Parmenides, Nothingness, & Zeno's Paradoxes
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- An introductory discussion of the Eleatic school, including Parmenides on the ultimate unchanging oneness of reality and some of the issues that arise regarding multiplicity and change (basically because such phenomena involve non-being, which is something that cannot itself be thought and so cannot exist), as well as one of Zeno's famous paradoxes, that of the dichotomy (perhaps second only to his paradox of the arrow). There's then a brief discussion of Aristotle's treatment of the paradox on the basis of his famous distinction between actual infinity and potential infinity.
These clips come from a program on classical Greek philosophy in a series on great ideas in philosophy.
#Philosophy #Parmenides #Zeno
We consistently do get as far as the door. The description of reality as a set of continuously smaller things is possible merely by continuously increasing the speed at which they occur, which well illustrates the point that nothing infinite is part of our reality.
Paradox only ever exists in language, never in reality. Languages must be first descriptive of reality in order to be meaningful.
This puts the mind in an awkward position though doesn’t it, in a way the Greeks did not consider.
In a way we really need to counter the idea that ‘what cannot be thought cannot be’, and so say that it is possible that the unthinkable exists.
Then the senses become a window into what may prove unfathomable.
Zeno made travel here unfathomable, but rearranging our concept of travel to relate to speed and time doesn’t really solve the more general problem of how we should quantify units along something like a dimension, considered to be infinite.
Nonsense, how exactly do you derive language from reality if to understand reality you need language? And how do you know that paradoxes do not exist in reality? saying so, it is in fact projecting language into reality, i.e. the consistency of logic into reality
@@el_equidistante We need language to understand complexity, not reality. Every being understands reality because they have experience of it. We need language to communicate perspective (our own experience) in order to gain the rudiments of complexity.
@@havenbastion experience is not the same as understanding, experience might not require language, but understanding does, I don't think you realize the problematic nature of what you just said.
Book VI of Aristotle's Physics contains the material referenced at the end. CZcams needs more lectures giving detailed examinations of Aristotle's scientific and metaphysical works.
Does this tv/video series have a title? I'd kinda like to see it in its entirety.
The title is "Classical Greek Philosophy" from the series "Great Ideas of Philosophy".
@@Philosophy_Overdose Thanks.
Whatever it is that we're experiencing IS reality. Actuality is what it's a filtered version of. There is nothing less illusory than that which continuously replicates.
My very first essay for an undergraduate course in ancient philosophy was on the topic of Parmenides. My whole argument in a page and a half was that he arrived at the conclusion that change is impossible given the wholeness of reality. OK, not a groundbreaking conclusion (or is it?), but the assignment was to give an interpretation, not to philosophize independently. What surprised me is that my professor gave me a D on that paper and gave very direct notes that that is absolutely not the position he was arguing for. I mean I was a (relatively uneducated, going into that deep a field of inquiry) kid, just 18. I never got the proper feedback on that paper, so I've always wondered even until now what she expected a class of 70 freshmen to say about the very cryptic ideas of Parmenides that we read off of fragmentary writings. To be fair, I think I mentioned something about an "unchanging universe" which may have pushed the argument too far. But the expectation was for a B+ to A-, so I just wonder where I went wrong to get pushed down to a D.
Don't care too much about grades in undergraduate, just pass your first year and study whatever you want in year 2 and 3
2:10 This paradox occurs only when the notion of "a half" (or "number") is applied to a distance in the real world. If we didn't divide the path in half, or in smaller parts - if we didn't represent the distance in number - there would be no paradox. The fault is, therefore, in our concepts we apply on the world, not in the world in itself. Bergson's method of intuition, for example, avoids this completely, because it's a non-representational way of interpreting the world.
My dude it's been around 2000 years, we know
fascinating
3:45 Aristotle: infinity as an ever-expendable finitude
ever-extendable
Gold dust in just 4 mins 40!
Infinity is an instruction not a number. It means keep going or etcetera.
What's the original source for this video? 😊
There's only one conclusion that explains everything.And that's....... well, it's so obvious. Can't you see?
... turtles all the way ...
To me it is confusing why they keep saying that it is a paradox today. The key part of the paradox is the "ad infinitum" part, but from a modern understanding that cannot be.
If you keep going with half the distance 30 or 40 times, you'll get to the lengths of atoms and below and then you'll have to change your notion of position. 30-40 is very different from infinity!
There is an implicit assumption in all this, that the concept of position is independent of length, no matter how big or small (formally, that it is scale invariant). That is the wrong assumption and the only reason why this appears to be a paradox, but it is not.
@@stoyanfurdzhev I'm taking space as a given and assuming there is a solution to the question, but so is the opposite stance where you would think there is a paradox.
@@stoyanfurdzhev I agree that a qualitative impression (idea) is implied whenever accepting or rejecting an argument, but I'm not following your argument. Could you express it in more simple terms or with a concrete analogy?
@@stoyanfurdzhev I'm sorry, but your answers are really hard to follow word salads. I cannot really follow them. If you pleasee just give a concrete example of what you mean in a few words.