Of course you do. And you can step into the same river as many times as you can. Because river is not the water flown by. River is the space where the water is held, and flows.
River could dry out with no water at all due to no rain for months, but it is still the same river, and you can step into the same river, as many times as you can.
I am not sure river could be classed as the noumenal world. Because if it is, then you cannot perceive it, or step into it. You could imagine or assume that such river does exist.
Yes, a worthwhile distinction to make.
I get tired of hearing arguments based upon ill-conceived premises like “Nothing can’t exist” or “Nothing can’t become something”.
“Nothing” is a contraction of “no / not” and “thing”; it doesn’t function like most nouns. “There’s nothing to be afraid of” does not mean there’s one thing to be afraid of, that we’re labelling “nothing” – it means there are zero things to be afraid of.
Or, as another example, the challenges of “Demonstrate that nothing can exist” or “Show me a nothing” that I’ve heard in some philosophy or theology discussions, can’t even be meaningfully translated into languages where “no” and “thing” were never joined into a noun. You end up with something like “Don’t show me something”
It tells us how a thing is - it rests with change.
The rest delimits the particular. This is the what.
The change is this particular existing, being, becoming.
Together this is how we experience what is a thing.
So, it rests with change can be said of all particular, distinguishable, things. The particular what of a particular thing becomes an exercise in lining up the static. So a barley-drink (a what), is specifically wine, oil, cheese and barley while stirring. The what is particularized by wine, oil, cheese and barley. The how such a particular thing exists is always “while stirring.”
So if we want to go on identifying particular things, we go on deriving the still, fixed, particular what answers, in the stirring, being/becoming of their presence.
Like Heraclitus said, it is difficult to speak at this level of abstraction and universality “The path of writing is crooked and straight.”
This all only matters from our perspective. This is about something ancient as much as the Pythagorean Theorum is about something ancient. But thank you for engaging with it.
Thanks for that positive contribution, although most of us already knew that. The rest of your effort and time though…? Wow.
I take it you are not a salesman.
Just because you are above metaphysics, sort of a meta-metaphysical system maker, or a super-supernatural being, and therefore can’t stomach my post, doesn’t mean you have to respond to it (at all) by taking down the entire TPF (that you support financially - weird).
Usually when people take the ball and go home, they bring a ball and play a little first. It has more effect. Cheers back at you!
Sick OP. Thank you for posting something with substance.
“Thinghood” is the smallest unit language can reliably perform the action of communication. It is a product of the mind’s autonomous ability of categorization.
“…Yet all things follow from the Word…”
Zeno’s Paradox Backs this and Nietzsche too in BGE 24.
Take for example the nature of the river, try detailing the various gradations of change at any given moment and you’ll sound like the Tasmanian devil constantly interrupting your last utterance with the new details on the gradations of change.
Hence a thing must rest from the gradations of change…
And “Thing” is a product of Grammar-Psychology.
A thing is a formalized sign produced by the mind’s autonomous power of unification: the capacity to gather a multiplicity of sensations, forces, relations, and affects under the communicable fiction of “one.”
That is an important area to investigate about this. I agree with it, but Heraclitus was always interpreted (by Aristotle and Plato) as merely saying nothing fixes still for the mind to observe in the world. Therefore, if Heraclitus was speaking of anything fixed, he must be speaking of something the mind imposes.
I don’t think that is what Heraclitus was saying, so maybe I’m smarter than Plato and Aristotle? Naa. Aristotle recognize “it rests with change” in the difficulty of defining a substance. He falls squarely in the camp of the resting, seeking eternally clear and distinct substances that can be fixed in universal categories; but when he tries to pin down any one substance - like rational animal - we still hold in our hands something swirling with deforming, becoming presence (we need to clearly define “rational” now and “animal” now and keep this distinguished this from a brilliant chimpanzee). And Plato wants the world of the forms exclusively to ground the fixed and permanent things. Yet point to a dialogue where we end up with a clear, fixed, permanent definition. Justice, good, beauty, love, knowledge - he may bring us closer to the form, but Platonic things continue to swirl.
Maybe. That is the question. I think the fixed is something only the mind can notice. Like only a certain eyeball can notice color, only a mind can notice stillness or permanence or truth or reality-versus-appearance in this world.
I don’t think that is what Heraclitus was saying, but this is important to analyze. I think Heraclitus was trying to say something about the world independently from minds. He was trying to say what any mind, God’s or a child’s, would say, when experiencing differences (between rivers and river-banks), in the world. He was saying, in the thing, how that thing comes to be what it is, is through resting in its moving.
