February Twitter Archive
Mar. 2nd, 2013 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerHere's February's edited tweets, plus one day of January and one of March. Thank you to all my interlocutors.
31 Jan
@Roewoof: I read the words, but I still don't understand the true difference between pantheism and polytheism as applied to my beliefs.
Labels like this have a lot to do with what direction you'll let yourself get pushed further toward, so their relevance depends a lot on the polemical pressures in one's intellectual environment. Pantheism was not originally formulated to be in opposition with polytheism; rather, in a context in which monotheism was presumed, to declare pantheism was to take up a position on the relationship between the divine, generically, and the world. These labels are probably best used with reference to where one's affirmative spiritual interests lie. I'm interested in divine persons, rather than the generic divine, so I'm naturally a polytheist. Somebody who was more interested in the "field effect" of divinity, so to speak, might feel more inclined toward pantheism.
1 Feb
@davidbmetcalfe: Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? http://ow.ly/hjMgD
I'm against reductionism, but that doesn't mean I want to reduce physical science to alien premises, either.
2 Feb
@t3dy: "Porphyry and Iamblichus, of course, teach that souls which are wholly restored to God never fall." -Ficino. Where’s this come from?
Plato's Phaedrus, more or less. "And this is a law of Adrasteia, that the soul who accompanying a God comes to perceive any of the truths is free from harm until the next period, and if it can do this always, is always unharmed," (Phaedrus 248c). Iamblichus interprets this so that these souls "descend without breaking away from the higher things" (In Phaedonem 5). So we can say that for Iamblichus, these souls descend without "falling", as it were.
4 Feb
@t3dy: have you thought much recently about the "One in the soul" of Proclus? Is there anything happening in scholarship on this topic?
Andrew Smith's book on Porphyry—actually a much more wide-ranging study—is all that comes to mind on that subject. In general, until more scholars decide to make sense of henology, instead of just handwaving, one can't expect much of value on the "one of the soul". You ask about my own thoughts; I think that the "one of the soul" is a placeholder for two things otherwise difficult to integrate: on the one hand, each soul's peculiar theurgical "token", which is not necessarily literally one, but a sort of refrain; on the other hand, the ineffable agency involved in the soul's choice of life-paradigm, that cannot be reduced to the pattern itself. These are the unitary (heniaios) dimension of the soul's activity.
5-6 Feb
@cole_tucker: How do you approach syncretic Gods, like Hermanubis? Wholly distinct from either Hermes and Anubis?
In Egyptian theology, you know, these fusion deities are very common: Amun-Re, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, et al. I think of them generally as a fusion of the powers of two or more deities into a stable, "molecular" form. They can be treated like any other deity, albeit having an act of synthesis as part of their essence. I see non-Egyptian syncretisms in this fashion, too, if there's anything to them other than idle comparativism. In some cases, one may regard a syncretic form as being an aspect of one of its members, rather than a fusion. Sometimes it seems that Egyptian fusion deities are aspects of the name appearing first, i.e. Amun-Re as the Re aspect of Amun. One can regard this as a manifestation of polycentric polytheism, in which all the deities are in each. One could thus distinguish between the Re aspect of Amun and the Amun aspect of Re as different "sentences". That's what these "molecular" forms are like: sentences, as opposed to words.
@cole_tucker: This is how I thought of the purely Egyptian forms, and it helped me get a hold on your presentation of Proclus' philosophy of the henadic manifold. Cross-cultural ones of this type seemed different from a syncretic revelation of a "new" God within history. Something like Christ or how Jake Stratton-Kent presents the Headless One of the PGM.
A useful concept in Proclus is the polarity in each deity between his/her hyparxis (existence) and his/her dynameis (powers). The hyparxis is the sheer haecceity ("thisness") of the deity, by definition unsharable, while the powers may be common to any number of other deities. Now, one may hypostatize some epithet, some power, in an act that implicitly invokes multiple deities. My personal intuition about such hypostases is that they have more power for the one who is aware of their act-character. For example: if someone says "God has property x", and s/he is aware of this as a general statement ranging over many Gods, that is a different proposition than if someone says that, and is referring to what s/he thinks of as a singular.
@cole_tucker: So during Solar adorations, holding devotion for the specific God addressed while allowing space for consideration of all Solar deities?
I think that it's more meaningful to focus completely on the individual deity in the moment of worship. What I was talking about above was the thought process that lies behind the use of generic "God" language in ethics, etc. I don't see generic entities as objects of devotion.
@cole_tucker: Neither do I. Had to cut out the "[...] By whatever name I call Thee" line from [Liber] Israfel, it's so unpalatable.
I see "forms"/"ideas" primarily as verbs. I wouldn't trade this mode of being for one that reifies them.
@cole_tucker: Form/Idea being the Sephiroth/Planetary association here?
