Hello David -- > Hi Moqers & especially Mr Ham > > Take a look at this: > > http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Alain_Badiou > > Is the one impossible?
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. "Mr. Ham's" first axiom is that subjective cognizance is a precariously balanced see-saw on either side of which lies ultimate truth. The individual is free to lean in either direction, but is restrained by the force of gravity from accessing absolute truth. Neither relational logic nor, certainly, Alain Badiou's saying so is going to prove what is absolute and unfathomable by the finite mind. Leaving aside his leftist leanings as a member of the Socialist Party, and (for the moment) his association with the French existentialist school (Sartre, Beckett, etc.), here's how Wikipedia summarizes Badiou's argument that "the one is not". "He proposes as the solution to this impasse the following declaration: that the one is not. This is why Badiou accords set theory (the axioms of which he refers to as the Ideas of the multiple) such stature, and refers to mathematics as the very place of ontology: Only set theory allows one to conceive a 'pure doctrine of the multiple'. Set theory does not operate in terms of definite individual elements in groupings but only functions insofar as what belongs to a set is of the same relation as that set (that is, another set too). What separates sets out therefore is not an existential positive proposition, but other multiples whose properties validate its presentation; which is to say their structural relation. The structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one. So if one is to think of a set - for instance, the set of people, or humanity - as counting as one the elements which belong to that set, it can then secure the multiple (the multiplicities of humans) as one consistent concept (humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set. "...(This axiom [of foundation] states that all sets contain an element for which only the void [empty] set names what is common to both the set and its element.) Badiou's philosophy draws two major implications from this prohibition. Firstly, it secures the inexistence of the 'one': there cannot be a grand overarching set, and thus it is fallacious to conceive of a grand cosmos, a whole Nature, or a Being of God." It is well to remember that Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" established the metaphysics of existentialism, the primary tenet of which is that Being precedes Essence. (This, of course, is directly opposed to my Essentialist ontology.) Mathematics and formal logic (including 'set theory') are capable of dealing only with relational systems, which means that statements like "a set cannot contain or belong to itself" are invalid as applied to what is absolute. So, for all his sophisticated analysis of forms and sets, Badiou's conclusion is nothing but an elaborate smokescreen concealing the fact that difference is the beginning of multiplicity, without which there are no relations. A much simpler theory was proposed by the Pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides 2500 years ago: Nothing comes from nothingness. Since it cannot be denied that existence is something, it must have a primary cause or source. And since nothingness does not exist, the nothingness that differentiates things must be the insufficiency (or void) of subjective experience which perceives in parts what is in reality whole and undivided. To conclude that the source of existence is itself created is to pose the paradox of an infinite regression of causes. Which is why I maintain that the source is primary, absolute, immutable, and --yes, David--not only a "possible" one but the "essential" One. Thanks for the Wikipedia link. Badiou was new to me. --Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
