JOURNEY IN BEING

PREPARATION FOR
A PRESENTATION

ANIL MITRA, PHD

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Journey in being-presentation.html (PowerPoint presentation, Word document)

CONTENTS

Introduction. 2

Understanding the narrative. 2.     The idea of the metaphysics. 2.     Journey. 2.     The presentation. 3

Part 1.     Universal metaphysics. 7

Function. 7.     Development of the metaphysics. 7.     The argument 10.     Objections and counterarguments (generic) 13

Part 2.     The sum of all endeavor. 15

Function. 15.     Introduction. 15.     Characterizing the human endeavor 15.     Common and experimental endeavor 16.     The problem of possibility and limits. 20.     Review of limits. 20.     All endeavor 21

Part 3.     Journey. 22

Function. 22.     Introduction. 22.     Ideas. 23.     Objections and counterarguments—method and content 45.     Topics from the history of ideas. 56.     Being and identity. 59.     Truths. 62.     The Future. 64

Appendix. 65

Dictionary. 65

 

JOURNEY IN BEING

THE PRESENTATION

Introduction

The journey of the title started as personal and sought universality through ideas and transformation. Accordingly, the narrative reflects the personal and the universal

Understanding the narrative

Every culture and every individual sees the world in terms of what amounts to a world view. In saying this it is not suggested that such views are entirely relative, explicit—the content of some written document or documents. The views of a culture or society may be distributed in the habits and words of the people and it includes instruments for negotiating the world and must, therefore, have some degree and—at least implicit—kind of validity. And as far as documents go, the world view or metaphysics may be expressed in the kinds of things people do with their lives, their interests, their commitments—very much as it is in the actual case

World views contain implicit and explicit elements. The implicit elements include those that are embodied in institutions and practices. Explicit elements include stories, legends, faiths, science, philosophy…

A significant portion—see Ideas—of this narrative is devoted to the development, justification and elaboration of an explicit world view or metaphysics—a Universal metaphysics, the Metaphysics of immanence

It is crucial to the understanding of the development that this world view to realize that it is claimed that the Universal metaphysics is an ultimate one and reveals the universe to be infinitely larger and more varied than is commonly understood in the world views from the myths and faiths to modern science and secular humanism. This claim is not merely asserted but is demonstrated

The idea of the metaphysics

Outline: void --> fundamental principle and brief consequences

Introduction: Metaphysics = Logic… implies that our physics cannot be universal

Journey

journey, becoming, experiment, discovery, action, diffuse action, single-minded action, transformation, world, experience, idea, immediate, ultimate, identity, meaning, ideal, vision, goal, possibility, feasibility, the right, the good, individual, relationship, commitment, sharing, significance, society

Origins

Ideas

Method

See method under Universe

Subject

1.      Method and subject arise together, in interaction

2.      Ultimate Theory of Being (Metaphysics-Logic-Cosmology)

3.      Mutual raising up of the level of the metaphysics and—human—endeavor including action, the formal disciplines and common—human—truth

Transformation

Method

System

Transformations so far

The presentation

Function

The presentation is a blueprint for a number of functions that include presentation, guide to Metaphysics-A Journey in Being.html—the version of 2007 whose most up to date version is ..\Journey in Being-New World-essence.html (doc,) and supplement to the 2008 in-process version ..\Journey in Being-2008.html (doc)

The kinds of presentation include computer presentation, formal presentation, general talk, formal debate, impromptu debate, letters and emails, a variety of venues including university, church, community-bookstore, pub, hike, chance meeting, informal meeting, job interview, radio, TV, hosted show, various impromptu occasions including casual discussion and chance-encounter-in-passing… and the purposes include exposition, demonstration, transformation, persuasion for shared commitment and action

Approach

Elements

Areas

Strategic examples, inferences, references to the main essays / site

Introduction

Universal metaphysics develops an ultimate metaphysics. It explains the sense of ‘ultimate’ used here and demonstrates—shows—that the metaphysics is ultimate. The metaphysics introduces the concepts of Universe, Law—a special case of Form, domain, and Void; and it uses these concepts to show that the one and only law of the Universe is Logic (the capitalization is explained below.) The concept of the Normal is then introduced as a means to explain the regular behavior of this—our—cosmological system or cosmos within the Universe that, in its entirety, has no such—contingent—regularities. The idea of Experience is used to situate the individual—animal andor human—in this infinite but apparently remote context as well as to give substance to the context

The ideas of the Universal metaphysics, also called Metaphysics of immanence, are not entirely unknown or unwritten in the history of ideas. What is new is the demonstration, the elaboration as a Theory of being—see the contents—i.e., a world view; and the development of immense consequences for everyday and extraordinary human life and affairs, and for common, academic and esoteric knowledge

The metaphysics and its methods of demonstration are interwoven; and it is shown that any level that seeks to be foundational should and may be integral with method. I.e., method or Logic is not another topic

The metaphysics does not upset common and contextual views within their respective domains of validity. Thus the metaphysics satisfies one natural requirement of any advance in understanding. Outside common views the metaphysics provides a new view of the universe as infinitely larger and more varied than the traditional. There can be no larger or more varied view… and all this is demonstrated in ‘cold Logic’

That Logic and metaphysics arise together suggests the possibility of circular reason. The demonstration shows that there is no circularity or assumption

Although the new metaphysics refers to the ‘furthest reaches of being’ it is based in what is so immediate and given in experience that it generally escapes notice and may be immensely difficult to appreciate. The term ‘abstract’ is suggested as a characteristic of the core of the new metaphysics. Here, however, the meaning of abstract is not that of a remove from the immediate but of an immersion in what is so immediate that it is not normally seen

One way of characterizing the new view is that it makes no distinction between the remote and the ultimate and the immediate—this confers upon the view and its demonstration a certain trivial character. However, the triviality lies in its lying beyond question and is therefore also the source of the depth and profundity of the view. In its pure essentials the view does not say much about common or particular contexts; however, in combination with any system of knowledge—or when applied to a particular context—including day-to-day practical knowledge the view reveals profound consequences that include revision andor re-appreciation to an often ultimate level of—the systems of human—knowing

The sum of all endeavor focuses first on a conception of the common human endeavor and its traditional possibilities and limits. It then goes on to describe all or universal endeavor—whose only limits, from Universal metaphysics, are the necessary or logical limits. The discussion suggests that the limits of Human being are those of all being, i.e., those of universal endeavor

Some versions of the presentation begin with the Universal metaphysics. A primary advantage of this setup is the early introduction of the central concepts, immense power and results of the entire development; it also shows that the traditional conception of the limits of the human endeavor are not at all absolute. Beginning with the Universal metaphysics may provide a shock that fractures a primary block to accepting a new view: the requirement of re-education of the intuition

An alternative arrangement is to begin with The sum of all endeavor. This arrangement may be seen as motivating the development of the Universal metaphysics. However, in this arrangement the contingent character of the traditional human limits must be taken on faith—pending later demonstration (the brief discussion of the Universal metaphysics above provides a preliminary but inadequate account of the limits)

The first two parts are intentionally brief and have a number of shortcomings of explanation and demonstration that are addressed in the final part

Journey develops consequences of the metaphysics under two main headings, Ideas and Identity. The Ideas are developed as Universal ideas or Theory of being and implications for Human being—that include showing that, properly understood, the limits of Human, i.e., Animal being are those of all being. A consequence of the ultimate metaphysics is a re-conceptualization and ultimate characterization a number of important topics that are central to thought and include Form, substance, Object, Logic and meaning, mind, cosmology; and the nature and possibilities of Human being and the social world. The universal develops both content and method and shows the necessity of the dual development as co-development. The discussion of the ideas rounds out their application to our world via the concepts of experience and the normal. The discussion of Identity first takes up the ultimate possibilities of (human) being and describes a system of experiments-in-process in the realization of possibility

On the meanings of terms

The words used for the main concepts are common terms, often important ones, such as being, metaphysics, form, substance, object, logic, meaning (itself,) mind (and matter,) cosmology; and human being, society, culture, civilization…

In any system of understanding such terms may have definite meaning but such definiteness exists only in terms of the understanding that may itself be incomplete and inadequate

Further, meaning resides not only in symbols but is primarily immanent in context or use. Explicit meaning is overlaid upon use and intuition; but does not escape use and intuition—which is a good thing. There are, however, degrees of escape and return—which is also a good thing. Despite separation, symbol and organism may be seen as unitary. It will be seen that there are aspects of explicit symbolic meaning that can be fully separate and absolute. There is no universalizing such as all meaning is absolute or no meaning is ever separate from context; all such assertions must be evaluated case by case

Since the present system is ultimate and the concepts are—often—raised to their ultimate capacity for meaning, it follows that the meanings or uses of the terms must necessarily different than in any other lesser system. For adequate understanding it is necessary for the audience to pay attention to the present use or meaning. To distinguish present use the terms may be capitalized e.g. Being or Logic

Thus the sign Being indicates the specified meaning of ‘being’ and not that Being refers to any special being or kind of being—especially ultimate being. It is significant to note, however, that without an understanding of ultimate potential Being is not completely understood… but the same may apply also to Object, Logic, Meaning, Mind, Cosmology and Human being

Part 1.           Universal metaphysics

‘Universal metaphysics’ would have redundancy if it were not for a variety of restricted uses of ‘metaphysics’

Function

The Universal metaphysics is ultimate as defined below. It is of interest in itself and as foundation for the ideas and the transformations in being and identity. The foundation is limited in that no symbolic formulation can generate all possibilities of being but is ultimate in that no deeper abstract foundation is possible. The foundation has another kind of limit in that symbolic formulations can not be complete substitutes for ideas and ideas cannot be complete substitutes for transformations in being and identity

We begin with the metaphysics (1) because this brings out the power of the development early and (2) it provides context for the next part, The sum of all endeavor. Particularly, while the next part shows that the common cultural estimates of the limits of human endeavor are imprecise, the metaphysics shows that those limits may be transcended to an immense degree and gives some idea of directions and means of the transcendence

Development of the metaphysics

See Part III for the concept of absolute demonstration

The demonstration will follow the following flexible sequence of concepts:

Universe

existence (being)

all

entity

law

form

pattern

universe

The universe is all being and contains all being which includes form, pattern, and law. There is—exists—one and only one universe

In this sense of ‘universe’ there is no other universe. It will be seen later that the universe cannot separate into two effectively separate or non-interacting parts

immanence

Form and law are immanent in being and this means that they are of being—an aspect of being—and not something external—for there is nothing external to the universe—that is attached to or imposed on being: law is what is perceived of Law that is of being

meaning

possibility

actuality

necessity

Domain

difference

domain

complement

dimension

Examples of dimension are extension and duration. It is not clear whether other dimensions are possible on Logical grounds

