Which is First?

Yes, that is the classical view. In fact, this view is what drove the philosophers to search for a natural law or a law of reason.

In ancient Greek, ethos and nomos are (near-)synonyms. Nomos means, in developmental order, “way, habit, custom; convention, principle; law”. In its sense of “convention, principle”, it was a if not the standing antonym of physis, “nature”. So a “natural law” is a paradoxical concept in the classical view. One should compare “positive law” or “positive right” on the one hand, and “natural law” or “natural right” on the other. Natural is what is not posited (by persons).

A similar discrepancy can be found between law and reason (logos). Consider astronomy and astrology. In Presocratic times, astrologia still meant “astronomy” (for example in Heraclitus). However:

“In Latin and later Greek, astronomia tended to be more scientific than astrologia.” (http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=astronomy)

And that’s certainly the way it is (considered) now, of course. Astronomy supposedly describes the physical laws of celestial objects–which are not conventions, let alone mere habits–, whereas astrology reads reason (sense, meaning) into the ways of celestial objects.

But all this has been uprooted by radical historicism. The God of the philosophers, Reason, is dead; nature is history. Formerly, nature or the Reason in nature was grasped by something likewise considered natural (eternal): human reason, the Reason in man. Now human reason is understood to be historical, a product of evolution; and not a finished product, never finished, but always subject to evolution. Nature itself, existence, the cosmos, or whatever you wish to call it is now understood to be wholly in flux–or is that only a misunderstanding rooted in the current form of human reason?..

Wow, what kind of total BS is that?

Again, BS. What is posited by people (proposed) is not the antithesis of natural. What is constructed by people is the antithesis of natural phenomenon (by common usage of the language). Quite the reverse is true concerning what is proposed by people as “natural law” or even as “dialectics”. There is no black or white between natural and conceptual. And that includes the entire issue of “God”.

I should probably expound on this a bit, lest solely the opposite discrepancy be seen.

Astronomos literally means “an allotting of the stars”, e.g., allotting them to different sections of a map of the heavens. This was understood as a man-made arrangement (nomos).

Astrologia literally means “an account of the stars”; but a logos account and not, for example, a mythos or epos account. It was understood as a dis-covery (unconcealment) of the truth (aletheia legein, “to tell the truth”, literally “to tell unconcealment”).

Interesting, by the way, that in Greek, as distinct from proto-Indo-European, the root (of) lethe meant “forgetfulness, oblivion”–sc. of the past (physis, the way things have sprouted up?)…

Recently approved post…

It’s common knowledge that nomos and physis were standing antonyms. See for example here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physis#Classical_usage

and here:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/nomos-Greek-philosophy

I deliberate wrote “persons”, not “people”. A law posited by a personal god–as opposed to, say, Deus sive Natura–would also be a positive law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_law

Even if a law posited by persons would reflect a natural law as perfectly as possible, there’s still the difference between the letter and the spirit of the posited law. A natural law would be all spirit. A positive law can never be all spirit, for then it wouldn’t be posited. Even if the Mosaic law, for example, was posited by a personal God, it still needs to be interpreted; one needs to infer back from its letter to its spirit.

Perception requires innate, non-lingual logic (“what I see is what is there”).

Perception requires a degree of consciousness (and vsvrsa). Natural law reactions are not perceptions.

You’re not getting it. There is a difference between what mankind does and what mankind proposes. From your source:

They are discussing the distinction between what man does, “nuture”/“nomos” verses what happens without man’s intervention, “nature”/“physis”. It has nothing to do with what man proposes to be natural law, “physics” or even language requirements, “dialectics”.

Language is a natural phenomenon, not restricted to people. But for ANY language to function, it must adhere to fundamental laws whether the participants are aware of it or not. I am certain birds and dogs are not aware of the consistency in their communication, yet without such consistency (aka “logic”), they could not communicate at all.

Aristotle pointed out what he believed to be the most fundamental laws governing any functioning language. He wasn’t inventing laws, but discovering natural laws in the same way that Newton thought that he was discovering natural laws, “Physics”.

Is this a bad time to ask how you know atoms have no degree of consciousness?

And would you say even the beings with the lowest degree of consciousness reason that “what I see is what is there”? What is much more likely, of course–not just for such beings but also for most (very young) people, is that no distinction is made between “what I see” and “what is there”. In order to relate these, rationally, e.g. with an “is” between them, one must first distinguish them.

