![Over 10 yrs ago everybody thought Mel Gibson was crazy [715x715 - 74KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/qXDJuk.jpg){kind=link}
Is there any other life-form that utilizes language to proclaim reality for each other, to then argue about truth and false states of those proclamations or do they seem to communicate with each other in adherence to motion (adaptation).
Is there any other animal that has written Inferno, Paradise Lost, or Macbeth? Is there any other animal that has painted a Mona Lisa? Is there any other animal that has composed Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata?
Question how nature inspired you to perceive impossibility?
Impossibility is a formal concept from modal logic. For example, it is logically impossible for something to be simultaneously both a circle and a square. It is metaphysically impossible for you to be your own parent. It is naturally impossible for a telephone booth to fly. Animals aren't aware of this concept because they lack higher intelligence. You'd have me think that all of this was for naught, a great mistake, and that I ought to live my life like an animal.
Question. You've highlighted the fact that man's intellect and rationality set him apart from nature, but you've not justified by way of any convincing argument that this is not, in fact, a privileged position, or perhaps even an ordained one. You discount human intellect a priori as an aberrant mode of being in the world, when our reasoning (in combination with our imagination and creativity) has produced wonders that the animal world could not dream of. You believe that you have discovered such an obvious fact of nature here, but it flies in the face of common sense.
Within motion (reality) you're perceiving a flow of information as inspiration to your senses.
Yes, I can see the point that you're attempting to make here, but you simply run afoul of not just common sense, but also of history. Start with Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus, Socrates - Plato, Aristotle, so on and so forth, and tell me that man's reasoning is a misguided and inexcusable error. Of course, you'll find error in the philosophy of these thinkers, but follow it down the line and note the changes, the increase in sophistication and methods, the increase in the resolution with which we formulate the questions that need to be asked.
You contradict yourself through and through. First, you assert that the only source of mental contents can be from sense data, which is patently false - and no, not false in an illusory sense, but actually false. The contents of my inspiration are provably not identical to sense data. Then you go on to say that our error is in holding on to the information we receive, which, becoming a 'want' - as opposed to basic action/response - separates us from nature.
How ought we adapt to the inspiration from our senses? You continue to say 'Adapt to motion!' - but do you literally mean to adapt thoughtlessly? To just move when the world moves? I can't emphasize enough how handicapped your notion of being in the world is. If I do not take my mind seriously enough to at least entertain some type of rational choice theory (never mind the particulars), then life would be a series of click-whirr responses (automatic responses) to every phenomenon I perceive. Not even higher animals interact with the world this primitively. There are many examples of animals demonstrating intelligence, wants, problem solving, and other psychological properties.
How does one judge the nature of the motion that they perceive and what they ought to do in order to adapt to it? That requires judgment.
I mean, you make some interesting points here and there about the relationship of the One to the Many. You aren't alone in this, because many of the philosophers you scorn have had a great deal to say on this subject, and it's a shame that you are stopping yourself preemptively from exploring that topic with any greater depth than what you have already reasoned yourself. If you personally have had thoughts about this subject which you think are correct, then to say that no other example from among the many brilliant minds of history has anything to add amounts to solipsism.
I want to take what you're saying seriously, but for whatever your philosophy contains that approaches valid metaphysics, the swamp of bad logic and solipsism that surrounds it is an insuperable obstacle.
No matter how often I repeat that I don't believe
This contains the proposition: "In the past, I have repeated the claim that I don't believe."
You believe that proposition, or you couldn't have made the claim.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'd highly, highly recommend you go back to the drawing board, and start from the beginning with the classics, and do it first by acknowledging that the human mind is not some negligible error-engine without power to reveal reality to us. There is no possibility to take your philosophy seriously, or any of your mental contents whatsoever, according to the very claims you're currently making.
You contradict yourself through and through
This is the problem and the key. A self-contradicting position is irrational. An irrational position, definitionally, cannot be rationally held. A position that cannot be rationally held cannot be argued for or defended. Logos is the key to logic / reason, and Logos is the key to argument / dialogue. To claim that there are no universals is a universal statement and thus self-contradicting. To argue that action that we understand / perceive as coming from free agents is only a response to other movements, and anything about this that might be perceived as "free" is mere illusion, is to undermine the legitimacy of both language and argument - and therefore the position is self-contradicting, ergo it is irrational. And one cannot dialogue without accepting the same premises, and those premises have to be rational to lead anywhere. We can accept as a premise that a circle can simultaneously be a square, but it will lead us nowhere.
I agree that some of the things @Energy-in-Motion says may be substantive in certain ways, but they are so bogged down by bad (in fact, self-contradicting!) philosophy that it is scarcely worth addressing. Indeed, he simply has to go back to the drawing board. I recommend starting with Book Epsilon (classics.mit.edu) of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
To claim that there are no universals is a universal statement and thus self-contradicting.
Destroy Relativism in one easy step! Here’s how.
Modernists hate this man! One weird trick...
To argue that action that we understand / perceive as coming from free agents is only a response to other movements, and anything about this that might be perceived as "free" is mere illusion, is to undermine the legitimacy of both language and argument - and therefore the position is self-contradicting, ergo it is irrational.
Bingo. You can't tell people that you can't say true and false things, else why should they take seriously what you're telling them? Sophistry!
Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics is damn good as well, for anyone that prefers more up-to-date language, as well as the elaborations that the Scholastics added. There are some people doing really serious Scholastic metaphysics in professional philosophy, but Feser is able to make it approachable. That's just my opinion.
and do it first by acknowledging that the human mind is not some negligible error-engine without power to reveal reality to us.
I’d like to adapt this to a bronze plaque and hang it up on my wall somewhere.
Thanks fella.
(post is archived)