The possibility of non space-time coordinates and of multiple temporal dimensions is left open till further discussion

extension

duration

space-time

coordinate

local-global

description, frame, patch

Void

absence

void

The void is the absence of being. Its fundamental property is that it contains neither entity nor form nor law. The void exists

Fundamental principle

The fundamental principle is the transformational result of the metaphysics—the one that makes it ultimate and allows raising of the metaphysics, the logic, the study of objects, of mind, of cosmology and of human being to their ultimate levels

Consequences… and significance

Theory of being—a metaphysics without substance, of ultimate but finite depth, and ultimate and unlimited breadth or variety

Nature of the universe—a universe of unlimited being… the only fictions are the Logical fictions

Theory of identity—the individual is identical to the universe

Further properties of the void

On substance

Fundamental problem of metaphysics

Properties of the void

Substance

Violence to the common and scientific sense of reality and resolution…

The normal

Cosmological examples

The following is linked to the original statement in Part III

Examples of necessarily existing objects. All actual objects. Most annihilator objects. Infinitely many copies of actual objects. Jesus Christ. Infinitely many copies of Jesus Christ (on infinitely many cosmological systems.) Recurrence. Karma. Every consistent fiction, i.e., all consistent literature, myth, legend. The Universe. The Void. Every complement corresponding to an existing domain

Logic

From the fundamental principle, every consistent concept has reference. This opens up the meaning of consistency. Clearly Logic is implicated. The meaning of consistency presents a problem. The problem is tacitly resolved by turning it around. What ‘describes’ the universe is Logic. The precise nature of Logic is to be discovered—of course the classical principles of logic provide clues

The fundamental principle of Logic is the principle of reference (Logic is an object)

The following is linked to the original statement in Part III

In a sense, Logic is Law or, perhaps a Law. However, it is unlike physical law which says something about behavior. Logic is what must obtain for concepts and sentences to have reference (the overlap with grammar again.) Logic does not so much determine variety as to permit variety; this is similar to the sense in which physical law describes rather than determines. In the sense that Logic is Law it is not merely a Law but it is the universal law. Are there any other universal laws? From the fundamental principle it follows that there are not. ‘The’ physical laws necessarily apply to a—very—limited domain. What is the immanent form of Logic? If we name it Logos, the question becomes What is Logos? Logos harbors the infinite variety of being; specifically it harbors the ‘entire system of consistent concepts.’ Although it suggests paradox, if we leave ‘the entire system…’ as implicit in Logic, there is no paradox for Logic is not determined as traditional logic or logics which may be but approximations to Logic

The argument

Principles of reasoning

Principles of good reasoning—argument—are sometimes referred to as the theory of rationality. The concept of logic is sometimes seen as being more restricted than theory of rationality in being traceable—by this concept of logic—back to the formal features of representations involved in inference

It is not the purpose here to review the theories of rationality or of logic or their history but to discuss (1) the concepts of rationality and logic—to be completed in subsequent parts, and (2) their development and deployment here

Argument based in the subject or context

A general principle of rationality, however, is that good reasoning is based in the subject of discussion and may involve premises regarding the subject or context and the formal features of inference which are presumed to be based in that context or a class of contexts to which it belongs

Argument that is—apparently—not based in the subject

There are various forms of ‘argument’ that are not based—directly—in the subject and many of these are considered under fallacy

However, an argument clearly based in the subject may not be available and yet judgment may be necessary

Under such circumstances alternative forms of argument may be employed and used even though they are not or do not appear to be rational

An ad hominem argument or an argument based in authority, including objection to an argument, is based in the person or authority or circumstance of the arguer—or in an appeal to external or received authority. Although such arguments and objections are not formally—logically—valid they may carry weight when formal argument is not available or when the audience does not have the time or ability to follow formal argument. When judgment or action is necessary, the only recourse may be to ad hominem argument or objection

Emotion is not a form of argument but is integral to action when action is known to be necessary—either obviously as in the case of imminent danger or by inference. However, when rationality is insufficient persuasion, emotional appeal to action may be appropriate but such appeal still does not constitute reason

It may be argued, and this thought is developed formally later, that emotion and cognition are inseparable, first, in that cognition rides upon a level of feeling without which the individual may—will—cease to cognate and, second, in that emotion (feeling) is essential in selecting from among the myriad data which data are important relative to reflection and action and in ongoing give and take—motivation—between thought and action. The issues are subtle and the argument of this paragraph do not justify or even nearly fully clarify the role of feeling

It is not being said that such forms of ‘argument’ are rational but the use of them may be rational. Additionally it may be argued that there is some connection to rationality—if we trust someone’s argument it is presumably because we trust their access to reason; if we trust feeling we presume that feeling points in the rough direction of appropriate action and we follow it when action is necessary and in the absence of more accurate pointers (we do this even when cognition points roughly)

Principles and content arise together

A central position of the development is that principles of argument and content arise together and are interwoven. This of course does not imply no separation or separability at all

It is essential that the foregoing principle is developed rather than assumed. Also, the principles of reasoning used in the developed are sufficiently evaluated to allow confidence in them—and confidence in necessary reasoning must be absolute. Thus, while the present work is not a complete treatise on logic, it provides a full concept of Logic and develops the essential Logical tools used here

Logic and method

As noted it is not the purpose here to develop a detailed account of logic and method. Rather, the goal of the discussion of logic and method in the narrative is to

1.      Introduce a concept of logic / method rather than systems of logic

2.      As noted above method and study arise together. The principle that allows and requires this is the principle of reference introduced later that itself arises out of rational concerns though not circularly

3.      The concept of method is immanent in and necessary for development of the universal metaphysics and the Logic

4.      The concept is not entirely abstract for it is used, first, in the net development and, second, in the evaluation of standard logics

The principles of criticism

The principles of criticism (objections) are not other than the principles and ways of argument or rationality. When we criticize we are looking at ways in which argument breaks down, i.e., we are looking, first, at ways of argument

Fallacy

Purposes to consideration of fallacy include (1) to encourage criticism of the development, (2) to prepare for criticism

Fallacies have been classified as material, verbal and formal or logical. Roughly, material fallacies are based in premises and the use of premises—premises and use of premises that is faulty or irrelevant. These include assuming what is to be proved; false generalization, and false particularization that disregards exceptions; irrelevant conclusion based in emotion or fear or threat, or in personal considerations including authority, or popular sentiment; inferring the premise from the conclusion and inferring the negation of a conclusion from the negation of a premise. Verbal fallacies are those in which a conclusion is obtained by improper or ambiguous use of words. A logical fallacy is an error in the form of an argument; logical fallacies are thus formal; however, the term logical fallacy is often used in a more general sense to refer to invalid argument and, in this sense, there is overlap between the logical and the other kinds of fallacy

Although it seems that the classification of fallacies is ad hoc, they may be seen as arising out of the principle of reference that lies at the core of rationality

Hume’s argument against material necessity, e.g. strict causation, was not that material necessity does not obtain but that it does not follow logically from some cases, e.g. from all prior cases, to all cases including future cases. Hume’s argument is not an argument against causation even though it is commonly taken to be so—for there may be some alternative logical argument; the argument of the Universal metaphysics is a Logical or necessary argument for certain material necessities; the case of causation is subtle and is taken up later

The argument itself

There are a number of intended gaps in the argument—and content—so far. These cases of incompleteness and omission are filled in Journey

Necessary versus probable arguments

The central arguments of the Universal metaphysics or Theory of being, particularly the Fundamental principle and the Theory of identity are necessary. A necessary argument is one whose premises and inference are necessary

In applying these theories to particular domains of knowledge, the result is necessary or contingent according to whether knowledge of the particular domain is contingent or necessary

A later argument for the existence of an external world—a world not contained in experience even though it may be experienced—is necessary except for being contingent upon the amount of information in experience. The Fundamental principle may be used to remove the contingent aspect of the argument although it may leave doubt about which part of experience is external. However, some such doubt will probably always exist even though any particular doubt may, perhaps, be cleared up

Ring of concepts

Problems

The question arises how the various concepts and arguments stand together. Especially (1) How does the Universal metaphysics acquire significance of intuition and heart, and (2) How does the individual relate—via experience—to the universal? Although this is immanent in the development, it is useful to provide an outline of the holism of the argument:

Resolution approach: ring of concepts

Preliminary discussion of experience and existence → fundamental principle → metaphysics: completed analysis of the basic concepts of experience, existence, form, identity → objects: particular, abstract → method, demonstration, proof, logic, meaning, grammar → mind, cosmology, journey → elaboration and application to, e.g., human world: civilization and faith → transformation in being and identity

Objections and counterarguments (generic)

Objections based in content and form of argument

Objections to content and method… and counterarguments are taken up in subsequent detailed analyses

The main objections are found in experience, existence, Objections and counterarguments—method and content

Other kinds of objection

The kinds of objections in this section are not based in errors of fact or form of argument or other fallacies of reason. Rather they are kinds that are peripheral to method-content. I consider them primarily because they may enter at a level that is less than explicitly conscious and intentional. Such objections or doubts may of course be present in the thinking of others but it is important that they may be present also and especially in the thinking of an author and may therefore have negative impact on the impeccability and strength of an author’s conclusions and arguments. I also take up such considerations so as to be ready for various kinds of attack or minimization based in person and fashion

It is inevitable that some individuals may have at least subconscious ad hominem doubts. My background is laid out at on my website http://www.horizons-2000.org. However, an essential point to the present development is its argument and I ask that readers raise any circumstantial doubts to a conscious level and ask whether the value of what they may learn is worth the effort of following the details of the arguments

In any culture there is a core of accepted belief. The present development appears to undermine both classical religion and secular humanism… and there is bound to be ‘objection’ or doubt from these perspectives. The actual position, however, is that those cultures have domains of validity and the present development agrees and must agree with them in those domains. That is because the present development is a necessary universal metaphysics. Individuals will inevitably find some archaic view apparently supported here. In all such known cases the source of this support is some combination of (a) the use of existing terms with new meaning and (b) the replacement of current world views by the universal metaphysics

Finally, I will mention the personal attack as a form of ad hominem objection. I mention this not because I want to take up the concern in any sense of argument but because of the possibility of a defense reaction, i.e. of taking an argument from logic as an ad hominem objection, and in order to prepare myself for it

