on Nietzsche

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
You have such an inferiority complex, don't you? The cave analogy is much more plausible than people realize, as is Plato's whole theory.

Tell ya what: break it down for the fellows at MIT or Stanford. The real junkies who do string theory and QM and other things that make my head explode to think about. See how plausible they think it is. Except it's not scientifically testable, now, is it? Is there a reason I should believe your religion and you shouldn't believe mine? Yeah, you think YHWH is obnoxious, fine. I happen not to care for irrelevant, untouchable hypotheticals. My preference runs to metaphysical truths I can actually come into contact with and that might presumptively impact my life in some meaningful way. To each his own.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Tell ya what: break it down for the fellows at MIT or Stanford. The real junkies who do string theory and QM and other things that make my head explode to think about. See how plausible they think it is. Except it's not scientifically testable, now, is it? Is there a reason I should believe your religion and you shouldn't believe mine? Yeah, you think YHWH is obnoxious, fine. I happen not to care for irrelevant, untouchable hypotheticals. My preference runs to metaphysical truths I can actually come into contact with and that might presumptively impact my life in some meaningful way. To each his own.

In other words, you don't want to argue because you might get your ass handed to you, yet you still want to consider yourself some sort of intellectual. Sorry, it doesn't quite work that way.

"Metaphysical truths I can come into contact with"? What on earth are you talking about? Stop misusing words.

[McCrea]

Originally posted by Elok
Except it's not scientifically testable, now, is it?

The rumor's been around since Pythagoras. "irrational numbers" weren't called that for no reason. Circles can't exist, because pi is irrational. Eventually they decided "well, we better include these numbers that don't make sense in with the numbers that do make sense."

The wise man there is the one that would have known the rational numbers didn't exist either. He would accept irrational numbers more easily than trained mathematicians.

The acceptance started around the time of Einstien and Godel. Theory of relativity? It doesn't work right. Well, redefine "time" so that it does. Oh, thanks. -- Booyah! Modern Physics. Modern Philosophy.

I would assume many (not most) modern physicists do accept these philosophies. My limit is at mid-level math though.

[Kuciwalker]

The rumor's been around since Pythagoras. "irrational numbers" weren't called that for no reason. Circles can't exist, because pi is irrational. Eventually they decided "well, we better include these numbers that don't make sense in with the numbers that do make sense."

When someone restates Plato's arguments with full mathematical rigor, let me know.

[McCrea]

When someone restates Plato's arguments with full mathematical rigor, let me know.

Hi.

If you have something to say please, express it as well as you can. As it is, you say a little. I say a little.

"full mathematical rigor" doesn't exist.

[Agathon]

That's one of the major problems I have with Nietzsche, his reflexive snobbery. If that worthless, stupid herd weren't working so hard to make stuff and keep the economy going, he wouldn't have anything like the luxury to sit around writing books critiquing Western civilization and getting into spats with Wagner.

I think you're missing his point. To be fair, he is prone to hyperbole. He just thinks we have the wrong values. In essence, his philosophy is an attempt to return us to the pre-Platonic Classical Greek view of the world, because he thinks that the values we have taken up since then are not very good for us. That's not surprising coming from a Classical Philologist. I think he has a point there. although it gets overshadowed by the warmongering and militarism that he gets painted with (although I wonder if these critics ever bothered reading what he actually says about militarism – it's almost all extremely uncomplimentary).

If you don't like metaphysics, then Nietzsche is on your side. He hates it more than any other philosopher I know of. He's really a kind of pragmatist (although my guess is that he would hate the label). I guess a lot of people don't like him because he is a critic of Christianity. Their problem is that he criticizes it on moral grounds, which is where Christians see themselves as being invulnerable, and thus where they are very weak. But you only have to look at some of the more extreme religious bigotry to see where he is coming from – there's something really mean about Christianity, and you don't have to be an atheist to notice it. Indeed, I have heard many Christians excoriate their own church using arguments that could have come from Nietzsche's pen.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

The rumor's been around since Pythagoras. "irrational numbers" weren't called that for no reason. Circles can't exist, because pi is irrational. Eventually they decided "well, we better include these numbers that don't make sense in with the numbers that do make sense."

