Is mathematics the ultimate intellectual circlejerk? What was Pythagoras thinking?

[Husseinisdoingfine]

IDK what the logic pun intended of Pythagoras was. He proposed that ''God is a number'', which is just nonsense from a metaphysical standpoint. The only number God is , is: ♾. 

Can math prove itself? 

No. 

The only think Math can prove is that Math can't prove itself.

Just in my personal observation, the types of people who get into Mathematics are pseudo philosophers. Mathematicians and Physicists always say the dumbest things about reality and are only good at measuring the material world.

[Ulax]

Nice one.  agree with you, up until the last paragraph.

A lot of philosophers tend to be completely out of whack too. Levels of delusion upon delusion. Aside from the postmodernists. 

Also, w/ math i don't even think the critique needs to be as complex as that video makes out. I'd just question the foundationalist stance, and any axiom that is offered to be the base axiom of math. And ask what the axiom of that axiom is.

[Oeaohoo]

On 07/05/2022 at 10:17 PM, Husseinisdoingfine said:

IDK what the logic pun intended of Pythagoras was. He proposed that ''God is a number'', which is just nonsense from a metaphysical standpoint. The only number God is , is: ♾. 

Can math prove itself? 

No. 

The only think Math can prove is that Math can't prove itself.

You have completely missed the point of Pythagoras’ teaching. When he says that God is a number he does not mean a number in the same sense that we moderns do. Mathematics itself has changed over the centuries. The ancient Greeks didn’t even have a zero!

Pythagoras teaches that there is an original Monad which contains All. It is the One and it is also God. This Monad then splits into a Dyad. This is Two or duality. This then splits further and so is God made manifest.

The Tetractys was used as a symbol by the Pythagoreans for the full manifestation of God as the world. It has Ten numbers like the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah has ten Sephiroth.

Mathematics in those days was not just a profane science. It was a path back to the One, God. 

On 13/05/2022 at 0:16 PM, Ulax said:

A lot of philosophers tend to be completely out of whack too. Levels of delusion upon delusion. Aside from the postmodernists. 

Hahaha. A lot of philosophers tend to be completely out of whack, except the ones who deny that there is even any “wisdom” to “love”! Postmodernism is just nihilism. It looks like the Truth but that is only because it is a total inversion of it.

[Carl-Richard]

It's a definition of God that emphasises "the logos", and he probably thought mathematics was the purest or most fundamental version of it, or the most sacred symbol of God.

[Carl-Richard]

On 4.6.2022 at 0:01 AM, Oeaohoo said:

Hahaha. A lot of philosophers tend to be completely out of whack, except the ones who deny that there is even any “wisdom” to “love”! Postmodernism is just nihilism. It looks like the Truth but that is only because it is a total inversion of it.

Postmodernism is an important part of context & construct awareness. 

[Oeaohoo]

6 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

It's a definition of God that emphasises "the logos", and he probably thought mathematics was the purest or most fundamental version of it, or the most sacred symbol of God.

Yes, it emphasises the masculine aspect of God: God as unity, Logos, truth, the One. Other paths, which were also popular in the Ancient Greek world, emphasise the feminine aspect of God: God as infinity, Eros, love, the All.

6 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Postmodernism is an important part of context & construct awareness. 

Only as the self-termination of the false constructs that had been established at the onset of modern “philosophy”. A real concept is not just an arbitrary social construct, it is a potent symbol with abundant layers of significance. I’d like to see Derrida deconstruct the Sri Yantra!

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Only as the self-termination of the false constructs that had been established at the onset of modern “philosophy”. A real concept is not just an arbitrary social construct, it is a potent symbol with abundant layers of significance. I’d like to see Derrida deconstruct the Sri Yantra!

It still has its place in a dialectic between deconstruction and construction, which is how metamodernity and beyond keeps itself sober. There is otherwise a danger of thinking that zooming out through levels of analysis is a way towards true objectivity. The postmodern impulse will then correct course and say: despite how meta one's worldview appears to be, it's still mediated by context&construct.

[Oeaohoo]

@Carl-Richard Interesting response. Some questions: By metamodernity do you mean that which has/will come after postmodernity? Where do you think that zooming out through levels of analysis gets you? Is there a way towards true objectivity? Is there no way out of contexts and constructs?

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

By metamodernity do you mean that which has/will come after postmodernity?

Yes. Metamodernity is when postmodernity re-integrates some of the aspects of modernity (progress, meta-narratives etc.), more specifically a metatheoretical/systems/biopsychosocial evolutionary lens. It says that we have to work with the natural impetus of evolutionary systems and not against them. Examples are Game B, Spiral Dynamics, Integral Theory and Nordic metamodernism. You get ideas like radical inclusivity/pluralism ("don't hate the hateful"), "transcend and include", "don't abolish modern society/technology and escape to nature; marry them!"

 

9 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Where do you think that zooming out through levels of analysis gets you?

You get increasingly more useful models/fictions for addressing the survival challenges that you've defined as important. An example is again zooming out and seeing the relationship between biological, psychological, societal and evolutionary factors. The postmodern critique helps to keep that within the pragmatic frame, rather than making hasty conclusions of universality or objectivity (e.g. "my model applies to everything/everyone" or "my model is not merely an useful fiction; it's absolute truth").

