The Philosophy theory thread

[Danoff]

Mmm... if after y seconds you're at 0.5x, after 2y seconds you'd be at x if at constant velocity.

The Dichotomy Paradox is that if it takes y seconds to reach x, for every half of the remaining time you cover only half the remaining distance:

0y = 0x
0.5y = 0.5x
0.75y = 0.75x
0.875y = 0.875x
0.9375y = 0.9375x
0.96875y = 0.96875x

and so on until 0.9 recurring y = 0.9 recurring x.

Problem is that space isn't infinitely divisible - even assuming you can move in infinitessimal quantites given your size - and you will run out of half distances and reach 1x at 1y seconds.

I would state it slightly differently - that you do not perceive time in an asymptote, but rather as a smooth transition. So regardless of how finely you can parse time mathematically, you will experience it as the same rate you always do - and so you will reach the door.

 

[bonobo4]

So, in order for my example to work, you'd need to be minutely slowing down? Or did I get my Maths wrong?

Remember, x is a set distance (distance at start) away, so as y increases (seconds), the distance gets fractionally smaller, not larger.

 

[Famine]

No, you'd be going at the same speed, just each subsequent discreet passage of time is half the duration of the previous one - the idea is that because you must travel half of the remaining distance each time before you can reach your goal you can never reach your goal as you have to travel half of the remaining distance.

But space is not infinitely divisible, so even accepting this to be true there is always a final step to the goal that cannot be halved - you either pass it or you don't. At the end of the (time taken to reach the goal) you're always (at the goal) regardless of how many half steps in half times you've taken on the way. Not that you perceive them.

 

[Danoff]

Taking you and the door as fixed particles of infinitely small mass in space at x metres apart, with the door being D and you being A, D being stationary, then after y seconds you'd be 1/2x away, after 2y 1/4x, 4y 1/8x, assuming constant velocity. However, due to the laws of indices, in order for the distance to be zero you'd have to move for infinite seconds in order to touch.

This ^^ is how the problem is perceived. That it always takes you the same amount of time to go half the distance. Once you start cutting the time with the distance you understand why you reach the door - because regardless of how you slice it, you reach the door in y seconds.

 

[Vince_Fiero]

Now, pardoning some my admittedly harsh, scanty, criticism, may we compose some sort of purpose to this thread?

I believe the purpose was misunderstood. I was in no way defending Aristotle, just introducing his ideas (so mostly not even my writing, but no direct quote either). If I got them wrong you can correct. If others invalidated his ideas (they did) just explain what the other thought. There is no intend to create a new Philosophy (critic on the others) in this thread, just discuss how to interpret the already written, at maximum what they can teach you.

P.S.: I admit Pro's and Con's was a bad formulation.

e.g.:

Descartes defined himself as the thinker of his thoughts. So there was no need to prove that he was, no need to doubt the doubt.

Indeed he was trying to avoid criticism, by using only indubitable ideas possessed innately by the mind.

Below a critic (Descartes did not prove anything): Immanuel Kant

A large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?
It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics (something we would call beliefs). The reason that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind’s access only to the empirical realm of space and time.
Kant also agrues many make the assumption that we can have knowledge of things as they are in themselves, independent of the conditions of our experience of them. Which is not true, we always interpret. We must recognize that we cannot know things as they are in themselves and that our knowledge is subject to the conditions of our experience.

Kant introduced as analysis of knowledge a distinction between synthetic (new fact out of 2 other facts) and analytic (analysing facts shows what it really is) truths. In short, you can formulate problems in a way you can never prove them, since you state a fact as true (one you can not analyse) to prove the fact is true (synthetic). It would not be possible to be aware of myself as existing, Kant says, without presupposing the existing of something permanent outside of me to distinguish myself from.

While Kant is a transcendental idealist – he believes the nature of objects as they are in themselves is unknowable to us – knowledge of appearances is nevertheless possible. So all is subjective, you can not even proof you exist, it is a believe. However Kant gives a robust defense of science and the study of the natural world from his argument about the mind’s role in making nature. All discursive, rational beings must conceive of the physical world as spatially and temporally unified, he argues. And the table of categories is derived from the most basic, universal forms of logical inference, Kant believes. Therefore, it must be shared by all rational beings. So those beings also share judgments of an intersubjective, unified, public realm of empirical objects. Hence, objective knowledge of the scientific or natural world is possible. Indeed, Kant believes that the examples of Newton and Galileo show it is actual.

Kant thought it necessary to presuppose a higher, transcendental dimension of consciousness, capable of reflecting upon the conditions of the possibility of objective knowledge. The empirical self remains individual and relative, the transcendental self is regarded by Kant as ‘universal’. Kant simply takes for granted that whatever a transcendental consciousness discovers to be true of its self will be true of any self which possesses a transcendental (self-reflective) status.
This universalizability leads to the idea that whatever moral judgments a self discovers to be morally valid for itself are by the same token binding upon all other moral agents.

For me what Kant says with: whatever a transcendental consciousness discovers to be true of its self will be true of any self which possesses a transcendental (self-reflective) status. => Is just Logic exists universally otherwise the world would be illogical and things out of logic, even only existing in one's mind are objective, universal.

 

[Lizard]

I am doing A level Philosophy so put something to me and I hope I can answer it.
I have studdied the folowing questions.

Reaso or expirience.
Why are we moral.
What is reality ie naive and repersenttive realism.

 

[Vince_Fiero]

I am doing A level Philosophy so put something to me and I hope I can answer it.

The Idea is that you post things that surprised you, even if it might not surprise some of the specialists on the forum. I'm not a philosophy graduate, but very interested in it.

I was reading again:

Again, the suppositions in this are almost entirely unrelated to current philosophic debate,...

