ceases to be valid. If you really believed in this hard empircism you'd be in the camp of either Berkeley or Hume.

>>20355961
A hammer is for hammering. A match is for igniting. A lawyer is for practicing law. A government is for governing.

It is worth noting that our names for many of these objects contains the name of a particular activity, implying that a criterion of being a certain kind of thing is doing a certain kind of thing. For example, if someone said that a group that did not govern was a government, it would not be clear what they were saying. Doing a particular thing--governing--is literally what makes a government what it is. The telos is embedded in the concept.

>>20355974
So for the hundredth time you've failed to explain how an empirical examination could reveal a final cause or how to bridge the is/teleology gap. Hume has beat you into the ground retroactively. I do not believe in Aristotelian actuality and potentiality along with final causes. That stuff has long been discredited and is obviously incoherent. This in particular is bizarre
>Without final causality we have no good reason to believe that any efficient cause should produce any particular effect.
A certain cause produces an certain effect.

>>20355992
>A certain cause produces an certain effect.
It's bizarre that you invoke Hume in one line and in the very next deny his conclusions. All the while pronouncing your conclusions without argument, as if they were obvious truth. Do you realize that you don't agree with Hume? Hume literally agrees with the line you quoted, not your position.

>>20355980
A murderer is murdering. A rapist is for raping. A revolution is for overthrowing the government.

>The telos is embedded in the concept.
And this is the basic point. Labeling something doesn't assign a moral duty. If I call you and idiot is your final cause then being an idiot? Labeling doesn't solve is/ought. Even the definitions themselves are arbitrary. The definition of marriage now includes gay marriage as enraging as that is to Thomists. Who is to say who has the correct definition?

>>20356000
>It's bizarre that you invoke Hume in one line and in the very next deny his conclusions.
It's almost as if Hume had more than one important concept. Is/ought is not the same as the problem of induction. I accept causality on practical grounds but is/ought fucks over objective morality and by extension teleology.

>>20355992
Without actuality and potentiality what exactly defines causality? What is the force between cause and effect?

>>20356002
Teleology is not identical to morality. It is a concept that makes intelligible non-normative senses of the word "good", such as "a good thief" meaning "good at stealing". This concept is one building block of a meta-ethical position, but it is not telos = moral. If someone says that purpose of a pencil sharpener is to sharpen, that doesn't commit them to the view that it is moral to constantly sharpen pencils.

>>20356010
>I accept causality on practical grounds
loooool. What in the world does "pracitcal grounds" mean here? It sounds to me like "I don't need justification for causality because I just want to believe in it, but I do need justification for normative claims because I don't feel the same way. "

>>20356013
>Without actuality and potentiality what exactly defines causality? What is the force between cause and effect?
Congratulations you've rediscovered Hume's problem of induction. You should feel proud it's an important problem that destroyed most of philosophy from before it.

>>20356026
Practical grounds as in being able to function in everyday life. You don't need to believe in teleology to function in real life.

>>20356027
Ive been citing Hume's problem at you for 2 days now and you've deftly evaded answering for just as long.

>>20356027
It is really striking how you have absolutely no justification for rejecting the problem of induction, and yet you try to cast other people as naive for bringing it up. You literally don't make any arguments in this thread, you just make pronouncements.

>>20356023
Teleology and morality are both subject to the same criticisms of being subjective judgments. Teleology is used in Thomism to sneak morality in as something supposedly objective when it's really just a moral opinion once removed.

>>20356029
Seems to me that David Hume had no problem going about daily life, so belief in metaphysical causation can't be a practical requirement.

>>20356032
>It is really striking how you have absolutely no justification for rejecting the problem of induction, and yet you try to cast other people as naive for bringing it up.
I don't reject it just ignore it for practical reasons. What I do reject is the idea that Aristotle's actuality and potentiality somehow solve it.

>>20356039
I'm not a Thomist, and I don't really care what your pronouncements are because you don't make arguments. Every single issue in this thread you have settled by simply declaring your answer to be "objective" or "empirically demonstrable" without further description. I gave a lengthy analysis of why color doesn't meet the criteria that were being used for the word "objective" after you said it was, and you offered zero, literally nothing, as a rebuttal, and just declared that teleology was subjective.

