The problem with this is that although it says something about all things, it does not say what differentiates one thing from another.
You are right. “It rests with change” says more universally how a thing is than what a particular thing is.
But this is great headway towards wisdom!
“How” was revealed by asking “what”.
So now you ask “what differentiates this from that.”
Well, we know that any “this” or any “that” must involve change/becoming to differentiate itself. How can we notice this - how can we know this one is not that one?
Is it a river, or is it a man, or is it a man standing in a river, or is it river-man and one thing, or still two things?
What makes this distinct from that has to be the resting. Not the change. The change makes fire of all distinct things. The change IS fire, always the same, simple dynamism. In that change, always with the changing forces, this distinct thing rests - so it is the rest alone that names a particular thing.
A river is liquid, usually water. A man is animal.
So a river moves from rainfall to pooling lakes and oceans and their tides. A river, distinguishes itself among all of these moving liquids, as well as earthly channels and valleys, and craters, defining the liquid. Man distinguishes himself from the other apes and mammals and these from the plants, and moves and changes in its own ways towards thirst which carries him to standing in the river.
All of these distinctions - river, rainfall, ocean, tides, valleys, man, apes, thirst, drink - these reflect whatness, particular resting points in ubiquitous fiery change.
So “what” a particular thing is is always very hard to pin down, because of change. “Fire will convict all things.” But what a thing is, the essence of a thing’s particularity, is found in the fleeting moment of rest as it rests from change.
So “it rests from change” tells you where to look to name or distinguish “what a particular thing is”. You look at the resting, and name that.
The question is, how a thing is the thing it is. I think Heraclitus’ answer has more to do with the Logos. Something rests by changing, but the change is not random and rest does not mean the cessation of change. The Logos orders change.
Over the years I’ve become increasingly suspicious of the way the word “knowing” is often tied, almost unconsciously, to a Platonic model of truth: as if to know means to possess access to “Truth as such,” a stable object behind appearances…
Though, since we’re speaking from the school of Heraclitus, that model already becomes questionable. What we call a “thing” is not simply given as a fixed unit. It is gathered, stabilized, brought to rest, and made intelligible through the mind’s capacity to unify a “flux of impressions,” or as Nietzsche would say a “multiplicity of sensations,” into something nameable, a single unified “thing” defined by some word or another. We do not escape becoming to grasp at the essence of a thing. It means we interpret becoming.
I think there is a misunderstanding here. I am not saying there is no reality outside the mind, nor that “stimulus,” “observer,” and “representation” are imaginary. I am saying that what we call a “thing” is not the same as the raw existence of whatever affects us.
On an awesome side note: this is where Nietzsche’s Will to Power really comes into play, as Nietzsche details the Will to Power as the Primitive form of affect. Which from BGE 36 we can see is a psychical interpretation of the world. Organic and inorganic forces interpreting other forces through various means.
Anyways, maybe I’ll get to the rest later, it’s a lot to go through sentence by sentence and typing out multiple paragraphs per sentence or two. Not as an insult to you, just as a realization that much time and energy can be sucked away into this, but there is obviously a great opportunity for us to dig deep and get experience expressing ourselves fully. I thank you for that opportunity, but it has chunked a considerable amount of time already. I need to level up my capacity for expressing myself.
You are moving goal posts on me. Heraclitus might be proud of you, but he might not.
I asked “what is a thing.”
Some have since concluded Heraclitus said that things are overcome by Fire, such that Fire is the only thing, and all other things are consumed - nothing rests as all is consumed by the one, the fire.
I am saying, that isn’t what Heraclitus said. He said, things rest, burning; or the burning, begets things burning, in an exchange. The exchange is the One, not just the fire that is exchanging, but the fire that is exchanging things.
So I still don’t know what a thing in particular is, but I know generally that things exist, and I know how they exist. (And let’s not move the goal post to epistemology - I am asserting that things exist by observing how things exist.)
Now you bring order, such that this thing may have a causal link to that prior thing - that motion is directed from this thing towards that future effect, and not just any future effect, but one rationally, logically (logos), formally linked.
I agree, Heraclitus was a wise man, who didn’t just say “Fire”. I agree he didn’t just see chaos either. But I wouldn’t want to figure out what Heraclitus meant by “the Logos” until we at least had a sense of what he meant by “it rests with change”, or what he thought of an individual thing.
