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6521 |
Subjective 9
Objective 1I dont say the objective can only be subjective or the substance that makes it. The objective reality may possibly exist. Im agnostic about it. Very similar to the atheist versus agnostic approach to God. I cant abide wth an atheist who thinks God »cant« exist. Just seems a bit extreme. Similarly I cant bring myself to believe with certainty that objective reality isnt a thing. Theres always that possibility. **
|
6522 |
The objective criteria of some value of fact may be not factual, but only contingent on opinion.
In other words, an opinion need ynot be based on an immutable fact, but in a concurrency of opinion of authorities in the field. It never is, it always starts with a theoretical basis. **
6523 |
No, objectivity is a concept with which it is possible to talk in terms that delineate subjective ideas. **
But as You ... point out, liars can try to convince others and themselves of their supposed objectivism, but what if this supposed objectivism is held in suspense only until their honesty can be sustained.
In this sense, objectivism , or holding to an objective belief, is contingent upon a belief for supposing honesty. Is there other ways to hold to objective truth and belief, other than in the way of believing in it? **
So belief and objectivity are contingent via reasonable assessment and consensus by repetition. **
It isn't that pure objectivity doesent exist, but that assumptions like the solar system is in the middle of the universe was objective from the ancient Greeks to the men of the Rennessaince. The objectivity of Newton's Second Law was objective until the quantum-relativity theory became objective. **
6524 |
6525 |
6526 |
6527 |
6528 |
6529 |
6530 |
So the last conclusion is that the machines are going to replace us. ** **
6531 |
Arminius wrote:
»Alf wrote:
What do you, for example, think when you see my avatar? How would you, for example, illustrate this thought? ** **
If I may answer:
I think of Alf and would illustrate that thought as follows:
« ** **
But thats not what everyone thinks and would illustrate.
I, for example, think of my birth place when I see my avatar and my illustration of this thought would be the birth house, and that is not illustrated in my avatar.
My avatar shows pretty clearly the church and pretty dimly a few houses of the village where I was born, but not my birth house. ** **
Food for thought or for illustration.
Do you think that a picture can be thought?
Do you think that a thought can be illustrated? ** **
|
6532 |
Newtons physics was true till Clausius second law (»entropy«) of thermodynamics, in any case till Plancks constant, Plancks quantum theory, and Einsteins (actually Hilberts) relativity theory. The »truth« about dynamics and about time changed. Both »truths« are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that the aspect of entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more »true«; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical. ** **
Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass the counterpart of constant force has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the »classical« mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. »Correct« and »incorrect« are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the »classical« concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant.
(1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (1920), pp. 17, 25.
If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the »classical« Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique true child of its century hides the collapse of the symbolism.
(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the »actual existence« of atoms has now at last been proved a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.
Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the attitude but the feed and, mechanically considered, the process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.
Mathematically, entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like force and will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.
Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.
What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy Theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.
If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the Law of the Conservation of Energy but, secondly, that in actuality processes of nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of »elementary disorder« for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The »smallest particles« of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.
Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to destiny and incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the »classical« mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of probability instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The nature »known« in this wise is the nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and become, destiny and causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.
That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical, but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced time, which is identical with destiny.
Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. »The course of the world« is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethean has entered into physics and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe's passionate polemic against Newton in the »Farbenlehre« we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of nature-knowledge came out of nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.
So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man's historical passion, care the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue-plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian »nature« in entropy.
Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a »discovery« of scientific induction claiming »support« from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of causality, and direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.
Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not »nature,« and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.
With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world's end, Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the term of an infinite series the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of entropy, signifies today world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution. ** **
6533 |
Alf wrote:
What do you, for example, think when you see my avatar? How would you, for example, illustrate this thought? ** **
Of course, I may be wrong here but when I see your avatar, aside from what you revealed of it, I think of someone who likes or loves his solitude, likes to enmesh himself in mystery, likes deeper shades and shadows rather then bright sunlight, enjoys a place much less traveled by people, likes to reflect on his life, someone who likes to get up in the early morning before the world gets up and someone who likes to stay up late at night when others have already gone to sleep. Someone who is content and at peace with himself when he has a sense of being all alone in this world.
There is a kind of sacred essence which I glean from the avatar.
Now you can laugh but that is what I sense from the avatar.
No, I don't laugh, but I don't like shades and shadows more than bright. **
Alf wrote:
»Arminius wrote:
Alf wrote:
'What do you, for example, think when you see my avatar? How would you, for example, illustrate this thought?' ** **
If I may answer:
I think of Alf and would illustrate that thought as follows:
** **
But thats not what everyone thinks and would illustrate.