>>20356054
>I gave a lengthy analysis of why color doesn't meet the criteria that were being used for the word "objective" after you said it was
Bro if something is not objective it's subjective. You explicitly denied that you were claiming colors were subjective here >>20355945
>I am saying that facts about colors are facts about the relation between humans and external objects. That does not make them "subjective"
You're contradicting yourself.

>>20356065
I am not contradicting myself. What I showed was that the notion of "objective" that was being used to exclude purposes also excluded colors. My conclusion was not that they are both subjective, but rather that the notion of "objective" that was being used was wrong. For something to exist objectively, it does not have to exist in the absence of humans, because there can be objective relations between humans and external objects. Those relations are not subjective. Examples are health, color, and purposes.

>>20356077
>What I showed was that the notion of "objective" that was being used to exclude purposes also excluded colors
NO YOU DIDN"T. You were repeatedly over and over asked to provide a way to empirically examine the final cause of something like you can with color. YOU NEVER ONCE GAVE AN ANSWER.

>>20355645
>The issue here is that all of the properties that make a match what it is--or at least, a critical amount of them--may not have a mind-independent existence that you claim needs to exist for purposes. If that's the case, your position might actually reduce to "matches don't exist, they only exist for us". But if that's the case, and we're still comfortable talking about matches and their properties, why should we be particularly worried about purposes? What's unique to them?
Sure, it's potentially possible that properties of the match don't exist outside the mind, but we can observe that the match always lights when we strike it. That observation is dependent on an observer, but at least I can observe it. I cannot observe the match's supposed telos.

>>20342024
What's the thesis?

>>20356077
>For something to exist objectively, it does not have to exist in the absence of humans, because there can be objective relations between humans and external objects
I agree with you on this particular point, but prove that a match's telos is an external and observable object. I can see the color of the match; I cannot see or test the notion that it has an inherent telos that tends towards it being lit.

>>20356090
The criterion I responded to was articulated here >>20347972
>That's the purpose of the match FOR US. No humans exist, is that still the purpose of the match?
and we can make an analogous statement about colors:
>That's the color of the match FOR US. No humans exist, is that still the color of the match?
From this I concluded that the criterion was wrong, and that statements about colors are statements about relations. And I postulated that final causes could be in the same category, along with health.

>You were repeatedly over and over asked to provide a way to empirically examine the final cause of something like you can with color.
I gave examples here >>20356002, and then I offered a brief analysis of the examples, and concluded that conceptually, they included reference to an activity. This is an empirical criterion (unless you think activities can't be empirically identified).

>>20356157
>I gave examples here >>20356002 (You), and then I offered a brief analysis of the examples, and concluded that conceptually, they included reference to an activity
You messed up the link and gave the response I gave to the post you were trying to link. You just gave more subjective opinions. Just read the link >>20356002

>>20356140
There has never once been a match which when struck produced water or ice. A struck match produces only flame.

>>20356165
How do you determine that they are subjective opinions rather than relations? For example, is it just an opinion that a lawyer exists to practice law? Is it coherent to claim "I am a lawyer, but I cannot practice law"? It seems to me that the claim that one "is a lawyer" necessarily entails some capacities and activities. So here is a tentative path to identifying final causes--let us try to identify those capacities and activities that, if they had not existed, the thing itself could not have been said to exist. It exists *in virtue of* its capacity to carry out certain activities.

Now, as I said earlier, this does not get us moral claims without a lot more work. And I do not even claim that this is an airtight definition of a final cause. But it looks like a very plausible concept that explains how we reason about the world.

>>20356170
Right, again that's not what I'm denying.... A match producing flame when struck is not the same as it having a telos to produce flame. It just happens to do that. And if no one picked up the match and it fell into the ground and decomposed it would never alight.

>>20356202
>How do you determine that they are subjective opinions rather than relations? For example, is it just an opinion that a lawyer exists to practice law? Is it coherent to claim "I am a lawyer, but I cannot practice law"?
Incredibly coherent. Lawyers are frequently suspended from practice for a few years as punishment. And again you're not addressing the basic point. Definitions in the English language are arbitrary. This type of philosophizing from the dictionary you're espousing would change based on common usage. You can claim some type of objective definition but then you're just back where you started. How do you know what the objective definition of something is?