Yes. There is a continuum of abstraction, from the theologically "thick" (what Proclus calls "sources", pêgai) to the ideal of conceptual transparency, the telos of dialectic. Inevitably, I tend to focus on the "thick" dimension of, e.g., Sephiroth, seeing them as tethered to Judaism.
@cole_tucker: I've moved from a personally discomfited relationship with reifying of the Ideas, and seeing the Gods as embodiments, to vocally objecting to the approach and proposing different approaches.
I spend so much time criticizing attempts to reduce the Gods to personified ideas that I don't get to talk much about the positive use of eidetics.
8 Feb
@A_P_S: “sensible religion: monotheism of the heart, the polytheism of the imagination and of art, & the mythology of reason.”
The odd thing about the "monotheism of the heart" line is that in life one has room for all kinds of relationships, no? Certain of my devotional relationships are more intense than others, but they don't exclude each other, far from it. In fact, I think many polytheists find that certain deities want certain others around, or just like others in general.
10 Feb
@adamkotsko: If Platonic dialogues were blogs, most of Socrates's interlocutors would've been marked as spam for agreeing too enthusiastically.
Quite true. I still have a hard time dealing with the lack of genuine dialogue in the dialogues. The uncomfortable truth, I think, is that the dialogues really involve a dialectical procedure that can be done by one alone, and hence the interlocutors are only really important at key junctures, where they nudge the inquiry in a given direction usually not by an argument, but by their fixed commitments, like Glaukon's demand for luxuries in the Republic.
11 Feb
@ShamanTigerZen: Physics has found no "partless objects" (ultimately solid things) -- it finds only energetic activity in a vast and mysterious space.
Opportunity for a wholesale reinterpretation/transvaluation of ancient atomism.
12-13 Feb
The harmony of Plato and Aristotle is generally based on a recognition that the two are pursuing different ends. This is probably never made more clear than by comparing Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. Aristotle is clearly organizing a polity, whereas Plato is indeed, as Aristotle remarks, creating something more like an organism. Amidst his critique of the Republic, it is interesting to note how much of the late Platonic methodology Aristotle uses in this text. The Politics is replete with henological and mereological argumentation, and the "Promethean method" of the Philebus puts in an appearance in the discussion of money and commerce at 1257b-1258a, where we see "limit" and "unlimited" clearly used in the technical sense.
@tonhoberlinense: I was thinking about the harmony earlier. It seems to me that Aristotle can play his daimonic/purificatory/intermediary role only if his distinctness from Plato is maintained. If there's no contradiction there's no purification from particularity.
Yes, and hence Aristotle's critiques are real, and post-Aristotle Platonism is really different from incorporating them. There's no contradiction between taking the critique as real and effective, but also as still coming from within Platonism.
14 Feb
@brightabyss: can materialism be non-reductionist via an adequate account of emergence and complexity?
An adequate account of emergence and complexity just makes a materialist reduction competent, sufficient to its purposes. A genuinely "flat" ontology, in my estimation, would have to recognize the existence of multiple incommensurable reductions. In this respect, a truly "flat" ontology could not be materialist, or idealist, or phenomenological, or vitalist, per se. A truly "flat" ontology would have to encompass any possible reduction; hence it would have to be very "thin" in itself.
@brightabyss: what does 'reduction' mean for you in this context? nuanced materialist explanations are capable of signifying all the modes and strata you would want to include via specificity.
I'm not disputing that. Nor am I disputing the ability of absolute idealism, for instance, to do the same to the materialist.
@brightabyss: then how do materialist ontologies fail to be 'flat' if they can provide cogent descriptions about a reality that is consistent?
It sounds as though you are describing criteria, not of a "flat" ontology, but any ontology at all. A "flat" ontology ought not to say, on its own behalf, that any class of phenomenon is "really" some other class.
@brightabyss: materialism need only be a commentary of the nature of the flatness and not about the particular character of emergent variations?
I'm not about determining what a materialist ontology ought to look like, but to the degree that it is "materialist" I don't see how it can be "flat"; it remains hierarchical.
17-18 Feb
@_shrine_: Is the animistic conversation with the spirit of a thing or with the thoughts accumulated around or within it?
I would imagine with both, and that these levels of interaction can be distinguished—maybe not easily, though.
@_shrine_: I think an experiment would be to pay attention to perceptual cues like vision and voice of the animated object or spirit.
There should be an analogy between one's own "spirit" (even if problematic) and one's own (introjected) thoughts and these dimensions in the thing, the object of animistic engagement.
@_shrine_: What do you mean by that, those dimensions in the thing?
I mean the spirit dimension in the thing, and the dimension of accumulated projected thoughts on the thing. In the same way that I have a spirit aspect, as well as a constellation of thoughts others have had about me I have introjected.
18 Feb
@cole_tucker: Does Thelema have the potential to be regarded as pagan in your formulation?
I think so. Thelema seems a bit like the Chaldean Oracles, a substantial theology but also with significant conceptual content. Of course, according to my definition, Judaism could probably be regarded as pagan, more readily than Buddhism!
