Is there One or Many things? -presocratic poll

[Borachio]

There's only One Thing. But it appears to be Many.

(Or vice versa.)

Does it matter? What's the penalty for getting the answer wrong?

 

[Kyriakos]

^It might. In one or more ways.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Instead of vote I like to quote:

The logician thinks he has ensured himself against error when he has made a classification of particular fallacies; but he forgets the supreme and general fallacy, the fallacy of thinking that logic can, as a rule, prove anything but particular and partial propositions dealing with a fragmentary and one-sided truth. Logic? But Truth is not logical; it contains logic, but is not contained by it. A particular syllogism may be true, so far as it goes, covering a sharply limited set of facts, but even a set of syllogisms cannot exhaust truth on a general subject, for the simple reason that they necessarily ignore a number of equally valid premises, facts or possibilities which support a modified or contrary view. If one could arrive first at a conclusion, then at its exact opposite and, finally, harmonise the contradiction, one might arrive at some approach to the truth. But this is a process logic abhors. Its fundamental conception is that two contradictory statements cannot be true at the same time and place & in the same circumstances. Now, Fact and Nature and God laugh aloud when they hear the logician state his fundamental conception. For the universe is based on the simultaneous existence of contradictions covering the same time, place and circumstances. The elementary conception that God is at once One and Many, Finite & Infinite, Formed and Formless and that each attribute is the condition of the existence of its opposite, is a thing metaphysical logic has been boggling over ever since the reign of reason began.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Sounds suspiciously socratic

Or rather some of it does. Where is it from, then?

(re the two contradictory statements being or not being true: in Aristotle -and math- there is an issue with the principle that 'Something can either have quality X or lack quality X, and no third state can exist'. This is not particularly evolved though in regards to previous notional logic, eg in Eleatic thought things can be X and not-X near a limit to some over-plane so to speak, or in Anaxagoras a thing is not X or not X but X and an infinity of other stuff, which happen to co-exist and in a specific plane or system make X seem the most apparently existent quality there).

 

[Kyriakos]

So, Mechanical, who was that quote by again? (iirc i had asked in a pm but that was long ago )

I can agree with it, apart from the bit about god which i would shy from adding due to agnosticism. But logic (the way of systematic thinking, starting with Aristotle and moving to types of logic in math) indeed has as its first premise that an object cannot have a trait and not that trait in the same time and the same way. Aristotle sets this as the fundamental axiom of syllogisms, in his book on metaphysics, so as to protect the natural sciences from the chaos of dialectic (where an object can both have and not have the same trait at the same time and way, ie there are no axioms there).

 

[Senethro]

I don't even understand how the question is interesting.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

So, Mechanical, who was that quote by again? (iirc i had asked in a pm but that was long ago )

I can agree with it, apart from the bit about god which i would shy from adding due to agnosticism. But logic (the way of systematic thinking, starting with Aristotle and moving to types of logic in math) indeed has as its first premise that an object cannot have a trait and not that trait in the same time and the same way. Aristotle sets this as the fundamental axiom of syllogisms, in his book on metaphysics, so as to protext the natural sciences from the chaos of dialectic (where an object can both have and not have the same trait at the same time and way, ie there are no axioms there).

I think when we concieve of existence as an absolute and infinite we cant apply the same logic to it as to the limited phenomenal existence. If absolute was limited by any quality or quantity it wouldnt be an absolute after all, right?

Only those thoughts are true the opposite of which is also true in its own time and application; indisputable dogmas are the most dangerous kind of falsehoods.

 

[Rashiminos]

Wait, wait, this was in Bridge of Spies... one thing.

 

[jackelgull]

Can't the universe be one thing made up of many things? Isn't this the fundamental premise of the universe- every object is made of a smaller object until you get to the atom which is the smallest one can go?

 

[Kyriakos]

Can't the universe be one thing made up of many things? Isn't this the fundamental premise of the universe- every object is made of a smaller object until you get to the atom which is the smallest one can go?

Yet it is not known if there is an atom or not. Maybe divisions continue indefinitely (which is the eleatic philosophers position to which Democritos reacted by forming the notion of the atom)

Furthermore it is one question if for a human observer there is or not in the end an atom, and whether that is a reality for the universe itself, ie the universe not bounded by any point of view examining it. The latter is again an important issue in ancient greek philosophy (the so-termed "thing in itself" is an idea circulating all around in Plato).