Substance sisters, our response?>To be a substance (thing-unit) is to function as a thing-unit in various situations. And to have a property is to exhibit this property in various contexts. ('The only fully independent substances are those which-like people-self-consciously take themselves to be units.)>As far as process philosophy is concerned, things can be conceptualized as clusters of actual and potential processes. With Kant, the process philosopher wants to identify what a thing is with what it does (or, at any rate, can do). After all, even on the basis of an ontology of substance and property, processes are epistemologically fundamental. Without them, a thing is inert, undetectable, disconnected from the world's causal commerce, and inherently unknowable. Our only epistemic access to the absolute properties of things is through inferential triangulation from their modus operandi-from the processes through which these manifest themselves. In sum, processes without substantial entities are perfectly feasible in the conceptual order of things, but substances without processes are effectively inconceivable.>Things as traditionally conceived can no more dispense with dispositions than they can dispense with properties. Accordingly, a substance ontologist cannot get by without processes. If his things are totally inert - if they do nothing - they are pointless. Without processes there is no access to dispositions, and without dispositional properties, substance lie outside our cognitive reach. One can only observe what things do, via their discernible effects; what they are, over and above this, is something that always involves the element of conjectural imputation. And here process ontology takes a straight-forward line: In its sight, things simply are what they do rather, what they dispositionally can do and normally would do.>The fact is that all we can ever detect about "things" relates to how they act upon and interact with one another - a substance has no discernible, and thus no justifiably attributable, properties save those that represent responses elicited from it in interaction with others. And so a substance metaphysics of the traditional sort paints itself into the embarrassing comer of having to treat substances ·as bare (propertyless) particulars [substratum] because there is no nonspeculative way to say what concrete properties a substance ever has in and of itself. But a process metaphysics is spared this embarrassment because processes are, by their very nature, interrelated and interactive. A process-unlike a substance -can simply be what it does. And the idea of process enters into our experience directly and as such.
Ack, we're under attack from all sides!> It is through action, and only through action, that real beings manifest or “unveil” their being, their presence, to each other and to me. All the beings that make up the world of my experience thus reveal themselves as not just present, standing out of nothingness, but actively presenting themselves to others and vice versa by interacting with each other. Meditating on this leads us to the metaphysical conclusion that it is the very nature of real being, existential being, to pour over into action that is self-revealing and self-communicative. In a word, existential being is intrinsically dynamic, notstatic.>...by metaphysical reflection I come to realize that this is not just a brute fact but an intrinsic property belonging to the very nature of every real being as such, if it is to count at all in the community of existents. For let us suppose (a metaphysical thought experiment) that there were a real existing being that had no action at all. First of all, no other being could know it (unless it had created it), since it is only by some action that it could manifest or reveal its presence and nature; secondly, it would make no difference whatever to any other being, since it is totally unmanifested, locked in its own being and could not even react to anything done to it. And if it had no action within itself, it would not make a difference even to itself....To be real is to make a difference.
/lit/ user's brain>I like [something]. >Should I post about [something] ingenuously and normally?>No! I'll post OH NO NO NO [not something] SISTERS HOW DO WE RESPOND TO THIS XDDDDX DXDDXDXDX --ACK!!!!!! *GET DUNKED ON* {{{{{{THIS POST ENDORSED BY DONALD TRUMP}}}}}}}}} HOW CAN [not something] ENJOYERS EVER RECOVER
>>23620245Oh no no no no no no no!/lit/izen brethren, how do we respond to this?
>>23620221It doesn't touch us. Aristotle already thought that natural substances were moving all the time in many ways. His whole treatment of the soul, for example, involves a system of continuous processes. His definition of nature is "principle of motion" (which for him basically means change in general not just locomotion). In another place he refers to motion as the "natural state". But the notion that something can be "just process", change without something that changes, doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe I've been too influenced by the Theaetetus or maybe it really is a sophism.The problem with the OP is that he assumes classical substances are static monads. So he's attacking a strawman. There IS a static element which is the essence of the thing, the "being man" or whatever. But this "being man" is being in a near-constant state of change - that's what it is to be a natural sublunary substance in the first place. Aristotle does give some arguments to the effect that things aren't always moving in every possible way (in Physics VIII); when he addresses the issue again in Meta.4, he doesn't even make that claim.
