LIke any argument regarding any God, there is no context to it, without any context there is no way to know anything, this is one of the reasons philosophers write in statements. IE
“Any school is a breeding ground for pretention and social separations within any game for any popularity” we become stigmatized within characterizations forming any labels"
I don't get if, if Heidegger comes after Nietzsche...I thought Heidegger called Nietzsche "the culmination of metaphysics", where Nietzsche saw that everything was "becoming". And then you get Heidegger returning to the question of "being" because he said the ancients forgot it...or something like that. Anyway PM me if you care to elaborate
@FeelingFreshSon What he is referring to is within any physics to conscious experience, there is a book that is being written on this subject ; The question is how can any philosopher develop a physical world view which no one can question; this within itself is a broad task where he mentions taking a long period within seeing and thinking which would become any method within providing any physical truths which would demand proper interpretations within a metaphysical language
@DrFruedienslip Reality is a touchy subject where as a physical world view looks into any cause and effect within any physical changes, and within any supposition that such a thing as any afterlife would truly exist this changes the way we would deal with population concerns while considering any exponential increases of the earths resources, materialism isnt what we think, its all inclusive and has many affects within any conscious experience, a principled economy isthe onlyway
I'm not sure I exactly get what you're saying. So Heidegger wants physics to be explicable by metaphysical thought? Didn't Kant already try and do this in a fairly detailed manner?
@FeelingFreshSon There is a book being written on this regarding any physics to consciousness and the physics of any union of people, this is what is missing within society, which is an all inclusive supposition, sort of like intrinsic anthropology, this rather questions any intent within any religious ideology, we are over populating the world while at the same time trying to maintain any balance within economy, occupations and any use within all natural esources, and what todo
@DrFruedienslip There is a point within being any philosopher related to expanding consciousness, which is why he said that the world is superficial, this has more to do with social principles being applied which is difficult to do when we have to many uneducated persons in the world which have been affected by capitalism, which is why we have so many arguments regarding Capitalism vs Communism which neither word has any intrinsic interpretation, generalizations
@DrFruedienslip Not expanding but exemplifying consciousness, Heidegger didnt achieve what he dreamed and was limited within any religious ignorance which has been around far too long, Plato actually wrote the whole good book and this will be exemplified within the book as well, so we can get rid of any fable that Jesus will ever return since its just a story written by a poet, philosopher attempting to exemplify an intrinsic world view. What is up with doctrines like Christmas and Easter?
@DrFruedienslip Hans Gadamer, was Heiddegers understudy and was very intelligent as he was attempting to exemplify hermeneutics, and also made mention regarding any creation of a common language, one can learn a great deal from all past philosophers by reading between the lines asking the question; what drives philosophers insane trying to figure out what is wrong with the world, and yes there is something wrong with it, there is no plan and there is no goal unless we can define one.
This distilled Heidegger is golden, especially the comment about religion. Can anyone tell me if his philosophy is worth working through? I find it very appealing but keep wondering whether or not it's substantial or just sophistry.
God, people are tiring ! This "calculable" universe of yours - what makes it calculable - if it is calculable ? Can you express that by means of calculation ?
Its not mathematical its how any and all math works out, which is any reasoning within any sense in logical assessments or any construal; what is reality when there is too much taking place all at once until we get into any intrisic level within any physics of any and all relationships; What was Plato's Meno all about? Or his Epistles? Its very hard work to become any philosopher isnt it boys. We might invent any paternal order for any and all philosophers??? Whats truly going On? PlatoRevised
@goldenarms Nietzsche speaks somewhere (I wish I could remember where) about the question of the proper direction of knowledge. Should knowledge proceed from the strange to the familiar and consist in a process of familiarization (science), or ought it really to proceed in the other direction, i.e. from the familiar to the strange ? This latter definition would agree with Heidegger's idea of the uncanny as the genuine element of knowing.
@zarakhast Any proper direction of knowledge ( information) would have more to do within any and all exemplification of any and all physical truths, or anything quantum mechanical which has everything to do within exemplifying any intrinsic world view within which would become any better sense of guidance within how anything works and where it might all lead, obviously we should be considering any and all decline within any population growth because eventually we are going to run out
@DrFruedienslip of any and all natural resources and any sustainability for any and all occupational sustenance which can and will lend to greater poverty and greater concerns within any terrorist threats, which is largely due to any fact that we have no unilateral intent for any purpose other than any heritage within any preconditioned environmental tradition. Or something like that, its just a very gigantuan topic which I have figured out through a long period of seeing and thinking'
@zarakhast Nietzsches notions on epistemology are a critique of the familiar, in the sense that we always creatively anthropomorphise. For Nietzsche, the problem is that the horizon reaches out from one absolute position, man. As such, we can talk about facts - but only through recourse to absolution. Nietzsche wants to say that this is not so, and that there are no facts - only interpretations, but instead the possibility of infinite perspectives.
@stillceaser All of which follows from what metaphysical conclusion ? Only if ultimate reality is nothing can we have "infinite perspectives". It is das Nichts ("the nothing") which makes possible all your silly ideas. It is both funny and not funny at all : it takes the piss out of you and wants you to come to your senses at the same time. It is an absolute ****. You don't understand it.
@zarakhast You haven't read Nietzsche have you? I'll bet you haven't read Heideggers treatments on Nietzsche either. If you'd bothered to then you'd know that stating 'All of which follows from what metaphysical conclusion?' is, as it were, the dogmatist fallacy Nietzsche was trying to flesh out. It is a challenge, or wager if you like, to the absolute presuppositions from which any metaphysics can lay claim to an epistemology. You should read more instead of being so reflexive and rude.
@stillceaser What Heidegger was trying to explain within regards to language and superficialness would be in relation to pretentious attitudes, which limits greater means within any and all communication, which is why philosophy has taken off in the world now that we have this medium called cyberspace,
@stillceaser What do you really know within what any philosophy is meant to fruition, its all inclusive within all social physics and any intrinsic education in being real' being real is knowing what you know within any and all experience' "Construal" there is no sophistry it isnt a definitive word, if one has to be derrogatory within any spiel it questions any intent in motive within any ego within any measure'
@DrFruedienslip I'm not sure I know what you mean when you say 'social physics' or 'intrinsic education'. I think I take your point, it appears to be an epistemological one. In that we 'cannot see beyond our own corner' as it were, we cannot extricate ourselves from Human experience in shaping our knowledge of world and self - which are indeed themselves conceptual artifacts born of human reason/language/cognition....
@DrFruedienslip ...I called what you wrote sophistry for two reasons. Firstly, it was impertinent to the discussion on Heidegger and Nietzsche. Secondly, you obfuscated any point you had with a muddled and slightly incoherent comment. If you are saying that language (and its philosophical treatment) has become too cognitively inflected, or that it can be abused - well, that is true - and Heidegger felt the same way. But how does this relate to Nietzsche/Heidegger?
@stillceaser Its all the same thing any philosophers quest to change the world by giving it any form of definition which has two kinds, the inner within any mind associated with the outer parts, which some calll the matrix or any malady, but what is your context here when it relates to Nietzche/Heidegger?
Any physics within conscious experience can be inhibiting when it comeswithin any and all comparisons while questioning what anyone else knows within any cause in any pretention
@DrFruedienslip Philosophers often write in statements due within any reasoning that there is no way possible to write down every physical experience, words have all origination within subjective conscious observation, any physic of language questions what is true and what is not so true predicated within contextual cognition, Any context provides any question, it is the preceptual operativeness which Gadamer was trying to explain; "How does any person actuallly know anything"
@DrFruedienslip Hermeneutics, applies true statements within any true experience, as one cannot know what anything means unless it can be applied within any actual sense within any experience, Like watching the boob tube, how much actually makes any sense when it is not any intrinsic art' like You cant take it with you, My Man Godfrey, Long Days Journey into night, three of the greatest arts ever composed, Economics has any origins within physical mediums of human extension
And how I relate myself to death is how I relate myself to Nothing (das Nichts). This is not a question for physicists. It is an "existential" question. We need to transcend ourselves in order even to ask, let alone to hope for an answer to it. Out of the window goes scientific so-called "objectivity". We are no longer resting on any assumptions here.
If you accept that you are going to die one day (even if this acknowledgement lies in the back of your mind as the honest part of yourself which you are for now repressing) then you can't merely make yourself at home in the universe as if it were going to last forever. For you (and for me) at least, it certainly won't last forever. The sun will certainly NOT rise tomorrow. The "laws" of mathematics and physics will be of no avail when the sun falls for you for the last time.....
@zarakhast So if we take literally your word that there is no physical world, then what does our mathematics and logic represents? Nothing? When its said that a =a; a is not equal to -a, a is different from b, are these but fabrications that the human mind makes? What presents itself as the basis of the axioms that mathematics and science are based on? But I do agree about the limits of mathematics in circumscribing being..since whenever problems are "solved", new problems arise, and we dont
have an axiom that assures us of any sense of completeness in arithmetic. Heidegger himself stated "When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.", and since we dont have "the world's formula" (a Theory of Everything) i guess that implies that there is always something that escapes discourse, axioms, primarily the "Nothing".
@goldenarms12 I believe you've just summed it up yourself. It is this "Nothing" (the incalculable) which makes mathematics and the mathematical possible. This is a foundation which is at the same time not a foundation, a foundation which is an abyss. Reason (ratiocination) can only lead us to the threshhold of knowledge, never to knowledge itself. And if knowledge is knowledge of the mystery then it is not knowledge as we habitually understand it. Heidegger calls this "the uncanny".
"To wonder" is defined by Heidegger as "the revelation of Nothing". It was previously defined (correctly) by Plato as "the mother of philosophy". But Heidegger actually leads us to the experience of Nothing at the same time as he is inquiring into it. To read this essay ("What Is Metaphysics ?") and to fail to have this experience is to fail to understand Heidegger full stop. I would not recommend reading this essay to anyone, unless he or she is "of stout heart". I speak from experience.
@goldenarms When Heidegger links the fundamental reality (Nothing) to the experience of dread (Angst) then we are "beyond reason" (and hence beyond mathematics or science) already. What is required of the one who is destined to know is not to produce yet another platitudinous "proposition", however, cryptic or paradoxical, but TO EXPERIENCE (i.e. to suffer) that which all speech AIMS AT. This is what Heidegger means when he speaks of the "telling silence". "Nothing" is the aim.
@zarakhast And also do you think that the concept of time dilation from Einstein's equations (YouTube it) where an object that goes with a speed nearing the speed of light will have their clock-time run slower relative the clock-time of the inertial observer, reflects the notion of as you said it, time being more than a consecutive series of nows?
@goldenarms12 Temporality in Being & Time and temporality in Einstein are conceptually incompatible. How might a person ever arrive at "authentic temporality" (Being & Time) by means of a deeper understanding of physical laws ? How I experience time is not a question of physics (relativity) but a question of how I relate myself to death. The physical universe is not the object of philosophy, though philosophy alone is capable of understanding the physical.
@zarakhast in the example you showed, it could be both..it could be allegorical based on a real life event, thus the necessity of multiple interpretations of a piece of work.