The goal for me is not to participate in the current philosophic debate. I understand that this means you can find everything in here somewhere else as well, it is just like "a what are you eating thread", here that would be "what philosophical theory is occupying you today."

Edit: Maybe it is in the wrong part of the forum for that?

==============
Something else I worked on: Christopher Macann (I met the man in 2005, did not discuss a lot of philosophy though, he served me breakfast).

Macann explains the basis of his ‘genetic’ system of phenomenology in short like this: Plato, Kant, Husserl studied the high level (reality and knowledge) in their philosophy where their studends Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger studied the low level (ethics and science); from this there is a point of departure for the philosophical movement upward or downward, a middle ground (appearance and opinion). Macann started from the bottom, with an ontological investigation of the nature of experience prior to self-reflection, to proceed through the middle ground characterized by science and common sense, before concluding with the higher transcendental sphere capable of reflecting upon the conditions of the possibility of the two lower levels of consciousness. Macann calls this a genetic investigation into phenomenology, because it involves analysing the processes that give birth to experience. His work Being and Becoming is distinguishing these three stages in the development of human consciousness, it situates ontological philosophy at the first (‘originary&#8217 stage, analytic epistemology at the second (‘objective&#8217 stage, and transcendental philosophy at the third (‘reflective&#8217 stage. The first and original stage is defined in terms of a coincidence of consciousness and the body; the second, objective stage, in terms of a distinction of consciousness and the body; while the third, reflective stage is defined in terms of an abstraction of consciousness from the body. Macann concludes that it takes the long detour via reflection for us to come to terms with what we are. So at the end you need to visit the onctology again which made Macann conclude on a cyclical, spiral genesis in philosophy. This supports the principle fundamental of Hegel’s cyclical genesis, where “The goal is the ground and the ground, the goal.” The fourth stage turns out to be nothing other than the reflective recuperation of the first.

At the end Macann finds that the development of consciousness is paid for at the cost of a diminishment of the being-relation. The more human being develops itself, its conscious resources, the less it remains one with itself and with that in which it finds itself. To employ an expression borrowed from Heidegger: “the more consciousness, the less being.” In the 19th century people assumed scientific progress would automatically bring with it an unlimited extension of human well-being – only for us to discover that this very same science and technology is bringing us to the brink of destruction. Where previously we tended to disparage so-called ‘primitive’ cultures and civilizations, we now study them assiduously, to learn from them how to live in a symbiotic relation with nature and at peace with ourselves. In other words, the ultimate goal of the genesis of consciousness is nothing less than a full comprehension of what it basically means to be human, to be a body, involved in a world with others, with all that that implies for our natural and social well-being.

I think I might attack his 2007 Being and Becoming to be reading a full work once.

 

[Lizard]

Oh I went wrong sorry


Anyway things that have supprised me? Berkeley saying that the world does not exist unless it is percieved. For example according to him if no one could percieve my house it would not exist now the reason that it doesnt dissapear is because god is always percieving my house but I find it a little hard to believe despite believing in god I find idealism hard to support.

 

[Vince_Fiero]

Oh I went wrong sorry

No problem at all, just wanted to be clear.

Anyway things that have supprised me? Berkeley saying that the world does not exist unless it is percieved. For example according to him if no one could percieve my house it would not exist now the reason that it doesnt dissapear is because god is always percieving my house but I find it a little hard to believe dispite believing in god I find idealism hard to support.

Berkeley surprises everybody and I do not believe he has a lot of dedicated followers.
I do follow it partially myself though, in the sense that if I do not perceive it, it does not matter to me. Things only exist in the way I can perceive them, reality is what I experience (although I'm conscious that I might not experience full reality).

 

[TankAss95]

Here's an interesting philosophical discussion a friend told me earlier:

A man owns a ship, and over time certain parts need replaced due to rust, overuse or as such. Eventually every singly part of the boat has been replaced, and no original part remains.
Another man buys the old parts to the ship and builds the ship together again. What is the original ship? The ship the man built using the existing, old parts? Or is it the ship which has the newer parts. By law it would be the ship with the newer parts, but if the police wanted to do forensic work they would use the ship built with the older parts.

This really makes me think a lot. When you think about it, we lose and build new cells from our body all the time. Are we the same person as we were from 5 years ago? Or are we different?

 

[Dotini]

Macann finds that the development of consciousness is paid for at the cost of a diminishment of the being-relation. The more human being develops itself, its conscious resources, the less it remains one with itself and with that in which it finds itself. To employ an expression borrowed from Heidegger: “the more consciousness, the less being.” In the 19th century people assumed scientific progress would automatically bring with it an unlimited extension of human well-being – only for us to discover that this very same science and technology is bringing us to the brink of destruction. Where previously we tended to disparage so-called ‘primitive’ cultures and civilizations, we now study them assiduously, to learn from them how to live in a symbiotic relation with nature and at peace with ourselves. In other words, the ultimate goal of the genesis of consciousness is nothing less than a full comprehension of what it basically means to be human, to be a body, involved in a world with others, with all that that implies for our natural and social well-being.

I think I might attack his 2007 Being and Becoming to be reading a full work once.

Sounds intriguing!

 

[Vince_Fiero]

When you think about it, we lose and build new cells from our body all the time. Are we the same person as we were from 5 years ago? Or are we different?

This comes down to a philosophical question on "Being", what makes that you are you? You will find it in about any philosophy, all different answers.

being is the object of study of metaphysics, and more specifically ontology

The goal of the thread is that you find some Philosophy and present what you found surprising conclusions, rather from 1 Philosophy, but I do not want to exclude an other approach (like a topic overview).

Wikipedia brings Marx forward on this topic:

It depends not on consciousness, but on being; not on thought, but on life; it depends on the individual's empirical development and manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions existing in the world.

So if you live the same, you are the same, cells are of no importance.