tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post3217877077990231240..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Thing and nothing, apatheia and apathyskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-71328918372409116282017-09-05T12:53:33.365-07:002017-09-05T12:53:33.365-07:00This is [para-]consistent with what I understand o...This is [para-]consistent with what I understand of Priest's engagements with Buddhism. I'm fairly sympathetic with at least leading with "ordinary language," but I'm inclined to say that this response tends more to the facile than the deep -- though this does not mean that the achievement you point to was not, indeed, profound. <br /><br />Nice to hear from you.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-4625298447317892962017-09-05T09:09:03.134-07:002017-09-05T09:09:03.134-07:00Enjoyed these reflections. I was recently in a sem...Enjoyed these reflections. I was recently in a seminar with Graham Priest in which he argued (based on mereological axioms) that "everything" is the sum/fusion of all objects, and "nothing" the sum/fusion of all non-objects. Nothing, he inferred, thus both is and is not an object (according to a paraconsistent logic, such a contradiction can be true). He then inferred nothingness to be the ground of reality, the only thing that must be. I asked him what I guess was a Parmenidean question: but don't you have to then *believe* that the word nothing actually or really refers to such a contradictory object? And if one accords such a belief, how is it also not acceptable to define something else in a similar manner—for example God as uncreated, apart from the world, not a being or beyond Being? An atheist, his own answer was to take recourse to the natural/spontaneous association we have with words: whereas God conjures ideas of control, omnipotence, etc., nothing recalls us only to the absence of things. This is either a facile solution, or it indicates what a profound achievement it was for humans to broach the thought of zero, to invent such a word/concept as no-thing.<br /><br />Wishing you the best from Berlin.fragilekeys.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07945608366871667839noreply@blogger.com