Did the downfall of western philosophy begin with William of Ockham?

>>10016473
No, it began with Roger Bacon and hasn't stopped since. Peirce and William James come up as close seconds and thirds.

>>10016480
You view empiricism as a greater threat to Truth than nominalism?

When it became math and "critical theory".

>>10016498
I find a denial of ontology to be a greater threat to Truth than any other epistemic methodology you can conjure up. Truth is NOT "what works"

>>10016618
Well prove me that things that I can't percieve exist

>>10017611
Why do you think ontology is only about what can't be perceived? What if I asked for an ontology of our best physical theories?

>>10016498
>capital t Truth
No such thing.

>>10016618
You actually think ontology is contrary to pragmatism? That's insanity. The universe is a process, not a static object, and descriptions of it must be adaptive and evolving.

>>10016480
>William James

wut?

>>10017646
He just read Sam Harris once.

>>10017646
pragmatists are retarded

>>10017643
totally false, hop off the heraclitean cock already. Parmenides proved that nothing changes before philosophy even got started

>>10017653
>nothing changes
All we see is change, ah but philosophy must go beyond our experiences because reasons. I bet you're one of those retards who spouts about "the myth of progress" as well.

>>10017658
>unironically being a naive realist

Whatever helps you sleep at night, friend. Non-being cannot be.

>>10017663
Non-being would have been your only shot at eternity, so thanks for proving my point and your own ignorance. But by all means keep listening to the soothing sounds of Harris as you fall asleep. I'll be thinking about the real world.

>>10017670
I'll pretend you haven't entirely missed the substance of what I'm saying and help you out. Nothing comes from nothing. Any process philosophy must confront that simple principle. It should tell you something that Aristotle easily dispatched pluralist ontologies while struggling to counter eleatic monism

>>10017677
You're seeking proof in metaphysics, a regressive excursion of the human mind into itself, not reality. Fine, but don't pretend you have any legitimate reason to hold this in higher authority than worldly observation. I don't buy it.

>>10017686
Don't pretend like process metaphysics isn't metaphysics. You're positing an ontology, same as I. It just so happens that mine makes more sense

>>10017653
Okay, now that Ben Stiller has so thoroughly indoctrinated you, you might want to ask a question James once posed.

https://archive.org/details/islifeworthlivin00jameuoft

>>10017696
No, they are both arbitrary, which is why the only real criteria for testing them is practical, not how far they can be stretched within themselves.

>>10017699
>caring about ethics

zzzzzzz

>>10017700
Can you test the proposition that something comes from nothing?

>>10017706
Of course not. Nothing doesn't exist. It's like 23i.

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>>10017706
>not caring about ethics

>>10017716
>Nothing doesn't exist

Exactly. And a static ontology follows completely from this principle (which is in itself a metaphysical supposition, albeit an entirely reasonable one). Nothing comes from nothing, there cannot be generation and destruction, as those processes necessarily involve the coming-to-be from what-is-not, hence nothing changes.

>>10017726
>nothing comes from nothing
I'm not being mean, it's just that this is a meaningless statement. I may as well say flagabop comes from flagabop.

We see transformation, it is there in front of our eyes. You can't use language to freeze the world in place. It's meaningless.

>>10017736
It's an entirely substantive statement, as you yourself afforded it a negative existential status, you implicitly acknowledge that we can speak of such matters. You should know better than to rely entirely on the fallibility of sense perception. We can in fact reason about the a-priori structure of the world

>>10017663
Parmenides is the easier type of thought to cope with. It's stable and sleepy. Heraclitus creates massive anxieties for those who can't find a way to create meaning in the endless Becoming and destruction

>>10017744
relativism is the sanctuary of a childish mind

>>10017742
I can say that the Easter bunny isnt real. Sure, we can make up stories about the easter bunny and talk about it, but that doesn't mean he will come hopping into your lounge room and shit out a chocolate egg for you. I rely on knowledge of the world and knowledge that that knowledge is filtered through body and mind. We cannot know of anything outside of that process.

>>10017755
And we know that the Easter bunny won't, because he isn't real, and we are entirely confident in making that assertion. Why? Because we are providing a negative ontological thesis. It is the same with "Nothing" as such, which even Parmenides says cannot be spoken of, because there is nothing of which to speak. There are consequences to the Easter Bunny not existing, just as there are necessary consequences for the non-existence of nothing.

>>10017766
You've already said that nothing cannot come from nothing, so the non-existence of nothing cannot have any concequences on something. So everything that exists is not at all influenced by the existence or non-existence of nothing.

>downfall
t. poltard
Western philosophy is as good as it has ever been and it's only becoming better now that white men doesn't have monopoly in academics.

>>10017750

aphorisms are nothing but setting disparate terms on either side of a copula

>>10017771
The non-existence of nothing entails the eternity of something, from which the eleatic argument for the impossibility of change follows

>>10017779
Eternalness and malleability are not mutually exclusive, anon. Sorry if I don't reply I'm enjoying our chat but trying to get some sex and sleep as well.

>>10017788
I wouldn't deny the appearance of change, but the ontological structure of reality is ultimately static. Go have sex, I promise nothing will change.

>>10017776
>bohooo white ppl
If I quote you die

>>10017797
Good morning! So when I read this now the first thought that pops into my head is that your view is cleary odds with current scientific models of the origin and fate of the universe, whereby even material laws emerge and change over time. How would you respond to that?

>>10019284
I would respond by saying that the map is not the territory, and that you should not confuse physical models with the reality it purports to describe. Secondly, I would say that your characterization of scientific law contradicts your description of what we ascertain to be the case, which is that the universe is homogeneous and isomorphic on large scales, and the laws of natural science do not appear to change over time or space. Furthermore, I would say that ontology (usually) does not fall within the purview of science, and that the natural phenomena the natural sciences describes are quite irrelevant to our discussion regarding the ontological structure of the world. After all, Parmenides does differentiate between the "way of seeming" and "way of truth".

>>10016473
That's an interesting idea. Can you point me to a book or jstor article that develops the thesis?

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>>10016473
Western philosophy began as the downfall of Western philosophy.

>>10016473
I side with Nietzsche and consider Plato the beginning of the end. Before him there was no suggestion of there being "one truth" or "one right way."

>>10022083
>Before him there was no suggestion of there being "one truth" or "one right way."
But that's objectively fucking wrong Anon.

>>10017658
There's no point to philosophy anymore because of the attitudes you reflect. The only options are analytical truisms or continental word salad. Anyone reading philosophy in 2017 is training to be a historian, because it's dead. There's no point in philosophizing.