 Oh, that's beautiful out here. So, permittities. Before we dive into permittities, boom, with them I'm sure you disagree. I think it's helpful to get started pretty much the same way we started with the others. Not just diving straight into the conclusion, but even just trying to figure out what he's trying to do. So, we've had a variety of different questions so far. All at different attempts to answer the question, what does it mean to exist? We ask Thales, Annexamander, Annexamenez, what does it mean to exist? They say, I'll answer that question by answering a different one. And the different one is, I'll tell you what it's composed of. So, for Thales, Annexamander, Annexamenez, what does it mean to exist is answered by the question of what is it composed? We go to Pythagoras. We ask Pythagoras, what does it mean to exist? He says, I'll tell you what it means to exist by telling you it's form, what is its form? And then we have Heraclitus. We ask Heraclitus, what does it mean to exist? And he says, I'll tell you what it means to exist by telling you it's unity. I'll answer the question, what's the unity and the diversity? So, we've got three different questions. As an attempt to answer the question, what does it mean to exist? So, now we get to permittities. Is permittities doing one of these three questions? We ask permittities, what does it mean to exist? We know his answer, right? His answer is the one, right? Okay, that's simple enough. But we ask him, what does it mean to exist? He says, I'll answer that question, what it means to exist, by answering a different question. What's the different question? Is it of what is it composed? Is it form? Is it unity and diversity? Or, is it something completely different? We ask, what does it mean to exist? And permittities is asking, saying, I'll answer that question by answering a different one. We ask, what does it mean to exist? We ask, dailies, and exemenis, and exemenis, what does it mean to exist? What does all this mean to exist? They say, I'll tell you what it means to exist for any of these things to exist by telling you it's composition. What makes it? Dailies says water, and exemenis says boundless, and exemenis says air. Is permittities doing composition? Well, if he thinks so, let me ask you this. How many things do you need in order to compose? Can I compose all of this with only one bit of water? No. Can I compose all of this with only one atom? No. You need more than one atom to compose anything. So, permittities isn't doing composition. He isn't saying all these are composed of a bunch of ones. That's not what he's doing. We're gonna see somebody who does that later, but that's not what he's doing. He thinks only one thing exists and it's the one. So, he's not doing composition. Form, is he doing form? Well, if you think he's doing form, then he's saying I'll tell you what it means to exist by telling you the number one. No, he's not doing form. He's not doing a definition or essence. Is he doing something else? Completely different? Well, if you think so, I'd be curious to think what you think it is. But bear with me for a moment, all right? Think about Heraclitus. Heraclitus is trying to answer the question, what does it mean to exist? If I answer the question, what's the unity and diversity? Okay, fine. But then what's his answer? Heraclitus says fire. Fire is the unity. So, all of this, what it is, is fire. It's not composed of fire, right? That's not, he's not doing composition. He's saying the unity, these are all diversities. These are all changes. You got the water moving, the wind blowing, the trees wrestling. These are all changes. The diversity isn't really what exists, right? He's not answering the question, what does it mean to exist by saying I'll tell you it's diversities. No, he's saying I'll tell you it's unity. And what remains the same with all of these things, for Heraclitus, is fire. Fire is what remains the same. Today, if we were put in today's language, you know, we'd probably say something like energy. And it's all energy. Well, if fire or energy is the unity, then there isn't a bunch of different blades of grass. That's diversity. What all that is is fire. There isn't a big lake. That's diversity. What's there is fire. There isn't the trees. There isn't the wind. These are diversities. If Heraclitus is right, what all this is, is fire. So for Heraclitus, surprisingly so, there's only one thing that exists, fire. Again, if we were to say this in today's language, we'd probably say energy. Then, you know, if Heraclitus is right, what everything is, is energy. If what you are is energy, you don't exist. You're a diversity. You come and go. The energy remains. If all what this is, is energy. Some way, shape, or form, that's what it is. All it means for these things to exist. None of this exists. This is all diversities. These come and go. They're fleeting, dust in the wind. If that's right, none of this exists. The only thing that exists is energy. Now, Zeno is very definitely responding to Heraclitus. He is very definitely replying to him. He's probably, what he's probably doing is taking Heraclitus's conclusion, you know, like the next step further. Heraclitus, surprisingly so, maybe he doesn't realize it. Maybe a lot of people don't realize it. Heraclitus thinks there's only one thing that exists and that's fire. Parmitides, it's just making explicit. Now, for parmitides, the one thing that exists isn't, you know, an ever, you know, a fire going through changes. I imagine what happened with the parmitides is he tried to take Heraclitus's conclusion seriously and say, okay, well, I understand the unity is this fire thing. Great, what's the diversity? What are these changes? And what Parmitides did was probably try to figure out how to make sense of changes and couldn't do it, right? He couldn't do it. Yeah, every time he, you know, as we saw with the argument and just to kind of forecast a little bit, every time he talked about change in division, it always, always, always had to involve some kind of discussion about nothing. Well, Parmitides points out, any discussion about nothing is nonsense. And if it's nonsense, no use talking about it. It's pointless. It's an illusion. Okay, well, if change is an illusion, if division is an illusion, this fire isn't going through changes at all. It's just one thing, the one. So, really sure the Parmitides is trying to answer the question, what does it mean to exist? By answering the question, what's the unity in the diversity? And according to Parmitides, the unity in this diversity and all this is the one. All right, this gives us Parmitides. We figure out what question Parmitides is trying to answer. What question is Zeno trying to answer? Well, Zeno is one of the few philosophers we're going to look at this semester that is just trying to defend his teacher's view. How the rest of these guys pretty much reject what the previous teacher teaches. Well, Zeno is trying to defend his teacher's view. So he's, you know, in essence, he's answering the same question, what does it mean to exist? Well, I'll tell you what it means to exist by telling the unity in diversity. But he's going about it in a slightly different way. Instead of independently trying to prove Parmitides' conclusion all over again, he's defending Parmitides' conclusion against a particular objection. Now, this objection is pretty straightforward. I think we covered it in the video. Subjection against Parmitides' conclusion is that common sense tells us that there's division. Common sense tells us that there's change. Look around. There's a lake and trees and boats and bugs and plants and me. All these things are different from each other. They're distinct from each other. Common sense tells us this. So of course, of course, there's division. You look out in the water, it's moving. The boats are moving across the water. The plants, the trees, these are all changing. Of course, there's change. Common sense tells us that there's change and division. So common sense says, Parmitides is wrong. Xena says not so fast. It's not like common sense gets a free pass here. It's not like common sense doesn't have its problems. And these are the paradoxes that Xena produces. He tells us that common sense produces its own contradictions. You don't have to introduce any other new evidence. You can just take common sense, follow the implications, and you get contradictions. So common sense isn't a good reason to reject Parmitides' conclusion. Parmitides got reason on his side, Xena's saying. I got reason with Parmitides. Common sense, it rejects itself. So that's what Xena's trying to do. He's trying to defend his teeth. He's still trying to answer the same question. But instead of producing an independent argument, he's saying, look, your objection against Parmitides' argument is common sense. All right, rejects it. But common sense got its own deep problems. So it's not any reason to reject Parmitides' conclusion.