|
THE WAY OF BEING Anil Mitra © April 2017 — May 2017 Latest update — May 31, 2017 The key words at the heads of sections are ORDINARY and or META-LANGUAGE and METAPHYSICAL LANGUAGE terms. For convenience the terms themselves are bold.
Resources and resource development Prologue—A path into the narrative The greatest possible universe or Being as a framework for the Way The meaning of greatest possible universe in the narrative The universe is the greatest possible The form of the greatest possible universe A rational and universal metaphysics for realization Reason as fabric for knowing and realizing Experience, meaning, and reason Discovering reason and its principles The pillars of reason: fact and inference Reason as fabric for knowing and realizing Necessary versus hypothetical inference Possibility, natural law, and logic The fundamental principle of metaphysics Substance and the properties of the void Pure and pragmatic metaphysics Perfect metaphysics and epistemology Relationship to history of ideas The fundamental question of metaphysics The fundamental principle resolves the fundamental question Further reflections on the question A satisfactory answer must be a necessary answer that shows the existence of all possibilities A new fundamental problem—What has Being? Doubt on the proof of the universal metaphysics Alternate proofs, heuristics, and other arguments Consistency of the metaphysics Existential and optimal stance Reason in light of the metaphysics Metaphysics, Logic, and Reason Logic, mathematics and science The Categories of Being and Reason: Principles of form, formation, and dynamics Introduction to the Categories Categories at the level of Being Categories of Stable Form and Formation; Formation of a world or cosmos Categories of Identity, Space, Time, and Dynamics Categories of Elements and Dimensions of identity and the world Traditional knowledge and practice
Plan for the document § To work on. § To work on now. Fill in—comment ® import ® write: § The templates; agency, elements and dimensions, etc for the templates, especially the universal template. § Living The Way § Prologue > the greatest possible universe > the universal metaphysics… § U Meta. § Reason II (and titles of the sections). § Levels of Being. § Fill in; do red and orange points §
Edit, eliminate imported text, be
sure that there is one and ONLY ONE NOT CROSSED OUT KEY TERM but allow § Find a co-writer-editor, co-discoverer, co-realize-actor; and individual, group, network, or society itself; to share and carry on the way. IntroductionThe Way of BeingThe AIM of The Way is shared discovery and realization of the immediate and universal real for civilizations and individuals. The Way has roots in my thought and experience, and world CULTURAL PARADIGMS of cosmos, life ways, REASON, and VALUE. SECULARISM, today closely related to NATURALISM, emphasizes experience and reason so far: Often felt complete, secularism is consistent with very different ROBUST other worlds, natural laws, and perhaps even reason. TRANSSECULARISM, metaphysical-rational and religious-emotive, tends to limited realism or mythic literalism. The paradigms deny a potential vast unknown or see it via dogma. Potent but distorted, they move and limit civilization in time. To overcome the limits, we uncover uncritical universalization of modes of naturalism and criticism and so free imagination from paradigmatic blindness. This reveals and enables proof of deep truth: the Ideas justify METAPHYSICS as knowledge of the real: they prove 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 and practice 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. Grounded in experience, it is a mesh of the local and the ultimate. Apparent conflict with experience and paradigm is resolved by attention to meaning. Re-education of intuition, required by the radical metaphysics, requires patience to see the matrix of ideas as a whole. The essay is ongoing dialog among ideas, action, the real, and our place in it. Its world picture is a matrix of known and new ideas chosen as comprehensive of the real in terms of Being, universe, experience, and difference. I provide design essentials for discovery and realization. Blue font text may be omitted at first reading. Resources amplify and consolidate material, and suggest research programs, sources, and resources. The essay is dedicated to freedom in IMAGINATION, reason and action toward to realization for individuals and the world. Narrative flowThis section explains the narrative flow of The Way. The ideas flow from general-abstract to particular-concrete. Every stage derives from earlier ones. After a foundation in a critical and complete account of meaning, the ideas begin with Being and universe as given and so neutral to kind and content as to accommodate a range from empty to greatest possible universes. The metaphysics shows the universe as greatest—inclusive of but far greater than our empirical cosmos and natural science. Similarly, a maximally inclusive cosmology moves from abstract to particular while admitting neutral notions of mind and matter. Spacetime, relation, and a dynamics are derived from identity. The final section in the ideas derives a mechanics of realization to be used in The Way. The way deploys the ideas to set up the aim, attitude, imperative (ethic), and nature of paths—immediate to ultimate. These set up interwoven and adaptable everyday (immediate) and universal (ultimate) process templates. An evaluation of the path so far precedes presentation of the templates. IdeasRealizations of individuals, civilizations, and the universe have no limit. The immediate and the ultimate are interwoven. While in limited form realization is ever in process. The ideas are completed only in entering The Way. Being‘Being’ sets up four ideas to found the universal metaphysics. The significance of 1 Being is neutrality—this avoids errors of ill defined kinds, e.g. mind-matter. The issue of what has Being is to fall out of analysis; this introduces algebraic power to thought; 2 Universe is that, unlike the empirical universe it is definite in allowing the yet unknown: whatever has Being is in it; there is no other Platonic world. Are matter and numbers real? If and only if they are in the universe; 3 Possibility is that it sets the widest framework for Being and reason; 4 The Void is that it avoids projection of law, determinism, and causation to the universe; which enables a metaphysics that demonstrates and shows the ultimate nature of the universe. Metaphysics and realismCosmologyCosmology develops a variety and range of Being preliminary to The Way: elements include (a) reality (Being) of experience, (b) endless variety and peaks of Being, (c) weave of immediate and ultimate, (d) micro- vs. macro-increment, and (e) Elements of Being and agency and phases of growth. Why is there Being at all? This fundamental question of metaphysics (Heidegger) is resolved. A new, appropriate, fundamental question is: What has Being—to what concepts do there correspond beings? All fundamental questions can be put in this form—identity, below, abstract objects. Even the how of becoming has Being. A prime example of cultural distortion: we argue GOD’s existence but the essential issue is What such ideals can mean!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Everyday
process template
The actions and dimensions
of Being in this template are sufficiently complete. The details show a
program of my design; here they are illustrative and suggestive.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Universal
process template
Resources, essential to discovery and realization, are cultivated by accumulation, imagination, criticism, and excision.
Resource emphases are dimensions of Being, particularly breadth and depth of experience, ideas, knowledge, and practice—all studied reflexively for method, too, has Being.
Topics emphasize breadth and depth and include: metaphysics, philosophy and narrative mode; design and planning; science and sciences, abstract and concrete; ethics; catalysts and ways; civilization; and art and artifact—see Topics for study. Sources include PLATO, Adi SAMKARA (the Vedanta), DESCARTES, HUME, KANT, Charles DARWIN, Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN, Martin HEIDEGGER, Karl POPPER, Kurt GÖDEL, W. V. QUINE, and a range thinkers and doers in natural science, cosmology, and religion.
Online—The Way of Being site; A longer version of The Way; The Way: sources and details; Ground of the real; Beyul: Quest for the Real; Civilization; Shared immersion; Cultural economics-politics-ethics; Artifactual Being; Catalysts; Ways; Study topics. Older versions of The Way have sources and glossary. The following have plans Study topics, Modifications. Highlights is an overview. Finally, here is: a digital model of the early universe.
Universal metaphysics as resource. Introduction Resolution of the essential problems of metaphysics. 1 Nature, possibility, and development of a full and robust metaphysics. 2 Universal metaphysics as absolute-ultimate framework for knowledge, philosophy, science, mathematics, art, and destiny. It enables a potent attitude to doubt. 3 Perfect DUAL EPISTEMOLOGY for pure-pragmatic metaphysics (imperfect by traditional criteria, the pragmatic, with science, is perfect in its function in the dual scheme). 4 Necessity, power and robustness of Frege’s concept of meaning. 5 The nature of Being; the universe as the greatest possible. Resolution of fundamental problems—Human Identity and Source of Being. 6 Cosmology—transient origin of stable cosmoses from the void. Indeterminism as essential in itself and to equilibrium between form-change and mechanism-chance. Foundation of creative-critical thought and measured freedom of will. The nature of object identity. Implication for the interwoven nature of space-time-matter and dynamics of change. Spacetime is the only measure of difference. 7 Being (void), not substance, as absolute foundation. Nature of matter-mind as Being-relation in near substance cosmology; necessary general realization of this; therefore there is no categorial mind-body issue; so mind is organic and from adaptation, intense feeling arises with cognitive freedom. The variety of forms of mind-matter is unlimited but there are no further attributes. 8 The entire rational system of concepts has an object. This entails dual reconceptualization of logic and science. There is no essential distinction between concrete and abstract objects—the abstract are real and in the one universe; there is no other Platonic universe; and insofar as the abstract are acausal, atemporal, and non-spatial, it is because those features omitted in abstraction. The concrete-abstract distinction is not real but lies in the main mode in which they are known. The concrete are empirical; the abstract are known conceptually, in symbolic, often axiomatic terms; and from this greater simplicity, are known with greater definition and certainty. Natural laws have Being; the void has no laws. 9 The metaphysics shows and provides an instrument for the highest realization. 10 Treatment of all essential metaphysics begins (began) with the simplest cognition—difference. We then saw measure of difference as spacetime and no more. Modes of Being are experience-experienced; no more. Kinds of knowing are concrete-abstract; no more. Modes of instrumentality, perfect and pragmatic and no more, are sufficient to ultimate realization. The realm of the will-be-accessed-by-identity is the limitless infinitesimal to the limitless ultimate; no less.
The index is in the full print edition.
Prologue—A path into the narrative
The prologue is a path into the narrative.
It will be a story about
The path to the GPU.
And the MU.
And path of The Way.
Comment. The rest of the ‘prologue’ will be absorbed or eliminated.
SPIRITUAL, MUNDANE; HUMAN ENDEAVOR, REAL
Is there a human endeavor? A narrow prescription would be contentious. We can, however, make a sufficiently inclusive and flexible characterization.
The human endeavor includes living well in this world, i.e. the immediate world, and the highest discovery and highest realization in the ultimate.
In beginnings we know neither least nor highest of what can be known and realized.
We will find there to be one realm—no remote opposed to the immediate, no spiritual versus mundane. There are distinctions and phases but these are ultimately bound together within the real.
There is an intrinsic interest in meaning-as-significance and whether and to what extent it is intrinsic to the universe.
In the endeavor it will be useful to begin with metaphysics—specifically a metaphysical system—to conceive the ultimate; one aim of the prologue is to present a metaphysics that is an ultimate metaphysics in a sense to be explained. The narrative develops and fills out the metaphysics; and shows paths to realization.
An informal discussion of Being will now be useful.
KIND, SUBSTANCE, BE-ING, ENTITY, RELATION, PROCESS
We begin informally with Being (capitalized) as straddling all distinctions, and the universe as all there is. Later, formal use will inherit from this use of Being that ‘existence’ is the one fundamental kind (not a substance) and from this use of universe, that there is precisely one universe. A being (lower case) is an instance of existence. The term be-ing refers to entity over relation and process. Two sides or means of Being are ideas and action.
SIGNIFICANCE, ESSENCE, INERT, ACTIVE SENTIENCE
The significance of Being—one significance—above is to allow that any essence of the universe is not necessarily inert or non-sentient—and may turn out to have active sentience and phases of unitary and sentient Being-hood.
GREATEST, GREATEST POSSIBLE UNIVERSE, GPU
Possibility is defined just below. Note that the concept of ‘greatest possible universe’ and ‘all possibilities’ are potentially paradoxical and indeterminate. We can remove trivial semantic paradoxes by requiring that every allowed possibility be conceptually determinate and acknowledging that for every one, there is a greater. What then is greatest? That there is always a greater is the first notion of greatest. Is there a real absolute greatest universe or must that be potential? A significant issue but regardless, there are clear implications for realization (below).
