wandeljw
...but unlike the case of Chomsky's "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", did it make him rich ?
Metaphysics Is more than simple discriptives.
dyslexia wrote:Metaphysics is the study of what isn't.
I believe that this would be better stated; Metaphysics is the study of that which is
Beyond Physics.
Wandeljw, thanks for an interesting stimulus:
The first sentence regarding the double nature of non-existence--"if the nonexistent exists, it will both exist and not exist at the same time"-- applies more readily, I think (and so does mystical thought in general and Heraclitus in particular) to "existence"
It seems that Giorgias was speaking only from the perspective of logic. Heraclitus and the mystics intuit all "existing" reality as in a state of flux and impermanence. That is to say everything is in process of changing, of becoming something else (of course a car is not becoming a horse but it is becoming "different", like a more rusty, car). Some kind of "law" of entropy/change (in the forms of decay and/or growth) is universal.
Esse est aut percipere aut percipi.
Fresco, you qualify Berkely's famous principle, esse est percipi, with aut percipere aut. Please translate your qualification; I was educated in the U.S..
My wife is still laughing at Dyslexia's definition of metaphysics as the study of what isn't. She sees no real difference between what ISN"T and wnat is BEYOND the experienced world.
JLN
"To be is either to perceive or to be perceived "
That is the
correct Berkeley quote according to the "Pan Dictionary of Philosophy". The logical disjunction (either/or or both) takes in both experiences and experiencer.
From Wikipedia on Idealism
Quote:Bishop Berkeley, in seeking to find out what we could know with certainty, decided that our knowledge must be based on our perceptions. This led him to conclude that there was indeed no "real" knowable object behind one's perception, that what was "real" was the perception itself. This is characterised by Berkeley's slogan: "Esse est aut percipi aut percipere" or "To be is to be perceived or to perceive", meaning that something only exists, in the particular way that it is seen to exist, when it is being perceived (seen, felt etc.) by an observing subject.
Thanks, Fresco. That's an interesting extension of my understanding of Berkely.
Interesting implications from the statement by Wikipedia:
"something only exists, in the particular way that it is seen to exist, when it is being perceived (seen, felt etc.) by an observing subject."
According to this, Berkely is a perspectivist: No-thing has an absolute appearance; it's appearance is subjective not objective, observer-dependent rather than observer-independent.
And according to this, Berkely is, in part, a naive realist (everthing IS as it appears to be--even though the ultimate observer is God, a notion not too dissimilar from the Hindu notion that all is the "consciousness" of Brahma.
One can extend that similarity to Hinduism (as I understand it). Brahmin's perspective is like that of Berkeley's God in that its figuration is not absolute, like that of Plato's ideal image of which individual perceivers enjoy only "versions."
Brahma is conscious of all experiences through the medium of each observer (atman), as are the perceivers of Berkeley's model. In both models very "object" has multiple shapes, i.e., as many as it has perceiving "subjects."
