Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

[GaryLouisSmith]

PURE CHANCE

Writing philosophy. And religion. Analysis. A sacrificial cutting things apart. Intellectual violence. Crossing boundaries. The embarrassing. The disreputable. The scandalous. You will never make it through school. You dream and you enter into the realm of hypnagogic slants. Your boy friend is a ghost. And you are a piece of bricolage.

If you look closely at the things of the world, you will find the subtle.



There are two types of philosophy: those that try to set up enchantment and those that try to tear it down. Platonism is the former. Positivism is the second.

The problem is that those who deal in enchantment will always come to know dislocation. The spirits of the paranormal will deny you what you want. Your life will be a mess. Rough going. Accidents will happen. Quarrels. All your aiming for knowledge will leave you in the dark and unknowing. You will need protection. We are dealing in magic. Magic is deception and getting lost. Which god will help you? You need a friend badly. Enchantment and the paranormal and magic are real and they really do f*ck with you. If your life is fine, then you haven’t been doing it right.

I am afraid of enchantment. And I am in love with it. I cannot give it up and I dread the convulsions. I pray to Jesus. I pray desperately. He is able to bring grace to my pain.

Enchantment cannot be separated from sexual desire and falling falling falling in love. You will always fall too far. You will walk alone on a cold night. And the greater the pain, the greater the allure. You are a mess and everyone knows it. You see things, but so what. Speak! The absurdities are true, but no one wants to hear. Speak on! The angels are listening. And they will lovingly mess with you even more. Enchantment is not for the faint of heart.



Love is sweet. So very sweet. And deadly. You speak and no one listens. You speak absurd metaphysics. No one wants it. But you speak Truth and Eternity and they all know it, but they turn away. You enchanter you. You are a dark thing. Are you good or evil? Both. Just like God. But God is insane. Just like you.

Christ came in the fullness of time, or so the translators have translated ‘O Kairos. A better translation is that he came through a sudden secret opening. We are all looking for that little error in the great science of our time that will let us escape. A kairos, in Greek, means a hole in the net or a channel through with an archer can hit his target or a weaver can quickly throw the shuttle. It comes fast, sort of unexpectedly, and you must instantly take it. Jesus was the trickster who saw an opening and went through. Now we can follow. But we must be quick and just as cunning as he.

All magic is deception and in that real magic is performed. It hides in the fraudulent. The unbelievers will not believe. Believers will believe in spite of it. The enchanting boy knows what you want and he gives it to you, if you will give him enough money to buy the trinket, the amulet, he needs to cast his spell. You give. He takes. You worry. He knows. And then he is your forgetting.

Love is so sweet and ultimately nauseating. But that passes. And you wait for the magician to come again. The really real. Sometimes a picture off the Internet is enough to cast you out of here. Into the Elsewhere.

[Belindi]

There is no primal stuff only change itself. Change itself gives rise to us and other transient things including whatever thinking is going on. Nature is change itself and nature is also the creatures of change.

The concept of a change that isn't a change in or of something makes no sense.

"'Changes', 'is changing' are again Fregean functions requiring completion. If someone says to me 'changes' or 'is changing' I can make no sense whatsoever of what they are saying unless something tells me what changes, what is changing. The same applies to 'pains' or 'hurts'. If Santideva or anyone else thinks otherwise it is up to them to explain how they can make sense of 'is changing' without explicitly or implicitly involving a subject. Even for his meditation Santideva must do so, I am afraid! See Lombard 1986, pp. 240-2, for a discussion of whether there can be subjectless events. Lombard leaves open the hypothetical possibility, but he says that he cannot get a grip on the concept of an event which is not bound up with change, or a change which is not a change in a subject. Nor me, I think."

(Williams, Paul. Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of Bodhicaryavatara. Surrey: Curzon, 1998. p. 250n94)

"The concepts deployed in the construction of my theory have made it impossible, I should think, that there be subjectless events, events that are not changes in something. I suppose that I could be said to have argued that events are changes, that changes are exemplifyings, and that there can be no exemplifyings unless there are things that exemplify. If such an argument were accused of being question-begging, I think I would find it hard to see precisely what question was being begged. I do not see how to get a grip on the concept of an event without seeing the concept of an event as bound up with the concept of change; and I do not see how to get a grip on the concept of change without seeing change as what objects undergo. But this is just to insist that the points from which my theory starts (though perhaps not where it ends) are obvious truths. As I see it, to suppose that there are subjectless events is to suppose that there are events that are not changes; and I don't think I understand such a supposition."

(Lombard, Lawrence B. Events: A Metaphysical Study. London: Routledge, 1986. p. 242)

Change is predicated against subjects undergoing change, as you explain, Consul.

Change is also the state of potential about to be actual/kinetic process. It's liminal, where the actual is unknown. The liminal state of change feels psychologically pleasant or unpleasant according to mind set e.g. faith (or lack of) in Providence, faith (or lack of) in reason, waiting in a dark theatre for the curtain to go up at the proscenium arch, a child waking up on Christmas morning, a new love, "we are the first who ever burst into that silent sea" ,and so forth. Anticlimax threatens.

In physics change is potential energy when the apple stalk has become frail and gravity will intervene now, and now, and now until the bashed grass stem evidences actual energy.An apple orchard in autumn is hazardously liminal if you don't wear a hard hat.

Politically (the liminal) state of change is when Jesus , or Stalin, is born.

The liminal state is not any specific duration it's how change happens; it's the way of all events.