@zarakhast The notions of physics are based on mathematical variables...Plato's Parmenides was about whether the one was not or is it associated with Being, the Greeks was instrumental in forming the building blocks of it (Euclid's Elements, Pythagoras) and even Badiou went to far as to say "Mathematics is Ontology". What say you Zarakhast? Does "One" and "Zero" mirror the concepts of Being and Nothing? And yes Parmenides' Chapter of the goddess "truth" can be seen as allegory...even though
@goldenarms12 I completely reject the notion that the thoughts of Parmenides or Heraclitus had anything to do with what we call "mathematics". Remember that Heidegger distinguishes between the calculable, which would be the mathematical, and the incalculable, which is his aim, and has always been the aim of philosophy as such. Mathematics has no way of grasping the Nothingquestion. But this question IS metaphysics, as Heidegger unambiguously states.
It may (or may not) be the case the Santorini is Atlantis (I hope it is, and it may be !), but not all (if any) myths, especially creation myths, are explicable in terms of modern science. This is where science oversteps its boundaries and becomes science fiction.
The idea that when the ancients used "allegory" they were really referring to "real" (i.e. empirically verifiable (or non-verifiable) events) is a bit fanciful. I love scientists for their imaginativeness when they suggest that Plato in the Timaeus was referring to a real event, i.e. the volcanic eruption of what we now call Santorini, and the consequent destruction of the Minoans (of Crete and Santorini).....
@zarakhast To bring it home even deeper that Mathematics may be a middle ground in our discussions, Dirac stated "Non-euclidean geometry and noncommutative algebra, which were at one time were considered to be purely fictions of the mind and pastimes of logical thinkers, have now been found to be very necessary for the description of general facts of the physical world." Can this also mean that the "physical world" is actually based on "fictions of the mind"?
@goldenarms12 Logic and mathematics may help us to understand the physical world - but what if there is in truth no physical world ? For this (and I assert) is fundamentally true : the physical world is not real ! The ancients had it right from the outset. This "world" which we take for granted is merely a passage. Everything in this world is either "no-longer" or "not-yet". Nothing is ever truly present. NOTHING is ever truly present.
.... any conclusions which science might eventually arrive at. Scientific "questioning" is also very far from being fundamental. The fact that Heidegger HAD to explicitly ask the Nothingquestion just goes to show what a poor age we are living in, intellectually speaking. This question is obviously the most important one, and this fact really ought to be more obvious to more people.
The idea that science is capable of throwing light on philosophical questions is comical. Philosophy questions what for thought is possible, and it pushes this questioning to the limit, i.e. to the something v nothing question, which is no longer accessible to science as such. Metaphysical conclusions have always formed the basis upon which science ("natural philosophy") made itself at home before asking its "own" questions. What is thinkable (hence possible) always determines .....
@zarakhast Its not obvious, even Hegel (and you have to tell me Heidegger's position on Hegel, the commentary on it is as obtuse as Hegel itself) said:
"If the result that being and nothing are the same seems startling or paraodoxical in itself, there is nothing more to be said; rather should we wonder at this wondering which shows itself to be such a newcomer to philosophy
and forgets that in this science there occur determinations quite different from those in ordinary consciousness and in so-called ordinary common sense-which is not exactly sound understanding but an understanding educated up to abstractions and to a belief, or rather a superstitious belief, in abstractions.."
And since the Science vs. Metaphysics shows no signs of going anywhere, i propose a middle ground: Mathematics. Dirac once said "God has created the world with beautiful mathematics".
@zarakhast You should watch a documentary on Youtube called HOME, which depicts the planet Earth and its geological/biological wonders and which may clarify some of your questions.
Ah, nothing - my favourite subject ! For me this is what thinking is all about. Something v Nothing : it doesn't get much simpler or to the point than that ! The concept of Being is indistinguishable from the concept of Nothing. We arrive at this concept via a wholesale negation of beings. But do we thereby arrive at Nothing itself ? According to Heidegger, Nothing precedes negation and makes it possible. In fact, every being is "not nothing", i.e. a result of the self-negation (nihilation) ...
@zarakhast We dont even know the cause of the Cambrian Explosion after the Precambrian Era even though we may have many explanations all of which may be inadequate but each sheds its light on the evidence available to us.
@goldenarms12 Science also seems to be undecided about the origin of life, i.e. whether it terrestrial or extraterrestrial in origin. We cannot easily answer these questions but my first port of call in looking for an answer would be the Greeks. They arrived at everything they thought by means of thought alone. They were amazing.
@zarakhast Unless the allegorical part of Parmenides' poem was some sort of extraterrestrial event, yes we can say that in matters of ontology, they and the Indians of the Vedas "arrived at everything by means alone."
Honestly, I do not know much about the specifics of those geological events, perhaps a online forum dedicated to geology might be more helpful, but I do know that nothing is set in stone and as time goes on, the scientific information on these and other events will improve.
From what I've read there does not seem to be a correlation between these two large impacts and any mass extinctions, though mysteriously there do appear to have been mass extinctions both before and after the impacts. I find science writers to be a bit annoying actually ! Like politicians they always seem to marshal the evidence in such a way as to support their own dearly beloved convictions !
Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite
or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.
Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking;
The universe as an object though ? This is what science doesn't so much teach as assume. I remember when I was first introduced to physics, chemistry and biology. I had always been good enough at mathematics and languages, but when we were suddenly introduced to science I couldn't grasp why I was supposed to be doing it, interesting though it was. There were other questions I wanted to ask ......
I think it's good to be able to switch between the scientific and the metaphysical views of the universe. They can enrich one another. The scene you describe at the beginning of 2001 is susceptible of many interpretations. The winner is the imagination. Another beautiful (but old) sci-fi story : "Earth Abides".
"every being, insofar as it is a being, is made out of nothing".
And so every element, too, is originally and ultimately nothing. Nothing is the source of all ambiguity. This essay ("What Is Metaphysics ?") is in my opinion the greatest single piece of writing that a human being has ever produced. In a sense it says everything which Being & Time DOESN'T say. But it speaks only to those who have ears to hear.
@zarakhast However we do not know what "the nothing" is, what "the nothing" signifies. I perused some Hegel and this is what I found, and of course the notion of an object does not exist in Greek philosophy, that concept is inherent of the subject-object dichotomy that is the basis of common knowledge,
It is surely essential that scientists, if they themselves want to be taken seriously, take the philosophical question of time seriously ? It is not good enough to apply "clock time" (based on the idea of the fixed "now) to the universe. Before there were human beings, asserts Heidegger, there was no time .... Aristotle, two thousand years earlier, asked whether if in the absence of consciousness there can be time. The "universe" according to science is already a humanisation, already a fiction.
@goldenarms "Man is a force to be overcome" ? I think you've made that one up ! Or perhaps you were paraphrasing Nietzsche ? He asked whether consciousness (hence mankind) might not in truth be a disaster. And that's a fair question. Mankind since the industrial revolution has been a boil on the face of the earth. Science has even had the cheek to embrace the philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger and is busy rewriting and reinterpreting them in accordance with the aims of science....
@zarakhast "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!" (Thus Spake Zarathustra).
@goldenarms12 "Man is a force to be overcome" :) I'll let you off.
What does "man" mean in this passage though ? This is surely Christian man ? When such a man has been "overcome" (and the concept of overcoming is not an obvious one either : it means to incorporate rather than to merely "get over"), he will have become the "overman". What was "human, all too human" will have been banished, eradicated. He will have become a god.
@zarakhast Not a "god", he would have eschewed the beliefs of the "flies of the marketplace" concerning religion, dependence on technology, etc..and will experience no regrets or guilt because he will have realized that that which is is fixed and unchangeable (return of the same). You ever watched 2001 A Space Odyssey? Like Zizek associating philosophy with film can be helpful, for we see that it is only through a withdrawal from Being (the monolith) that the apes were able to overcome themselve
@goldenarms12 My favourite character, apart from Hal, is Leonard Rossiter. The atmosphere of that film is unique. I'm a huge fan of Arthur C.Clarke's imagination, even if I ultimately have to reject his (and science's) ideas. Rendezvous with Rama is another classic, and Childhood's End.
and the astronaut, by eschewing technology and refusing to be "the Last Man", sedentary, and instead taking upon himself to bring forth Being (through going to the unknown, beyond Jupiter) overcame himself, and became The Child (Nieztche's third animal symbolizing the third meta (beyond) morphosis of human being). Along that vein. Essential thinking, is of course thinking that strives to find the essence beyond fleeting appearance.
Of course you know that (they teach you this in Geology) most dating is based on either carbon-dating and the dating of other radioactive material, or through relative dating, like through layers and tree rings. So mostly we are dependent on constants (the half life of Carbon 14 for example) in the making of the Geological Time Scale. We can't say the "gradualist" will win over Gould's punctuated equilibra (which explained the evolution of the horse more satisfactorily then gradualism". All
@goldenarms12 (Sorry to interrupt if you are still typing). What I mean is that unless dating techniques (argon-argon or whatever, I really don't know what I'm talking about) can eventually be refined to yield dates which only have an error of, say, a few years, then gradualists will always have the upper hand, even if there is a huge crater and everything seems to point to an impact. I realise that there might be an impact but that this might not have caused the extinctions. I'm out of my depth
@zarakhast Well it could have been many things including those catastrophic events and other colluding factors. After all extinctions are usually not instantaneous, they are an inability of the organism to adapt over time, causing their demise. Its not a question of either gradualism or punctuated equilibra, all of which betray our notion of time.
@goldenarms12 I've picked that much up from what I've read. The K/T extinction may have been an exception though ? On the other hand the occurrence of flood basalt eruptions seems to coincide with many extinction events. It's baffling. The more I read the more I can see every side of the argument, from my scientifically uneducated point of view. Dating just seemed to me to be crucial. The Eocene extinctions, for instance, and the Popigai and Chesapeake Bay craters ,,,,
is an attempt for Man's Reason ("All that is real is rational, all that is rational is real) to explain and strengthen the evolution of life through the theory of natural selection/genetric drift, which will improve over time. After all Carbon-14 is highly reliable, even though Heidegger would say that its dependent on the fact that Carbon-14 always had and never had another half-life of 5,760 years lol.
We have been born, we "exist" (whatever that means) for a time, and then we shall certainly die. We really don't know what is happening. So is it sufficient to just shrug our shoulders, forget about the "big questions" and adopt a (thoughtless) pragmatic attitude towards "life" ? I find this attitude astounding. When you come across it in "ordinary" people it is bad enough, but when you come across it in learned folk it is positively offensive.
@goldenarms Give or take a million years, or "merely" a hundred thousand. As long as dating techniques cannot be refined any further, the gradualist will "win" the argument by default it seems ? They may be correct in any case, though equally they may not. This seems unfair to me. I never forget though that the foundation on which the scientific view of the universe is based is metaphysical. The universe for the philosopher is not yet - in fact never is - an object.
@zarakhast On a comic note to stray away from "mass extinctions" here's a clip from IFC's Portlandia that gives its meaning to instruments of information urging towards the extreme.
"Man is a force to be overcome." as Nietzsche once stated. The question shouldn't be can we avert mass extinction? The question needs to go back to essential thinking, which is the purpose of this video. After all it was the same physicists whose theory gave us the radio, tv, and the atomic bombs/ and weapons. Back to you.
@goldenarms12 What does "essential thinking" mean to you ? What do you take Heidegger to mean when he uses this phrase ? I'm not challenging you, but I am interested, since you seem to be a reasonable and thoughtful type of person. Essential thinking, in my view, indicates the very opposite of modern science. All thinking ought to point Beingwards. And as Heidegger makes clear at the beginning of Being & Time, "Being is not a being". Essential thinking is certainly not scientific "thinking".