A general response to the personal attack is (a) positive or self-affirmation, and (b) negative—the attacker is in no position to make such ‘arguments.’ This response is not complete in itself. First, the expression of feeling does not exclude cognitive truth. Therefore, if I set myself up defensively against all but the most calm argument I am almost inevitably missing some essential element of being-in-the-world which includes ideas relevant to the topic under discussion. Second, audiences, i.e. third parties are sensitive to feeling even when it is peripheral to the issues. In fact all parties, including the 1^st and the 2^nd are sensitive to the sway of elements peripheral to the issues at hand. These elements which include the ad hominem argument are not intrinsically peripheral or destructive they may also be constructive and interwoven with the ‘issues.’ There are situations where the para-argument should be used in return. A second general response is to bring the focus, including that of para-argument, back to the real issues

Part 2.           The sum of all endeavor

Function

Here we attempt to characterize the endeavor of the human animal. The Universal metaphysics provides both significance and ultimate direction for this endeavor

This part pays particular attention to what are commonly thought to be practical and conceptual limits to the endeavor. The desire to explore human possibility motivated the search for a metaphysics which shows the common ‘limits’ immensely underestimate the potential of human being even those putative limits are based in what appears to be reasonable

What is the potential of human being? It is the potential of being itself. The limits of being have been seen to be those of Logic. There can be no more permissive limits. At any given time, however, certain potentials have been realized and immensely many others have not. One of the goals of the Journey is to explore the possible and the desirable starting at the present boundary of realization

Introduction

Characterizing the human endeavor

(1) Relation to experimental activity. (2) Historical and universal viewpoints. (3) Limits and possibilities are equally characteristic… we are defined by the endeavor and by its limits and possibilities

Limits

Neutral and positive limits—a neutral limit is agnostic r/t ‘beyond’ and a positive limit is one, either absolute or relative, for which there is no beyond. A positive limit is relative if there is no beyond on certain conditions. From the Universal metaphysics, the absolute limits are the ‘limits of Logic.’ A transparent limit is one that is accepted in certain cultures, e.g. the culture of scientific positivism, is otherwise known to not be a true limit

The place of intuition

It is well recognized that formulation of the common endeavor is elusive. This is, first, because knowledge does not completely ‘get outside’ being and action—the internal processes of the organism do not fundamentally represent but remain in interaction with the world and it is only in some rough sense that there is representation. The elusive character of formulation results, secondly, from the fact that knowing is fundamentally in in-tuition and secondarily symbolic

This does not imply that there is no completely faithful symbolic or intuitive representation. We have seen significant cases of such representation. It does, however, mean that knowledge or knowing lies on a continuum of interactive non-representation to independent representation in which faithfulness has meaning and obtains

Much has been written on the place of emotion in relating to the world—and that writing has validity. However the place of intuition is fundamental and emotion and cognition find places within intuition; and, further, as is seen, emotion and cognition are not islands but are deeply meshed in both sense or nature and reference or fact

An essential truth

Whatever its external manifestation and cultural form, the human endeavor has some place in the individual where it resides. That place is, significantly, the intuition which is neither emotion nor cognition-as-we-know-them nor not those but contains their roots-in-integration

Common and experimental endeavor

Individual and society

The first distinction is that of individual and society

The individual has the important characteristic of freedom of choice and action whose non-trivial expression requires effort and commitment and that is not absolute freedom but stands in balance with various necessities of natural law, individual form and tying in to culture and society. A second characteristic is feeling that is the element of experience or mind and has the dimensions of intensity, quality, bonding in perception or ‘attitude’ and action to world and individual versus freedom in potential, e.g. pure experience, icon and symbol. Normal consciousness is bright consciousness; the unconscious is dim consciousness or feeling. The higher human modes are elaborations and layering. Bright consciousness does not require self-reference but such reference enhances brightness in the ability to be aware of awareness and to focus awareness. Awareness without experience is generally dim awareness without awareness of awareness that, if not too dim, may enter into acute awareness. Language, treated in detail in the essays—Home—has the dual function of expression and communication and, in memory and the written form of preservation. The ability to manipulate the environment is enhanced by symbolic representation and preservation

Society is characterized by groups and institutions. Institutions include culture which encompasses the modes of knowing and is fundamental to the institutions. Other institutions include the institutions of knowledge—creation, preservation and transmission, i.e., discovery, representation and storage, and education. Knowledge includes factual and conceptual knowledge, value and morals which are required to balance destructive expression of human freedoms, and a variety of implicit forms such as those of trades and practices. Institutions relating to group process include the political which is the group decision process, codes that may be seen as channeling of behavior toward both efficient and moral ends and whose modes of expression are not restricted to force, and the economic or the feasible organization and processing of resources to individual and social ends

Common and experimental endeavor

Human activity may be classed as common or that of the norm and experimental or that of active departure from the norm. There are tensions between the common and the experimental but both are necessary—the common as expression of adaptation and stability and the experimental as expression of adapting and necessary to avoid decay, deal with competition and negotiate changing circumstances

A system of modes of being and knowing

Introduction

Consider a distinction according to the categories of nature, society, psyche and the universal or unknown. The following may be equivalent: physical, the living, the intuitive and the symbolic-cultural. The physical and the living cover the natural; the intuitive is in the sense of Kant and includes the unconscious and together with the symbolic covers psyche; the living includes the group or the social whose communication is intuitive-symbolic; and the universal and the unknown are implicit in intuition, symbol and culture

The modes

Also note that the physical and the living may be seen as ‘being-in-the-world.’ Therefore the following system of modes emerges

Natural—physical and biological

Action-idea

Intuition-symbol—tacit-immanent versus symbolic-cultural

Symbolic—representing versus communication or knowing versus relating

Symbolic—casual versus formal; the formal includes the empirical-rational

Common or established and or putative versus the experimental

The common is often established as a result of adaptation characterized by casual expression and the tacit; these forms arise organically from the origins and are conducive of stability

The experimental emphasizes the explicit and therefore the formal; and is established by trial and error

The distinction between the common and the experimental is not absolute and they dovetail and interact; there are continuities in content and significance; they are part of one-process; thus although the original establishment of the common was and remains

Some human modes, common and experimental

The animal

Primal holism—myth-legend, intuition and science

Religion / religion

Science / science

Secular humanism

In the following, terms in brackets note the archaic or religious counterparts of the secular or modern

Literature (sacred text;) drama (ritual,) music—and suspension of judgment  and promotion of flow; art—including drawing,  painting, and ornament and sculpture—and architecture (sacred form and space;) philosophy and metaphysics (scripture on the nature of world, society, institution and morals)

Specific cultures and their limits

Early religion, myth and science…

Insofar as these are flowing, limits are tacit

Religion

The classic religions have histories—e.g. of the people, cosmologies or views of the world—that may be pointed at awe or behavior or beauty rather than ‘neutral’ description, ethics or codes of behavior, myths or stories that weave the foregoing with inspiration

The obvious limits of religion concern the archaic cosmologies. However, in the origins the point to the cosmologies may have been to promote social bonding, attitude, and behavior—andor story—rather than description or representation. Thus Heaven and Hell and, more particularly, the rising from the dead tell metaphorically of the limitation of the secular notion of death—making explicit the implicit story always has the element of hypothesis. That such cosmologies become word has an undoubted political component including neutral or benign bonding. The religions of the hunter-gatherers are relatively moored in the environment; the religion of the agriculturalists who are revealed as the true uprooted nomads tends to lack mooring in context. There may be limitations to the explicit and implicit morals of religions due to issues of context and changing context. Clearly, religion has function and limit

The distinction—Religion versus religion. The religions are the actual religions. Here, Religion refers not to the object but to an ideal form—Religion as the negotiation of all being by all modes available to the individual and the group

Secular humanism, science and their limits

Primary sources of secular humanism lie in the ascent of science and the demise of religion as the source of a primary authority regarding the real… and in the search for a replacement of the religious or spiritual function in secular elements of culture—thought, science, literature, art, music, drama, and technology

Science is but one dimension of secular humanism; another dimension lies in the possibilities of the—human—psyche. With regard to the external world, however, science tends to define the limits of secular humanism. Even with regard to the psyche, science is thought to define two kinds of limit. First, the psyche is part of the natural world—everyone else’s psyche is part of the external world and therefore so is mine. And, second, while fiction may explore, for example, the subtleties of human feeling and relationship, here too there are limits that are thought to be defined by science, e.g., Freudian psychology. One may, of course, disagree with Freud as science but surely there are some limits to the psyche that result in limits to expression, feeling and behavior. ‘Fiction’ that does not respect—or seriously explore—such limits is experienced as inauthentic

The limits of science

Therefore, it is important to explore the limits of science. The first kind of limit to science is the ultimate limit. Are there any areas of knowledge that are ultimately off bounds to science? It is important that the science of the future may be methodologically and conceptually different from the science of today, e.g., while there are commonalities among physical and biological science, there are also differences of method. It seems reasonable to think that if something is definitely knowable it should be knowable scientifically even though the ‘science’ by which it is known and it method and its expression may be yet un-thought. Perhaps, one day, formal science and mathematics may equal human intuition even though the work of Gödel suggests that there are limits to formal systems. In any case, formal thought and formal systems are not a substitute for living experience

A second kind of limit concerns the limits of current science. It is clear that psychology and sociology are far from complete—and it is not clear that they will ever approach the definiteness of the natural sciences. The contours of biology may be thought to be complete but they are probably not complete relative to all possible life forms—as revealed by the Universal metaphysics. It is not at all clear that modern biology is at all adequate as a science of the possible transformations of Identity. Modern physics defines its own limits. Its laws are known to be inadequate beyond a certain threshold of energy-extension-duration. Recently there is again doubt regarding the application of the firmest model of cosmology—the inflationary big-bang theory—within the cosmos; beyond the cosmos… theory and experiment are inadequate to suggest whether there is a beyond and, if there is, what it is like—there is speculation about bubble universes. However, Universal metaphysics reveals that there is an infinite beyond with regard to remote time and place and the most intimate time-space—that of the very small. Although Universal metaphysics reveals that there is an infinite and unending variety—there are no fictions except Logical fictions—it does not tell us the relation of these nearby and distant worlds to this world

These limits of science, therefore, indicate extreme limits to secular humanism. There is of course enormous room within the secular and the feeling aspect of the spirit; but this room is still limited. There is therefore room for an ideational form, whose name may be religion or science or otherwise, whose contours or limits are those of the Universal metaphysics

The future of the ideational form

‘Religion,’ ‘science,’ ‘secular humanism’… versus unnamed ideational form

Action

Political, economic…

Metaphysics and world view

Tacit and formal views

A tacit view is one that immanent in individual andor group behavior. It may be intuitive or even tacitly embodied, i.e., the physiology of the organism may predispose the individual to certain behaviors. ‘Animal faith’ is a form of tacit view. By extension of the concept of knowledge, the tacit may reach down to the elements of being. A tacit view may be immanent in an institution, e.g., the form of language or the form of group decision, i.e., politics. A formal view is one expressed in symbols

