self evident

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billcu1

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This is what I am understanding so far of Thomism. To be self evident the predicate and subject must be the same. Now what exactly does that mean? “The same”? Also Truth is self evident. If one says there is no truth ie “God” and he is correct then there is truth. And God is truth. It seems to me that all things are God. We know God is love. Love is the “holy spirit” personage. What the father and son see when they look at each other. But these things can be understood only by faith hence this is a “mystagogy” or mystery. Sound right?

Bill
 
What the Father and Son see looking at each other is their understanding of the other (intellect, knowing). The Holy Spirit is actualized love (breathing themselves out into the other, union with the other, so that the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son) meaning the Will. Love (the Spirit) is at Rest (satisfied) when the Lover is one with the Beloved.

That the Father, Son, and Spirit are, and that they are One - that is the Mystery, that is revealed. What was said above is reasoning about the revelation, that makes reasonable sense if the revelation is true (which requires trust in the person who brought the revelation).
 
Do you have a reference to Thomas’ understanding of “To be self evident the predicate and subject must be the same”?
I would have to re-read it to refresh my soul’s animation of my conscious memory.
 
billcu1 said:
This is what I am understanding so far of Thomism. To be self evident the predicate and subject must be the same. Now what exactly does that mean? “The same”? Also Truth is self evident. If one says there is no truth ie “God” and he is correct then there is truth. And God is truth. It seems to me that all things are God. We know God is love. Love is the “holy spirit” personage. What the father and son see when they look at each other. But these things can be understood only by faith hence this is a “mystagogy” or mystery. Sound right?

Bill
Click to expand...
Something is self evident when its truth cannot be demonstrated, it is just accepted. For example, a thing cannot be and not be in the same respect at the same time. Nothing can be true and false in the same way at the same time.

That God is truth is not self evident, it is something that must be demonstrated or proven. Divine mysteries are not examples of self evident truths, they are matters of faith and cannot be demonstrated. The ground of their truth is Divine Revelation, God’s own word.

God Bless
Linus2nd
 
billcu1 said:
This is what I am understanding so far of Thomism. To be self evident the predicate and subject must be the same. Now what exactly does that mean?

Bill
Click to expand...
I’ve never heard “self-evident” defined in that way.

“Self-evident” should mean that the truth of a proposition cannot be demonstrated because there is no other possibility of stating the truth in precisely that way and therefore we consent to the way it is stated…

for example:

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

If you said, The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, this would call for a proof because we do not see how that can in any way be true … and of course there is no proof.
 
I was listening to a Summa discourse on youtube. I will try to find it. I will read the online Summa too. It’s possible that I may not be understanding. I do know that Jesus very much told us to pray for things by the hoy spirit and said he would leave it to us because he was going away.

Bill
 
Aquinas says that things that are beginingless and endless and therefore do not have in between “existence” is ridiculous. I see no reason why such a thing cannot exist, or should I say, not-exist. For in order to exist, one must’ve at some point been non-existent. We are continually coming in and out of existence. Is what is “real” around us and ourselves really real? Yes and no. There is existence and non-existence I have heard said. Like if you are dead you must’ve been alive. Likewise if one is alive they must’ve been dead. I am not saying there is no God. Aquinas quite clearly makes the case against that. I am saying there are at least 2 “realities”. Well actually as as many as there are people at least. Opinions?

Bill
 
A=A
A has the property of "A"ness.
The subject and predicate are the same.
A=A is self-evident
 
wittgenstein said:
A=A
A has the property of "A"ness.
The subject and predicate are the same.
A=A is self-evident
Click to expand...
But then:

Socrates is Socrates is also A=A.

This, however, is not self evident because the proposition says nothing. Rather, it states a tautology (a redundancy), as the real Ludwig Wittgenstein would put it.

“A line is the shortest distance between two points,” is self-evident, but is not a tautology, because the predicate says something about the subject that was not known until the predicate arrived. 😉

“All men are mortal” also is self-evident. We intuit immediately the truth of the proposition, yet the predicate is not identical to the subject. A is not equal to A. Rather, A has the property of B. Moreover, A (Man) is a noun, whereas B (mortal) is an adjective, so that cannot be a matter of A=A.
 
Charlemagne,
So your self-evident equality would read:
StraightLine = ShortestDistanceBetweenTwoPoints
yet self-evident would not read:
Socrates = Socrates

Bill,
You wrote “we are continually coming in and out of existence” and " if one is alive they must’ve been dead" - the last phrase, may have been a misstatement of something like this " if one is alive they must’ve been **nothing **prior to being alive" ???

Do you mean “we” individually are repeating existence, non-existence? or that each individual "was not, then IS, then dies (or suffers corruption)?
(I do not think of there existing a “not-alive Me being”, but I am only “Me Being” if and while I am alive, - which would not contradict me, my soul, being after this body dies and is no longer part of me but is a corpse.)

God, the eternal (no before, no after), knows all.
One thing he knows is something “not-God” that is also “not-eternal”.
He always knows this “not-God”, and the “not-God” has its being just as it is known by God, meaning temporally, without God suddenly doing a “movement” to “now create”.
He knows the “not-God” as “dependent, contingent on cause”, and it “is”.
He knows his union with the “not-God” and, therefore, that it will be eternal in its future, “redeemed reality” - not independently eternal, but “participating in the eternal as one contingent united to its cause”.
 
