/mg/ - metaphysics general

[Anonymous No.22105929]

Metaphysics as Science edititon

previous thread >>22085207

>We come now to metaphysics, a purely speculative science, which occupies a completely isolated position and is entirely independent of the teachings of experience. It deals with mere conceptions—not, like mathematics, with conceptions applied to intuition—and in it, reason is the pupil of itself alone. It is the oldest of the sciences, and would still survive, even if all the rest were swallowed up in the abyss of an all-destroying barbarism. But it has not yet had the good fortune to attain to the sure scientific method.
- Herr Kant

[Anonymous No.22105996]

What Kant was trying to do was tell philosophers
>why the fuck are you trying to run "does God exist.exe", "Total Annihilation" and "Do we have a soul.exe", at the same time on a 1998 IBM you fucking retard. It doesn't have the specs to handle it.
But some other retard had to say
>works fine on my machine
So Kant had to lay, in detail, the specs of the computer, what could be added, what came with the manufacturer, what could be inputted/ outputted, as well as all the general principles of a 1998 shitbox, so he could try to definitely say what programs could be run and what couldn't.

This analogy is useful in explaining the limitation of the human intellect, but fortunately the human brain as material correlate to the human intellect is organic and capable of growth and change in a way an inorganic electronic computer is not. To run DoesGodExist.exe on an inorganic electronic computer you would need a computer that already had those specs, if not, you'd have to get a new computer, or upgrade with after market parts; on an organic computer, you can start with one that may not be able to run it yet, but can, in time, develop and grow itself to be able to run it. And the same goes with the human body. In fact, this is what I believe the Greys to be. Imagine the intellectual capacities of beings with significantly more vast and complex neural matter correlate, even a more complex physiological matter correlate as a whole. Kant actually addresses this in the first critique as well:

>It is, moreover, not necessary that we should limit the mode of intuition in space and time to the sensuous faculty of man. It may well be that all finite thinking beings must necessarily in this respect agree with man (though as to this we cannot decide)...

>It may be true that there are intelligible existences to which our faculty of sensuous intuition has no relation

>...the categories do in some measure really extend further than sensuous intuition, inasmuch as they think objects in general, without regard to the mode (of sensibility) in which these objects are given. But they do not for this reason apply to and determine a wider sphere of objects, because we cannot assume that such can be given, without presupposing the possibility of another than the sensuous mode of intuition...

>we cannot form the most distant conception of the possibility of an understanding which should cognize an object, not discursively by means of categories, but intuitively in a non-sensuous intuition...

and so on.

93

[Anonymous No.22106004]

>>22105929
can I request that the next thread by the John Locke edition

[Anonymous No.22106035]

>>22106004
no

[Anonymous No.22106038]

>>22106035
fuck you. you don't care about metaphysics. you just have a crush on a severe autist from the 18th century.

[Anonymous No.22106045]

>>22106038
kek no homo tho

[Anonymous No.22106126]

>>22105929
The thing-in-itself is itself in the thing.

[Anonymous No.22106134]

>>22106126
you mean Being is virtual in all things? duns scotus said it.

[Anonymous No.22106152]

>>22106126
>thing
what thing?

[Anonymous No.22106165]

>>22106134
Any recommendations for an overview of Scotus?

[Anonymous No.22106178]

how old do you thinks the anons in here are? 60? 70?

[Anonymous No.22106200]

>>22106178
I'm 18
>>22106165
read the first section of this "concerning metaphysics." it's only 13 pages. a bit out of context, but it should get you interested in him http://library.lol/main/0101179738BB3E2C1E9049D30030B76C

[Anonymous No.22106229]

>>22105929
can I request that the next thread be the Michael Sembello edition?

[Anonymous No.22106629]

This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to ever understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.

—Diels–Kranz, 22B1

For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding.

—Diels–Kranz, 22B2

Listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all things are one.

—Diels–Kranz, 22B50

an independent existence of a universal logos was clearly suggested by Heraclitus.

