Відео

Thank you; I used this research for one of the characters in the book Elea.

Many such cases; Eleatic philosophy is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be "unnatural".

Thank you!

Thanks. I only take notes when I have some specific project or purpose in mind. For example, when I re-read parts of this book before making the video, I took some notes and used them to prepare. Usually I just read a book and then put it away without ever taking any notes.

Sure, here you go, I uploaded it on this site: justpaste.it/92iul I'm not sure how long they will keep it online. They have a "Download as PDF" function, though.

I was recently asked for a similar recommendation about Parmenides specifically, so here's what I said: The best introduction to Parmenides I've seen is the The Phoenix PreSocratics edition of his work. It provides a side by side translation with multiple alternative readings for the most popular sections, and a nice 25~ page intro that does a good job of presenting a solid take on Parmenides without wasting your time (although I think it goes off the rails a little near the end). If you want to go beyond Parmenides, then there's Zeno, Melissus (I have a recording of what remains of his work on my channel), and I think it's also worth checking out the later thinker Diodorus Cronus. I have my own "neo-eleatic" work that I update, but it doesn't have anything to do with exegetical analysis. I don't think I'm in a position to strongly argue what Parmenides intended to say in his poem. The apparent subject manner does interest me though, and if he's read as speaking about Being in an existential sense then I don't think I've departed too far from him and other Eleatics.

That's one of the many philosophical challenges, right? This rendering of Melissus ends with the line, "Therefore, if there were many, they ought to be of just the same sort as the One is." Which I interpret to mean that the many particulars must comply with the strictures of the Whole/Being. They can't violate or otherwise go beyond the all-subsuming/omnipresent context. The question isn't so much "why do I experience movement and change", because clearly you do experiences those things and whatever is possible is necessary. Rather, the question is how to give a coherent account of it, how to understand it. The simple answer is that we should reject presentism and adopt an eternalist model of time. There are various examples of that, I have my own version, but essentially the chronology must be whole and inviolate.

@@tweetophon I still believe movement and change must be real, and that it would be impossible to experience movement and change if movement and change did not exist. Either the world is moving, or my perception/awareness is moving. If neither one was moving then I don't believe I would experience any change and movement.

​@@dubbelkastrull It's not that I disagree that people have such experiences, so much as I disagree with the way those experiences are typically described. When you say things like "movement and change must be real", you are rooting that in a more general claim that your experiences as a person are real. I agree with this more general claim because literally everything is real. I'm not going to say there's some secondary illusion world of things that "are not", or posit some sort of "nothing", that's a neoplatonist strawman of Eleatic thought. However, you need to think about what how to describe your experiences in a coherent manner, otherwise your claim will devolve into incoherent gibberish. Here is what I want to know: when you say things move, what does that process involve ontologically? Is it like a movie, where we can watch a person walk from one side of the room to another and understand that it's all relative (for all the moments in the scene exist together; the recording is a perfect whole)? Or, do you think that when the man moves the original moment is "destroyed into nothing", and the future moment (an "is not") now "is"? Or something else? I've seen people discuss this as A and B theories of time, or presentism vs eternalism, or whatever. Point is, I don't deny your experiences, I just want to know more about the context you place them in. Because your description must conform with the metaphysical context, on pain of being incoherent gibberish.

@@tweetophon I don't know if things are really moving/changing, or if it's just my awareness that changes focus. But I think it has to be one of the two, or perhaps that everything is destroyed and recreated in every moment. I don't know the true nature of movement and I'm willing to grant that it might be beyond our words and logic. But I still believe that I wouldn't experience any movement or change if absolutely everything (including my awareness and the moment) never changed and was always 100% still.

@@dubbelkastrull I think the problem is that you keep referring to terms that are either undefined or revealed to be gibberish. When you say things like “I think it has to be one of the two,” those two options need to have some meaning. Otherwise you’re not referencing two options, it's just gibberish. Further, everything you say that involves those pseudo-options will also be gibberish. It’s better for people to say that they don’t yet understand their experiences. That is a great reason to study philosophy. Perhaps you will find a way to coherently describe your experiences and thereby build an insightful worldview that you can share with the rest of us. Maybe you can start with the last sentence of your post: “But I still believe that I wouldn't experience any movement or change if absolutely everything (including my awareness and the moment) never changed and was always 100% still.” You claim that your experiences involve “movement or change”. Those terms need to have some meaning, otherwise the sentence just falls apart. I assume the words reference some model of ontological creation and destruction, but such claims are incoherent, so your sentence falls apart. You'll need to develop or adopt some sort of theory or understanding about what you want to communicate. We need some meaning; referencing meaningless terms is pointless.