Maybe "the profoundest silence" can be seen in one way by the increasing alarming possession of weapons in the hands of governments, which is put out of debate because of political CORRECTNESS (for defense, for national security, etc...). Another aspects which are more subtle, such as Colony Collapse Disorder (the collapses of bee colonies and all the possible aftershocks), Climate Change. Even Earthquakes and natural "acts of God" can occur that threatens man. All is a challenge to adapt.
extinction effect. And of course 1962 we had the Cuban missile crisis where its said (Chomsky tells us this) that the world was saved from nuclear holocaust because of one man (Vasili Arkhipov, check him out). In Sept. 1983 the same threat happened again when the USSR mistook a computer error for a U.S launch (Stanislav Petrov pointed that out). Nov. 1983 the Soviets mistook a "war exercise" as a ruse of war...if Stalin was alive instead of ailing Andropov, there's your mass extinction lol.
These geological events may have reduced sunlight and hindered photosynthesis, leading to a massive disruption in Earth's ecology. Many researchers believe the extinction was more gradual, resulting from a combination of the events above and others including sea level and climate changes." Like most things, a variety of causes could've played a part. What they dont tell you is that in 1883, fragments of a billion ton comet could've hit the Earth, which might have caused an
"Scientists theorize that the K–T extinctions were caused by one or more catastrophic events, such as massive asteroid impact(s) (like the Chicxulub impact[8]), or increased volcanic activity. Several impact craters and massive volcanic activity, such as that in the Deccan traps, have been dated to the approximate time of the extinction event
@goldenarms12 I've read up on this quite a lot. In fact it's my favourite diversion at the moment, though I'm no scientist and would need to learn so much more to earn any right to join the debate as anything other than a spectator. From an outside point of view though, it seems that dating geological events is a major problem, in spite of amazing technical advances. The asteroid, the Deccan eruptions - both occurring at "about" 65 MYA, give or take a million years... Thx for the videos.
between knowledge and truth, which is defined (outside of logic) as its breach (epitomized by that reversal of Descartes: I AM, therefore I THINK). Ironically it is in those troubled times where Heidegger in contrast says that the process of language in today's world exist "in the profoundest silence". All of these "truth events" or breaches only confirms that indirectly. How far does it go in "the profoundest silence"? Ill leave that to you.
experiments (Foucault took LSD and Lacan mentioned hallucinogens as a legitimate use in his own paper "The Subversion of the Subject") and its aftereffects in popular culture all show in differing ways "transformations of the human being to language". The Consequences of course has to do with enframing, the transformation of the human being to language where "The notion of language as an instrument of information urges towards the extreme." We want to know without knowing the connection
the incursion of structuralism in the vein of Althusser, Foucault and Lacan, the increasing of the intensity of the Cold War (and its rhetoric) and military technology, the advances of science with Feynman 's Quantum Electrodynamics (1964 Nobel Peace Prize) stating that we cannot even use notions of Newtonian physics and its notions of matter in explaining the most minute of reactions (a photon, the basic unit of light, is massless zarakhast. Does it exist? lol, and even the psychedelic
can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." In this context, language is used vaguely (figures of speech are used) as "defense mechanisms" to strengthen the ego and by extension the image that one projects on the world. In 1964-ish, with the Civil Rights Movements, and
"Today everybody is able to operate a radio or television set without knowing the laws of physics that make them work, without knowing the methods which were used to find these laws-methods, which in their ...contents are understood by five or six physicists. The same is valid for the task of thinking." Language is the "house of Being"; for nothing "exists" unless it can be said. However we neglect the fact that language remains the master of man, and therefore language can be used to stifle
@zarakhast Meta-language is the notion of a language of being, a language which can speak the truth about truth which is of course " just total nonsense" since language will never be able to explain being satisfactorily.
@goldenarms12 But what if language is governed by Being ? And how could it not be ? Perhaps Being might then throw some light on language ? Are we to grasp Being or is it to grasp us ? If Being comes first then there is no way that we can grasp it by means of language. But it might grasp us if we could find a way to devote ourselves to it .. When Nietzsche speaks of "rausch" (rapture) what does he mean but this exceptional state in which we are grasped by Being ?
@zarakhast Finally we're going on point, since this Youtube Video is about Heidegger's position on language. "The relation of human being(s) to language is undergoing a transformation the consequences of which we are not ready to face." Why does Heidegger says this in 1964 (i think) as one of his last messages to the world? (he dies in '76). "It cannot be stopped by direct intervention, instead it is going in "the profoundest silence"?" A clue might be when he says:
@zarakhast aletheia ("the truth as unconcealedness") into correctness (the truth as relative to a certain dependence on appearance and the law of appearance without taking into account the structure that sustains it). To quote Orwell, another Philosopher of Language: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan,
@goldenarms12 Completely off-topic (I'm not avoiding the subject) : in your opinion was it an asteroid / comet that did for the dinosaurs or the Deccan Traps, or climate / sea-level change ? And what about the present state of life on earth ? Are we in the midst of another mass extinction ? If so, are humans to blame or is it down to a combination of factors ? I'm on science's side here for certain. If only you could all stop disagreeing with one another !
@zarakhast Thats why there is no "metalanguage"; that's why when you state "Nothing is", it would be more accurate to say "Nothing is, if not insofar as it is said that it is." for saying that it is, brings it into existence, even though it is "Nothing" that is the subject.
@goldenarms12 Okay, I THINK I understand that ! I can't see what difference it makes though. Either everything is made out of something (which is hardly a very enlightening proposition) or it is made out of nothing. If it is made out of nothing then it "is" nothing, and Nothing "is" it - in two different senses. I fear we're losing each other here though, or at least I'm not quite sure what you mean ......
But your last comment brings us back to the question (Aristotle's question) of whether time can exist when there is nothing there to count, i.e. no consciousness, i.e. no human beings. On top of that, how can the universe be 13 billion years old and have been preceded (which it would have to be) by no time, when this would immediately make it infinite ?
The a priori to my understanding is not an "assumption" in the ordinary sense of the word, i.e. an arbitrary opinion. It is something which forces us to assume it by its own nature. The concept of Being is another (in fact the only) a priori assumption. It is not possible for you to deny Being without invoking Being, for instance. You cannot speak a sentence which is not an articulation of Being : even to deny Being is to assert Being.
and the "letting oneself be encountered by", and time more describes the apparent entropy of a system. Now we are alive, In the past we were born, and In the future we are dead.
@zarakhast Side note, According to "Science": "Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill." Heidegger calls it the "having been"
So is time, as we understand it and apply it in physics and everyday life - i.e. clock time - not already a bit of fiction ? If we cannot arrive at a single moment of time how can we begin to count ? Let alone ascribe this kind of temporality to the universe ? Even the everyday, human idea of time is merely a convenience and in no sense a solid concept.
Human beings have existed (or "existed") for 2.5 million years (roughly - please feel free to correct me). Even assuming that for this entire period humanity has experienced time just as we moderns so now, what about time before humanity ?
@zarakhast 100,000 years for Homo Sapiens, before that prehistoric humans. Time is a very complex concept, even Heidegger's magum opus was concentrated "Being and Time". Time always exists in a notion of change or entropy, which is dependent of the human observer (Isn't that Einstein's relativity?). Since time and space are a priori constructs that we can't go without in explaining the world; man cannot imagine time before humanity without stating that there is no movement or change.
@goldenarms12 Why is concept of time complex ? It is surely based on the concept of presence, i.e. the "now". And this of course cannot be pinned down (Zeno's paradox again). How can we even arrive at a single moment of time ? Is time not a complete illusion, as St.Augustine held ?
@zarakhast The concept is complex because we are used to the concept of present, past, and future which exist equiprimordially (Heidegger term), that are relative to many circumstances of the human experience and phenomena. We arrive at a single moment of time by agreeing on certain arbitrary standards (fictive hypothesis) just for everyday life I suppose.
@goldenarms12 But the past and the future are based on the present : the past is the "no-longer-now" and the future is the "not-yet-now", so it is sufficient to first of all arrive at a sure knowledge of the present (the now). But can we do this ? Theoretically it is impossible. And so we have to start again. Somehow we are here, questioning, in this (fleeting) moment.But how can that be when there cannot be any time ? It's baffling.
@zarakhast And of course essential thinking is thinking of the essence of things, about that which brings forth the disparity between Appearance and Being.
And time : in what sense did it exist before there were human beings ? Do animals experience time ? What about Aristotle's question in which he asks whether if in the absence of something which can count (i.e. in the absence of consciousness) there can be time ? Does science not humanise the past when it speaks of geological and astronomical time ?
itself; and if man was to disappear, whatever is the referent for "nature" will remain, for it always remained. Would we even know about the time of the Earth's coming to being without scientific experiments? Its all a search for knowledge, which doesn't imply truth but its needed to bring forth truth from concealedness (through self-negation). "The true comes from twisted pathways". Science as well as other discourses are those "twisted pathways"
@zarakhast can be reflected in many ways, including science, for it defines/circumscribes the sense of world as humans know it by defining laws of appearances, and through their incapability of "telling the whole truth" we see the essence of truth as unconcealedness, as Being remaining the master of man. Man may be the "shepherd" of Being, but human beings are not necessary for Being itself, that is man's arrogance. The world of 4.5 billion years -100,000 years didn't need humans to sustain
@zarakhast "At the same time, it is a "saving power" and and opportunity: humanity's enframing orientation to the world makes clear the responsibility of human beings to the world. If we reflect upon the enframing as the essence of technology, we will find not only that we are a part of the world, but that the world "needs" us to care for it, that humanity "is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth""
Having provided that, the "safekeeping of the essence of truth"
Enframing is the essence of technology. Enframing is ambiguous, in that contains two possibilities:
It is a danger that sets man on a destructive and self-destructive course. "On the one hand, enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth"
"Humanity's orientation to the world takes the form of an enframing which views the world only as "standing-reserve," a source of raw materials. In this enframing, however, lies the potential for another orientation."
"This instrumental way of thinkings stems from our assumptions about causality. If we come to understand modes of causality as ways of being responsible for the arrival of things into existence, we can begin to understand that the essence of technology has to do with the way we are oriented to the coming-into-existence, or the "revealing" of the world."
This is from the Guide from "A Question concerning Technology":
We tend to think of technology as an instrument, a means of getting things done. This definition, however, misses the actual essence of technology, and tends to make us think that by making the technology better--better able to "get things done"--we will master technology and solve the problems that accompany it.
In Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics and in other places too (in fact throughout his works, though not it is not always explicit) he comes to the profound conclusion that the human being IS in fact exceptional within the whole of beings. And Nietzsche, too, only wanted to dehumanise nature in order that it could afterwards be humanised anew : rehumanised according to his thought of the eternal return.
beneficial aspects of science when applied correctly, in introducing Penicillin, germ theory of disease, and computer theory, which can of course be the "saving power" or "danger" of humanity depending on he who possess it. Nature in itself is the fact that appearances conform to laws (Kant), laws which have no ground except from our perception.
He would have cause to complain because the scientific attempt to dominate, master and alter beings can be the "saving power" or "danger" of Humanity. Like i said the subject in peril is Humanity as a whole. World War I, World War II and the Wars that followed all showed science and technology, being used to dominate, master , and alter beings in order to achieve wealth or power, and how many people died from the whole affair? Inversely, the advances of Fleming, Pasteur, Turing showed the
@goldenarms12 I think you're cleverly reinterpreting what Heidegger said in order to justify your own interpretation, and I think you know it. By the "saving power" Heidegger certainly didn't mean modern science.