When someone restates Plato's arguments with full mathematical rigor, let me know.

This is unintentionally very funny.

[McCrea]

Ya. Hi again Agathon.

I do gotta say, before you pointed that out, I was just in the zone -- a little bit frustrated, just *sigh*-ing. Now I had a good 10-minute chuckle. Thanks

_____
Whoa, not a word-of-the-day, but a word-of-the-week! "excoriate" Thank you!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by McCrea
Hi.

If you have something to say please, express it as well as you can. As it is, you say a little. I say a little.

"full mathematical rigor" doesn't exist.

Neither do you.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
This is unintentionally very funny.

Cute, but you have to be seriously deluded if you think it's not a legitimate counterargument. He's trying to draw an analogy between Plato's cave allegory - which is supposed to at least have some relation to reality - and irrational numbers, which are purely mathematical constructs.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
In other words, you don't want to argue because you might get your ass handed to you, yet you still want to consider yourself some sort of intellectual. Sorry, it doesn't quite work that way.

"Metaphysical truths I can come into contact with"? What on earth are you talking about? Stop misusing words.

No, I phrased it quite simply: Plato's cave is a lot of unverifiable hooey that, if true, is still irrelevant because the Forms are just some hypothetical perfection on a plane we can't reach. At least my unverifiable hooey is meaningful if true. Plenty of people have religious experiences, at least feel that they are in contact with something divine. Maybe it's all BS, but it's BS someone can care about.

Not that it doesn't feel strange to post this with C.S. Lewis in my avatar...

[McCrea]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

He's trying to draw an analogy between Plato's cave allegory - which is supposed to at least have some relation to reality - and irrational numbers, which are purely mathematical constructs.

No, I was not. I'm still researching what the **** a cave allegory is. I was confirming that nothing can be proven. <-- Very general. I try to avoid specifics. I was responding soley to what I quoted, which was "Except it's not scientifically testable, now, is it?".

Please consider my post, in a standalone context. (Then, feel free to expand it or dismiss it as you might) God dammit, Jim, I'm a McCrean not a Platoist!

*shrug* The only analogy I used was between "mathematical ratios" and "logical rationality." I took I peek, and I don't think one can do the 1500 years of entymology to see where the ironic(?) coincidence between irrational vs. real numbers and irrational vs. sane minds comes from.

[McCrea]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
irrational numbers, which are purely mathematical constructs.

I also said rational numbers are purely mathematical constructs. [Edit: Didn't say, certainly implied.]

[Pekka]

Dudes, in reality, and I use this term very brilliantly, Nietzsche just wanted to have sex with me. That is why he said God is dead and we killed him. He realized he could not have sex with me because I wasn't even born yet. Now that is a very difficult task to do, to have sex with someone in the far far future, when you aren't even alive anymore.

And I'm all for positivist views, like I know I'm huge down there, but for some of yous some other perspective might work better. Then again, that's not my approach anyway. I know I'm huge, even if I was a pure abstraction.

Back to Nietzsche... I mean he tried to become an ubermensch, which in reality, I mean he went to the mountains and figured out he has two options: to have sex with me or go mad. That's the whole idea, to get pass your own ego, to rise above your own self. That's the ubermensch, basically he tried to, in physical terms, stop his own entropy so he can live forever, or at least few hundred years, to survive the cell damage and all that jazz.... to suck my

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by McCrea
No, I was not. I'm still researching what the **** a cave allegory is.

Are you serious? You're trying to talk about philosophy and you don't know what that is?

I was confirming that nothing can be proven.

Then you'd be wrong. Sorry, kid. Every single math professor on the planet disagrees with you.

I mean, trivially, there are statements that can be proven. A proof in propositional calculus is a sequence of propositions, where each proposition is either an axiom or follows from two previous proposotions by the rule of modus ponens. Trivially, the assertion of an axiom is a complete, correct proof.