Very late responding to this but I appreciate you elaborating. That makes sense to me.

pretty cool website graph for charting the influence of philosophers
s4n0i.github.io/schoolofathens

Lol.

The way commies talk about this guy you would think he's the second coming of Christ

Wonder how they measured this stuff

from what I understand the guy put it together in like an hour from a large source of data, so I don't think it's totally accurate. Still pretty cool though I was able to guess a lot of philosophers before I clicked on them based on their size. Immanuel Kant, Plato, Hegel, Wittgenstein etc. ...Heidegger and Descartes should have been larger. And it's lacking Eastern philosophers, but I think their influence is a bit harder to trace based on Western data

He prolly just looked at the Wikipedia pages and looked at ‘influenced by’ or something

Finally got around to picking up Aristotle’s principal work The Metaphysics and it makes sense why I ran into an issue with causality for Thomism in retrospect, Aristotle’s notion of causality is tied to the existence of an independent material substance and I reject that substance due to my idealism that holds reality is qualitative and fundamentally mind-dependent, Kant also attributes causality as something that is structured a priori by the mind

Maybe Schopenhauer will be able to iron this out for me whenever I get around to his stuff

nah Hume is right. We have no idea the link between cause and effect. Causality is just as incomprehensible as time, space and noumenon. it can be observed a posteriori but not validated through logic or reason (yet)

You don’t feel like Kant’s a priori synthetic propositions cut into Hume’s argument against causality?

In a certain sense I side with Kant, as I still agree with many aspects of transcendental idealism. But in my opinion it still doesn't tell us - or at least prove - anything fundamental about causality (as an answer to the 'hard' problem itself.)

To be fair it's not really an idea I dedicate much mental bandwidth to anymore.

What’s your stance on the nature of causality wholly? Do you think it’s something that will never be resolved?

hmm, i'm not really sure. It depends on how long human beings are around for. But in the same way I don't think noumenal reality can ever be accessed, and in the same way I don't think we'll ever discover the idea of "why there's something rather than nothing", or the hard problem of consciousness....

But that may be a bias, just be because the idea of causality is so
incomprehensible to me personally. Ironically the answer to the question may exist somewhere outside of consciousness and/or beyond the faculties of cognition, which is how I feel about a lot of these things. The thing is there are people who believe that some of these questions have already been answered, I just happen to (vehemently) disagree with them.

do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

I feel similarly for the hunt for the answers of some these questions, (at least particularly for the hard problem of consciousness) I closely align with the Upanishadic take on the nature of it (it also harmonizes with my idealism as consciousness/mind as fundamental):

”You have only told me, this is your inner Self in the same way as people would say, 'this is a cow, this is a horse', etc. That is not a real definition. Merely saying, 'this is that' is not a definition. I want an actual description of what this internal Self is. Please give that description and do not simply say, 'this is that' –“

”Yājñavalkya says: "You tell me that I have to point out the Self as if it is a cow or a horse. Not possible! It is not an object like a horse or a cow. I cannot say, 'here is the ātman; here is the Self'. It is not possible because you cannot see the seer of seeing. The seer can see that which is other than the Seer, or the act of seeing. An object outside the seer can be beheld by the seer. How can the seer see himself? How is it possible? You cannot hear the hearer of hearing. You cannot think the Thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the Understander of understanding. That is the ātman."

”Nobody can know the ātman inasmuch as the ātman is the Knower of all things. So, no question regarding the ātman can be put, such as "What is the ātman?' 'Show it to me', etc. You cannot show the ātman because the Shower is the ātman; the Experiencer is the ātman; the Seer is the ātman; the Functioner in every respect through the senses or the mind or the intellect is the ātman. As the basic Residue of Reality in every individual is the ātman, how can we go behind It and say, 'This is the ātman?' Therefore, the question is impertinent and inadmissible. The reason is clear. It is the Self. It is not an object-na vijñāter vijñātāraṁ vijānīyāḥ, eṣa ta ātmā sarvāntaraḥ.”

"Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense"

”Then Uṣasta Cākrāyana, the questioner kept quiet. He understood the point and did not speak further.”

