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11777043 No.11777043 [Reply] [Original]

Why was actuality/potentiality dropped by modern philosophers?

>> No.11777066

>>11777043
Because, being too maladaptive to participate in the sublime and intricate, immensely taxing investigations of their predecessors, they desperately needed to assert their own intellectual prowess in the face of an obvious mental impotence, the result being: Ubiquitous Obfuscation.

>> No.11777070

>>11777043
out of secular necessity. if you accept it you then necessarily come to God. They obviously cannot stomach that, for whatever political reasons, so they pirouette and pivot in nonsensical ways to avoid reality.

>> No.11777180
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11777180

>>11777066
>>11777070

>> No.11777250

Wouldnt transcendence and facticity of Sartre be analagous? At least in the Self

>> No.11777867

Giorgio Agamben has written a lot about potentiality. Also, Deleuze on virtuality/actuality.

>> No.11778947

They didn't like the implications. That's seriously it. Guys like Hume and Descarte sought to create an alternative system and the people who came after just sort of assume there was a good reason to abandon it

>> No.11778975

>>11777070
>>11778947
I've heard this before. Can you explain to a brainlet how potentiality inevitably leads to god?

>> No.11778981

It's coming back in style

>> No.11779022

>>11778975
A thing can only move or change if it has the potential for that movement or change. A rock has the potential to move but can't move itself, it has to derive that movement from something else. In other words, something else has to actualize the rocks potential movement. Since every series or chain of moved and mover is contingent on the first mover, the first mover couldn't have any potential. It would have to be pure act.

Pure act must be omnipotent, omniscient, non corporeal, perfect, and singular because to not be able to do something would be unrealized potential, to have a lack of knowledge is potential to have knowledge, to not exist would be pure potential, to be physically corporeal would imply potential since physical things change, and the only way to tell the difference between two things is to spot a difference which implies that one would lack something the other didn't. Pure act can't lack anything.

>> No.11779049

READ WOLFGANG SMITH

>> No.11779107

>>11779022
>>11778947
But Hume and Descartes were both christians.

>> No.11779112

>>11779107
Hume was an atheist even on his deathbed. He cosntantly memed that he wasn't to protect himself but he very obviously was

The Humean perspective cannot admit of a God in any way

>> No.11779127

>>11779112
more specifically an agnostic atheist. he wouldnt have ever said 'god doesn't exist' but his skepticism about everything would have inclined him towards atheism

He is basically modernity, in its empirical, rational form, encapsulated. He is totally lacking the other strain of modernity though the 'progress' thing, he was in fact something of a reactionary.

>> No.11779132

>>11779112
>>11779127
True, but what about Descartes?

>> No.11779135

>>11779107
So? They weren't Aristotelians

>> No.11779145

>>11779132
yeah Descartes was Christian, but he had to meme his way into 'proving' his Christianity, rather than having faith.

He's like Hobbes. He really wants to be a revolutionary, self-based, modern, but he uses that worldview to justify tradition. The two of them are even contemporary

>> No.11779209

bump. I haven't bothered to read the Greeks yet but these discussions show me how important they are in modern thought.
What are the criticisms of this theory? Are there any valid ones?

>> No.11779469

because idealism, nominalism, and niave skepticism . Descartes and Hume did the most damage.
There are notable exceptions. Most importantly Peirce, then Deleuze. I dont thing there is any way of getting around it. Its certainly integral, to my pet dilettante metaphysics.
>>11779022
My belief is that any being with potential necessitates its own actualization. Either a potential to have potential is actualized and it moves or a potential to not have any potential is actualized and it dies. Something with potential; potential defined by its relation to at least itself in space, not spacetime mind you as time is the function of potential continuing to potential. necessitates its own actualization. It is just a hunch that has hardly been reasoned but my guess is that an efficacious absence, a space that something can possibly exist in. Is all that is needed for something to begin. My view is that potential is animated by potential, contrary to the reasoning that actuality births potential. Peirce's triad is the ground of this hypothesis.

>> No.11779487

it didn't go anywhere, it just moved to physics

>> No.11779518

>>11777066

This guy knows whats up. Exactly this.