 

9 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Is there a way towards true objectivity? Is there no way out of contexts and constructs?

True objectivity lies outside all relative contexts and constructs (the transcendent, the formless, the absolute, God etc.), so in that sense, there is a way out (mysticism), but it's generally not a good survival strategy on its own. If you care about survival, the intellect (rationality, science, morality etc.) and its relative biases should not (and cannot) be abandoned, as survival is inherently a type of bias. Mysticism that outright denies intellect leads to naive skepticism and nihilism, loss of order, direction, purpose etc. For the sake of functionality, being (the East) must be married with meaning (the West).

[Oeaohoo]

13 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

You get increasingly more useful models/fictions for addressing the survival challenges that you've defined as important. An example is again zooming out and seeing the relationship between biological, psychological, societal and evolutionary factors. The postmodern critique helps to keep that within the pragmatic frame, rather than making hasty conclusions of universality or objectivity (e.g. "my model applies to everything/everyone" or "my model is not merely an useful fiction; it's absolute truth").

Wouldn't your models and fictions become increasingly less useful the more you zoom out? After all, the process of zooming out is essentially one of becoming further and further removed from the immediate situation, which is the only place in which any utility could be applied (unless we mean a sort of spiritual utility). Maybe this is what you mean by the "stage green" postmodern critique keeping "stage yellow" metamodernism within the pragmatic frame? From what you have said, however - and this is certainly how it seems to me - postmodernism is only deconstructive whilst metamodernism reintegrates "construction". This seems to imply that the latter is more pragmatic: after all, "man cannot live by deconstruction alone"!

Your prior comment makes more sense now:

18 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

It still has its place in a dialectic between deconstruction and construction, which is how metamodernity and beyond keeps itself sober. There is otherwise a danger of thinking that zooming out through levels of analysis is a way towards true objectivity. The postmodern impulse will then correct course and say: despite how meta one's worldview appears to be, it's still mediated by context&construct.

Why isn't zooming out through levels of analysis a way towards true objectivity? On a practical level you can never zoom out far enough, and so like you said you will always be somewhat bound by "context&construct", but to me it seems that true objectivity could be formulated as something like: the Limit from X to Infinite of Zooming Out.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

Wouldn't your models and fictions become increasingly less useful the more you zoom out? After all, the process of zooming out is essentially one of becoming further and further removed from the immediate situation, which is the only place in which any utility could be applied (unless we mean a sort of spiritual utility).

Maybe in an isolated sense (as there is a trade-off in choosing different levels of analysis), but in the larger scheme of things, you only end up covering more ground, because the higher levels aren't contradicting the lower. For example, SD doesn't explicitly describe or explain DNA, genetics or evolutionary game theory, but the things it does explain is certainly not incompatible with those things. It captures larger structures, hence it's systemic, biopsychosocial, metatheoretical etc.

 

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

Maybe this is what you mean by the "stage green" postmodern critique keeping "stage yellow" metamodernism within the pragmatic frame? From what you have said, however - and this is certainly how it seems to me - postmodernism is only deconstructive whilst metamodernism reintegrates "construction". This seems to imply that the latter is more pragmatic: after all, "man cannot live by deconstruction alone"!

I mean pragmatic in the sense that one recognizes conceptual constructs and theoretical models as useful fictions – nothing more, nothing less. Reality seems to work "as if" what one is postulating is true, i.e. descriptive, explanatory and predictive utility. You could say postmodernism takes this conclusion too far and gets lost in the weeds ("all metanarratives are equally valid or invalid"), meanwhile metamodernism sticks its head up and regains some perceived sense of control. It does so by conceding that it's indeed only a perceived sense of control, but that this is still useful ("an useful fiction"), unlike say modernism which is stuck in a type of naive realism ("this is objective reality").

 

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

Why isn't zooming out through levels of analysis a way towards true objectivity? On a practical level you can never zoom out far enough, and so like you said you will always be somewhat bound by "context&construct", but to me it seems that true objectivity could be formulated as something like: the Limit from X to Infinite of Zooming Out.

It's not just a practical problem, but also a theoretical one. Models are supposed to simplify reality into neat categories whereby one can e.g. create explanations (reducing one category to another, e.g. "biological inheritance is the generational transfer of genes"). If reality is indeed infinite, then the conceptual approach will never give a complete account. In a sense, giving a partial account is the point. That is what is useful.

[Oeaohoo]

@Carl-Richard Thanks for your reply, I understand your perspective much more clearly now.

The problem I have with all of this is that it seems to imply a very one-way relationship between man and truth. It is as though all we can ever have access to are our own models, theories and fantasies, which - whilst they might be able to become ever more refined - are fundamentally empty; better and better approximations to reality but never reality itself. As you've seen, I have made my traditional inclinations quite plain elsewhere on this forum, and I understand that in this context they can probably only seem like Stage Blue retrogression, but all of this stands in direct contradiction to the doctrine of Revelation: a symbol that has been divinely inspired is not just a limited man-made construct that can be deconstructed by the tools of the limited human mind. It is an archetype in the original sense of the word, a potent and and multi-faceted symbol with an indefinite possibility for application and interpretation.

