Time is a measure of change; energy exists beyond time in the “absolute”; therefore energy does not change?
Yet you have stated that Forms are mutable as they are temporary arrangements, consisting of energy; these forms being matter -presumably- and that the measure of this change of forms through interaction is time; that this interaction is an infinite process given, as you say, energy is absolute and cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore the measure of the length of the activity of energy is… not subject to time.
Is infinity a length of time, such that it can be said to possess a start and end? Is not therefore infinity simply a description of the activity of energy?
Have you realized that you have contradicted yourself with the “absolute” position of energy, yet agreed with me on everything else?
I would describe the nature of energy that you have given as the infinite process which I referred to in this thread; without giving it the nature of an absolute.
That this thread is an old one and that my understanding has moved on from treating “causality” as an “absolute” is something that has escaped your notice…
I resurrected it in order to respond to other users whose posts I had originally overlooked. As a consequence of the timegap, 10 months or so, my thoughts as expressed in the OP are not my thoughts as expressed here recently…
My aim was to present an alternative to what an “uncaused cause” is, because from you OP, it seems as though you consider a self-causing cause.
If we were to accept objective randomness, we must understand that it must be uncaused (because objective randomness = undetermined). And then there are only two observations we can make:
The event is uncaused in the sense that it came from absolutely nothing.
It came from a process that is objectively random. What the process would cause is uncaused, so thus an uncaused cause.
Firstly, the second does not state that the event is uncaused, but rather the result of a process that is uncaused in what it would cause.
Taking up the latter, the computer is this uncaused cause. Does this machine “cause its own existence”? It need not to, which is why I use the thought experiment. An uncaused cause need not be seen in terms of a god causing all that exists.
I cannot understand the conclusion that you make from here. If you see that I am using the word “objective randomness” then unpredictability is not the issue. Perhaps this is why you talk about “unpredictability” but I am confused as to how you reach this conclusion, because it seems If I were you from your understandng (believing that I am saying that the outcome is uncaused) I would just be confused.
What I have been describing is that the machine determines what number comes out in an objectively random sense. The idea is another conceivable form of an uncaused cause.
Have you been familiar with the concept of libertarian free will? Agent causation says that the person is an uncaused cause. Though I only see it as a random choice (not a libertarian ), the choices of their “uncaused cause” are followed from the person (caused by the person), but the person is not caused by antecedent factors, which is how they come to the conclusion that people make “free” (if free is another word for random) choices.
If you have been reading my previous posts more carefully, you would see my attempts to deny this particular idea. The outcome is NOT UNCAUSED, it is caused by the machine. How the machine determines the outcome is UNCAUSED, and is done in an objectively random sense ( so it must be uncaused).
The maybe you can try to give a reformulation of what your views are now. My point of contention is what your views of an “uncaused cause” are, and whether you consider it to be more than “something from nothing” or a cause whose existence is uncaused (which I do not find to be necessary).
My position at the present on this subject is very close to the position The Last Man accuses me of not occupying, minus the absolutist reference.
The apparent is a process; this process, lacking “states” or “forms” is ongoing without beginning or end; the present is a manifestation of this process. Look into Heraclitus…
As has been already pointed out by myself or others - if the apparent as a process were not the case, then it would be the result of ex nihilo or Causa Sui. Which is ridiculous in either case as it demands that something pre-exist itself in order to cause itself.
Further to that, that the definition of “nothing” or non-existence has no value in itself since it is a relative term used in respect to a subject; the absence of which it defines. Therefore something-from-nothing is irrelevant to this discussion.
Similarly, that the concept of “something” subverts this argument in that it presupposes idealized forms or static states which contradict the notion of an ongoing process.
So, with regard to your questions, given sufficient knowledge, one can predict events in this process. Since as I stated I argue from a position of determinism which is consistent with the concept of an ongoing process, I do not regard it to be possible for a process to be objectively random as you have described it.
Whether or not indeterminancy in the field of quantum mechanics is proved or not will necessitate an adjustment on my part with regard to this subject.
Do you think that an uncaused cause necessarily implies “ex nihilo” or a “casua sui”? I find the concept of randomness to be an exception, which is what I have been saying before with an uncaused random process, where the outcome is caused but the process that causes it is not, especially if you would not accept its alternative that something comes from nothing. The process is how the random number generator causes the outcome, so how the machine chooses the number is done randomly.
Rejecting the existence of objective randomness is different from holding it to be an intelligible concept. Do you find my concept of a “random process” to be logically contradictory?
Energy exists. It is in constant motion. Stasis is merely an illusion of forms, which themselves are nothing more than illusion. “Time” is merely a word we use to designate that, “X changed by Y amount according to Z standard of measure”. Of course Y is relative, and so is Z. And so is X. Thats the thing about time, its all relative.
