Ya da da da da da, Ya da da da da da, Ya da da da da Boom Ching! 
Feel any better?
Seriousness aside–are there philosophical perversions or perverted philosophies? Think about it . . .
Statements aren’t physical. A statement about things changing can be universally true without the slightest paradox; the language used to express the statement can change, the media by which it is expressed can change… a statement is an abstraction of the physical instantiations of expression. Unless you’re a Platonist, that shouldn’t be a serious problem.
Still, it’s an appropriate thread to raise the point in 
True. Reality comes in “Realms”. There is the conceptual realm and the physical realm. What you meant by “statements” would belong in the conceptual realm (also known as the Divine).
In the conceptual realm, nothing changes at all. A circle is always a circle. If any such change were to take place, the changing itself would become physical. I don’t know why anyone would need to know that, but just say’n…
Gods, angels, ideas, plans, souls, and perfect geometries or examples of things that exist only in the conceptual realm (hence “eternal”).
Smears pretty much has it. The problem with using the word “absolute” is that it usually doesn’t mean anything at all. There is no such thing as an absolute statement. Saying so is sort of like saying that moral statements are about objective facts and so morality is objective. The word “objective” means nothing to begin with, in this context, and so the question of the objectivity of morality is falsely introduced to begin with.
What happens is this - when I say “my dog has fleas”, I am making a claim to truth. When I say “It is true that my dog has fleas”, I am being redundant. “It is true that” does not add to the meaning of my original statement. So, if i say “It is absolutely true that my dog has fleas”, there is no hope that I am adding any meaning to my original statement.
“Absolute”, when it can be used in philosophy, is a term of metaphysics. Outside that context, it has no meaning whatever. Metaphysicians, mostly of a religious stripe, will try to interject this meaning when they say “nyah, nyah, that’s an absolute statement”. It’s pretty much just a stupidity. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. As smears points out, it’s pseudo-philosophy.
Good question.
A comment …
When we think, or let’s say when I think, there is a split creating a division between myself and the world. It would seem that this is where perversion could take place. What I mean is if ever my process of thinking would be an attempt to become other than itself, to change the given present condition, then I perceive the present as something that will be distorted according to my predilections. Wouldn’t this be a kind of perverted process if I were to use my knowledge to perpetuate my thoughts in an attempt to create a continuity and permanence for myself?
Yes, there is a split, but I don’t understand how you could change your thinking processes without some sort of mind altering drug use. The ‘split’ between ‘yourself’ and the world is there because of thinking, isn’t it? What I mean by ‘perverted philosophies’ is how philosophies are changed because of time, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, the fluidity of language. Take the word “hedonism,” for example. The meaning has changed from Epicurus’ idea of ‘moderate pleasure’ to mean one of inordinately seeking pleasure in sexuality, life style, experiences, and so on.
Basic philosophic ideas get misinterpreted by the ‘public’ all the time and reduced to ‘adages’ that are often far removed from the actual philosophy. That’s what I meant by my ‘throw-away’ line.
Thanks for keeping the thread going everyone. I appreciate the input and support.
Liz, I think by perversion, in this thread I’m referring to abusing language in order to first confuse people, and then promote some idea you carry around in your pocket. Not you you. Just… people. It seems to happen a lot. I think I’ve seen Faust call this “parlor tricks” before. I think. Some people just call it sophistry. Usually the view expressed is that all ideas are equal and there’s no reason to value one idea over another. It’s an essentially nihilistic way of arguing.
I’m kind of babbling and don’t feel too rigorous at the moment though. So if this makes little sense to you just forget about it! Thanks for visiting.
I’m often not altogether sure when it’s a parlor trick and when it’s a delusion, anon. I think it can be the blinding effect of metaphysical lust. people want absoluteness so much that they accept any excuse to invoke it. Others merely believe that ideas like absoluteness are "more philosophical’ - they buy into the fancy phraseology of Plato or even Hegel because they think it’s difficult, dense and fecund. It’s usually just dense.
Fecund! Fun word. Such associations…
I think sophistry is the appropriate word because it carries a hint of philosophical shaming, as opposed to just saying “you have a bad argument!”
What is it that they lust for Faust?
Faust will have his own answer, but I’d like to chime in. Metaphysical lust is… to be as a god - the knower of everything. If all that is, is flux, then lust is to ‘fix’ the universe, to be omniscient. Thus certainty and ‘absolutes’ become the house built upon sand. We don’t know shit - and it pisses us off. If the universe is flux, then knowing is conditional and provisional. What I can know is local and temporary and all the language in the world won’t change that.
There are some philosophies going around having to do with ridding oneself of extraneous mental baggage, emotional baggage, metaphysical baggage and so on. Comments in regards to this include suggestions that, in the effort to attain purity of thinking, it’s not a matter of total annihilation of self, it is rather that a self wants to continue probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but continuity is still wanted. That continuity is imagined to take place in some kind of uncontaminated void like territory in the mind. But continuity abhors a void, so here comes inquiry as to how to create this new self. That structure of inquiry and attachment to a method is born of time and functions in time, but does not come to an end through time – as is seen in philosophy sites and how people find a kind of charm in repeating things.
If you don’t immediately understand at this instant, you’ll never understand. No dialogue is possible with this sort of thing. When the self is not there, when the question is not there, what is is a different kind of ‘understanding.’ You are finished. You’ll walk out. You will never listen to anybody describing that state or ask any questions about understanding at all. But rather than going to that extreme, people will look around. They would rather tread an enchanted ground with beatific visions of a radical transformation of a non-existent self of theirs into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes one away from his pure and natural state – it is a movement away from one’s self. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are ‘blessed’ with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is being his own natural unperverted self.
Tentative pretty much has the line on metaphysical lust, Smears. ML is at least the difficult desire to know something, with complete certainty, if not everything. We use many expressions that ignore change. Most of our expressions ignore change. There’s a continuum, for example, between objects and events, not a fixed line. Which term we use has more to do with the scale upon which we live than it does on anything else.
Fireworks are a favorite example of mine. What if it took a century for a firework to explode? We’d call that an object, even as we recognize that it changes, as all objects do. It would be unusual to call an exploding pyrotechnic an object, though, as it happens in real time. Calling anything an object more or less ignores change. Ignoring change, or even just generalizing, freezes time or denies difference. Very useful. But this is useful only within some context. The metaphysician either ignores context or makes the context “everything”, which has the same effect. Ideas that are perfectly useful when limited by context become nonsense when that context is removed. Metaphysical lust impels us to remove that context.
You did not respond to my point about how your statements were in negative form, when in fact they are making positive assertions about the way things are in all places. The issue is not some equivocation about certainty or universalness, but rather that you are making metaphysical claims precisely in the way the position you are opposing is.
i can’t see how Everything Changes (all the time)
is not an absolute idea.
it’s certainly not relative.
So lusting for the law of identity to be true is bad. But what if you only lusted for it to be true in it’s purely, practically applicable forms?
If you are asking me, I need help connecting this question to what I wrote. Baby steps for me.
Huh?
The Law of Identity needs no “lusting to the true”.
that shits totally metaphysical. i mean, how am i supposed to believe that two things are the same?
What “shit”?
It would help if you would put just a tad more effort in letting us know exactly what you are responding to.
If you are talking about “A=A”, you have merely been minded fucked by the people around you.
“A=A” merely means that whatever is called “A” is whatever is called “A”; “It is whatever it is”.
If you have an argument against that, I would certainly like to see it.