@cole_tucker: I was actually wondering exactly that!
20 Feb
@SawayRyanga: Maybe God is a Buddha whose being composes and sustains the entire multiverse
Maybe each God is this.
@chagmed: That which is totally independent cannot interact with interdependent phenomena
No, I don't think this inference is valid.
@chagmed: OK
It's interesting, don't get me wrong. I'm still thinking it over.
@chagmed: are you familiar with Buddhist philosophy?
To a degree, but I operate out of a different paradigm.
@chagmed: understood - diff paradigm, diff conclusions
Couldn't an independent entity interact with the entire system formed by the interdependent phenomena? But then I suppose you would say that in interacting, it becomes interdependent.
@chagmed: yes, exactly
I think that the inference is correct if we disallow any notion of dependent aspects of the independent and vice versa, and if the only valid sense of interaction is being parts of a third-party whole.
@chagmed: if I am part of something, how can it be 3rd-party?
That's exactly the question, whether the availability of a first-person perspective compromises the objective nature of the whole.
@chagmed: what if there is no person? what if there appears to be personal perception, but that is a misinterpretation?
Well, that's just asserting the dependent nature of the part relative to the whole; uninteresting.
@chagmed: uninteresting? I think it points to the essential question
Even if the person is a dependent origination in all these different fashions, if these dependencies are distinct in themselves, then they are more interesting than the fact that one can reduce this, reduce that. It seems no different than a physicist saying "Why study chemistry?" or a chemist saying "Why study biology?"
@chagmed: I consider that a false analogy
21 Feb
Came across an interesting technical discussion of the ontology of magic in Damascius today. At De Princ. III 31, Damascius discusses "the source <presiding> over magic" (epi mageiôn pêgê), basically, magic's intelligible form. Damascius is concerned with the relationship between this "source" and the "duplex transcendent" (dis epekeina). The "duplex transcendent" is essentially any God in an exclusive dyadic relationship, the prime example being Demiurge and Paradigm. Damascius is also concerned here with two kinds of divine procession or activity, which he characterizes as "vertical" and "horizontal". In characterizing these two modes of procession, Damascius borrows a longstanding classification of the parts of substances, namely, "homoiomerous" and "anhomoiomerous" parts. Homoiomerous parts of a substance are essentially just like the whole, only smaller; like molecules of air in a mass of air. Anhomoiomerous parts do not resemble their whole. Think of the parts of a face: nose, ears, eyes, etc. This is a question of level of organization, because anhomoiomerous parts of a substance are generally composed of homoiomerous parts. Hence, the anhomoiomerous parts of a face are themselves made of flesh, which is homoiomerous. So Damascius, rather unexpectedly, decides to apply this mereological opposition to high metaphysics, something which never seems to have occurred to Aristotle, if I'm not mistaken. Damascius starts talking about homoiomerous vs. anhomoiomerous processions from Gods. He also frames them as horizontal and vertical: horizontal=anhomoiomerous; vertical=homoiomerous. These become for Damascius two different ways in which a productive cause can encompass its products, and hence two different modes of existence (hyparxis) (DP III 35.16-19). Basically, homoiomerous productions from a God are synonymous declinations of him/herself, like hypercosmic Zeus from intellective Zeus. Anhomoiomerous productions from a God are heteronymous, like Dionysos from Zeus. (Just to be clear, even though Damascius uses examples where a "younger" God is produced by an "older" one, we could reverse this. As henads, Zeus is as much produced by Athena as Athena is produced by Zeus.)
Okay, those preliminaries out of the way, here's what Damascius says about "the source <presiding> over magic": "The source presiding over magic [lit. 'over magics'] proceeds [from the duplex transcendent] according to some anhomoimer[ous part]," (De Princ. III 31.9-10). Later (38.8-10) he refers again to the "source" in question as a "partial [merikên] demiurgic source". So the intelligible form of magic is here being positioned relative to the demiurge-paradigm relationship, or duplex transcendency. There is a tradition since Iamblichus at least of thinking of the magician as a sort of microcosmic demiurge. But Damascius is saying that there is not a simple analogy between the demiurge and the magician, it's anhomoiomerous. Magic is an articulated part of the total demiurgic project, like a specialized limb or organ. So magic works because of a place the Gods have provided for it in their work, functioning there as part of a whole. This is in harmony with Iamblichus, but it makes things a bit more specific. It places magic in relation to the whole system of other activities animals do to organize their environment. It makes magic something done inherently in cooperation with the Gods, and that works because it furthers cosmic order. Magic, according to Damascius, is a part of demiurgy the way that a nose is part of a face.
@Roewoof: I'm curious when Socrates uses the word magic, what does he mean exactly, because I get stumped on the definition. Does he mean something supernatural, of the gods etc. Or is he using the word to describe something else?