A view may have tacit and formal aspects; these aspects may be coherent or at odds

The common and the experimental may cut across the tacit-formal distinction; however there is some—if not significant—alignment of the tacit with the common and the formal with the experimental

Formal truth emphasizes (1) concepts, analysis, and principles, (2) science and the empirical, (3) the essential unity in experience of the conceptual and the empirical, (4) technical and detailed developments

About world views

holism vs. atomism

all: abstract vs. detail

all: sense-intuition ↔ concept

tacit-immanent ↔ symbolic-representational (… and formal)

action ↔ idea; incomplete separation; living-in or being-in versus views-of or representing the world; ambition-change vs. acceptance-flow: not a real choice… both are part of the world. World—as it is / appears. Representing is advance and regression

Incorporate the following concepts

view-metaphysics, rational-empirical (sense), context-limits, idea-action, experimental-established (common), all-part, abstract-detail, tacit-formal

modes of being and knowing, natural, physical, living, feeling, reference, intuition, symbolic-cultural vs. tacit-immanent, common human-formal

There is a point of view of the mental / symbolic as definitive versus immanent. At root all is immanent but there are areas of more or less definitiveness

common modes, modes, religion, Religion, the religions, science, the sciences, Science, formal-symbolic, language, grammar, logic, Logic, mathematics, secular humanism, philosophy, literature, art, painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, technology, the technologies: material, psycho-social—politics and group, economics, culture and knowledge, law; formal-symbolic—computation, artificial intelligence and robotics

Analysis of some common views and their limits: summary

It is seen that there are serious limits revealed by the human modes themselves and  the Universal metaphysics

These limits apply to the common and much of the experimental; to much of the tacit and the formal; to the modern, the historical, and the archaic

And there is infinite room for discovery and journey

The problem of possibility and limits

 (1) Consider, first, conceptual or theoretical limits. (2) Limits are not just conceptual—perceived limits are culturally defined and have material, political and economic aspects… the perceptions of conceptual limits and, for example, of economic limits interact

Review of limits

Summary

Conclusions

Positivism versus agnosticism regarding limits. Conclusion

Is there knowledge beyond the limits of common culture? Humean analysis—openness of the question on the common account—of course such knowledge is possible on that account but, further, it may be available today to anyone who is willing to analyze fact and meaning

All endeavor

Part 3.           Journey

Concepts for the Journey

See Journey

Function

In this part we explore realizations in ideas and in being and identity. We use the standard outline the development

Here, we will not provide details of the developments that may be found in the essays. Instead, we gather together the main concepts, problems, truths (results) and implications, kinds of demonstration and argument, objections and counterarguments

These elements of the narrative will be organized into two classes—the common or human and the formal or conceptual

The conceptual developments in Ideas have attained a significant degree of maturity—relative to the original insight that made the ultimates possible—and include not only metaphysics but also ultimate developments in the understanding of Objects, Logic, Meaning, Method, Mind, Cosmology, Journey, and the Human World. It is clear that these developments merely scratch the surface of the immense detail that they may found

The transformational developments of Being and identity have ultimate potential but are necessarily in process. The foundation for this potential has been laid. A tentative minimal system of experiments has been set and is being explored. A formal approach to transformation, the Dynamics of Being, has been formulated. It is recognized, of course, that no formal delineation of realization is possible but such a delineation is not a part of the dynamics or any program based in it. Rather, the dynamic process is not laid out in advance but learns and builds upon what has been accomplished so far. Thus the dynamics may be seen as an approach that is similar to discovery in general but is tailored to the needs of transformation and based in the Universal metaphysics

Introduction

The journey is one of transformation. The areas of transformation are those of Ideas and of Being and identity. Transformations in ideas are sometimes thought of as ‘virtual’ but are very much real. An ideational transformation is a transformation in being and identity and such transformation may be significant. Ideational transformation by itself is regarded as incomplete. Thus conceptual foundations are incomplete relative to the possibilities of being. This assertion is related to the thought that no formulation completely lists or generates all possibilities of being. Additionally, the experience of a state of being is, in the sense of transformation, greater than the conception of that state of being. Note, though, that the experience is an idea. Additionally ideas are significant and in conceiving and instrumental in effecting transformations. The incompleteness of the pure ideas implies, however, that there is an essential part of the journey that is pure transformation without preconception

…it is a journey within and into the infinite beyond of common or normal limits

Main concepts

idea, being, identity, transformation

Commentary

The idea is an incomplete mode of transformation that is completed by transformation in being and identity. However, ideas are essential because as the place of the appreciation of being. Ideas are instrumental in transformation in being and identity; however this instrumental character is incomplete—what completeness there may be requires supplement of ideas by ‘pure’ action and experiment

Some topics

Origin and doubt—a foundation in-process

Why ideas are taken up first

Significance of ideas

Contribution to the history of ideas

Ideas

intuition, foundationalism, being, object, experience, reference, understanding—verstand, meaning, empirical, idea—vernunft, rational, demonstration, proof, all, universe, difference, mode of difference, part, domain, form, immanence, normal

duration and extension fall under mode of difference

Note that in Kantianism, verstand—understanding—is ‘thinking the object of sensual intuition,’ the source of concepts; vernunft—the ideas of pure reason—are the ideas of pure metaphysics, regulative in that they point to general objects, but traditionally  thought to be outside experience and therefore impossible to know

Approach to concepts

Careful analysis and formulation of use—to be in-process, in-extension, in the careful reflection of common things, in unforced relation… seeing the universe in the most elementary concept—the concept itself

Universe / metaphysics

The sense of ‘metaphysics’ used here is roughly that in philosophy which is roughly the study of being as being or the study of existence. This sense defines a family and is narrowly interpreted as pure Theory of being. However, the boundary between the pure theory and the variety of being is thin and in a broader sense metaphysics is cosmology or the study of the Universe

‘Universe’ is capitalized to emphasize the meaning here—all that exists without distinction made according to temporal or any other dimension

Theories

Theory of being

Substance theory. I—motivation: simplicity, explanation, worldliness. II—includes determinism. III—is untenable

Problems

What is a theory of being?

The nature of demonstration and proof—see Being, Metaphysics, Method, and Logic

Being

Concepts

being, the verb ‘to be,’ existence, experience, forms of experience, empirical, logical, para-logical

existing versus having existence, existence in entirety

Experience

form of experience, external world

It is convenient to put the detailed discussion in Objections and counterarguments—method and content, below

The analysis of experience shows that experience is a relation—actual andor potential. Together with the analysis of objects, this will show the general correspondence of concept and object. Of course this does not guarantee absence of errors for that would be unreasonable and, as it will turn out, illogical. It will also be seen that error is subsumed under object-as-including-process

Therefore, as will be seen, experience is an object—may be seen as an object, particular or abstract according to the way in which it is seen—and, so, the theory of experience will be seen to be part of the theory of objects

Existence

non-existent object

It is convenient to put the detailed discussion in Objections and counterarguments—method and content, below

Metaphysics

Main concepts of the metaphysics

universe—all being, possibility, actuality, necessity, immanence, form, law, pattern, object, void—absence of being, voidism, metaphysics of immanence, fundamental principle, power, determinism, indeterminism, absolute indeterminism, pure metaphysics, depth, foundation, foundationalism, breadth, variety, behavior, normal, dynamic form, mechanism, adaptation, variation, selection, evolution, dynamic, Logic, manifest, difference, domain, God, mode of difference, extension, duration, space-time

Existence of the generic necessary objects—experience, being, universe or all being, difference and domain, modes of difference, extension-duration and displacement-change, void or absence of being. Demonstration by recognition and naming, analysis of meaning and use, and proof

While the discussion through Topics from the history of ideas and some parts of Human world constitute the metaphysics in a broad sense, the discussion through Fundamental principle… and its first consequences constitutes the core metaphysics

Theories

Theory of the possible

…of the actual

…of the necessary

Theory of depth

Theory of variety

The essential problems

What is metaphysics?

The problem of the empirical nature of metaphysics. Part I—the empirical character of pure metaphysics. Part II—the consequent empirical character of any application of pure metaphysics to an empirical discipline or science

The problem of the structure of metaphysics. The ‘problem’ is implicit and resolved in the following

Existence and nature of the generic necessary objects

Method. Method is inherent in and coeval with theory. Empiric-logic

Conclusions from existence and properties of the universe, domains, and the void—the metaphysics of immanence or universal metaphysics. The concept of the normal, its use in resolving the apparent tension between the universal metaphysics and local science. Conclusions from and about specific empirical forms. Objections and counterarguments that arise in critical reflection on the metaphysics and its development. Faith—an essential concept; faith in life, becoming and metaphysics. Pure and general metaphysics; characterizations of the universal metaphysics; setting up a complete understanding of concept-object or word-world from Theory of Objects to Human world and Transformation of being

Universe—concept and implications

The Universe is all being

There appear to be various conceptions of the universe. Sometimes alternate conceptions vie to adequately describe the same object. Here, alternate conceptions marked by the term ‘universe’ refer to different or potentially different objects. Thus ‘universe’ is used variously as ‘known universe,’ ‘physical universe,’ Universe as used here, and as Eriugena’s use of the universe as all that exists (in the global / atemporal sense) and all that does not. Why the present use? It is because it is the most felicitous of the alternatives. If physics is regarded as modern physics then it is not known that the ‘physical universe’ is the entire universe. The present meaning allows for advance in physics but does not require it (it is later seen that advance is necessary.) Certainly the ‘known universe’ is less than the entire universe. Most importantly, though, it is the present use that leads to the ultimate / Universal metaphysics and cosmology… and this metaphysics shows that the present use is equivalent to that of Eriugena

There is one—and only one—Universe

Although the assertion is necessary, it will turn out to be stronger than its present sense for it will be seen that every part of the Universe may interact with any other part. It will be seen that the universe cannot separate into two separate eternally non-interacting parts

In the present sense there is no other universe

Entity

Law

Form

Immanence

Since our versions of the laws of nature are our creations, laws sometimes appear to be imposed on being. However, what is read appears to correspond to something that is of being—Law. Law, however, cannot be outside the Universe (e.g. residing in world’s of Platonic form or mental constructs) since the Universe is all being

Therefore, Law and Form are immanent in Being; Law and Form are not other than Being—are of Being

The universe is all being and contains all being which includes form, pattern, and law. There is—exists—one and only one universe

