>Existences precedes essence

>Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are results of material interactions.

What exactly does this mean? I know it's a line associated with existentialism, but I never was able to figure it out.

Does it mean the actions taken during the existence of something dictates its essence?

>>2279278
In objects, part of their essence is their function ok? When I make a hammer, I make it for its purpose, which is its essence. So in inanimate objects essence precedes existence. Sartes point though, is that we are not made with purpose in mind so it is flipped. We alone are made with no purpose. So existence precedes essence.

>>2279512
So essentially, this whole thing is a myopic view of reality right? Where the world revolves around humans rather than humans being part of the world.

>>2279512
Oh, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

>Non-Aristotelianism: While Aristotle wrote that a true definition gives the essence of the thing defined (in Greek to ti ên einai, literally "the what it was to be"), general semantics denies the existence of such an 'essence'.[43] In this, general semantics purports to represent an evolution in human evaluative orientation. In general semantics, it is always possible to give a description of empirical facts, but such descriptions remain just that—descriptions—which necessarily leave out many aspects of the objective, microscopic, and submicroscopic events they describe. According to general semantics, language, natural or otherwise (including the language called 'mathematics') can be used to describe the taste of an orange, but one cannot give the taste of the orange using language alone. According to general semantics, the content of all knowledge is structure, so that language (in general) and science and mathematics (in particular) can provide people with a structural 'map' of empirical facts, but there can be no 'identity', only structural similarity, between the language (map) and the empirical facts as lived through and observed by people as humans-in-environments (including doctrinal and linguistic environments).

>>2279547
The argument doesn't say we are not part of reality, but that there is a distinction between inanimate objects and objects with free will. There clearly is a difference between the two ,and it's not that illogical to see sentient life as a higher being in some sort of ideological hierarchy. Tools still have no need to find meaning whereas we do in at least a few cases.

You could say our essence Darwinian and that merely living and being involved has purpose, but the scale of this is too grand and gives almost no direction. So you have to pick something more personal that gives you meaning unless you assume we, like the objects are not in control of our destiny. Is this what you mean? In a deterministic world I guess existence and essence are not different, but you still would have to behave like you have a choice pragmatically.

I don't really think you can argue out of this one. It is a necessary part of the human condition.

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>>2278726
>People believe that

>>2279547
No. Even "the world revolves around humans" implies a role for humans and a defined relationship to the cosmos. A moon orbits around a planet, that's what makes it a mooon, and part of what it makes it a planet.

The claim here is that Humans are unique in that their role is self-creating. You can decide you exist to make the world revolve around you, but you can decide you exist to serve creation. Humans are the only self-creating things in the universe.

>>2278726
>>2280719
>Tfw people like this have to believe that math is a social construct.

>>2280736
He's describing the "orbiting" as a flaw of the philosophy, obviously not a tenant of it.

>>2280743
give me an example of some mathematical truth which is not a social construct

>>2280719
All rational people believe it, my man.

>>2280854
Too easy. Pi. Irrational numbers. Etc.

>>2280861
What about pi is "true"? Keep in mind that perfect circles do not exist.

>>2280861
is not pi a product of two dimensional space, which is a human construction?

I don't believe that. I think on a macroscopic level, essence does precede existance. Every part of your body is crafted to serve one goal - propagating your RNA. Even your consciousness serves a fuction, because parts of the brain where it would not benefit you to be conscious, you are locked out of, such as temperature control, breathing ect.

>>2280865
Pi is a mathematical constant, it is used in numerous mathematical and physical applications from geometry to acoustics, to electromagnetism, to digital signal processing, to telecommunications, to quantum mechanics, with exactitude.

>>2280865
>Keep in mind that perfect circles do not exist.
Than to what does "do not exist" refer to?

>>2280857
>rational people
wew

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>>2280881
your mother is a prostitute

>>2280865
You see, not all circles are circles you draw with your pencil. For example, an electrical current passing through a wire will generate a circumferential magnetic field around the wire. This circumference is a perfect circle. The ratio of this circumference to its diameter is the number pie. Electromagnetic waves, albeit not circles, can be described with "perfect" periodic functions which also pressupose pi. All properties of electromagnetic, period, frequency, waves can be deduced exactly with pi. Etc.

>>2280868
No. Two-dimensional space is a mathematical object.

>>2280881
Its still an abstraction that doesn't exist outside the brain.

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>>2278714
>Order precedes Chaos

Deny Chaotic entropy all you like, you wont live forever.

>>2280906
See >>2280900

>>2280911
Is she holding the magic conch under the bowl of blood?

>>2280912
You dont know what an abstraction is, its ability to accurately describe reality is not proof of its existence.

It will always just be an abstraction, no matter how accurately it describes reality.

>>2280919
>You dont know what an abstraction
The irony.

>>2280923
Yes, the ignorance of what language and math are, and that morons take them to be LITTERAL truth is ironic.

Reality is fluid and cannot be described with words or functions.

>>2280881
I'm aware of that, you don't have to show off. There is such a thing as useful fiction, just because it has applications in physics doesn't mean it exists.

>>2280883
It means nothing in the universe is perfectly circular. The idea of a circle is not a circle.

>>2280900
>For example, an electrical current passing through a wire will generate a circumferential magnetic field around the wire. This circumference is a perfect circle.
lol, not unless the wire is perfectly cylindrical. And not on the quantum level.

>periodic functions which also pressupose pi.
Again no, have you ever heard of degrees? The Taylor series definitions of sine and cosine also don't require the use of pi. This isn't strictly relevant though because, as I said, having applications does not mean it exists.