John_Martin said:
Charlemagne,
So your self-evident equality would read:
StraightLine = ShortestDistanceBetweenTwoPoints
yet self-evident would not read:
Socrates = Socrates

Bill,
You wrote “we are continually coming in and out of existence” and " if one is alive they must’ve been dead" - the last phrase, may have been a misstatement of something like this " if one is alive they must’ve been **nothing **prior to being alive" ???

Do you mean “we” individually are repeating existence, non-existence? or that each individual "was not, then IS, then dies (or suffers corruption)?
(I do not think of there existing a “not-alive Me being”, but I am only “Me Being” if and while I am alive, - which would not contradict me, my soul, being after this body dies and is no longer part of me but is a corpse.)

God, the eternal (no before, no after), knows all.
One thing he knows is something “not-God” that is also “not-eternal”.
He always knows this “not-God”, and the “not-God” has its being just as it is known by God, meaning temporally, without God suddenly doing a “movement” to “now create”.
He knows the “not-God” as “dependent, contingent on cause”, and it “is”.
He knows his union with the “not-God” and, therefore, that it will be eternal in its future, “redeemed reality” - not independently eternal, but “participating in the eternal as one contingent united to its cause”.
Click to expand...
Before alive being nothing no. I stated “If one is alive they must’ve been dead.” Dead from a string of lives. One dies, and a part of us reborn. Until One such as Jesus takes us out of this mire and into a place that has been prepared. no-thing is the opposite of thingness. non-existence opposed to existence. It only makes sense that if one exists they must’ve been non-existent. I don’t know that any of this would apply to God.

Bill
 
John_Martin said:
Charlemagne,
So your self-evident equality would read:
StraightLine = ShortestDistanceBetweenTwoPoints
yet self-evident would not read:
Socrates = Socrates
Click to expand...
Correct.

Correct>

Socrates=Socrates tells us nothing because the subject is identical to the predicate.

So it is a tautology.

StraightLine = ShortestDistanceBetweenTwoPoints is not a tautology, because the predicate tells us something about the subject that is self evident, in that it could tell us nothing else but what the predicate tells us, and it can be demonstrated by excluding all other definitions of a straight line.
 
billcu1 said:
Before alive being nothing no. I stated “If one is alive they must’ve been dead.” Dead from a string of lives. One dies, and a part of us reborn. Until One such as Jesus takes us out of this mire and into a place that has been prepared. no-thing is the opposite of thingness. non-existence opposed to existence. It only makes sense that if one exists they must’ve been non-existent. I don’t know that any of this would apply to God.

Bill
Click to expand...
So you don’t conceive of a living ME saying, “I am existent (and I am only I as a Living Being), where prior to 1952 I was non-existent (for I am not I as dead)” Prior to my birth, there is nothing that can say, “I am”. Living, “I am”. There is nothing, and suddenly there is something, alive, me, saying, “I am”. If I die, nothing says, “I am”.

(you might argue that my “soul” could still say, “I am” after I die, but not really - the soul needs its body to speak, or even think, those words. It has none, thus does no thinking as we understand thinking. And it cannot become alive again in a new body, because its “I am” meaning is suited only to its own body, which is now decomposing or fully dust. We are individual from all other living things, we are not a living thing that makes appearances multiple times in the various centuries of the world. One time only.)
 
John_Martin said:
So you don’t conceive of a living ME saying, “I am existent (and I am only I as a Living Being), where prior to 1952 I was non-existent (for I am not I as dead)” Prior to my birth, there is nothing that can say, “I am”. Living, “I am”. There is nothing, and suddenly there is something, alive, me, saying, “I am”. If I die, nothing says, “I am”.

(you might argue that my “soul” could still say, “I am” after I die, but not really - the soul needs its body to speak, or even think, those words. It has none, thus does no thinking as we understand thinking. And it cannot become alive again in a new body, because its “I am” meaning is suited only to its own body, which is now decomposing or fully dust. We are individual from all other living things, we are not a living thing that makes appearances multiple times in the various centuries of the world. One time only.)
Click to expand...
In answering your first sentence, I would say What is existence? What is living? It all depends on what you’re speaking of. I am well aware of my own history. If a blind man was told all of his life by others what a door is like and he came up with all kinds of conceptions and believed “There are no such thing as doors.” And a man who could see told him there’s a door there. “No, Nope replies the blind man. There is no door there.” What does the man who can see think?
Are we a living being and at the same time another living being? I am a non-human being that is outside of time (I will not speak her name). At the same time I am not her and human and inside time. She sends her emanations into the 3 times. I am one of them. I am an independent being and an emanation of another being. Depends on your point of view. I know where I was and what was going on in the 16th century. But I will not get into that.
Code: 
Sorry it took so long to answer. I have been at my mother's house. What do you think about this idea of time? If I were sitting at a table with you and picked up a glass of water and drank it and set it down, are there "realities" out there where we were sitting at that table and I didn't pick up that water and drink? Cite whomever I am curious.
God Bless
 
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