When Socrates speaks of magic, he often seems to have in mind either an enchantment that might, say, attract another erotically, or something more Orphic, that might have as its goal, as we might say, lifting certain "karmic" traces. In any event, Socrates never really speaks directly to what magic is, but rather alludes to it, as an analogy. As such, he draws on a commonplace cultural understanding of the terms (and these terms can vary, mageia, goêtia…)
@Roewoof: So is it fair to say that for Socrates magic is less part of the natural order, and more of a supernatural phenomenon?
I don't think that the "natural/supernatural" distinction, as we know it, applies.
@Roewoof: […] aren't all arguments a Socratic argument?
The style of argument most associated with Socrates is known as elenchus, "refutation". Elenchus generally consists in showing that holding certain commitments leads to contradictory inferences.
@Roewoof: I always feel like this work is really a demonstration of different types of thought.
Perhaps, but we also have a tendency to avoid permitting arguments to play out. It's such a reflex to "agree to disagree".
26 Feb
It's a shame that English doesn't have a complement for "vehicle" the way French does, "véhiculé"; have to go with "rider" I guess. I'm looking for good terms to render the Greek complements ochoun/ochoumenos.
Dreamed of a magical redbrick Victorian tower with a cozy cinema inside, but it fell down! Hoping they rebuild it.
@ArtVolumeOne: fiction is so ingrained in everything, we just fail to see how it operates in everything we do, even well intentioned our relationships/etc
I find narrative structure to be far more philosophically significant than any of the ideas narratives articulate.
28 Feb-1 Mar
@ArtVolumeOne: "Why is structuralism serious? For serious to be truly serious must be the serial, made up of elements repetitions-" http://www.lacan.com/zizrealac.htm
That's an interesting, if fanciful, bit of etymology. "Serious" relates rather to "severe". Then one might hear an echo of "several"; but that relates instead to "separate". For "series" we go to Greek eirô, to string together; looks like eirô, to say, but the root of former is ser, the latter fer. Could severus, "stern, strict, serious" have something to do with fer, to say, as "lay down the law"? Seems just the opposite of stringing together iterations, with its tendency to undermine the "seriousness" of the word.
@ArtVolumeOne: yes these w/also my observations (identifying strongly w/your latter obs) he pedagogically states obvious. #repetition #fictions "unconscious means thought is caused by non-thought that one cannot recapture in present except by capturing it in consequences"; "before blood / before you / beyond all time & cosmic pursuits / that #you /which is #unconscious" http://www.txt.io/t-2jije ; #fiction
@ArtVolumeOne: "pregnancy' of fictional worlds reflects another way w/literary theorists reject abstract hypothetical nature of possible worlds" (http://www.scribd.com/doc/37159814/Ruth-Ronen-Possible-Worlds-in-Literary-Theory)
This is what my statement about narrative structure failed to take account of: the fictional world; cf. my remarks on the Republic and "imaginal citizenship". Where fictional worlds differ from ideas in fiction, though, is that the world has to be taken as a whole, not piecemeal. In this regard, both narrative structure and the fictional world are more important than ideas in fiction. Ronen is correct to point out the difference from logicians' "possible worlds": the presence of "concrete fictional entities". I should say that the parts proper to a fictional world are its characters, and its places; these being anhomoiomerous parts. The parts of the logician's "possible worlds" are homoiomerous, by contrast: states-of-affairs, infinitely variable.
@ArtVolumeOne: […] & it is many/the/our #fictional & real seen/unseen selves/worlds (serial/series) "hidden, in a philosophy, an I = I," must - wake. see it is- the opposite, indeed. 'fictional *world*/worlds' 'imaginal citizenship' & TAKEN AS A WHOLE (infinite as it is) Yes- hah :) possibility- of fictional--- ontologies-- "a 'pregnant' world of which one must know all acting individuals & their properties".
[re: "both narrative structure and the fictional world are more important than ideas in fiction"] nonlinear interplay (imo most similar to quanta & #QFT) of structures simultaneously sensitive/potent/destructive to a 'neophyte'.
[re: "the parts proper to a fictional world are its characters, and its places; these being anhomoiomerous parts"] yessssssssssssssssssssssss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmmjXGwarU … "contagion & interrupter" http://www.txt.io/t-20rdv ; #naturalsupernatural #FICTIONS
"I fall inside of the splintering of language / contagion & interrupter / the beautiful place that never was."- Couvade
[re: "The parts of the logician's "possible worlds" are homoiomerous, by contrast: states-of-affairs, infinitely variable"] ABRACADABRA "Nos actives investigations n'ont pas abouti à pénétrer dans son intégralité" http://bit.ly/ikqwoS ; #whichuniverse "…n'a rien d'un paresseux: si c'est un #artiste," http://bit.ly/13w2BVJ ; http://bit.ly/ikqwoS "équilibre: harmonie ou logique: peut-être n'a-t-il jamais rien fait, mais j'en doute, car l'écriture ....." (cont'd)
31 Jan
@Roewoof: I read the words, but I still don't understand the true difference between pantheism and polytheism as applied to my beliefs.