Melissus would no doubt agree with you that "nothing" is a very strange term! That's the point of the opening section - he rejects the claim that "nothing" could serve as a basis for becoming. So far, you two have some limited agreement. Instead of relying on "nothing", you claim that a cake comes from something else - flour and eggs. Melissus also considered these sorts of responses, hence the discussion of rearrangement and of particulars needing to comply with the nature of the whole. Change is shown to be incoherent if interpreted in an absolute sense; it could only make sense to discuss it as a relationship between permanent points that comply with the requirements of the whole/what-is. So while we might have flour, eggs, and cakes, they must all exist, permanent & inviolate. It is incorrect to say that the cake comes from the flour and eggs, because the flour and eggs are different from the cake. Whatever additional meaning or significance the cake represents in your scenario, that significance must exist permanently just like the flour and eggs. This is true on pain of you incorrectly creating some new meaning from "nothing" (after all, "cake" represent some new meaning or significance that was not present when you just had flour and eggs). So really it is Melissus and the other Eleatic thinkers who best understand what may be said of change. This is because Eleatic philosophy has the broadest and most secure metaphysical model. Those who rely on their immediate impressions, with no broad metaphysical foundation, devolve into incoherence.

@@tweetophon 2:49 "Neither is it possible for it to be rearranged, for the order that was previous is not perishing, nor is one that is not coming to be, and since nothing is either being added, or being destroyed, or being altered, how can anything that is be rearranged?" Surely nothing can be rearranged if nothing can be altered, but for what reason would he say that nothing is being altered? 2:22 "For if it is being qualitatively altered, it is necessary that what is is not qualitatively alike, but what was previously is being destroyed and what was not is coming to be. Therefore, if it would undergo qualitative alteration by a single hair in ten thousand years, in the whole of time it all would perish." He seems quite dismissive of the notion of alteration here, but for what reason? Why shouldn't what was previously be destroyed? What is to prevent what was not to come to be? Why can't it all perish in the whole of time? He seems to assume that we've followed along with him on the idea that nature must be infinite, even though at this point he gave no reason for it being infinite beyond the fact that it could not come from the nothing of its own absence. If it did come from something else, then there's no apparent reason to think it must be infinite, and the whole beginning of the video becomes mere fantastic speculation as to what it might be if it were actually infinite. And this fantastic speculation seems to be his only basis for asserting that it cannot be altered. "It is incorrect to say that the cake comes from the flour and eggs in an absolute, ontological sense." What does it mean to say that cake comes from flour and eggs in an absolute, ontological sense? What sense is that? Presumably "ontological" refers to the nature of the cake's existence, and the ontology of a cake seems to be that it is a structure composed from the materials in flour and eggs and rearranged by heat, so it's difficult to see by what measure we would judge that the cake did not come from flour and eggs. Calling it "ontological" does not clarify the problem, so perhaps the issue is in "absolute." But what does it mean to absolutely come from something?

​@@Ansatz66 The chief issue with your comment is that it does not recognise the ramifications of omnipresent existence. That omnipresence was recognised when the term "nothing" was rejected as incoherent; we are just left with "is". Specfically, an all-subsuming ontological status from which there is no escape or alternative. Whatever bit of meaning or significance you happen to mention, it "is" in this absolute, ontological sense. So in terms of alteration, we must take the process as a complete and inviolable whole. The beginning "is" and the end "is", by necessity. Hence your questions, if referring to the broadest ontological picture, no longer make much sense - "What is to prevent what was not to come to be?" fails because "what was not" is rendered incoherent. There can be no talk of ontological negation, because there is no alternative to the omnipresent "is". At best, you must render all negations as affirmations that a thing "is other than", whereupon we acknowledge that all "is". To your final paragraph then, the term "absolute, ontological" is simply referring to omnipresent existence. The flour, egg, cake, it all exists as a whole. You could also say there are relationships. The point is that whatever picture we draw, it must comply with the requirements of the whole/one. As for infinite, that word has a lot of baggage and I don't think it's a good term to use. At least not without a longer discussion of how it should be understood.