The sketch of the metaphysics begins with a framework. This section shows that the greatest possible universe (gpu or GPU) is a rational framework for the aim of the Way.
EXTENSION, PARADOX; VARIETY, SPACE, TIME, MOST LIBERAL POSSIBILITY, LOGIC (lc), LOGIC (cap)
Greatest will not mean not best or most ethical but most inclusive of kind and variety of Being, regarded as including extension in space and time. It is implicit in ‘greatest’ the possible shall be real and that possibility shall be most liberal possibility.
What is the manifest form of the greatest possible universe? Even if the actual universe follows physical law, the only restriction for a concept to be realized in the greatest possible universe is to satisfy logic. If logic is satisfied, a concept is realizable in some world; on the other hand if logic is not satisfied, realization is not possible at all.
Thus the greatest possible universe is the universe of Logic. ‘Logic’ (capitalization, signifies a use that is explained later). A concern will be to avoid paradox potentially inherent in the idea of ‘all possibility’. One approach to this concern is to specify what is allowed—and so to approach the greatest possible while avoiding paradox.
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF METAPHYSICS, FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, FP
It will be shown that the universe is the greatest possible; this is one form of what will be named the fundamental principle of metaphysics or just fundamental principle, abbreviated FP.
IDENTITY, LIMIT, PEAK
If the universe is the greatest possible, it must have has identity. The universe as greatest possible and its identities have no limit to variety of kind or peak of Being, extension, or duration. A material example is that there are cosmoses limitlessly arrayed in space and time. The ultimate possibility of any being—individual or civilization—is that of the universe itself. Within that range, be-ing and relating and becoming, immediate and ultimate, home and abroad are ever interwoven.
Given sufficient security, a choice between the immediate and the ultimate is neither necessary nor appropriate.
Consider a given being. Then, there is always (1) a greater being, (2) a greater sentience or sentient being, (3) realizations of the being and 1-2 from the void (absence of Being), and (4) a sentient being capable of engineering realizations the being and 1-3. Description of this kind avoids paradox.
The universe is the greatest possible universe or being.
INTELLIGENCE, CULTURE, EXPERIMENT, IMAGINATION, CRITICISM, INTUITION, SYMBOLISM; FP, PLEASURE, PAIN, CHOICE, MEANS, ELEMENTS OF REASON,
IDEAS, ACTION
Individual and civilization already partake of the immediate and the ultimate. Though often obscured in this life vision of the ultimate can be approximated. Questions arise. (1) Is full vision possible? (2) What is the form of realization? (3) What means are there for realization?
That an individual and civilization are centers of emergent-quiescent awareness follows from FP; it explains partial knowledge-realization of the ultimate; it explains the connection with other beings on the way to the ultimate and connections with ultimates. Rational karma would not be the individual reaping future cycles benefit or loss; but of being part of general process toward the ultimate. Pleasure and pain are unavoidable but we have choice and may use intelligence in the choosing and acting.
The classic means are laid out in various traditions. To lay them out would be a map of human culture and process, supplemented by the following elements of reason, taken blowfish up later, self-consistency, experiment and reflection—imagination-criticism, intuition-symbolism; some elements are provided later. The means must be a weaving of be-ing in the present and process toward the ultimate. But we can inquire of the elements of means in broad terms. That we even conceive realization involves ideas; and it is ideas—reason and so on—that are involved in action toward realization. The means are ideas and action. Ideas refer to the world which includes ideas, action, and the rest of the world. Thus, reason, taken up later pertains not only to truth but also to action.
The greatest possible universe provides a framework. But how can the ultimate be known-realized at all; and how can this go beyond a framework?
FRAMEWORK, SUBJECTIVE
AWARENESS, WORLD, FIELD OF EXPERIENCE,
RATIONAL
METAPHYSICS, METAPHYSICAL
LANGUAGE, ORDINARY LANGUAGE, META-LANGUAGE; EXPERIENCE, MEANING, SAMENESS, DIFFERENCE, UNIVERSE, BEINGS, BEING, EXISTENCE, NATURAL LAW, PATTERN, POSSIBILITY, REASON, ABSTRACT
SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, CONCRETE SCIENCES,
NATURAL
SCIENCES, RELIGION, THE VOID
The framework will begin with ideas of experience whose essence is subjective awareness, meaning, sameness, difference, universe, world and field of experience, beings, Being (cap) and existence, natural law or pattern, possibility, reason (which will include logic, and abstract sciences including mathematics and the concrete sciences, especially the natural sciences, and rational metaphysics or religion), and the void conceived in sufficient abstraction that empirical knowledge is precise. This will be sufficient to derive the fundamental principle. These are the special terms of the metaphysics or metaphysical language; the system evolves; but at any point it is described in ordinary language which whose status is secondary to and not as critical as the metaphysical language terms. The metaphysical language may be described in special meta-language terms (in this regard the term ‘metaphysics’ is unfortunate). Because the metaphysical language cannot be perfectly atomic and is unlikely to be final, we allow the boundary between the languages to be porous; and we can see the metaphysical and meta-languages to be part of the ordinary. Still, an abstract metaphysics can be isolated and cast axiomatically and we may seek to include the concept of the pragmatic in such axiomatics.
Reason is the means of reliable knowledge and action.
RATIONALITY; REASON, TRUTH
PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSICS, CATEGORIES OF BEING, MIDDLE GROUND
In building up a metaphysical picture a system of problems of metaphysics is basic. Each problem may be relatively trivial in itself, its source being some philosophical puzzle or paradox. However, when the problems are solved simultaneously—this may be iterative—a full picture of the real emerges. This is supplemented by tradition. Of course even the supplemented picture is not a complete map of the real. But it is, as described earlier, the most we can get, desire, or need. It resolves what is inessential, even if philosophically deep, so that we can get on with what is essential on the way of discovery and realization.
This process gives us a rational approach to the question of metaphysical categories or categories of Being—the fundamental aspects of Being, mostly at or near the metaphysical level of Being.
When we wonder about ‘ultimate reason’ we recognize that we always begin in the present, with what we know take as pragmatic. We begin here and now in the ‘middle ground’. We then proceed to improve ‘outward’ which allows us to come back and improve the middle. The outward directions are metaphysical, traditional, and cosmological. The process begins iteratively but this does not rule out systematic development which will be significant.
Key words are bold but are not listed separately only when not listed elsewhere in the document.
WORLD, PERFECT
METAPHYSICS; UNIVERSE (WHAT THERE IS), SAMENESS, DIFFERENCE, BEINGS, BEING, EXISTENCE, WHAT IS (VERB TO BE), POSSIBILITY,
THE
VOID, GREATEST
POSSIBLE UNIVERSE, ULTIMATE, REASON, LOGIC, NORMAL WORLD,
TRADITION, REAL, DUAL
PERSPECTIVE
The universe is the greatest possible universe—the ultimate: the ‘world’ defined by reason or Logic; it frames normal worlds. Our normal world, the world of tradition, and cosmos are given in naïve experience. The perfect metaphysics of knowledge and realization is a mesh: the ultimate in which the normal is perfect instrument. It enhances knowledge of the universe to examine all aspects of the real from the dual perspective of the metaphysics.
The boundary between metaphysics and cosmology is marked by level of generality but is otherwise porous.
matter, mind, simulation; QUALITY, first order Being,
second
order Being, substance, free will, AGENCY
The subject of cosmology is the variety and extension of Being and identity. Some elements of these are quality, relation, process, space, and time; matter (first order Being) and mind (second order Being), substance, free will and the nature of agency; material world, the problem of simulation.
PSYCHE, DOUBT, TEMPLATES; INNER-OUTER PATH, DIMENSIONS OF BEING,
ETHICS, AIM OF BEING,
ATTITUDE, WAYS, CATALYSTS, PATHS
Topics include: metaphysical foundation of The Way of Being, identity (psyche) as real, inner-outer path, dimensions of Being; ethics and derivation of the aim of Being; attitude in face of doubt; ways, catalysts, and paths; templates—everyday and universal; the path so far and for the future.
Comment. The section on experience is preliminary.
Comment. In a short version, the prologue may be eliminated and key terms up through Prologue > On realization placed here.
The AIM of THE WAY OF BEING is a SHARED ENDEAVOR for Being, especially for the INDIVIDUAL and CIVILIZATION throughout the universe. The aim is that of LIVING WELL and the HIGHEST DISCOVERY and HIGHEST REALIZATION in the IMMEDIATE WORLD and the ULTIMATE WORLD.
The MEANS of discovery and realization are IDEAS, PRACTICE, and ACTION in interaction.
Comment. Some key terms from the Prologue > A rational and universal metaphysics for realization > The framework should be placed here.
Comment. Appropriate categories and related problems from Prologue > A circle of problems may be placed here.
Why Being? In searching beyond our world and what we know, we begin with the thought that our common views of the way the world is are rough and incomplete. The way Being is used here makes it an excellent vehicle for a picture of the world to emerge with experience and reflection rather than imposed at the outset. But it is valid to ask whether any concept or system of concepts can be adequate to this aim. It is in the spirit of the present meaning of Being that this will emerge with the narrative rather than be presumed at the beginning.
The following section introduces fundamental concepts of Being, ALL Being—the universe, a being—PART, and the void—NULL being or part.
Small capitals in subsequent paragraphs in this section identify basic and derived GIVENS. Regarded in CONCRETE detail, knowledge of the givens is PRAGMATIC. If sufficiently ABSTRACT, knowledge in the sense of CORRESPONDENCE is PERFECT. To begin, the treatment is sufficiently abstract to permit such perfection; that is, sufficient concrete detail omitted. Later, when an abstract framework is set up, the concrete will be brought back in.
SAMENESS and DIFFERENCE are fundamental givens.
The UNIVERSE is what IS there—what has EXISTENCE—over all sameness, difference, and their absence. There is exactly one universe.
Above ‘is’ has two uses; in lower case it is the ‘is’ of definition; in small caps it is a generic form of the VERB TO BE—indifferent to distinction: to sameness and difference and, for later reference, to tense, process, location, relation, interaction, quality, number, and so on.
A BEING is the universe or part of it. Thus a being as a being has no special characteristics that define special kinds of Being (later).
What beings possess in virtue of existing is BEING (capitalized). In virtue of abstraction Being is indifferent to the distinctions above. In the sufficiently abstract, there is Being; there are beings; beings are not Being but have Being; at greater abstraction beings and Being are not distinct; with sufficient abstraction there is only experience.
The abstract conceptions of Being and a being introduces an algebraic character to the study of Being and universe. It empowers the means of answer to the question of what has Being, which is a fundamental problem if not the fundamental problem of metaphysics. The idea of Being is instrumental in addressing this question of Being. Is substance the answer? Substance is an abstract posit—it may ‘exist’ but it is not a final answer. If something never has an effect existence neither obtains nor fails to obtain but is without meaning. This is one motive to the concept of power introduced below.
Thus Being derives from the generic verb to be above a neutrality as extreme as possible while still referring at all—while referring to the distinction between existence and non-existence. On the other hand, a being, while not as neutral is still neutral to entity, process, relation but does distinguish this being from that one. To emphasize entity we will write BE-ING and for process we write BECOMING. We also recognize INTERACTION.
POWER, the ability to affect is the measure of Being. Power is an effective answer to the question of What has Being?
As cause and effect are relations, the universe—all Being—is neither created nor caused. It lies outside the ideas of relation, cause, and effect.
THE VOID is the NULL BEING or absence of Being.
Sameness, difference, the universe, beings, Being, and power have Being—they exist. POTENTIAL is not outside the universe—it has Being; as potential of a prior Being to REMANIFEST, NONBEING has Being.
