Parmenides - the Philosophy of Being 

Thank you, that means a lot. My formal education is in theology, so I'm glad to get enough right about this sister-topic to be recommended :)

He may not be correct though ;)

@@SolomonsCave Considering that a priori truths and deductions are logical certainties, and a priori deductions about Existence itself are logical certainties regarding Existence, it would be foolish to deny them.

Meridian I also came to the same conclusions myself, afterwards realizing that Parmenides was right along, and just how fundamentally important his ontological deductions are. You see, many people learn about Parmenides, very few of them actually fully understand the philosophy, and even fewer people are capable of fully accepting the deductions in a way where they are able to incorporate the fundamental truths into a coherent Worldview that is consistent with all of their other beliefs. :)

@@thatchinaboi it kinda freaks me out how old the universe must be, realizing that it's existence has always been. it amazes me. It's as if we're stuck in a bool state except that the bool can only be one state(true) in this case "Existing".

Meridian The truth is definitely a mind fuck from the normal perspective. Logically it makes perfect sense and is irrefutably true.

Great! This is certainly idealism in it's... fetal form so to say.

@@SolomonsCave sounds more like Advaita Vedanta (non dualism) to me....

Or... Philosopher Kings are just saying that to prop themselves up. There is no Good you can define definitively. There is comfort... At least Akhenaten was honest when he pointed at the sun and said to all, there... there is my God.

Interesting. Can you say more about this?

Our perception of existence is bordered by past ( memory ) and future ( dreams ), imho

As I say about Swiss cheese: the best cheese is around the holes :P A similar question can be asked about darkness, cold, and with Augustine: evil. I would say they have no ontological reality, only a practical, psychological, or linguistic reality. But hey, I'm just a dude with a RU-vid channel, what do I know?

@@SolomonsCave I thought it had no ontological status too, that it could be only an extension to matter, like shape, size etc. But this text makes the subject a little more complex: www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil375/Lewis1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiFmsTz3-3rAhUxm-AKHc-vAGAQFjAQegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0GP7j8a7FLtaxKo8nSm9nk&cshid=1600263174215

Metaphysics is just a search for Eternal Truths and Purity, which don't exist. And holes exist. You can use them. Real nothingness, though, the absence of all space and time, is something we can talk about, but we cannot fully comprehend. I believe Parmenides is reifying Being. He was simply struck dumb by a gerund... that, and the theoretically possible - but, in practice, absurd - concept of Infinity. Finally, it sounds dumb to say that a hole is a being, but if we say it exists, that's usually fine. It's just words.

Busy busy busy :( My study, two jobs, other things... I haven't forgotten about this channel though.

Nice post. I do have a bunch of questions, if you don't mind. 1) By 'atomic' do you mean 'uncuttable' or 'pertaining to atoms'? 2) wouldn't 'experience' be a matter of Doing, before it is a matter of Thinking? 3) What do you mean by 'driving'? I have no idea here. Are you talking about Urges? Thanks

@@floepiejane atomic is smallest unit of anything that retains the qualities of being that which it is a unit of. An atom if gold has all of the properties of the element called gold. Similarly, the smallest unit of a perception is a quality. Visual qualities include size, shape, color, distance, etc. Auditory qualities would include pitch, volume, distance, timbre, etc.Kinesthetic would include pressure, duration, intensity, etc. Of the qualities present in a perception one to three of them will be 'drivers'. These qualities change our inner state of Being as they change. A visual driver for one person might be distance. As an image moves closer and gets bigger, they will accordingly feel better or worse. Volume might be a driver for another. Louder or quieter would make them enjoy it more or less. A kinesthetic driver might be pressure. More or less might feel better or worse. I hope this helps. I can't really explain it more simply without the added words getting in the way. Namaste'.

@@raycosmic9019 i appreciate it. I have much to think about.

Atomism developed later, in part inspired by these theories. As for the Gospel a/t John, though he may have played with this idea, he starts with "en arche" (in the beginning), which hearkens back to Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint. In fact, three of the four gospels have explicit connections to Genesis in their opening line (Luke being the exception, though he traces back Jesus' lineage to Genesis 1-2 in chapter 3).

@@SolomonsCave ​ @Solomon's Cave Well if you think about where and when John was writing, the people he was writing to would have been familiar with this dispute over what is the arche. John's gospel can be observed to be geared to a more philosophically minded Greek audience than some of the other gospels geared more to Jews that describe Jesus's lineage from David and Adam. So it's fair to say John 1:1-3 hearkens back to the pre-Socratics as well.

I think you're getting it. See now Zeno took this concept to the next level :)

No, it's real. I think this is just an early attempt to explain relativity. Heraclitus did it way better.