But maybe “All is Fire” (which he never directly said - closest was “fire will convict all things” leaving motion for eternity and no permanence thing to remain in it), may the fact that all is motion means (like Plato and Aristotle took it to mean) that no “thing” ever really sits in existence, save for the moments when, with our minds and our language, we fix something permanent against this moving backdrop. All human thought and our words are the illusion, because we can carve them in some metaphorical stone and say “2 plus 2 will forever equal 4.”
This to me, points to the problems of making inductive, a posteriori statements about the world. Maybe they have nothing to do with the actual world and we are just super imposing them on it. First, I think Heraclitus was saying, a priori, rest and change are of any one thing - they come to us or in this case would be imposed by us, at once. When we claim some thing is fixed, we have claimed something that is stirring. When we claim something is stirring, we fix something.
But this doesn’t mean we will ever truly be able to distinguish a river from a river-bank. That remains an epistemological pickle, the absurdity of being a mind thrown at the universe such as we have been.
So, I didn’t get into Heraclitus’ views on the “Logos”. These are the words that we share. The sharing is important, because inside the sharing, rationality is made manifest. If I make no sense to you, then am I really using words? We have to come together, seeing the same words in a similar way, to identify the Logos.
So you are right in the same pocket with me, bringing up imposing stillness versus stillness subsisting outside of the mind, and stillness emerging between us in words.
I think this is two areas to inquire. 1. Language is how becoming gets stabilized. 2. stabilized enough to be passed between people.
So, do you ask these questions from a position where you are calling into question my interpretation of “it rests with change” entirely (which is fine), or do you ask these questions accepting my interpretation as a way to further unpack and develop the universal experience of “rest” in “change”? The latter is obviously where I would go, but all of that would be further fool-hardiness if we didn’t at least posit some value to my basic interpretation.
A restatement of your good question. So a restatement of my question about your question: are you asking this to show something that contradicts what I’m saying, or to build off of it?
I don’t see that. A river with no water is not a river. Perhaps a river is not, but if a river is, it is distinguished as such because of its ever-flowing waters.
I’m not sure what you are getting at. I think this could easily be because what I am saying is difficult to say and easily misunderstood (like I think Heraclitus has been misunderstood).
It’s not just the space, because if so, everything is the same - just space, so why make any distinctions at all.
This whole post is about identity - can we distinguish this from that at all, and if so, how. Heraclitus said it is difficult, because of motion, and because motion was so ubiquitous and all consuming, only a riddle flashing for a moment might capture something still, as in, it rests from change.
I simply dissolved the 6-year-old vs. Heraclitus aporia. Did you completely miss it? That was top-tier metaphysical clarification, but since you couldn’t grasp or appreciate it, you immediately defaulted to emotio-moral-psychological whining—i.e., purely non-philosophical reacting.
I am frequently dismissive and borderline insulting because it actually explains things. I consider it is the most precise way to dismantle philosophical insanities and expose exactly why they exist and where they come from. This is precisely what I just did to your post. That is actual Philosophy at its best, exactly as Socrates taught us to do it.
I agree. We hover right around the same space when we ask about all things and thinghood, as when we ask about nothing. Thing only stands out in juxtaposition with no-thing else. So we can look, we have to look, in both directions to find anything to speak about.
This is why my question “what is a thing” became the question “how is a thing being a thing” which raises the notion of “being versus becoming versus non-being”. It’s a tangled knot, vexxing language and thinking itself.
This is the same spot where Parmenides said “it is the same thing to think as it is to be.” And this is why I had to raise Descartes above to point out objectivity from subjectivity, all lurking in this same messy spot of inquiry.
Lol, Heraclitus does so just fine… he details things as a sign of the mind’s ability to unify multiplicity into oneness. This is why the aesthetic state which communicates directly in signs is the zenith of communication…
That you’re incapable of comprehending what Heraclitus was talking about… well that’s because you’re not very wise…
So then, are there things in the world, or only in the mind?
I think there is some truth to the entanglement of the word with distinct, knowable things. Like intelligible form is both created by the intellect in the moment the intellect perceives a thing. So things exist, but naming this as distinct from that doesn’t exist without the namer.
But “the communicable fiction of one.” Is it JUST fiction, or is there some thing out there that is a thing regardless of our experience of it. Do things speak, regardless of whether anyone is listening?