To bring it back to the original subject of this post, it is like the numbers that Pythagoras spoke of. These numbers were not just arbitrary symbols for man to use to manipulate reality for his own material and technological advancement, they were symbols of metaphysical principles.

[Carl-Richard]

@Oeaohoo

I would say that the knowing of God's fundamental nature (God as Oneness, which is one form of revelation) is exactly that: it goes beyond constructs and contexts. However, the mind has a tendency to corrupt such teachings in retrospect (the moment they're put into language), especially when it comes in other forms of revelation like visions or voices from God (which are often inherently linguistic).

(This may seem like a tangent, but it's related): With regards to say eschatological visions, a postmodern question could be: are you interpreting them literally or metaphorically? Are they literally about the end of the world, or are they a symbol for e.g. the general fight between good and evil? For example, I really like the story of the Fall as a metaphor for the origin of metacognition (or reflective self-awareness), i.e. the time when humans really became human (which probably happened as recently as 30-50k years ago): we ate from the tree of knowledge and became aware of the fact that we were naked.

You could argue that such ancient myths were designed to be taken metaphorically, as they predate rigorous sequential reasoning and instead rely on the mind's innate quality of making associations as a means of communication.

This associative quality, in that it's inarticulate and intuitive, is driven by the very roots of your being (archetypes, the unconscious), and stories like the Fall can therefore serve as a sort of deep memory cue for those aspect within yourself (in that you "remember" the fall into self-awareness of your ancestors through your DNA so to speak). Pre-literate mythic people would be much more attuned to this than we are, as they were again less burdened by the noise of the intellect.

So in a way, the inarticulate or metaphorical ways of communication are both less corruptible and more amendable to the deeper truths of your being. (If this seems disorganized, it's because I first misinterpreted your comment and then had to rewrite some stuff, and also the fact that I just recently fixed a broken sleeping schedule and threw all my hormones out of whack ).

[Oeaohoo]

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I would say that the knowing of God's fundamental nature (God as Oneness, which is one form of revelation) is exactly that: it goes beyond constructs and contexts. However, the mind has a tendency to corrupt such teachings in retrospect (the moment they're put into language), especially when it comes in other forms of revelation like visions or voices from God (which are often inherently linguistic).

Yes, of course the knowing of God's fundamental nature must always be beyond all limited constructs and contexts. As far as the corruption through expression, I do agree that this is inevitable whatever mode is chosen, but I think it is worth pointing out that there are many other modes of expression which are much less corruptible than language: visions (like you said, and which are often not only strictly visual), Mantras, Mandalas, Yantras, Music and other non-verbal arts, and many ancient languages have a quality which is symbolic in a way which transcends the limitations of pure conceptuality.

To me this is why postmodernism could only ever have arisen on Christian ground: Christianity is one of the only religions not to have a sacred language associated with it. Christ spoke in Aramaic (a corrupted and colloquial form of Hebrew mixed in with other Semitic dialects) but, at least to my knowledge, even today after the recovery of many long lost Gnostic texts, none of his original Aramaic survives. Even the Hebrew Gospel is actually a translation from the Greek! This among other things gave Christianity a one-sidedly "logocentric", analytic, speculative, detached and theological character, devoid of some of the potency of pure metaphysical symbolism which is often conveyed through a sacred language (Sanskrit, Zend, Arabic, Hebrew), which has inevitably rebounded in the modern methods of deconstruction.

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

You could argue that such ancient myths were designed to be taken metaphorically, as they predate rigorous sequential reasoning and instead rely on the mind's innate quality of making associations as a means of communication.

So in a way, the inarticulate or metaphorical ways of communication are both less corruptible and more amendable to the deeper truths of your being.

How else can you communicate? If everything is One, surely there can only be associations?

It's interesting to me that you agree that language has shifted from being an implicative and associative medium to one which is explicit, and that these older forms of communication are therefore more amendable to expressing the deeper truths. Like you say, this is the Fall into duality and reflective self-awareness. I guess this is why you also refer to these deeper truths as being rooted in the "archetypes" and the "collective unconscious", implying that what all of this represents is a sort of collective emerging out of the swamp of pre-consciousness and awakening to consciousness itself (or "meta-cognition").

To me this also implies that time must be in a certain way if not cyclic (as I was saying in my other thread) then at least circular or Ouroboric: in the beginning is total unconsciousness; then there is a progressive development into consciousness (this being the "fall") and then a gradual reascension into superconsciousness; in the end is total superconsciousness. What do you think of this? Does this fit with whichever models you find to be most truthful?

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

(If this seems disorganized, it's because I first misinterpreted your comment and then had to rewrite some stuff, and also the fact that I just recently fixed a broken sleeping schedule and threw all my hormones are out of whack )

Haha, that's OK, all made sense to me. Also, my Stage Blue side can't help pointing out, congratulations on 6,606 posts! Here's a song to celebrate such dark omens:

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Oeaohoo