“A foolish man (me) is apt to be in a flutter at every word (logos, theory).” - Fragment 87
Heraclitus is not very clear as it is. He was more unclear regarding just about every other point he made, than this simple point about what/how is a thing.
I’m more interested in any object, anywhere, be it stable or not, or on the surface or in reality.
Maybe. Maybe not just the mind does the gathering.
Nature likes to hide. - 123
Maybe the hidden nature of “things” likes to hide in the flux, regardless of whether we see it.
The hidden harmony is stronger (or better) than the visible. - 54
I don’t know that Heraclitus was making the post-Kantian, subjective contstructivist distinctions we all seem to take for granted (to the demise of the “thing” being there as something to know).
That is the ubiquitous assertion of modernity that I think even the Father of Flux, Heraclitus, might challenge.
If all there is is interpretation, and all there is is becoming without essence, then how is it we have ever constructed a difference between this thing and that thing? Process is a process of, meaning process of something. Becoming is only observed where things come to be things. Without things in the becoming, there would only be one thing - interpretation, or the interpreter, or the fabricator of interpretations. The same fire with nothing left to burn.
Why bother to name a unity when we know, at bottom, the multiplicity is just one fire?
I am actually trying to move beyond Heraclitus, using his own ideas. Nietzsche was trying to back away from what came after Heraclitus, but to something new (eternal recurrence of the same power fluctuations, or the tragedy of “thinghood” failing to be…)
This is the precise spot I’m trying to hover in and really dissect. So I appreciate you stopping by on your way!
So we are both not saying there is no reality here with the mind. (You said “reality outside the mind” - I’d like to be more simple, and just say there is the mind, and there is a world the mind is in, with the mind.) We aren’t solipsists in a vat.
We can fall into a epistemological trap as we think “stimulus, oberver and representation” through. You said:
I am saying that what we call a “thing” is not the same as the raw existence of whatever affects us.
So we have “what we call a thing” on the one hand,
and “raw existence affecting us” on the other.
The “what we call a thing” is fraught with epistemological peril.
But the “raw existence affecting” anything - that is the thing I am trying to theorize about. Like a naive philosopher/physicist.
I agree, I may be wrong about there being a computer screen in front of me. But if it is, it’s a thing, and if it is a thing, it rests from change, like all things are in the raw.
You are getting way out ahead of me here. I don’t think we are talking about the same “thing” so I would rather clarify longer before moving along.
I understand. But I am interested. If you post it here, I’ll read it and respond.
Ultimately, as you might see from my long posts, I don’t think we can say one thing without saying many things, and so, for the philosopher who is trying to be clear and thorough about even the smallest idea, we need to touch on many things at once just to support that one thing we are trying to say.
“Men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.” - Fragment 35
“This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will be: an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.”
The logos is common, but most live as though their thought were their own.
We seek the fire and miss the measure. We name the river and forget the flowing. We hold the thing and lose the holding.
To exist is to stand apart. But standing apart requires the apart — the between, the difference, the facing. You cannot step outside this to examine it. The stepping is already it.
Opposites have no outside. To draw a limit around them you would need a limit — which is already opposition working. It contains its own containment. This is why the logos has no outside. This is why it is common.
The fire does not hold back. But the fire that burned all would burn out all — including the burning. Perfect consuming is perfect stillness is nothing. So the fire burns in measures. The tension persists before it can fully dissolve. This is what a world is.
“tension in every thing, before during and after experience”
“it rests from change as how a thing must be”
Where tension holds, the lyre sounds. The lyre is the thing. Not the water — the river. Not the flesh — the man. Not the moment — the life. Each rests in its changing, rests from its changing, rests as its changing. The rest is real. But the rest rides the fire.
“the snake, the mouse, the man — all reconstructing differently”
The logos of the mouse and the logos of the man seeing the mouse and the logos of the seeing itself — these are not three. They are one measure, kindling in different proportions.
The river does not repeat. The man does not return. But the measure holds, before, during, and after both.
We cannot bathe in it twice. But the logos by which we cannot — that is always the same.
I could be missing something fundamentally challenging in the responses above mine, but I had thoughts before I got through them.
I thnk some of the disagreements are misguided: “a thing” is a linguistic tool, not a 1:1 description of some aspect of hte world. We know this because it is in abstract. From the general, to the particular. “some things” → “this thing here to my left”.