Labels like this have a lot to do with what direction you'll let yourself get pushed further toward, so their relevance depends a lot on the polemical pressures in one's intellectual environment. Pantheism was not originally formulated to be in opposition with polytheism; rather, in a context in which monotheism was presumed, to declare pantheism was to take up a position on the relationship between the divine, generically, and the world. These labels are probably best used with reference to where one's affirmative spiritual interests lie. I'm interested in divine persons, rather than the generic divine, so I'm naturally a polytheist. Somebody who was more interested in the "field effect" of divinity, so to speak, might feel more inclined toward pantheism.
1 Feb
@davidbmetcalfe: Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”? http://ow.ly/hjMgD
I'm against reductionism, but that doesn't mean I want to reduce physical science to alien premises, either.
2 Feb
@t3dy: "Porphyry and Iamblichus, of course, teach that souls which are wholly restored to God never fall." -Ficino. Where’s this come from?
Plato's Phaedrus, more or less. "And this is a law of Adrasteia, that the soul who accompanying a God comes to perceive any of the truths is free from harm until the next period, and if it can do this always, is always unharmed," (Phaedrus 248c). Iamblichus interprets this so that these souls "descend without breaking away from the higher things" (In Phaedonem 5). So we can say that for Iamblichus, these souls descend without "falling", as it were.
4 Feb
@t3dy: have you thought much recently about the "One in the soul" of Proclus? Is there anything happening in scholarship on this topic?
Andrew Smith's book on Porphyry—actually a much more wide-ranging study—is all that comes to mind on that subject. In general, until more scholars decide to make sense of henology, instead of just handwaving, one can't expect much of value on the "one of the soul". You ask about my own thoughts; I think that the "one of the soul" is a placeholder for two things otherwise difficult to integrate: on the one hand, each soul's peculiar theurgical "token", which is not necessarily literally one, but a sort of refrain; on the other hand, the ineffable agency involved in the soul's choice of life-paradigm, that cannot be reduced to the pattern itself. These are the unitary (heniaios) dimension of the soul's activity.
5-6 Feb
@cole_tucker: How do you approach syncretic Gods, like Hermanubis? Wholly distinct from either Hermes and Anubis?
In Egyptian theology, you know, these fusion deities are very common: Amun-Re, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, et al. I think of them generally as a fusion of the powers of two or more deities into a stable, "molecular" form. They can be treated like any other deity, albeit having an act of synthesis as part of their essence. I see non-Egyptian syncretisms in this fashion, too, if there's anything to them other than idle comparativism. In some cases, one may regard a syncretic form as being an aspect of one of its members, rather than a fusion. Sometimes it seems that Egyptian fusion deities are aspects of the name appearing first, i.e. Amun-Re as the Re aspect of Amun. One can regard this as a manifestation of polycentric polytheism, in which all the deities are in each. One could thus distinguish between the Re aspect of Amun and the Amun aspect of Re as different "sentences". That's what these "molecular" forms are like: sentences, as opposed to words.
@cole_tucker: This is how I thought of the purely Egyptian forms, and it helped me get a hold on your presentation of Proclus' philosophy of the henadic manifold. Cross-cultural ones of this type seemed different from a syncretic revelation of a "new" God within history. Something like Christ or how Jake Stratton-Kent presents the Headless One of the PGM.
A useful concept in Proclus is the polarity in each deity between his/her hyparxis (existence) and his/her dynameis (powers). The hyparxis is the sheer haecceity ("thisness") of the deity, by definition unsharable, while the powers may be common to any number of other deities. Now, one may hypostatize some epithet, some power, in an act that implicitly invokes multiple deities. My personal intuition about such hypostases is that they have more power for the one who is aware of their act-character. For example: if someone says "God has property x", and s/he is aware of this as a general statement ranging over many Gods, that is a different proposition than if someone says that, and is referring to what s/he thinks of as a singular.
@cole_tucker: So during Solar adorations, holding devotion for the specific God addressed while allowing space for consideration of all Solar deities?
I think that it's more meaningful to focus completely on the individual deity in the moment of worship. What I was talking about above was the thought process that lies behind the use of generic "God" language in ethics, etc. I don't see generic entities as objects of devotion.
@cole_tucker: Neither do I. Had to cut out the "[...] By whatever name I call Thee" line from [Liber] Israfel, it's so unpalatable.
I see "forms"/"ideas" primarily as verbs. I wouldn't trade this mode of being for one that reifies them.
@cole_tucker: Form/Idea being the Sephiroth/Planetary association here?
Yes. There is a continuum of abstraction, from the theologically "thick" (what Proclus calls "sources", pêgai) to the ideal of conceptual transparency, the telos of dialectic. Inevitably, I tend to focus on the "thick" dimension of, e.g., Sephiroth, seeing them as tethered to Judaism.