>>20356202
>For example, is it just an opinion that a lawyer exists to practice law?
Yeah pretty much. It's an association made about a word that we all collectively agree on--i.e that lawyer = practicing law. The lawyer does not exist to practice law. He just does do that because of the social expectation that this is what being a lawyer means.
It is not coherent to claim "I am a lawyer, but I cannot practice law" because we've defined the term in such a way that this claim contradicts all of our assumptions about what being a lawyer means.

>>20356239
>Definitions in the English language are arbitrary. This type of philosophizing from the dictionary you're espousing would change based on common usage.
Do you deny that there is a concept that underlies the "arbitrary" meaning of the word lawyer? Can that concept be analyzed, (that is, understood in terms of its parts, its relations, etc), or is it just irreducible? Can there be a word that refers to that concept in languages other than English?

>>20356253
The definition of the word is the description of a concept. If the word were defined differently, it would refer to a different concept. If I started calling apples "oranges", that would not prove that it is mere opinion that apples grow from apple trees. It would only show that it is mere opinion what concept "apple" refers to.

>>20356268
>Do you deny that there is a concept that underlies the "arbitrary" meaning of the word lawyer?
Certainly not. But concepts are subjective and arbitrary. There is a concept that underlies the word unicorn.

>Can there be a word that refers to that concept in languages other than English?
Through the filter of translation yes just like we can believe that the same concept exists in other English speaker's minds. You chose a bad example because in real English not American lawyer doesn't refer to one profession but two, barristers and solicitors that are combined in the US.

>>20356276
>If the word were defined differently, it would refer to a different concept. If I started calling apples "oranges", that would not prove that it is mere opinion that apples grow from apple trees. It would only show that it is mere opinion what concept "apple" refers to.
There's an underlying concept to which the language refers. But imo that underlying concept is still dependent on us, and so not teological. Multiple different cultures happen to find an use for a person that can represent you in court. If those cultures didn't have lawyers, there would not be a concept of lawyers. And indeed lawyers have not always existed. Did the telos spring into existence the moment a culture invented lawyers, or was it pre-existent?

>>20356292
Also the example with apples is not comparable. Lawyers are clearly a socially defined role. Apples will exist irrespective of the language we use to refer to them.

>>20356280
>There is a concept that underlies the word unicorn.
And I can determine whether a unicorn exists by comparing that concept to my experiences, right? In the same way that I could determine whether a lawyer exists by comparing the concept to the world. And if the concept entails the capacity to carry out certain activities, I could ask whether empirically a particular thing or person has those capacities. I could ask whether it would fail to exist if it lacked some capacity.

For example, if a unicorn lacked a horn, it would be a horse, not a unicorn. If I claim that it is possible for unicorns to lack horns, because English could just define "unicorn" to mean horse, then I have shifted the conversation from the concept of unicorn to the use of the word "unicorn".

So if you assert that a hammer could entirely lack the capacity to hammer, because we could define the word differently, you're talking about the symbol "hammer" and not the concept of a hammer. The concept of hammer exists--it is instantiated in the world--*only if* a certain relation to the capacity of hammering obtains. And calling something that lacks that capacity by the name "hammer" does nothing to refute this.

>>20356301
Social roles objectively exist. If I am an anthropologist, I can look at a culture and determine whether police exist in that culture, by looking for those features of the concept referred to by the word "police". Just because something is a social phenomenon doesn't mean it doesn't have real existence. Otherwise we would be in very strange territory when trying to explain the boundaries of "real" social behavior.

>>20356335
>Social roles objectively exist. If I am an anthropologist, I can look at a culture and determine whether police exist in that culture, by looking for those features of the concept referred to by the word "police". Just because something is a social phenomenon doesn't mean it doesn't have real existence.
I never claimed that social phenomenon are unreal. Just that they're not eternal immutable properties. Again, did the telos of laywerness always exist even before lawyers existed?