The power of the framework under development derives from (1) the inclusiveness or universality of the concepts and (2) their abstraction which permits precision as well as formation of a framework for the world (defined below).
Comment. Appropriate categories and related problems from Prologue > A circle of problems may be placed here.
In its first meaning here, EXPERIENCE will be SUBJECTIVE AWARENESS. There is a NIHILISM that denies that there is experience. However, it is a fundamental named given for to doubt experience is experience. It has an ontological priority over matter as its seat or mind as its place. To see this is to reject any—nihilist—materialism that negates experience or its powers. There is experience of experience; and there is experience as-if of a REAL WORLD (also metaphorically called the EXTERNAL WORLD). While CONSCIOUSNESS is experience, the term experience suggests an experiencer and an experienced.
It is conceivable that there is nothing in the world but experience—in a naïve form this is SOLIPSISM. However, if we map experience we find that the names for its aspects and regions are roughly the names we use for the as-if real world. But we could also see that world as a field of experience with individuals as concentrations of experience. We ascribe reality to the former because it is effective: what is called ‘I’ has powers but only limited powers of knowing and acting. We ascribe reality to the latter as an abstract description (made concrete later). With appropriate interpretations, the two descriptions are equivalent. What this says is not that there is more than one description of the real but that equivalent equally good descriptions or conceptions are part of the real.
The SKEPTICISM of nihilism and of solipsism have been used to clarify and establish the nature of experience. DOUBT is key in arguing that there are experience, SUBJECT (EXPERIENCER), and OBJECT (EXPERIENCED, the REAL WORLD). Of all philosophers, this section owes the most to DESCARTES for analysis of existence; it also owes to WITTGENSTEIN for pointing out that an alternate description often masquerades as factual difference.
The WORLD is the universe-as-experienced-by-the-individual or culture; we have just seen that at root, world and universe are the same.
Kinds of experience include (1) BOUND EXPERIENCE—PERCEPTION-FEELING,
as if of an object felt real, (2) FREE EXPERIENCE—CONCEPTION-EMOTION (note that conception has
two senses in this narrative—here it is free conception but it is also general
mental content), creative play of experience that includes imagination, LANGUAGE, and reason
and which show abstract-pragmatic reality to the felt-real, (3) ACTIVE EXPERIENCE
with VOLITION—which
identifies ACTION
and the ACTIVE
INDIVIDUAL in contrast to the rest of
the world: (4) to talk of experience is not to exclude the world or the BODY of the
individual. CITTA
(also see Living
The Way, citta),
though it has a more specialized use in Buddhist texts, will here refer to
the combination of the three kinds above.
We can define a CONCRETE OBJECT as the object of a percept (or bound citta). Earlier, we considered abstractions from concrete objects. We could regard these as abstract objects, metaphorically speaking. However, we can also define ABSTRACT OBJECTS as the objects of free concepts (free citta).
Comment. Improve and place:
We will later see that abstract objects are real; that abstract objects lie in the one universe that the distinction between the abstract and the concrete lies only in the means of knowing them and is not intrinsic; and we will develop a symmetric and unified theory of abstract and concrete objects; and the variety of all objects far exceeds expectation.
We have seen that experience and so consciousness, SUBJECT (EXPERIENCER),
and OBJECT
(EXPERIENCED)
have Being.
Can we regard subject or object as fundamental? That is, we are enquiring into the PROBLEMS OF MIND AND MATTER.
The treatment is not at a point where it can make a commitment to SUBSTANCE or otherwise but we can analyze some possibilities regarding substance.
On MATERIALISM, a MONISM, there is only ‘matter’ or object. STRICT MATERIALISM invokes the further idea that mind—experience, consciousness—are no part of matter.
On strict materialism the occurrence of experience is MAGIC. Therefore
emergence at some level of complexity is magic; an ANALOGY to emergence from matter to a
material system is a disanalogy because there is no emergence of substance.
Therefore the condition of strictness must be jettisoned if materialism is to
be satisfactory. Now experience (mind) has three possible sources—internal to
the organism, external, and magic. We eliminate magic for obvious reasons and
the external because it does not directly pertain to FUNCTION. Therefore the ELEMENTS of the
experiential must be among the known or unknown elements of the object
(matter) and from the nature of experience its elements must be relations
among those material elements. That is, there is an EMERGENCE in
higher organisms but what emerges is higher level experience or consciousness
and not the elemental forms (mind) themselves. This is a monism but
material—or mental—only on an open interpretation of the terms ‘mind’ and
‘matter’. Experience is a form of power—of CAUSE and AFFECT (yes, affect).
Given substance, is this a monism or DUALISM? Two kinds of apparent SUBSTANCE DUALISM seem possible. First, experiential phenomena are the result of something non-object (non-matter) like that interacts with matter to make the organism. But this is essentially the above case of monism. In a second situation, some minds migrate to our immediate world from elsewhere but unless this is the monistic case then, since the form of mind must be material, it would be an other kind of matter different from the local but this does not seem to make sense for it represents something without power or at most ‘spirits’ or ‘ghosts’. These are of course possibilities; later we will see an extension of these ideas as real and as significant to a complete view of our Being—what we are—and destiny.
Comment. Follow up on the above.
Later, we find that there can be multiple experiential kinds, each an as-if monism, each minimally interacting with the others and each, perhaps, associated with a distinct cosmos but in the most common cases, in a given cosmos, the situation in a stable phase of a cosmos is likely close to monism. Entire systems of this kind will be found in give and take with a transient background that is also in give and take with the void.
Here, MEANING is REFERENTIAL MEANING, for which CORRESPONDENCE may be perfect or pragmatic. The pragmatic subsumes COHERENCE, which it will not be necessary to use explicitly in this essay.
CONCEPT MEANING is a concept as mental content (citta) and its object (indifferent to sing. vs pl.). When sufficiently abstract reference may be PERFECT CORRESPONDENCE but otherwise PRAGMATIC. That is, concepts may be ATOMIC when structure is omitted in abstraction; a LOGICAL ATOMISM is possible in the perfect correspondence case—here we are developing such an atomistic framework for the pragmatic (citta) case.
To illustrate, consider the concept of ‘universe’. If it refers to the universe in all its detail, it is not atomistic. However, if it refers to all existence distinguishing it only from non-existence. It is a conceptual atom. And it is this atom that is part of the perfect correspondence in which the concept ‘universe’ refers to the actual universe. Is it superfluous to have a concept ‘universe’ and the thing universe? No, for without the concept an object cannot be identified: imagine, for example, if someone yells ‘sher’ while you are in the forest. You have no reaction. However, if they had yelled ‘tiger’ you might have panicked. That’s because you associate the word ‘tiger’ with a conceptual picture of a tiger. Now ‘sher’ is the Hindi word for tiger but you do not make the connection: the concept is essential even though it is not always efficient to be explicit about it. That is the concept is essential if a pure sign such as ‘tiger’ or ‘sher’ are to have meaning. There’s a further consideration. Under the concept of ‘universe’ you can entertain square-circles and then, realizing that that is a contradiction you can tell that the real universe does not have any. This clarifies that you can if you wish include ‘square circles’ in ‘universe’ but it makes no material difference and therefore you are also free to omit ‘square circles’ from ‘universe’. This approach to meaning also clarifies what a non existent object is. If ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is defined as the person in the Arthur Conan Doyle writings describing a literary British detective, then Sherlock Holmes does (did) not exist.
LINGUISTIC MEANING associates signs with concept-objects; pure signs have no intrinsic meaning; structure contributes to compound sign, e.g. sentence, meaning. This concept of meaning is essential to its possibility, clarity, adequacy, and definiteness. Without the concept, reference is impossible; even seemingly well formed compound reference may be indefinite, empty, or paradoxical. This is crucial later in defining Logic; its neglect results in many SEMANTIC and logical paradoxes.
USE–the milieu of language—is the first source or DETERMINER of ORDINARY LANGUAGE meaning; it may be stabilized and conventionalized in the common LEXICA and prescribed-semi-logical SYNTAX (pl.). But the ordinary is far from ordinary and so the single-multiple milieu, conventional-realist, fluid-stable, atomic-diffuse, unique-multiple and family nature of ordinary language meaning. Also, the meaning of a compound sign is usually more than the sum of the parts and might have little to do with the parts. We have no option but to begin in the immediate and so we use ordinary language to build up a METAPHYSICAL LANGUAGE system—terms introduced in ‘SMALL CAPITALS’. One aim of a metaphysical (formal) language is to overcome the difficulties of ordinary language—e.g. as in mathematics (the formal case). Here, we should not wish to be as strictly formal as in logics and mathematics there is, I find, significant achievement. I do not know what the ultimate achievement or improvements may be. A number of special METALANGUAGE terms may be used to supplement ordinary description of the metaphysical language.
Via abstraction there is, in discussing experience and meaning, the beginning of a METAPHYSICS—a METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM—of precise reference (the atomic frame). This is crucial to meaning and precision. It is essential for understanding that it be followed and not confused with ordinary or other special meaning such as in science or other metaphysical systems.
Because the present work is not, say, mathematics it is likely impossible to not have nuances of meaning and play. But I hope that the introduction of metaphysical language introduces reasonable general consistency, careful consistency where it is needed—the ‘pure’ metaphysics, allows play, disallows variant interpretations but allows play with those interpretations.
In introducing terms here, it will no longer be necessary to say, for example, ‘here, reason is establishment of truth’. We will simply say ‘reason is establishment of truth’ and we will not add the reminder that ‘it is not to be associated with other uses’.
The meaning of terms is and should be related to historical and modern uses but is as defined here. For the defined terms of the narrative, the metaphysical language and so on, an attempt at precision and context independence is made. The system of terms also has meaning that is revealed in the metaphysics and so on. It is crucial that the reader recognize this and not impose imported meaning. This quite valid for I endeavor to be internally and externally consistent and I do not impose my meaning on extra-narrative use. However, I do claim a valid and potent system that should at minimum be informative for extra-narrative—for the measure of a system of meaning should be primarily what it captures and secondarily the historical uses.
Comment. Work on the metalanguage; where to define metaphysics and metaphysical system.
The section on reason is elevated to a higher level because of its detail.
REASON is establishment of TRUTH. Some related terms are ARGUMENT, logic, science, and RATIONALITY.
Reason is the means of reliable knowledge and action.
So as not to see reason as sterile, it is important to see that reason does not exclude any element of citta. To see that reason is rich and human, note that though it may be used with a sterile set of presumptions, it may be used only to exclude what is absurd and so to allow all richness of vision. We will chisel a view that is maximally rich, yet may be used with precision.
This will require that we do not alter the strict meaning of logic, especially in its modern use as deductive logic, in its domain of applicability. Yet we must also see logic in its larger context as synergic with all aspects of experience. Where it is necessary to specify what meaning we use, we will do so.
Comment. Use argument.html here. Move this section down?
BEGIN IN THE PRESENT—where we are; begin with ordinary language which may be investigated later.
There is NO ABSOLUTE A PRIORI
To not seek immediate perfection is EMPOWERMENT OF FOUNDATION.
The TWO PILLARS OF REASON are to establish fact directly and to infer other facts, simple and compound.
Reason does not stand above knowledge content or action and realization.
Since Being and experience are in the world reason is a kind of content.
Reason maps action.
Here, neither absolute a priori nor final reason is assumed, except where shown. Reason remains a fluid center in communication with all content.
Reason is not merely formal and cognitive—e.g., logic and science. It also involves, as noted, other elements of citta: appropriate and necessary use of heuristics, emotion, value, intuition, imagination, experiment, and action—all in reflexive interaction. But note that an image of action is captured in reason and that in the universal metaphysics it is a perfect image:
An ultimate metaphysical framework will be developed that is precise by abstraction. This will frame and interact with the rich, pragmatic, case that permits citta and imprecision, and includes TRADITION—what is valid in the tradition of human cultures, imagination and criticism, experiment and action. The latter will be found to be the perfect instrument for the former.