[Anonymous No.22106632]

>>22106629
what are you trying to apply? that he was talking about Jesus?

[Anonymous No.22106637]

>>22106629
>>22106632
>tfw you're the reincarnation of Heraclitus

[Anonymous No.22106643]

>>22106629
>>22106637
>The central idea of Heraclitus' philosophy is the unity of opposites
holy shit...

[Anonymous No.22106645]

>>22106632
it wasn't, but now that you mention it I see the connection

[Anonymous No.22106650]

I hasten to inform you all that I am drunk, eating couscous, I have just given my ex-girlfriend some flowers (an act which has profoundly confused her), and I am about to read a pirated pdf of Guthrie's book on Orphism until my booze runs out.

[Anonymous No.22106652]

>>22106637
>>22106643
H*gel just used Heraclitus's ideas because it sounded cool

[Anonymous No.22106671]

>>22106637
>According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus deposited his book in the original Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.

>In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Artemis (/ˈɑːrtJmJs/; Greek: Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. She was heavily identified with Selene, the personification of the Moon, and HECATE...
wut. the. fuck.

[Anonymous No.22106673]

>>22106652
no

[Anonymous No.22106690]

>Dialetheism (from Greek δι- di- 'twice' and ἀλήθεια alḗtheia 'truth') is the view that there are statements that are both true and false. More precisely, it is the belief that there can be a true statement whose negation is also true. Such statements are called "true contradictions", dialetheia, or nondualisms.

>According to Aristotle, Heraclitus went so far as to be a dialetheist, or one who denies the law of non contradiction.

this just keeps getting better

[Anonymous No.22106699]

>>22106690
Hegel isn't a dialethist.

[Anonymous No.22106728]

>Ethos anthropoi daimon
>A man's character is his guardian divinity
- Heraclitus

93

[Anonymous No.22106737]

>>22106699
>All that is necessary to achieve scientific progress — and it is essential to strive to gain this quite simple insight — is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative is just as much positive, or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity
explain?

[Anonymous No.22106743]

>>22106737
dialethism means holding both contradictions simultaneously, just as they are. he is talking about how they resolve. if you take the two and don't let them interact or change, and require them to be considered separately, he won't accept them both. that's why he isn't a dialethist.

[Anonymous No.22106770]

>>22106743
>what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity
he holds both to be true and yet not cancel out.

[Anonymous No.22106774]

>>22106770
that's not what that says. it says a thing that is self contradictory isn't a nothingness/impossibility.

[Anonymous No.22106780]

>>22106774
or to be exact, what is self contradictory resolves itself, but not into a nothingness. he isn't even referring to two different propositions in that case, but one thing that is self contradictory, and he's still referring to it as a process.

[Anonymous No.22106782]

>Cratylism holds that there is a natural relationship between words and what words designate.
based Cratylus

[Anonymous No.22106788]

>>22106782
>Cratylus finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once.
Cratylus bros, we can't stop winning

[Anonymous No.22106800]

>32 posts
>4 IPs
metaphysics bros...

[Anonymous No.22106808]

>>22106637
>The influence of Heraclitus on Hegel was so profound that he remarked in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy: "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic."
it's official then

[Anonymous No.22106821]

>the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the logos by Philo, who also said that the logos was God's instrument in the creation of the Universe.

[Anonymous No.22106837]

>For Ibn Arabi, the logos or "Universal Man" was a mediating link between individual human beings and the divine essence.

[Anonymous No.22106864]

>>22105929
>only 4 posters in this thread
>35 posts
What a weird thread. >>22106038 this dude is right, and it further seems OP doesn't really care about anything but talking to himself or maybe to 1-2 others.