It will be seen that Objects with are the most general kind of thing include Entity, Form, Pattern, Law, Universe, Domain, and Void. It will also be seen that there is no final distinction between Object and Entity, that Form is immanent in the Object, in Being, and is not something external that is attached to or imposed on the Object

Possibility

Actuality

Necessity

The meaning of possibility is that of something that does obtain or could obtain under different conditions. However, if something does not obtain in the Universe there are no different conditions or other world in which it obtains. Therefore what is possible must be actual and since what is actual is obviously possible, the actual and the possible are identical

This appears to contradict the usual understanding of possibility which is that includes what does not obtain but could obtain under different conditions. In this understanding the ‘universe’ is left vague but it is not the Universe but rather some limited ‘universe’

It is not essential to the present discussion to go into the ideas of ‘possible worlds’ and the physically versus the logically possible but it is obvious that the present discussion could clarify those notions

The capitalized forms Actual and Possible are the actual and the possible relative to the one Universe

If something obtains in the Universe it is not only Possible but Necessary. It may not be necessary since it might not obtain in a sub-universe but it is necessary relative to the Universe and therefore Necessary. Similarly, if something does not obtain in the Universe it is Impossible

The Actual, the Possible and the Necessary are identical

These thoughts suggest a connection between the developing metaphysics and Logic and Law that it is more efficient to take up later

What is commonly thought to be necessary, e.g. physical law, may be probable or normal or locally necessary (where ‘local’ implies space, time and other restrictions)

Domain

Difference

Part

Domain

Complement

The complements of existing domains exist

Dimension

Examples of dimension are extension and duration. It is not clear whether other dimensions are possible on Logical grounds

The possibility of non space-time coordinates and of multiple temporal dimensions is left open till further discussion

Extension

Duration

Space-Time

Coordinate

local-global

description, frame, patch

The Void

Absence

Void

The void is the absence of being

The fundamental property of the void: the void contains no Object—no Form, Entity, Pattern or Law. This follows from the fact that the Universe contains all objects

The void may be taken to exist. Proof: there is no distinction between the existence and non-existence of the void. Alternate proof: the void is the complement of the Universe relative to itself. The first proof shows that the void may be taken to exist; the second proof, about which there may be doubt, shows existence. Existence of the void will be established shortly

Fundamental principle… and its first consequences

The fundamental principle of metaphysics—Every consistent concept or description defines an existing object or entity

Proof. If there is a consistent concept that has no object, this is a law. This law cannot reside in the void. Therefore all objects that correspond to consistent concepts emanate from the void (fundamental principle)

Examples of necessarily existing objects. All actual objects. Most annihilator objects. Infinitely many copies of actual objects. Jesus Christ. Infinitely many copies of Jesus Christ (on infinitely many cosmological systems.) Recurrence. Karma. Every consistent fiction, i.e., all consistent literature, myth, legend. The Universe. The Void. Every complement corresponding to an existing domain

It will be seen that Jesus Christ as understood above, i.e., without specification of which Jesus Christ, is what will be called an abstract object

Reference

First principle of reference—every consistent object has a concept

Fiction

The fundamental principle is the transformational result of the metaphysics—the one that makes it ultimate and allows raising of the metaphysics, the logic, the study of objects, of mind, of cosmology and of human being to their ultimate levels

Manifest Universe

Why is there a manifest universe—why is there something rather than nothing? This has been called the fundamental problem of metaphysics, e.g., by Heidegger

Resolution of the fundamental problem of metaphysics. If there were nothingness there would be only the void. By the fundamental principle manifest being would necessarily result from the void

Note that this does not prove that there is ‘always’ manifest being but that there must ‘sometimes’ be manifest being. In fact it is also proved (since eternal manifest being would constitute a law) that there must be occasions of no manifest being, i.e., of the void and only the void

The Normal

Introduction to cosmological and human examples and the paradox of the apparent violation of ‘normal reality’

Introduction of the normal at this point allays the sense of paradox and points to the applicability of the Ultimate metaphysics. Development of the ‘metaphysics of normal objects’ is taken up below

Substance

determinism, indeterminism, absolute indeterminism, essence, atomism, ontological commitment, supervenience, monism, idealism, materialism, dualism, mass terms, sortal terms, epistemic terms, action, relation, process, fact, word, spirit, soul, god, sacred

The mass versus sortal distinction of substance is that of eternal, uniform, deterministic substrate versus Aristotle’s substance of a genera

Problem of substance: the terms of understanding

To be simple, it seems that the world would be understood in terms of something else—an essential part, something under or behind… The idea of simplicity suggests substance. For substance to have significance, the way it manifests as the world will be deterministic for without determinism anything can manifest as anything else

Although simple in intent, the idea of such terms of understanding is a form of complication in itself

The alternative is to consider understanding the world-as-world, i.e., not in other terms. This is the understanding in terms of Being—what is rather than what may be behind

Problem of substance: the nature of substance. Substance is untenable

The discussion of terms of understanding shows that substance must be deterministic. The ideal of world-substance is that of a uniform and unchanging, i.e., pervasive and eternal ‘stuff.’ If the stuff is something that is of the world, even better. Thus Thales’ idea that the world is of water that has the virtues of simplicity and worldliness

The documents have further reflection on the nature of substance. Also discussed is the thought to turn other worldly kinds e.g. process, property and relation and knowledge kinds as substance e.g. fact, idea, sense-data…, property which lies on either side according to interpretation. As other than world these have no purchase unless deterministic… and the same applies to the more mundane notion of each essential kind having its own substance for which there is further critique from reason and from biology

Because of the requirement of determinism—invariably ignored even by Heidegger—substance is untenable

Problem of being as foundation for understanding—of explaining the world on its own terms

But what understanding can be provided by world-as-world? This is the problem

The resolution lies in looking at the broad and necessarily empirical features of the world—all being, absence of being, domain… These form the basis of a rational-empirical metaphysics, a pure metaphysics of ultimate depth and breadth that together with knowledge of specific domains provides, in interaction, a profound practical metaphysics

Form

The concept of form is repeated from above

Identity

Nature of the universe… and the individual (and identity)

Mechanism

Further properties of the void

Ultimate character of the metaphysics

The metaphysics so far—the core—sets up the remainder of the metaphysics from  Objects through Topics from the history of ideas and select topics from Human world

The metaphysics of normal objects

The Normal

Motivation: the apparent violation of normal reality by the fundamental principle and its consequences (Metaphysics of immanence)

Development and deployment of the concept of the normal. Relation to the probable

Conclusions from and about specific empirical forms. (A) Sentience. (B) Particular coherent domains, especially this cosmological system

Formal concepts

form, Identity, object, Logic, Method, meaning, mind, cosmology, human being, society…

Metaphysics, faith and action

Method

Further objections

Also see all sub-sections whose heading has the word Problem

Metaphysics of immanence: review

Further concepts of metaphysics

voidism, metaphysics of immanence, power, pure metaphysics, depth, breadth, foundation, behavior, dynamic form, adaptation, variation, selection, evolution, manifest, variety, God, spirit, soul

A Metaphysics of immanence

Equivalent characterizations of the metaphysics

Pure and general metaphysics. Pure metaphysics contains its own principles

Relation to subsequent developments

Necessary and contingent aspects

Objects

Theories

Theory of objects

Problems

The problem and nature of the object

Problem of faithfulness

Does faithfulness have meaning?

What kind of meaning can faithfulness have?

Confusions regarding the problem of the object

Problem of location in experience of the ‘pure’ objects of metaphysics

The nature of abstract objects

Are abstract objects distinct in nature from particular objects?

The nature of truth

The nature of universals

The nature of the real

The nature of ethics and morals

The nature of identity

Problem of description of the variety of being

Nature and development of a cosmology of objects

Main concepts

object, entity, particular object, abstract object, universal, faithfulness, sufficient faithfulness, transcendental argument, pure metaphysics

Particular objects are things—they have a more or less ‘concrete’ existence (but ‘thing’ itself, though commonly thought of as particular may also be abstract)

Examples of abstract objects are universals such as properties that are common to things, mathematical objects such as ‘number,’ ethical objects such as value and ethics itself

What is the definition of particular and abstract objects and how are they related? This is taken up…

Supplementary concepts

infinity of conceivable objects, absolute object, accuracy, precision, memory-concept, iconic perception, thought and reason, memory and reconstruction, memory of fact, memory of form

Secondary concepts

full versus partial object, actual versus fictional object, logical versus contradictory object, existent versus non-existent object, determinate versus indeterminate object, manifest versus potential object

Secondary concepts—distinction according to knowledge

absolute versus practical objects, definite versus vague objects, entire versus filtered objects, appearance, reality

The problem of appearance and reality

Appearance and reality are secondary concepts here because the treatment has subsumed the problem and not because it is unimportant

The variety of objects

variety, objects of science, categories of intuition, action, truth, real, universal, ethics as an object, mathematical objects, cosmology of objects

Characteristics of perception

object constancy, object holism

Particular objects or particulars

Sufficiently faithful and necessary objects; absolute and Kantian objects

Abstract objects

The essential identity of the nature of particular and abstract objects

There is no—absolute—distinction between Entity and Object; abstract and particular objects are entities

A miscellany of objects—Logic, mathematics, ethics… note that the classification absolute and Kantian applies here as well

A necessary object is one whose objecthood is precisely given in Logic, e.g., Universe, Domain and Void. The sufficiently faithful objects are those that are known with sufficient faithfulness or accuracy. These include the common objects, the Kantian objects of cognition or intuition and its mesh with symbolic system, the objects of science, the objects-by-immersion, and the case where ‘it doesn’t matter’…

…The worry about accuracy and precision is a value. It is not a merely subjective value for it is instrumental. However, as objective it is not universal as can be seen by reflecting on the history of the pursuit of knowledge. Sitting in office or walking the hallways of an academic environment or having a certificate on the wall does not force an individual to think a certain way even though individuals tend to identify with such ways and may think of those ways as necessary. There is a context—are contexts—in which such ways are necessary but such contexts are porous to the world by flux with the world or by death of the context. However the contexts are not universal—either subjectively or objectively where ‘objectively’ means, for example, being instrumental in negotiating the Universe

An absolute object is one that is accurate. Provided that precision is not required, the Kantian, scientific, and many common objects are absolute. Are there any precise absolute objects except the necessary objects? The concept can be defined to make a ‘rough’ object precise but let us except this important case to consider the also important case of the ‘sharp’ concept. Perhaps the scientific objects approach the absolute—that possibility is open. In an interesting development, it has been shown that quantum theory may contain both observer and observed (Omnès)—the case is not absolute since there is little doubt that quantum theory is incomplete but quantum theory is sufficiently complete to think that the case reveals the possibility of absolute scientific objects that are demonstrated by science itself

Method

Theories

Theories of experience—empiric-logic, grammar, metaphysics, rationality and science

Problems

What is method?