>>23620319bro no we don't talk like that
And I know it's a bait so I'm officially NOT TROLLED, okay? But I wanted to answer anyway because I'm autistic.
>>23620326Isn't matter the thing that's supposed to "stay the same," as form changes?I agree that the OP is probably not a problem for Aristotle but it seems to be a bigger problem for Locke who has every property emerging out of primary qualities which reside fully within "things as they are in themselves." And this seems to be a pretty common sort of view in the modern period. For example, the sort of "standard" vision of reality seems to be one of fundemental particles with specific properties due to what they are/are made of which recombine into all objects.
>>23620327oh no no no no no no no! Tourist sisters, we've been bee tea eff oh-ed'd. How will we ever recover?
>>23620221Analytic philosophy has always been living in the shadow of heidegger and is still scrambling to catch up.
>>23620354>Isn't matter the thing that's supposed to "stay the same," as form changes?Not exactly, the matter is that which is actualized by the essence (which is a kind of form). Matter only exists potentially, it's the principle of potentiality. The forms in themselves do not change, nor does matter, because they're principles of change. (If the form itself came to be/was generated, you have an infinite regress). But getting into the details of all of this might just muddy the waters because people tend to misunderstand the technical vocabulary (as Rescher is, if he is indeed attacking classical substance theory and not just Locke et al, or as Descartes does every couple of pages whenever he takes a shot at Aristotle). Real, actual natural substances do change all the time and the essence of a substance (which is, after all, what most truly is substance) is an actuality of natural processes, not some mysterious metaphysical entity "Man" or "Pear Tree".
>>23620221>>23620234Neither of them is denying substance, they're just clarifying what a substance must be in order to be a substance, for substance to be a meaningful category in the natural world to begin with.>citing a neo-Thomist as an opponent of substancewat
>>23620374what do you think about these filtered retards?https://youtu.be/4fJNiPbIbZQ?si=q0RMTPH0wj398yMO
>>23620449holy fuck huemer and fine are cringe
>>23620374Heidegger's project failed. The end of metaphysics never occurred.
>>23620449the continental/Analytic divide is cringe and unnecessary. it is unfortunately one of the many scissions devised by modernism that we now pay the consequences for. I only watched a minute from that video and it's already obvious these guys just don't want to do the hard work that it would take to shift perspectives, which is a critical skill in philosophy. they've pigeonholed themselves into believing a certain philosophical methodology is what philosophy ought to be, to the detriment of all else. I don't know about you, but I believe that's typically what is called dogma. A/C philosophy both have the great moments, and their super shitty moments. also, Wittgenstein was obscure as fuck when I read him, nothing concise other than the simplicity of his language. I myself typically land on the side of "continental", but in all honesty I think we're just stuck in a forgettable moment of philosophy.what do you guys think
>>23620480word
>>23620471I think you're under false pretenses about what heidegger meant about the end of metaphysics. he never argued that it was a full stop death, but moreso a transmutation or recapitulation of occidental metaphysics in order to fully deepen our relationship with being. I do think the heidegger failed within the context of his own philosophy to realize this (as he did with his attempt at defining being), but his thought is still monumentally important.
>>23620449The idea of talking around the truth and being obfuscatory goes all the way back to Socrates and Plato. So if you hate continental philosophy you hate Socrates and Plato and that means you're a Bad Person.
>>23620488Okay, but if anything metaphysics in the traditional sense is going on just as strong as ever. If anything, Heideger is the one sitting in the dust alongside Nietzsche, the positivists , and Wittgenstein.
>>23620234Clarke also responds to this in a paper in "Explorations in Metaphysics." I think he's right to say that most modern rejections of substance rest on the tacit assumption that substance can only be of the lockean kind.
