In this work, metaphysics will be conceived as is the study of the world, that is of the universe and the place of sentient entities in it and in relation to it. Among sentient beings, there is emphasis on human being. Also the ‘universe’ of metaphysics is the entire universe of all kinds and not just the empirical or physical universe.

Metaphysics has a number of fundamental problems among which are (a) whether it is at all possible—especially if we ask that the study be of the world as it is and not just as it appears and (b) how shall we do metaphysics.

We will find that the answer to (a) above is a nuanced affirmative. Item (b) is the question of ‘method’—but note that method may include but is not the same as ‘strict method’ or algorithm.

In modern thought, metaphysics is frequently found difficult to define—as though there is such a thing as metaphysics but that the thing is difficult to specify. Is there such a thing? It is important to note that the term ‘metaphysics’ has various uses. Here, (a) we fix on one particular use and (b) show that this use specifies a definite and powerful sense. Thus, while we have not eliminated other uses and nor should we, we find a specific and potent use that should be distinguished from the other uses. Further there is nothing vague about the sense introduced here. One reason for the traditional difficulty is that definiteness of a subject is not to be found until the subject has a definite theory or kind of theory. Physics, for example, has theories that are regarded as well developed and definitive of physics and so, while the term ‘physics’ is not completely unambiguous it is widely regarded as quite definite. Hitherto, however, metaphysics lacked such a theory. Here, however, a definite and definitive system of metaphysics is found. It is therefore with justification that we can assert that there is a clear definition of metaphysics.

Among the modern notions of metaphysics (and philosophy) is that they are not studies of the world; rather, metaphysics is the study of experience or the study of how to study; and philosophy is, e.g., a therapeutic activity aimed at correcting the excesses of positive claims to knowledge outside science or as in metaphysics. Here, we restore metaphysics and, since the approach is significantly philosophical, we restore philosophy to include the study of the world. We are not claiming however to challenge or discredit the range of modern thought regarding the subject matter of philosophy.

Another the modern notions of metaphysics is the following—just as physics is the study of concrete objects, metaphysics is the study of abstract objects. We will find metaphysics to include the study of the abstract and the concrete.

It is noteworthy—and characteristic of metaphysics as we will do it here—that the method and the instruments are in the world and therefore part of the study itself. I.e., method and mind are part of metaphysics. Mind would be part of metaphysics on two counts—that it is part of the world and that it is associated with the instruments and methods. Also noteworthy is that metaphysics is reflexive—it studies itself; thus there may be metamathematics but no meta-metaphysics. We can also put this: meta-metaphysics would be part of metaphysics.

How then shall we do metaphysics?

1. In no such endeavor do we actually begin at the beginning. Even for axiomatic systems we need preliminaries on the language and universe of ideas to entertain. Therefore we begin somewhere in midstream—all endeavor in life is like that—and then, perhaps, build toward a foundation so that the structure that we build may be more secure. Of course we are also interested in the nature of ‘security’—for we may find that accepting some degree of uncertainty and error provide the optimum security and outcome.

2. For inspiration, we turn to existing knowledge, our experience of and with the world, reason and reflection, experiment, and action (experiment can be seen as a kind of action). Let us tentatively label such a system the WELLSPRING OF METAPHYSICS. We have access to earlier studies in metaphysics, reason, science, and other fields. In science, which emphasizes the empirical, we find the concept of matter, suitably understood, to be adequate. We accept that regarding matter to be universal has limitations and we accept that empirical study has limits of precision—the aim includes the pragmatic. But the empirical may be a fraction of reality and the known universe may be a fraction of the entire universe. Matter and mind may be approximate kinds. And the approximation may result from being specified and defined. How do we overcome this approximation?

3. Being will be defined here as that which is (i.e. that which exists—or existed or will exist). The absence of specificity is what makes the concept of Being precise if bland. The blandness is that it points out nothing in particular—except the difference between existence and non-existence—and so it may well be that despite its precision, Being is impotent as a concept to understand the world. It will turn out that, in combination with other concepts, Being enables a potent and ultimate ‘pure universal metaphysics’ that shows the world itself to be ultimate. But a question arises. What could it mean that something does not exist—for if ‘it’ doesn’t exist then there is no ‘thing’ in the ‘something’? This is the well known problem of negative existentials. A resolution lies in a careful conception of meaning (the more ‘traditional’ resolution is in analysis of ‘orders’ of predicates; order one refers to ‘real’ objects but order 2 refers to concepts of real objects and so on; this will be seen to be unnecessary complication).

4. What is the justification of meanings as introduced above and in what follows? It is that the system of meanings results in a definite—and ultimate—explanatory system for being, i.e. a metaphysics. It is important to note, then, that meanings must be specified and that while this does not eliminate other meanings it is important to not confuse the specified meanings with others.

5. What is meaning? It is a concept and the object (objects) to which it refers (and in the case that there are no objects we say that there is no existing object or, colloquially, ‘it doesn’t exist’). This is of course referential meaning and this is sufficient for the present development—i.e., while meaning is broader than as defined here the present definition is sufficient to the present development. Note further that in linguistic (referential) meaning a sign is attached to the concept; signs may be simple or compound—as in sentences; that the structure of compound signs may contain meaning; and that a symbol is a sign and its associated concept.

6. Having tentatively suggested Being as a fundamental concept of metaphysics—indeed we will also conceive metaphysics as the study of Being—what other ingredients might we need to develop metaphysics? In the spirit of beginning midstream we begin tentatively. We turn to the wellspring of metaphysics. Consider science, particularly physics. Physics is the study of matter and radiation (and, if we include cosmology, the history of their distribution in the known universe). But to do physics we need further concepts. There are matter and radiation but also space and time, force or interaction and field—as, say, interaction-itself, and motion. These are some of the fundamental concepts. They constitute an analogy for metaphysics (a) in showing the need for a system of concepts and (b) perhaps as analogy for specific metaphysical concepts. In the beginning, however, the concepts of physics are too specific to provide a concrete analogy. However, what we see in physics is that there are a number of concepts at the level of the physical or just below the physical in terms of their generality. A further point to the analogy (c) is that the categories should not be but mere classes or ‘kinds’ but should include concepts that contribute toward an explanatory system and perhaps even a dynamic.

7. To begin to develop an explanatory system in metaphysics we introduce the idea of the categories or classes of Being—a system of concepts at the level of Being or just below that will be adequate to metaphysical explanation. Aristotle was perhaps the first thinker to introduce categories; more recently Kant and Schopenhauer also introduced systems of categories. The system here will not be the systems of those thinkers. But how shall we proceed. The origin of the system I present was arrived at via a rather long incremental process. What I present are the principles rather than the details. And after the principles I will present the categories along with sufficient reason to show the system to be adequate to a full metaphysics.

8. Just as Being is, after all embedded in experience as the idea of what is there, so we should at least begin with experience—particularly, experience-as-awareness or experience-as-consciousness. But reflect that we never escape experience and that everything that we know is ultimately registered in experience. Our world is a world of experience—but note that this is not to say that existence depends on experience or to argue for solipsism; however it is to say that experience is an important ingredient of the real if not, as some thinkers might argue, the only ingredient. But though experience may be not the only ingredient of the real, it is the place that all significance is registered. In beginning to specify categories, we conclude that Being and experience are coequals at the highest level of the real.

9. A further category—beyond Being-experience—found, incrementally, to be of use derives from the idea of ‘part-hood’. This system includes the ideas of whole, part, and null (null is the idea of emptiness as an entity). And then, the universe is all being, a being is a part of the universe, and the void is the null being.

10. Yet another category will be the category of the real. This includes Being-experience—but its essence will be the possibilities and actualities of the real—actuality is that which does obtain, and possibility is that which can or may obtain. For a given context the possible includes or is identical to the actual. For the universe, the actual and the possible are the same.

11. Note that Being-experience in all its richness not marked by precision. Yet the idea of Being-experience is precise. This precision is arrived at by abstraction of the idea of Being and experience from the welter of Being and experience. Thus as a concept, Being-experience refers precisely or perfectly to its object. Such categories are labeled ‘pure’. The pure categories will also include those experiential notions of identity and change provided sufficiently abstracted and the idea of form.