What is the method—if any? What common aspects to method are there? Are method and content altogether separable? What classes arise? Are method and content duals—why—how?

What is the minimum that leads to method? Join of the empirical and the rational in perception-conception?

Method

experience-concept, meaning, Empiric-Logic, the rational, metaphysics, dynamics of being

Of logic and meaning

logic, Logic, meaning, reference and sense, grammar, metaphysics, logics, para-logic

Note that concept includes percept

Meaning

Linguistic meaning

meaning, family, description, fiction, use, empirical, logical, para-logical, demonstration, proof, axiom, axiomatic system, definition

Some problems of meaning

The problems of meaning and, especially, of (1) dictionary meaning versus use, (2) the idea that meaning is non empirical, and (3) the separation of syntax and meaning. The problem of defining fundamental concepts

Concept and object

concept-object, sense-reference, intension-extension, connotation-denotation

Use

Use is the anchor of meaning… the final anchor of meaning is use—not further meaning, description or definition… meaning is immanent in use—not outside use—and therefore in context, i.e., meaning is relative to context… yet there may be absolute meaning (1) due to empirical necessity—when the form of experience is precise and accurate and the word names the experience, which is an example of (2) possession of—ultimate—metaphysics

stability, field of meaning, axiomatic system, holism in meaning, system of description

Percept

Concept

Cognition

Sense

Reference

Logic

para-logic

The Empirical

The Rational

In elementary experience the following come together: meaning and the empirical, sense and reference, percept and concept

Hence the possibility of metaphysics

Duality of method and content—Hence it is that method (demonstration) and content arise together

Thus the integral character of cognition (perception-conception)

…the integral character of the rational (Logic) and the empirical

… and the overlap if not identity of Logic and Grammar

Demonstration

Proof

As used here, proof is relative to premises that may or may not be questionable but demonstration either has no premises or depends on unquestionable premises. This may depend on point of view—for example, the fact of being is hardly a—mere—premise even though it may be taken as such (analytically, the fact of being is a name for what is given in experience rather than a contingent fact that could be incorrect)

What is a theory? Theories in science and philosophy, i.e., in empirical-conceptual endeavors

Colloquial uses of ‘theory’

Although ‘theory’ is often used colloquially to mean ‘guess,’ ‘suspicion,’ or ‘hypothesis’ there is another meaning or family of meanings—especially in science and philosophy

In science and philosophy theory often has some of the following connotations

Science

1.      A scientific theory is a body knowledge expressed in terms of concepts, simple facts and laws that permits the summary representation of the patterns and behaviors of a significant field of phenomena. Thus a theory usually permits prediction. It is not a mere collection of facts

Hypothetical scientific theories

2.      A relatively scientific new theory is often regarded as hypothetical—until a time arrives that the ‘theory’ has been sufficiently subject to and survived conceptual and empirical scrutiny and, typically, has been applied successfully to broad ranges of phenomena

Factual scientific theories

3.      When sufficiently mature a theory may be regarded as factual. While it is true, for example, that physical theories are often replace by newer ones that agree with the old in its domain of validity but also apply outside that domain of validity. The new theories may have new concepts which includes reinterpretations of the concepts of the older theory. However the old theory remains factual within its domain of validity. For many phenomena, the mechanics of Newton remains valid; its use is factual and not merely probable. The theory of evolution is often regarded as factual  and final because, unlike physical theories, its only domain of application (so far) is to life on earth and its domain does not extend (has not yet extended) outward as physics sees further into large and small scale phenomena

Theories in philosophy. Conceptual systems with logical necessity. Significant factual theories that are also necessary

4.      Facts may be necessary (as in logic) and contingent (as in observation)—at any rate that is the conventional distinction (which is seen to break down in the narrative.) A system of necessary facts may add up to a philosophical theory that may be expressed in terms of concepts and necessary propositions. Such theories are typically logical theories corresponding to areas and kinds of logic. It is typically thought that the facts of necessary theories are tautologies, i.e., their truth follows from the structure of the propositions and not from the proposition asserting something about the world (in a sense, of course, even a tautology says something—it says of symbolic forms, which are part of the world, that it is possible for truth to follow from form.) In the present narrative, as noted, the distinction between fact and necessity breaks down (in some circumstances) and therefore the possibility of theories that apply to the world (are empirical) and are yet necessary arises. These theories include Metaphysics of immanence, aspects of the cosmology, and aspects of the study of identity labeled the theory of identity

Principles of thought and action

reflexivity, method, intuition-cognition, perception, integration of the psyche, thought is only partially separable from action, idea, concept, imagination, construction, criticism, meta-construction, meta-criticism, world, text, meaning, analysis, charisma and patriarchalism

Method and context

Synthesis of universal and contextual that raises the level and understanding of the context and illustrates the universal

Tie-in to human being through (general and how) experience and (specific and what) disciplinary—system of human knowledge

Logic

Theories

Theory of descriptions (Logic)

The Logic as the empty theory of Logos

The logic as para-Logic, i.e., as on the periphery of Logic

Theories of science as necessary

Theory or principle of reference (new)

Theory of logics

Contingent theories

The theories of science

Problems

The nature of Logic—one law of the universe, theory of descriptions, as an abstract object: logic is brought to the same plane as the study of the real by the principle of reference

Objection. Immense conclusions are made here from the concept of Logic. However, since ‘The one Law of the Universe’ or of all being defines Logic, how is it now possible to conclude anything at all from the ‘fact’ that Logic is the one Law of the Universe? Response. The motivation to the ‘definition’ was not definition per se, i.e. not the introduction of a new concept, but the possible contradictions arising from ‘the set of consistent statements…’ and the extension of Logic is at least some large set of consistent statements, i.e. the immanent and ultimate realization of the idea of logic

Identity of Logic, metaphysics, and Grammar

Logic, reference and the problem of the infinite

The logics, their nature and formulation

Main concepts

meaning, grammar, sense, reference, principle of reference, use, empirical logic, descriptive logic, para-logic, principle of non-contradiction, consistency

Traditional concepts

traditional, formal and symbolic logic, logics

Supplementary concepts

logic, universal law, tautology, principle of identity, principle of the excluded middle, actuality, possibility, necessity, contingency; theory of descriptions; logic and object; Logos, logic as immanent in being; the problem of the infinite; logic and metaphysics; mathematics, science, theory, fact, pattern

Meaning

meaning, sense, reference, use, system meaning, grammatical form, emotion, will

Secondary

fundamental principle, atomic proposition, Ockham’s principle

Theories

Theory of definition

Logics

direct inference, syllogism, propositional, predicate, modal, many valued, fuzzy, dialethic

Note. Propositional logic is sometimes called 2-valued sentence calculus. There are predicate calculi, e.g., of first and second order

Induction. Logic of science

pattern, constitution, contingency, necessity, practical logic, heuristic, aesthetic, Ockham’s principle, simplicity, hypothesis, theory

Logic: discussion

The idea of Logic as an object

Principle of reference… then non-contradiction…

In a sense, Logic is Law or, perhaps a Law. However, it is unlike physical law which says something about behavior. Logic is what must obtain for concepts and sentences to have reference (the overlap with grammar again.) Logic does not so much determine variety as to permit variety; this is similar to the sense in which physical law describes rather than determines. In the sense that Logic is Law it is not merely a Law but it is the universal law. Are there any other universal laws? From the fundamental principle it follows that there are not. ‘The’ physical laws necessarily apply to a—very—limited domain. What is the immanent form of Logic? If we name it Logos, the question becomes What is Logos? Logos harbors the infinite variety of being; specifically it harbors the ‘entire system of consistent concepts.’ Although it suggests paradox, if we leave ‘the entire system…’ as implicit in Logic, there is no paradox for Logic is not determined as traditional logic or logics which may be but approximations to Logic

Logics

Science

Mind

Mind is implicit in experience (discussed earlier)

Problems

The problem of anthropomorphism in relation to mind: mind-as-mind versus mind-as-human-or-animal-mind

The fundamental character of experience and status of other alleged fundamental ‘dimensions’ of mind—attitude and action

The concept and essence of mind

The problem of fitting mind—experience, intentionality, action, mental causation and so on—into a material or physicalist framework. (1) It is easy to dispense with the argument that materialism / physicalism does not allow mind because matter / physics show no aspect or sign of mind. There is no necessary inconsistency because all that is known is that there is no manifest sign of mind at the elementary physical / material level. Even if it could be demonstrated that mind is not possible in a framework of modern theoretical physics there is still no inconsistency because that framework is not known to be complete. (2) However, it is still an interesting problem to attempt to explain mind from matter

Why experience is fundamental

The problem of the indefiniteness of the received notions of mind and matter; and so the vagueness of the classical problems of mind; i.e., the problem of mind and matter is not so much not a problem as not (even) defined

The problem of experience at the root

The problem of the problem of consciousness—its trivial character

The analysis of consciousness is not trivial

The (peripheral) problem of the modern studies of consciousness. The problem of the illicit concept of access-consciousness

The problem of freedom in relation to mind. Freedom is an essential characteristic of mind in an organism capable of choice and the creation of concepts

The question of attributes. Aspect in which the possibility of a third and further attributes—i.e., beyond mind and matter—is incoherent. Meaning in which question of further attributes, e.g. in another cosmos with different physical characters, is not at all incoherent

Classical problems of mind and its philosophy

Problem of the classical problems of mind and their status

Main concepts

mind-as-such, feeling, experience, awareness, consciousness, intentionality, attitude, action, the unconscious; kind of mind, ground, root, primal mind, freedom, attributes, substance, mental causation, memory;  psychological-behavioral concept of mind, access consciousness

Variety (cosmology)

Problems

Cosmology—intension and extension

Intension—cosmology as the variety of being in a global—e.g., atemporal—framework

Intension—details: variety of temporal beings and processes; interactions including identity; processes including evolution and origins, mechanism and dynamics, space-time-being in general cosmology; the case of normal and local cosmology, interaction of general and normal elements, implications for normal elements including kinds and modes of being, e.g. God, soul, physical, life, human and animal… and implications for space-time-matter, causation, determinism and dynamics and other elements of ‘physical’ and biological science in a local cosmology

Extension—when intension is sufficiently detailed, extension=intension?