I, for example, think of my birth place when I see my avatar and my illustration of this thought would be the birth house, and that is not illustrated in my avatar.
My avatar shows pretty clearly the church and pretty dimly a few houses of the village where I was born, but not my birth house.« ** **
Because you wrote the following text too:
»Alf wrote:
Food for thought or for illustration.
Do you think that a picture can be thought?
Do you think that a thought can be illustrated? ** **Is it right that you are saying that there are many differences when it comes to thinking a picture and imaging a thought? ** **
|
6534 |
Arminius wrote:
»The similarities between philosophy and art are not caused by an accident.
What do you think about the similarities, the analogies?« ** **
The two are inextricably linked.
From Art and Design, and Poetry and Writing et al, comes Philosophy. We think first, then we feel/express after. **
6535 |
|
6536 |
Arminius wrote:
»Arminius wrote:
Newtons physics was true till Clausius second law (»entropy«) of thermodynamics, in any case till Plancks constant, Plancks quantum theory, and Einsteins (actually Hilberts) relativity theory. The »truth« about dynamics and about time changed. Both »truths« are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that the aspect of entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more »true«; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical. ** **
Oswald Spengler (translated [**]):
Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass the counterpart of constant force has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the »classical« mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. »Correct« and »incorrect« are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the »classical« concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant.
(1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (1920), pp. 17, 25.
If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the »classical« Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique true child of its century hides the collapse of the symbolism.
(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the »actual existence« of atoms has now at last been proved a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.
Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of Entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which Nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the Attitude but the Deed and, mechanically considered, the Process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in Nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.
Mathematically, Entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like Force and Will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.
Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.
What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal Nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.
If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the law of the Conservation of Energy but, secondly, that in actuality processes of Nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of »elementary disorder« for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The »smallest particles« of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.
Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the »classical« mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of Probability instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The Nature »known« in this wise is the Nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and Become, Destiny and Causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.
That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical t, but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced Time, which is identical with Destiny.
Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. »The course of the world« is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethean has entered into physics and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe's passionate polemic against Newton in the »Farbenlehre« we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of Nature-knowledge came out of Nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the Late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.
So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man's historical passion, Care the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word Time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue- plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian »Nature« in Entropy.
Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a »discovery« of scientific induction claiming »support« from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of Destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of Causality, and Direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.
Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by Destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not »Nature,« and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.
With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world's end, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the term of an infinite series the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies today world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution. ** **
« ** **
Although quite erudite, he expresses the very reason why science's ontologies must be revisited and reborn.
The second law of thermodynamics is false. The universe is not winding down to a stop. **
6537 |
6538 |
|
6539 |
But is it possible that sciences ontologies will be revisited and reborn (**)? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance. ** **
Alf wrote:
»But is it possible that sciences ontologies will be revisited and reborn (**)? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.« ** **
It's not only possible, it is very probable. **
6540 |
|
6541 |
6542 |
Arminius wrote:
»Most people are subjectivists, not objectivists« ** **
Your pole seems to confirm this. **
Arminius wrote:
»Even most scientists are subjectivists ....« ** **
No, they r subjective beings, like the rest of us. But I guarantee u, if u asked them, they'd call themselves objectivist. **
Arminius wrote:
»They subjectively dictate the objects and objectivity because of their methods and the fact that they have become more and more dependend on their money givers.« ** **
I think you're right that objectivity comes out of subjectivity. **
It is not opposite. It's like a man color blind to red all of a sudden seeing red and thinking it must b something opposed to color. Subjectivity and objectivity possess opposing characteristics--namely, tendencies towards consensus vs tendencies away from consensus, thereby giving off the illusion of being real vs in the head--but if consciousness and mind are characterized by subjectivity and if objectivity requires consciousness and mind, then objectivity must be a form of subjectivity. Having different characteristics does not make two things opposite. **
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Subjective 9
Objective 1I dont say the objective can only be subjective or the substance that makes it. The objective reality may possibly exist. Im agnostic about it. Very similar to the atheist versus agnostic approach to God. I cant abide wth an atheist who thinks God »cant« exist. Just seems a bit extreme. Similarly I cant bring myself to believe with certainty that objective reality isnt a thing. Theres always that possibility. **
Theres also the possibility that its like asking if you are an inhaler or an exhaler. Perhaps consciousness is a balancing act of the subjective and objective, and that even when we allow that subjectivity seems primary, we can only hold that thought for so long, we cant permanently talk ourselves out of playing along with the objective. The soul must breathe. **
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Kathrina wrote:
»Also, music is therapy.« ** **
Also, dolphins are good for therapy:
** **
Kathrina wrote:
»Also, music is therapy.« ** **
It depends on what music it is, where and when it is played, how all those circumstances are ... and so on and so forth. ** **
6546 |
The soul isnt physical; the soul is metaphysical. Exclusively. ** **
6547 |
The case of North Korea as the new case of Pearl Harbor? ** **
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6549 |
Is there an equivalent behavior to banking and money lending in nature, or animal kingdom, or is this a 100% purely human creation? **
What could be the closest analog in nature? **
6550 |
I have heard the emerging Chinese investors being compared to Jews in their financial takeover abilities. Obviously, they are not the same people, but they do have some similarities, especially when it comes to their keen interest in finances and monetary ambitions in general. That brings up an interesting question: if Chinese were pitted against the Jews in the war for financial power and supremacy, who would win? **
6551 |
The Jews could very well support and nurture the Asians gambling weakness (which, I think is part of their cultural collective superstitiousness). Because its part of their own culture, this mindset could be easily worked with and manipulated ( its not even introducing a foreign concept). It is their superstitiousness (or cultural beliefs) that will have to be addressed.
