Finity

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Reply Thu 13 May, 2010 12:09 am
We know what we mean by "one" but how? If anyone knows of axioms that get around the intuition of the one, let me know. I can't imagine them.

I put this in logic because I think the concept of unity or union or the one is a (or the) foundation of human thought. It seems to me that our choices as far as quantity go are singular or plural. And it seems to me that plurality is nothing but the systematic iteration of the unity concept. But whence this concept?

P or ~P, we still have the implied unification of P. At the moment, I can imagine no thought that isn't founded on the repeated use of the unity concept. For instance, every abstract word and every proper noun. All mathematics, despite protestations from certain quarters. And we cut the world into objects, into framed singularities that we can also further subdivide into more framed singularities.

For some, this is a trivial matter. It won't pay the bills. But I can't help but suspect that here at least is something that doesn't change. This is my miniature "transcendental" (or "absolute") analytic.

Of course this is an old old isssue. Parmenides and Zeno, etc.

I know something of Kant's objections, but I have certain objections to Kant's objections. Smile
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Thu 27 May, 2010 02:17 pm
@Reconstructo,
One more time, just in case.....
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Wed 2 Jun, 2010 10:52 pm
@Reconstructo,
The finite is also an aesthetic value. Chess is beautiful because it is precisely finite. There are no accidents. We are given a complete picture, and make our decisions from there. The real world is too complex. To enjoy the same sense of the finite, we have to see the world as a "limited whole," although this is really just an abstraction. The world is way too much information for any mind to process, or so it seems.
 
Fido
 
Reply Thu 3 Jun, 2010 10:21 am
@Reconstructo,
What may well be presumed of existence, that it is a monad we cannot prove, so we cannot know...It is not from nature as nature that we have this sense of the one, but of life where each person is roughly the equal of another, where all deer are deer, and all flies are flies for that is how living nature appears to us...But of ourselves we hold a different opinion, that we are unique, distant, apart, isolated... It is a mental leap from seeing self as unique to seeing all of humanity as the same in identity... We must overcome the spiritual conception to see the practical conception, and this never occurs without necessity.....
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Sat 5 Jun, 2010 12:37 am
@Fido,
Fido;172461 wrote:
What may well be presumed of existence, that it is a monad we cannot prove, so we cannot know...It is not from nature as nature that we have this sense of the one, but of life where each person is roughly the equal of another, where all deer are deer, and all flies are flies for that is how living nature appears to us....

This is a nice twist. I like this as well. But I think the unity thing is just hardwired, and not learned socially. Humans think in terms of unities.
 
 

 
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