@cole_tucker: I've moved from a personally discomfited relationship with reifying of the Ideas, and seeing the Gods as embodiments, to vocally objecting to the approach and proposing different approaches.
I spend so much time criticizing attempts to reduce the Gods to personified ideas that I don't get to talk much about the positive use of eidetics.
8 Feb
@A_P_S: “sensible religion: monotheism of the heart, the polytheism of the imagination and of art, & the mythology of reason.”
The odd thing about the "monotheism of the heart" line is that in life one has room for all kinds of relationships, no? Certain of my devotional relationships are more intense than others, but they don't exclude each other, far from it. In fact, I think many polytheists find that certain deities want certain others around, or just like others in general.
10 Feb
@adamkotsko: If Platonic dialogues were blogs, most of Socrates's interlocutors would've been marked as spam for agreeing too enthusiastically.
Quite true. I still have a hard time dealing with the lack of genuine dialogue in the dialogues. The uncomfortable truth, I think, is that the dialogues really involve a dialectical procedure that can be done by one alone, and hence the interlocutors are only really important at key junctures, where they nudge the inquiry in a given direction usually not by an argument, but by their fixed commitments, like Glaukon's demand for luxuries in the Republic.
11 Feb
@ShamanTigerZen: Physics has found no "partless objects" (ultimately solid things) -- it finds only energetic activity in a vast and mysterious space.
Opportunity for a wholesale reinterpretation/transvaluation of ancient atomism.
12-13 Feb
The harmony of Plato and Aristotle is generally based on a recognition that the two are pursuing different ends. This is probably never made more clear than by comparing Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. Aristotle is clearly organizing a polity, whereas Plato is indeed, as Aristotle remarks, creating something more like an organism. Amidst his critique of the Republic, it is interesting to note how much of the late Platonic methodology Aristotle uses in this text. The Politics is replete with henological and mereological argumentation, and the "Promethean method" of the Philebus puts in an appearance in the discussion of money and commerce at 1257b-1258a, where we see "limit" and "unlimited" clearly used in the technical sense.
@tonhoberlinense: I was thinking about the harmony earlier. It seems to me that Aristotle can play his daimonic/purificatory/intermediary role only if his distinctness from Plato is maintained. If there's no contradiction there's no purification from particularity.
Yes, and hence Aristotle's critiques are real, and post-Aristotle Platonism is really different from incorporating them. There's no contradiction between taking the critique as real and effective, but also as still coming from within Platonism.
14 Feb
@brightabyss: can materialism be non-reductionist via an adequate account of emergence and complexity?
An adequate account of emergence and complexity just makes a materialist reduction competent, sufficient to its purposes. A genuinely "flat" ontology, in my estimation, would have to recognize the existence of multiple incommensurable reductions. In this respect, a truly "flat" ontology could not be materialist, or idealist, or phenomenological, or vitalist, per se. A truly "flat" ontology would have to encompass any possible reduction; hence it would have to be very "thin" in itself.
@brightabyss: what does 'reduction' mean for you in this context? nuanced materialist explanations are capable of signifying all the modes and strata you would want to include via specificity.
I'm not disputing that. Nor am I disputing the ability of absolute idealism, for instance, to do the same to the materialist.
@brightabyss: then how do materialist ontologies fail to be 'flat' if they can provide cogent descriptions about a reality that is consistent?
It sounds as though you are describing criteria, not of a "flat" ontology, but any ontology at all. A "flat" ontology ought not to say, on its own behalf, that any class of phenomenon is "really" some other class.
@brightabyss: materialism need only be a commentary of the nature of the flatness and not about the particular character of emergent variations?
I'm not about determining what a materialist ontology ought to look like, but to the degree that it is "materialist" I don't see how it can be "flat"; it remains hierarchical.
17-18 Feb
@_shrine_: Is the animistic conversation with the spirit of a thing or with the thoughts accumulated around or within it?
I would imagine with both, and that these levels of interaction can be distinguished—maybe not easily, though.
@_shrine_: I think an experiment would be to pay attention to perceptual cues like vision and voice of the animated object or spirit.
There should be an analogy between one's own "spirit" (even if problematic) and one's own (introjected) thoughts and these dimensions in the thing, the object of animistic engagement.
@_shrine_: What do you mean by that, those dimensions in the thing?
I mean the spirit dimension in the thing, and the dimension of accumulated projected thoughts on the thing. In the same way that I have a spirit aspect, as well as a constellation of thoughts others have had about me I have introjected.
18 Feb
@cole_tucker: Does Thelema have the potential to be regarded as pagan in your formulation?
I think so. Thelema seems a bit like the Chaldean Oracles, a substantial theology but also with significant conceptual content. Of course, according to my definition, Judaism could probably be regarded as pagan, more readily than Buddhism!