>>20356352
>Again, did the telos of laywerness always exist even before lawyers existed?
That's a difficult metaphysical question. For the same reason as asking, "Did red exist before human (or other relevant animal) eyes existed?" If red is a concept relating human eyes to external objects, can the concept predate the thing itself? Depends first on whether metaphysical realism or nominalism or trope theory is true, and second, if realism is true, is it more like Platonic realism or Aristotelian realism? I don't know. I think some kind of realism is true, but this is one of the most debated issues of contemporary metaphysics.

>>20356322
But you're going at it the wrong way. The thing in the outside world is what is supposed to have the teleology not whatever arbitrary concept you assigned to it.

>>20356403
The things in the outside world are instantiations of concepts. This is an ugly metaphysical issue, but it is not as ridiculous as it might seem at first. Consider the following claims:

1. If this unicorn did not have a horn, it would not exist.
2. If this unicorn did not have any body parts except hooves, it would not exist.

Most people's reaction to claim (1) is that it's false: the unicorn would still exist, but it would be a horse instead. But I think most people's reaction to claim (2) is that it's true: if the unicorn lacked all these features, we would not claim that the hooves are "the unicorn". I claim these intuitions are in tension. On the one hand, we want to say that an object can lose some of its features but still "exist", and on the other, we want to say that it can only lose so many, and after that point whatever is left is not the *same* object.

Where can the line be drawn? I draw it at the conceptually essential features. If what is left of the unicorn does not have the essential features of the concept of a unicorn, then the unicorn has ceased to exist. This is complicated by the fact that we tend to identify particular animals with their particular minds, and subtracting the horn of a unicorn would not alter its mind (at least not in a straightforward way).

>>20356403
Also, calling it an "arbitrary concept you assigned to it" is deeply misleading. I could not look at a horse and just assign it the concept of turtle and still be correct. I could use the symbol "turtle" to refer to it, but I would only be correct if I was conceiving of the horse using the concept horse, and I had merely substituted the word.

>>20356455
>The things in the outside world are instantiations of concepts. This is an ugly metaphysical issue, but it is not as ridiculous as it might seem at first
It is exactly as ridiculous as it seems. Concepts are arbitrary and subjective. To claim the real world is made of concepts is idealism and clearly false. Like I've said earlier to deal with the obvious subjectivity of final causes you've moved to claiming everything is subjective. I believe in objective reality and you don't so that you can protect teleology from being dismissed as a personal judgment.

>>20356468
The correctness of the concept is dictated by the thing it is referring to not the other way around. None of my concepts have final causes attached to them like yours and my concepts agree with the real world.

>>20356476
Can you explain to me your position on the debate between metaphysical realists and nominalists?

>>20356479
Nominalist all the way. I dropped out of a math grad program and I have no doubt the supposed abstract objects of math are invented and not discovered. Concepts are a psychological construction there are no Platonic forms or anything like that.

>>20356486
Can you describe what you mean when you say "the correctness of a concept is dictated by the thing it is referring to"? How does a concept match the world if not by being instantiated in it? If there's a thought in Jimmy's head, and there's an object in the world, it seems to me that Jimmy's thought is correct if and only if both it and the object participate in the same concept. If there is no [universal] concept, in what way is the correctness of the thought dictated?

>>20356504
>Can you describe what you mean when you say "the correctness of a concept is dictated by the thing it is referring to"?
The same way you mean when you say you
>I could not look at a horse and just assign it the concept of turtle and still be correct.
If your concept doesn't describe the real world object it's assigned to it's incorrect. Your teleology laden concepts are incorrect since teleology doesn't exist in the real world. You can't just define or conceptualize it into existence.

>If there's a thought in Jimmy's head, and there's an object in the world, it seems to me that Jimmy's thought is correct if and only if both it and the object participate in the same concept.
Huh? Concepts and thoughts are the same thing. Concepts exist only in your head. There is no abstract concept floating around. The concept of horse in Jimmy's head is correct if it corresponds to the real horse.

>>20356220
>it just happens to do that
>BECAUSE IT JUST DOES OKAY

>>20356531
Yeah.

Before or after?

>>20342083
>achieving Communism
Impossible, anon.

The Kingdom of Heaven has already been offered to you. It is freely given to those who freely give. It cannot be brought into existence by force of any kind.

