Your opinion on the following statement:

[Mudhammam]

"Coming to be is for the sake of being, not being for the sake of coming to be." - Aristotle

[Losty]

Most things I do are for the sake of coming

[Minimalist]

Maybe it made sense in Greek?

[Jackalope]

I'm thinking either something was lost in the translation, -or- Aristotle was a bit of a twat.

[Mudhammam]

The rest of the quote I have goes:

"Hence Empedocles was wrong in saying that many attributes belong to animals because it happened so in their coming to be, for instance that their backbone is such because it happened to get broken by bending."

:-|

[Chad32]

I don't get it. Is this another "meaning in life" question?

[Mudhammam]

I don't get it. Is this another "meaning in life" question?

Seems to be a statement opposed rather to the use of chance in explanation.

[bennyboy]

This reminds me of arguments we had a few months back about particles, objects and reality. Let's say there's a wave of water. We know it's made up of particles, but we treat it like an entity. So is it more correct to say that the particles are an expression of an underlying truth-- waveness-- or simply that our word "wave" is just a label for what we see water doing?

I interpret "coming to be" as referring to whatever processes organize disparate particles into something that, while made of those particles, can also be said to have a singular existence, and "being" as the thing. So the question if I'm right is: are things just the course expression of underlying truths, or are the things themselves the truths, and the underlying forces the mechanism by which those truths are expressed? To reference your comment about chance-- what is the chance that the particular collection of water molecules in an ocean would form into a particular wave? Infinitesimal. But what is the chance that the wave will form on the ocean? 100%, I think, in Aristotle's view-- the ocean "uses" the mechanisms of QM, gravity, etc. to manifest a wave.

It seems to me that Aristotle is essentially a kind of physico-idealist, i.e. that he thinks the forms, shapes, colors etc. that we experience are reality, and that the underlying physical mechanisms (which we currently have at QM) are subservient to that reality. I agree with this: I think that the world could exist as we experience it with a different underlying mechanism (i.e. if we were in the Matrix or in the Mind of God), but I do not think that there would really be any meaning to those mechanisms without the objects which supervene on them. So to look at the wave example in QM-- there's no reason for QM particles to manifest, and no reason why they would manifest as objects, some of which have names and argue on forums; but since the existence of things is (apparently) a philosophical necessity, then the QM particles represent a flexible enough mechanism to allow things to manifest.

Or. . . fuck Arisotle, he's just pulling shit out of his ass. I'm pretty sure one of those two positions is right.

--edit--
Also, kiss my ass for adding additional context about the OP quotation as a separate post, rendering much of my voodoo search for meaning into what would now be considered a weak debating point in a discussion about evolution.

[Mudhammam]

This reminds me of arguments we had a few months back about particles, objects and reality. Let's say there's a wave of water. We know it's made up of particles, but we treat it like an entity. So is it more correct to say that the particles are an expression of an underlying truth-- waveness-- or simply that our word "wave" is just a label for what we see water doing?

I interpret "coming to be" as referring to whatever processes organize disparate particles into something that, while made of those particles, can also be said to have a singular existence, and "being" as the thing. So the question if I'm right is: are things just the course expression of underlying truths, or are the things themselves the truths, and the underlying forces the mechanism by which those truths are expressed? To reference your comment about chance-- what is the chance that the particular collection of water molecules in an ocean would form into a particular wave? Infinitesimal. But what is the chance that the wave will form on the ocean? 100%, I think, in Aristotle's view-- the ocean "uses" the mechanisms of QM, gravity, etc. to manifest a wave.

It seems to me that Aristotle is essentially a kind of physico-idealist, i.e. that he thinks the forms, shapes, colors etc. that we experience are reality, and that the underlying physical mechanisms (which we currently have at QM) are subservient to that reality. I agree with this: I think that the world could exist as we experience it with a different underlying mechanism (i.e. if we were in the Matrix or in the Mind of God), but I do not think that there would really be any meaning to those mechanisms without the objects which supervene on them. So to look at the wave example in QM-- there's no reason for QM particles to manifest, and no reason why they would manifest as objects, some of which have names and argue on forums; but since the existence of things is (apparently) a philosophical necessity, then the QM particles represent a flexible enough mechanism to allow things to manifest.

Or. . . fuck Arisotle, he's just pulling shit out of his ass. I'm pretty sure one of those two positions is right.

--edit--
Also, kiss my ass for adding additional context about the OP quotation as a separate post, rendering much of my voodoo search for meaning into what would now be considered a weak debating point in a discussion about evolution.

Great post! I especially like what you said in the second paragraph.

---

On a mostly unrelated side note, it's pretty badass that ancient humans like some of the presocratic Greek philosophers explained motion with Love and Strife and modern physics describes such apparently symmetrical properties of positive and negative charge.

[Alex K]

The rest of the quote I have goes:

"Hence Empedocles was wrong in saying that many attributes belong to animals because it happened so in their coming to be, for instance that their backbone is such because it happened to get broken by bending."

:-|

Well this makes it more concrete, so it is very useful context to make *any sense* of the first statement. What we can say for sure is that, indeed, empedocles was wrong here concerning.the details, but more correct than aristoteles: animals are indeed the way they are because "it" (natural selection) happened so in their coming to be. However, I get the feeling that precise meanings of words matter here...