How could Heidegger (or others) have any cause to complain about the scientific attempt to dominate, master and alter beings if nature really merely lies there, unaffected by human intervention and incapable of being affected by it ? Science, because it lacks depth of insight, simply assumes that the "laws of nature" are constant and cannot be affected by human intervention.
if its self-sustaining." I am not exculpating technology for the environmental ravages it causes, but just saying that the consequences we speak of pertain to our own survival, not the alleged "destruction" of nature. Parmenides stated time and time again that there is no change or movement, meaning no lack. For from whence will this lack come from? It only exists in our conception.
@zarakhast The conception that Man's conception of the World is equivalent to the World as it is, more specifically the maxim that "All that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational", that residue from the Enlightenment, from which of course the capitalist mode of production gained its footing, where "raw material" became connected to the commodity. Suffering is a projection of ego over Being; a sense of privation. But nature, that which exists, cannot have a sense of privation
@zarakhast cataclysms that occured on planet Earth for thought its history? Ice ages, mass extinctions and etc? Did nature "suffered"? No for every species that became extinct, new species came in its place, and so on and so on. Even by using the word "suffer", you're betraying your subjectivity. Physics will never be able to give structures that can explain every phenomena, we dont even know what is the cause of Gravity! When we modify "nature" we are really modifying our conception of it
@goldenarms12 I know you're probably still replying and if so I apologise for interrupting you. I know that there have been many mass extinctions and it's one of my favourite scientific subjects (having always been a bit of a dinosaur nut), though I'm only a layman. But how can you so confidently have decided that nature (or nonhuman things collectively) is incapable of suffering ? I find this odd coming from someone who is so enthusiastic about the thoughts of Parmenides.
What about what Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy about the conceit of science that it can not only grasp the universe conceptually but even modify it ? Some scientists these days are even so mad to believe that one day they will be able to cure death ! You've got to applaud them for their humanitarianism, but are they not barking mad - regardless of how many coffees they may have drunk ?
To goldenarms (not that you'll be listening by now I imagine) : What do you think of what Heidegger says about the scientific attitude towards nature (i.e. that it challenges nature) ? Do you think that science is enslaving nature ? Do you believe that nature is "inanimate" and cannot suffer ? Do you believe that physics can explain and rectify everything ? If so then how does this conviction fit in with your other beliefs. In plain(ish) language please, if you feel inclined to respond.
@zarakhast Lets not use personifications. Science does not enslave nature; technology and more specifically the way it is implemented in a society where everything is treated as raw material defines nature in their own image,. How can you enslave that which is "fixed and unchangeable"? What do you define as nature? In the point of view of the human being, the environmental carnage that technology causes threatens our survival as human beings; but how is this any different from the "natural"
@goldenarms12 But how did things come to be regarded and treated as "raw material" ? The way I read Heidegger (and Nietzsche) the objectification of nature is being accomplished by modern science, but this in turn has its roots in the philosophy of Plato. But it was the philosophy of Descartes (as the metaphysics of subjectivity) which gave the go-ahead to humanity to lay into nature like the unthinking (scientific) brute which he is today.
@zarakhast and through that, we make meaningful progress in our survival (mastering our own Being). Medicine, major pathways in the understanding of the human body, have all increased the health, well-being and age of Homo Sapiens. Curing death? The thing is not that they would fail (entropy assures us of this) , but its how they would fail, that Being comes forth as predominant over human ego. You take too much stock in the importance of the human being Zarakhast lol Ill end with Voltaire:
" It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him."
the driving force in Ideal Science when it is realized that things may constitute one subsistence (the human body for example), but at the same time "constitutes diverse, mutually indifferent content" (The organs, the brain, etc). Laws or Notions of structure are made and perfected so that after the eventual erasure of appearance, the essence of the thing to the human observer does NOT disappear. Experimentation and changes in science and technology can have one observe this Appearance vs. Being
to not hold to consistent experimentation with Galileo giving us a law of appearances (Distance of a falling body not proportional to mass but to acceleration). This "law of appearances" is itself dependent on the "presupposed elements" of space, mass and time. When the presupposed definitions of these"elements" become challenged, by scientific experiments or otherwise, then the dichotomy appears again as negativity, as "self-erasure". This forces the subject back into reflection, and this is
Revolution.". Whatever foibles Science may have, Ideal Science helps us, alongside real philosophy, not define Being, or Nothing, but the joining or disjoining between Appearance and Being. How would we be able to do that without experiments? Aristotle was as much as a scientist (the first significant man to study fish i think) as a philosopher; and even some of his physical suppositions (the time the differing weights will reach the ground depends on their weight. Obviously !) were proven
@zarakhast The Brain. Its a presupposed element, independent from human reflection (You don't have to think you have a brain, to have a brain) while being dependent on it (there would be no notion of human reflection without whatever neurochemistry that conditions, (not causes) consciousness in the brain). It was this element, presupposed throughout medieval philosophy, that Kant used to show how our notions of existence are DEPENDENT on, calling it What? "A Copernican [another scientist]
in co-dependence with the "World in and for Self" what I presume would be "the nothing", or more specifically the concept that you introduced, that the eternal wanted to reflect upon itself, thus bringing forth beings. There is no way, through human logic to make out which is appearance, law of appearance and which is Pure Being (Thus the necessity for Ereignis/Erlebnis) except through a presupposed element that is found independent of human reflection while being dependent on it. Example?
@zarakhast C'mon Zarakhast, don't you at least find the least amount of wonder in the way technology/science is progressing in all fields Even Heidegger wasn't strictly against technology, he was against its essence in a capitalist-mode-of-production society (Enframing, what we spoke of a few months ago). Hegel once stated that it is appearances all the way down; whatever deductions we can make of being is dependent on appearances and the law of appearances (which is Science, Language, and Law)
@zarakgast a never ending argument between the Ionians (Heraclitus, Democritus-founder of atomic theory 2,000 years BEFORE it was officially incorporated in modern physics) and the Eleatics (Parmenides, Zeno- "There is no movement nor change") that, recurres eternally from generation to generation and that has the same ill-feelings as Athens and Sparta lol. Heidegger of course commented on both schools in his lectures.
@zarakhast The Fire that burns? :"This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures" (Heraclitus). [Reminds you of Conservation laws isn't it? It always amazes me how the ideas of the Presocratics are reflected in modern science even if science is "total idiocy" as you state it. After all one could say that modern physics is just
@zarakhast of the common-sense notion of a 'thing'; it is merely a characteristic of a physical process (All that they can tell you about a definition of energy is that "it is the ability to do work"). It might be fancifully identified with the Heraclitean fire, but it is the burning [the formal cause], not what burns [the effective cause]. 'What burns' has disappeared from modern physics." "
"What burns" is what which causes there to be something rather then nothing.
@zarakhast called electrons and protons, out of which atoms where composed; and these units were supposed, for a few years, to have the indestructibility formerly attributed to the atoms. Unfortunately it seemed that protons and electrons could meet and explode, forming, not new matter, but a wave of energy spreading through the universe with the velocity of light. Energy had to replace matter as what is permanent. But energy, unlike matter, is not a refinement
@zarakhast to destroy, only transmutes: elements are recombined, but each atom that existed before combustion still exists when the process is completed. Accordingly it was supposed that atoms are indestructible, and that all change in the physical world consists merely in rearrangement of persistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radioactivity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate. Nothing daunted, the physicist invented new and smaller units,
I didn't know what "Delian diver" meant lol, so I googled it, found the link to Heraclitus, and also found something else which I think is relevant to the question of science: Bertrand Russel's commentary on Heraclitian "perpetual flux":
Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substratum amid changing phenomena. Chemistry seemed to satisfy this desire. It was found that fire, which appears
Final cause embraces all the "other" causes and precedes them. The final cause is the first and the last cause. There is in truth no other cause. In eternity everything has already happened. Everything is destined for death. The intellect does not preside over this "state of affairs" as a "judge". Petty little human beings with their massive brains, their huge egos and their snivelling little souls are not going to change the way the world is.
Wittgenstein ? The most boring "philosopher" in Western history ? I must admit that I've never read any of his stuff and have never felt even slightly tempted to do so. Possibly the dullest figure in the history of philosophy?
Why is there anything at all, why not far rather nothing ? That is THE QUESTION ! All your "scientific" questions are OBLITERATED by this questions : they are of ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCE WHATSOEVER. So hunker down, get yourself a copy of Introduction to Metaphysics, and READ. It will do you good !!!
@zarakhast Lay off the coffee, and be nice to the scientists who do all the legwork for humanity while you bore us with rather pointless ontological statements.
@seblasian They should keep doing their "legwork" - though you have to ask whether it's going to work in the long run (it isn't, in case you were wondering). To state the reverse of what a certain overconfident fool said to me a few months ago : scientists shouldn't speculate on the cosmos. That is the domain of philosophy. Science is incapable of grasping reality as a whole. It would be well advised, for the sake of thw world, to give up its grandiose aspirations to universal knowledge.
@zarakhast What isn't going to work, finding universal knowledge? I doubt anyone among (recent) scientists seriously expected that to ever happen, and the same goes for any half-smart philosopher. My point is that while you could argue that scientific questions are trivial compared to "the question", its profoundly infantile to do so, since "the question", in everyday life, hasnt even a smudge of relevance compared the far more laborous and fruitful activity called science.
@seblasian But do you believe that absolute knowledge is possible ? It sounds to me as if you are laughing the idea off not only on the behalf of yourself and other scientists but also on the behalf of philosophers, as if they too are bound to agree with you ? You sound like a mere pragmatist. Science has an everyday, practical value and is a good thing, practically speaking . But is that enough ? It is incapable by its very nature of reaching an all-embracing point of view.
wake up, the phenomenology is over dude
hegemoniuspiper 3 days ago
“Being any philosopher is like reliving your life and writing it down properly within wondering what anyone else is experiencing”
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
"Pretention has no meaning"
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
LIke any argument regarding any God, there is no context to it, without any context there is no way to know anything, this is one of the reasons philosophers write in statements. IE
“Any school is a breeding ground for pretention and social separations within any game for any popularity” we become stigmatized within characterizations forming any labels"
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
Comment removed
S00dalayadi 3 weeks ago
@S00dalayadi
I don't get if, if Heidegger comes after Nietzsche...I thought Heidegger called Nietzsche "the culmination of metaphysics", where Nietzsche saw that everything was "becoming". And then you get Heidegger returning to the question of "being" because he said the ancients forgot it...or something like that. Anyway PM me if you care to elaborate
FeelingFreshSon 2 weeks ago
@FeelingFreshSon What he is referring to is within any physics to conscious experience, there is a book that is being written on this subject ; The question is how can any philosopher develop a physical world view which no one can question; this within itself is a broad task where he mentions taking a long period within seeing and thinking which would become any method within providing any physical truths which would demand proper interpretations within a metaphysical language
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
@DrFruedienslip Reality is a touchy subject where as a physical world view looks into any cause and effect within any physical changes, and within any supposition that such a thing as any afterlife would truly exist this changes the way we would deal with population concerns while considering any exponential increases of the earths resources, materialism isnt what we think, its all inclusive and has many affects within any conscious experience, a principled economy isthe onlyway
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
@DrFruedienslip
I'm not sure I exactly get what you're saying. So Heidegger wants physics to be explicable by metaphysical thought? Didn't Kant already try and do this in a fairly detailed manner?