12. Now, we do not derive the laws of science from data as premise via proof to the laws as consequence. Rather, the laws and theories begin as explanatory hypotheses bases at least in part on guesses (often inspired guesses from intuition mixed with inference). In science, empirical data are among the real data. For metaphysics which is understanding at a more inclusive level than science, the ‘data’ includes science and other disciplines—while of course also including experience. But in importing the ideas of science, to do so a pure form we must abstract the notions first. As such laws and theories of science may be among the pure categories.

13. The ideas discussed so far will enable a pure metaphysics that, it turns out, shows that the universe is ultimate in that all logical possibilities are realized. But, while this pure metaphysics reveals an ideal side to Being and while it enables inspiration, it does not provide so much as an instrument of temporal living. Here there are other instruments—science, technology, art, and others—the wellspring. Perfect precision is not their mark. But they provide an instrument in realizing the ultimate revealed by the pure. The associated categories will be called ‘pragmatic’. But it is also seen from the pure universal metaphysics that (a) there can be no perfectly precise pragmatic categories, (b) they are the ‘best’ instrument of realization, (c) they are therefore perfect as the best instruments. That is the pragmatic categories are perfect as instruments of the real (realization).

14. But the pragmatic as immediate will be more than instrument. They will serve as models for the pure. For example, the matter-interaction-motion paradigm from physics will serve as a model analogy for ‘dynamics’ at a higher level for Being. But it will not be sufficient to merely import and impose the analogy. Rather, the analogy is inspiration but the application and its limits of application must be derived and this will be done in considering identity and change. The philosophical substances of mind and matter will form an analogy for substance at the higher level of Being. But again mere import is insufficient. We will have to show of necessity from experience the nature and limits of substance at the metaphysical level. We will find, to state the case in rough terms, that there is no ultimate substance at all but the substance is always potential and associated with significance.

15. The pure and the pragmatic combine in a universal metaphysics—in which the prefix ‘pure’ has been dropped—that is perfect in dual but perfect epistemic criteria—the pure that is perfect in the sense of (representational or correspondence) truth, and the pragmatic that is perfect as instrument though imperfect in the traditional sense of precision (but which may also be seen as perfect to its role in universal realization).

16. We saw above that the purity of a category is a matter of perspective or abstraction. This is the case for most of the pure categories. On the other hand consider science. In the Popperian view of science approaching the universal, science—physics at least—never reaches an ideal of universality or precision and is therefore pragmatic in nature. On the other hand the sciences very definitely reveal actual local patterns. Further there is an abstract of the pattern that is pure—i.e., precise in abstract. In all cases the purity vs. pragmatism is a matter of perspective or abstraction. Therefore the classification of a category as pure or pragmatic will be in part a matter of convenience. Of course we want the main entry of Being to be pure (but it may also be entered among the pragmatic; and similarly some categories may be entered more than once).. For reasonably obvious reasons we will include the pure versions under Metaphysics below and the pragmatic versions under Cosmology.

17. In the categories below, I present two schemes (i) ideal and (ii) practical—the practical will be the convenient basis of a development. Rather than lay out the schemes in sequence pure « pragmatic it is more convenient to have them interlaced. Nonetheless, (a) there is a pure framework and (b) the pragmatic drives and instrumentalizes the pure.

18. Finally, note that reason—as logic, the necessary, and science and the contingent and more—are included in the categories.

Summary: categories and ground

The categories

The aim is ultimate understanding of the world—the universe and our relation to it.

We’ve seen that an ultimate understanding will have two meshing parts

1. A pure, universal and ultimate part. This illuminates. It shows us what is possible and actual. What can and what will be achieve. In itself it does not show us the ‘how’.

2. A pragmatic, local, and approximate part. Though rough, there is and need be no better. In that sense it has its own perfection. It is the perfect yet improvable instrument.

The ground

The source of all things—the perfect, the pragmatic, content, and method—is our system of experience. This is the ground.

The pure and ultimate is obtained from the ground by abstraction.

The pragmatic and immediate is the ground in its concreteness. It is improvable but pure perfection is neither possible nor desirable.

The arrangement of the categories

An arrangement into the pure and the pragmatic is possible but not desirable.

Study and reflection have shown that an interspersed arrangement is best. There is no ultimate distinction between the pure and the pragmatic—it is a matter of how much to abstract.

Therefore we choose that organization that leads to optimum method, understanding, and action. It is possible to extract a ‘purer’ organization as suggested immediately below.

A natural division is into (1) Metaphysics that emphasizes the general and the abstract and (2) Cosmology that continues the metaphysics but includes an emphasis on the pragmatic and on detail.

A system of categories

Metaphysics

Preliminary

On referential meaning

FREE CONCEPT, GENERAL CONCEPT (includes PERCEPT), OBJECT, CORRESPONDENCE, REFERENTIAL MEANING, TRUTH; SIGN, SYMBOL, BARE SIGN, COMPOUND SIGN, meaning and SIGN FORM, GRAMMAR, LINGUISTIC REFERENTIAL MEANING

Being

Experience

BEING₍₂₎: EXISTENCE, EXPERIENCE (awareness), EXPERIENCED, MEANING₍₂₎, TRUTH

Power

DIFFERENCE, SAMENESS; POWER (CAUSE-EFFECT, AFFECT-EFFECT) , ACTION (aware or intelligent affect), AGENCY (capacity for aware affect)

Span of being

LIFE (matter with agency), BIRTH, DEATH

Whole and part

Parthood

WHOLE, PART, NULL

Universe and Being

UNIVERSE, A BEING, BEING₍₃₎, VOID (emptiness as a being)

Meaning

Justification for the earlier discussion.

The Real

The actual and the possible

ACTUAL, CONSTITUTION, POSSIBILITY, STATE, LOGIC; FORM, PATTERN, NATURAL LAW, LIMIT, CONTINGENCY; REALISM, PURE METAPHYSICS

The range of the real

UNIVERSAL METAPHYSICS, PERFECT DUAL EPISTEMIC FOUNDATION, NORMAL, PROBABLE; PURE, LOGIC, PROOF, TRIVIA, NECESSITY; PRAGMATIC, SCIENCE

The concrete and the abstract

CONCRETE, ABSTRACT, QUALITY, DEATH₍₂₎ , RECEPTACLE, DISPOSITION; POTENCY OF BEING

Cosmology

Identity and change

Identity, extension and duration

IDENTITY, RELATION, PROCESS, MECHANICS, MECHANISM;
BEING₍₄₎-EXTENSION-DURATION, SPACETIME, IMMANENCE

Substance

EXPERIENCE₍₂₎, SUBSTANCE: MATTER AS BEING-ITSELF, MIND AS BEING-IN-RELATION

Significance

SIGNIFICANCE₍₂₎, DESTINY, UNIVERSE OF SIGNIFICANCE, UNIVERSE OF DESTINY, PAIN, SUFFERING, JOY

Form

Form and origins

FORM, VARIETY OF FORM (COSMOLOGY: PEAKS, EXTENTION, DURATION), MATHEMATICS, NON-FORM; MANIFEST, POTENTIAL; INDETERMINISM (NOVELTY), DETERMINISM (FORM-ATION), EPOCH, ADAPTIVE SYSTEM, SINGULAR EVENT

AETERNITAS, BRAHMAN, PERFECT BUDDHA

Description of form

Symbol

LANGUAGE, QUANTITY, SYMBOL₍₂₎, ALGEBRA

Shape and size

SHAPE, SIZE, GEOMETRY, ANALYSIS

Form and function

SCALE; MICRO, CODE, MACRO; NATURE (PHYSICAL), DYNAMICS (OF RELATIONAL IDENTITY), PHYSICAL CAUSATION, LIVING₍₂₎, FUNCTION, ADAPTATION, PSYCHIC (PERCEPTIVE-REFLECTIVE-ACTIVE—INNER-OUTER—BOUND-FREE), SOCIETY (FORMS, COMMUNITIES, CULTURE, COMMUNICATION, TRANSMISSION, POLITICS, ECONOMICS, TECHNOLOGY, IMMERSION, HISTORY, HUMANITIES, PHILOSOPHY (METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, ETHICS), ART, WAYS OF REALIZATION (THE WAY OF BEING), CATALYSTS, LOCAL CIVILIZATION, THE UNIVERSAL₍₂₎, WEAK UNIVERSAL CAUSATION₍₂₎, UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION

Agency

Alternate labels are The Categories of Agency, The Elements of (Being and) Agency and The Mechanics of (Being and) Agency.