@@tweetophon : What does "omnipresent existence" mean? How was it recognized when the term "nothing" was rejected as incoherent? "'What was not' is rendered incoherent." From this it seems that omnipresent existence is taken to mean that all things exist, in the broadest possible sense so that to say "X does not exist" is incoherent, regardless of what we put in place of X. This is a puzzling idea that raises deeper questions about what is meant by existence. In casual conversation "existence" has a meaning that clearly does not apply here. In casual conversation, if we bake a cake, the cake exists, and if we do not bake a cake, the cake does not exist. But now it seems we're saying that even the cake that we do not bake still exists. And it seems that Sherlock Holmes exists too. Is that correct? We might say that Sherlock Holmes exists as a fictional character who is the star of many stories, but now must we also say that Sherlock Holmes exists as a real person, for to say that Sherlock Holmes does not exist as a real person would be incoherent? To put this in meaningful context, we should clarify what is being claimed when we say "X exists." The usual casual conception of existence as a physical presence in this universe cannot apply, since by that measure a cake which we do not bake does not exist. We need a sense of existence that excludes any concept of not existing. Is it possible to have such a sense of existence that still has some meaning? If so, what does it mean?

@@Ansatz66 Now I think you have grasped the breadth of Eleatic thought. I could tackle the particular questions and say things like, "Is not" must be defined as "is other than", and therefore to say that Sherlock Holmes is not a real person is really defined as "Sherlock Holmes IS something other than a real person". At all points "is" shall be preserved, there being no alternative ontological status." But I think I am just happy that you have seen the metaphysical breadth or scope being discussed by people like the Eleatic thinkers (even if you might not adopt their conclusions).

Right, we can say that Being is "beyond explanation". I believe that explanation/causation is a limited matter. There is no alternative to Being or coherent question of why there "is".

I think what Oppy might have been trying to say is that in a universe with ‘things’ those things are necessarily going to have properties. Mathematics is just another way of describing those properties, like any other language, but more precise. For example, let’s take the distance between Earth and Mars. There is no ‘distance’. That’s just the concept. You just have the space between Earth and Mars than can be described by the concept of distance using mathematics as part of its properties. That’s what I think he meant.

Look forward to the links. I think there are a few reasons to expect reality to be the way it is, chief of all the fact that there is no alternative to what-is (for what can be said of "what is not"). But that is me speaking - I think when one does a debate review like this it is important not to insert one's own opinions too strongly, to the detriment of identifying and comparing the points argued by the participants.