I like the way you're thinking.

I think we have very similar ideas about philosophy, though I have different examples in mind: Idealism vs. realism (Plato / Aristotle // Augustine / Thomas) Rationalism vs. empiricism (Descartes / Locke) Modernism vs. post modernism As for religions, I can only really speak for Christianity, and both extremes are widely attested within it, but I also think that the belief that the unchangeable God became a changeable man is a very interesting doctrine to look at through this lens. And in politics, I think we can dig even deeper. On economic issues, the libertarian right (which has found a home in the Republican party) has individual freedom as its fundamental principle. Then the progressive left (currently fighting for a place in the Democratic party) strongly believes in equality (of opportunity). Both freedom and equality are good principles that correlate with the same two philosophies. But at some point, my freedom can take away someone else's equal opportunity, while absolute equality (especially of outcome) will diminish overall freedom.

@@SolomonsCave I agree with you basically 100%, though I would say Aristotle represents the shifting toward more empirical style philosophy. Whats interesting is that it always seems that in the history of Ideas, the rationalistic principle manifests first temporally. hindusim >> buddhism for example. Its as if the affirming principle shows up to set the stage for the empirical principle to come in to keep it honest and cut it back, the empirical principle always seems to criticize what the affirming principle has already created. Anyways, great video.

@@SolomonsCave ooo, interesting. Freedom and Equality... They both allude to the shift from Aristocracy to Democracy: freedom from the King, and all citizens with a voice in the government, equal representation. Freedom can also point to the ability to develop one's self and actually have a personality. Equality can also point to the need to eradicate corruption and exploitation. They go hand-in-hand in the service of spreading democracy. Imo, using them otherwise is sus.

Is there a name... Yes, Connor, it's called The Great False Dichotomy. They're actually not oppositional; they're two parts of analysis, two complimentary parts in the process of thinking. Then what's the disjunction here? I think it's that the framing of the situation is coming from the Idealists, and they don't trust their senses, and they think there's an inner essence of all things that our minds can't fathom - that only omniscience could ever hope to touch, and their real goal is Purity anyway, so they see "observation" as inherently flawed and petty. Of course they ignore the fact that without observation, their calculators won't have data. Knowledge implies knowing about something, after all. ... Question: why is observation limiting when its use brings in ever more information?

As for your Taoist tendencies, I'll offer this. We have three sets of Vinegar Tasters in front of us: the Oriental, the Occidental, and the Accidental. So, respectively, we have Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha, then Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Aristotle, and finally Plato, Kant, and Hegel (with their fingers in Descartes's vat, his head looking around in confusion)...

You're frustrated, that's all.

@@rajarsi6438 I am

@@bhagirathraghav2192 Perhaps study & apply Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, reach total freedom of existence because of it.

Logically there are infinite points between the beginnings and ends of an inch, but I can step over that infinity at any time. And, just try to race a turtle and lose, or stand in front of a flying arrow and live. Finally, 'nothing' is an abstract noun that signifies the lack of something, in this case, existence. But if you need more than that, then 'nothing' signifies that lack of space and time. Q. E. D.

There have been many proposed solutions, some more successful than others. However, the point of this video (as well as the one I did on Zeno) isn't so much to disprove their philosophy, but to get you to think about the questions they asked about the nature of reality. To think outside the box of the obvious and the simple.

@@SolomonsCave I like to see the most successful solution of others.

What's your solution?

@@floepiejane I have no objection to publish self sponsored research findings.

@@godofgodseyes Sri Lanka, eh?

You gotta earn them, one at a time ;)

I excelled for our presentation. Thank you! :>

So basically you cheated 😂 copied his presentation and presented his presentation 😁

A great movie too!

I was searching for this comment phaha

Like Jung's shadow...

You're welcome. It is however "the Philosophy of Being" not "the Philosophy of Bejing" :P

Solomon's Cave yeah，I know it. I love western philosophy so much

@@TheJanuary12312 There sure is a lot we can lear from each other :)

Why is that relevant?

@@Darth377Zethlyn because virtual things can easily be created 'out of nothing' or destroyed, almost like the things in our imagination... so I was wondering what would Parmenides have said about that

But the quantum theory exist also inside the observable universe and its not the arche, so no, Parmenides the boss, will be proven right sooner or later.

We'll hopefully get to Aristotle at some point, but remember that though he certainly took steps "forward" in philosophy and science, he was also wrong about basically everything :P I'm not sure that Parmenides was fully answered (if at all) until Einstein's theory of general relativity.

I have absolutely no idea! But I do know that these philosophers asked the kinds of questions that provoke the imagination and could very well have inspired the search for mathematical answers that ended up with the theories you mentioned.