The scope of agency

Elements of agency

The ELEMENTS of a way of being are primitive basis of a MECHANICS OF A WAY OF BEING

Mechanics of agency

IDENTITY-RELATION-PROCESS (MECHANICS)

AGENCY₍₂₎, CHOICE, ELEMENTS, MECHANICS₍₂₎ (OF A WAY OF BEING)

Dimensions of agency are the dimensions of identity

DIMENSIONS OF IDENTITY: NATURE, CIVILIZATION and SOCIETY, PSYCHE, THE UNIVERSAL

Elements of identity

The elements of identity, relation, and process are classed according to the dimensions of identity

These elements are also the PHASES OF GROWTH of an individual—i.e., the natural, social, psychic, and universal

Nature

PARTICLE, CONTINUUM; ORGANISM, CLASS—SPECIES

Civilization

INDIVIDUAL, SOCIETY, CIVILIZATION

Psyche

PSYCHE

The universal

The previous three are often tied to PLACE

THE UNIVERSAL

Elements of relation

ELEMENTS OF RELATION

Nature

FORCE, FIELD, FLOW, CHEMICAL; MATTER-ENERGY INTERCHANGE for organisms, SYMBIOSIS, COMPETITION-COOPERATION among classes; of

Civilization

COMMUNICATION: BEHAVIORAL, LINGUISTIC

Psyche

EXPERIENCE, INTELLIGENT-PASSIONATE COMMITMENT

The universal

ONE and MANY; SENTIENCE-UNIVERSE, CIVILIZATION-CIVILIZATION

As foresight, experience and choice mediate identity and process; the mechanics is incremental, and in large steps: seeing-choosing-risking-acting and consolidating the significant and the ultimate. It is self-examining-referential, ever under discovery, an active part of the metaphysics. It employs-develops The Way, catalysts and ways.

Elements of process

ELEMENTS OF PROCESS

Nature

MOTION, FUNCTION, EVOLUTION

Civilization

LOCAL CIVILIZATION or POPULATION of the world, and INSTRUMENTAL MEANS: WAYS (revelation-illumination), DISCIPLINES, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, POLITICS

Psyche

COGNITION (MIND-THOUGHT) and EMOTION (HEART), and ACTION; INTRINSIC MEANS: CATALYSTS (fracture-integration), PRACTICES, IMMERSIVE ECONOMICS and IMMERSIVE POLITICS; and

The universal

ULTIMATE and IMMEDIATE, BRAHMAN and ATMAN—UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION. Universal and local cycles of BECOMING, PEAKING, and DISSOLUTION.

Further elements of the way

Intrinsic

YOGA, MEDITATION, BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY, VISION-QUEST, BEYUL

Instrumental

SCIENCE, PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE OF INFORMATION, NETWORKING AND COMPUTATION

Categories and the disciplines

An optional and repetitive part—to absorb to the above?

The disciplines

Tradition—whatever is valid in knowledge-action of all cultures over all times.

TRADITION, REASON (COGNITION), FEELING (GROUNDING), COMMITMENT, and ACTION, PATH, SANGHA as COMMUNITY.

Some elements of the traditions are the ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES, especially the SCIENCES—NATURAL SCIENCES (PHYSICAL SCIENCES, LIFE SCIENCES), SOCIAL SCIENCES (SOCIAL SCIENCES, SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS, ECONOMICS, THEORIES OF EDUCATION), and PSYCHOLOGY (SCIENCES OF MIND)—and MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY, (general and the main divisions—METAPHYSICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, and ETHICS) HUMANITIES, HISTORY, and ARTS; CATALYSTS and WAYS of personal transformation (e.g. aspects of RELIGION); TECHNOLOGY and ENGINEERING. The disciplinary modes include the INSTRUMENTAL and the IMMERSIVE.

Text as category

PERSONAL HISTORY, HISTORY OF THE WAY OF BEING, PEDAGOGY, INTRODUCTION, METATEXT, CATEGORY OF INCOMPLETENESS, PREFACE, GUIDE

The way

OCKHAM’S PRINCIPLE, DESTINY, EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE, EVERYDAY PROCESS, RENEWAL, UNIVERSAL PROCESS

Meaning and reason—to be reduced

Truth and correspondence

With TRUTH as CORRESPONDENCE, the perfect primitive object is DIFFERENCE. The pragmatic primitives are ordinary language and the cultural paradigms—used so that pragmatic correspondence imperfection is not inherited as essential.

Meaning

In a fixed CONTEXT, the SYMBOL or sign associates sufficiently to the object.

In moving out of habitual contexts, the concept is essential! This is brought out clearly when there is no object – but it is also starkly clear when there is an object.

Possibility, clarity, adequacy, and definiteness of meaning; neglect results in confusions of meaning, wasted debate, unwarranted concreteness of meaning, and paradox

Pivoting definition of logic, resolution of SEMANTIC PARADOX and LOGICAL PARADOX.

Referential

REFERENTIAL MEANING resides in a CONCEPT and its OBJECT(S) of reference.

Linguistic

REFERENTIAL LINGUISTIC MEANING associates signs with concept-objects

SIGN, PURE, COMPOUND (meaning from structure)

Meaning, argument, and metaphysics

Argument

argument.html

Argument is discussed in Prologue, Motivation and means, and Flow and outline—consolidate that to here (perhaps keeping a mention in Flow and outline)

Metaphysics

Metaphysical principle of identity

Alternate metaphysical positions of formulations that cannot be distinguished are identical.

E.g., the case for solipsism is ‘too good’, i.e. solipsism is presented as indistinguishable from ordinary realism. In that case there is no distinction and it is just an alternate labeling

Text, infinite or open text and oral tradition

ORAL TRADITION is DIALOGIC.

The boundary of a text is defined by its conceptual system which, however, is arbitrary and concept-porous.

Texts can be written dialogically.

OPEN TEXT is dialogic

Regarded as distinct items, texts lend themselves to argument or linear development—without excluding dialogic

Dialogic cycle of ideas—and of ideas and action

Text, oral process, continue as part of a dialogic: idea ® use or action ® modification ® use… this is of course more like a net than a line:

tHE wAY OF bEING

Prologue

Outline

The universe is the realization of all possibility.

This assertion, named the fundamental principle of metaphysics, is shown true later.

Among its consequences are (a) the one universe is the greatest possible and has identity, (b) we are identical to that, (c) while living in the immediate there is a path to the ultimate, (d) development of a path of reflection, feeling, practice, and action toward the ultimate.

The prologue develops some essential ideas about the fundamental principle so as to provide context. Without this, the reader would face the problem of understanding details the development without understanding the picture on which it is based.

Introduction

THE WORLD is a term used to refer to earth, all its life and cultures throughout history, with emphasis on our experience of and in it. Here, the use is similar but with ‘universe’ substituted for ‘earth’/

A WORLDVIEW is a conceptual picture—iconic and symbolic—of

§ What the world is like,

§ Its extent and duration,

§ The varieties of thing in it,

§ What it is made of, and

§ Its destiny and our place in it.

Thus a worldview combines subjective and objective experience of our place in the universe.

Every human being has a worldview, if only an informal or intuitive one. Our attitudes to life and possibility depend quite a bit on our worldview. There is, therefore, value to making worldviews explicit—so that we can critique and use them. There are of course the problems that we tend to be fixed or limited or dogmatic in our worldviews and that errors in our worldviews can be a hindrance. It is a good thing to be open about our views until we have evidence of their truth. But true openness requires both IMAGINATION and CRITICISM. To be imaginative is to positively experiment with ideas—to not regard our standard views as final. To be critical is essential as corrective to errors of imagination and to avoid the uncritical errors of the standard views.

The common worldviews fall into the SECULAR or roughly materialist and the TRANSSECULAR. The transsecular views may admit a material side but go beyond it—into the spiritual and or RELIGIOUS-EMOTIVE and or METAPHYSICAL-RATIONAL.

A FOUNDATION for this essay is a worldview that significantly different from the common worldviews. It will challenge the UNDERSTANDING, IMAGINATION, INTELLIGENCE, and INTUITION of secular and transsecular readers.

To approach the text from standard views would be limiting and misleading. The prologue enables understanding by providing a preview of the new world view.

