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Theoretical Philosophy » Are we immortal? » 4/14/2018 8:23 am

SapereAude
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Miguel wrote:

Yes, because our immaterial intellect carries out operations independently from our bodies...

Were it the case, it would have been the strongest argument for the immateriality of mind (but NOT for the immortality of one since immateriality and immortality are not logically connected—it may turn out that our minds are material and immortal after all. It heavily depends on the definitions of material/immaterial one assumes). What we do see is quite the opposite—not only brain traumas result in severe damage for mental abilities, but what is more important, specific traumas result in specific damage implying the existence of a material structure that is the basis for our mental abilities. When this structure gets broken or changed, so does one's mind. What is the CT response to this undeniable fact?
 

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/08/2018 9:12 am

SapereAude
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@Greg
Here's my point—it's madness to attack PNC per se, it's impossible, and I'm not interested in abstract formal reasoning at all, I'm interested in reality. My question is whether PNC as a tool is applicable through and through and whether we can justify its application at all in some cases. Kant, Kierkegaard and Shestov deny that for different reasons. The simplest point is made by Kierkegaard and Shestov (irrationalism). As Kierkegaard famously said, there is nothing impossible for God. We might take it as a definition, actually. So, if according to PNC we can't say that God does and doesn't exist "in the same respect and at the same time," let alone that He is and is not good, omniscient, and so forth.... and that's the case because PNC is unassailable..... what we are stating, in effect, is that God is subject to the Necessity of PNC. But that's absurd - God cannot be subject to anything.... except for Himself perhaps.... and even if so, there always exists a nonzero possibility that such a world might come into existence where He was not, should there to be His will. Or take, e.g. time - if God just cannot make the past "non-ever-happened" it follows that He is subject to the irreversibility of time, so He is a false god and Gnostics were right after all. Show me the entity who laid down that PNC is unassailable, that time is irreversible, that 2+2 always equals 4 - that's true God.
As Bill Vallicella put it:

Given the identity of the Second Person and the man Jesus, if a man was raised bodily from the dead by the power of God, and this man is God, then God raises himself.
This doctrine violates our ordinary canons of reasoning. It is, to put it bluntly, absurd in the logical sense of the term: logically contradictory. (Tertullian, Kierkegaard, and Shestov would agree.) Or so it seems to me and Dale Tuggy and many others. But others, eq

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/07/2018 11:21 am

SapereAude
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@Greg
I readily admit that I'm not a mathematician or logician and even if I were, it would be just impossible to properly address such a question in a mere comment. My problem with PC lies in the qualification: "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time". That "in the same respect and at the same time" seems doubtful to me—we do know precisely what it means in the proposition but what about reality? Already Plato questioned it: "According to both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus was said to have denied the law of non-contradiction. This is quite likely if, as Plato pointed out, the law of non-contradiction does not hold for changing things in the world. If a philosophy of Becoming is not possible without change, then (the potential of) what is to become must already exist in the present object. In "We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and we are not", both Heraclitus's and Plato's object simultaneously must, in some sense, be both what it now is and have the potential (dynamic) of what it might become." According to some interpretations of Zeno's paradoxes, "all of Zeno's motion paradoxes are resolved by the conclusion that instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes do not physically exist." Aristotle himself argued that "Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles." Alas, modern physics posits exactly that: "Another proposed solution is to question one of the assumptions Zeno used in his paradoxes, which is that between any two different points in space (or time), there is always another point. Without this assumption there are only a finite number of distances between two points, hence there is no infinite sequence of movements, and the paradox is resolved.[b] The ideas of Planck length and Planck time in modern physics place a limit on the measurement of time and space, if not on time and space

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/07/2018 9:45 am

SapereAude
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John West wrote:

But Vallicella doesn't argue that we can't prove the theses are metaphysical laws (cf. example 4). Only that we can't prove they are by retorsion.

No, I don't think BV meant that the theses are metaphysical laws, but rather that they are truths simply on logical grounds. No ontology is specifically engaged (cf. example 6 which requires some ontology but not too much also). Upshot:

My tentative conclusion is that retorsion has merely a transcendental significance, not a metaphysical one.

