guest_of_logic wrote:
Cory Duchesne wrote:Whether you realize it or not, you're asking for a cause. That's what explanations are, they are a causal account for a phenomena, but the totality doesn't have a cause, so the explanation you seek isn't there, by definition. Are you accepting the definition or not? I thought you said you held the same definition as me, but it appears you have no faith in it.
Just because I accept a definition for working purposes, doesn't mean I have faith that that definition reflects reality. For example, I can accept the definition of "the Furblegoobie" as "the pink leprechaun at the centre of the sun whose laughter powers that star's nuclear fusion reactions", but in that case it seems likely that that which I've defined as "the Furblegoobie" has no referent in reality.
Very weak analogy. I wonder if you are high when you post? Or drunk?
In your example of the Furblegoobie, you are doubting the concept has a referent to reality at all. That's very different than the way you are handling the totality. Why haven't you asked me something like: "Cory, how do you know there is a totality?" "What if there is no totality?" These questions would be
somewhat reasonable, and in such contexts it would at least be analogous to your Furblegoobie. "e.g., how do I know there is a Furblegoobie in the sun at all? what if there isn't?" There is some glimmer of intelligence in such a question.
In the example of the totality however, you are accepting the definition, you aren't doubting it. You already told me you hold the exact same definition of totality as me. You aren't trying to redefine the totality, nor even reject it, you aren't making the slightest of effort in that direction. All you seem to be doing here is sticking your head in the toilet and blowing bubbles, pulling your head out for a moment only to laugh before you plunge it back in. That's the extent of your intellectual maturity here.
But let me be more generous for just a moment and use some analogies of my own.
For a brief period, atoms were modeled quite differently than the current atomic model. I believe there was J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom, followed later by the Rutherford model.
Modeling is an empirical endeavor, so it becomes reasonable to ask questions such as, "what if this plum pudding model is wrong? What if atoms are different than our current model? What if they actually have a nucleus?, etc, etc." Casting doubt on models in such a matter is perfectly appropriate.
So, Laird, is it in this spirit that you ask if the totality could be different? Do you assume I have some model of the totality in my head, like a big black sphere that holds all the parts?
Likewise I question whether the definitional framework that the house philosophy works with accurately reflects reality, or whether it's overly simplistic and not nearly nuanced enough to answer the biggest mysteries of reality.
The totality, as a concept, does not reflect reality in the same way an idea mirrors sensory perception. It does the opposite, it strips you of all empirical knowledge. Rather than having a revelation where everything makes sense, the totality does the opposite, it strips you of your knowledge and leaves you in total ignorance. You don't know anything. You aren't reflecting reality, because reality cannot be contained in the mirror of knowledge. The mirror has to be thrown away.
Cory Duchesne wrote:All mathematics, which are a priori truths, are derived first from experiencing the world, making observations, and then deducing truths that are applicable regardless of the initial experience that initially funded the truths. Totality is no different than maths in this sense, you experience the world, gather data, and then deduce what must be true from the premises, and then once you have the truth, it's true everywhere and anywhere, regardless of what you are seeing in the moment, just like mathematics. The impression here is that you don't understand a prior reasoning.
The "truth" that "the Totality is the way it is because it is the way that it is", is tautologically true only, and
not a meaningful explanation.
A meaningful explanation depends on causality, and causality cannot apply to the totality, so you are demanding an impossibility. Like I said, you are just dunking your head in the toilet and blowing bubbles, it's beyond childish what you are doing.
I grant that a tautological truth is an a priori truth, but asserting the truth of the specific content of that tautology need not be: to assert the truth of the content of the tautology assumes that the truth of that content has been verified by some means, and in the case of the truth of the Totality being the specific way that it is, the means of verification is experiential - hence my reference to this as an a posteriori truth.
You and I can't experience every single thing, every moment of time, every nook of empty space, every possible experience there is to have. We can only experience the finite and by noticing the immeasurable quantity of all the the things around us, we can deduce the totality, which is a non empirical concept.
If scientists and philosophers settled solely for tautological truth, we would learn, and would have learnt, nothing. Admit it, Cory: a tautology is no meaningful answer to this question.
I'm not asking you to settle solely for tautological truth. I am asking you to see how tautological truths enable us to derive less fundamental truths.
Laird: Absent experience, there would be no reason to believe that the Totality would be any particular way at all, let alone the way that it actually is.
Cory: I don't have to see the totality empirically in order to know it is.
But you have to see it empirically to know
in which particular way it is, which is my point. If you hadn't seen it empirically, you would have no a priori means of knowing how it is, would you?
This is the crux of your confusion. You assume I care to know exactly "how" the totality is. I don't. That's not the point of the totality, the point of the concept is to make you realize your ignorance, scientifically and religiously. The shortcomings of both science and religion is revealed when you understand the totality. You can't know how it is. You only know it is. Big difference.
Cory Duchesne wrote:The tautologies clearly can't be escaped since your very question is embedded with tautologies the whole way through.
Why = Why
Is = Is
This = This
Cup = Cup
made = made
plastic = plastic
Don't be ridiculous:
you inserted those tautologies! They weren't present in the original.
They were indeed present, but their presence was beyond your awareness, and this will likely continue. To even apply causation to help explain ordinary things we first must accept things as they are, tautologically. A thing must first be accepted as it appears before we begin to derive less fundamental truths, such as noticing the factors which cause the thing to be as it is.