The prologue is informal and brief. The formal development of proof, of developing consequences, of building up a whole picture from the new worldview, and of developing a path of action is deferred to the main text.

The Universal Metaphysics

The UNIVERSE is the realization of all POSSIBILITY—this is the core assertion and truth of the universal metaphysics. We will call this assertion the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF METAPHYSICS and abbreviate it FP.

Questions arise:

1. What does it mean?

2. What are its important consequences?

3. How does this mesh with experience, including SCIENCE? How can we address the common criticism from the materialist perspective that metaphysics is impossible?

4. How do we relate to ourselves and the world under the universal metaphysics? Particularly, what aims and path of action does the new worldview entail?

Meaning of the universal metaphysics

The universe is the realization of all possibility does not mean that ‘everything is possible’. What we need regarding ‘possibility’ is a clear conception that enables us to see what is possible and, therefore, what are its realizations.

The possibility in question is LOGICAL possibility—this is shown in the main text. Logical possibility may seem sterile but, in fact, it is only the logically impossible that is excluded the logically possible is the richest or greatest possible universe. The concepts of possibility and logic are developed later.

Meaning and consequences

If ‘everything is possible’ why is our immediate world limited in the way it is? The answer is that what we see in the immediate world is a fact and it is not (logically) possible that facts should be violated.

But how, then, can the universe be the realization of all possibility? The answer is that the world of FACT, the EMPIRICAL world, is what we see. It is a mistake of some forms of ‘POSITIVISM’ to think or even insist that the empirical world is the world. In fact, experience allows that the world beyond the empirical world is one of limitless extent and variety. Possibility, beyond the empirical includes (a) a limitless ARRAY OF COSMOSES of limitless variety (b) a VOID background in communication with the manifest (c) that the cosmoses do not follow our physical laws and may therefore manifest to us as ‘SPIRITUAL’ for even if they are not currently in communication with us they may be later (d) that the communication with the non empirical is possible because it is possible that the LIGHT SPEED limit of relativity is possibly only local (e) that such ‘GHOST’ cosmoses may be passing through ours with zero to minimal interaction at the present (f) that DEATH and BIRTH are apparent but not real—ABSOLUTE—LIMITS and that our true nature is IDENTITY with all being that also has identity and (g) that there is a PATHWAY from our immediate and apparently limited identity to ultimate identity.

Now, since all this is possible, FP implies that it is true and real.

The universal metaphysics is of course transsecular but it is neither dogmatic nor merely speculative; rather it is EMPIRICAL and RATIONAL.

Does all this contradict science and experience

No, for it is outside the empirical realm. It is consistent with science and experience.

But how does consistency with science and experience imply the truth that the possible is realized? It does not; we are not claiming that it does. It is FP that implies the realization and FP will be demonstrated in later.

But then how is our immediate world stable? This is answered above. In fact, FP implies our world and our experience; what it does not imply—in fact it implies the contrary—is that our world and experience project to the limitless … to infinity.

What, then, are the limits of our world? The universe is divided into causal domains or epochs. These are spatial and temporal. At their boundaries they merge. Before their ‘time is up’ they are distinct. Our world is an EPOCH.

But isn’t this a lot to swallow? How could it all be true, given our experience and our secular and transsecular paradigms? Aren’t there doubts about FP? Answers—yes it does seem as though it stretches imagination, but there is PROOF and there are very plausible arguments. We begin to see plausibility when we recognize that the DOGMATIC transsecular views may be ALLEGORICAL representations and that the positivist interpretations of the secular are uncritical applications of CRITICAL THOUGHT. The proof will follow from the properties of the void—it contains no natural law and therefore the void must be a generator of all possibility (which destroys the idea of our experience of causality as universal). From doubt we also consider the following plausible arguments—the known natural laws apply to manifest being but not to EMPTINESS; and FP is the outer limit of all possible physics; and more, later. And when doubt remains we keep in mind (a) that the consistency of FP with all we know is certain and (b) that since it is also reasonable we adopt it as an EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE or value productive of the greatest EXPECTED OUTCOME.

The possibility of metaphysics and the ground of knowledge

The ground of essential knowledge is what we know already. True, many details remain to be filled in regarding, e.g., science and mathematics, but we already have the essentials.

For example we know that with the universe defined as ALL BEING, there is exactly ONE UNIVERSE. Further, the abstract object ‘all being’ is known precisely. If we define metaphysics as knowledge of the world as it is, then we already have some metaphysical knowledge (it is an error of the classical mode of thinking about metaphysics that we should demand metaphysical knowledge of the entire concrete universe—we do not demand this of common experiential knowledge or we would sit down and starve and we do not demand it of science). But so far what we have, all being, is trivial. In the development the fundamental metaphysical concepts of universe, BEINGS, BEING, VOID, and possibility are shown to be perfectly known and the basis of FP and the universal metaphysics. This is the PURE side of metaphysics. Then we consider PRAGMATIC knowledge in all its approximateness. What the pure side implies is that the pragmatic side is infinitesimal in its scope; but that from the pure point of view it is perfect in its function as stepping stone to the universal. Viewed in its function of seeing this world, it is indeed limited (as far as we know). But in the universal function it is perfect in its pragmatism. The pure and the pragmatic combine to form the (enhanced) universal metaphysics that is an ultimate instrument of universal knowledge.

We have now answered all questions above except the fourth. Let’s now address the fourth question.

Aim and path of Being

The question was

“How do we relate to ourselves and the world under the universal metaphysics? Particularly, what aims and path of action does the new worldview entail?”

The pure side of the metaphysics shows the aim. It is to live under the recognition that the universe is ultimate and that we are the universe. It is to live fully in the immediate and the ultimate. But we do not recognize ourselves as so living.

In so far as we do not—we would be on the path to seeing and becoming this reality. Seeing it is living in this world. Becoming it is being on the way.

Our tools are the metaphysics, EXPERIENCE, REASON, FEELING, and ACTION. We also have access to a range of INTRINSIC and INSTRUMENTAL ways. The intrinsic involve modification of internal reality—they range from PSYCHOTHERAPY and ART and MYSTICISM in the WEST (and, yes, the ABRAHAMIC VISION) to YOGA, MEDITATION, and HINDUISM and BUDDHISM in the EAST. The INSTRUMENTAL ways are scientific and TECHNOLOGICAL in the physical, living, and psychic realms.

These ideas are given a design form and worked out in the final part of the essay.

How does this change my life and world here and now

It changes our awareness of the ultimate; this awareness is in the immediate. It affects the quality of being.

It complements and re-interprets human thought—the sciences, philosophy, mathematics and logic, our understanding of history. It gives science and philosophy new aims (to complement the old). It makes for definite knowledge in many realms that are hitherto indefinite. At the level of categories, the universal metaphysics enables definitiveness and integration regarding:

METAPHYSICS and GROUND (NON RELATIVE FOUNDATION); DIFFERENCE and PATTERN; SUBSTANCE, BEING, EXPERIENCE (MATTER and MIND—or FIRST ORDER BEING and RELATIONAL or SECOND ORDER BEING), and the WORLD (REALISM); IDENTITY, BEINGS, SPACE, and TIME; and the ABSTRACT and the CONCRETE.

And thus it changes our focus on the future. In the beginning this is an awareness, but development and implementation of consequences promise to be real.

The Way of Being

This section is (a) an introduction that connects world and experience to content, (b) a preface in telling you about the book, and (c) a guide on using the book.

Aim and History of The Way

Aim

The AIM or PURPOSE of The Way of Being is shared discovery and realization of the IMMEDIATE and UNIVERSAL REAL.

In this introduction the aim includes a personal aspect. The aim of Being itself is clarified and stated later.

Means

Ideas (discovery), Action (realization).

Aims, Teleology, Mechanism

Are aim and purpose at most local?

Construct, Intrinsic

Process, Direction, Teleology

Individual and Civilization

Individual, Self

Civilization, Universe

With reference to being, individual, civilization, universe etc.

COMMUNITY, SANGHA

Source

TRADITION, WORLD CULTURES, PRIMAL, SECULAR, TRANSSECULAR (SUPRASECULAR), ULTIMATE (new)

PAN-EMPIRICAL EXPERIENCE, and REASON

WRITING (Record, Review, Communication)

History

History is here or in resources.

Purposes are (a) to show and motivate origins in history of ideas and my thought and so (b) to provide understanding, especially of the divergence from but consistency and continuity with tradition.