Asians are already being targeted:
Lucky Dragon to cater to Asian Americans (**|**). **
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Yes (**). But the enemies of the US are not only outside but also inside the US. ** **
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Many scientists got fired because they had been objective. ** **
6561 |
Watch what you eat before going to bed. **
Make love, not war. ** **
6562 |
I know youre trusting me to see you right.
** **
6563 |
Kathrina wrote:
»The soul isnt physical; the soul is metaphysical. Exclusively.« ** **
** **
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Even if one was acting on instinct, any actions would still be triggered by a subconscious thought. **
6565 |
Kathrina wrote:
»Kathrina wrote:
The soul isnt physical; the soul is metaphysical. Exclusively. ** **
« ** **
The soul is similar to Kants »Ding an sich« (»thing at itself« / »thing as such«), Schopenhauers »Wille« (»will«). ** **
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Scientist cant explain our world, the philosophers and theologians cant explain it either. ** **
So, all we can do is to describe it and to do it in the most possible way of correctness and conclusiveness, stringency, thus by using logic in connection with our experiences. ** **
6569 |
Alf wrote:
»But is it possible that science's ontologies will be revisited and reborn? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.« ** **
I guess, you mean all this narcistic theories, kinds of solipsim (extreme subjectivism) and nihilism? ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
They fit the wildest destroyers as well as the stupidities or absurdities you are talking about. ** **
6570 |
God a contradiction?
A contradiction is impossible. [if same sense, time and conditions]
Therefore God is an impossibility. **
PI. Absolute perfection is an impossibility
P2. God imperatively must be absolutely perfect
C.. Therefore God is an impossibility. **
6571 |
Prismatic wrote:
»Here is an argument Why God is an Impossibility.
There are two types of perfection for philosophical consideration, i.e.
1. Relative perfection
2. Absolute perfection1. Relative perfection
If one's answers in an objective tests are ALL correct that is a 100% perfect score.
Perfect scores 10/10 or 7/7 used to be given to extra-ordinary performance in diving, gymnastics, skating, and the likes. So perfection from the relative perspective can happen and exist within man-made systems of empirically-based measurements.2. Absolute perfection
Absolute perfection is an idea, ideal, and it is only a thought that can arise from reason and never the empirical at all.
Absolute perfection is an impossibility in the empirical, thus exist only theoretically.
Examples are perfect circle, square, triangle, etc.Generally, perfection is attributed to God. Any god with less than perfect attributes would be subjected to being inferior to another's god. As such, God has to be absolutely perfect which is the ontological god, i.e. god is a Being than which no greater can be conceived.
So,
PI. Absolute perfection is an impossibility
P2. God imperatively must be absolutely perfect
C.. Therefore God is an impossibility.Can any theists counter the above?« **
False for a variety of reasons, but let's just pick one...
Prismatic 567 wrote:
»Absolute perfection is an idea, ideal, and it is only a thought that can arise from reason and never the empirical at all.
Absolute perfection is an impossibility in the empirical, thus exist only theoretically.« **False. A convenient presumption for your bias, but hardly provable and certainly not an acceptable premise.
