Post favorite theories, complaints, ideas.
Who's your favorite philosopher? Why?
OP here. Ganna bamp.
Why did Descartes believed his thinking proved God's existence? What duties does he think God has to fulfill?
I always thought that was conceited as fuck. Why do humans seem to believe that thinking is such a huge deal? Humans seem to think everything revolves around them. Granted, humans can do many things other beings cannot. However, I'm still clinging on to the idea that there are other, possibly more powerful beings out there.
If humans stopped existing, would "God" cease to exist, too?
Is the self a metaphysical construct?
>>1395683
I think that depends on what you define the self as, and what your belief of reality consists of.
Actually screw my last question, because I have one that bugs me more:
Descartes combined materialistic and idealistic metaphysics into a dualistic theory. Plato did dualism as well. Are there any theories that go beyond there being two parts of reality, like some sort of triple branch metaphysical reality, or even a reality with four planes?
>>1395699
Well, I believe reality is ultimately just the fundamental particles that it's physically composed of. Beyond that, any distinctions between objects are strictly products of our minds. Nothing beyond these particles truly exists in a universal sense; its existence is derived from your perception and attachment of a label upon it.
The self, I think is an emergent property of your body, a capability not unlike the potential uses of a tool. Much as the uses of tool are not the tool itself, the self is not the body itself.
On your questions about Descarte, I don't have much to offer because I've never actually read Descarte, sorry.
On the subject of the OP: my favourite philosopher is probably Lao Tzu, I get a kick out of the fact the foundational philosopher of Taoism may not have existed, and even if he did, probably didn't write the book that he's credited with writing. That and I just like Taoism.
Plato, Plotinus.
One>Mind>Soul>Body
>>1395739
I think the self is a construct, then, since you were able to define it using your mind. Then again, that would be saying that our minds are what ultimately create reality.
>>1395739
But isn't the self perceived, too? And this perception is very limited.
>>1395816
Well, yes. I believe there can be considered three possible stages in which things can be considered to exist. The universal, which are the fundamental particles, the reactive, in which existence is not so much actively created as perceived, but with subjectivity taking hold at this point (what looks a stick to one may be a tool to another, for instance), and created, which is strictly the realm of ideas.
I think the self would occupy a bridge between the last two.
>>1395804
Oh man, you're right, I forgot about that. Hell, I'mma be cancer and reference LoZ, with Wisdom, Power, and Courage, because it reminds me of that.
Is One the combination of all the other three? Can we then count the One as another reality, or can it only be a term to reference the overarching consideration of the other three components?
>>1395632
The issue is not humans possibility of think it, it's why does any being have a subjective experience
>>1395840
Not that guy, but I think the one is everything good and perfect, and everything beyond it is just a flawed reflection of it.
>>1395847
So it's like a complete triforce whereas the other three on their own are sad little broken pieces of it?
>>1395846
Do dogs count as beings? What about invertebrates, plants?
I am having an immense amount of trouble underdtanding Hegelian dialectic.
Can someone explain it in terms a retard could understand?
>>1395876
Seconded
>>1395853
The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be.
But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality?
It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.
Continue reading at
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn429.htm
>>1395738
I think that's because to go beyond dualistic theory seems like arbitrarily creating more categories to suit your ideas.
Imagine if you argued that you only had two types of reality, and then someone points out something that does not fit your categories. It's poor logic to simply assume that then there must be another category of reality, rather than addressing the issue with your dualistic idea originally.
>>1396133
Isn't "having no quality" a quality itself? I think Neoplatonism is based and while I can intuitively understand what he means, what really separates the One from absolute nothingness? I mean to even speak of the One is to speak of something, right? and that's definitely a property in one way or another. Do we just have to accept the paradoxical implications?
Who here /subjectiveidealism/
>>1396294
What is subjective idealism?
>>1396241
Yes you have to deal with a lot of contradictions if you admit the existence of the one, and still more if you don't (see Plato's Parmenides), but I don't think those you mentioned are some of them. Is "having no quality" a quality itself? No. Is the One absolute nothingness? In Plotinus system, there is no nothingness, but it is matter that which comes close to it. The One is above Intellect and being, hence why we can't apprehend it with the intellect, much less speak about it, because the intellect is concerned with the knowledge of beings. To speak of it is to speak of something, as you said, and hence not of it; to try to understand it is to limit it, and hence to not understand it. The One is seen as a necessary condition of being in the Platonic system, but other than that we can't say or know anything about it. Proclus poetically says that the One is best worshipped in silence.
>>1396133
That's a religion, not metaphysics. Go back to church
why do you even bother finding out?
you're a bunch of colours percieving other colours.