In the history of ideas and tradition of action

See ../../the realizations-resource version.html and other essays that may have information on this.

The local and universal aims of culture

Nature of reason, including experiment, value, and feeling

The principle of plenitude and its history

In my life and thought—a personal account

The resource article above and other essays also have information.

What I’m specifically interested here is how my personal characteristics and history contribute to the universal metaphysics and The Way of Being.

Some useful characteristics of my thought and experience

Experience, reading, and work—broad, ideas, people

Perception and judgment in balance; judgment emergent, not forced

Not bound by cultural paradigm (but open to all) or reinforcement; search for paradigm beyond paradigm

Persistence.

How I came to write the way of being

Writing has been a part of my life—it has enhanced my ideas and experience. I came to see my thought as a potentially unique contribution—there is no other system of comparable power. That made it natural to convert my writing into a publication.

Motivation, means, and method

Worldviews: culture and paradigm

INDIVIDUAL, COMMUNITY, CIVILIZATION, and COSMOS

CULTURAL PARADIGMS

PRIMAL

SECULAR, SECULARISM—EXPERIENCE and REASON so far. The range of consistency—POSITIVISM is the inner limit, POSSIBILISM is the outer—which includes very different ROBUST other worlds, natural laws, and REASON.

TRANSSECULAR—includes the secular—metaphysical-rational, religious-emotive

The paradigms move—process—and achieve civilization—equilibrium and limit

Limits of the paradigms throughout history

The paradigms deny a potential vast unknown or see it via dogma. Potent but distorted, they move and limit civilization through time.

Limits of culture—necessary and contingent

The distinction of necessary and contingent limits clarifies what can be transcended.

Defining the necessary and the contingent

The contingent is commonly mistaken for the necessary

... and other fallacies

The known is the real

The unknown does not exist

Transcending the contingent limits

Uncovering fallacies, uncritical universalization of modes of criticism, and freeing from paradigmatic blindness. This reveals and enables deep truth.

Why metaphysics, Being?

1. Because of the substance issue, 2. because of the cycle of ideas and interactions building up a whole >> parts

What is metaphysics

(a) Knowledge of Being, (b) Knowledge of the Universe

Metaphysics as knowledge of the real

The critical-imaginative approach justifies and proves a radical, visionary, universal metaphysics—envelope of all truth, ultimate in showing the universe to have local but no essential limitation, that shows ideas as essentially incomplete without action, and that is deployed toward a way of realization of the ultimate in The Way. Its perfection is conceived and shown. It critically incorporates and goes beyond the paradigms and their PRIMAL sources.

The system

Worldview, Metaphysics, Possibility, Pragmatic Knowledge

Personal origins and history

Ideas and action

This title is new relative to the pocket manual.

This section explains that ideas are an essential part of and completed only in action.

The ultimate metaphysics and the way

Grounding and perfection; incorporation of the paradigms

Resolving conflict with experience; re-educating intuition to the radical metaphysics

Argument

This is implicitly developed in the Ideas

What is argument?

Holism and the place of feeling

Rationality

Method

Method arises from the ground—it is intrinsic; it is reflexive—imagination and criticism are self applied; the distinctions of abstract and concrete and think and kind and idea are critiqued.

Begins with the paradigms—creative and critical—and reflection on them.

The universal metaphysics

How the metaphysics is essential to and generates truth

Flow and outline

Argument versus dialogic development

Argument is linear, from meaning and premises or definitions and axioms to conclusions or theorems. Establishment of premises is here included under argument.

Dialogic includes but goes beyond argument. When an argument is done, we may discover—in part through action or application—deficiencies that occasion improvement or even new argument. Thus argument, action, and improvement are part of an ongoing dialogic.

Argument tends to be on the sidelines of living. Dialogic is immersed. Informed dialogic subsumes the positive functions of argument.

Content—flow of ideas

Ideas

Ideas flow from general-abstract to particular-concrete … from absolute neutrality to commitment … from the inclusive to the local

Every stage derives from earlier ones

The cosmology moves from abstract to particular, admitting neutral notions of mind-matter and derives rather than posits notions of identity, spacetime-relation

…which all lead to a mechanics of the real and realization to be used in the way

The pathway

The way uses the ideas ® aim, ethic, path and way ® everyday and universal process templates ® epilogue: the path so far and its evaluation

Encouragement

The essay is dedicated to freedom in IMAGINATION, reason and action toward to realization for individuals and the world.

Guide

What is new and unusual

Especially emphasize the universal metaphysics and ideas-action

How the essay should be viewed by general, academic (disciplines and sub-disciplines etc), secular, and trans-secular players and readers.

Meaning of metaphysics—and why this must be the meaning; ‘possibility of metaphysics’. There is significant metaphysics.

The metaphysics—the one universal metaphysics; ‘size’ of universe; a new metaphysics with a (new) proof; must include proof because can’t refer you to a standard version; but can work around the proof for those with other interests.

How to read and use this book

As an essay

First reading—Broad picture, be aware of newness

Second reading—detail, criticism, rebuild intuition, meaning-holism, gestalt

Meaning, holism, surprising newness, power of the metaphysics

Two reads (1) preliminary, open rather than critical, overview (2) detailed, critical and constructive…

As manual or guide

Suggested conceptual background

Contribution

Here or resources?

Disciplines

Practices

Results, discipline-practice wise

Sources, acknowledgments, originality

Sources could go to introduction like material

Sources—experience, history of ideas and action, literature

Further acknowledgments—specific persons… help and inspiration

Personal comments ‘no claim’ as in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Ideas

The ideas show the universal metaphysics—limitlessness of being and its metaphysical, cosmological, and existential consequences. The immediate and the ultimate are interwoven. While in limited form realization is ever in process. They are a base for and completed only in action—the way—for ultimate realization grounded in this world.

Being

Being sets up those fundamental ideas whose power lies in—analysis of—their choice rather than analysis of their meaning; i.e. the power lies in the meaning of the whole! These concepts are difference and all-part-nothing or Universe, beings, Being, the Void, and possibility. The significance (1) Of Being is its categorial neutrality; (2) Of Universe is its definiteness and inclusiveness; (3) Of possibility is that it refers to comprehension of the whole; (4) Of the Void is its clear revelation of the power of Being.

Preliminary on the use of ‘Being’ and metaphysics

Being is that which is, over all difference.

The use of ‘is’ above is non specific with respect to ‘coordinate’ of difference, e.g. time and space.

To say of something that ‘it is’ is to say that it has Being.

In this use, the ‘Being’ is capitalized.

Metaphysics is knowledge and study of Being—of things, e.g. the Universe, as they are.

In this use, the very possibility of metaphysics has been criticized—for, given illusion and error, we ask ‘How can things be known as they are?’

Our goals here shall include (a) demonstrating an ultimate metaphysics—The Universal Metaphysics—and so showing the possibility of metaphysics, and (b) explaining the sense of the term ‘ultimate’

A preliminary answer to the question of whether we can know things as they are is as follows.

1. Some (where ‘some’ includes ‘no part’) of our knowledge is true and some is illusion and error,

2. The true part as true, and the illusion as illusion, constitute a metaphysics,

3. The entirety of Being—the universe as it is—exists and this knowledge constitutes a minimal metaphysics and part of any further metaphysics to be developed.

Knowing and being are of the same cloth. Knowing and concept will be regarded as distinct and true only where demonstrated.

Why metaphysics and Being?

Universe and representation; being and knowing

Ideas and representation of the whole; self-representation; abstraction

Individual and path

Difference

Part and Whole

PART, WHOLE, NULL

Universe (All)

Definition

Definition. The block and temporal views.

Consequences

The UNIVERSE is not created

The category of CREATION does not apply to the universe

The universe has no ORIGIN

Nothing is OUTSIDE the universe

Beings (Parts)

BEINGS are parts of the universe

The universe is a being

A part of the universe may create another

Being (and knowing)

BEING is the property common to all beings.

(All) beings have Being—they EXIST—beings are being is not the correct usage here

KNOWING – relation – inseparable from being; knowing is (has) being

The Void (No being)

Absence, empty part, nothingness, NULL BEING – the VOID

Does the void exist? We don’t know yet but if so then the void has being and we redefine part as true part or whole or nothingness.