So, we can believe that a thesis is a metaphysical law, but we cannot prove it. All "proofs" revolve in the framework of the "first principles" of which we can only believe that they are true. Done properly, "proofs" are unassailably valid but only within the starting framework. Has that framework anything to do with reality?—that's another question.

Ouros wrote:

Kant was a prime example for that: even if he wanted to show that we can only use the PSR for phenomena, he used it also, in a more subtle way, on the things-in-themselve.

Kant is not an idol to blindly worship. The whole conception of the things-in-themselves was ill-devised and should be discarded in favour of much stronger notion of the Noumenon (but not Noumena!).
 

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/06/2018 8:39 am

SapereAude
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seigneur wrote:

With their unreadability they are risking being useless, because they cannot be understood or can easily be misunderstood...

There is nothing to argue about—life is too short. My position is as follows: if there is something valuable in a philosopher's writings that must be transferable into other words. So, I read only secondary literature not bothering a bit about unimportant subtleties.

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/06/2018 12:52 am

SapereAude
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Greg wrote:

It is hard to think of a modern philosopher of greater influence than Kant in the theory of knowledge and ontology. It is no exaggeration to say that both the continental and analytic traditions would not have come into existence without him.

Yes, like it or hate it, it's just the fact—Immanuel Kant is the central figure in modern philosophy.

Greg wrote:

I am never sure what I'm supposed to think when I hear claims like this. Is there any proposition which you propose I should believe and disbelieve?

As far as I understand, Hegel's project aims to create a dynamic philosophy, a philosophy of process. Aristotle's static logic demonstrably leads to paradoxes (Zeno), so, being a complete system in itself, it poorly grasp things as they are in reality, i.e. in time, in motion. Sure, we use AL on a daily basis, but that only on condition that we consider objects as being static. It's a bit like Newton's physics to be enough for everyday calculations than to use Einstein's. Nobody is quite sure how to implement Hegel's dialectical logic, but it just cannot be bypassed in modern philosophical reasoning.

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/05/2018 3:09 pm

SapereAude
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seigneur wrote:

When it comes to pure metaphysics (ontology in particular), they get quite clear, e.g. in Advaita Vedanta that thou shalt not mix up self and not-self, in Buddhism that it's a fatal error to attribute essence to anything (or any thing), etc.

But Hegel does precisely the opposite! Thou shalt mix up self and not-self! Speaking of logic proper, I think Hegel is the right choice. His Science of Logic is just formidable being a radical challenge to the statics of Aristotle's Prior Analytics. And what is the matter with combining epistemology and metaphysics? Since Kant it's been inevitable.
Sure, Hegel is absolutly unreadable but that's another issue.

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/05/2018 1:47 pm

SapereAude
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UPD A funny attempt to cope with an apparent Hegel's influence in the history of philosophy. Upshot: Maybe I'm just wrong. Maybe Hegel is king after all.

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/05/2018 1:01 pm

SapereAude
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seigneur wrote:

Similarly, when you deny the law of non-contradiction, you can't do metaphysics. Or maybe you can, but then please show the result and we'll see whose metaphysics is better in some respect, if any.

Ever heard of Hegel?

Wikipedia: Central to Hegel's conception of knowledge and mind (and therefore also of reality) was the notion of identity in difference, that is that mind externalizes itself in various forms and objects that stand outside of it or opposed to it, and that, through recognizing itself in them, is "with itself" in these external manifestations, so that they are at one and the same time mind and other-than-mind. This notion of identity in difference, which is intimately bound up with his conception of contradiction and negativity, is a principal feature differentiating Hegel's thought from that of other philosophers.

Hegel cites a number of fragments of Heraclitus in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. One to which he attributes great significance is the fragment he translates as "Being is not more than Non-being", which he interprets to mean
Sein und Nichts sei dasselbe
Being and non-being are the same.
 

Theoretical Philosophy » Retorsion argument, first principles and non-classical logic » 4/04/2018 1:17 pm

SapereAude
Replies: 40

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Ouros wrote:

The basis of metaphysics, first principles, can only be defended with retorsion argument, or it seems so.

Too bad for metaphysics then.
 

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