Posted on 11/04/2002 7:52:21 AM PST by thinktwice
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.
Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.
Reality is that which exists, and if God exists in reality, He necessarily must have created Himself.
Based on that dilemma, it's my guess that He who created reality -- God -- doen't exist in reality.
Thank you for the idea.
That is nothing your objecitivism can prove. What it is, it seems, is the product of a mind that refuses to accept that actualized concepts exist outside of present human understanding.
actualize ... 1. to make actual or real; realize in action 2. to make realistic.
An "actualized concept" has no basis in perception, reason, or reality; it is without heirarchical roots, there are no earlier -- realistic -- concepts on which it logically depends; and accepting such a "concept" is the intellectual equivalent of "standing on the fortieth floor of a skyscraper while dynamiting the first thirty-nine." ^1
The term "actualized" appears to be synonymous with "reify," a word provided us earlier in this thread by LogicWings in post 239.
reify ... to treat (an abstraction) as substantially existing, or as a concrete material object -- reification: n
^1. Derived from page 136 in "Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand," by Leonard Piekoff.
Maybe not, but no one can deny my point -- an analytic truth -- that a stone statue is made from stone.I understood the point to be that just as the Aristotle's form of a statue is material, so too Aristotle's soul, which is the form of the body, is material. I'm simply pointing out the error of the premise. For Aristotle, the form of a primary substance is not material.
Right-eo. It helps to have read him.
It helps to have read him.Good point. The Aristotelian distinction between matter as potentiality and form as actuality can be found in De Anima at 412a10.
Reason is Man's standard for knowing reality; and any attempt to use reason to explain the unreal (actualized concepts, reified abstractions, guardian angels, Santa Claus) is a misuse of reason.
A real number is any rational or irrational number.
I'm happy to have you aboard.
A good question from an epistemology viewpoint, and I'll answer it by quoting the first two paragraphs in Chapter one of "Introduction ot Objectivist Epistemology" by Ayn Rand.
Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration.
Although, cronologically, man's consciousness develops in three stages: the state of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual -- epistemologically, the base of all man's knowledge is the perceptual stage.
Holding up one finger and associating it with the number "one" demonstrates all three stages. The presentation of a visual sensation, the perception of that sensation, and the conceptualization of that perception.
The one finger is a material prop for demonstrating the concept of "one." The number is not material, but the prop symbolizing "one" is; and all other single objects in the universe may be similarily used to demonstrate the concept of "One."
In order for the student to "know" the concept of "one," the student must first mentally separate the visual finger from the concept (differentiation), and then associate all single objects with the concept (integration).
I hope this helps ...
The number is not materialAssuming reality is the set of all real things, and real numbers are not material, I deduce that reality includes non-material things. And since real numbers can be irrational, I deduce that reality includes irrational, non-material things.
Oxymoronic. You create an artificial standard in saying that all that is non-material is immaterial. You are going around and around with others too, in attempting to outlaw what lies beyond the perceptions of man. What lies beyond our scope is no less real, for a man closing his ears and shouting "unreal."
If you were around at the time Mary first became pregnant, would you waive your arms over her and shout, "Foul! Foul!?" It's not about you.
Tricky, isn't it? There are "imaginary" numbers out there, too.
The key to rational use of reason is to remember that all reality based concepts have roots in reality; using a tree as an example, the reality based concretes linking leaf to root are -- leaf, branch, limb. trunk, root; and so it also must go with all concepts, abstractions, and abstractions from abstractions.
I haven't said that ...
Nonetheless, thank's again for your thought provoking assertions.
reality based concepts have roots in realitySo the number "one" is not material -- and not real per se -- but is a rational concept based on reality. May I conclude, then, that "any attempt to use reason to explain the unreal (actualized concepts, reified abstractions, guardian angels, Santa Claus, [real numbers]) is a misuse of reason?"
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