Over 10 yrs ago everybody thought Mel Gibson was crazy [715x715 - 74KB]

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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.

@PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica

>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. @PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica

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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.

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Thanks fella.

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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.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica

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You seem to espouse belief-antirealism, and yet you claim I believe in truth vs falsity.

You diminish the reality of the conflict between the true and the false, and then you cite a "law of nature".

You criticize the meaning of language and argument, and then structure an argument on the basis of several word definitions.

Is anyone here denying the role of motion in temporal reality? No, but you would reduce everything to it, thereby undermining the vertical causation of the intellect itself, without which they could be no apprehension of Logos, no meaning in definitions, no possibility of argument. I do not find what you are saying to be coherent.

@Chiro @KingOfWhiteAmerica

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The universal; the ALL is communicated to the ONEs within through motion; through change.

Yes, but this is not the only way the One is understood by the Many. It has long been a goal of the sages, and later the alchemists, and later (some) scientists to understand God through the forces and patterns in nature, of which motion (as change) is a kind of all-encompassing category.

But I ask you: is mind itself not a motion, and not something which is always in motion? In fact, is its motion not the most peculiar because it transcends temporal and spatial dimensions, moving freely with a power not demonstrated by any other natural phenomena?

Why dismiss the motion of the mind, especially the automatic motions which encounter us as intuition?

The One is understood not simply through man's senses, in the wise that the brain perceives nature directly, but instead the One is perceived through the intellect - by way of intellective acts which encompass the lower reasoning and the higher forms of direct intuition, together comprising what the ancients called gnosis.

Show me anything within nature I need to submit my consciousness to instead of adapting to it?

Exactly what do you take adaptation to be? I'd like to know what you think it is, this adaptation, that does not benefit in every respect by the conscious apprehension of what we're doing when we do it.

To increase ONEs potential equals to increase ONEs comprehension of ALL.

Alright, so you say that the ONEs are set into motion between start and end, and in between they can comprehend the ALL. Since all ONEs issue from the ALL, then it follows that the ALL gains - through the ONEs - a kind of understanding of itself. That might be a simplification, but it does enough work. So doesn't it follow that the ALL, being infinite, would over time attract to its local manifestations (ONEs) the maximal number and types of knowing that could cause understanding to be the most complete within the boundaries of the natural law?

Think about this for a moment. You are saying the ALL can only be known through our adaptations to motion. That's pretty paltry, on anyone's account of knowing. To clarify, imagine a coconut falls from a palm tree, I notice it and step out of the way to avoid being struck. On your account, I've adapted, but this is where it stops. The question I'm posing is: do I not know more about the phenomenon of that set of motions (including my own adaptation) if I can reason about it and use language to communicate it to other ONEs? It's as if you'd wish to eliminate our shared experience of the ALL by preventing anyone from going beyond the immediate subjective experience of it, and communicating.

If there were not more ends than this in reality, why the diversity of creature and kind? If responding to motion is the final cause of all things, then the eagle or the shark or the hummingbird or some sleek, swift cat would be the only Forms necessary. Everything which sets mankind apart from other animal nature appears to lay with man's unique pursuit of justice, truth, and beauty - this great rising up to the air from out of the mud, literally an elevation, that simply cannot be dismissed as misbegotten and undesirable adaptations to motion. Your reduction of this is so palpably absurd that I'd actually like to somehow draw the thought from your head and find a way to light it on fire and stomp it out with my heel. It's that bad.

Why would the ALL not also increase the means for comprehension, such that with time the ONEs could begin to know the ALL through multiple channels, including experience and apprehension directly of the logic (laws) in nature? It follows that language and pictographic representations of meaning would also come to be ways of knowing the ALL. And that eventually our social adaptations such as Churches and art, and music, and culture would be means of, together, participating in an even greater collective apprehension of the highest reality. We are always climbing UP and transcending the most material level of existence where the only meaning is in the vector quantities of particles and their motion and collisions...your theory throws out entirely the much more robust universe of the spiritual, of which our physical/material universe is just a coarse microcosm.