Interesting question and it gets at the heart of what "being" is. I do think that being and not-being are opposites. Some things have opposites and negations: heat and cold, where sometimes the opposite can be more or less precisely defined as a negative. Cold is the absence of heat, but heat is not the absence of cold. Other things don't have a clear opposite and can only be negated. The negation of a dog is not a dog, but the two are not opposites. But when it comes to being (in the way Parmenides and some others define it), that is in a category all by itself, where the negation and the affirmation are perfect opposites. This also goes to the heart of other discussions, like the medieval realists vs. idealists, Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God (and why it is or isn't valid) and more modern ideas.

@@SolomonsCave Thank you for your response. Okay... some more questions, if you don't mind. 1) If the word for the negation is "Not-Being," then what is the word, the name, for the relational opposite of "Being"? It seems that our grammar urges us to use negative forms of adverbs or affixes because our lexicon denies us a good characteristic word. But what is "Being" really then to begin with? ... It's a gerund, the Act of Being, really. It's not a proper Name. My head gives me "Existence" as an alternative, but that's just a Latinate form, and it also has no true opposite. "Oblivion" comes to mind, but one must have already come into existence if they're going to be forgotten, so that won't work... I don't see this as a problem. This lack of an opposite name for Being or Existence itself is a fact about the concept, and our ability to comprehend that phenomenon. ... This is leading somewhere, but I'm going to take a breath for a moment. Thanks.

@@SolomonsCave So when we talk about Being, we're signaling an Action and not a Fact, not a Name, not a thing. I always found it ironic that Parmenides argued against motion on behalf of an Act. He mistook an Act for a Fact. Sooo... What is the opposite of "Act"? ... Can Actions have opposites, or do they just end up being two parts of one process, ie. Live-Die. ... rather than a description of opposite qualities or characteristics. ... Can opposites only be Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions, or can they also be Verbs? I think my argument just above proves the latter false. ...

@@SolomonsCave so Parmenides is actually looking at the Process of Acting and Not-Acting, rather than this supposed Thing called Being. He's analyzing Existence in a personified form, rather than as a process in space-time. This is his deity. ... Okay, so... Life and Lack. Those two could be the real opposites we're looking for. They're flawed, but poetic. We could stick with the focus on Actions such as being, but then we lose our sacred Eternal Truths angle. We'll have to admit that Being happens, rather than is; no Este.

@@SolomonsCave And this is exactly why Heraclitus was correct about change and relativity. He gave us a Taoist-style wisdom that we didn't get back to until Nietzsche. Instead Parmenides, via Plato and Aristotle, won the war of conceptual framing and set the stage for Western Civilization and the internal organization of Christian polities and the hierarchical suppression of personal identity. Not that Heraclitus didn't have his major conceptual struggle, ironically, when he talked of struggle and strife but then went to play and have fun with the local kids. Struggle was seemingly irreducible, but it can be opposed to Play, and he knew it, but ...maybe... never made the connection. Fire will bring change, but so can playing with ideas. And I suppose Play and Struggle fall under the category Endeavor, Doing. ... another gerund. ... Logos is Logic, Discourse, etc., but the Big Logos is slippery to get ahold of... I call it Grammar.

This idea is a very reassuring way of seeing life and death. The living are always alive at some moments in time, always have been and will be. At other times there are their earthly remains which have likewise always existed forever. But it isn't possible for someone living to die.

How is the passing of time an illusion? I understand that people hypothesize about that, but it's simply not true for us in our practical lives. Our past is yesterday. Our future is tomorrow. Our now is here. You cannot escape that with logical games. And you can't say, 'oh, you just have bad vision;' that's a cop out. So what if there's an infinity between every whole number; I'll step right over it, as Parmenides did himself. See an arrow hanging in the air? Get off the PCP. Can't catch the turtle? That's all you.

@@floepiejane is hard to grasp. Humans perceive time like you describe it, going forward in a linear fashion. It doesn´t mean it is like that. The human perception is not the absolute truth. Humans can perceive the color red in a determinate way, but other species who can only see black and white perceive in a different way. Or some species cannot see at all. No one wants to "escape" time with logic. We are inevitably bound to it. But time, as everything and as Einstein concluded, is relative.

@@orlandocarrillo7132 the perception and experience of time is relative, not time itself.

@@floepiejane we will never know if there is an absolute version of things, as we will ever be bound to our human perception.

Cringe weeb

Hope to give it its own video one of these days :)

How so?

Yes, he can, and easily in fact, just look around you. He knew this. That's why he stacked the deck and had a goddess explain everything after putting down human rationality as mere opinion. This sounds like elitist propaganda to me, tbh.