It is just a tool to pick-out an item from the environment. This, I think, is why given changing environments and in turn changing ideas of what “item” might mean - in some places a “dream” might be an item, a specific speech act might be an item etc.. along side all of what in law we’d call a chose - an actual object which can be delineated from all otehrs sufficiently. I suggest that’s just the most common use of a tool we’ve built to pick “things” out of our environment - no real need to have necessary and sufficients, imo.
In your initial post you said:
So when I say:
I don’t think that is moving the goal post, unless you think he is asking how anything exists. But you go on to say:
Yes, but “that which is in opposition is in concert, and from things that differ, comes the most beautiful harmony.” - 8 We can hold the thing AND the holding - it is just with great difficulty, because it is a tension.
I think that is a restatement of my whole post. 
“It rests with change” means “to exist as a thing is to stand apart” or more dynamically and more presently and more reflective of the world: “to come to be as a thing, is a standing apart.”
Yes.
Also yes. Dynamism and the “it” resting come as one, or “is already it.”
But no. I disagree. We already did step outside everything to observe about things that “it rests with change” or that “to exist is to stand apart.” We are standing apart right now, and we know it.
Yes they do. Us. Me. This discussion. We see both opposites. At once. How else would I hold them together as “opposites” if I could not hold them apart and together at once? This holding arises from a position outside of the opposites. (The logos is outside the things in tension as well.)
I like, "it contains its own containment - but you now bump into the Set of All Sets type of container and paradox (which is where I need to post next!). What if that is what a mind is? The first true limit, the first true finitude, the first truly fixed, immovable yet existing thing, wondering “why is there something at all?” as if there was “a nothing” anywhere out there besides the mind? We are limit. We, the human subject, is outside ourselves. This is how our character is pure potential and becoming as well, while remaining “me”. (But this is another thread - Chapter 2 maybe.)
The Logos is the language of the outside. If you call it the ordering principle, than what is there for it to order, but separate things? But I, personally, I think like Aristotle, find the logos is more with things, in them, and observable as much as it is createable, by minds, the limit in the motion, like mirrors that both create a wall, and reflect back into the flowing everything. Logos is always logos of, and what it is the logos of, are the changing things resting in measures and dissolving.
What is “common” has to do with we minds groping through the ever-changing seeming consumption of everything to both identify “things” and speak them through communication with other minds. (A sub-topic of Chapter 2.) Logos is common as language. Language is the birth of the common, and minds recognizing the logos is the birth of language. (And as Aristotle points out in the Metaphysics, identity of the unit, only intelligible as it resists its own contradiction as the LNC grounds signification, is the birth of the logos - I think this point agrees with Heraclitus. Logos is of the identity of the rest, (the ordering tendencies) in the fiery changing of that temporarily resting thing.
Yes - I agree with all of that. I am curious if you take it as far as I do (I suspect not). We seem to be disagreeing and agreeing. The tension is helping me to say more, but I’m curious if a Logos is emerging between us?
Can you explain why you said that? I would say, the sound is the thing, not the lyre (in this image). The lyre and the bow create the tension, which is the thing. The tension is the harmonious single note, the sound.
I think maybe we agree again? Like I would say, ‘not the lyre or the bow but the sound’, here you are saying ‘not just the river or the man, but the life of the man with the river’? Is that what you mean?
Full concurrence.
Logos is always the same. I think I agree. That sounds more like where a Plato or Aristotle are going. The logos is what knows the same man does not step into the same river twice, ever, and this type of understanding is of the logos which rests eternally as the fire burns eternally.
But I don’t think we have gotten there yet logically. I started this whole thread on the assumption that “there is motion”. We’ve just appended another assumed assertion to it “there is logos”. I am fine with that (and that is what Heraclitus does - he just says “there is a logos” with no specific justification), so I want to see if you think there is some necessary logical connection whereby one has proven the other (things resting with change demonstrates the logos), or if you are just making bald assertions because Heraclitus is cool and his idea of the logos is rad.
I don’t think you are missing something. I’m just trying to do metaphysics in a historic moment where metaphysics has long been consumed in Hume’s fireplace.
If we stay modern, “thing” is a linguistic tool only. Like any other name, it just points.
I am trying to say something about the world. I am using language with no reference to how language works (although @Chelydra keeps pointing us to language as well). So I am trying to avoid a discussion about language:world as 1:1 or not, and just, naively talking about the world.