>>2280935
>cannot be described with words or functions.
I love you humanities fags. You are like little children, or adolescents to be more accurate ;)

>>2280919
>no matter how accurately it describes reality.
But you seem to be implying that there really is a way the world is in itself!

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>>2280881
>with exactitude
Not so fast.

>>2280971
was waiting for someone to post this

>>2280935

The materialist must pressupose that all "ideal" objects such as mathematical objects are abstractions from material objects. But clearly not all mathematical objects are abstractions from things in the real world. Proof: there are finite material objects, but there are infinite (and transfinite) mathematical objects. I have proven to you that you don't know what an abstraction is, if you are using the word to things which don't apply, saying silly things, falling on your head flat and making a mess ;)

>>2280958
What is two?

Can you smell two? Can you feel two? Can you see two?

>>2280943
>It means nothing in the universe is perfectly circular.
That's not the same thing as a perfect circle not existing.

>The idea of a circle is not a circle.
Right. It's a arrangement of matter. So when you say "a perfect circle does not exist" I assume you're not saying the arrangement of matter in my brain does not exist. But if not that, what doesn't exist? It can't be an idea that doesn't exist.

So math essentially existed in essence before it was actually discovered and appropriated by humans who created a shell/language which drew from the preexisting existence of mathematics?

>>2280943
>wire etc
Again the obstinancy of pi in literally infinite other examples suggest what everybody already knows, that it is a universal and not a human construction.

>degrees
Not this one is actually a social construct lol.

>Taylor series
What are you even trying to argue with this? This is one definition. Trigonometric functions also can be proven with basic calculus using pi.

>>2280998
Bingo Bango.

>>2280998
Mathematical objects are mind-independent objects that are can be intuited a priori, irrespective of human perception and experience. Sets of physical objects can be mapped into sets of mathematical objects -- always tentatively and never 100% -- and, if this is reasonably done, mathematical objects can be used to describe and predict the behavior physical phenomena with an increasing degree of accuracy.

>>2281037

I did the idea deeply compelling even as I find it completely bonkers.

>>2278714
What is essence?
What is existence?
Doens't the word essence come from the Latin word essere, which means "to be"? Can something "be"and not exist? Can something exist and not have an essence?

>>2281014
This is the immediate gratifying answer

>>2281037
This is the interesting one.

>>2280976
>there are finite material objects, but there are infinite (and transfinite) mathematical objects
What's your point here? Abstractions are always considered to have some qualities of concrete things but not others. Infinite sets just lack the quality of finitude. The reason this is useful is that we often deal with things that are, for all practical purposes, unlimited, even if they aren't actually infinite.

>>2280998
Absolutely not.

>>2280992
>So when you say "a perfect circle does not exist" I assume you're not saying the arrangement of matter in my brain does not exist. But if not that, what doesn't exist? It can't be an idea that doesn't exist.
I mean the mathematical definition of a circle doesn't refer to something real.

Reality is just a word on its own
A concept if given thought
A experience if accepted

Reality is perception. No perception = no reality
OR to put it another way: if you fuck your perception, you fuck your reality. They are mutually inclusive

>>2281046
The crazy thing is that it's the least bonkers of the options. We had something called "immanent realism" where numbers are a property of things in the universe. For example, we have two apples, therefor 'two' is a thing inside the universe. This had a problem with things like infinite and negatives, but then things like set theory and imaginary numbers came up. Where is an imaginary number in the universe?

And then the pragmatists/psychologism school came out, and that has problems with like, if I am able to change math, and it's actually useful to me, my change is now literally true.

>>2281079
>I mean the mathematical definition of a circle
Is this a real object?

>>2281052
The idea may precede the object just as the object may precede the idea. This is likely to be true of many things. Ideas, constructions. What are they but an expression upon this existence.

>>2281100
Of course not, but it has a meaning.

>>2281079
The materialist worldview pressuposes that all mathematical objects are abstractions from physical. Some of them (actually an infinite quantity of them) aren't. Therefore this pressuposition is wrong. I think I made myself clear.

>>2278714
>not being unironically pythagorean
>2011+6

>>2281126
>a meaning
Is THIS a real object?

>>2281144
And does it have essence and existence, or just one or the other?

>>2281037
wouldn't there just be one mathematical idea, which is reality itself?

>>2281178
If you're a radical monist, yeah.

>>2281187
>2017
>not being a radical monist

>>2281144
No. Stop.

>>2281235
No you stop it's a valid question you psued. If we are even still going on the axiom that reality is monistic, then the fact that we can even consider something means it exists materially. These symbols exist in our brain. They are stripped from the essence of objective reality. I know the number two because I have seen a pair of things before. Symbols and ideas no matter how abstracted are still physical. This is why we can't imagine a color that we haven't seen. Again, the symbol is taken from the essence of an object.

>>2280857
Rational people don't believe in materialism or monism.

>>2280622
Hammers are easy, but what is the essence and purpose of a dog, or a cat, or an ostrich?

>>2282513
>but what is the essence and purpose of a dog,
To sniff.
>or a cat,
To pounce.
>or an ostrich?
To be turned into middling quality jerky for people with more money than taste.

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>>2279735
>Aristotle holds that the soul (psyche, ψυχή) is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in. That it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul—the intellect—can exist without the body, but most cannot.) It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of spiritual substance "inhabiting" a body. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle's term soul is better translated as lifeforce.[1]