This is idealism: things doesn’t exist, only the idea of things does. Idealism is slightly above Religion but also belong to the very bad metaphysics category. The idea of God has just replaced the God idea as the ultimate metaphysical reality… Next try
It’s funny how the value of a thing can change… is this a metal bucket with two holes in it or a crude helmet?
I think we could probably find the answer lies with our experience with said “thing” which I believe may come into your idea with “motion” in a sense.
I think some Deleuze may come im handy here too, with Anti-Oedipus, about how the Schizophrenic experiences a multiplicity of bands of intensities across their body such that each provoke a different “perspective.” Or rather a different configuration of “machinery” at work…
Schizophrenia becomes the sign of a failed or unstable synthesis of oneness: a case where the multiplicity of drives, affects, perceptions, or signifying chains is not gathered into a stable “thing,” “I,” or world.
Deleuze also highlights the awesome power of the ability of living in a state of multiplicity and becoming. And then developes his method for Schizo-analysis and how to see a “thing” from a multiplicity of experiences.
“a state” - that’s a unit, a distinguishable entity, an object, a thing.
“mulitiplicity” - that’s a complex unit, entity, object, thing, necessarily composed of this thing and that thing and that thing, all distinguishable from each other, or else we could never say “multiplicity” in the first place.
“becoming” - that is the motion.
So Deluze is just running full steam ahead with “it rests from change” if you ask me. Which is my point. “It rests from change” is basic, ubiquitous, unavoidable, present at every moment of distinction, such as here…and then over here, or now…and then not then… but…now. Tons of things. Resting for a moment as they become the next thing.
So I’m not arguing against Deluze. I’m saying Heraclitus isn’t contradicting him. Neither does Heraclitus contradict Aristotle or Plato (in some senses). It rests from change is eternal wisdom - not capable of being deconstructed without bringing things to rest amongst the change, and so merely re-proven over and over. So neither does Heraclitus contradict Nietzsche (in some senses), or Hegel (in some senses).
Everyone is pivoting among the change, resting at points within it. Resting itself is active, a tension.
argh! I was just quoting Heraclitus (as described by Kit) to demonstrate to Kit I have a plain understanding of his work and that, as an idealist, he can only do bad metaphysics. But all classical philosophers are idealists, the intrinsic reason is explained in the first paragraph of the MCogito system: it is the immanent faulty [nature-human] intrinsic framework of Philosophy. In my system the essence of Reality is recursive infinite (self of self) self-stabilizing into code. With that concept I can adequately describe each of the five quanta-matter-life-thought-data in which Reality self-construct and explain the category change,the self-construction itself. The quanta randomness allow to fully totalize Reality i.e. answer the by far hardest question in Philosophy: why something instead of nothing? And the working answer may surprise you… but we have to stop here, we are clearly off topic, Jamal will spank our ass
All language is irreducibly platonic, the sign of the state in this case is “the body” in which the psychology of multiplicity and becoming is lived (the schizo).
The body is a union of a multiplicity of organizing forces.
Bet, I can get behind that. Actually a sick link if you ask me.
As Nietzsche said, all Philosophizing after men like Heraclitus became easier.
It’s very difficult to watch all this and not interfere. As I wrote above, behind all the words in this discussion, I see a “struggle for the right to be a subject” against modernity.
What is this? Quixotic? Perhaps sentimentalism? Perhaps it’s a human cry against everything that has deprived man of life, turning him into an object? I don’t know. It’s possible that I’m simply making this up, but it’s too coherent an explanation to simply dismiss it.
If we previously needed a “knight of faith” (when we began to feel that religion was being eroded by philosophies), it seems we now need a “Knight of Humanity.” To protect all those who still remain such…
I apologize for going beyond the scope of this discussion.
It was a counter argument against everything changes. If you read Parmenides, he insists nothing changes. Everything is one. Motion and change are illusion. You can only talk about what exists. Every perception and judgement are about the momentary actions. All else is your imagination.
Heraclitus was wrong in saying that you cannot step into the same river twice. You can step into the same river anytime as long as you exist.
Was explaining the structural identity of the river. River is originally space, and thanks to the space, water is held in there, and due to the slope, it flows.
The most important part of the river is the space, not water. Water can disappear drying out with no rain for months. Space still remains.
Change and motions are illusion according to Parmenides. What you saw was a moment of frozen image, and the past came from your latent memory, immediate future after present from your imagination.