So it makes no sense to speak of the “time passed” by existence itself. Existence itself is not passing through time, it just is. It exists. Period. It does not age, it does not pass through time – it did not begin, it will not end.
So your “infinite regress” is not only superfluous, but a contradiction. Of course Kant’s critique of the idea is also valid. But whether by his revelation of the contradiction within the idea of “infinite change”, or by the fact that existence is not “passing through time” at all, your argument is rendered irrelevant.
But is energy finite or infinite? If it is finite, within what does it exist? And if it is infinite—well, I don’t think that changes anything, as ‘pure energy’ is already unthinkable!
By the way, how can something that has no form be in motion?
Because it IS Flux…interpreted as motion, via a juxtaposition of mental models.
The very idea of a “within” implies a “without”, and in both cases it refers to a mental construct that has no meaning outside the mind.
But against your mentor’s positions you position yourself behind Parmenideis, instead of Heraclitus, and behind Spinoza and the current obsession with monism…nihilism.
Commenting on reality, from the presumed position of an outside, is exactly what religiuos mnids do…as God is nonsensical within the space/time continuum and so an outside it, a separate, existence outside existence (a self-contradictory position) must be invented and implied ambiguously.
This is top-down reasoning…one assumes something, usually somehting that contradicts all experiences of reality, and then tries to explain the experience. In this manner Buddhism, Christianity, and all other nihilistic philosophical positions, dismiss the real, the experience, as an 'illusion" or as a test-phase before a more ‘real’ reality.
My approach is from the bottom up: I see no immutable substance…and I do not assume one.
I see no immortality and I do not assume one.
I see no perfection or compeltion or any static thing, and I do not assume one.
I see no boundaries to reality, except in my perceptions of it, and I do not assume one.
I see no beginnings and no ends, and I do not assume one.
I see no God, and I do not assume one.
The idea of placing this noumenal wall around the universe - thusly separating it from what? - is nothing more than a mechanism of consciousness, the arbitrary detachment of pieces of reality, so as to simplify and order it into something comprehensible.
All is Flux, exhibiting diversions, congruences, temporary unities etc.
The question "What is in Flux?’ is a human one begging for the very thing it presumes, via linguistic simplification mirroring mental abstractions.
Doesn’t it…or are Nietzsche’s metaphors the only ones you can grasp and the only ones you can consider because they come, presumably, from one of your mentor’s orifices?
Are his words holy?
What outside then?
When one speaks of a universe is not one projecting himself outside this totality, imagining it as a whole…as a uni?
Is this projection not akin to religious projections and nonsensical, given that one cannot project one’s self outside reality and so one can never speak of what he can never know - as Witgenstein said?
Is this also about you?
Really? Quote please.
But this is about you and your interpretations of your mentor, or the interpretations of others concerning him, you’ve read.
In one of your posts you imply that Nietzsche was in agreement with Spinoza (in one of the threads titled something like “Nietzsche’s early metaphysics”)…Is this right?
Do you think that he was in agreement with Spinoza?
Out of necessity. My mind is programmed to construct totalities, as to order and understand the simplified and generalized contents.
If I already know this, then things become easier.
Consciousness places barriers, porous ones, around reality, or parts of it. The amount of detail contained within these constructed ‘wholes’ is determined by the mind’s perspicacity and it’s ability to retain abstractions in memory.
The simple mind can only compare the abstractions of the immediate…and so animals are said to live in the moment, and simpletons are said to be unburdened by anything beyond immediate gratification.
Genius, or Schopenhauer’s timelessness, is this ability to hold onto and integrate mental models, as well as then to compare them.
Weininger commented on this, as well.
Does it? Flux is no thing, although the only way to conceptualize it is by abstracting it into a thing. It is constant (inter)action displaying diversity, due to this (inter)action. It is constant multidimensional flow with no static state…and so no absolute definition.
The only way to understand the Flux is to freeze it into a point, just as a particle is the freezing of the wave into a point in the space/time continuum.
The only way to know the Flux is occurring is to juxtapose and extrapolate mental abstractions, adding and subtracting nothing and presuming nothing in advance.
If you want a forum above the common boring bullshit, out there, populated by mediocre minds, then shut the fuck up and allow the participants to hash it out.
Otherwise, simple man, go back to your humdrum reality, finding the quotations of Nietzsche mysteriously inspiring and wondering if philosophy is even worth it.
You have no fairness in you, so stop pretending you do…you know little of what you attempt to moderate…so stop acting like you know what is being said and why. The fact that you locked that other thread was indicative of your level of comprehension.
For you the topic is understood on a superficial level…and you think it a diversion off-topic when one speaks of the Nietzschean ideal man, and not of the damn Greek State.
As if the idealization of labor and its metaphysical connections to activity (ironically the topic here) were anythnig new.
My question stands:
“Can an average mind be judge and jury over above average minds”?