The criteria of truth will be perfect correspondence for the logical atomic framework and pragmatic for tradition. Though pragmatic, tradition as defined here, is the perfect instrument in realization within the framework
That is, in an ideal and active sense, metaphysics, reason, argument, and Logic are identical.
Reason is a main thread weaving the Way together. It is so, not because reason or reasoning generates all things but because it is in efficient communication with all things.
This section treats the ELEMENTS OF REASON—to ESTABLISH FACT and INFER FACT from fact.
A SIMPLE FACT or FACT is an item of DATA that is ATOMIC for a given correspondence or BASIC for a given pragmatic purpose.
Facts are ESTABLISHED by PERCEPTION, OBSERVATION
(link), MEASUREMENT, CORROBORATION, and reason (argument).
When discrimination is imperfect, facts are uncertain or imprecise.
But pure or PRECISE FACTS are possible, e.g. that there is a universe, which from
abstraction is perfect and atomic. Though TRIVIAL
in following from DEFINITION and the
GIVEN, such precise facts in combination will be found to have
immense consequences.
A NECESSARY TRUTH is one that must be true. From universe as all Being, that there is precisely one universe is a NECESSARY FACT, if tautological—since there is ‘always’ either a manifest or void universe.
Are there any necessary non tautological non analytic facts? Following W. V. QUINE, “It is raining” is contingent. But “It is raining on Saturday, May 20, 2017 at 8:46:23 AM in my backyard”, on tenseless us of ‘is’ and factual truth of the statement in double quotes, is an eternal fact. That is, prior to Saturday, May 20 it could not be said to be true. On the other hand now that it is past the given date and time I know that it is an eternal fact. It is a necessary fact, a necessary truth.
Given that there is, by simple observation and earlier Cartesian type analysis, a manifest universe, this is a necessary truth. But can we say it is a necessary truth without the observation? No—not unless we find some other way of demonstrating it as a fact. In Metaphysics the fact will be demonstrated and so shown necessary, while not eternally, but limitlessly in that the non-manifest case will be also limitless but non-eternal.
A COMPOUND FACT as a collection of facts is also a fact; but as PROJECTION beyond the collection, finite or unlimited, it may be HYPOTHESIS or THEORY.
INFERENCE is to arrive at a CONCLUSION with a certain CONFIDENCE from a PREMISE of a specified confidence. ‘If the premises are true, the conclusions are true’. Note that because they may be compound, ‘conclusion’ and ‘premise’ include ‘conclusions’ and ‘premises’.
NECESSARY INFERENCE is possible only when the conclusions are essentially contained in the premises (by TAUTOLOGY) or independently true, e.g. as fact. A necessary inference is a LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE. The main means of necessary inference is DEDUCTION; which follows semantically from the containment of conclusion in premise; for example the transitivity of implication can be modeled by inclusion for sets: (a ® b).(b ® c) ® (a ® c) says, with appropriate interpretation, (A Ê B).(B Ê C) ® (A Ê C). However syntactic representation is desirable when we want logic to be independent of models. First order logic, too, has a set theoretic interpretation.
If, indeed, the conclusion follows from the premise, the inference is VALID.
If the facts or premises are true and the inference valid, then the conclusions are true and the reason or argument is SOUND.
When the conclusion is not contained in the premise, it is at most PROBABLE and the inference is the inference of INDUCTION of which particular cases are HYPOTHETICAL INFERENCE, ABDUCTION, and CONDUCTION. In SCIENCE, the projected conclusions begin as hypotheses and via repeated and widespread success achieve THEORY status. Unless the ‘universe’ of potential data has been exhausted, the theory is never finally confirmed.
METHOD is CONTENT; in reason, IDEATION and ACTION are
continuous.
Reason is everything.
Knowledge is also a social and cultural phenomenon—i.e.,
one of CULTURE
and SOCIETY.
This is emphasized above—COHERENCE includes AGREEMENT or CONSENSUS among individuals and cultures; CORROBORATION
includes agreement or consensus by INDIVIDUAL(s) and cultures.
The CONSTITUTION
of a being or CONTEXT
is what, if altered, results in mutation to another being or the null
being—i.e. at least temporary cessation of manifest existence. Constitution includes
INDIVIDUAL
and GENERIC PATTERNS.
A conceived STATE is POSSIBLE for a being if it is allowed by the constitution of the being; otherwise it is IMPOSSIBLE for the being. NECESSITY for a being is what must obtain for it. It is necessary that a being be in one of its possible states and not in an impossible state. More precisely for a being B, these are RELATIVE POSSIBILITY and RELATIVE NECESSITY or B POSSIBILITY and B NECESSITY.
An ACTUAL state of a being is possible (B possible). The set of actual states is included in the set of possible states.
UNIVERSAL POSSIBILITY, UNIVERSAL ACTUALITY, and the GREATEST POSSIBILITY are identical.
An EPOCH is the phase, perhaps limited, of sameness and difference over which the being does not mutate and which is causally isolated over a limited region of difference.
A COSMOS is a being or domain whose constitution is regarded as immutable over a limited epoch—the epoch of the cosmos.
Cosmological possibility refers to any outcome consistent with the constitution of a cosmos in its epoch. A temporally deterministic cosmos would have only one outcome; an indeterministic cosmos may have more than one possible outcome.
A LAW, LAW OF NATURE, or NATURAL LAW is a READING of a generic pattern for a being, particularly a cosmos; and can be seen as a compound fact of some domain or a universal hypothesis (later we find that the ‘universal hypothesis’ as potentially applicable to all Being is empty). The capitalized term ‘LAW’ refers to the pattern itself but what follows will use just the term law and not distinguish it from Law.
The constitution of a cosmos may be expressed in terms of its natural laws (this is possible though not typical for other kinds of Being, e.g. individuals) and the extent of its epoch.
Possibility, called NATURAL POSSIBILITY, for a cosmos (and some other kinds of Being) is defined by its constitution (to the exclusion of epoch). The kinds of natural possibility include the PHYSICAL and BIOLOGICAL. We may also consider COSMOLOGICAL POSSIBILITY (epoch included).
Now consider LOGICAL POSSIBILITY—the logically impossible concept is never and cannot be realized; therefore all possibility lies within the logical; therefore logical possibility is the greatest conceivable possibility which must contain universal possibility. Logical possibility is the most LIBERAL—a state cannot be obtain but not be logical. Note that the interpretation of logic here must include that given fact cannot be violated which brings the concepts of logic and reason into alignment. That is, logic here is LOGIC as reason. In what follows we will distinguish logic—inference only—and Logic—fact and inference—only when necessary for clarity.
If a concept—a proposed state of affairs—violates a system natural law but not logic, it may exist outside the realm of the natural law; the existence of such realms are logically possible; they are possible under different natural laws. If a concept violates logic it cannot and does not exist in any world; this is equivalent to saying it exists outside the greatest possible universe; or saying it exists outside the universe if the universe is the greatest possible (which will be shown).
Our LOGICS are cases of logic. They approximate in two ways—in being incomplete and where not known to be consistent.
Logical possibility lies in the free concept; lesser possibility lies also in the relation between the free concept and the fact object or percept. That concepts can step outside or violate logic (and fact) arises from freedom of concept formation.
Logic is a limit on thought for REALIZABILITY; it is not a limit on the world—’God cannot violate true logic’... meaning that violates logic.
The concept of the GREATEST POSSIBLE UNIVERSE (GPU) is defined by Logical possibility. If the concept of the GPU were introduced independently we would be concerned with paradox inherent in the careless use of language. However, the burden of consistency is shifted to Logic.
NON-SENTIENT and SENTIENT POSSIBILITY (as not just what sentience can think or feel or be but also what it can do and create), and the possibly limited case of sentience and biology that is HUMAN POSSIBILITY.
Regarding the relationships among the various kinds of possibility, let = mean is the same as, É mean includes but is not the same as, Ê mean either includes or is the same as, and ÉÉ mean is much greater or larger than.
For possibility—with the word possibility omitted in each case and so, for example, ‘logical’ should be read ‘logical possibility’.
We can be sure that logical Ê universal Ê natural Ê physical.
We expect from our common paradigms that logical ÉÉ universal É or ÉÉ natural É physical, and non sentient ÉÉ or É sentient.
We will find that the universe is the GPU and therefore, logical = universal ÉÉ natural and cosmological (our cosmos); that for any epoch or being, some sentient epoch or being ÉÉ that epoch; and that with suitable interpretation logical = universal = sentient = human. And therefore the great idealist cosmology of Atman = Brahman.
Comment. Some key terms from the Prologue > A rational and universal metaphysics for realization > The metaphysics should be placed here.
Comment. Appropriate categories and related problems from Prologue > A circle of problems may be placed here.
Among philosophers today, concerns about metaphysics include (1) problems concerning the meaning and historical use of the term, (2) that concern with epistemology, especially since Kant, seems to vitiate some historical uses, (3) that neither historical nor modern meanings are agreed upon, and (4) that there are multiple meanings of term in historical and modern use.
Thus ‘what metaphysics is’ is complex. However, I shall use this meaning:
METAPHYSICS is the study of Being—the world, the universe—as it is.
Why and with what justification? It is consistent with the earlier comments on narrative and extra-narrative meaning—i.e., it is potent and while it does not artificially impose upon the extra-narrative, it’s force, if my claims of potency and universal capture are correct, naturally has an imposing and displacing consequence for extra-narrative meanings of metaphysics as knowledge of the world, both concrete and abstract. Of course, this is to be shown; and what will be shown is that these claims are claims of reason. Metaphysics need not be primarily a some somewhat vague search for an historical idea.
But the main justification is post-justification—a metaphysics that perfect for ultimate knowledge and realization that while necessarily incomplete as a static achievement and therefore not in need of completion, shows itself to be process complete-able.
It is important to see that while the idea of ‘given meaning’ is practically needed for communication, there is a contrary need for open and fluid meaning when going beyond given contexts. Discussions such as ‘What is metaphysics?” depend crucially on an adequate meaning of concept and linguistic meaning.
The main method is reason. Language is means of expression, communication, and part of the method. Note that appeal to content, experience, experiment, and action are part of reason; and that what is valid in tradition is part of this and so on.
We develop a sense in which metaphysics and reason are identical.
That is, ultimately, method and reason are not gods while content is the universe. The universe is its content and process and all that may lie in between (such as relationship, quality, dynamics, agency and so on).
If the universe is in a void state, i.e. non manifest, there are no laws. Therefore, all logically possible states emerge from that void state for the contrary would be a law (this proof is also plausible).
But a being and the void are just the being, so a void is present with all beings—i.e., voids exist. But there is no difference between voids existing and there being precisely one eternal void—the void.
That is—The universe is the realization of all logical possibility. This is the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF METAPHYSICS (also, fundamental principle or FP). From earlier discussion this is equivalent to saying that the universe is the greatest possible universe.
The fundamental principle is the pivotal result of the ideas.
The chapter on metaphysics explores and develops the meaning, significance, and consequences of the principle and the metaphysics that it entails.
From the fundamental principle, while the limits are set by the logic of necessity (deductive logic and necessary fact), filling out the interior is the task of reason as set out earlier. That is, since the strict logic is part of reason the task is that of reason. But the exploration of reason is part of the undertaking since we have so far explored only its generalities—recall also that reason is part of content.
The void exists. It is EQUIVALENT—may be thought to generate—to every possible and actual state of every being, including that of the universe.
In its definition the void is ultimately simple; yet it is ultimately varied in its potency.
Therefore every state is equivalent to every other state.
There is no substance in the traditional sense because,
clearly, every being is equally foundational. However, because of its
generative role the void may be thought of as the SUBSTANCE of Being and the
universe. But every being can assume that role.