This is pure speculation, but I think, unrefutable, like something a priori, like axiom, or like the ground of the law of non-contradiction. A thing, which cannot both be and not be in the same manner, at the same time (the LNC), is itself standing apart as a thing in the tension that in language looks contradictory, but that in experience, makes perfect sense - the barley-drink is only a barley-drink, in a constantly changing state. Being a thing is to be undone as a thing.
So I am talking about the world, avoiding the epistemological problems and avoiding talking about talking.
So I would say, we do not get certainty. We never come to be so certain as to say “For this particular thing, here are the full list of all necessary and sufficients.” This may be the whole ball-game for some, because without all of the necessary and sufficients, we may as well have none of them - now essence is gone and there is nothing to say about the world that really is about the world.
I just disagree. I think when one person sees ash falling from the sky and says “look it’s snowing” and another person says “no, snow is different”, these two people are not just making the ordering of the world up and forcing it to correlate with their names for things and uses of language. I think there are a few things we can say about ash that we can never say about snow, and vice versa, because of the ash alone and the snow alone, in themselves.
It’s both naive and practical, but I think it is also a wisely observable consequence of the axioms of the LNC, and now, for there to be any isolated, distinction, it must be of some thing that rests with change. Thinghood is real, and would not have been invented for language purposes otherwise.
This isn’t proof, it’s based on the assumption that “there is motion.” I think that’s an easy assumption, and brings with it the assumption of “there are distinct things in motion.”
Everyone here is bring up the logos, or the language of it. And it may be essential to understanding any of this, precisely because this is metaphysics and language analysis has consumed straight metaphysics long ago. And even Heraclitus is the one who raised the Logos.
So I shouldn’t have accused you of moving the goal posts. Maybe I should instead admit the goal post is wider and/or farther away than I thought.
So maybe what you are raising is, instead of me being so abstract and universal and just talking about how any thing comes to be a thing, let’s get more specific about a particular thing and see if we can apply this and talk about about a particular thing.
Let’s really crack this open. Here are some things:
- There is the Atlantic ocean, and the shoreline, and North America.
- There is a border between the US and Canada.
The shoreline is the tension point constantly redefining the shape of the land, and the shape of the sea. What’s in the sea constantly changes as the tides and waves constantly reveal its motions. And what’s on the land and from the land are constantly reshaped by wind and weather as well. So when we claim “the land is a thing” we are capturing a motion in a sentence. But the land, as a thing, in itself, is where I found “wind changes” and “weather changes” and shoreline reshaping because of the sea." The land, rests in these particular motions. I just observe them. Same thing for the sea.
The shoreline is where the tension is, that informs my language - I need two words at the shoreline - one for land and one for sea, or I will not be able to communicate about the things in the world. (Heraclitus’ logos, is my mind observing the ordering of land versus sea - I don’t invent these, my mind receives the common logos, and in language, can talk about it without just pointing, as we are doing now.)
But then there is the line between the US and Canada. That is a tension between another type of thing. Only a human being with a mind can see a border between US and Canada. We have to first make a map (a representation) to then make a borderline (a representation distinguishing mere concepts called “US” and “Canada”.
I think many people today think that all lines we draw are like the border between the US and Canada - constructed and not reflective of things in the world. Even the sea versus the land is a mere construction. I think we do this because it is so hard to pin down and fix “the sea” as it is in constant flux.
But this conflates the two functions of the mind. We make lines called concepts in order to order our minds, in order to speak. These are communicated in a logical grammar, in words. Because we are minded things, words and logos engulfs us.
But what about the world? Because we can conflate the things differentiated by lines in the world (land-sea), with the “things” differentiated by lines constructed in the mind (US-Canada), must we?
I am not trying to completely jettison Hume and Kant and Wittgenstein and post-modernism. I am saying maybe they discuss one side of the story. I am not even saying we are not completely submerged in phenomenal experience with maybe no access to things in themselves. Maybe we are. But I am saying maybe we are not, because from my once stepping into a river twice, I figured out that I can’t step into a river twice AND I figured out that I could not have figured this out unless there was a difference in the world between a river and me (like the difference between this river, and the changed river that immediately replaces it with each moving instant). Change and stillness MUST be.
A consideration of biological membranes suggests that the distinction between what is there to be observed and what the mind divides and constructs is not the whole of the story. Membranes have an essential biological function, allowing some things to pass and while preventing others. They distinguish between self and other.