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, 2.4.14-15, translated by Swami Sivananda, The Upanishads: Volume 1

I find that the very nature of consciousness (well, even stripping the more spiritual and metaphysical dressing that Hinduism grants it) is unable to be explained due to it being the foundation for all subjective experiences. There’s an ofness to qualia and a je ne saís quoi to the conscious experience that cannot be replicated or broken down mechanistically, and that’s one of science’s main ways to understand and a***yze reality. I find the cases for consciousness being identical with the brain (or being a product of processes neurologically one way or another, alà emergentism) to be fairly unconvincing. I think the attempt to breakdown or find the nature of consciousness to be ouroboric and akin to trying to find water while being deep inside of an ocean.

lol

@Very_Based Why’d you scrap the post you made in here? I read it and was digesting it

I thought it was very well written and I liked some of the poetic flair you dotted in there, it closely aligns with how I think about consciousness, reality and experience overall.

Besides the two paragraphs in bold I wasn't sure if it really applied to your previous post so I deleted it. Thanks though, maybe I'll repost it tomorrow

Aquinas works from the potentials-actuals distinction set forth by Aristotle, it is thought that causality is a feature of the world itself, and it's built into the material substance which subsists and exists mind-independently.

Now with that being said, Feser illustrates the argument for a first mover (or a sort of metaphysical universalized actualizer in this sense): Let's take a cup of coffee, a table, and a floor. Now the table has the potential to be raised around roughly 4-5 feet off of the ground, this is actualized by the floor (as in it is being brought into existence), the cup of coffee has the potential to also be roughly 3-4 feet off of the ground, this is actualized by the table. The important thing for this is understanding that all of these things in this illustration are considered dependent on one another, the floor actualizes the table, the table actualizes the cup of coffee, so on and so forth. Now with that being said Aquinas takes it a step further. It isn't necessarily about what came first to actualize these sets of items, what matters is why the cup of coffee is currently 3-4 feet off of the ground, and why the table is 4-5 feet off of the ground, we can trace this back to the floor.

The floor is currently the key thing that both the table and the cup is deriving its actualization from, without the floor, the actualization of the current positions of the cup and the table is completely null and not possible. If we snatch away this floor this entire illustration collapses. What Aquinas however seeks is an explanation for, is why the universe is instantiated in a particular, organized and non-chaotic way in which it exists versus it not existing at all in the first place, or even existing in another completely different fashion than we currently know it, this is where God enters into the picture.

The floor, table and cup do not have the power to actualize its own existence off of the floor, it has to derive that power ultimately from somewhere else. Now we can segue from the cup-floor-table example and go deeper, the floor is ultimately supported by the Earth, so on and so forth, this is considered a hierarchial cause. Now the Earth also does not have an independent causal power of its own to instantiate its own existence as such. The Earth has the potential to not exist, just like any other objects within reality does. (The mere existence of these objects is the issue here, not necessarily the particular positioning or fashion in which they are put together) it is posited that there has to be something that is actualizing its existence currently, in the here and now.

In order for there to be the actualized existence for any object, there has to be something that is independent from this potentials-actuals dichotomy, and possesses the ability to actualize the existence of these objects, or otherwise we collapse into an infinite regress. There would have to be some sort of first member within these series of causes that everything else derives its power from. This is where God is conceived of as an unactualized actualizer. By virtue that things exist currently right now, there cannot be an additional entity actualizing God. Since God is purely actual with no potentialities, it is considered timeless and or immutable.

This is why Aquinas argues that the first cause has to be God, by virtue of what an unactualized actualizer would have to be like, in order to be a suitable first member to ground the actualization of existence of everything in reality. It's derived from the nature of causality v. an arbitrary sneaky assertion of God's existence, it follows rationally from the nature of potentials-actuals. In order to dispel this argument, something else would have to be presented as the ultimate metaphysical ground for existence. (Of course, assuming that you also accept material substance and everything else that comes with it) or argue against the potentials-actuals as an explanatory mechanism for causality itself.

this guy covers all bases

this was in my recommended it’s pretty good