The number of voids is irrelevant except that there is at least one.
The universe is absolutely indeterministic in that every state may emerge from any state. It is absolutely deterministic in that every state is already given and will emerge from any state.
All states, including the void, may be seen as the cause of the universe and all its states. This is quite different from the common and physical causation.
The void has power.
Any state has the potential of all Being.
The void is not the quantum vacuum but has similarities to it. The void generates this cosmos and its vacuum state.
HIGH PROBABILITY, almost certain, pure metaphysics, pragmatic metaphysics, perfect universal metaphysics of the ultimate, external consistency, self-consistency
action, tradition, pragmatic criteria, coherence criteria, perfect, pure, normal, normal world, contingent necessity, pragmatic certainty, contingent impossibility, pragmatic impossibility, metaphysics, abstract, correspondence criteria, concrete, pragmatic, ideas, action
The universal metaphysics may be defined as what Logic allows.
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 abstract objects the metaphysics is seen to include systems of mathematics as abstract sciences.
The pure and the pragmatic form a joint system: the pure will frame, clarify, extend, and be fleshed by the pragmatic; their criteria are PERFECTLY ADAPTED: each to its ends and both jointly to the metaphysics and The Way.
GPU tradition…
Here ‘history of ideas’ is study up to the present, emphasizing philosophy, science, and the study of religion.
In philosophy it includes metaphysics and epistemology. It is especially concerned with the nature of knowledge and its possibility for precision and meaning.
In science, it is concerned with issues of precision and predictability and with the significance of science for worldviews. It is also concerned with the empirical boundary—which it regards as the boundary of what has been seen and not the boundary of the universe which may, even according to science, stretch infinitely beyond.
The concern for religion is (a) the meaning of the seen world, (b) reason applied to what might lie beyond, and (c) the significance, symbolism, and any rational content of scripture, practice, and dogma, (d) the secular expression of such concerns in art, literature, music, psychological studies and more.
The main positions here are two—(1) the world and the destiny of (human) Being is far greater than generally seen in the history of ideas, but (2) while occasions great enhancements to the history of ideas, it modifies rather than vitiates their significance.
It will be useful to state some consequences immediately. Some of the consequences anticipate Cosmology.
The principle is that from the nature of logical possibility, many consequences are trivial. Of course, buried in the heart of logic, which exceeds what we know of our cosmos, there are many consequences that are non trivial in the sense of ‘difficult’.
The universe has IDENTITY. Individual identity shares in universal identity. The individual is an expression of potential or disposition, comes from and returns to the universal; has access to this knowledge which is entire in abstract principle if limited in detail; has ultimate realization as an inevitable imperative; and while eternal rebirth has validity—that is not karma: KARMA is participation in ultimate universal process in the present and toward the ultimate.
The universe and its identity go through manifest and void phases. The whole is limitless with regard to variety and extension (sameness and difference and their absence—to be identified as time, space, and their absence). It is limitless with regard to peak and dissolution. Ours is one cosmos; there is a limitless of cosmoses of limitless variety, all in transient communication with the void, sometimes via a transient background. Every cosmos has its ‘laws of nature’; while they may be the same among some cosmoses, there is limitless variety of the laws, from slight to great differences; thus there is no universal law (Logic is universal but not law); thus the correct view of laws is that they are compound facts on particular domains.. A question to be addressed is not whether this obtains but what is its significance, what are the kinds and frequencies of the various kinds of cosmoses—and a related question of mechanisms of formation-sustenance-dissolution, and the place of sentient Being amid this eternity.
Sentient Being is the place of significance. And as we have seen, given any being or cosmos, there is a greater sentient being and creation by a sentient being. If you wish you may think ‘God’ but the truth is that we participate in and are the ultimate.
Regarding the issue of all possibilities, how can apparently contradictory possibilities be realized? True contradictions of course are not realized. However, amid the array of cosmoses there are limitless earths and near earths and in the latter there are alternate histories that were they but one history would be contradictory.
Metaphysics, often said impossible, is possible.
The metaphysics under development, is an ultimate capture of the ultimate universe—i.e. of the universe as ultimate.
Next let us consider the consequence for a well known problem of metaphysics.
The question of why there is something at all rather than just nothingness has been seen as intractable.
Certainly none of science, common experience, and metaphysics so far provides an answer. This question has been called the fundamental question—or problem—of metaphysics (MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Introduction to Metaphysics, based on a 1935 lecture course, in an English translation, © 2000, Gregory Fried and Richard Polt).
Clearly, this is a fundamental problem for metaphysics. After all, if our interest is Being, one of our concerns will be why there is or should be Being? We just want to know, e.g. because we want to know why we are here, because the answer might be a source of meaning, because the answering might illuminate many other problems, because if proved the proof might be a source of method in metaphysics. Above all, however, not knowing why there is Being means that our knowledge of Being—our metaphysics is incomplete. And we see that all of these reasons are addressed here.
It is also a fundamental problem for science. Consider the equations of any fundamental branch of physics. They may refer to space and time, have representations of matter-radiation, e.g. particles and fields. What is the source of these entities? What is the source of the laws? As physics digs deeper, some of these questions for some entities may be answered. But they are answered, invariably it seems, in terms of other posited entities (observed or hypothesized to explain what is observed). In the end, though we see or infer the lowest level entities we do not know their why? Perhaps physics does not need to know the why? But it does for the why is not idle but would take physics deeper. And in any case we are curious about our world which is one of the sources of science. Thus the fundamental question of metaphysics is fundamental for science and so the recent interest in it, e.g. as in Why Does the World Exist? (2013) by JIM HOLT.
Clearly the fundamental principle resolves the problem. It shows that given the universe in a void or non-manifest state, manifest Being must emerge. But let us think about why the problem has been considered a problem.
Why should the problem have been considered intractable? Suppose we were to show that either modern physics or some particular metaphysics entails the existence of something. We would then have to show how the physics or metaphysics obtained. I.e. a relative answer is inadequate.
On the other hand we might argue that our experience shows that we exist and therefore manifest Being is a necessary. But the argument is contingent on observation.
A satisfactory answer must be a necessary answer (and of course non-relative).
But how could we have a necessary answer? It would have to be that the manifest and the non-manifest are necessarily equivalent—given one the other must also exist.
We now ask—But why should the ‘something’ be any particular something, e.g. just our observed cosmos? If nothingness, the void, were just slightly other than nothingness we can see how it might give rise to this cosmos but not another. But that is not what is in question. To be something from nothing the nothing must be perfect—i.e. symmetric in any sense. Thus if it gave rise to our cosmos, i.e. one possibility, of necessity it would have to give rise to every possibility.
That is, an adequate proof would prove the necessity of the existence of all possibilities.
And that is precisely what the fundamental principle / universal metaphysics does but science and metaphysics so far do not do.
Thus the problem of something from nothing can no longer be considered a problem.
Well it exhibits a symmetry between Being and non Being. It is an ultimate unifier. It sets all Being on an equal footing.
If we are ever to know why we are here it must be the fundamental principle and its equivalents.
Is there another candidate for the fundamental problem of metaphysics?
A new fundamental problem of metaphysics is—What has Being?
Here ‘has’ is atemporal.
Why is this a or the fundamental problem? This is because an answer tells us not only whether substance or relation or process or entity or sentences or tropes have Being, it also tells us which parts of Reason have Being.
What has Being? Is an open and fundamental problem. Here we provide a significant but very partial answer.
An approach to the question is not to enquire of substance but of power. What things in the universe affect us or me? Only if there is an effect (atemporal, neutral ‘is’) is there Being. Another speculation would lead us outside the universe and so outside Being. We know from Logic that such a speculation would have to be irrational, i.e. non-Logical.
So then, What has Being? Much of what is said here, above and below, is an implicit answer.
Clearly power is a measure: without power existence is without meaning. I.e., while there are local substances, substance does not determine Being. Or, every Being is its own substance and the substance of the universe. Do ideas have Being? The pragmatic object of the concept of an electron? Sentences? TROPES (“ontologically unstructured, i.e. simple, abstract particulars”—Tropes—Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)? Power establishes Being for all such as may affect us even by existing in or entering into our minds. There are no grades of the real.
But metaphysics is not possible—in the first place because we do not have knowledge of the object and in the second place because of the speculative nature of metaphysics, especially what Kant called ‘special metaphysics’. Response. We have seen that we do have pure correspondence knowledge of what now emerges of an abstract core to the metaphysics. We will further show that while knowledge of the interior of the abstract framework is pragmatic, pragmatism is all that is possible there but also precisely what is needed in filling out and realizing the ultimate—it is perfect in its own way. That is, the pure and the pragmatic together will constitute a perfect dual but unified ultimate metaphysics of knowledge and for realization—and that is associated with a perfect dual epistemology (which does not eliminate the local need for normal epistemology). Finally, note that where not contradictory all special metaphysics is realized per FP; the question that emerges concerns its significance. This is addressed below, especially under cosmology and agency.
‘All possibilities’ is a self-contradictory notion. Response. The burden of consistency was earlier shifted to logic. Modern logic addresses contradictions inherent in careless use of language. Probably not all problems of language are yet uncovered. The burden of explicit consistency is an in process endeavor.
It is possible that Earth should not have existed—therefore its existence is contradictory (this is a trivial example of how all possibilities is contradictory). Response. Since this Earth exists, it is not possible. There is no contradiction. In fact, from FP it is necessary that Earth, its inhabitants, their experience should have existed and shall exist over and over.
But is not multiple earths just repetitious? Response. Yes but it is repetitious as part of a limitlessly greater variety and adventure.
Does not all possibilities include immense pain and suffering? Response. Yes, but that is not an objection. Whereas pain might be a criticism of an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God, it is not a criticism of the fundamental principle. In the ‘significant universe’ pleasure and pain are commingled in proportion and pain has some meaning and can be employed to positive purpose.
If all is possible why is
the Earth the way it is? Response. See the earlier discussion of
necessary fact. Further, it is necessary that some place be the way Earth is.
We call this a NORMAL
occurrence. What, in the normal, is not universally necessary but seems
locally necessary is but high probability in the local. For example, a
natural law of our cosmos is a NORMAL LAW; our form is a NORMAL FORM.
Comment. Now get the parts that say the above, incorporate and eliminate.
The universal metaphysics and its implications contradict science, experience, and common sense. Response. We have just seen examples of how apparent contradiction of expectation is not a true contradiction. A full response, however, is to observe (a) that the metaphysics requires our world as a normal world and therefore is not merely consistent with but requires our science, experience, and common sense where valid, and (b) it provides a reinterpretation of the normal world placing it in a larger context.
There is and should be doubt about the proof of the fundamental principle. Response. This is addressed in the next section.
The essence of the proof is the proof of the fundamental principle. It is principled to doubt the proof from the nature of the proof, the magnitude of the implications, and the apparent contradiction of experience. The latter concern is addressed above; it remains to address the first two. The magnitude of the implications are not an actual doubt but reasons that doubt should be taken seriously. What remains is the nature of the proof. What kind of doubt may be had regarding the proof?
The proof seems trivial. Response. Well, it is not trivial for its recognition is absent in the literature or at least rare enough that I have not seen it in extensive reading.
In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein comes tangentially close to the idea of the proof in equating metaphysics and logic. That would perhaps make the proof trivial and non-original. However, Wittgenstein neither claims nor demonstrates the fundamental principle, i.e. the universal metaphysics. What he says is that given the universe as a collection of atomic facts, all the facts—metaphysics—are just the compound facts and to determine the truth of any asserted fact is a matter of logic. The present metaphysics is not a metaphysics of atomic fact and is neutral to the issue of whether facts are ultimately atomic. It does give priority to logic as and in determining the boundary of what obtains—it says that logic is the only limit on conception for realization (this is not a limit on the universe).
