March 13, 2006

This Post is Old!

The post you are reading is years old and may not represent my current views. I started blogging around the time I first began to study philosophy, age 17. In my view, the point of philosophy is to expose our beliefs to rational scrutiny so we can revise them and get better beliefs that are more likely to be true. That's what I've been up to all these years, and this blog has been part of that process. For my latest thoughts, please see the front page.

Blogging Parmenides

I feel the need to point to this post about Parmenides over at Mathetes simply because ... well, because I approve of blogging about Parmenides! The post gives a good overview of Parmenides' argument for the establishment of monism. To which let me add three things:

  1. This is the oldest deductively valid argument in surviving literature.

  2. It is contained in a hexameter poem (written, presumably, in imitation of Homer and Hesiod) which begins with an appeal to divine revelation (a narrative about being carried in a chariot to meet a strange goddess who promises to reveal "the way of truth" and "the way of mortal opinions, in which there is no truth at all").

  3. In addition to becoming the father of logic by being the first to (a) write down a deductively valid argument, and (b) formulate the principle of contradiction, Parmenides also becomes the father of metaphysics (according to me) by being the first person we know of to conceive of the possibility of "representation dualism."

My complements to Kristopher on his impeccable taste in blog subjects.

Posted by Kenny at March 13, 2006 1:59 PM
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Comments

Parmenides was flawlessly correct as far as I can see - but i neen to get the entire poem - where do I get it?

Posted by: hal at April 14, 2006 7:27 AM

Most of the poem is lost. I believe that the fragments found here are all we have. But who knows what the archaeologists might turn up tomorrow? I also would very much like to have the entire poem.

Posted by: Kenny at April 17, 2006 9:11 AM

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