I am a little more optimistic about what’s available for discussion, post-Hume so I’m unsure we’ll be on similar pages. Onward…
Ok, fair enough. In that way, i think my comments so far would colour any further response - I don’t think the use of the word is really apt for this sort of history-less analysis. Though, I do appreciate these sorts of efforts.
This may be an example of why.. I can’t really understand what’s being got on (and I did read hte prior comments, I just don’t see hte through-line). A “thing” must be what that word causes us to imagine, right? So It’s quite hard to imagine what you’re positing.
Ah, Ok i’m feeling a tension worth addressing here now. I can’t say this is how I see it. I imagine that for any “thing” there will be necessary and sufficients, but we don’t need them (this probably goes to your point about avoiding the language-discussion problem earlier - a naive discussion of the world as-it-is gives us a clear concept of “thing” in our mind, even if not in language. That is interesting. I guess I’m getting the feeling the reason for this is that we use the word in such a way… I’m so sure I had a different point.. LOL.
In the next section, I’m not quite sure what you’re disagreeing with. Your example is a bit specific - you’re right, some things can be said about one but not hte other of ash and snow. I’m not seeing what’s being disagreed with. I can make a tortured assumption based on the next paragraph that it might be about “thing” being a linguistic tool only? I suppose setting aside that that is what all words/phrases are, my answer would be something like: Well, wence cometh “thing”? And then that story is that human’s invented it as a linguistic tool to pick “stuff” out of the environment in single-item form rather than like-kind form (ie “snow” is actually an abstract, in a pretty front-on sense, but “this snowflake here” is “a thing” which would need to be picked out of the infinite abstract of “snow” in a given, actual environment where snow is present).
I agree that all is always in motion - that is time writ large - but I’m not quite sure this isn’t just one category we apply “thing” to. We apply it to plenty of unchanging concepts or ideas.
That, to me, sounds like a membrane might be a good example of a “what”, the “how” of which is that membranes rest from changes occurring through them, on both sides of them, by their own natures and by the natures of the other things on both sides of them.
You reference here “what that word causes us to imagine.” This puts the word as primary, or prior, as a cause. So, when asking ‘what is a thing’, a mental act is placed first as the initiator of the identification of some “thing” carved out and now having an identity.
And then, “A ‘thing’ is what that word causes us to imagine.” So we start with the mental act of wording, and from that, we are caused to imagine, and what we imagine is the thing, so we have another mental act, an imagination. Connecting words to mental acts (imagining) is “a thing”.
Doesn’t that leave our entire world inside our head? Cause and effect contained in words about imagined (or conceptual) things?
That sounds like a sort of idealism, or modern constructivism (poised for deconstruction in all the relative change), which I don’t know if you intended.
I’m am pointing in the opposite direction. Like a chemist or physicist. Naively, at things, like a naïve realist I guess.
And I am asking a metaphysical question about such physical things, since they all seem to crumble so often in my grasp - what makes a thing be something, if things come to be at all?
I think the constructivist, idealist might have to say that such physical things crumble because, they don’t really exist in the first place. We invent and imagine and narrate experience with no direct access to anything beyond ourselves.
But my answer is the cryptic but simple, Heraclitean: “it rests with change.”
Crumbling is the becoming, the engine, the fire of being.
Things are the possessors, the ones that wield, the manifestations, the real substance, revealing the fire in measurable moments. Both are essential, or, both are being. Things being things, are things being changed to new things.
So I naively attribute an analytic, a priori type, mechanism of changing things changing, not just to my mental activity, but to the physical world, in itself.
We don’t have to attribute it to the world, but I am willing to because it seems to me, we thought of any of this, because we live in a world of changing things.
I leave the world as prior to the mental acts about it.
So where you say: “A ‘thing’ must be what that word causes us to imagine, right?”
I would say, “A ‘thing’ must be what rests in the changing world that briefly, fleetingly causes us to imagine (sense, speak of) there might be a useful word for that particular ‘it’, or ‘thing’ or barley-drink (quick before it dissolves again).” Useful, for both of us to communicate about as not just imagined, but in the world regardless of each of us.
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Quite plainly, no. That claim would be like saying ding-en-sich means that there is nothing out there, because we can’t access it.
The fact that use of hte word occurs inside our head is actually pretty much an airtight reality no one can escape from. Words do not begin with what they refer to. Ever.