Sources. Science, logic, metaphysics, categories of intuition, religion and mythology, literature, art, other disciplines, imagination

Theories

Theory of identity

Theory of variety—of being and process

Theory of origins

Main concepts

general cosmology, philosophical cosmology, being, process, variety, universe, life, mind

Method

metaphysical principles, logic, the normal, intuition, the human endeavor, science, art, music, literature, ultimate, depth, breadth

Aspects of general cosmology

identity, extension-duration, space-time, being, variety, fiction

Behavior

state, void state, identity of states, indeterminism, absolute indeterminism, karma, recurrence, identity, Atman, Brahman, annihilation, indeterminacy of origins, mechanism, stability, symmetry, origin of complexity, evolution, saltation, extension, duration, signal speed

Behavior: local cosmology

the normal, incremental process, variation, selection, explanation, causation, determinism, god, mechanism, evolution

Space, time, matter

absolute, relative, weak interaction, extension, duration, space, time, dual origin, space-time, multiple times, dominant time

Journey

Problems

Journey in the ultimate realm. Merging of identity in Identity

Journey that begins individually in the local realm. Approach

Main concepts

journey, ambition, process, pathway, ideas, identity, individuation, individual, limits, delusion, real, yoga, coalescence, join

Additional concepts

See concepts under the title Being and identity

Human world

Introduction

Human and animal world (including elements and dynamics)

world, psyche, society, anthropology—psychological and social, freedom, alternatives, creation, choice, freedoms of the psyche, emotion, cognition, freedom of action, determinism, indeterminism

Problems… and theories

Problem of method. Dual study from Theory of being and Anthropology—primary psychological and social but also physical. Dual method—except when shown otherwise, the level of confidence is that of the anthropological. It is generally anticipated that the interactive study of Theory of being and anthropology improves confidence in application to human being

Problem of freedom and determinism. Nature, necessity and consequences of human freedom

Problem of elements and dynamics—human world

The problem of Freudian and other psychological determinism

A note on the determinist’s problem. What the classical determinists show. What the determinist must show. Why are there determinists?

Human being

Problems

The ongoing nature of the study of the nature of human being; characterization versus characterizations; freedom; sense and symbol, i.e. animal and human; technology; language and writing; culture; immersion and belief-animal faith; separation and science

The binding problem and the problem of object constancy

The problem of the unity of consciousness

Primary concepts

human, animal, organism, individual, elements of psyche, feeling, dimensions and variables of feeling, quality, intensity, bound-free dimension, function, neoteny, cognition, emotion, higher emotion, motivation, higher drive, integration, mechanism of integration, adaptive integrability, concept-percept, symbol, personality, growth, sense of history, commitment, identity, the unconscious, intuition, categories

A system of categories

existential, physical, biological, psychosocial

The existential includes the immediate—the so very immediate as to be invisible—and the remote and the ultimate; trivially, therefore, the existential includes the other categories and any further human (sub) categories

Language

Also see the introductory section On meaning in that, in the most recent version, is in Being

The section on language concepts is especially complete and ends just before Exceptional achievement

Main concepts

sign, symbol, language, function, expression, representation, and communication

Language and para-language

language, para-language

Speech and para-verbal language

speech, para-verbal language, drama-form, dramatics, music

The thought that speech and music occur in different brain areas—with or without overlap—does not imply a conceptual divide between music and speech (there is of course a conceptual distinction)

Recorded forms of language and para-linguistic expression

writing, graphic form, sculpted form, architectural form

Regarding the distinction between writing and art, comments similar to those on the distinction between speech and music may be made

The spoken and the recorded forms are not islands

Syntax and structure of the world; semantics and objects

states of affairs, processes, structure of states and processes, words, syntax, syntactical form, semantics

Subject-predicate form. Generally linear form of language

subject-predicate form, generally linear form of language

Other forms. Speech, linear and nonlinear expression

non subject-predicate forms, e.g., perhaps the groan

non-universality of subject-predicate form; non-predicative utterances; formal exclusion from written form-the domain of the priest and the scholar... a mark of distinction… distinction as a source of the intuition of correct syntax over and above the semantic content of syntax

Meaning function—literal and non-literal

meaning or semantic-syntactic function, literal and non-literal functions including poetry, meaning in ‘non-formal’ elements such as sound, alliteration, meter

Non-meaning function

non-meaning functions, e.g., social bonding

Written language, comparison with spoken language, special features or functions of written language

written form-sign, alphabet; word; punctuation including sentence structure and para-verbal; dissociation from context-a strength and a weakness

Achievement

exceptional achievement, disorder

The infinite

Atman, apprehension of the infinite

Social world

Theories

Theory of feasibility—economics

Theory of value—aesthetics

Theories of action, choice, good, and right—ethics

Theory of group action and choice—political philosophy

Problems

The nature of ethical problems—also taken up in Civilization

Main concepts—institutions

freedom, institution, form, process, culture, creation, transmission, organization

Institutions are regarded as including native process, i.e., the proto-institution

There are institutions of culture, creation, transmission and organization

Social groups

group, immanent form, politics, economics, aesthetics, morals, religion, experimental character of the concepts, inseparability of the institutions, dynamics, renewal

Renewal over form, action over outcome, learning over knowledge—these mark desirable approaches to decay, abuse, and loss of relevance of institutions

Economics

constraint, feasibility, theory of feasibility

Politics

politics, influence, locus of power, points of influence, paths to influence, political action, principles and practice, interaction of principles and practice, institutions and decay, sovereignty of nations, political realism, politics of perception, politics of knowledge, religion and state

Morals

ethics and freedom, choice, ethics as an object, the occasion for ethics, emotion and cognition in morals, assigning moral value, right, good, evil, the right and the good: clarification, consequentialism, non-consequentialist ethics, metaethics, normative ethics, ethics is essentially in process, absolute ethics, practical ethics, intrinsic value, derived value, values in general, competing values, ethics and substance, knowledge as an ethical object, values as objects, ethical objectivity

Civilization—and its current status

A problem

Looking at the history of attempts to understand the state of the world and its needs it may be seen that while every ‘solution’ presents itself as final understanding, such attempts are fluid

The question arises whether there are any constants of the flux—except of course for flux itself—of amid the flux. Some possibilities include

The fact of institutions… and to some extent the character of the institutions

Homeostasis… and breakdown

…

Main concepts

civilization, civilizations, the status of our civilization, universe, extension, duration, web, matrix, fundamental principle, history, history, the world, state of the world, truth and information, necessity of institutional overlap, institutional interaction in choice and action, interaction of issues of choice and action, the highest ideal

Examples and principles of practical ethics

war and peace, aggression and resources, energy—an example, resource use, population, environment, illusions of infinite resources, non-competition among resources, perfect choice, perfect instrument, perfect action

Faith

Problems

The nature of faith and religion

What can be learnt from the actual history of religion? The lessons of the archaic religions and what have been called the ‘proto’ religions

The problem of the nature of faith and religion is preliminary to:

The problem of faith in the—modern—world

A classic truth of faith is that it points to truth…

Although it is not logically necessary to have an institution that performs this function (just as the institutions of politics, economics, and culture may be ‘unnecessary’) it may be most effective to have such an institution—‘religion.’ And—there is inertia and abuse to all institutions; perhaps it is not so much particular institutions that have fault as it is that renewal is ever necessary to avoid decay

Faith

faith, meanings of faith, received meaning, ultimate meaning, function, meaning function, literal, mythic, metaphorical, non-meaning function, social binding, sharing, incompleteness of knowledge, illusion of perfect choice, perfect instrument, perfect action, faith-in-action, faith as attitude toward action in the world, religion, myth, the spiritual, the sacred, the secular, the mundane

Faith: commentary

Reality of the realms; incompleteness of knowledge in all realms; knowledge and faith intersect in all realms; in all realms there are meaning and non-meaning functions of ‘text’; in all realms the meaning functions are physical or factual and psychical or non-literal; functions of absurd myths; the psychical meaning includes the response to finitude… to death and suffering… and the fracture of the psyche; truth cuts across all boundaries; if the concern in secular and sacred text is truth there can be no ultimate separation of the secular and the sacred; there should and can be no ultimate separation of the secular and the sacred

Religion

Religion, secularism, an ideal religion

Introduces a more comprehensive, ultimate concept of religion

Religion: commentary

Religion and faith; modes of religion—sacred text, ritual and place; distinction between the sacred and religion is false; religion includes shared knowledge of and standing in the sacred; the academic approach that sees religion as restricted to the domain of the divine or the sacred is archaic; in sharing there are powers of insight and community; abuse and decay of the institution do not negate the concept; renewal rather than form is ‘the’ answer to abuse and decay

Religion in the modern world

archaic religions, conflict, tolerance, dialog, limits to abuse, bridge, no exclusion

Religion in the modern world: commentary

Religion is here to stay. Therefore even if corrupt—and there are many corruptions and abuses—its pervasive character requires address. The best address may be tolerance and dialog without boundaries but within limits. Simultaneously, the virtues of religion and religions—of ideals—may be cultivated

Possibilities for religion and faith

opportunity, renewal

Objections and counterarguments—method and content

Objections, doubts and problems regarding the concept of experience

Some concepts pertinent to the analysis of experience and existence:

meaning, sense, reference, empirical, rational, concept

The problem of the nature of experience

Problem. Characterizing experience. Sense—the experience of the subject; similar to awareness, consciousness, what it is like. Also—qualia. Response. The fallacy of unending chains of definition and proof. Experience is primitive—taken up in detail elsewhere

Is there experience?