FeelingFreshSon 2 weeks ago
@FeelingFreshSon There is a book being written on this regarding any physics to consciousness and the physics of any union of people, this is what is missing within society, which is an all inclusive supposition, sort of like intrinsic anthropology, this rather questions any intent within any religious ideology, we are over populating the world while at the same time trying to maintain any balance within economy, occupations and any use within all natural esources, and what todo
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
@DrFruedienslip There is a point within being any philosopher related to expanding consciousness, which is why he said that the world is superficial, this has more to do with social principles being applied which is difficult to do when we have to many uneducated persons in the world which have been affected by capitalism, which is why we have so many arguments regarding Capitalism vs Communism which neither word has any intrinsic interpretation, generalizations
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
@DrFruedienslip Not expanding but exemplifying consciousness, Heidegger didnt achieve what he dreamed and was limited within any religious ignorance which has been around far too long, Plato actually wrote the whole good book and this will be exemplified within the book as well, so we can get rid of any fable that Jesus will ever return since its just a story written by a poet, philosopher attempting to exemplify an intrinsic world view. What is up with doctrines like Christmas and Easter?
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
@DrFruedienslip Hans Gadamer, was Heiddegers understudy and was very intelligent as he was attempting to exemplify hermeneutics, and also made mention regarding any creation of a common language, one can learn a great deal from all past philosophers by reading between the lines asking the question; what drives philosophers insane trying to figure out what is wrong with the world, and yes there is something wrong with it, there is no plan and there is no goal unless we can define one.
DrFruedienslip 2 weeks ago
This distilled Heidegger is golden, especially the comment about religion. Can anyone tell me if his philosophy is worth working through? I find it very appealing but keep wondering whether or not it's substantial or just sophistry.
FeelingFreshSon 1 month ago
What calculates ? Is the calculator something calculable ? Are you a thoughtless idiot ? Am I incapable of putting a question into words >
zarakhast 1 month ago
God, people are tiring ! This "calculable" universe of yours - what makes it calculable - if it is calculable ? Can you express that by means of calculation ?
zarakhast 1 month ago
Its not mathematical its how any and all math works out, which is any reasoning within any sense in logical assessments or any construal; what is reality when there is too much taking place all at once until we get into any intrisic level within any physics of any and all relationships; What was Plato's Meno all about? Or his Epistles? Its very hard work to become any philosopher isnt it boys. We might invent any paternal order for any and all philosophers??? Whats truly going On? PlatoRevised
DrFruedienslip 2 months ago
@goldenarms Nietzsche speaks somewhere (I wish I could remember where) about the question of the proper direction of knowledge. Should knowledge proceed from the strange to the familiar and consist in a process of familiarization (science), or ought it really to proceed in the other direction, i.e. from the familiar to the strange ? This latter definition would agree with Heidegger's idea of the uncanny as the genuine element of knowing.
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast Any proper direction of knowledge ( information) would have more to do within any and all exemplification of any and all physical truths, or anything quantum mechanical which has everything to do within exemplifying any intrinsic world view within which would become any better sense of guidance within how anything works and where it might all lead, obviously we should be considering any and all decline within any population growth because eventually we are going to run out
DrFruedienslip 2 months ago
@DrFruedienslip of any and all natural resources and any sustainability for any and all occupational sustenance which can and will lend to greater poverty and greater concerns within any terrorist threats, which is largely due to any fact that we have no unilateral intent for any purpose other than any heritage within any preconditioned environmental tradition. Or something like that, its just a very gigantuan topic which I have figured out through a long period of seeing and thinking'
DrFruedienslip 2 months ago
@zarakhast Nietzsches notions on epistemology are a critique of the familiar, in the sense that we always creatively anthropomorphise. For Nietzsche, the problem is that the horizon reaches out from one absolute position, man. As such, we can talk about facts - but only through recourse to absolution. Nietzsche wants to say that this is not so, and that there are no facts - only interpretations, but instead the possibility of infinite perspectives.
stillceaser 1 month ago
@stillceaser All of which follows from what metaphysical conclusion ? Only if ultimate reality is nothing can we have "infinite perspectives". It is das Nichts ("the nothing") which makes possible all your silly ideas. It is both funny and not funny at all : it takes the piss out of you and wants you to come to your senses at the same time. It is an absolute ****. You don't understand it.
zarakhast 1 month ago
@zarakhast You haven't read Nietzsche have you? I'll bet you haven't read Heideggers treatments on Nietzsche either. If you'd bothered to then you'd know that stating 'All of which follows from what metaphysical conclusion?' is, as it were, the dogmatist fallacy Nietzsche was trying to flesh out. It is a challenge, or wager if you like, to the absolute presuppositions from which any metaphysics can lay claim to an epistemology. You should read more instead of being so reflexive and rude.
stillceaser 1 month ago
@stillceaser What Heidegger was trying to explain within regards to language and superficialness would be in relation to pretentious attitudes, which limits greater means within any and all communication, which is why philosophy has taken off in the world now that we have this medium called cyberspace,
DrFruedienslip 1 month ago
@DrFruedienslip I think you barked up the wrong tree chap. We weren't talking about sophistry.
stillceaser 1 month ago
@stillceaser What do you really know within what any philosophy is meant to fruition, its all inclusive within all social physics and any intrinsic education in being real' being real is knowing what you know within any and all experience' "Construal" there is no sophistry it isnt a definitive word, if one has to be derrogatory within any spiel it questions any intent in motive within any ego within any measure'
DrFruedienslip 1 month ago
@DrFruedienslip I'm not sure I know what you mean when you say 'social physics' or 'intrinsic education'. I think I take your point, it appears to be an epistemological one. In that we 'cannot see beyond our own corner' as it were, we cannot extricate ourselves from Human experience in shaping our knowledge of world and self - which are indeed themselves conceptual artifacts born of human reason/language/cognition....
stillceaser 1 month ago
@DrFruedienslip ...I called what you wrote sophistry for two reasons. Firstly, it was impertinent to the discussion on Heidegger and Nietzsche. Secondly, you obfuscated any point you had with a muddled and slightly incoherent comment. If you are saying that language (and its philosophical treatment) has become too cognitively inflected, or that it can be abused - well, that is true - and Heidegger felt the same way. But how does this relate to Nietzsche/Heidegger?
stillceaser 1 month ago
@stillceaser Its all the same thing any philosophers quest to change the world by giving it any form of definition which has two kinds, the inner within any mind associated with the outer parts, which some calll the matrix or any malady, but what is your context here when it relates to Nietzche/Heidegger?
Any physics within conscious experience can be inhibiting when it comeswithin any and all comparisons while questioning what anyone else knows within any cause in any pretention
DrFruedienslip 1 month ago
@DrFruedienslip Philosophers often write in statements due within any reasoning that there is no way possible to write down every physical experience, words have all origination within subjective conscious observation, any physic of language questions what is true and what is not so true predicated within contextual cognition, Any context provides any question, it is the preceptual operativeness which Gadamer was trying to explain; "How does any person actuallly know anything"
DrFruedienslip 1 month ago
@DrFruedienslip Hermeneutics, applies true statements within any true experience, as one cannot know what anything means unless it can be applied within any actual sense within any experience, Like watching the boob tube, how much actually makes any sense when it is not any intrinsic art' like You cant take it with you, My Man Godfrey, Long Days Journey into night, three of the greatest arts ever composed, Economics has any origins within physical mediums of human extension
DrFruedienslip 1 month ago
And how I relate myself to death is how I relate myself to Nothing (das Nichts). This is not a question for physicists. It is an "existential" question. We need to transcend ourselves in order even to ask, let alone to hope for an answer to it. Out of the window goes scientific so-called "objectivity". We are no longer resting on any assumptions here.
zarakhast 2 months ago
If you accept that you are going to die one day (even if this acknowledgement lies in the back of your mind as the honest part of yourself which you are for now repressing) then you can't merely make yourself at home in the universe as if it were going to last forever. For you (and for me) at least, it certainly won't last forever. The sun will certainly NOT rise tomorrow. The "laws" of mathematics and physics will be of no avail when the sun falls for you for the last time.....
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast So if we take literally your word that there is no physical world, then what does our mathematics and logic represents? Nothing? When its said that a =a; a is not equal to -a, a is different from b, are these but fabrications that the human mind makes? What presents itself as the basis of the axioms that mathematics and science are based on? But I do agree about the limits of mathematics in circumscribing being..since whenever problems are "solved", new problems arise, and we dont
goldenarms12 2 months ago
have an axiom that assures us of any sense of completeness in arithmetic. Heidegger himself stated "When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.", and since we dont have "the world's formula" (a Theory of Everything) i guess that implies that there is always something that escapes discourse, axioms, primarily the "Nothing".
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@goldenarms12 I believe you've just summed it up yourself. It is this "Nothing" (the incalculable) which makes mathematics and the mathematical possible. This is a foundation which is at the same time not a foundation, a foundation which is an abyss. Reason (ratiocination) can only lead us to the threshhold of knowledge, never to knowledge itself. And if knowledge is knowledge of the mystery then it is not knowledge as we habitually understand it. Heidegger calls this "the uncanny".
zarakhast 2 months ago
"To wonder" is defined by Heidegger as "the revelation of Nothing". It was previously defined (correctly) by Plato as "the mother of philosophy". But Heidegger actually leads us to the experience of Nothing at the same time as he is inquiring into it. To read this essay ("What Is Metaphysics ?") and to fail to have this experience is to fail to understand Heidegger full stop. I would not recommend reading this essay to anyone, unless he or she is "of stout heart". I speak from experience.
zarakhast 2 months ago
@goldenarms When Heidegger links the fundamental reality (Nothing) to the experience of dread (Angst) then we are "beyond reason" (and hence beyond mathematics or science) already. What is required of the one who is destined to know is not to produce yet another platitudinous "proposition", however, cryptic or paradoxical, but TO EXPERIENCE (i.e. to suffer) that which all speech AIMS AT. This is what Heidegger means when he speaks of the "telling silence". "Nothing" is the aim.
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast And also do you think that the concept of time dilation from Einstein's equations (YouTube it) where an object that goes with a speed nearing the speed of light will have their clock-time run slower relative the clock-time of the inertial observer, reflects the notion of as you said it, time being more than a consecutive series of nows?
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@goldenarms12 Temporality in Being & Time and temporality in Einstein are conceptually incompatible. How might a person ever arrive at "authentic temporality" (Being & Time) by means of a deeper understanding of physical laws ? How I experience time is not a question of physics (relativity) but a question of how I relate myself to death. The physical universe is not the object of philosophy, though philosophy alone is capable of understanding the physical.
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast in the example you showed, it could be both..it could be allegorical based on a real life event, thus the necessity of multiple interpretations of a piece of work.