The principle of plenitude, in one of its forms, is that anything that is possible it will occur. This is an ancient idea that has recurred in many forms; were it to be the fundamental principle and were it to have been proven it would show the fundamental principle proven and non-original. However, it is not the fundamental principle. It’s deficiencies relative to that principle are (a) it is stated without proof as perhaps reasonable, (b) perhaps because stated without proof it is not taken seriously or well understood for its usual applications have been trivial and taken from normal cosmology or to support traditional religion, and (c) where there arguments they are deficient. Immanuel Kant asserted that given an infinite amount of time, whatever is possible will occur. In the first place this is not true. A possible event may have zero probability. What Kant might have said is that given limitless realization all possibilities will occur. But the reason that we see the need for limitless realization is precisely because of the proof. Also, there is no hint that possibility itself needs to be explored. Here, the earlier exploration of the nature of possibility was occasioned by the proof, and in turn, this led to the present exploration of the possibilities. In summary, the principle of plenitude is an idea and not a rational metaphysics.
Returning to the question of triviality, it is only after the proof is given that it becomes manifestly trivial. Triviality however is not an argument.
Another argument is that the proof is not founded in fact; and that every proof ultimately rests on assumption or axiom. Response. However, we have already seen that the Being of the universe, beings, Being itself and so on are given as necessary-facts-from-observation-by-abstraction. Therefore they are empirical and precise. This is a remarkable exception to the traditional notion that all philosophy—and science—must be either relative in being non-terminating or non-relative but founded in axiom-assumption. It is worth emphasizing that this reiterates a interpretation of logic (Logic) in its traditional sense enhanced by necessary fact (or reason in its traditional sense enhanced by fact). But note that while the necessary facts begin as facts-necessary-after-establishment, this restriction is no longer metaphysically necessary once the proof of the metaphysics is accepted.
Yet another argument is that the proof is that, like the ontological argument for the existence of God, it is a proof by appeal to pure logic and so, by analogy with the ontological proof, it must fail. However, this rather repeats the previous objection where we saw a necessary empirical foundation from which logic was able to build. Note, also, that this shows that while some ontological arguments may fail, others may succeed.
Still we have an obligation to support the proof. We may do this by providing alternate lines of proof and heuristic arguments to appeal to intuition.
Existence of the void is equivalent to non-existence.
Any system of laws of nature apply only to the manifest.
Ockham’s razor applied to what does not exist.
The principle of plenitude—as discussed above.
From this point on, proofs are given only where not obvious.
While proof is critical we also need:
1. Significant meaning—occurs in sentience, sentient organism can exceed knowledge and creation of any ‘inert’ possibility, perhaps the highest significance as in the aim of the way is living-well-in-this-world-on-the-way-to-and-from-the-ultimate.
2. What is worthwhile—what is value and what particulars are of value.
3. Mechanism and likelihood—to make distinctions of feasibility and means in the region of limitless possibility.
4. Practice, action, and reason—as supplement to knowledge… on the way to the ultimate. Note that action is already a part of reason as seen earlier.
What shall we do if we do not accept the proof of the fundamental principle?
We should of course continue to seek proof. In addition to symbolic proof, there is proof in action—as follows in discussing ‘existential attitude’.
It is important that the fundamental principle is consistent with all we know and—as we have seen—it must be. Therefore, to assume it would not be absurd in the way that so much of traditional mythology and religion is absurd when taken literally.
We can adopt an EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE—that the implications of the principle are so great in value and magnitude that there is value in adopting it as a stance and in devoting energies to it in parallel with other traditional pursuits, secular and mundane and more.
If we assign the infinite value to the limitless potential under the universal metaphysics, then an optimal approach to ‘this life’ is to devote sufficient energies to the immediate while reserving energy also for the infinite potential.
Object is interpreted generally to include fact, thing, process, relation, quality or property, fiction.
If the universe is the universe of logic then all concepts, free and bound, are realized:
Obviously all concepts, free and bound, consistent and otherwise are in the universe.
The inconsistent do not define objects, except perhaps the null object.
All other concepts have objects
Relative to human Being, the concrete objects are roughly the perceived and the abstract are conceived for which a degree of concreteness, e.g. spatiotemporality—defined later, is not included in the abstract.
I.e. all objects, abstract and concrete, are in the one universe.
This constitutes a unification of the abstract and concrete; they are not essentially different. The difference is one of filtering rather one of nature. The distinction is conventional. The abstract can be causal unless causation is filtered out. The abstract and the concrete lie on a continuum.
The abstract lend themselves to conceptual or rational study and symbolic representation. The concrete to perceptual or empirical study and iconic representation. Language straddles the iconic-symbolic divide.
Logic, potential, reason, concepts, mind-and-matter-in-so-far-as-they-exist, are in the universe—are real.
FP resolves issues of the concrete and the abstract. FP: every Logical concept has an object. Consequences: no essential difference between CONCRETE and ABSTRACT objects or beings (abstraction omits concreteness, e.g. cause and space); Being is a being; realisms—Logical, MATHEMATICAL, and SCIENTIFIC—on par: from FP, mathematical systems are abstract sciences of forms which are real (and in Platonic worlds as parts of the one universe); all content—perhaps neither literal nor explicit, e.g. art—that has possible objects has real objects; DEATH, real but not absolute, is reminder that this life is no less significant than the ultimate and so to live well; the ultimate abstract is a RECEPTACLE of DISPOSITION to emerging-merging-reemerging identity of substantial beings; local science as locally valid but otherwise shed like snakeskin in transcending a cosmos; religions as allegorically real and socially significant but premature if taken literally; which suggests THE WAY OF BEING, the aim of wholeness, of real religion, as discovery-realization of immediate-ultimate Being by limited beings using all Elements of Being and agency.
Only those key terms not listed elsewhere are given next.
UNITARY METAPHYSICS, FUNCTION, CRITERIA, ABSTRACT-CONCRETE CONTINUUM
Metaphysics is Logic interpreted as reason
As reason, Logic has the following extensions to logic-as-necessary-inference:
1. Inclusion of hypothetical or inductive inference that is less or other than necessary,
2. Inclusion of fact or premise and determination of fact,
3. Extension of necessary inference and definite fact to the pure metaphysics.
A final extension is to the perfect metaphysics of the world:
4. Extension of the foregoing to the perfect metaphysics which though a unitary metaphysics, is dual—the pure and the pragmatic—with regard to function and criteria.
The full metaphysics and its rationale
Under the universal metaphysics, there is no essential distinction between the concrete and the abstract; they form a continuum—the abstract-concrete continuum; and ‘all objects’ exist is the fundamental principle. The abstract and the concrete exist in the one universe; in the abstract the concrete is suppressed rather than essentially absent.
Here, ‘science’ is interpreted broadly to include the concrete and the abstract; and non-dogmatic religion as addressing inner Being in light of both truth and rational imagination beyond the empirical.
Comment.
In this and the next sections on logic, mathematics, science, and religion, each topic establishes the general case and then its enhancement or restriction under FP; this practice is continued in discussing cosmology and agency.
Math and GPU.
The valid comparison of logic, mathematics and science, is (a) discovery and creation of the systems which is not intrinsically necessary and (b) inference under those systems which is frequently necessary inference.
In its beginnings mathematics is empirical and interwoven with what passes for early science.
However, we learn over history that some patterns are general and can be seen to have a formal character. They can be expressed in abstract or symbolic terms as axiomatic systems. If the universe is the greatest possible, then any mathematical system that is logically consistent has objects in the universe which may be seen as abstract.
Today, mathematics does not use the empirical approach even though it has objects—for locating those objects would be difficult; and what is more the symbolic approach gives mathematics a necessity that it would not have if empirical. This necessity is not at all obvious over history—i.e., its necessity is after the fact; and there is an entire study of that necessity. It begins with the idea of definite proof but we know from experience that that is not enough and so we have the metamathematical disciplines of proof theory and model theory.
But beings have constitutions and perhaps other facts—or states of affairs.
More precisely: a FACT is correct PERCEPTION of a STATE OF BEING or OBJECT.
We say facts can be correct because claimed facts can be incorrect (usually, fact will mean ‘correct fact’). How is a fact validated? Observation, measurement, corroboration, and argument (below) are among the means.
There are also COMPOUND FACTS, e.g. the natural laws. The laws of nature are usually regarded as tentatively universal; but they may also be seen as local facts; which view is less problematic. But then: the SCIENTIFIC METHOD is available for validation: the law is hypothesized and as local may be validated (e.g. a very limited epoch); which does not rule out law as UNIVERSAL HYPOTHESIS. Unlike the necessity of logic, science as universal hypothesis is not necessary and goes under the names of scientific method or INFERENCE, INDUCTION, or ABDUCTION.
Comment. Develop this.
Metaphysical language, logic, mathematics, and science will be the study of the variety implied by the fundamental principle and harbored in the universal metaphysics.
While we have already begun this, the concern here is the difficult, the detailed, and the esoteric but not to the exclusion of the exoteric.
Tradition as understood in this essay is important. It may be enhanced in interaction with the present developments.
Comment. The point is that religion is search free from retention but without the dogma of belief or strict logic—i.e. we cannot use intuition (Einstein).
The POTENCY of the idea of Being so far includes avoiding paradigmatic prejudice. As the pure and the PRAGMATIC, each on its criteria, are perfect, the FOUNDATION is perfect (this reflects an idea—perfection does not pertain to the world as whole). Contrary to a long tradition of post-enlightenment criticism, there is potent metaphysics as knowledge of Being. Its source: perfect CATEGORIES—beings, universe, Being, void, possibility, and pragmatism. This contrasts with the imperfect if useful categories of Kant and Schopenhauer.
Comment. Appropriate categories and related problems from Prologue > A circle of problems may be placed here.
This chapter considers ‘general cosmology’. Typically, modern default secular cosmology is modern empirically driven physical cosmology; the universal metaphysics shows this to be extremely limited. In comparison, general cosmology is limitlessly broader in variety and deeper regarding the elements of beings.
The functions of the chapter are (1) cosmology as an application of the metaphysics, (2) part foundation for Agency, the next chapter, and Becoming—Realization of Being, the next part, and (3) to suggest foundations for physical cosmology from metaphysical considerations.
GENERAL COSMOLOGY (COSMOLOGY) is the study of the kinds, variety, and extension of beings. It includes study of special cases, particularly our EMPIRICAL COSMOS.
Cosmology began in and continues Being and Metaphysics; it continues in Agency.
The GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF COSMOLOGY is the universal metaphysics.
To study variety without error requires a concept that captures it precisely.
An effective approach is to look at unitive principles, such as ‘SUBSTANCE THEORY’. Examples are Plato’s forms, Aristotle’s primary substances or objects-themselves and secondary substances or kinds of objects, Hume’s impressions and ideas, and the modern idea of the physical. These can be thought of as ontological or generative.
We saw that there is no substance of fixed finite simplicity, yet the void can play the role of ultimate substance of ultimate simplicity. We take up substance approximations below; this is useful though incomplete and imprecise.
A metaphysically satisfactory and unitive approach to variety is via categories. But how can this be done precisely at all? It is to start with Being and to see if and how the abstract precision can be inherited by not quite as abstract but still a little concrete ‘categories’.
Traditionally, the categories are a catalog of the highest genera. The systems of Aristotle, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Whitehead are well known.
1. Here, the CATEGORIES OF BEING AND REASON are assigned the aim of an effective foundation for metaphysics. EFFECTIVE FOUNDATION aims at a metaphysics of maximal power.
2. The foundation is the universal metaphysics (cum tradition).
3. The focus is to find basis for form (ontology), formation (process, generation), and dynamics (e.g., for prediction). Note that dynamics might have been bracketed under formation.