@cole_tucker: I was actually wondering exactly that!
20 Feb
@SawayRyanga: Maybe God is a Buddha whose being composes and sustains the entire multiverse
Maybe each God is this.
@chagmed: That which is totally independent cannot interact with interdependent phenomena
No, I don't think this inference is valid.
@chagmed: OK
It's interesting, don't get me wrong. I'm still thinking it over.
@chagmed: are you familiar with Buddhist philosophy?
To a degree, but I operate out of a different paradigm.
@chagmed: understood - diff paradigm, diff conclusions
Couldn't an independent entity interact with the entire system formed by the interdependent phenomena? But then I suppose you would say that in interacting, it becomes interdependent.
@chagmed: yes, exactly
I think that the inference is correct if we disallow any notion of dependent aspects of the independent and vice versa, and if the only valid sense of interaction is being parts of a third-party whole.
@chagmed: if I am part of something, how can it be 3rd-party?
That's exactly the question, whether the availability of a first-person perspective compromises the objective nature of the whole.
@chagmed: what if there is no person? what if there appears to be personal perception, but that is a misinterpretation?
Well, that's just asserting the dependent nature of the part relative to the whole; uninteresting.
@chagmed: uninteresting? I think it points to the essential question
Even if the person is a dependent origination in all these different fashions, if these dependencies are distinct in themselves, then they are more interesting than the fact that one can reduce this, reduce that. It seems no different than a physicist saying "Why study chemistry?" or a chemist saying "Why study biology?"
@chagmed: I consider that a false analogy
21 Feb
Came across an interesting technical discussion of the ontology of magic in Damascius today. At De Princ. III 31, Damascius discusses "the source <presiding> over magic" (epi mageiôn pêgê), basically, magic's intelligible form. Damascius is concerned with the relationship between this "source" and the "duplex transcendent" (dis epekeina). The "duplex transcendent" is essentially any God in an exclusive dyadic relationship, the prime example being Demiurge and Paradigm. Damascius is also concerned here with two kinds of divine procession or activity, which he characterizes as "vertical" and "horizontal". In characterizing these two modes of procession, Damascius borrows a longstanding classification of the parts of substances, namely, "homoiomerous" and "anhomoiomerous" parts. Homoiomerous parts of a substance are essentially just like the whole, only smaller; like molecules of air in a mass of air. Anhomoiomerous parts do not resemble their whole. Think of the parts of a face: nose, ears, eyes, etc. This is a question of level of organization, because anhomoiomerous parts of a substance are generally composed of homoiomerous parts. Hence, the anhomoiomerous parts of a face are themselves made of flesh, which is homoiomerous. So Damascius, rather unexpectedly, decides to apply this mereological opposition to high metaphysics, something which never seems to have occurred to Aristotle, if I'm not mistaken. Damascius starts talking about homoiomerous vs. anhomoiomerous processions from Gods. He also frames them as horizontal and vertical: horizontal=anhomoiomerous; vertical=homoiomerous. These become for Damascius two different ways in which a productive cause can encompass its products, and hence two different modes of existence (hyparxis) (DP III 35.16-19). Basically, homoiomerous productions from a God are synonymous declinations of him/herself, like hypercosmic Zeus from intellective Zeus. Anhomoiomerous productions from a God are heteronymous, like Dionysos from Zeus. (Just to be clear, even though Damascius uses examples where a "younger" God is produced by an "older" one, we could reverse this. As henads, Zeus is as much produced by Athena as Athena is produced by Zeus.)
Okay, those preliminaries out of the way, here's what Damascius says about "the source <presiding> over magic": "The source presiding over magic [lit. 'over magics'] proceeds [from the duplex transcendent] according to some anhomoimer[ous part]," (De Princ. III 31.9-10). Later (38.8-10) he refers again to the "source" in question as a "partial [merikên] demiurgic source". So the intelligible form of magic is here being positioned relative to the demiurge-paradigm relationship, or duplex transcendency. There is a tradition since Iamblichus at least of thinking of the magician as a sort of microcosmic demiurge. But Damascius is saying that there is not a simple analogy between the demiurge and the magician, it's anhomoiomerous. Magic is an articulated part of the total demiurgic project, like a specialized limb or organ. So magic works because of a place the Gods have provided for it in their work, functioning there as part of a whole. This is in harmony with Iamblichus, but it makes things a bit more specific. It places magic in relation to the whole system of other activities animals do to organize their environment. It makes magic something done inherently in cooperation with the Gods, and that works because it furthers cosmic order. Magic, according to Damascius, is a part of demiurgy the way that a nose is part of a face.
@Roewoof: I'm curious when Socrates uses the word magic, what does he mean exactly, because I get stumped on the definition. Does he mean something supernatural, of the gods etc. Or is he using the word to describe something else?