>>20342024
I havnt read that book but I have read some his essays and and works of one of his students, May Sim. They both come across as midwits desu

>>20356588
And it just doesnt ever produce frost because... it just doesnt... like it has real forms it can potentially take intrinsic to it.

>>20356999
Why do quarks have the properties that they do?

>>20356919
As multiple anons have been saying, this is MacIntyre's entire ideology in a nutshell: We can't do Communism without Jesus.

>>20356504
>"the correctness of a concept is dictated by the thing it is referring to"?
Correctness and consistency are two different things. What Anon is suggesting is called Mathematical Fictionalism. A mathematical statement is consistent, but it isn't necessarily "true". A five sided square is totally consistent under some algebra, that doesn't make it true that squares have five sides.

I think this board just copies me when I leave it just gravitates to everything I gravitate to when I come back

>>20342024
Nice complement

>>20355467
It's not a cope, it's just a basic fact of reality. Most things prefer to continue existing as they are if possible, they only change or degenerate when acted upon by external forces, unless they are self-movers like us capable of self-destruction.

>>20356029
>he needs to believe in metaphysical causation to function
Are you autistic?

>>20355961
>I can tell someone to tell me what color something is.
And I can tell someone to tell me what a virtue is.
>So for the hundredth time tell me how to make an empirical examination with human perception of a final cause
He's been telling you the entire time that telos cannot be seen "empirically" via the eye, no more than the fact that "arsenic is poisonous" can be seen by the eye. You are a very thick poster.

I'd like to remind you all that Aristotle was a pagan and pagan imagery should follow him and not scholastic

>>20355992
>A certain cause produces an certain effect.
Not if there is no specific potency. In that case it is totally foreseeable that any cause can create any effect, because there is no such thing as potency/potentiality. As you were saying, a match could produce water vapor, sulfuric gas, or any other random effect, when struck against the box, because the match has no specific potency (there is nothing basically essential about "being a match.") If the match has no specific potency (= telos), then anything is possible.

>>20345369
The decleration of human rights has an islamic version which is ironically more honest than its progressive counterpart because at the end they basically admit it's all subject to interpretation and judgement

>>20358987
Aristotle was a Proto-Christian

>>20358962
>If I put my key in socket and twist, it will unlock my door
It's a very basic implicit belief for most people who aren't schizophrenic

I'd like to share some thoughts on teleology.

It’s a framework on how to look at the world just as any other, and just as any other framework it reveals some “truths” and obscures others. The modern science obviously does not disprove thelos as such because modern science doesn’t care about ends but repeating patterns, thus telos is outside the scope of modern science as much as questions like “what is life?”, which are strictly philosophical questions. From my observation almost all people who support the idea of teleological view of the world usually use it to ground their pro-life stances or preach Tomism (Christianity). The idea is usually to demonstrate how fetus is potentially a grownup or his telos is to grow up, thus under such framework terminating pregnancy is the same as murder, or to prove that final cause is god or smth.

If we were to be honest with ourselves the crux of this worldview is in relation to reality it entails, because if you want to believe in telos you also have to commit yourself to specific forms of realism which justify inferring telos from reality in the first place. But not just telos as a concept, which is not really controversial, the point is to establish it as a metaphysical, objective property of a given thing, which is present even if the potential is not realized. The strategy I’ve seen in this thread is to show how telos is integral to the reality of an object and can’t be disproven by not being realized in the same object because it is present in it in a different way. There is of course no way to disprove teleology, smarter than average person can easily think through all the necessary steps one can do in developing a reality framework which would justify telos. It can’t be proven either. It’s something you either believe or you don’t.

I feel like this weirdness is a residue of Aristotelianism where his cosmology states that bodies are governed by their individual natures, like fire which goes up because stars are up in the space and fire wants to be with its fire buddies stars, like rock falling down because it wants to be with rocks, etc. Scolastics integrated similar thinking into their own framework. Only with Newton is there a shift in thinking and conceptualization of governing laws, because he introduces abstract consistent laws that govern reality in almost every aspect, instead of the inner nature of objects themselves. We don’t tend to look at object as bearers of metaphysical properties because our frameworks include much broader forces and much more complex and indeterminate conceptions of causation.

>>20342249
You can no more destroy Nietzsche than you can the laws of physics. Stop coping.