[Anonymous No.22107131]

>>22106864
I'm here to save y'all

>>22105929
Metaphysics peaked at Gayreeks and Buddyhists, you simply don't need anything beyond them for correct assessments that weren't repeated later in different forms and different layers of unoptimized pedantry

[Anonymous No.22107137]

>>22107131
I may even add that the peaking was done at Taoism but, honestly, it's just laid out better and generally more comprehensible in the other two

[Anonymous No.22107444]

>>22107131
>Metaphysics peaked at Hegel
ftfy

[Anonymous No.22107451]

>>22107131
>Metaphysics peaked at Gayreeks and Buddyhists,
>>22107444
>Metaphysics peaked at Hegel
>t. hasn't read Lotze
dunkin on you readlets is too easy

[Anonymous No.22107476]

>>22107444
>>22107451
>introduced nothing new since Taoism aside from their subjective obsessions
yikes

who's next?

[Anonymous No.22108374]

>page 10
metaphysic implications if this?

[Anonymous No.22108393]

>>22106774
midwit take

[Anonymous No.22108762]

The true founder of a distinctively Byzantine mysticism was Maximus the Confessor (7th century), who deepened the tradition of Christian Neoplatonism, as found in the Pseudo-Dionysius, with the resources of Orthodox Christology. No other writer in Eastern Christian tradition surpasses Maximus in speculative range and originality. Later representatives of this mystical tradition were Symeon the New Theologian and Nicetas Stethatos in the 11th, and Nikolaos Kavasilas in the 14th century. The Byzantine mystical writers differ from those of Western Europe chiefly in their attitude to ecclesiastical ceremonies, to which they adhered implicitly, seeing in it a profound symbol of the spiritual life of the church, where Occidentals see an attempt to displace the inner life with external pomp. Accordingly, Symeon strictly observed the ceremonial rules of the church, regarding them, however, only as a means to the attainment of ethical perfection. His principal work (published only in Latin) is a collection of prose pieces and hymns on communion with God. He is akin to the chief German mystics in his tendency towards pantheism.

[Anonymous No.22108962]

>>22106864
>OP doesn't really care about anything but talking to himself or maybe to 1-2 others.
not very many of you are worth talking to

[Anonymous No.22109074]

>>22108962
That's how I feel about people who don't even read the vast amount of metaphysics produced and stick to Kant and Hegel and maybe the Greeks and Eastern philosophers. It's you who aren't worth talking to.

[Anonymous No.22109084]

>>22109074
please enlighten us non-western metaphysics fag

[Anonymous No.22109104]

>>22109084
Well what's worth learning about Kant is figuring out the limits of thought and experience and inference. The issue is Kant did that project over 200 years ago and his account, though heroic, is limited. Hegel's great insight was that reality need not conform to the forms of logic alone. There are other Germans, including other idealists (Schelling and Schopenhauer) who noticed this even better. The Greeks (if you mean stuff like the Platonists) and Eastern philosophers (like Buddhist ones) also realized this. But again, these guys are all limited. You need tor revamp Kant's project and apply it to the scope of possible human thought, experience, and inference. To do that though, like Kant, you need to be up to date on the newest developments. He was very informed about what the late Scholastic Aristotelians were up to, as well as the continental rationalists and the British empiricists. How many of you can say you know the history of philosophy up to and including the latest metaphysics work in 21st century analytic and continental philosophy? You just can't hope to replicate what Kant did 200 years ago if you're not even trying. Don't ask me to guide you yet because I don't have evidence that you want to even go this route. That's what I'm critiquing though.

[Anonymous No.22109120]

>>22109104
>How many of you can say you know the history of philosophy up to and including the latest metaphysics work in 21st century analytic and continental philosophy?
anon this is 4chan

[Anonymous No.22109159]

>>22105929
Metaphysics is nothing but a projection of pure human bias onto reallity itself.
All criticism of it troughout history prove so.
Every time some pumpkinhead says he diacovered underling truth of reallity, we just get 100 years of thesis-anthithesis until someone like Kant comes and says: Hey my dudes, your fiction does not work because so and so and so.
If metaphysics was sucsesfull in anything it was in showing how wild human imagination can go and was proven as a good field to show flaws in human intellect.
>Inb4 i was late to a movie but i can by logic and apriori reassoning conclude what happend in 1st minutes of a movie by observing what is happening now.