>> No.11779537

>>11777070
>out of secular necessity. if you accept it you then necessarily come to God. They obviously cannot stomach that, for whatever political reasons, so they pirouette and pivot in nonsensical ways to avoid reality.

Ah yes.... Cause there is only 1 God and you shall have no other gods before me? Thus being a God is not allowed; makes sense why people acted like I was crazy when I said/ I am God.

>> No.11780182

>>11777043
Because they knew actuality/potentiality is a sole phenomena, only separated by consciousness.

>> No.11780733

As far as I understand it, Heidegger presents a reworking of energeia/dunamis and morphe/hyle in his "The Origin of the Work [ergon] of Art [techne/poiesis]" (he, in a typical fashion for him, finds that a lot was lost through latinisation). I'm refering to the World/Earth dichotomy he proposes, the "strife" of which supposedly lies at the heart of how truth as unconcealmeant (aletheia) has both an element of a shining-forth and one of retreating into the darkness of pure untamable potentiality. For example, a poem's formal elements bring-forth beauty and structures a narrative (they reveal "worlds", enteliachially – as it's their job to do so); but the "matter" of the poems, the words themselves, even if (and especially if) shown "in their best light" (as a poem does), have multiple and ambiguous meanings, as they produce several conflicting possible interpretations simultaneusly, one of which cannot be pinned down without an active decision of the reader to call that particular meaning into his mind – thus constituting a spectral background as "earth", which remains non-actual.

>> No.11780813

>>11780733
nice post anon

>> No.11781827

What are some good books on this subject?

>> No.11781890

>>11779209
The best possible criticism comes from Parmenides, who said "For this will never be proved, that the things that are not are; and do you restrain your thought from this way of inquiry."
We know that a rock may have a certain hypothetical potential to move, although it could remain for the rest of eternity without ever moving from the surface which it sits perfectly still on top of. It's no different from flipping a coin and expecting it to land on a certain side. Therefore, even if an object might have the potential to move or to transform, it might never actually do so. Thus, from a pragmatic, empiricist perspective, there is no potential, only actuality. Certain things move at certain points in time, and others do not.

>> No.11782216

>>11781827
Read Feser

>> No.11782262

>>11777066
This. The model is too obvious to justify an entire field of study. So modern pseudophilosophers have continued to obfuscate the field until it's current state, where it's basically useless for anything but generating papers no one is gonna read.

>> No.11782326

>>11781890
The rock exists in spacetime. If it didn't have the potential to continue existing, It would disappear in the next instance. read Peirce.
What I have a hard time accepting is that there is any such thing as "actuality" besides as a sign signifying potential. My intuition shows that reality is pure potential, and that being is a continuous form of potential moving towards potential. Potential itself is a formative agent, likely the only kind of such a thing.

>> No.11782342

>>11781827
The main reason why Aristotelian metaphysical conceptions dropped out of physics is because early modern science self-consciously saw the Aristotelian concepts as qualitates occultae, inimical to inductive, empirical scientific inquiry, and then Kant's transcendental philosophy established the norm that our concepts for explaining the world exist for us, and not in the world itself. People like Heidegger come along within that tradition and further demonstrate that even the idea of static "beings," in the world, like metaphysical entities or their properties or natures, are conceptual projections that our everyday language can reify and make difficult to see around.

Any history of early modern science will tell you about the departure from Aristotle, but you may want to get into hermeneutic phenomenology for a fuller understanding of Aristotelian substance ontology as a discourse spanning many centuries and mostly taken for granted unconsciously.

>> No.11782369

>>11777043
Uncaused cause is incoherent in the face of the fact that causality is incoherent/nonexistent/different prior to it. Notions of causes don't apply, just as our physical laws don't apply to something with a different set or none. Impossible to peer beyond, as the faculties and action of peering are based in this set of laws and chain of causality. Physically incommensurable.

>> No.11782839

>>11777043
Because it was untenable as anything other than a useful fiction. It's impossible to really put a hard limit on something's potential except by restricting it to the actual.