Power

POWER, the ability to AFFECT – ascertains being absent direct knowledge

POTENTIAL being, MANIFEST being, REMANIFEST, NONBEING,

Possibility and logic

STATE, POSSIBILITY, ACTUALITY, CONSTITUTION, LIMITS and impossibility

Logical

…and logic

LOGICAL POSSIBILITY

LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE

A NECESSARY TRUTH is a truth that must be true—i.e., that is never untrue.

Facts are necessary truths.

A logical consequence of a fact is a necessary truth

Something that is true in all contexts is a necessary truth

Real?

REAL POSSIBILITY

Universal

UNIVERSAL POSSIBILITY

In the universe, whatever obtains is both possible and necessary; necessity follows because there is nothing outside the universe.

Natural

NATURAL POSSIBILITY

Patterns and natural law

A LAW is a PATTERN. A LAW is our reading of the Law.

NATURAL LAW has being

No natural law outside being

Physical

PHYSICAL POSSIBILITY

If physical law obtains then a consequence of a fact and physical law is necessary

Cosmological

COSMOLOGICAL POSSIBILITY

Sentient and non-sentient

SENTIENT POSSIBILITY

NON-SENTIENT POSSIBILITY

Human

HUMAN POSSIBILITY

A hierarchy

Incorporate human and cosmological possibilities?

Logical Ê universal Ê natural Ê physical

Expect logical ÉÉ universal; universal É natural but perhaps natural = physical

Metaphysics 2

Already begun

The Universal Metaphysics

An axiomatic, grounded, dialogic cycle.

Metaphysics, realism, and necessity

Ground of metaphysics É tradition and personal knowledge, experience, reason — allows Ideal and pragmatic in relation with dual criteria

The fundamental principle of metaphysics, FP—that the ultimate character of the universe is realization of all possibility—is shown below. All possibility entails self-grounding. This keys perfect metaphysics with pure and pragmatic sides—each perfect by its grounded nature—the pure showing the possible and the ideal, the pragmatic providing the means. Both sides stem from the ground which includes the PURE and the PRAGMATIC. The pragmatic includes experience, reason, and valid TRADITION from valid in all culture and civilization over time. This enables resolution of the essential problems of metaphysics and unification the modes of being and knowing, especially individual and universal identity.

Fundamental principle and its proof

THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF METAPHYSICS or FP

FP is identity of the logically possible and the universal actual. It implies a NORMAL sense in which our cosmos and laws are as in tradition and infinitesimal compared to the logical-universal. The meaning of ‘normal’ includes that, except logical NECESSITY, what we regard as necessary or IMPOSSIBLE from regularities of the cosmos, are but locally very PROBABLE or very improbable. I.e., there is local ‘conservation’ but universal violation of normal laws.

In the universe, whatever is logically possible is necessary. This is a consequence of the fundamental principle and would not be true if the fundamental principle were not true.

Logic and logics

Let us explore logic. Known logics exemplify it, at least roughly. In LOGIC, constraints inhere in and only in concepts; seeing facts as constraints among percepts, include facts in logic and, to avoid confusion with logic, rename it LOGIC (capitalized). A law of nature is a fact on some domain; elect this view this over law as universal hypothesis—thus Logic includes science (and tradition). But this seems strange because we see logic as deductive, science as inductive. This resolves in that discovery is inductive for both and inference under both is deductive (sciences and logics remain distinct). Thus Logic disallows only violation of fact and conceptual constraint. Define the UNIVERSAL METAPHYSICS (also called the metaphysics) as what Logic allows (logics, cosmoses, their sciences—ours or other, robust or not, and more). Then FP and the metaphysics are equivalent. Here, then, we find the metaphysics as (1) Identity of universal actuality and Logical possibility, (2) In process, (3) A join of logic and science. In considering abstract objects the metaphysics is seen to include systems of mathematics as abstract sciences.

Existence and properties of Void

Existence of the void—there is at least one void; the number of voids has no significance; therefore we may take it that there is exactly one void

Power of the void (and equivalently of every state of being including the Universe)

Equivalent to ultimate principle—‘Substance’ (but any being can do this), ‘cause’, …

The following are equivalent

§ Nothing created the universe

§ The void created the universe (equivalently, any state of Being created the universe)

§ The universe created itself

§ The category of creation does not pertain to the universe (repeated from earlier)

The following are equivalent

§ Nothing is outside the universe

§ The void is outside the universe

Further metaphysical consequences of FP

Ultimate character of the universe

Realization of all possibility entails self-grounding

Perfect metaphysics with pure and pragmatic sides (repeat of above)

FP = identity of logical possible and universal actual

The normal begins as our local sense of the real; the normal is required by FP

Possibility and impossibility, necessity; practical possibility, impossibility and necessity

The cosmos is infinitesimal compared to the universe = logical

Except logical possibility, normal necessity = very probable, normal impossibility = very improbable

Local and normal conservation but universal non conservation of normal laws

The logical constraints inhere in and only in concepts; logic and fact = Logic; Logic disallows only violation of fact and strictly logical – conceptual constraint

The Universal Metaphysics = what Logic allows º FP

Traditional science = universalization of local law but Science = the local pattern: a law of nature is a fact on some domain

Logic É science and in this interpretation, both are inductive in discovery (particular ® general) but deductive in application (general ® particular)

Scientific possibility » natural possibility

The metaphysics is a realism that obtains in that the real is the object of what Logic permit

The pure and pragmatic both flow from tradition + experience + reason seen clearly; the real É reason and knowledge; and the pure and the pragmatic are dually perfect in relation to the (later) ultimate

Potency of the idea of Being

Perfection does not pertain to the world as a whole

Perfection of the foundation. Its source: pure categories—see earlier for more—beings, universe, Being, void, possibility, and pragmatism (contrasts to the imperfect but useful classical categories)

The concrete and the abstract

Metaphysical consequences—continued…

The abstract and the concrete (objects); resolution of their nature—and their identity; logical, mathematical and scientific realism on par

DEATH is real but not absolute; existential significance; the ultimate a RECEPTACLE for DISPOSITION to emerging-merging-reemerging identity of substantial beings

The Way of Being

Metaphysical consequences—continued…

The way of being, the aim of wholeness and real religion is discovery-realization of immediate-ultimate Being by limited beings using all elements of being and agency

Elements of Being and Agency

What are the elements?

The elements of a way of being and becoming are hypothetical, primitive basis or elementary components of agency—of a MECHANICS OF THE WAY OF BEING or realization.

Basis

The hypotheses—from difference there arose a state-relation-change or IDENTITY-RELATION-PROCESS description or MODEL of mechanics; we accept this model as tentative.

Dimensions and Elements of Identity or Be-ing

The tentative DIMENSIONS OF IDENTITY (GROWTH) shall be the following ‘classical’ dimensions:

NATURE.

CIVILIZATION.

PSYCHE.

The UNIVERSAL.

The first three above are often tied to PLACE.

Dimension or element

Identity

Natural (Physical and biological)

Civilization (Modes: Society and Individual)

Psyche (Cognition, emotion)

Universal (Ultimate and immediate, Brahman and Atman)

Relation

Force-field, flow, chemical

Communication—behavioral, expressive, speech and language

Experience, passion, commitment

As foresight, experience and choice mediate—relate—identity and process; the mechanics is incremental (see Cosmology of form), and in large steps: seeing-choosing-risking-acting and consolidating the significant and the ultimate. It is self-examining-referential intelligence, ever under discovery, an active part of the metaphysics. It employs-develops The Way, catalysts and ways.

One and many

Process

Motion, function, and evolution

Local population

Instrumental means—cultural ways, disciplines, technology, economics, and politics

Thought, feeling, action

Intrinsic means—catalysts, practice, immersive economics and politics

Universal population

Universal and local cycles of becoming, peaking, and dissolution

Table 1 Elements of Being and Agency

Elements of relation

Natural—FORCE, FIELD and FLOW, CHEMICAL.

Civilization and society—COMMUNICATION—BEHAVIORAL, and LINGUISTIC EXPRESSION (not in the brief version: EXPRESSIVE COMMUNICATION, SPEECH and LANGUAGE).

Psyche—EXPERIENCE, INTELLIGENT AND PASSIONATE COMMITMENT.

The Universal—ONE and MANY.

Elements of process

Natural—MOTION, FUNCTION, and EVOLUTION.