[Anonymous No.22109167]

>>22109159
>Every time some pumpkinhead says he diacovered underling truth of reallity, we just get 100 years of thesis-anthithesis until someone like Kant comes and says: Hey my dudes, your fiction does not work because so and so and so.

Herr Hegel:
>>these thousands of years the same Architect has directed the work: and that Architect is the one living Mind whose nature is to think, to bring to self-consciousness what it is, and, with its being thus set as object before it, to be at the same time raised above it, and so to reach a higher stage of its own being. The different systems which the history of philosophy presents are therefore not irreconcilable with unity. We may [...] say, that it is one philosophy at different degrees of maturity...
anon you are still at an inferior level of maturity

[Anonymous No.22109186]

>>22109167
No.. i am at level when i figured out i can sell what ever story i can to anyone if i have enought time and will to create a system based on umverfiable assptions filled with vague and ambigious words.

[Anonymous No.22109214]

>>22109186
Edit:
What hegel quote is saying is:
We keep hiting wall with head expecting wall to break but realising we cant so we stop until another guy comes and says we could try it from different angle so we do it again because he used different words to describe the wall.
Here.. there is your metaphysics

[Anonymous No.22109220]

>>22109104
>Hegel's great insight was that reality need not conform to the forms of logic alone.
you have it backwords

>In the Preface to my Philosophy of Right, p. xix, are found the propositions:
What is reasonable is actual
and
What is actual is reasonable.

>The actuality of the rational stands opposed by the popular fancy that Ideas and ideals are nothing but chimeras, and philosophy a mere system of such phantasms.

>The object of philosophy is the Idea: and the Idea is not so impotent as merely to have a right or an obligation to exist without actually existing.

[Anonymous No.22109224]

>>22109214
thats... not what it says... at all... which confirms my point

[Anonymous No.22109431]

>>22109120
Yeah, which is why I only spend time here during the Summer break when I'm bored and have free time. I just would rather leave a positive influence on pseuds if possible. Every smart person begins as a pseud in their youth. You guys have like 70 years ahead to work it out.
>>22109220
I used language that you misconstrued, and that's my fault. I know fully well how Hegel sees reality (our word) as appearance (his word) on its dialectical way towards becoming true reality (his word). And he thinks that what it requires for appearance to become true reality, is for the immanent contradictions to be resolved and the Idea be achieved at the end of the process. I know this, but my point is his insight is that (at the current date), reality (my word, aka what he calls appearance instead) can fail to meet the forms of logic. That's in fact something he says. That's what I'm saying is the valuable insight, because many previous philosophers thought current reality must meet logical forms already by default. They don't have some account like Hegel's where they will in the future but don't do it yet. Anyway I disagree with Hegel's dialectic myself, but I believe he's right to notice that current reality (appearance for him) doesn't fit logical forms. After that, we part ways as to the why. The British idealists are closer to me than Hegel in this.

[Anonymous No.22109470]

>>22109431
>I only spend time here during the Summer break when I'm bored and have free time.
are you grad or undergrad?

[Anonymous No.22109497]

>>22105929
>posts a thread about metaphysics
>picture of some german

you have to do better, op

[Anonymous No.22109503]

>>22109497
why do the Krauts make /lit/ seethe so much?

[Anonymous No.22109512]

>>22109470
5th year PhD philosophy student in the Fall.

[Anonymous No.22109524]

>>22109512
if not larp I kneel
good luck finding professorship

[Anonymous No.22109528]

>>22109503
the reverse is the problem. germans get shilled so much that everyone ignores the anglos. when all you post is germans newbies don't realize there is anything else, and if they pursue this shit they end up wasting the rest of their lives away on Heidegger, the biggest dead fucking end ever. Kant is a worse pseud trap than Wittgenstein. I've been anti-kraut posting constantly for a few months.

