I have almost completely abandoned any sort of literary or normative study of philosophy to understand formal sciences. Accordingly, the Analytic-Synthetic distinction interests me a great deal, in addition to mathematical knowledge. If we accept that all analytic propositions and mathematical knowing is the purest (most reduced and ‘perfect’) form of synthetic a priori, what does this natural and universal quantifying allow us to accomplish? What arguments can be put forth against 2+2=4? Currently, I have come to accept that complex mathematical knowledge is a profound and natural phenomenon only occurring in humans, which allows us to understand an object in-itself.
There are three problems I would like to discuss.
What is 0?
How can we come to knowing or signifying 0? Is it not circular and facetious to represent “nothing” as presence?
Perpetual limitation
It is impossible to quantifying everything, and having a limited perspective is not transcended, nor is it ever transcended, by ways of analytic propositions and maths.
Chaos
This problem concerns the categorization of analytic versus synthetic propositions in so far as pragmatism has given the latter the power to control or estrange the former.
Zero does not represent “nothing”. As with all numbers, it represents a quantity of something. Zero represents the quantity of the complete lack of something: I have zero, “0”, full grown elephants in my shirt pocket.
Well… 1 unit of 2.5 plus another unit of 2.5, allows 1+1 to equal 5. 2+2 to equal 10
1.) zero is a product of simulation, even as a base, it is abstracted as a placeholder. It is our imagination which facilitates our abstraction of zero.
2.) perceptual limitation is what allows us to see in the first place… A balance between telescopic and microscopic senses
3.) an analytic proposition is even synthetic to the extent that the comparison capacity is “out there in the world”. I’d say everything is synthetic
I am unable to contact you in PM, let me know how best to message you here or elsewhere and I’ll send you a few things.
In brief sum, analytic philosophy is empty, groundless, positivistic word-games with no relation to anything meaningful or significant. Analytic philosophy treats words as things in themselves and believes that mathematical operations constitute a sufficient and legitimate means of arriving at truths. Analytic philosophy is a willing apology to scientific positivism and to neoliberal capitalism, precisely because analytic philosophy deliberately evades real issues and real questions. It is for scientists who fail at philosophy, and “philosophers” who fail at science.
For an easy example consider the so called problem of analysis. The implicit assumption is that conceptual meaningfulness is always already strict definitional, and that definitions cannot give new information. Analytic philosophy is totally ignorant of what concepts are, why they exist, how the exist, from where they get or fail to get justification, as well as the fact that we already know far more than we know we know. Analytic philosophy tries to reduce thought, language and meaning to a barest standard of universal sufficiency, which is ironic since such a standard isn’t even possible because if it were possible that would necessarily violate what “thought, language and meaning” are to begin with, as well as why/how they are and why/how they are used and useful at all.
Analytic philosophy is basically the ideal of turning human minds into computers. It is deeply nihilistic and trends into the garbage of transhumanist/scientific positivism (i.e. religion).
James doesn’t know what he is talking about. Well actually he does, he is just being deliberately misleading.
The philosophy that I engage in would be most associated to the continental tradition. That is where real philosophy resides. The problem is that much of continental philosophy also sucks, it just sucks for a different reason than the reason why analytic philosophy sucks.
Continental philosophy sucks because it is still quite nascent and hasn’t pushed far and honestly enough into its own method and conclusions. It “sucks” often enough because it actually has the potential to be great, and in rare cases reaches that potential.
Analytic philosophy sucks because it isn’t philosophy.
Well, you guys can invent your own personal definitions and idealized concepts of what “real philosophy” is if you like, but the “real world” of philosophers, seriously famous ones, say otherwise (e.g. Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.).
You are each proposing that “real philosophy” is the bantering about subjects without even knowing what the subject is (common mindless thrashing … and accusing without examining). And your last few posts are in fact a reflection of such presumptuousness.
James is a believer in theoretical constructs. He thinks that forces are farces because they are clearly theoretical constructs that never were anything more than theoretical constructs, whereas affectance is a theoretical construct that is reality itself simply because it’s a part of an all-encompassing theory (which is a pretentious, practically useless, theory with a ridiculously high input/output ratio.) And QM is a fantasy even though it works because it doesn’t describe reality “as it is”. As if theories can ever be anything more than theories – procedures that can generate predictions based on given parameters.
You have absolutely no clue because you know nothing about it at all.
Yet here you are trying to derate it.
And why?
Certainly not because of your intellect.
RM:AO proves that theories can be “more than just theories”. But you wouldn’t know anything about that.