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@zarakhast The notions of physics are based on mathematical variables...Plato's Parmenides was about whether the one was not or is it associated with Being, the Greeks was instrumental in forming the building blocks of it (Euclid's Elements, Pythagoras) and even Badiou went to far as to say "Mathematics is Ontology". What say you Zarakhast? Does "One" and "Zero" mirror the concepts of Being and Nothing? And yes Parmenides' Chapter of the goddess "truth" can be seen as allegory...even though
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@goldenarms12 I completely reject the notion that the thoughts of Parmenides or Heraclitus had anything to do with what we call "mathematics". Remember that Heidegger distinguishes between the calculable, which would be the mathematical, and the incalculable, which is his aim, and has always been the aim of philosophy as such. Mathematics has no way of grasping the Nothingquestion. But this question IS metaphysics, as Heidegger unambiguously states.
zarakhast 2 months ago
It may (or may not) be the case the Santorini is Atlantis (I hope it is, and it may be !), but not all (if any) myths, especially creation myths, are explicable in terms of modern science. This is where science oversteps its boundaries and becomes science fiction.
zarakhast 2 months ago
The idea that when the ancients used "allegory" they were really referring to "real" (i.e. empirically verifiable (or non-verifiable) events) is a bit fanciful. I love scientists for their imaginativeness when they suggest that Plato in the Timaeus was referring to a real event, i.e. the volcanic eruption of what we now call Santorini, and the consequent destruction of the Minoans (of Crete and Santorini).....
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast To bring it home even deeper that Mathematics may be a middle ground in our discussions, Dirac stated "Non-euclidean geometry and noncommutative algebra, which were at one time were considered to be purely fictions of the mind and pastimes of logical thinkers, have now been found to be very necessary for the description of general facts of the physical world." Can this also mean that the "physical world" is actually based on "fictions of the mind"?
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@goldenarms12 Logic and mathematics may help us to understand the physical world - but what if there is in truth no physical world ? For this (and I assert) is fundamentally true : the physical world is not real ! The ancients had it right from the outset. This "world" which we take for granted is merely a passage. Everything in this world is either "no-longer" or "not-yet". Nothing is ever truly present. NOTHING is ever truly present.
zarakhast 2 months ago
.... any conclusions which science might eventually arrive at. Scientific "questioning" is also very far from being fundamental. The fact that Heidegger HAD to explicitly ask the Nothingquestion just goes to show what a poor age we are living in, intellectually speaking. This question is obviously the most important one, and this fact really ought to be more obvious to more people.
zarakhast 2 months ago
The idea that science is capable of throwing light on philosophical questions is comical. Philosophy questions what for thought is possible, and it pushes this questioning to the limit, i.e. to the something v nothing question, which is no longer accessible to science as such. Metaphysical conclusions have always formed the basis upon which science ("natural philosophy") made itself at home before asking its "own" questions. What is thinkable (hence possible) always determines .....
zarakhast 2 months ago
@zarakhast Its not obvious, even Hegel (and you have to tell me Heidegger's position on Hegel, the commentary on it is as obtuse as Hegel itself) said:
"If the result that being and nothing are the same seems startling or paraodoxical in itself, there is nothing more to be said; rather should we wonder at this wondering which shows itself to be such a newcomer to philosophy
goldenarms12 2 months ago
and forgets that in this science there occur determinations quite different from those in ordinary consciousness and in so-called ordinary common sense-which is not exactly sound understanding but an understanding educated up to abstractions and to a belief, or rather a superstitious belief, in abstractions.."
And since the Science vs. Metaphysics shows no signs of going anywhere, i propose a middle ground: Mathematics. Dirac once said "God has created the world with beautiful mathematics".
goldenarms12 2 months ago
what is ver ruecket?
anthonycotillo 2 months ago
@anthonycotillo "Here Heidegger is using the word verrückt, which is typically translated “crazy”, with the meaning “transcendent.”
goldenarms12 2 months ago
@goldenarms12 thanks
anthonycotillo 2 months ago
@zarakhast You should watch a documentary on Youtube called HOME, which depicts the planet Earth and its geological/biological wonders and which may clarify some of your questions.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Ah, nothing - my favourite subject ! For me this is what thinking is all about. Something v Nothing : it doesn't get much simpler or to the point than that ! The concept of Being is indistinguishable from the concept of Nothing. We arrive at this concept via a wholesale negation of beings. But do we thereby arrive at Nothing itself ? According to Heidegger, Nothing precedes negation and makes it possible. In fact, every being is "not nothing", i.e. a result of the self-negation (nihilation) ...
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast We dont even know the cause of the Cambrian Explosion after the Precambrian Era even though we may have many explanations all of which may be inadequate but each sheds its light on the evidence available to us.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 Science also seems to be undecided about the origin of life, i.e. whether it terrestrial or extraterrestrial in origin. We cannot easily answer these questions but my first port of call in looking for an answer would be the Greeks. They arrived at everything they thought by means of thought alone. They were amazing.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Unless the allegorical part of Parmenides' poem was some sort of extraterrestrial event, yes we can say that in matters of ontology, they and the Indians of the Vedas "arrived at everything by means alone."
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Honestly, I do not know much about the specifics of those geological events, perhaps a online forum dedicated to geology might be more helpful, but I do know that nothing is set in stone and as time goes on, the scientific information on these and other events will improve.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
From what I've read there does not seem to be a correlation between these two large impacts and any mass extinctions, though mysteriously there do appear to have been mass extinctions both before and after the impacts. I find science writers to be a bit annoying actually ! Like politicians they always seem to marshal the evidence in such a way as to support their own dearly beloved convictions !
zarakhast 3 months ago
Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite
goldenarms12 3 months ago
or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking;
goldenarms12 3 months ago
The universe as an object though ? This is what science doesn't so much teach as assume. I remember when I was first introduced to physics, chemistry and biology. I had always been good enough at mathematics and languages, but when we were suddenly introduced to science I couldn't grasp why I was supposed to be doing it, interesting though it was. There were other questions I wanted to ask ......
zarakhast 3 months ago
I think it's good to be able to switch between the scientific and the metaphysical views of the universe. They can enrich one another. The scene you describe at the beginning of 2001 is susceptible of many interpretations. The winner is the imagination. Another beautiful (but old) sci-fi story : "Earth Abides".
zarakhast 3 months ago
But of course for Heidegger
"every being, insofar as it is a being, is made out of nothing".
And so every element, too, is originally and ultimately nothing. Nothing is the source of all ambiguity. This essay ("What Is Metaphysics ?") is in my opinion the greatest single piece of writing that a human being has ever produced. In a sense it says everything which Being & Time DOESN'T say. But it speaks only to those who have ears to hear.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast However we do not know what "the nothing" is, what "the nothing" signifies. I perused some Hegel and this is what I found, and of course the notion of an object does not exist in Greek philosophy, that concept is inherent of the subject-object dichotomy that is the basis of common knowledge,
goldenarms12 3 months ago
It is surely essential that scientists, if they themselves want to be taken seriously, take the philosophical question of time seriously ? It is not good enough to apply "clock time" (based on the idea of the fixed "now) to the universe. Before there were human beings, asserts Heidegger, there was no time .... Aristotle, two thousand years earlier, asked whether if in the absence of consciousness there can be time. The "universe" according to science is already a humanisation, already a fiction.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@goldenarms "Man is a force to be overcome" ? I think you've made that one up ! Or perhaps you were paraphrasing Nietzsche ? He asked whether consciousness (hence mankind) might not in truth be a disaster. And that's a fair question. Mankind since the industrial revolution has been a boil on the face of the earth. Science has even had the cheek to embrace the philosophies of Nietzsche and Heidegger and is busy rewriting and reinterpreting them in accordance with the aims of science....
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!" (Thus Spake Zarathustra).
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 "Man is a force to be overcome" :) I'll let you off.
What does "man" mean in this passage though ? This is surely Christian man ? When such a man has been "overcome" (and the concept of overcoming is not an obvious one either : it means to incorporate rather than to merely "get over"), he will have become the "overman". What was "human, all too human" will have been banished, eradicated. He will have become a god.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Not a "god", he would have eschewed the beliefs of the "flies of the marketplace" concerning religion, dependence on technology, etc..and will experience no regrets or guilt because he will have realized that that which is is fixed and unchangeable (return of the same). You ever watched 2001 A Space Odyssey? Like Zizek associating philosophy with film can be helpful, for we see that it is only through a withdrawal from Being (the monolith) that the apes were able to overcome themselve
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 My favourite character, apart from Hal, is Leonard Rossiter. The atmosphere of that film is unique. I'm a huge fan of Arthur C.Clarke's imagination, even if I ultimately have to reject his (and science's) ideas. Rendezvous with Rama is another classic, and Childhood's End.
zarakhast 3 months ago
and the astronaut, by eschewing technology and refusing to be "the Last Man", sedentary, and instead taking upon himself to bring forth Being (through going to the unknown, beyond Jupiter) overcame himself, and became The Child (Nieztche's third animal symbolizing the third meta (beyond) morphosis of human being). Along that vein. Essential thinking, is of course thinking that strives to find the essence beyond fleeting appearance.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Of course you know that (they teach you this in Geology) most dating is based on either carbon-dating and the dating of other radioactive material, or through relative dating, like through layers and tree rings. So mostly we are dependent on constants (the half life of Carbon 14 for example) in the making of the Geological Time Scale. We can't say the "gradualist" will win over Gould's punctuated equilibra (which explained the evolution of the horse more satisfactorily then gradualism". All
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 (Sorry to interrupt if you are still typing). What I mean is that unless dating techniques (argon-argon or whatever, I really don't know what I'm talking about) can eventually be refined to yield dates which only have an error of, say, a few years, then gradualists will always have the upper hand, even if there is a huge crater and everything seems to point to an impact. I realise that there might be an impact but that this might not have caused the extinctions. I'm out of my depth
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Well it could have been many things including those catastrophic events and other colluding factors. After all extinctions are usually not instantaneous, they are an inability of the organism to adapt over time, causing their demise. Its not a question of either gradualism or punctuated equilibra, all of which betray our notion of time.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 I've picked that much up from what I've read. The K/T extinction may have been an exception though ? On the other hand the occurrence of flood basalt eruptions seems to coincide with many extinction events. It's baffling. The more I read the more I can see every side of the argument, from my scientifically uneducated point of view. Dating just seemed to me to be crucial. The Eocene extinctions, for instance, and the Popigai and Chesapeake Bay craters ,,,,
zarakhast 3 months ago
is an attempt for Man's Reason ("All that is real is rational, all that is rational is real) to explain and strengthen the evolution of life through the theory of natural selection/genetric drift, which will improve over time. After all Carbon-14 is highly reliable, even though Heidegger would say that its dependent on the fact that Carbon-14 always had and never had another half-life of 5,760 years lol.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
We have been born, we "exist" (whatever that means) for a time, and then we shall certainly die. We really don't know what is happening. So is it sufficient to just shrug our shoulders, forget about the "big questions" and adopt a (thoughtless) pragmatic attitude towards "life" ? I find this attitude astounding. When you come across it in "ordinary" people it is bad enough, but when you come across it in learned folk it is positively offensive.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@goldenarms Give or take a million years, or "merely" a hundred thousand. As long as dating techniques cannot be refined any further, the gradualist will "win" the argument by default it seems ? They may be correct in any case, though equally they may not. This seems unfair to me. I never forget though that the foundation on which the scientific view of the universe is based is metaphysical. The universe for the philosopher is not yet - in fact never is - an object.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast On a comic note to stray away from "mass extinctions" here's a clip from IFC's Portlandia that gives its meaning to instruments of information urging towards the extreme.