This aside, though, (because I don’t actually think this is in question) you’ve misunderstood what I mean to say:
Conceptually. Not that “a thing” can only be represented as a further representation of an idea.
What I’m saying is that the use of “thing” is inextricably tied to whatever the user imagines it to mean when they use it. Not that the content they refer to is deflated to that imagined concept (indeed, how could it? The object, whatever it might be, is empirically real).
The only spanner i saw was that I think “thing” refers to plenty of items which are, in fact, mind-bound.
You’re asking a metaphysical question about hte use of words, as far as I can tell. I imagine this will be most dissatisfying, on even a truly eloquent response. I’m unsure I can do that, at any rate lol.
You are surely confusing (or, not noticing that you’re interchanging perhaps) “a thing” the phrase, with the “thing” one intends to refer to. I think they are entirely separate discussions - and I think our cross-wires show that 
I wouldn’t want to put the cart before the horse either - there are x’s, y’s and z’s in the world. We could’ve stopped there. But we constructed the term “thing” to be a catch-all term for any item which can be picked out of hte environment (among other things which can’t - the spanner). I see nothing particularly interesting or conceptually deep about this.
Well, I see what you are saying. But then, somehow, I over here, in my head, see what you are saying from your head. There is something more than heads when there is a communication. But still, I understand - words are for heads, and we don’t bump into “13” walking down the street because we only apprehend it in a mind.
Ok, the word “car” refers not only to what I imagine a car to be, AND that moving, honking vehicle thing.
Ok, I agree. Words simultaneously refer inward, towards the concept/imagination in the mind, and outward, towards the empirically real object.
No. That would be the word referring inward. I am referring to the empirical object. (The world of things regardless of minds and words.) I asking a metaphysical question the nature of things, regardless of words (words are secondary, necessary to reflect upon things, but I am not losing sight of the things that remain over there, outside of my head).
That is just an unfortunate semantic problem. “Thing” is used to refer to all kinds of entities. Before we parse these entities into precise language (before we stop using “thing” to say things like “object” or “entity” or “things like ‘object’”), I was hoping “it rests with change” might first be of interest, and worth the future labor of precision.
I think modern philosophy doesn’t ever start there. Hume burned up “in the world” with causal metaphysical speculation. That starting point requires objective identities, in the world. X is there, X is not Y, because Y is different, in the world, plain to see, requiring two different words called “X” and “Y” in order to speak precisely to “Z” who is not X and not Y… These are many things, causing my imagination, but not my imagination, which is another thing.
Modern thought says: “in the world” is a game. Asserting something is what it is, regardless of your assertion, is really just your head functioning, making things up, making a world, and seeing what floats in it, what’s useful, what people seem to repeat with you, out of habit’s sake, but not because the world caused anything. Modern thought seems to say differences may or may not be in the world, but who cares, because all we can do is make temporary use of phenomena, conjure it up in a word or name or sentence or story, and see if anyone wants to play along.
So what I am saying here is, no wonder all our stories are so ungrounded in the world, no wonder modern thought has long given up on “truth of things” and “the normative, objective facts in the world” - things are all bound up in becoming and change. Things are elusive as they can only briefly rest, from change.
The final significance is that, despite the motion of doing and undoing, despite the separation words create between the inward concepts and outward swirling appearances, things must remain real, for us to refer to, in the world.
Despite Hume/Kant/20th century, it remains the case, as we keep talking about change: we wouldn’t be able to observe any difference, any change, any motion, nor make any words out of these moving targets, unless “it rests from change” was already happening. Things really do exist, or we wouldn’t have named anything, and would never have invented “knowing”.
This thread is about identity. Quiddity. Essence/Existence. It’s about being a unit, in a rushing torrent of a world. It is about language, but I was hoping to get to that later, because the point I’m making is, where you asserted above the word points to its concept (remaining inward), I am asserting that, in addition, and more practically, the word points outward to things in the world - one word, fixed, as one thing, for the mind to know about things in the world at all.
Another future topic has to then deal with epistemology. But before I confirm whether I know any of these things, I think we can already tell what we would be looking to find (because of the fact of motion/becoming/existing/thinking/being/ing-ing). Things will always be spun up, resting from change. It is the a priori nature of things, given motion; or it is the a priori nature of motion, given things.
This is really the same topic (or related/necessarily tied topic) as ten other threads going on right now (Being and relations, Purpose, Concepts of knowledge, pragmatism and truth).