[GaryLouisSmith]

In that instant when the potential changes into the actual, is there a thing there? Maybe a ghost.

[Belindi]

In that instant when the potential changes into the actual, is there a thing there? Maybe a ghost.

There is a thing or an event there. I'd not call what is there a ghost.

[Consul]

Metaphysics is religion. Religion is ghosts.

Metaphysicians should exorcise the ghosts of religion!

"An interest in man's situation and destiny is not, of course, a monopoly of the philosophers—every reflective or curious person wonders about such things, and every religion gives its own answers. What sets metaphysics apart is not the peculiarity of its basic questions, but its distinctive method of approach. Metaphysics is the attempt to answer our simple, central questions thoroughly and systematically, and to answer them using only natural human faculties, of which reason is the chief. This is what makes philosophy the rival of revealed religion; religion offers for the problems of our origin, nature, and fate, solutions deriving from tradition, or from a divine revelation claimed by a visionary. But the rule in philosophy is to accept and adopt only those doctrines which can be substantiated by the use of man's natural powers for finding things out.
The impulse to metaphysics is the desire to know, and to know in general terms, which it shares with the sciences."

(Campbell, Keith. Metaphysics: An Introduction. Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1976. p. 1)

[Belindi]

Metaphysics is religion. Religion is ghosts.

It's true one's metaphysical reasoning finishes at a faith claim.

Metaphysics ends with ethics. Religion is a human endeavour to explain the world and control behaviour.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Metaphysics is religion. Religion is ghosts.

Metaphysicians should exorcise the ghosts of religion!

"An interest in man's situation and destiny is not, of course, a monopoly of the philosophers—every reflective or curious person wonders about such things, and every religion gives its own answers. What sets metaphysics apart is not the peculiarity of its basic questions, but its distinctive method of approach. Metaphysics is the attempt to answer our simple, central questions thoroughly and systematically, and to answer them using only natural human faculties, of which reason is the chief. This is what makes philosophy the rival of revealed religion; religion offers for the problems of our origin, nature, and fate, solutions deriving from tradition, or from a divine revelation claimed by a visionary. But the rule in philosophy is to accept and adopt only those doctrines which can be substantiated by the use of man's natural powers for finding things out.
The impulse to metaphysics is the desire to know, and to know in general terms, which it shares with the sciences."

(Campbell, Keith. Metaphysics: An Introduction. Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1976. p. 1)

I would say that is a very good presentation of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. And it of course is an idea that is still going strong. It is obviously not my thinking on the matter, but I have always know that it is there. What do you think is the best way for proponents of that idea to proceed in order to rid the world of benighted religion?

[GaryLouisSmith]

Metaphysics is religion. Religion is ghosts.

It's true one's metaphysical reasoning finishes at a faith claim.

Metaphysics ends with ethics. Religion is a human endeavour to explain the world and control behaviour.

You seem to be in agreement with Consul on this matter. That idea from the Enlightenment still has an uphill trek ahead of it. Are you optimistic about the chances of your side winning this spiritual struggle? What do you think the best strategy is now for your side? More education? Legislation? Art? Surely not social media, I hope, where ghosts prowl about everywhere.

[Bluemist]

In that instant when the potential changes into the actual, is there a thing there? Maybe a ghost.

The potential is everywhere forever. What is actual depends on either personal experience or on some kind of public experience. Since personal experience is momentary, why not have actuality of experience flicker in and out of being?

Scientific experience and actuality must then be different than the personal in the sense that scientific observations are either recorded or are repeatable. This kind of objectivity is not the same as philosophically agreeably objective semi-permanent actual existents.

[Belindi]

The potential is everywhere forever.

Yes, but the potential becomes liminal when the baby is ready to be born, when the moment is upon you, when you are about to totally immerse yourself in the cold sea water, when your finger hovers over the click "buy it now".

Gary, I think you slightly mar your writing with your eccentric usage of 'religion' and 'ghosts'.

The best strategy for western thinkers is art. Religious practise is an art form i.e. theatre. Ethics are best expressed by allegory and fiction. Doctrines and ideologies are best demolished by humour.

[GaryLouisSmith]

In that instant when the potential changes into the actual, is there a thing there? Maybe a ghost.

The potential is everywhere forever. What is actual depends on either personal experience or on some kind of public experience. Since personal experience is momentary, why not have actuality of experience flicker in and out of being?

Scientific experience and actuality must then be different than the personal in the sense that scientific observations are either recorded or are repeatable. This kind of objectivity is not the same as philosophically agreeably objective semi-permanent actual existents.

I think you are saying that Society determines what is actual and what isn't. Are you saying that the Social is the final arbiter of what exists and what doesn't?

[GaryLouisSmith]

The potential is everywhere forever.

Yes, but the potential becomes liminal when the baby is ready to be born, when the moment is upon you, when you are about to totally immerse yourself in the cold sea water, when your finger hovers over the click "buy it now".

Gary, I think you slightly mar your writing with your eccentric usage of 'religion' and 'ghosts'.

I think you should say what you really think, which is that you think I GREATLY mar my writing with my eccentric usage of religion and ghosts.

[Belindi]

What use is hyperbole?

PS I cheated I magically edited on another bit to my last

[GaryLouisSmith]

What use is hyperbole?

When I write I use only the ideas that come out of strict logical analysis. If that idea is hyperbolic, then so be it.

[Belindi]

When I write I use only the ideas that come out of strict logical analysis

Sure you do