Youtube "Technology Loop - Portlandia on IFC"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
"Man is a force to be overcome." as Nietzsche once stated. The question shouldn't be can we avert mass extinction? The question needs to go back to essential thinking, which is the purpose of this video. After all it was the same physicists whose theory gave us the radio, tv, and the atomic bombs/ and weapons. Back to you.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 What does "essential thinking" mean to you ? What do you take Heidegger to mean when he uses this phrase ? I'm not challenging you, but I am interested, since you seem to be a reasonable and thoughtful type of person. Essential thinking, in my view, indicates the very opposite of modern science. All thinking ought to point Beingwards. And as Heidegger makes clear at the beginning of Being & Time, "Being is not a being". Essential thinking is certainly not scientific "thinking".
zarakhast 3 months ago
Maybe "the profoundest silence" can be seen in one way by the increasing alarming possession of weapons in the hands of governments, which is put out of debate because of political CORRECTNESS (for defense, for national security, etc...). Another aspects which are more subtle, such as Colony Collapse Disorder (the collapses of bee colonies and all the possible aftershocks), Climate Change. Even Earthquakes and natural "acts of God" can occur that threatens man. All is a challenge to adapt.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
extinction effect. And of course 1962 we had the Cuban missile crisis where its said (Chomsky tells us this) that the world was saved from nuclear holocaust because of one man (Vasili Arkhipov, check him out). In Sept. 1983 the same threat happened again when the USSR mistook a computer error for a U.S launch (Stanislav Petrov pointed that out). Nov. 1983 the Soviets mistook a "war exercise" as a ruse of war...if Stalin was alive instead of ailing Andropov, there's your mass extinction lol.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
These geological events may have reduced sunlight and hindered photosynthesis, leading to a massive disruption in Earth's ecology. Many researchers believe the extinction was more gradual, resulting from a combination of the events above and others including sea level and climate changes." Like most things, a variety of causes could've played a part. What they dont tell you is that in 1883, fragments of a billion ton comet could've hit the Earth, which might have caused an
goldenarms12 3 months ago
"Scientists theorize that the K–T extinctions were caused by one or more catastrophic events, such as massive asteroid impact(s) (like the Chicxulub impact[8]), or increased volcanic activity. Several impact craters and massive volcanic activity, such as that in the Deccan traps, have been dated to the approximate time of the extinction event
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 I've read up on this quite a lot. In fact it's my favourite diversion at the moment, though I'm no scientist and would need to learn so much more to earn any right to join the debate as anything other than a spectator. From an outside point of view though, it seems that dating geological events is a major problem, in spite of amazing technical advances. The asteroid, the Deccan eruptions - both occurring at "about" 65 MYA, give or take a million years... Thx for the videos.
zarakhast 3 months ago
between knowledge and truth, which is defined (outside of logic) as its breach (epitomized by that reversal of Descartes: I AM, therefore I THINK). Ironically it is in those troubled times where Heidegger in contrast says that the process of language in today's world exist "in the profoundest silence". All of these "truth events" or breaches only confirms that indirectly. How far does it go in "the profoundest silence"? Ill leave that to you.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
experiments (Foucault took LSD and Lacan mentioned hallucinogens as a legitimate use in his own paper "The Subversion of the Subject") and its aftereffects in popular culture all show in differing ways "transformations of the human being to language". The Consequences of course has to do with enframing, the transformation of the human being to language where "The notion of language as an instrument of information urges towards the extreme." We want to know without knowing the connection
goldenarms12 3 months ago
the incursion of structuralism in the vein of Althusser, Foucault and Lacan, the increasing of the intensity of the Cold War (and its rhetoric) and military technology, the advances of science with Feynman 's Quantum Electrodynamics (1964 Nobel Peace Prize) stating that we cannot even use notions of Newtonian physics and its notions of matter in explaining the most minute of reactions (a photon, the basic unit of light, is massless zarakhast. Does it exist? lol, and even the psychedelic
goldenarms12 3 months ago
can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." In this context, language is used vaguely (figures of speech are used) as "defense mechanisms" to strengthen the ego and by extension the image that one projects on the world. In 1964-ish, with the Civil Rights Movements, and
goldenarms12 3 months ago
"Today everybody is able to operate a radio or television set without knowing the laws of physics that make them work, without knowing the methods which were used to find these laws-methods, which in their ...contents are understood by five or six physicists. The same is valid for the task of thinking." Language is the "house of Being"; for nothing "exists" unless it can be said. However we neglect the fact that language remains the master of man, and therefore language can be used to stifle
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Language is already meta-physical so talk of the need for a "meta-language" is just total nonsense. You only need one "meta-" !
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Meta-language is the notion of a language of being, a language which can speak the truth about truth which is of course " just total nonsense" since language will never be able to explain being satisfactorily.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 But what if language is governed by Being ? And how could it not be ? Perhaps Being might then throw some light on language ? Are we to grasp Being or is it to grasp us ? If Being comes first then there is no way that we can grasp it by means of language. But it might grasp us if we could find a way to devote ourselves to it .. When Nietzsche speaks of "rausch" (rapture) what does he mean but this exceptional state in which we are grasped by Being ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Finally we're going on point, since this Youtube Video is about Heidegger's position on language. "The relation of human being(s) to language is undergoing a transformation the consequences of which we are not ready to face." Why does Heidegger says this in 1964 (i think) as one of his last messages to the world? (he dies in '76). "It cannot be stopped by direct intervention, instead it is going in "the profoundest silence"?" A clue might be when he says:
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast aletheia ("the truth as unconcealedness") into correctness (the truth as relative to a certain dependence on appearance and the law of appearance without taking into account the structure that sustains it). To quote Orwell, another Philosopher of Language: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan,
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 Completely off-topic (I'm not avoiding the subject) : in your opinion was it an asteroid / comet that did for the dinosaurs or the Deccan Traps, or climate / sea-level change ? And what about the present state of life on earth ? Are we in the midst of another mass extinction ? If so, are humans to blame or is it down to a combination of factors ? I'm on science's side here for certain. If only you could all stop disagreeing with one another !
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Thats why there is no "metalanguage"; that's why when you state "Nothing is", it would be more accurate to say "Nothing is, if not insofar as it is said that it is." for saying that it is, brings it into existence, even though it is "Nothing" that is the subject.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 Okay, I THINK I understand that ! I can't see what difference it makes though. Either everything is made out of something (which is hardly a very enlightening proposition) or it is made out of nothing. If it is made out of nothing then it "is" nothing, and Nothing "is" it - in two different senses. I fear we're losing each other here though, or at least I'm not quite sure what you mean ......
zarakhast 3 months ago 2
But your last comment brings us back to the question (Aristotle's question) of whether time can exist when there is nothing there to count, i.e. no consciousness, i.e. no human beings. On top of that, how can the universe be 13 billion years old and have been preceded (which it would have to be) by no time, when this would immediately make it infinite ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast I presume that question is still subject to debate.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
The a priori to my understanding is not an "assumption" in the ordinary sense of the word, i.e. an arbitrary opinion. It is something which forces us to assume it by its own nature. The concept of Being is another (in fact the only) a priori assumption. It is not possible for you to deny Being without invoking Being, for instance. You cannot speak a sentence which is not an articulation of Being : even to deny Being is to assert Being.
zarakhast 3 months ago
and the "letting oneself be encountered by", and time more describes the apparent entropy of a system. Now we are alive, In the past we were born, and In the future we are dead.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast Side note, According to "Science": "Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill." Heidegger calls it the "having been"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
So is time, as we understand it and apply it in physics and everyday life - i.e. clock time - not already a bit of fiction ? If we cannot arrive at a single moment of time how can we begin to count ? Let alone ascribe this kind of temporality to the universe ? Even the everyday, human idea of time is merely a convenience and in no sense a solid concept.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Thats why Kant called time a a priori assumption. We only question it when we are forced into external reflection.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Human beings have existed (or "existed") for 2.5 million years (roughly - please feel free to correct me). Even assuming that for this entire period humanity has experienced time just as we moderns so now, what about time before humanity ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast *do so now
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast 100,000 years for Homo Sapiens, before that prehistoric humans. Time is a very complex concept, even Heidegger's magum opus was concentrated "Being and Time". Time always exists in a notion of change or entropy, which is dependent of the human observer (Isn't that Einstein's relativity?). Since time and space are a priori constructs that we can't go without in explaining the world; man cannot imagine time before humanity without stating that there is no movement or change.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 Why is concept of time complex ? It is surely based on the concept of presence, i.e. the "now". And this of course cannot be pinned down (Zeno's paradox again). How can we even arrive at a single moment of time ? Is time not a complete illusion, as St.Augustine held ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast *the concept (too much coffee)
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast The concept is complex because we are used to the concept of present, past, and future which exist equiprimordially (Heidegger term), that are relative to many circumstances of the human experience and phenomena. We arrive at a single moment of time by agreeing on certain arbitrary standards (fictive hypothesis) just for everyday life I suppose.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 But the past and the future are based on the present : the past is the "no-longer-now" and the future is the "not-yet-now", so it is sufficient to first of all arrive at a sure knowledge of the present (the now). But can we do this ? Theoretically it is impossible. And so we have to start again. Somehow we are here, questioning, in this (fleeting) moment.But how can that be when there cannot be any time ? It's baffling.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast And of course essential thinking is thinking of the essence of things, about that which brings forth the disparity between Appearance and Being.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
And time : in what sense did it exist before there were human beings ? Do animals experience time ? What about Aristotle's question in which he asks whether if in the absence of something which can count (i.e. in the absence of consciousness) there can be time ? Does science not humanise the past when it speaks of geological and astronomical time ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
So what does Heidegger mean when he speaks of "essential thinking" then ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
itself; and if man was to disappear, whatever is the referent for "nature" will remain, for it always remained. Would we even know about the time of the Earth's coming to being without scientific experiments? Its all a search for knowledge, which doesn't imply truth but its needed to bring forth truth from concealedness (through self-negation). "The true comes from twisted pathways". Science as well as other discourses are those "twisted pathways"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast can be reflected in many ways, including science, for it defines/circumscribes the sense of world as humans know it by defining laws of appearances, and through their incapability of "telling the whole truth" we see the essence of truth as unconcealedness, as Being remaining the master of man. Man may be the "shepherd" of Being, but human beings are not necessary for Being itself, that is man's arrogance. The world of 4.5 billion years -100,000 years didn't need humans to sustain
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast "At the same time, it is a "saving power" and and opportunity: humanity's enframing orientation to the world makes clear the responsibility of human beings to the world. If we reflect upon the enframing as the essence of technology, we will find not only that we are a part of the world, but that the world "needs" us to care for it, that humanity "is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth""
Having provided that, the "safekeeping of the essence of truth"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Enframing is the essence of technology. Enframing is ambiguous, in that contains two possibilities:
It is a danger that sets man on a destructive and self-destructive course. "On the one hand, enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
"Humanity's orientation to the world takes the form of an enframing which views the world only as "standing-reserve," a source of raw materials. In this enframing, however, lies the potential for another orientation."
goldenarms12 3 months ago
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goldenarms12 3 months ago
"This instrumental way of thinkings stems from our assumptions about causality. If we come to understand modes of causality as ways of being responsible for the arrival of things into existence, we can begin to understand that the essence of technology has to do with the way we are oriented to the coming-into-existence, or the "revealing" of the world."
goldenarms12 3 months ago
This is from the Guide from "A Question concerning Technology":
We tend to think of technology as an instrument, a means of getting things done. This definition, however, misses the actual essence of technology, and tends to make us think that by making the technology better--better able to "get things done"--we will master technology and solve the problems that accompany it.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
To attribute reason to nature is to humanise it. To attribute feeling to it is to attribute life to it. The two are not the same.