When Socrates speaks of magic, he often seems to have in mind either an enchantment that might, say, attract another erotically, or something more Orphic, that might have as its goal, as we might say, lifting certain "karmic" traces. In any event, Socrates never really speaks directly to what magic is, but rather alludes to it, as an analogy. As such, he draws on a commonplace cultural understanding of the terms (and these terms can vary, mageia, goêtia…)
@Roewoof: So is it fair to say that for Socrates magic is less part of the natural order, and more of a supernatural phenomenon?
I don't think that the "natural/supernatural" distinction, as we know it, applies.
@Roewoof: […] aren't all arguments a Socratic argument?
The style of argument most associated with Socrates is known as elenchus, "refutation". Elenchus generally consists in showing that holding certain commitments leads to contradictory inferences.
@Roewoof: I always feel like this work is really a demonstration of different types of thought.
Perhaps, but we also have a tendency to avoid permitting arguments to play out. It's such a reflex to "agree to disagree".
26 Feb
It's a shame that English doesn't have a complement for "vehicle" the way French does, "véhiculé"; have to go with "rider" I guess. I'm looking for good terms to render the Greek complements ochoun/ochoumenos.
Dreamed of a magical redbrick Victorian tower with a cozy cinema inside, but it fell down! Hoping they rebuild it.
@ArtVolumeOne: fiction is so ingrained in everything, we just fail to see how it operates in everything we do, even well intentioned our relationships/etc
I find narrative structure to be far more philosophically significant than any of the ideas narratives articulate.
28 Feb-1 Mar
@ArtVolumeOne: "Why is structuralism serious? For serious to be truly serious must be the serial, made up of elements repetitions-" http://www.lacan.com/zizrealac.htm
That's an interesting, if fanciful, bit of etymology. "Serious" relates rather to "severe". Then one might hear an echo of "several"; but that relates instead to "separate". For "series" we go to Greek eirô, to string together; looks like eirô, to say, but the root of former is ser, the latter fer. Could severus, "stern, strict, serious" have something to do with fer, to say, as "lay down the law"? Seems just the opposite of stringing together iterations, with its tendency to undermine the "seriousness" of the word.
@ArtVolumeOne: yes these w/also my observations (identifying strongly w/your latter obs) he pedagogically states obvious. #repetition #fictions "unconscious means thought is caused by non-thought that one cannot recapture in present except by capturing it in consequences"; "before blood / before you / beyond all time & cosmic pursuits / that #you /which is #unconscious" http://www.txt.io/t-2jije ; #fiction
@ArtVolumeOne: "pregnancy' of fictional worlds reflects another way w/literary theorists reject abstract hypothetical nature of possible worlds" (http://www.scribd.com/doc/37159814/Ruth-Ronen-Possible-Worlds-in-Literary-Theory)
This is what my statement about narrative structure failed to take account of: the fictional world; cf. my remarks on the Republic and "imaginal citizenship". Where fictional worlds differ from ideas in fiction, though, is that the world has to be taken as a whole, not piecemeal. In this regard, both narrative structure and the fictional world are more important than ideas in fiction. Ronen is correct to point out the difference from logicians' "possible worlds": the presence of "concrete fictional entities". I should say that the parts proper to a fictional world are its characters, and its places; these being anhomoiomerous parts. The parts of the logician's "possible worlds" are homoiomerous, by contrast: states-of-affairs, infinitely variable.
@ArtVolumeOne: […] & it is many/the/our #fictional & real seen/unseen selves/worlds (serial/series) "hidden, in a philosophy, an I = I," must - wake. see it is- the opposite, indeed. 'fictional *world*/worlds' 'imaginal citizenship' & TAKEN AS A WHOLE (infinite as it is) Yes- hah :) possibility- of fictional--- ontologies-- "a 'pregnant' world of which one must know all acting individuals & their properties".
[re: "both narrative structure and the fictional world are more important than ideas in fiction"] nonlinear interplay (imo most similar to quanta & #QFT) of structures simultaneously sensitive/potent/destructive to a 'neophyte'.
[re: "the parts proper to a fictional world are its characters, and its places; these being anhomoiomerous parts"] yessssssssssssssssssssssss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmmjXGwarU … "contagion & interrupter" http://www.txt.io/t-20rdv ; #naturalsupernatural #FICTIONS
"I fall inside of the splintering of language / contagion & interrupter / the beautiful place that never was."- Couvade
[re: "The parts of the logician's "possible worlds" are homoiomerous, by contrast: states-of-affairs, infinitely variable"] ABRACADABRA "Nos actives investigations n'ont pas abouti à pénétrer dans son intégralité" http://bit.ly/ikqwoS ; #whichuniverse "…n'a rien d'un paresseux: si c'est un #artiste," http://bit.ly/13w2BVJ ; http://bit.ly/ikqwoS "équilibre: harmonie ou logique: peut-être n'a-t-il jamais rien fait, mais j'en doute, car l'écriture ....." (cont'd)