Civilization and society—LOCAL CIVILIZATION or POPULATION. INSTRUMENTAL MEANS—CULTURAL WAYS (revelation-illumination), DISCIPLINES, TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, and POLITICS.

Psyche—COGNITION (MIND-THOUGHT) and EMOTION (HEART), and ACTION. INTRINSIC MEANS—CATALYSTS (fracture-integration), PRACTICES, IMMERSIVE ECONOMICS and IMMERSIVE POLITICS.

The Universal—ULTIMATE and IMMEDIATE, BRAHMAN and ATMAN—UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION or POPULATION. Universal and local cycles of BECOMING, PEAKING, and DISSOLUTION.

Pathway

Was ‘The Way of Being’

The way

The Way

The Way, founded in the metaphysics, joins ideas – action – practice, which embeds the real in the psyche.

The Way is an approach to realization, founded in the Ideas. It is a journal edited for general use. It joins the metaphysics with traditional, experimental and reflective practice to form a discipline for transformation. Once the ideas are absorbed, the task is to begin-renew the process. Ideas and action are an essential continuity—a contrast to our modern emphasis. In thought we conceive ultimate ends; in acting we engage with realization; continuity of idea and action embeds the real in the psyche.

The aim of Being

The introductory discussion of aim posited the aim of the way. Here we derive the aim of Being.

The aim of Being is realization of the highest forms.

AIM OF BEING

The ethic is to devote adequate energy of mind and heart to the aim

ETHICS

Attitude

An existential stance—doubt and positive action—to the ultimate nature of individual-universe is the ethical attitude

ATTITUDE, EXISTENTIAL STANCE, DOUBT, POSITIVE ACTION, OCKHAM’S PRINCIPLE

We live in two worlds the finite with death and the limitless with immortality

Path

Being is ever on the path but engagement is the way to the greatest significance. The path begins with the greatest cultivation of the present occasion.

DESTINY

The everyday and universal process templates emphasize the immediate and the ultimate and that these phases must be connected

RENEWAL, EVERYDAY PROCESS, UNIVERSAL PROCESS

The path of Being so far

Here or in the epilogue?

The path so far reveals the essential incompleteness of ideas—even though the ideas are mature, realization is always at a beginning

Method and dimension

Some material here. Refer also to The elements of being, above.

Psychology.

Buddhist Psychology.html.

Tradition and the way

The universal metaphysics and tradition

Tradition and eclecticism

Experiment

Self and universe

The immediate and the ultimate

Guide to the way

New

Aligning the individual and civilization with the universe—holism, cognition, emotion, and stability of identity.

Immediate and everyday process

Universal Process

Epilogue

If I put an epilogue in the text it will incorporate The path so far and what remains.

Supplement

Resources

The function of the resources

Reference to sources for The Way

Reference for developing The Way and resources

The Way of Being online

Website

Essays

Topics

Study topics

Digital modeling of the early universe

Other sites and resources

The Way of Being website and blog

Simple

Aim of the way

Purpose of the site

Name

The way

1. Means; Tradition

2. Ideas (Metaphysics, cosmology, agency, pathway…) ® Realization

Template and outline

Essays—brief, long—and guide

Details

Metaphysics

PURPOSE, MECHANISM, TELEOLOGY, MEANS, IDEAS, ACTION, AGENCY, REFLEXIVITY, ARGUMENT, DIALOGIC, TRADITION, WORLDVIEW, PRIMAL, SECULAR, TRANSSECULAR (SUPRASECULAR), POSITIVISM, DOGMA, LIMITS, CUMULATIVE EXPERIENCE, IMAGINATION, REASON, RATIONALITY, and ACTION.

METAPHYSICS, GROUND.

BEINGS, BEING, EXISTENCE, EXPERIENCE, KNOWING, MEANING.

Being

DIFFERENCE (PATTERN), SAMENESS, IDENTITY, ALL (UNIVERSE), PART (A BEING), NONE (THE VOID)

Meaning

TRUTH, CORRESPONDENCE, PRAGMATIC, CONTEXT, REFERENTIAL MEANING (CONCEPT and OBJECT), LINGUISTIC MEANING (SIGNS, SIMPLE and COMPOUND – compound FORM AND MEANING – SYMBOLS – concept and object), ORAL TRADITION, WRITTEN LANGUAGE.

Experience

PERCEPTIVE (RECEPTION), REFLECTIVE (PURE but POTENTIAL REAL), and ACTIVE (AGENT); BOUND and FREE (PERCEPT and CONCEPT); OUTER and INNER (COGNITIVE and FEELING).

POWER, CAUSE, AFFECT, POTENTIAL, MANIFEST, REMANIFEST, NONBEING.

POSSIBILITY, ACTUALITY, LOGICAL POSSIBILITY, LOGICAL NECESSITY, STATE, CONSTITUTION, LIMITS, REAL POSSIBILITY, UNIVERSAL POSSIBILITY, PATTERN and LAW, NATURAL LAW, SENTIENT POSSIBILITY.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, PRINCIPLE OF PLENITUDE, POSSIBILISM, LIMITLESSNESS OF BEING, PROOF, NORMAL, PROBABILITY, CONTINGENT NECESSITY, LOGIC, UNIVERSAL METAPHYSICS, VOID BEING (existence of the void), GREATEST UNIVERSE, PERFECT METAPHYSICS, ABSTRACT OBJECT, CONCRETE OBJECT, IDENTITY OF THE CONCRETE AND THE ABSTRACT, LOGIC, FACT, THEORY, SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, DEATH, RECEPTACLE, DISPOSITION, GOD.

Cosmology

COSMOLOGY, DIFFERENCE, SAMENESS, IDENTITY, SPACE, TIME, RELATION, IMMANENCE, LOCALITY, EPOCH.

DETERMINISM, INDETERMINISM, ABSOLUTE INDETERMINISM is ABSOLUTE DETERMINISM, SUBSTANTIAL CAUSE, ABSTRACT CAUSE, FREE WILL, FREE WILL THEOREM.

MODES OF BEING, MATTER or BEING-AS-SUCH or BEING-AS-BEING or FIRST ORDER BEING, MIND or BEING-IN-RELATION or SECOND ORDER BEING, MIND-MATTER IDENTITY, extension to the non substance root: POTENTIAL IDENTITY OF MIND AND MATTER.

AGENCY, SIGNIFICANCE, and the SIGNIFICANT UNIVERSE AS THE GREATEST. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, COMMUNITY, SANGHA, SOCIETY, LOCAL CIVILIZATION, UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION, ATMAN and BRAHMAN.

PAIN, SUFFERING, JOY; YOGA, MEDITATION, and VISION QUEST.

Cosmology of form

Form and its origins

FORM, INDETERMINISM, NOVELTY, DETERMINISM, ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

Singular events and their significance

SINGULAR EVENT

Physical cosmology and origins

DYNAMICS.

Elements of Being and agency

MECHANICS OF THE WAY OF BEING.

IDENTITY-RELATION-PROCESS MODEL.

DIMENSIONS OF IDENTITY (being), NATURE, CIVILIZATION, PSYCHE, the UNIVERSAL, PLACE.

Details

Currently omitted—see main content.

Pathway

AIM OF BEING.

ETHICS, PSYCHOLOGY.

ATTITUDE, EXISTENTIAL STANCE, DOUBT, POSITIVE ACTION, OCKHAM’S PRINCIPLE.

DESTINY.

RENEWAL, EVERYDAY PROCESS, UNIVERSAL PROCESS.

Blog and dialogic topics

What the blog should have!

Simple

The Blog is also a FAQ. It should build up casually to a whole dialogic (doxastic) circle of ideas.