zarakhast 3 months ago
In Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics and in other places too (in fact throughout his works, though not it is not always explicit) he comes to the profound conclusion that the human being IS in fact exceptional within the whole of beings. And Nietzsche, too, only wanted to dehumanise nature in order that it could afterwards be humanised anew : rehumanised according to his thought of the eternal return.
zarakhast 3 months ago
beneficial aspects of science when applied correctly, in introducing Penicillin, germ theory of disease, and computer theory, which can of course be the "saving power" or "danger" of humanity depending on he who possess it. Nature in itself is the fact that appearances conform to laws (Kant), laws which have no ground except from our perception.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
He would have cause to complain because the scientific attempt to dominate, master and alter beings can be the "saving power" or "danger" of Humanity. Like i said the subject in peril is Humanity as a whole. World War I, World War II and the Wars that followed all showed science and technology, being used to dominate, master , and alter beings in order to achieve wealth or power, and how many people died from the whole affair? Inversely, the advances of Fleming, Pasteur, Turing showed the
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 I think you're cleverly reinterpreting what Heidegger said in order to justify your own interpretation, and I think you know it. By the "saving power" Heidegger certainly didn't mean modern science.
zarakhast 3 months ago
How could Heidegger (or others) have any cause to complain about the scientific attempt to dominate, master and alter beings if nature really merely lies there, unaffected by human intervention and incapable of being affected by it ? Science, because it lacks depth of insight, simply assumes that the "laws of nature" are constant and cannot be affected by human intervention.
zarakhast 3 months ago
if its self-sustaining." I am not exculpating technology for the environmental ravages it causes, but just saying that the consequences we speak of pertain to our own survival, not the alleged "destruction" of nature. Parmenides stated time and time again that there is no change or movement, meaning no lack. For from whence will this lack come from? It only exists in our conception.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast The conception that Man's conception of the World is equivalent to the World as it is, more specifically the maxim that "All that is rational is real, and all that is real is rational", that residue from the Enlightenment, from which of course the capitalist mode of production gained its footing, where "raw material" became connected to the commodity. Suffering is a projection of ego over Being; a sense of privation. But nature, that which exists, cannot have a sense of privation
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast cataclysms that occured on planet Earth for thought its history? Ice ages, mass extinctions and etc? Did nature "suffered"? No for every species that became extinct, new species came in its place, and so on and so on. Even by using the word "suffer", you're betraying your subjectivity. Physics will never be able to give structures that can explain every phenomena, we dont even know what is the cause of Gravity! When we modify "nature" we are really modifying our conception of it
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 I know you're probably still replying and if so I apologise for interrupting you. I know that there have been many mass extinctions and it's one of my favourite scientific subjects (having always been a bit of a dinosaur nut), though I'm only a layman. But how can you so confidently have decided that nature (or nonhuman things collectively) is incapable of suffering ? I find this odd coming from someone who is so enthusiastic about the thoughts of Parmenides.
zarakhast 3 months ago
What about what Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy about the conceit of science that it can not only grasp the universe conceptually but even modify it ? Some scientists these days are even so mad to believe that one day they will be able to cure death ! You've got to applaud them for their humanitarianism, but are they not barking mad - regardless of how many coffees they may have drunk ?
zarakhast 3 months ago
To goldenarms (not that you'll be listening by now I imagine) : What do you think of what Heidegger says about the scientific attitude towards nature (i.e. that it challenges nature) ? Do you think that science is enslaving nature ? Do you believe that nature is "inanimate" and cannot suffer ? Do you believe that physics can explain and rectify everything ? If so then how does this conviction fit in with your other beliefs. In plain(ish) language please, if you feel inclined to respond.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Lets not use personifications. Science does not enslave nature; technology and more specifically the way it is implemented in a society where everything is treated as raw material defines nature in their own image,. How can you enslave that which is "fixed and unchangeable"? What do you define as nature? In the point of view of the human being, the environmental carnage that technology causes threatens our survival as human beings; but how is this any different from the "natural"
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@goldenarms12 But how did things come to be regarded and treated as "raw material" ? The way I read Heidegger (and Nietzsche) the objectification of nature is being accomplished by modern science, but this in turn has its roots in the philosophy of Plato. But it was the philosophy of Descartes (as the metaphysics of subjectivity) which gave the go-ahead to humanity to lay into nature like the unthinking (scientific) brute which he is today.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast and through that, we make meaningful progress in our survival (mastering our own Being). Medicine, major pathways in the understanding of the human body, have all increased the health, well-being and age of Homo Sapiens. Curing death? The thing is not that they would fail (entropy assures us of this) , but its how they would fail, that Being comes forth as predominant over human ego. You take too much stock in the importance of the human being Zarakhast lol Ill end with Voltaire:
goldenarms12 3 months ago
" It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him."
goldenarms12 3 months ago
the driving force in Ideal Science when it is realized that things may constitute one subsistence (the human body for example), but at the same time "constitutes diverse, mutually indifferent content" (The organs, the brain, etc). Laws or Notions of structure are made and perfected so that after the eventual erasure of appearance, the essence of the thing to the human observer does NOT disappear. Experimentation and changes in science and technology can have one observe this Appearance vs. Being
goldenarms12 3 months ago
to not hold to consistent experimentation with Galileo giving us a law of appearances (Distance of a falling body not proportional to mass but to acceleration). This "law of appearances" is itself dependent on the "presupposed elements" of space, mass and time. When the presupposed definitions of these"elements" become challenged, by scientific experiments or otherwise, then the dichotomy appears again as negativity, as "self-erasure". This forces the subject back into reflection, and this is
goldenarms12 3 months ago
Revolution.". Whatever foibles Science may have, Ideal Science helps us, alongside real philosophy, not define Being, or Nothing, but the joining or disjoining between Appearance and Being. How would we be able to do that without experiments? Aristotle was as much as a scientist (the first significant man to study fish i think) as a philosopher; and even some of his physical suppositions (the time the differing weights will reach the ground depends on their weight. Obviously !) were proven
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast The Brain. Its a presupposed element, independent from human reflection (You don't have to think you have a brain, to have a brain) while being dependent on it (there would be no notion of human reflection without whatever neurochemistry that conditions, (not causes) consciousness in the brain). It was this element, presupposed throughout medieval philosophy, that Kant used to show how our notions of existence are DEPENDENT on, calling it What? "A Copernican [another scientist]
goldenarms12 3 months ago
in co-dependence with the "World in and for Self" what I presume would be "the nothing", or more specifically the concept that you introduced, that the eternal wanted to reflect upon itself, thus bringing forth beings. There is no way, through human logic to make out which is appearance, law of appearance and which is Pure Being (Thus the necessity for Ereignis/Erlebnis) except through a presupposed element that is found independent of human reflection while being dependent on it. Example?
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast C'mon Zarakhast, don't you at least find the least amount of wonder in the way technology/science is progressing in all fields Even Heidegger wasn't strictly against technology, he was against its essence in a capitalist-mode-of-production society (Enframing, what we spoke of a few months ago). Hegel once stated that it is appearances all the way down; whatever deductions we can make of being is dependent on appearances and the law of appearances (which is Science, Language, and Law)
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakgast a never ending argument between the Ionians (Heraclitus, Democritus-founder of atomic theory 2,000 years BEFORE it was officially incorporated in modern physics) and the Eleatics (Parmenides, Zeno- "There is no movement nor change") that, recurres eternally from generation to generation and that has the same ill-feelings as Athens and Sparta lol. Heidegger of course commented on both schools in his lectures.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast The Fire that burns? :"This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures" (Heraclitus). [Reminds you of Conservation laws isn't it? It always amazes me how the ideas of the Presocratics are reflected in modern science even if science is "total idiocy" as you state it. After all one could say that modern physics is just
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast of the common-sense notion of a 'thing'; it is merely a characteristic of a physical process (All that they can tell you about a definition of energy is that "it is the ability to do work"). It might be fancifully identified with the Heraclitean fire, but it is the burning [the formal cause], not what burns [the effective cause]. 'What burns' has disappeared from modern physics." "
"What burns" is what which causes there to be something rather then nothing.
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast called electrons and protons, out of which atoms where composed; and these units were supposed, for a few years, to have the indestructibility formerly attributed to the atoms. Unfortunately it seemed that protons and electrons could meet and explode, forming, not new matter, but a wave of energy spreading through the universe with the velocity of light. Energy had to replace matter as what is permanent. But energy, unlike matter, is not a refinement
goldenarms12 3 months ago
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goldenarms12 3 months ago
@zarakhast to destroy, only transmutes: elements are recombined, but each atom that existed before combustion still exists when the process is completed. Accordingly it was supposed that atoms are indestructible, and that all change in the physical world consists merely in rearrangement of persistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radioactivity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate. Nothing daunted, the physicist invented new and smaller units,
goldenarms12 3 months ago
I didn't know what "Delian diver" meant lol, so I googled it, found the link to Heraclitus, and also found something else which I think is relevant to the question of science: Bertrand Russel's commentary on Heraclitian "perpetual flux":
Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substratum amid changing phenomena. Chemistry seemed to satisfy this desire. It was found that fire, which appears
goldenarms12 3 months ago
@adrianfischetti - you just weren't good enough for goldenarms.
zarakhast 3 months ago
Final cause embraces all the "other" causes and precedes them. The final cause is the first and the last cause. There is in truth no other cause. In eternity everything has already happened. Everything is destined for death. The intellect does not preside over this "state of affairs" as a "judge". Petty little human beings with their massive brains, their huge egos and their snivelling little souls are not going to change the way the world is.
zarakhast 3 months ago
Wittgenstein ? The most boring "philosopher" in Western history ? I must admit that I've never read any of his stuff and have never felt even slightly tempted to do so. Possibly the dullest figure in the history of philosophy?
zarakhast 3 months ago
Why is there anything at all, why not far rather nothing ? That is THE QUESTION ! All your "scientific" questions are OBLITERATED by this questions : they are of ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCE WHATSOEVER. So hunker down, get yourself a copy of Introduction to Metaphysics, and READ. It will do you good !!!
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast Lay off the coffee, and be nice to the scientists who do all the legwork for humanity while you bore us with rather pointless ontological statements.
seblasian 3 months ago
@seblasian They should keep doing their "legwork" - though you have to ask whether it's going to work in the long run (it isn't, in case you were wondering). To state the reverse of what a certain overconfident fool said to me a few months ago : scientists shouldn't speculate on the cosmos. That is the domain of philosophy. Science is incapable of grasping reality as a whole. It would be well advised, for the sake of thw world, to give up its grandiose aspirations to universal knowledge.
zarakhast 3 months ago
@zarakhast What isn't going to work, finding universal knowledge? I doubt anyone among (recent) scientists seriously expected that to ever happen, and the same goes for any half-smart philosopher. My point is that while you could argue that scientific questions are trivial compared to "the question", its profoundly infantile to do so, since "the question", in everyday life, hasnt even a smudge of relevance compared the far more laborous and fruitful activity called science.
seblasian 3 months ago
@seblasian But do you believe that absolute knowledge is possible ? It sounds to me as if you are laughing the idea off not only on the behalf of yourself and other scientists but also on the behalf of philosophers, as if they too are bound to agree with you ? You sound like a mere pragmatist. Science has an everyday, practical value and is a good thing, practically speaking . But is that enough ? It is incapable by its very nature of reaching an all-embracing point of view.
zarakhast 3 months ago