The Sauwelios was trying to reciprocate…and you should stand back and watch, or else you’ll remain the same New Age hippie you always were.
I do not complain every time someone insults me, in a defensive maneuver…but you think yourself the man to stand in my defense, when you have no idea what is being said…and only recognizing insult and sarcasm.
It’s all self-explanatory…someone, at some point, must have had his/her feelings hurt…Faust is just not one of them…he’s only here to defend those that mights have, at some point, been insulted, somewhere.
This has been my point from the beginning. Or rather, that this goes for an infinite as well as for a finite existence.
For you, apparently…
With pleasure!
[size=95]Thinking would be impossible, if it did not fundamentally mistake the essence of esse [Being, i.e., Becoming]: it must postulate substance and that which is identical, because a cognition of the completely fluent is impossible, it must poetically ascribe properties to Being in order to exist.
[Nachlass Herbst 1881 11 [330].][/size]
That’s what you say.
You have been referring to that for a while, so do your own homework and show me where I said that.
Nietzsche agreed with Spinoza insofar as the latter’s God (Deus sive Natura) was beyond good and evil: see the second treatise of the Genealogy.
Good for him. But this thread is about whether we can say anything meaningful about the totality of existence. apaosha thinks (or thought, ten months ago) that it is infinite. I think (and have argued) that such a totality, even if we must needs assume one, is inconceivable. And you? You think it’s a ‘Flux’:
Of ‘things’?
Of ‘things’?
So, in order to think about the ‘Flux’, we must falsify it.
Ahhhh, there we go! “ALL is FLUX.” Absolutist mentality, portraying nihilistic qualities.
“All is God.” That is what you meant, deluded mind. You are guilty of what you accuse others of doing, using your selective rationale. Flux is a phenomenon? Then flux is anything. Although, of course, you either will not or cannot comprehend this fact.
This is what causes the paradox of attempting to express a fluid reality with static symbols…especially when the mind is inflexible and takes the symbols literally.
Language, more specifically, presupposes the very concepts it then attempts to either prove and/or disprove…the medium is the massage…reflecting the dualistic conceptualization of the mind.
One requires a more flexible mind, a more artistic one, to even attempt to circumvent this inherit flaw.
For instance when seeing a painting of a tree one does not suppose that it is the tree, but knows that it is a representation of it…a simplification of it, if the artist is trying to be true to reality.
But the artists must simplify the representation by eliminating aspects of the phenomenon we know as tree…He freezes it, by eliminating the temporal aspect…and so the painting of the tree is static, a static representation of a dynamic phenomenon.
Same goes for language.
This is not a quote by your hero-god…and it agrees with my positions.
Substance is a necessary metaphor…but the quote asked for was from your hero-god and how he explained existence.
Yes…what I say after reading you and those like you for years.
If there is a true representation of an effeminate male, a follower, standing against what your hero-god spoke of as the “free-spirit”…it is YOU. You worship and by worshiping you contradict his ideal…isn’t that ironic? No…it is mostly funny.
That is all that can be said about it…for the concept of infinity only implies the constancy of existence…whereas the finite implies a walled in existence…
Of flows…like currents in a river.
A thing implies a static state, whereas reality is dynamic…a process a towards…
There is no flow of things, there is only flow…the thing is how the mind tries to make sense of it. A thing would constitute a singularity…a singularity that contradicts existence, by positing an arbitrary exception to a rule, with no justification.
Can you point to one?
All of monism has been an attempt to justify this arbitrary exception…or to harmonize the noumenon with the phenomenon.
See how you are stuck?
We must reject it…as in order to remain a cohesive unity, an identity, you must reject what is other than.
Self is a constant rejection…a towards selfness.
In essence the implication of an otherness, an identity, a self, a god, in dualism is this striving towards completion.
The sense of self, the ego is the sense of other-than. A desired detachment…freedom…perfection…omniscience, omnipotence…always towards never there.
Obviously. But is what is symbolised by this ‘Flux’ infinite?
It was written by Nietzsche and translated by yours truly.
Kindly point me to “those like me”. All I see here are minds like you.
Where is there any mention of Spinoza there?
So it can be said that existence is infinite, but an infinite existence is inconceivable… Actually, I’d agree if this was about indefiniteness. All ‘things’ are indefinite. Infinity, however, implies infinite extension. All ‘things’ are indefinite, but none is infinitely extended. But is the totality of all ‘things’ infinitely extended? Whether in time (as apaosha thinks, or thought ten months ago) or in space or in any other dimension? According to your logic, it must be in all dimensions. Now what could symbolise that?
But currents in a river consist of molecules. If all is ‘Flux’, how can there be different currents?
), the choices of their “uncaused cause” are followed from the person (caused by the person), but the person is not caused by antecedent factors, which is how they come to the conclusion that people make “free” (if free is another word for random) choices.