What is The Way of Being and its Aim

What is The Way of Being.html

Knowing and being the real and ultimate

In this life and beyond

Who will be interested in it

Anyone interested in

1. The aim

2. The particular topics

What are the origins and inspirations of The Way

My life

1. Wanting more in my life; wanting fullness; cultivating this over my life.

2. My exploration or the worlds of the real and of ideas; and what other people have written

3. Non acceptance of so-called (non-logical or contingent) limits as ultimate (while of course accepting practical constraints)

World tradition

1. Knowledge—sciences (concrete and abstract, particular and general including metaphysics), art, technology, history, religion, humanities

2. World cultural paradigms for aim and accomplishment of individual and civilization—primal and suprasecular (metaphysical), secular (experiential), and transsecular (religious)

3. Practice—instrumental (world) and intrinsic (identity)

What is its view of the real—of the world

It is characterized by

1. Approach from Being

2. The universal metaphysics

What is metaphysics and how can it be possible and potent

1. It is knowledge of the world as it is

2. It is founded in concepts so abstracted from the world as to be perfectly known

3. The concepts are chosen so as to empower a non-trivial metaphysics

Why Being and related concepts

What is the Universal Metaphysics

1. An ultimate and demonstrated metaphysics

2. Its fundamental principle is that The universe realizes all possibility. This ultimate is the envelope of Being.

3. There is a pragmatic part—what is valid in tradition, common experience, experiment, and reason.

4. The pragmatic is perfect, not in precision, but as ideal instrument to realize the envelope of Being

5. This results in a perfect dual metaphysics and epistemology.

What are the purposes of the narratives and website

What are the means

Ideas—imagination (I), criticism (C), and reflexivity. Reflexivity is interaction of all modes and contents. Particularly, the four combinations: I ® I, I ® C, C ® I, C ® C.

Action—in increment. Includes experiment or trial increment, blind andor based in ideas.

Reason—reflexivity and its extension to experiment in which failure of increment provides external criticism of ideas and further motive for internal criticism and modification of ideas and experiment.

What are some of the main and special topics

For a comprehensive set of topics see the table of contents, index, and peruse the narrative.

For a select list see the fundamental ideas and concepts below.

What are the fundamental ideas and concepts of The Way

Fundamental

Being, Power, Experience, Difference

Whole, Part, Null

Universe, Beings, The Void

Possibility, Logic, Pattern, Natural Law

Metaphysics

Possibilism, (its) Proof

The Concrete, The Abstract

Cosmology

Identity, Spacetime, Matter, Mind

Ultimate Universe, Normal World

Form, Origins

Physical Cosmology

Agency, Ultimate Being

The Way

Systems (Ways), Knowledge, Practice, Catalysts

Path, Attitude, Exploration

Is there a guide or template to the way?

The two templates are

Everyday Process

Universal Process

What difficulties does the narrative present and how may they be overcome

For details see sections in the narrative

New, unusual, and difficult

The metaphysics—surprising ultimacy, proof; challenges experience, intuition, the main cultural paradigms

Possibility of metaphysics

New meaning, old and new terms

Holism of meaning

Multifaceted world picture requiring philosophical-scientific modules, each subtle, to be made seamlessly into the picture.

Holism of ideas and action. I.e. ideas are essentially incomplete without action. Absorption approaches completion only when you act out the ideas in your life.

Guide to overcoming

Forewarned is forearmed.

Pay attention to meanings and holism

Temporarily suspend criticism on a first, open reading

Read the text a second time with a critical and constructive (intuition building) approach and to resolve deferred concerns.

For holism of ideas and action, the everyday and universal templates provide a start. You can adapt them to your use if you wish.

What are the main cultural paradigms

Primal

Secular-experiential, material, humanist

Transsecular-dogmatic

Suprasecular-non dogmatic religion, spiritualism, and experimental metaphysics

Details

Motivation

The difficulties

History and aim

History

General with apparent limits on culture

Personal with origins of the worldview—universal metaphysics, cosmology, sentient possibility

Comments on the worldview sufficient to seeing it, the attitude, and the aim

Aim of being—immediate and ultimate

Aim

Traditional ways, realism, and psychology

The Way of Being—univalent versus multivalent

Grounding

That we already have what it takes in the world, tradition, experience, reason, and action—you already know the essence of the truth; it is required to see it.

Note that Plato had this notion in that he saw all knowing as recalling.

That the limits are largely those of interpretation

The difficulty of coherent action is not an intrinsic limit

The essence of the metaphysics

How the essence is consistent with experience

How the immediate and ultimate mesh

Doubt and attitude

The essence of the cosmology

General cosmology

Cosmology of form

Origins of the physical cosmos

The essence of the elements of Being and agency

Pathway

Ways and the way

Instrumental ways

Intrinsic ways, tradition, experience, reason, and action

Psychology

Buddhist Psychology.html.

Immediate and everyday process

Universal process

The path of being so far

Universal Metaphysics as resource

To define and resolve the problems of metaphysics

The essential problems

Means of resolution

Nature and development of ultimate metaphysics

Possibility

Ultimate, full, and robust metaphysics

Universal metaphysics as framework for the ultimate

Realization of the ultimate

Knowledge, art, doubt, and destiny

Perfect epistemology for dual pure and pragmatic metaphysics

Necessity, power and robustness of Frege’s concept of meaning

The nature of Being—The universe as the greatest possible

Resolution of fundamental problems—Human Identity and the Source of Being

Cosmology—transient origin of stable cosmoses from the void

Indeterminism as essential in itself and to form-change and mechanism-chance

Foundation of creative-critical thought and measured freedom of will

The nature of object identity

Implication for spacetime-matter and dynamics

Being and the void, not substance, as absolute foundation

Mind, consciousness and matter in near substance and general cosmologies as relation and being

No categorial mind-body issue

Mind is organic and from adaptation, intense feeling arises with cognitive freedom

Variety of forms of mind-matter is unlimited but there are no further attributes

The entire rational system of concepts has an object and consequences

The system of concepts has an object

This is the fundamental principle

Entailments now follow

Dual reconceptualization of logic and science

Unity and identity of the concrete and abstract objects and of the material and Platonic ‘universes’

Natural laws have being; the void has no laws

The metaphysics shows and provides an instrument for the highest realization

Treatment of essential metaphysics

Treatment begins with the simplest cognition, i.e. difference

Measure of difference as spacetime and no more

Modes of being as experience and experienced and no more

Modes of experience as bound and free

E.g. perception and conception

Kinds of knowing as concrete and abstract and no more

Follows from the modes of experience as bound and free

Instrumental modes, pure and pragmatic and no more, as sufficient to ultimate realization

Realization is the limitless infinitesimal-to-ultimate and no less

Sources for The Way

Existing and future

Thinkers and actors

Literature

Online

Resources

Ideas and study

Writing and publishing

Acting and implementing

Topics for development

Study topics.html

Emphases

New

On the selection

Metaphysics

Philosophy and narrative mode

Design

Science

Abstract and concrete sciences

Ethics

Catalysts and ways

Civilization

Society, culture, tradition

New

Economics and politics

New

Art and artifact

Art, the immediate and the ultimate

New

Art, technology, and the instrumental

New

Some source documents for this essay

Combine with earlier. Link to here from there!

The way of being-Aug2015-pocket manual-print-with-import-headings.html

The way of being-Aug2015-pocket manual-print.html

Foundations of physical cosmology.html

Foundations of physical cosmology-detail.html.

Buddhist Psychology.html.

Argument.html

The simulation hypothesis.html.

The realizations-resource version.html

Glossary

See other documents with glossaries.

Full or selective?

Do this after completion of the individual documents—full or pocket manual.

Index

See pocket manual.

About Anil Mitra

See other documents.

Preliminary to the Way of Being

Discussion

Summary: categories and ground

The categories

The ground

The arrangement of the categories

Metaphysics

Preliminary

Categories

Pure

Pragmatic

Universal

On referential meaning

Being

Being

Experience

Power

Span of being

Whole and part

Parthood

Universe and Being

Meaning

The Real

The actual and the possible

The range of the real

The concrete and the abstract

Cosmology

Identity and change

Identity, extension and duration

Substance

Significance

Form

Form and origins

Description of form

Symbol

Shape and size

Form and function

Agency

The scope of agency

Elements of agency

Mechanics of agency

Dimensions of agency are the dimensions of identity

Elements of identity

Nature

Civilization

Psyche

The universal

Elements of relation

Nature

Civilization

Psyche

The universal

Elements of process

Nature

Civilization

Psyche

The universal

Further elements of the way

Intrinsic

Instrumental

Categories and the disciplines

The disciplines

Text as category

The way

Truth and correspondence

Meaning

Referential

Linguistic

Meaning, argument, and metaphysics

Argument

Metaphysics

Metaphysical principle of identity

Text, infinite or open text and oral tradition

Dialogic cycle of ideas—and of ideas and action

Outline

Introduction

The Universal Metaphysics

Meaning of the universal metaphysics

Meaning and consequences

Does all this contradict science and experience