>>23620488I love Heidegger because of how grounded he was in Aristotle. The movement of thought in the opening "Being and Time" is already prefigured in the Metaphysics which is nothing but an exaltation of the being of the particular against the universal. He makes quiet references to Aristotle about as often as Aristotle makes quiet references to Plato, i.e. almost every sentence. I think Kierkegaard too said somewhere something like 'the problem with ancient philosophy is that it comes up against something it can't rationalize and it just stops because it can't say anything else within its categories of thought,' and I think that's true. The main things it can't rationalize being God and the individual. But Aristotle was still stuck in this conception of philosophy as being concerned with the universal and only the universal, 'that which always is' and so on, and he denies that philosophy can deal with particulars, relegating them to the realm of "experience". So I see Heidegger and Kierkegaard as taking the next step into that 'unscientific' realm of experience and particularity. The analytics are sperging out because it isn't scientific but it isn't and can't be, they're moving beyond the scientific because they think it's basically exhausted, which it kind of is. What are the analytics arguing about these days, how many edges a coin has? What I wouldn't give to travel back in time and give Aristotle a Greek translation of Heidegger and hear what he thought of him.
>>23620498I believe he would agree with you in saying traditional metaphysics is still present, but you do have his epigons attempting to realize his thought who have reached immense popularity themselves - focault, deleuz, sartre etc. I'm not trying to substitute popularity for truth, but they have made worthwhile movements in the direction heidegger laid out. the recapitulation of metaphysics into thought is evental and futural. That does not imply his philosophy is useless. I'm not sure what school of thought you come from, but all the philosophers you've named have their place in the history of being.
>>23620509Well put, anon. I've been reading a lot of aristotle recently after finishing being and time and it's somewhat startling how much of an aristotle fanboy heidegger was. What I would somewhat disagree with you on is that Being and Time is still caught up in that science of existence that it exerts so much effort to demolish, and I believe that realization is what lead to the second division never being published/written and thus the kherne.
>>23620498This is a fair take. Neither the many people who claimed to "solve metaphysics," nor the whole "anti-metaphysical" movement ended metaphysics. Indeed, it seems like the "anti-metaphysical movement" of the Vienna Circle, Russell, etc. will just go down in history as a relatively short epoch where a misguided philosophy of science was able to do some real harm to science, all why claiming to be saving science from philosophy. I don't think any other contemporary intellectual movement has been quite as dogmatic, or at least not as successful in enforcing their dogmatism. Research in quantum foundations was a career killer for like 50 years because it violated these people's preconceptions about what science should be.Personally, I think we're well on our way to seeing a reintegration of philosophy and science. Copublished articles are a thing now, and philosophy of biology, etc. is becoming more mainstream. The theory side of science always tends towards philosophy anyhow.Wittgenstein particularly failed to have an impact in the way he wanted to. Virtually no one thinks looking at how words like good, real, and true are used will solve metaphysical confusion for us. It doesn't work. And his idea of philosophy as therapy has only been adopted by a tiny minority. I don't think any professor is going to tell a student writing like Wittgenstein is a good idea.
>>23620471You can't kill the MetaphysicsThe Metaphysics will live onHume tried to kill the MetaphysicsBut he failed, as he was smit to the groundThe Marxists tried to kill the MetaphysicsBut they failed, as they were stricken down to the groundNietzche tried to kill the MetaphysicsHa-ha-ha-haHe failed, as he was thrown to the groundAh, yeahAh, yeahNo one can destroy the MetaphysicsThe Metaphysics will strike you down with a vicious blowWe are the vanquished foes of the MetaphysicsWe tried to win, for why? We do not knowComte tried to destroy the Metaphysics, but the Metaphysics had its wayWittgenstein then tried to dethrone the Metaphysics, but Metaphysics was in the wayHeidegger tried to destroy the Metaphysics, but Metaphysics was much too strongAyer tried to defile the Metaphysics, but Ayer was proven wrongYeahMetaphysicsIt comes from Reality
>>23620471it's been over for a while