>> No.11782847

>>11777066
>>11777070
>>11778947
>>11779022
>they just rejected it because they don't like the implications
It really seems like you all are only accepting it because you like the implications, since God is the first thing you jump to when discussing this concept.

>> No.11782882

>>11777066
based

>> No.11782990

Another implication people won't like now is that abortion, as any sane person thinks, is murder.

>> No.11784149

>>11782990
Interesting take.

>> No.11784171

>>11782990
My ex aborted my 'kid' and it felt deeply weird and fucked up. We went to the ultrasound thing and it was just a blob but it had a heartbeat that you could see. It's not like I was upset at her, i didnt even want a kid, or to be with her forever, but the entire thing was extremely melancholic and dark. Incidentally it sort of ruined our relationship.

>> No.11785279

>>11784171
Holy shit. The feels.

>> No.11785374

>>11782326
I understand that a rock, or anything else which exists has a potential to do something which we have known it to do, but why would anything have a potential to do something we do not know of it ever having done?

>> No.11785773

>>11784171
Because it was the murder of an innocent human.

>> No.11785786

>>11785773
>clumps of cells are persons
this is your brain on religion

>> No.11785788

>>11785786
lol shut the fuck up you fucking goober

>> No.11785814

>>11785786
>Using scientific arguments to counter philosophical ones.
You're a clump of cells too after all, aren't you?

>> No.11785820

>>11777043
Nigga everyone is going bananas on potentiality ever since Big D made Spinoza great again. Maybe drop literally "arguing semantics" philosophy and try reading some continental chads.

>> No.11785825
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11785825

>>11785814

>> No.11785860

>>11785825
>People find X thing as immoral and perverse.
Hurt Durr just ignore it bigot.

>> No.11786037 [DELETED] 

>>11779022
Regarding not being able to accept God, the atheist would just say they just don't care, which deceptively sounds like a rational reason but is actually just a statement about their feelings, much like is "agnostic atheist."

Anyway, this is equivocation of something like metaphysical (actual) and epistemic (imaginary) potential. It's possible a 'pure act' implies only the actualization of all metaphysical potential, not all epistemic potential, the latter which you're referring to. As a Christian, this same contention seems valid against the modal ontological arguments.

>> No.11786046

>>11779022
Regarding not being able to accept God, the atheist would say they just don't care, which deceptively sounds like a rational reason but is actually just a statement about their feelings, much like is "agnostic atheist."

Anyway, this is equivocation of something like metaphysical (actual) and epistemic (imaginary) potential. It's possible a 'pure act' implies only the actualization of all metaphysical potential, not all epistemic potential, the latter of which you're referring to. As a Christian, this same contention seems valid against the modal ontological arguments.

>> No.11786771

>>11785825
How about you answer the fucking question, nitwit?

>> No.11786838

>>11778975
>Can you explain to a brainlet how potentiality inevitably leads to god?

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmpw0_w27As

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7ekInWOMw

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx9gLvLYF5s&t=1929s

Watch in that order.

also for the
>but this doesn't prove the God of Christianity!!
Yeah it doesn't, but if start with all five ways that Aquinas gave, you begin to discover the divine attributes of God and embark on the philosophical trail towards the Christian God up until you need sacred doctrine (divine revelation).
so with that, watch this, to get the ball rolling:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcmFbEC9kDE&t=741s

>> No.11786894

>>11779469
>My belief is that any being with potential necessitates its own actualization.

>Summa Theologiae I.2.3
"There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible."

>Summa Contra Gentiles I.22.6
"If, then, something were its own cause of being, it would be understood to be before it had being – which is impossible…"

Something cannot be both potentially X and actually X; something causing itself would mean that for that something to be potentially X, it must be actually X to change that potentiality of X into actuality of X. See how that is impossible?

Now if you say something like "this thing is potentially X and actually Y, that actuality of Y can reduce the potentiality of X to the actuality of X. That would make sense, because the actuality of X is being caused by some other actuality, Y, which happens to be an actual part of that thing.

>> No.11787065

>>11786894
If the potentiality of anything isn't necessarily what you say it is, then you can't use potentiality to imply anything.

>> No.11787523

>>11785820
this is your brain on rhizomes and weed