Altriusm, a nice way to express your selfishness?

[JoeDawg]

Out of equilbrium in your example of cancer is where one aspect grows too fast.

'Too fast' sounds extremely relative.

As an absolutist statement, this is indeed rubbish.

That's just a language game.

But reality develops out of vague potential towards these absolutes without ever actually achieving them.

Right, they don't exist, they are just imaginary architecture.
Just like the ancients used the 5 elements to describe the world. Some things had more water in them, some were more a combination of Earth and air. We moderns have a greater understanding of the world because our model is more detailed and more descriptive. But any model is about utility, it is used for something.

All philosophy's concepts arose as dichotomies.

That is oversimplification, as I said before.

But that would be OK if the multiverse is really just our universe at a vaguer state of development.

Not if the universe was a random event.

Good and evil - the subtext of this thread - do not make a good dichotomy.

Again, good, depends what you want to use it for.

 

[apeiron]

'Too fast' sounds extremely relative.

You didn't get the point about log/normal vs log/log? Too fast is precisely defined here. It is a model rather than a hand wavy statement.

Right, they don't exist, they are just imaginary architecture.
Just like the ancients used the 5 elements to describe the world. Some things had more water in them, some were more a combination of Earth and air. We moderns have a greater understanding of the world because our model is more detailed and more descriptive. But any model is about utility, it is used for something.
.

This may be true, but it has nothing to do with the quote of mine you attach it to. Is this further evidence of your shrewd debating skill?

That is oversimplification, as I said before.

And as I've pointed out, your statements about what you personally believe really don't rate even as an appeal to authority. An argument backed with evidence would be more convincing.

I've challenged you to name a single metaphysical concept that you believe to be true, or even just fundamentally useful for modelling purposes, that is not a dichotomy. That is a concrete challenge you have continually passed on. To me, that is evidence. The lack of an argument is eloquent indeed.

 

[JoeDawg]

I've challenged you to name a single metaphysical concept that you believe to be true, or even just fundamentally useful for modelling purposes, that is not a dichotomy. That is a concrete challenge you have continually passed on. To me, that is evidence. The lack of an argument is eloquent indeed.

I gave you this example, and others, ages ago:
Past-Present-Future

And, I made it clear that the fact you can reduce something to a dichotomy doesn't mean it is useful to do so. And yes, we all know you think dichotomies are the basis of everything. Your endless nattering about it, however, is not proof or evidence, and once again you've tried to hijack the discussion so you can preach the gospel of dichotomies.

 

[apeiron]

Ooh, language Timothy!

I gave you this example, and others, ages ago:
Past-Present-Future

Apologies. I don't remember that at all.

Unfortunately, dichotomies do lead to triads because what is separated then gets mixed, which gives that third emergent result. So having three things, rather that one thing all on its own, supports my position.

Again, can you think of a monadic concept that can stand all on its own?

I could deconstruct past~future for you, show how the present arises as a scale-free mixing (think lightcones, think the transactional interpretation) but I can see that would try your patience.

Once more, the challenge was to find any standard concept in metaphysics which stands mondadically alone and has no natural dichotomous partner. Identifying triads just leads you to the next step of the systems argument.

Remember, we have in physics the triad of QM-classical-GR. Hierarchy theory explains why.

And mechanists are stuck because it seems so hard to reduce GR (let alone classical) to the monadic category of QM standing alone.

And, I made it clear that the fact you can reduce something to a dichotomy doesn't mean it is useful to do so. And yes, we all know you think dichotomies are the basis of everything. Your endless nattering about it, however, is not proof or evidence, and once again you've tried to hijack the discussion so you can preach the gospel of dichotomies.

Yet again, the point was that metaphysics does reduce things to dichotomies, and yet not to monads. And those dichotomies have proved immensely useful as the basis of reality modelling.

It is not my obsessive idea but philosophy's eternal discovery.

I agree that much of western intellectual history has been about an attempt to go one better and reduce to monads.

Heraclitus said all is flux so Parmenides had to say all is stasis. Or at least that is how modern historians like to recreate the to and fro of greek philosophy. Likewise, the atomists said all was substance and Plato said all was form (except he didn't - there was also, dichotomistically, the chora).

Anyway, repeated attempts have resulted in repeated failure. Can you do any better?

Information theory would seem a successful example of modern monadism. It from bit. Wolfram's CAs. Tegmark's infinitude. There is a lot of triumphalism about these ideas. I'm surprised you don't cite actual current examples of monadism. And I would enjoy knocking them down if you did.

I know how distressed you usually are over the inadequacy of ad hominen arguments in the place of reasoned, referenced, debate, so you will be happy to be reminded that the views I put forward are as ancient as civilisation. And they are not a religious belief that is preached but a model of logic that can be backed up by argument and evidence.

The challenge remains. What is a single (monadic) philosophical principle that exists all on its own-some?

Not a triad. That is a hierarchy.

To remind you again of some of the classic dichotomies, they are local~global, discrete~continuous, stasis~flux, chance~necessity, matter~mind, substance~form, atom~void...the list just goes on.

Now where is the similar list of monadic philosophical concepts? That is your challenge.

Otherwise you have to accept dichotomies rule (symmetry breakings rule) and have to start considering why.

Anything less would indeed be faith-based. One would be left making statements unsupported by arguments and evidence.

 

[Kajahtava]

The point is that this entire discussion hangs on 'intention', what your intended goal/action instead of your action itself is. Intentionality is not a scientific category, rather it is naïve realism.

If I trip over, hurt myself, but in that process bump into my greatest enemy and save him or her from a bullet. I had nothing to gain from that and all to lose (for sake of argument), however, was it my 'intention' to trip over?

Most people define an altruistic act by that it was my intention and not just did so by not being careful. However, intention really is just naïve realism.

 

[disregardthat]

The point is that this entire discussion hangs on 'intention', what your intended goal/action instead of your action itself is. Intentionality is not a scientific category, rather it is naïve realism.

If I trip over, hurt myself, but in that process bump into my greatest enemy and save him or her from a bullet. I had nothing to gain from that and all to lose (for sake of argument), however, was it my 'intention' to trip over?

Most people define an altruistic act by that it was my intention and not just did so by not being careful. However, intention really is just naïve realism.

Do you leave no room for intention? Certainly on an intuitive level we distinguish between acts which was intended and acts which was not intended. If the results of our actions are as expected, the result was intentional. If the results of our actions was surprising and not as expected, then the result was not intentional. It seems to me that distinguishing between the two is trivial, but perhaps not in every case. Maybe there are some deeper reasons why this is not so? I am sure that including intention in a moral issue is not equivalent to naïve metaphysical realism.