@@tweetophon On the Wigner paper, Dr. Robert Kuhn’s youtube series is insightful. It’s fascinating how top mathematicians and physicists respond to the question. Kuhn apparently is not satisfied with the answers. Wigner describes this "unreasonableness" as a "miracle" and as a "gift" that we should simply be thankful for. These terms are pregnant with metaphysical-perhaps even theological!-implications. In secondary literature it’s pointed out that Wigner discusses the links between the philosophy of science and the foundations of mathematics: “It is difficult to avoid the impression that a MIRACLE confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of laws of nature and of the human mind's capacity to divine them.” Wigner is aware of the materialist-naturalist reading of the data, but apparently but he finds it insufficient and unsatisfactory (see also atheist Thomas Nagel’s book Mind & Cosmos for a similar position, a rejection of reductive physicalism). For Wigner, that nature is mathematically structured is something unexpected, it’s a contingent reality. Nothing in reality demands or requires this to be the case. So, how come this is the case? Thus, oft-quoted concluding words: “The MIRACLE of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a WONDERFUL GIFT which we NEITHER UNDERSTAND NOR DESERVE. We should be GRATEFUL for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.” (Emphasis mine.) Kuhn put the question to Edward Witten (multi-awarded theoretical physicist and mathematician), and his response should be taken with careful thought; he described it as "UNCANNY", why? because "it's as if the universe has been created by a mathematician.” Kuhn responded with a nervous laugh and said, "that goes into a whole other area"-an area outside the empirical and into metaphysics and even into theology-an area he explores but doesn't really like. (See Edward Witten - Why the ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness’ of Mathematics, starting at 1m ua-cam.com/video/1-Zl9o7I4Fo/v-deo.html) Though in a different context, Einstein’s affirmation of his "conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe," can be analogous to the idea that a mathematical Mind is the source of the structure and beauty of the cosmos. It’s a rational inference based on what is empirically observed. Agnostic Sir Fred Hoyle’s grudging admission comes to mind here, that a "common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." But one could always reject realism and ontologically deny any objective reality to math, and that it’s simply a creation of our minds and not something we discover out there in nature. But eminent authorities resist this move, e.g., Penrose, Tegmark, et. al. arguing that an entire Platonic world filled with mathematical objects exists cab be discovered. Here are some astonishing statements made by some of these guys at a conference hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson (the subject is different but very related): Max Tegmark (cosmologist): "The more I learned about later on as a physicist, the more struck I was that when you get down under the hood about how nature works, how can I be sure that this MATHEMATICAL REALITY isn't actually some kind of game or simulation?' (My emphasis.) And why is Tegmark baffled? Precisely because he sees math as a fundamental reality of nature. James Gates (theoretical physicist): "In my research I had found this very strange thing: Error-correcting codes. Error-correcting codes are what makes browsers work. So, why were they in the equations that I was studying about quarks and leptons and supersymmetry?" Tyson raises the obvious point, watch carefully: “So you're saying as you dig deeper, you find computer code WRIT IN THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS." "Computer codes, strings of bits of ones and zeroes.” Gates (Nicely captured in this short highlights ua-cam.com/video/QdP0f4dt61Y/v-deo.html) Back to Kuhn. His interview with Mlodinov (see ua-cam.com/video/uqGbn4b3LPM/v-deo.html) is also very interesting. Mlodinov appears to simply echo Wigner himself. Hence this unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is MIRACULOUS, and as Wigner added, a GIFT we should all be thankful for. But then these descriptions cry out for an explanation, at least offer a reasonable inference. So, brute fact-no-reason (rationality is abandoned then)? Coincidence (what a jackpot!)? Multiverse (extravagant violation of the law of parsimony!)? Reason rationalizing nature (chicken and egg problem)? Or, to infer a single, simple mathematical MIND doing the math behind the universe (perhaps similar to Einstein's 'superior reasoning power')-or as Mlodinov said at the end of the clip, ‘God’. This is a rational inference (if one is not already committed to the ideology of reductive naturalism). Watch the fascinating conversation between Penrose and Craig (ua-cam.com/video/9wLtCqm72-Y/v-deo.html). Penrose is a mathematical REALIST. He holds that reality is somehow made up of the material, the mental/mind, and the mathematical. Penrose is looking for a solution to string the 3 together, but he’s not sure how to do it. Craig offers him the mental, or Mind as having the necessary and sufficient qualities to account for the 3 seeming disparate ontologies. Penrose’s response was, IMO, disappointing. Craig’s suggestion appears so alien to him despite the fact that he could not offer any substantial rebuttal to it. I like agnostic scientist Paul Davies' openness (ua-cam.com/video/PmgPoWZTOgo/v-deo.html). I also like the way he admits unresolved issues of mind, math and reality. Davies admits that the reductionist paradigm is very insufficient to account for these amazing facts of reality. Here’s a more explicit argument ua-cam.com/video/2r74vcMxwUk/v-deo.html

Thanks for the comment! I do remember watching the Feser/Oppy exchange some time ago, it was pretty interesting (not sure if it was the first one, or if I watched some subsequent debate, I'll have to go check). Either way, that's a good suggestion, I'll look into doing that. I reject the Doctrine of Divine Conservation/existence itself as an act, and I recall having some strong opinions on what the debate was lacking and where I wish the parties had gone.

Thanks for the kind words! The new demo was just released early this morning, it's available for free here: antiquity-games.itch.io/theseus-journey-to-athens