To ask “what is before what is first?” is a nonsense question.
To deny first principles is to invoke an infinite regress in which nothing can be known or shown to be true.
So he’s either irrational by dint of nonsense or by the rejection of reasoning.
So he’s irrational.
We have to be careful of spurious “how” questions, e.g. of the sort Kant made famous.
There is perhaps a good deal to be said and thought about HOW we cognize the First Principles, the Ἀρχαί, but it is a very different matter to deny that we DO cognize First Principles.
The First Principles AND our cognition of them are BOTH self-evident.
HOW do we KNOW that “all wholes are composed of parts”?
That is a very difficult question.
DO we KNOW that “all wholes are composed of parts”?
Yes, we do know that. THAT is not a difficult question.
We must not conflate WHETHER with HOW.
It is the First Principles and our cognition of them which give us our HIGHEST STANDARD of what it means to BE EVIDENT.
The concept of “evidence” is DERIVATIVE from our awareness of the First Principles.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Aristotle’s relationship to Plato on this point is misunderstood.
I there were a “Platonism” scale from 0-5, Plato would be a 3 and Aristotle a 2, whereas the members of the Academy against who Aristotle contended would be more of a 4.
Assuming we equate “Platonism” (much too simply) as “realism regarding abstract entities.”
Plato did not, e.g. think artifacts like toasters or houses had an ἰδέα in the full sense.
Aristotle is ENTIRELY clear in the Metaphysics: YES, independent abstract primary substances do exist. In other words, Aristotle affirms the existence of PLATONICA.
He does seem to think these are FEWER than Plato did, but he in NO WAY, SHAPE, or FORM (pun intended) DENIES THEM.
It changes the first premise of the ontological argument and declares that the NEW premise (which the critic added) makes the ORIGINAL argument invalid, when, in fact, it is the new, added premise that does that.
It has been the case for some time that things below the level of aggregates of molecules are NOT perceptible to the senses: atoms are not, forces are not, sub-atomic quantum phenomena are not, macrocosmic relativistic phenomena are not.
It would be a grave mistake to confuse “the physical” with “perceptible by the senses.” This may have worked in the 18th century, but not really past that.
Furthermore there are many physical things that cannot be understood MERELY on the basis of raw "sense data.”
The primary entities with which we deal are THINGS, natural and artificial, e.g. trees and computers—but sense perception alone CANNOT TELL WHAT THINGS ARE.
∙ Allowing men to appropriate the status of women is good for women.
∙ Allowing women to murder their children is good for women.
∙ Socializing women to imitate men is good for women.
The reason we “do a 180˚” on “other women’s issues” is because you are 180˚ wrong on those also.
Conservatives care much more about women than feminists. We care about real women. Feminist care about abstractions which they are happy to harm real women over.
Feminists “care about women” is just the same way communists “care about workers” — they wouldn’t mind murdering them by the hundreds of millions in order to “smash Patriarchy” — which of course is the name for anti-natural imaginary utopian state.
So Dianna E. Anderson (whoever that is), is going to whitesplain to other "ignorant whites" (nevermind that others might have this question "Why can't you be transracial if you can be transgender?"
First, if you want some orientation, you can watch @BenjaminABoyce's video on this thread:
You can also have a look at philosopher Rebecca Tuvel's infamous "In Defense of Transracialism." sites.middlebury.edu/sexandsociety/… (Excerpt below).
Tuvel's case is straightforward: almost all arguments that justify transgenderism seem to also justify transracialism, so, since we accept transgenderism, we should accept transracialism.
That we do not is irrational, and must be a prejudice.
And to state the obvious, this is totally incoherent.
Which is why that poor young novice philosophy professor, meaning well, got so savagely attacked for making the rather compelling case that every argument for transgenderism can work for transracialism.
The “white people cannot be black because they haven’t grown up having the black experience” argument is supposed to WORK for race. But if you say “men cannot become women because they haven’t grown up having women’s experience under Patriarchy” … you’re a hateful, bigoted TERF.
But they are, of course, the same argument: “Person P who is A cannot become B where A and B are socially constructed roles, if P has not had the full lived experience of being (assigned as) B from the beginning."