There is a dark force that would very much like for you to ignore the spirit and only see crude motion and materiality in the world. But you'd be missing the cosmically more important part of your being. To answer another question you posed in your post, there is no non-existence. God is and always was, and therefore the Absolute Spirit everywhere is. 'I am that am' (Exodus Ch. III)

@PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica

> The universal; the ALL is communicated to the ONEs within through motion; through change. Yes, but this is not the only way the One is understood by the Many. It has long been a goal of the sages, and later the alchemists, and later (some) scientists to understand God through the forces and patterns in nature, of which *motion* (as *change*) is a kind of all-encompassing category. But I ask you: is *mind itself* not a motion, and not something which is *always* in motion? In fact, is its motion not the most peculiar because it transcends temporal and spatial dimensions, moving freely with a power not demonstrated by any other natural phenomena? Why dismiss the motion of the mind, especially the automatic motions which encounter us as intuition? The One is understood not simply through man's senses, in the wise that the brain perceives nature directly, but instead the One is perceived through the intellect - by way of intellective acts which encompass the lower reasoning and the higher forms of direct intuition, together comprising what the ancients called *gnosis*. >Show me anything within nature I need to submit my consciousness to instead of adapting to it? Exactly what do you take adaptation to be? I'd like to know what you think it is, this adaptation, that does not benefit in every respect by the conscious apprehension of what we're doing when we do it. >To increase ONEs potential equals to increase ONEs comprehension of ALL. Alright, so you say that the ONEs are set into motion between start and end, and in between they can comprehend the ALL. Since all ONEs issue from the ALL, then it follows that the ALL gains - through the ONEs - a kind of understanding of itself. That might be a simplification, but it does enough work. So doesn't it follow that the ALL, being infinite, would over time attract to its local manifestations (ONEs) the maximal number and types of knowing that could cause understanding to be the most *complete* within the boundaries of the natural law? Think about this for a moment. You are saying the ALL can only be known through our adaptations to motion. That's pretty paltry, on anyone's account of knowing. To clarify, imagine a coconut falls from a palm tree, I notice it and step out of the way to avoid being struck. On your account, I've adapted, but this is where it stops. The question I'm posing is: do I not *know* more about the phenomenon of that set of motions (including my own adaptation) if I can *reason* about it and use language to communicate it to other ONEs? It's as if you'd wish to eliminate our shared experience of the ALL by preventing anyone from going beyond the immediate subjective experience of it, and *communicating*. If there were *not more ends than this in reality*, why the diversity of creature and kind? If responding to motion is the final cause of all things, then the eagle or the shark or the hummingbird or some sleek, swift cat would be the only Forms necessary. Everything which sets mankind apart from other animal nature appears to lay with man's unique pursuit of justice, truth, and beauty - this great rising up to the air from out of the mud, literally an elevation, that simply cannot be dismissed as misbegotten and undesirable adaptations to motion. Your reduction of this is so palpably absurd that I'd actually like to somehow draw the thought from your head and find a way to light it on fire and stomp it out with my heel. It's that bad. Why would the ALL not also *increase* the means for comprehension, such that with time the ONEs could begin to know the ALL through multiple channels, including experience *and* apprehension directly of the logic (laws) in nature? It follows that language and pictographic representations of meaning would also come to be ways of knowing the ALL. And that eventually our social adaptations such as Churches and art, and music, and culture would be means of, together, participating in an even greater collective apprehension of the highest reality. We are always climbing UP and transcending the most material level of existence where the only meaning is in the vector quantities of particles and their motion and collisions...your theory throws out entirely the much more robust universe of the spiritual, of which our physical/material universe is just a coarse microcosm. There is a dark force that would very much like for you to ignore the spirit and only see crude motion and materiality in the world. But you'd be missing the cosmically more important part of your being. To answer another question you posed in your post, there is no non-existence. God is and always was, and therefore the Absolute Spirit everywhere *is*. 'I am that am' (Exodus Ch. III) @PS @KingOfWhiteAmerica

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To claim that there are no universals is a universal statement and thus self-contradicting.

Destroy Relativism in one easy step! Here’s how.

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Modernists hate this man! One weird trick...

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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.

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