4. As genera and for completeness, Being will be a category. As they are real and interwoven with Being, experience and reason will be categorial. Note that our tendency to minimize the reality of ideas is a categorial error that minimizes Being and universe. Inclusion, means that the categories include their own principles and shall be founded rather than ad hoc or relative.
5. The universal metaphysics and reason are the highest level paradigm. Abstract science, especially mathematics, are an intermediate level. Tradition, especially natural sciences of matter, life, and mind, shall provide paradigms at a lower level. Recalling that reason includes citta and the functions of art and literature, these are an adequate tentative initial vertical and horizontal range for the categories.
Being and reason; form and formation are given by the universal metaphysics; the paradigm is Logic; causation is Logic; process is absolutely indeterministic and absolutely deterministic.
Experiencer-experience-experienced (subject-content-object), mind-world-matter and substance metaphors or approximations.
We have seen that on strict monism, experience (e.g. consciousness) and experienced (world, matter, experience itself) must constitute a single substance. Therefore, experience is interaction, a form of power. This is paradigmatic for any stable single substance cosmos.
However, in the general stable case, there may be many substances, each either a single matter like substance or a experience-experienced substance. Generally the substances need not but may interact.
In the fully general case there may be matter-like Being, experience-experienced like Being, and mostly experience like Being with simple form. All these may interact.
It is an evident principle that experience-experienced (mind-body) should be studied each on its own terms and on mutually informing rather than reductive terms.
Indeterminism yields many transients of which few are stable, have well formation and symmetry, and aware reason. Being potent and long lived these populations dominate the significant universe. The paradigm is indeterministic increment and selection; sources of the paradigm are evolutionary biology and reflection on necessity for origin of novel form. Stable beings, stable cosmos, and stable physical laws are outcomes rather than initial causes. However, once established, given any form, sentient beings are and are agents of higher forms.
The most
elementary pattern is DIFFERENCE with SAMENESS across the universe’s
oneness. IDENTITY is sense of sameness of object or person. Difference with and without identity
mark TIME (duration)
and SPACE (extension),
respectively, which would so be the modes of difference. Then the
universe is Being over all spacetime and its absence (other modes were just
seen improbable). Spacetime (difference) is IMMANENT in the world, not absolute, has and
is of Being; relations among identities across extension mediate change over
duration. Identity is transparent only when local: space-time-identity does
not always separate into its components. Where identity is fully absent, so
is spacetime. PROCESS,
INTERACTION
(RELATION),
and STATE
have Being—and will found dynamics. An EPOCH is a realm of fact relative to
which the rest of the universe is not determined.
The paradigms for identity, space, time, and dynamics are (a) primitives of sameness and difference in general and in experience and (b) modern physics—classical, quantum, and relativistic.
Two sources of identity and dynamics are ‘Logic’ at the most general level and the stable formation from numerous trials. This would explain (1) stable second order dynamics, (2) residual indeterminism cum structure, and (3) why the long range interaction in our stable cosmos, gravity, is solely attractive.
So far in this section, identity is material or physical (object) identity. But the concept of identity above also allows for the self-identity of beings—individuals and the universe. This ‘side’ of identity is inclusive of object identity. The beginnings of its description and theory are earlier in sections on experience and meaning, reason (and reason and the metaphysics); it is developed further, below, in discussing agency (psyche, agency, and dynamics and practical dynamics of agency). The development is employed in the part on becoming.
In our NORMAL lives, effective agency may be difficult, slow,
and incremental; and may require ‘will’. That is, being an effective human Being
may be a difficult task even when the accomplishment is or seems small.
Yet, in the larger realm of Being and stable formation, agency is about effecting significant change. We have seen that there are no limits to form except Logic, and that given any form there is a higher form and creation of sentient Being.
The first paradigm for agency is human psychology, i.e. our normal experience of the world.
The following are a tentative set of elements and dimensions for use in agency. The paradigm is a traditional organization of our cosmos into nature, society (civilization), psyche, and the universal. Psyche could be placed under nature but it is convenient here to keep it separate because nature will emphasize the INSTRUMENTAL or external while psyche emphasizes the INTRINSIC or inner.
The ELEMENTS of a Way of Being are primitive basis of a MECHANICS OF THE WAY OF BEING—of realization. From ‘difference’, there arose a tentative IDENTITY-RELATION-PROCESS MECHANICS. The following are tentative.
ELEMENTS OF IDENTITY—DIMENSIONS OF GROWTH: NATURE (roughly, INSTRUMENTAL: physical,
biological), CIVILIZATION
(individual, society)—often tied to PLACE; PSYCHE
(cognition, emotion, integration as personality), and the UNIVERSAL
(immediate, ultimate).
ELEMENTS OF RELATION include the natural—FORCE, FIELD, FLOW, CHEMICAL; of civilization
and society—COMMUNICATION:
BEHAVIORAL,
and LINGUISTIC
expression; of psyche—EXPERIENCE, INTELLIGENT AND PASSIONATE COMMITMENT; and universal—ONE and MANY. As FORESIGHT, experience and
choice mediate identity and process; the mechanics is incremental (see Stable form and formation, and Cosmology and origins of form),
and large step: seeing-choosing-risking-acting-consolidating the SIGNIFICANT and 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 include the natural—MOTION, FUNCTION, EVOLUTION; of civilization
and society—LOCAL
CIVILIZATION or POPULATION
and INSTRUMENTAL MEANS: WAYS
(revelation-illumination), DISCIPLINES,
TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMICS, POLITICS; of 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.
The following continues the discussion from Identity, space, time, and dynamics of which the first paragraph is repeated for convenience.
Comment. Edit the following at the source.
The most elementary pattern is DIFFERENCE with SAMENESS
across the universe’s oneness. IDENTITY is sense of sameness of object or person. Difference with and without identity mark TIME (duration) and SPACE (extension),
respectively, which would so be the modes of difference. Then the
universe is Being over all spacetime and its absence (other modes were just
seen improbable). Spacetime (difference) is IMMANENT in the world, not absolute, has and
is of Being; relations among identities across extension mediate change over
duration. Identity is transparent only when local: space-time-identity does
not always separate into its components. Where identity is fully absent, so
is spacetime. PROCESS,
INTERACTION
(RELATION), and STATE
have Being—and will found dynamics. An EPOCH is a realm of fact relative to
which the rest of the universe is not determined.
The universe is a field of Being and identities (entities, processes, relations—not substances) are its concentrations.
Experience—pure and engaged—is
relationship, place of AGENCY which will be seen to require CHOICE (and, so, free will), and SIGNIFICANCE but experience is not all significance; subject-object meet in experience as
one.
The ‘universes’ of significance and destiny are fields of experience and agency; and sentient agents (beings) are their concentrations. Assertions and reasoning for sentience follow; those for agency are similar. All peaks of form are accessible to sentient form. We might expect that all actuality ÉÉ sentient actuality; but from FP, for any form there is greater sentient form (and vice versa). The field of experience and agency has no limit; it is effectively and essentially the universe.
Only in sentience are there PAIN, SUFFERING and joy and agency; so in and only in sentience are there pain, its sometime temporal non-overcoming, its universal cycles of release and overcoming into JOY (bliss, calm abiding) and dissolution.
The Gita’s fourfold YOGA and MEDITATION-VISION QUEST are identity with the real—present-as-ultimate (in a broad sense practice includes science, reason, philosophy, and their methods). As expansion of awareness, meditation is concurrent to discovery and realization of the real. It may begin with a range of techniques as a good foundation: Shamata—calm abiding, and vipasana—insight; Gates to Buddhist Practice, Chagdud Tulku, and Beyul, nature pilgrimage to evoke true self as told in Ian Baker: The Heart of the World.
The universe has identity. Identity and manifestation have no limits—especially to variety, peak, extension, duration; cycle endlessly—without simple and universal periodicity—in acute, diffuse, and non-manifest phases in relatively remote epochs; universal CAUSATION is at most weak; causal connectivity is at most local (in creation-destruction, time has causal direction); beyond ours, there are cosmoses, natural laws, physical and living forms without end or limit; these occur meshed to a void-transient background; only some occurrences have mechanism; every atom is a cosmos, every cosmos an atom; individuals and civilizations inherit these powers—while in limited form realization is eternal endeavor; LOCAL CIVILIZATIONS (webs of cultures across time and continents) merge with UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION (capitalized, the matrix of civilizations across the universe) and Being; discovery and realization beyond a cosmos—beyond the normal—is a limitless and eternal journey. What is the identity of self? In overcoming limited form individuals realize the ultimate—BRAHMAN (Upanishad), AETERNITAS (Thomas Aquinas), or PERFECT BUDDHA. But for process even these are local peaks.
General cosmology does not follow a strict substance metaphysics—i.e. one of fixed kinds and no emergence of or interaction among kinds. In monism, experience and Being are coupled through and through; in dualism their interaction is inexplicable. In general cosmology kinds and forms may occur independently but must at times merge, emerge, and export—kinds-forms are not substances and are organic to Being. Our cosmos normally approximates monism. The constitution of beings is normal—only normally inviolable (see possibility): beings have no absolute real limits or impossibilities.
If the metaphysics and cosmology read as fantasy—as if entering a strange land—their truth is cast in Logic. Where access is improbable, cosmology of form, next, seeks the probable. Then The Way seeks access to the ultimate (via intelligent commitment that enhances enjoyment and likelihood), transforming it as needed to the probable.
The only universal way of origin of FORM is that of INDETERMINISM for NOVELTY and DETERMINISM for form. The universal metaphysics allows single steps according to ‘Logic’. However, we are interested in a mechanism that would generate stable populations. Evolution suggests a general incremental mechanism: indeterminist variation, then selection of adaptive states and a rough optimum step size: if larger, the probability of non viable organisms is high; if smaller, larger steps achieve more (this too is allowed and required by FP). From FP, such ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS origin is generic if not universal; details depend on context; it is causal in a general though uncommon sense; it can explain populations in the universe in terms of the product of frequency of origins and longevity or relative stability; it would explain the origin of form, cause, and laws for our cosmos. There may be other mechanisms but from FP, mechanism is not necessary—there are single step origins.
Generally, function and form are in rough proportion; in a SINGULAR EVENT increase in function is far beyond such proportion. FP implies singular events—events at a threshold of function. Some factors are self-reference and micro-organization of macro-function. Such events partially explain origins of life from complex molecules; origins of human and linguistic intelligence; a hypothesized, perhaps imminent, immense leap in and dominance of computational and networking intelligence; and, from FP, conscious intelligence—with our Being among its disposition—as driver and form of peaks of universal Being. Singularity may be a norm in origin of essentially new forms and approaches to the universal.
Comment. Some comments from earlier maybe appropriate: re discussion of the following terms.
ATMAN, BRAHMAN; RECEPTACLE, DISPOSITION
General…
Receptacle and disposition
Atman and Brahman
The aim of this section is to show conceptual basis from general cosmology for an indeterminate space-time, relational-experiential cosmology.
Origins of physical cosmology. Vacuum transients arise in hierarchies of scale from the void. All possible worlds occur; an efficient mechanism is informed by modern cosmology—small near quantum transients combining as large scale near determinate-symmetric-stable hyper-dense state with some near classical behaviors. A DYNAMICS—change in semi-determinate relational identity depends on duration of interaction or ‘force’ across extension, and on inertia to change. Experience as interaction is integral to the dynamics. Essential issues: represent semi-determinate identity; whether this entails process indeterminism; account for dual origin of force-inertia. Aim: improve-particularize-quantify. In realms of opaque measure and difficult analysis, e.g. beyond the empirical cosmos, simulation guided by cosmology may show a way: see a tentative digital modeling of the early universe whose principle is LAYERING from the void and random to mechanism.
Comment. Combine with earlier treatment of agency.