One of a great, great many »perfect« empirical existences is mass attraction. Mass attraction is very easily observable existence and empirically provable. Of course there are a great many others; speed of light, linear momentum, conservation of energy, centripetal momentum, .... These are all 100% true to reality and indispensable to the construct of the universe = »perfect«. **
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Arminius wrote:
»According to my understanding, scientists have to be objectivists; but when they become corrupt and greedy, so that they depend on their money givers, then they are no objectivists, but subjectivists; because they only say what their money givers want them to say. The methods are the other reason why scientists can and mostly do become subjectivists.« ** **
I understand what you're saying. When scientists are pressured to generate the results that their money givers paid them to generate, they become less reliant on the standard objective methods that science is normally based on. I suppose in a sense that makes them more subjectivists, but I wouldn't say it means they believe their results are true because they believe in them or that they feel it's true. If they believe in the results at all (in these kinds of situations, they may just lie with a guilty conscience), it would be based on a different set of subjective experiences than the standard scientific ones (pressure to deliver what they were paid to deliver rather than objective observations and measurements), but even the standard scientific methods are based on subjectivity as far as I'm concerned. Remember, I'm saying that there is a subset of subjective experiences which also count as objective. Scientific observation and measure are examples of these. They are subjective because they are grounded in experience, but objective because they are typically met with unanimous consensus among all other scientists who also make the same observations and measurements. I will agree that when corrupted by greed and pressure from money givers, scientists tend to become only subjective, but even then not necessarily in terms of their beliefs but rather their methods.
Arminius wrote:
»The words subject and object are linguistic (grammatic) and philosophic (epistemic) concepts.« ** **
Sure they are, but that doesn't address our disagreement (if there is one). My main point is that objectivity is a special case of subjectivity, not an opposite. Your main point seems to be that they are opposite, and that this is decided as a matter of language. We define subjectivity and objectivity as opposites. I agree that this is how we define these terms, but there are also instances of subjectivity and objectivity themselves (not just words and definitions), and when I look at these, I find they aren't always opposite. I conclude that we've got the definitions wrong (at least insofar as we're defining them in terms of opposites: i.e. objectivity is defined as the opposite of subjectivity). This can happen sometimes. Definitions aren't always just a matter of how we choose to construct our language. They are sometimes a matter of things in the world, and experiences we can have. We sometimes draw our definitions from how we describe these things, how they feel to us, and what we understand about them. So I'm saying that I think we can question the conventional definitions of subjectivity and objectivity because we can have subjective and objective experiences, we can examine these experiences and draw conclusions about their nature, and thereby rethink our definitions. In my experience with subjectivity and objectivity, I find there are many example in which they overlap, so I disagree that they are opposite.
Arminius wrote:
»The object/subject relationship is different from the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity and different from the relationship between a subjectivist and an objectivist.« ** **
Right, so are we agreeing or disagreeing? **
What is your self-evaluation?
SUBJECTIVE: 1__2__3__4__5__6__7__8__9__10
OBJECTIVE : 1__2__3__4__5__6__7__8__9__10 ** **
6573 |
Arminius wrote:
»Arminius wrote:
Kathrina wrote:
'Kathrina wrote:
`The soul isnt physical; the soul is metaphysical. Exclusively.´ ** **
' ** **
The soul is similar to Kants 'Ding an sich' ('thing at itself' / 'thing as such'), Schopenhauers 'Wille' ('will'). ** **
« ** **
I may be wrong here but couldn't you explain most things away with that terminology - *a thing in itself*, *thing as such*, like a tree, rainbow, animal, human, ad continuum? What story do those things tell, aside from that? **
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Alf wrote:
»Many people have tried to show that God is an impossibility. All of them have failed. That does not prove the existence of God, but it shows clearly that God is a possibility. And there is another evidence: History of mankind. It is full of several beliefs in the same old possibility named God.« ** **
I am sure it is the other way round. **
Ever since the »idea« [philosophical] of God emerged no person has ever proved God exists as real positively. **
History of mankind?? once it was so obvious »the Earth is flat« as based on normal observation, but that has been proven wrong with additional knowledge. **
History of mankind. It is full of several beliefs in the same old possibility named »God«. ** **
God's existence at present is so obvious to the majority .... **
But with additional knowledge and thinking power, God is an impossibility.
As I had demonstrated, the idea of God persisted only because it has a critical psychological utility to deal with an inherent existential crisis.
As for my syllogism »God is an impossibility« show me where has I failed on this argument? **
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Us dollar is backed by a strong military, and it is becoming more technologically advanced and automated. In the future, it might be drones that will do the fighting, mitigating the human moral element (plus media control of public opinion). In any case, I don't see gold backed yuan (or whatever) having a chance against military backed dollar as it is. **
.... **
6577 |
Seems like animals using money to me
As far as banking is concerned... I suppose a squirrel burying a nut is akin to a bank. **
I think a more accurate comparison would have been if the male monkey stole the fruit from the female and then gave it back to her in return for sex. Lol! **
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- Kraftwerk (Hütter, Schneider, Flür, Bartlos), Europa endlos, 1977.
** **
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