“Husserl found the most important example of the contrast between claim and achievement in ‘the reigning naturalism.’ (In the present context the difference between naturalism and positivism is unimportant.) […]
As theory of knowledge naturalism must give an account of natural science, of its truth or validity. But every natural science accepts nature in the sense in which nature is intended by natural science, as given, as ‘being in itself.’ […] Hence naturalism is completely blind to the riddles inherent in the ‘givenness’ of nature. It is constitutionally incapable of a radical critique of experience as such. The scientific positing or taking for granted of nature is preceded by and based upon the prescientific one, and the latter is as much in need of radical clarification as the first. Hence an adequate theory of knowledge cannot be based on the naive acceptance of nature in any sense of nature. The adequate theory of knowledge must be based on scientific knowledge of the consciousness as such, for which nature and being are correlates or intended objects that constitute themselves in and through consciousness alone, in pure ‘immancence’; ‘nature’ or ‘being’ [physis, bhusis] must be made ‘completely intelligible.’ […]
According to Husserl it is absurd to ascribe to phenomena a nature: phenomena appear in an ‘absolute flux,’ an ‘eternal flux,’ while ‘nature is eternal.’ Yet precisely because phenomena have no natures, they have essences [eidea!]. Phenomenology is essentially the study of essences and in no way of existence.” (Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy”.)

It is probably a bad time in your education. Can you even define what “consciousness” means other than simple awareness that any thermostat would have?

Yes, given that they see at all and that such “reasoning” is merely innate, not cognitively formulated as philosophers do. Initial perception is pre-wired into the neural network, else the creature cannot see or hear anything. The inherent logical condition of every living creature is that “if I see it, it is there”. It takes much higher consciousness to dispute the validity of that reasoning (higher than most modern-day Quantum Physics enthusiasts).

This is from Wikipedia, and it is accurate:

Considered a major figure in mathematics, he [Frege] is responsible for the development of modern logic and making contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is also understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, where he concentrated on the philosophy of language and mathematics. Though largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) introduced his work to later generations of logicians and philosophers.

You are a genius.
I mean I assume these other people are reasonably intelligent, and that my sentence was EXTREMELY complicated.

Yeah, Im Faust.
Heres where I split up into two persons.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETVOd4tcvis[/youtube]

Im enjoying the fact that I have 50 posters circling me purely based on how cool I am to be around - none of them even reads my posts. They just want to be close, to think about my person.

It does distract from the topic, but hey, I already resolved it.
For those who are intelligent but still have trouble doing the work:

Ethics is the study of right and wrong — how we should act.

  • 1: we should act logically.

Logic is the study of valid reasoning — how to reason.

  • 2: now we can reason.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge — how we know.

  • 3: now we can apply reason to formulate a statement.

Ontology is the study of beings or their being — what is.

  • 4: now we try for a statement that pertains to something.

Phenomenology is the study of our experience — how we experience.

  • 5: now we can apply our statement to our making of the statement. Now, we can begin to philosophize.

I must admit that at first glance, I thought you meant “when I posted in this thread for the first time in almost six years”, but then I read the words “had done”, and knew that couldn’t be the case. Logically.

Does ethics not pertain to how we should act morally rather than logically
Acting logically is not always ethical so logic cannot be the basis for ethics

Logic does not pertain to behavior. Logic only applies to language and thought structure. You are thinking of people who behave inconsiderately out of self interest. IF someone has only the betterment of their self as a goal and rationally pursue that goal, they can be seriously unethical. Some people call that “being too logical”, but that is a misuse of the term.

I think a better term would be rational because that pertains to behaviour whereas logic pertains to thinking like you said

Why this never made it to Cannes, I will never know.

Depends on the ethics.

It is ethical in as far as one has the ethics to act logically.

The only safe source we know about “you” is this:

s_p.jpg
So Leyla is possibly right: “you” are possibly the fifth sock puppet of the one who has no real supporters.

Kdding, Faust. Alf is my sock-puppet.

Its true I have no followers though.
I have friends, fellow philosophers.

And a whole shitload of trolls, but I agree that these can’t be seen as followers, as they don’t care about my philosophy, only about me.
Or are those actually what one calls followers?

Hm.

On the fence.