This section aims at a satisfactory account of agency and its dynamics. Practical dynamics of agency is about effective agency for transformation and realization.
Comment. In short editions this section will be at most minimal.
The following repeats the earlier section on the category of agency.
Comment. Edit the following at the source.
AGENCY is the
power of sentient beings to see and conceive alternate futures, to value some
of those futures, and to select to act toward the valued futures, especially
those of high value. Therefore it requires also the concept and understanding
of value and ordering of value. Agency requires indeterminism with
structure—the structure is necessary for the seeing etc. and indeterminism is
necessary for the existence of alternate futures. In being agentive, the
agent is involved in creating a future. However, to be agentive is only to
say that there is at least a small effect and not that the agent can ‘do
anything’ or violate physical law.
In our NORMAL lives, effective agency may be
difficult, slow, and incremental; and may require ‘will’. That is, being an
effective human Being may be a difficult task even when the accomplishment is
or seems small.
Yet, in the larger realm of Being and stable formation, agency is about effecting significant change. We have seen that there are no limits to form except Logic, and that given any form there is a higher form and creation of sentient Being.
The first paradigm for agency is human psychology, i.e. our normal experience of the world.
In this essay, agency employs The Way of Being toward its aim.
It draws from Psyche, above, and Cosmology > The sections on identity… and experience…
Comment. At this time for this document the treatment in the following is adequate:
Ideas > Experience, meaning, and reason,
Ideas > Introduction to reason,
See, especially, the discussion of citta in previous two sections,
Metaphysics > Some consequences, especially comments on identity,
Cosmology > The sections on identity… and experience…
Comment. For more complete treatment see:
Outline of concepts, the longer version of this document, and
Pocket manual for the way of August 2015.
Comment. This section is currently a stem. It may be filled out in process with realization
Sources for agency, repeated from the practical dynamics of agency are as follows:
At the highest level the dynamics employs the universal metaphysics and reason (also see: reason and metaphysics).
Its realms of application are the elements and dimensions of identity and the world which derives from identity, space, time, and dynamics.
The idea of DYNAMICS OF AGENCY, is efficient means of being agentive in our normal lives and larger realms of Being (previous section).
At the highest level the dynamics employs the universal metaphysics and reason (also see: reason and metaphysics).
Its realms of application are the elements and dimensions of identity and the world which derives from identity, space, time, and dynamics.
These provide basis and classification for and may be used together with traditional means.
The dynamics emphasizes the inner—the psyche. It emphasizes that experience – ‘my subjective flimsy awareness’ is indeed real and the place where the really real plays out. No, we do not control all aspects in our human form and so in that form we must adjust so as to have optimal control; that is the play both forcing and flowing and combining optimally. And flowing into the ultimate when for an eternal instant we are the universe. The play between the manifest and the hidden.
The dynamics emphasizes the instrumental—the powers of nature, technology-in-the-service-of-populating-the-universe, art as transforming the inner, politics and economics; and the continuities of these with the inner: immersion-science, immersion politics-and-economy.
The dynamics emphasizes the universal—where the inner and the instrumental meet in ultimate identity.
The practical dynamics may selectively employ traditional ways and catalysts for inner, instrumental, and universal phases of awareness (and knowledge) and realization.
What follows is a catalog to suggest ways and combinations—as a source to guide concrete ways. For details, see a system of human knowledge
Universe
1. Metaphysics (and philosophy), symbols and signs.
2. Abstract sciences—of language, logic, mathematics, computer and information science.
3. Concrete sciences—of nature, mind, human being (anthropology) and society.
4. History.
Artifact
5. Art (and art as representation on the border between metaphysics and artifact)—literature, drama, music, painting, sculpture, architecture…
6. Engineering.
7. Technology. Nature and development: scope and history, organization of work. Elements of technology: materials, energy, tools and machines, measurement and control, industry and production… Fields of technology: agriculture and food, major industries, transportation, information processing – communication – networking, urban, military, earth and space exploration.
8. Humanities and the study of systems of knowledge and the tradition(s).
9. Transformation of Being. The concept of religion as knowledge and negotiation of the entire universe by the entire individual in all its faculties and modes of being (potential, un-named and perhaps un-thought forms). Nature and varieties of religions of the world—hunter gatherer and agriculture based societies, throughout pre-history and history. Ways and varieties of religion and spirituality. Catalytic awareness and transformation—mystic, yogic including vision-quest, nature and culture immersion (including Beyul as nature immersion in quest of self), modern—e.g. dream as inspiration, psychoanalysis as depth analysis, isolation-deprivation-exertion as source of vision, metaphysical insight, immersive approaches to metaphysics, science, economics, and politics.
The content of The Way is a journal edited for general use. This is more so in this part.
The Way of Being is an approach to realization with a foundation in Ideas. It joins the metaphysics to traditional, reflective and experimental practice to form a transformation discipline. Once the ideas are absorbed, the task is to begin or 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—and engages the individual with the real.
This second part of the essay is on realization of highest forms in immediate and ultimate worlds—even or especially in the midst of insecurity and uncertainty.
First there is a review of the way and its aim. The aim of the way is presented as a UNIVERSAL AIM OF BEING and as an ethic.
The main chapter is the one on ‘Templates’—there are two templates, the first on everyday process and the second on universal process. The aim is to present templates that may be modified and filled in by readers. The reasoning behind the templates is in the Ideas and so introduction to the chapter points out the most pertinent sections.
The templates are followed by a chapter on ‘Path’. After a review of the idea of a path, I attempt to estimate what I have achieved and then present my thoughts for the future. Perhaps these may serve as examples.
Here the AIM OF BEING is seen to be the aim of The Way of Being.
The aim was stated as:
The AIM of THE WAY OF BEING is a SHARED ENDEAVOR for Being, especially for the INDIVIDUAL and CIVILIZATION throughout the universe. The aim is that of LIVING WELL and the HIGHEST DISCOVERY and HIGHEST REALIZATION in the IMMEDIATE WORLD and the ULTIMATE WORLD.
The AIM of The Way is now seen as a universal aim of Being: to know the range of significant Being and realize its highest immediate and ultimate forms for all beings and Civilization.
Even if the proof of the fundamental principle is not accepted, it is self and empirically consistent and there is an imperative to the realizations that it entails. Even though the ultimate remain unrealized, there is value to attempts to realize—the potential, the inspiration, and what is learned on the way.
It is inspiring and rewarding, spiritually and politically, to engage in the aim.
An ethic for the aim, implicit in the introductory statement of the aim, is this: given that intelligent commitment enhances realization and enjoyment, what energies should we devote to the aim? The oneness of the universe implies the worth of devoting resources to the aim as ‘duty’ and joy. Quantitative choice, individual and social, may recognize that resource allocation is already integral to our secular and transsecular institutions. ETHICS are driven by citta, specifically ‘heart’, channeled by thought or ‘mind’, and encoded in culture. ‘Rational ethics’ stems from citta—mind and heart—there is no ethics without reason, emotion, and value.
Though we should DOUBT the universal metaphysics, it is consistent internally and with all we can know. Its argument is at least highly plausible—from the proof, and, e.g., that as a form of OCKHAM’S PRINCIPLE it is minimal regarding what is not in the universe (i.e., the ‘strong principle of plenitude’).
We therefore adopt universal metaphysics as an EXISTENTIAL ATTITUDE—valuable in itself and as affording the greatest likely immediate and ultimate outcome of life. Without intuition immersed in attitude, intellect is impotent.
While accepting temporal limits this side of death—while living in this world—we also live in act toward the ultimate.
Wholeness of being, perception-feeling, conception-emotion, Active experience, volition; Citta, Sangha, practice, practice-action,
ACTION-EVEN-IN-INSECURITY
Wholeness of Being involves heart—mind or Citta (also see citta, The middle ground): perception-feeling—conception-emotion—active experience-volition; and security in openness-transience, e.g. not depending on proof—the proof is in the person. This wholeness is essential to the way.
Among its means are:
Sangha, practice, practice-action, action-even-in-insecurity
Comment. Set up the reference links first.
This brief template is adaptable to a range of ways and phases of life. It requires complement by a practice (see the index). Dedication and meditation infuse and are practice for life.
|
1. |
Rise before the sun. Dedication (W Wilson). We dedicate our lives to The Way of Being—to shared discovery and realization; to shed the bonds of limited self and culture and so to see the way so clearly that even in difficulty life is flow over force; to realizing the ultimate in this life, this world, and beyond. Shared affirmation (A Gupta). The pure unlimited consciousness that is all Being alone is supreme reality. That is the universe—its life and breath—that am I. So I am and embody the self-transcending universe that is all Being and has no other. |
|
2. |
Review and meditate on realization and immediate priorities and means. |
|
3. |
Realization. Work and care. Ideas, writing, networking with the young and the established; shared action, transmission, experiment: Everyday and Universal process. Days for renewal. Other activities, e.g. languages, art. |
|
4. |
Tasks. Daily (AM); select / regular days for long term tasks. |
|
5. |
Yoga. General, postural. Meditation. Focus on spaciousness, freeing from ego-fixation, ultimate in-itself-and-the-present, continuity of meditation-action-Being. |
|
6. |
Exercise. Aerobic: in nature; and photography. |
|
7. |
Evening. Rest, renewal, realization, and community. Evening tasks, preparation and dedication of the next day and the future. Sleep early. |
Everyday process template
The actions and dimensions of Being in this template are sufficiently complete. The details show a program of my design; here they are illustrative and suggestive.
|
Action |
Dimension |
Details |
|
Being |
Pure Being and a spiritual home |
Everyday process, bridges the immediate-ultimate. Vision retreat. |
|
Ideas |
Knowing |
For understanding, begin with the Ideas. For further design information see the Resources. |
|
Action |
Dimension |
Details (for topics below, see online resources) |
|
Becoming with phases of human life |
Ground of real and renewal e.g. as in Beyul (Tibetan Buddhism). |
|
|
Civilization with society and culture |
Civilization, shared immersion, community, populating the universe, cultural economics, politics, and ethics. |
|
|
Artifact |
Artifactual Being and technology. |
|
|
Universal |
Catalysts, ways, in everyday process, and renewal, knowledge, technology, developed-deployed in transforming Being-civilization. |
Universal process template
Being is ever on the path, sometimes consciously, to design and affect DESTINY. Individuals and civilizations peak at stages of ultimate realization; in death and decay they dissolve into and transact with the receptacle of eternal Being. The greatest cultivation of the present occasion of Being is essential: in the singular case, this life as the only life, it is the occasion; in the eternal case, the alternative is as if condemned to eternal death.
Everyday process is a (personal), flexible, adaptable routine for living in the immediate as ultimate. Universal process is an adaptable process for living in the immediate for and with openness to the ultimate. An approach is to select from these templates; they are adaptable to a range of situations and phases of life and civilization—and deploy dynamics and agency. RENEWAL, critical to practice, is reflected in the templates.
It is crucial that the everyday and the universal reflect each other and both reflect the immediate and the ultimate.
An evaluation of The Way of Being—the ideas are relatively complete but always under review. The ultimate is given to all Being but normally only felt, seen, or potential in ‘this life’—transformation is ongoing.
My plan in outline is to follow the two templates. Also see traditional knowledge and practice.
Comment. Details for traditional knowledge… are in a system of human knowledge. Also see study topics.
Epilogue—The way forward
The epilogue looks forward to realization and its ways based in the knowledge and practice of The Way of Being.
What if we doubt the proof of the universal metaphysics? Because the metaphysics is self-consistent and externally consistent, and frames all possible experience, to live under it is existentially optimal.
The immediate and ultimate are interwoven. A derived ethic is that living well is living for this world and the ultimate.
The intrinsic-experiential—the true nature of Being—includes the instrumental. It is the way to the ultimate.