[Anonymous No.22109544]

>>22109431
>That's what I'm saying is the valuable insight, because many previous philosophers thought current reality must meet logical forms already by default.
Hegel does believe this. The world is rational, the Logos is already objectively real, but our finite understandings must be raised through dialectic to see the eternal presence of the Logos that is right in front of us if only we had the eyes to see it.

[Anonymous No.22109555]

>>22109528
>ignores the anglos.
if by anglos you mean "analytic philosophy" then I don't see the problem.

[Anonymous No.22110577]

Metaphysics is the most gate kept field of study ever.

[Anonymous No.22110609]

>>22109528
How do I start with the Anglos?

[Anonymous No.22110678]

before you do metaphysics, you must refute hume first, do we have a connection to the external world? We don't have any empirical evidence for any of the metaphysics and even induction, ball A hitting ball b and causing a reaction is just stating the current state of affairs and not induction

[Anonymous No.22110796]

>>22109544
I don't believe this is Hegel's view, but I'm open to believing someone interprets him that way. The Science of Logic makes it really clear that the rational development isn't over per se, and contradictions remain immanent for now in it. It's not a problem of our understanding being finite, but the very fabric of current being. We're not at the Idea stage yet. But I'm willing to bet Pippin or Brandom think something otherwise since they try to psychologize the Science of Logic.
>>22110678
Hume doesn't need to be refuted because Hume himself explains the way forward, but people don't read his Treatise or even Enquiry in close detail. Not saying Hume is right even then but it's like people don't read Hume when they think they know him as some absolute skeptic.
>>22110609
I'm not the person you're replying to but my recommendation would be you learn about the following at least through tertiary or secondary sources, if you don't have time to dive deeper.
>British Scholasticism (Anselm, etc)
>English Renaissance Philosophy (Erasmus, More, Bacon, etc)
>Cambridge Platonism
>British Empiricism
>Scottish Realism
>English Positivism (John Stuart Mill, etc)
>Synthetic Philosophy (Spencer)
>Oxford Movement (Newman)
>Transcendentalism
>British Idealism
>American Idealism (Royce, Bowne, Howison)
>American Pragmatism
>Collingwood's Aesthetics
>Process Philosophy
>Early Analytic Philosophy (the Russell/Moore brand of realism; read Frege too)
>Logical Positivism (Ayer; read the Germans too though, chiefly Carnap)
>Ordinary Language Philosophy
>American Neopragmatism and Analytic post-Positivist Metaphysics and Metametaphysics
>Analytic Modal and Post-Modal (Hyperintensional) Metaphysics and Metametaphysics
>Communitarianism (MacIntyre, Taylor)
>Warwick Accelerationism, Theory-Fiction, and Speculative Realism

[Anonymous No.22110797]

>>22105929
Hello, excuse me.
How do you even penetrate this literature? It seems so dense. Kant especially.

Where does someone start?

[Anonymous No.22110798]

The only real metaphysicians are
>Plato
>Aristotle
>Al-Farabi
>Avicenna
>The Sufis
>The Scholastics

Everything des Cartes and beyond should be ignored.

[Anonymous No.22110957]

>>22110609
>>22110796
start with the british empiricists and the american pragmatists

[Anonymous No.22111366]

"There are more things , Horatio , in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy . " -HAMLET

Among the occult sciences I include the cult of Spiritism , and I do not deny that associated with it are fraud , deception and trickery , but can any one believe that scholars like de Mirville and Des Mous seaux and scientists like Lodge , Flammarion , Barret , Richet , Wallace , and James , who , after many years of experience with mediums , after patient examination of the cult , and intelligent study of the subject , aban doned materialism for Spiritism - were deceived . They have all confessed their absolute belief in the objective reality of spirit phenomena . The only ground of dispute between these eminent men and Catholic and Anglican investigators of the cult is the nature of the beings or intelligences that produce the phenomena

[Anonymous No.22111986]

I wanted to say something in Sunday school today but everyone else kept talking and I didn't get a chance.

[Anonymous No.22112007]

>>22111986
share with us

[Anonymous No.22112066]

>>22110797