It’s only profound if you think there is very little we know about anything. Then any small bit may be significant.
I’d like to ask you a question on this topic. But it’s more about epistemology than ontology.
Here’s a short excerpt from one of my papers:
The roots of our approach go back to the 18th century, to Immanuel Kant, who made a “Copernican revolution in philosophy” by declaring that we don’t passively reflect the world, but actively structure experience through innate (a priori) forms of perception and categories of the mind. Kant was the first to point out the existence of an interface: we know not “things in themselves” (noumena), but only phenomena—the world already formed by our consciousness. However, for Kant, reality (the world of noumena) did not disappear—it remained a necessary source of data, “filling” our cognitive forms. In our methodology, this is transformed into Axiom #1: An idea is an adaptive filter, without which reality would be nothing but chaotic noise for us.
In the 20th century, Jean Piaget translated this philosophical approach into the language of cognitive science, demonstrating that knowledge is the construction of “schemas” (frameworks of thought) through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Here we introduce a critical addition: accommodation (the restructuring of a schema) occurs not at the whim of the subject, but under the pressure of resistance from reality. If your Idea (scheme) asserts that “fire does not burn,” reality “asks the question” in the form of physical pain, forcing the construct to either change or lead to the subject’s collapse. Thus, knowledge is not simply “creativity” but a continuous dialogue with the world, where reality has veto power.
Radical constructivism, represented by Ernst von Glasersfeld, made an important contribution by replacing the concept of “truth” with “viability.” According to him, an “Idea” is good if it enables us to act effectively. At the same time, we deliberately move away from the extremes of this approach. This philosopher’s assertion that reality is entirely anthropogenic and that objective truth does not exist leads to an epistemological trap: if everything is merely a construct, then the criterion of “error” disappears and leads to relativism. In “The Architecture of the Idea,” we postulate that reality is objective and independent. Constructivism describes the way we know, but not the nature of existence itself. Humans do not create the laws of physics—they construct models that describe them and enable their use. The more accurately a model corresponds to the “questions” of reality, the greater its functional weight.
Do you agree with these conclusions?
Let me clarify one point. This excerpt is from a work that’s not strictly philosophical, but rather social philosophy, so I make some statements in the text that I later develop into practical solutions in a more engineering-oriented manner. But the content is directly related to epistemology and the topic of ontology discussed here.
And my second question is this: Humans are qualitatively different from any other known organism in their capacity for abstraction. Their ability to “grasp essences” or “photograph reality.” Humans can do all this abstractly: they don’t need to see an object before their eyes to mentally dissect it. Isn’t this human characteristic that’s being discussed here?
After all, we don’t live in the world directly. We operate with “ideas” (as I called it above). There’s reality (which is fluid), but there’s also our ability to photograph and analyze photographs (which are static). Wouldn’t all this help resolve your main question?
Yeah something liek that, but I’m making a much simpler point than this usually get’s used for: You’re looking into a dead end for a trap door, i think. When i talk about “thing” being “in the head” I do mean the use of it as a descriptor (or some more basic version of descriptor). Not that “things” we refer to are inside the head. I get that you’re not arguing with this; I just want to be perfectly clear that I am not suggesting any kind of idealism - i’m separating semantics from “what we want to talk about”.
That latter, it appears, is the former. I don’t quite see what’s intended by this, tbh.
Yes, but notice that “Car” and “thing” are demonstrably very different “vehicles” (hehe) of description. “thing” is entirely non-specific, and designed to be - i think - for the reason I’m getting at: each person considers different margins for what could may be brought under the umbrella of “thing”.
I understand - but I can’t see it. I don’t really even understand your basic approach to trying to talk about the word yet. It seems to violate the nature of hte word itself, and want it to do something that may ultimately just be what the word does inside your head, and not what it’s “doing” for the world outside when used.
I can’t understand what you mean with this (and hte preceding comments) i am sorry.
Yeah. I think this is a misguided and a large portion of why the world, socially, sucks so much more than it did 20 years ago. That’s just my opinion though, not some philosophical argument.
This applies to the next paragraph referring to KAnt/20thC too. I just can’t understand what you’re getting at. It feels as if you’ve worked back from a conclusion that you cannot escape, emotionally.
This is, in fact, what I suggested it does - but that what can come under this description is something for the thinker’s thoughts to assess.
I think its possible you’ve either entirely missed me, or not understood that “thing” is not a metaphysical position.