Objection. Doubt regarding the existence of experience. A first source of this objection is that there is doubt that there is there is an object of experience. Response. There is a distinction between experience and object. As in hallucination, there may be doubt that there is an object of experience and in illusion that the experience is faithful to the object. However, neither of these doubts concerns the experience itself. It is necessary that there is something beyond doubt or there would not even be doubt or hallucination or illusion. The idea that all things can be referred to something else without end may be called the fallacy of unending foundation; this will later be shown to be a fallacy that is not dependent on positing experience as a name for a given. One such thing is experience. Experience is the name for that thing

…the distinction between the experience and its object a necessary distinction that is useful in characterizing experience. The experience or concept may be faithful to an object but is not necessarily so and does not even guarantee the existence of the object. Practically we expect that there will be sufficient faithfulness of experience in general. Experience is capable of being an object though being an object may require a higher level of experience

While we expect some practical faithfulness since we are able to negotiate the world, a problem arises regarding the very meaning of faithfulness. Since experience is not the object and since the only handle we have on the object appears to be further experience, the meaning of faithfulness is not clear. This is addressed below under Doubt: the forms of experience—continued

Doubts related to the apparently immaterial nature of experience

This doubt raises the question of the nature and existence of experience

As seen in the Universal metaphysics, matter is not fundamental and therefore this problem of experience does not exist as a real problem. There is of course a problem of the varieties of experience and object and this is taken up in the narrative

Again, though doubting the existence of experience is absurd and what is required is (a) and understanding of the true nature of experience and (b) bringing the local categories of experience and matter into coherence (which requires a understanding of the local category of matter)

These issues are taken up in detail in this and other narratives where the local issues are understood in relation to the universal

It will be seen that it is not impossible or even very fetched that local mind has been infused from without the local cosmos. However, there is no evidence to hold this as a practical case and, further, the problem of the explanation of local mind in local material terms can be seen to provide no essential categorial problem, i.e., there is no essential problem of resolving local mind and matter in unitary terms even though, in the final analysis, such resolution may require abandoning the local perspective. The practical or scientific problem of explaining the varieties of local mind and its phenomena in physical and biological terms remains challenging, interesting and potentially useful. It does not follow that such explanations shall be fully forthcoming—even if the issues are altogether local, they may be too ‘computationally’ complex. Further, it is possible that full explanations are non-local

Personality and doubt

Sources of doubt regarding experience. The objective sources are noted above. These are important sources for their analysis helps clarify the nature of experience, the nature of matter and of physical science—both present and potential. Personality and doubt. There is a style of thinking that emphasizes criticism over construction or imagination. Additionally certain personality and sensing types are predisposed to doubt. First there is the general case of the person who is neurotically or aggressively disposed to doubt. Doubt is functional of course and there are individuals who manifest this function in greater degree than others; the manifestation may be functional and perhaps in balance with judgment but may also be excessive to the point of dysfunctional preoccupation of peripheral concerns. There are also non-functional though not necessarily illicit sources of proclaimed doubt that include ego, territory and control. Second, there may be extraverted sensing types who are constitutionally disposed to minimize experience. Response. Perhaps no logical response is necessary. However, two responses occur. The first is to reiterate the arguments in alternative ways, both rational and metaphorical; these may have some success; a related approach is via the illustrative example. The second may be therapeutic, e.g., the balancing of perception by judgment; showing that growth out of the clutch of territorial concern, for example, may be rewarding; for the sensing extravert it is perhaps the alternative arguments that are most therapeutic

General doubts regarding the contingent forms of experience, especially Identity

Doubt: the forms of experience—the existence of an external world. This doubt regarding the contingent forms of experience has been noted—it is the doubt whether the various forms of experience, e.g., the external world—whose meaning is not that of a world outside my body or mind but of a world that exists independently of experience, the self or ‘I’ and various other forms correspond to or define objects. A root form of this doubt is solipsism. Solipsism is the position that experience is all that there is; however, the usual form of solipsism is that it is the experience of one individual, the subject, that is all that there is and everything that is usually thought to be in the world, galaxies, ‘other’ individuals and so on are but elements of that ‘individual's’ experience: it is the position that all I have is experience or, more precisely, this experience is all that there is. The two modes of solipsism are thought to be similar but are in fact vastly different. The universe, it will turn out, may well be a single solipsist; it is, in effect, just a name not a material difference—it may be regarded as a complete idealism in the sense that there is a complete materialism whose material elements are renamed ‘ideal.’ However, the second form of solipsism has it that the individual mind as we normally know it effectively generates the entire universe. Response. This position, labeled solipsism, is not a philosophy or metaphysics but the importance of such absurd views lies in the fact that (a) they can be presented as logically correct, (b) they contradict our common views, and (c) this challenge forces us—if we wants to be correct—to review and refine the common view and confirm and strengthen or disconfirm it. This position contradicts the capabilities of the individual mind as known to that mind— the argument is excellent: the solipsist must be able to reproduce the universe but this he or she cannot do. The argument, however, is contingent. On certain accounts of the physical universe, e.g. its atomic structure, taken as given, the argument may be promoted from excellent to logically necessary; but then it would be necessary to show that modern physics is not only scientific but also logically necessary. It turns out that experience must be a relation, actual or potential, and that there is a self and an external world and its objects. It also turns out that the argument so far is likely to be highly probable but a necessary argument for the external world and its objects can be given from the Universal metaphysics but there remains doubt—perhaps infinitesimal—that this applies to this world which is seen to be one of infinitely many worlds that constitute not only a numerical infinity but also a qualitative infinity of variety

Doubt: the forms of experience—continued—the contingent forms including Identity. The forms of experience are a source for variety. The metaphysics of experience shows the necessity of the ‘necessary’ forms. What of the contingent forms? The argument here, and this also applies to our common sense and common experience, and to our science, is the Kantian-adaptive argument regarding intuition and symbol that these must be sufficiently faithful but that more than that is neither available—in all cases—nor desirable. We are accustomed to being able to measure faithfulness in terms of more fundamental constructs but there is a limit to this. The meaning of faithfulness, therefore, must lie in either (a) the necessary forms andor (b) the Kantian-adaptive form of intuition-cognition (which includes the case of immersion in the object-action.) Thus absolute faithfulness is possible for the abstract objects—which abstraction is not identical to the concept of the abstract object of Objects—of the pure metaphysics but only sufficient faithfulness is available for other kinds and the meaning and measure of this kind are implicit in the context… and, further, since no further refinement is possible this is good. Personal identity is a special case of the forms of experience (the argument regarding universal identity is distinct)

Lessons regarding life, significance and meaning

One lesson learned is perhaps that if one wants to do something positive in life, puzzles and paradoxes are useful and powerful as instruments but one does not want to get hung up on them. Another lesson is this that experience is not a unary object but is a relation… Now come back to the possibility of solipsism. It emerged from the Universal metaphysics that the Universe may itself be seen as a Solipsist and that this Solipsist is equivalent to the Universal Individual. The normal view is that the individual is part of the universe and experience is that of an external world. The super-normal view allows for the normal experience as well as the view of the Universe as Solipsist as Individual. However, this Solipsist hardly deserves the label ‘solipsist’ for all that he-she truly is, is the Universe in other terms

Doubt and its functions

Doubt regarding doubt

A first doubt regarding doubt is the application of criticism to criticism. Typically, criticism itself makes ‘assumptions’ that may be tacit. An example is taking Hume’s criticism of material necessity including causation to imply that there is no causation; Hume’s criticism is not that there is no material necessity but that the usual arguments are not logical arguments; the criticism allows alternative arguments that may be logical; and as seen there are such arguments in some cases of material necessity though not for universal strict causation

A note on the function of doubt

Doubt and criticism function, first, to eliminate specious argument and understanding. Additionally, the ‘philosophically’ inclined may doubt even the obvious—including what may be shown to be obvious. In this case, a first function of such doubt is the clarification of what is obvious, of its meaning, confirmation of its obvious character—or disconfirmation which is a case of elimination of invalid—e.g., specious—understanding. As seen here, a second and perhaps the most important function to doubting the practically obvious is that in analyzing the obvious character of what is obvious we arrive at powerful tools of analysis including the analysis of meaning and seeing the dual empirical-rational roots of meaning (and the origin of principles including reference and the roots of method and Logic)

Objections, doubts, problems and paradoxes regarding the concepts of existence and being

The problem of existence and its meaning—an introduction

Roughly, to exist is to be—whether in the local, e.g. temporal, or global sense. The meaning of the verb to be, e.g., ‘is,’ ‘were,’ ‘will be,’ ‘has been’ and so on. The word ‘is’ is used what may be seen as derivative senses, e.g. to indicate quality ‘diamond is crystalline’ or identity ‘diamond is carbon’ which are related to but not the existential but uncommon use ‘diamond is.’ Existence is perhaps a trivial concept and perhaps there is no analyzing it but only naming it—at any rate some thinkers have argued so. Existence is a trivial concept in some sense, especially in the sense that it is immediate and fundamental and in that everything has it or more precisely, as will be seen, in that every existing thing has it (the circularity of locution does not indicate circularity of definition but points to its fundamental character.) The meaning of existence is clear in intuition but is so immediate that it is named rather than defined—yet analysis is possible along traditional as well as novel lines brought out below

Existence and being

Here, Being has been defined as that which exists. A distinction has been made however between existence which depends on being experienced or being in interaction with other things and being which is in and of itself. Also, existence has been opposed to essence or substance. All such distinctions are ever beyond analysis unless one is privy to ultimate and final knowledge or to an ultimate metaphysics. The Universal metaphysics shows that there is no distinction between existence and being—interaction is and requires being; all beings interact actually or potentially with all other beings—and between existence and essence or substance. Therefore, there is no fundamental distinction between—the primitive idea of—existence and—the idea of—being

The problem of the history of the idea of Being

The idea of being is central in the history of thought. In Western Philosophy it dates back to Plato and, implicitly, at least to Thales. In the open metaphysics of human thought, the fundamental ideas of being and existence have gone through many interpretations. There is as we see, however, a fundamental and final root meaning in which being and existence are identical. Since the Universal metaphysics reveals a world that is infinitely more varied and deeper than the world of traditional thought, the traditional ideas of being are not expected to and do not play a significant role in the development—of course the fundamental thoughts of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Wittgenstein have significantly informed the development of the present system even though the outcome stands far from the point of its origin. The traditional ideas of being may be mentioned in passing as and when the occasion arises

The allegation that existence is trivial, that it is not a concept

Counterargument. Being / existence is trivial—this is the source of the fundamental character and power of the idea, e.g. foundation of the ultimate metaphysics, displacement of substance. Except for the point to be made below in considering the problem of the non-existent object, it is close to irrelevant whether it is insisted that existence is a concept; in any case the concept is / would be trivial—it refers to ‘everything’ and this, again, is its power

The problem of the non-existent object

The problem. What does it mean to say that unicorns do not exist. If a unicorn does not exist, what is it that does not exist? Resolution—the existential case. The problem is present in the existential case. What is it that exists when one says that Mt. Everest exists? In the presence of Mt. Everest, one points and says that mountain, Mt. Everest, is there: it exists. But what does it mean to say Mt. Everest exists when not in the presence of Mt. Everest. It means that an object exists to which my concept, e.g. mental picture, of Mt. Everest has some faithfulness. Resolution—the non-existent object. ‘Unicorns do not exist’ means that there are no objects that correspond to my concept or picture of a unicorn. While we may feel confident that there are no unicorns and no Jesus Christs arising from the dead on this earth, the Universal metaphysics guarantees that there are infinitely many of both unicorns and Jesus Christs. Residual concern—but is the concept sufficient to specify the object? The problem of faithfulness of the concept has been considered under experience and its analysis is continued through the Universal metaphysics, Objects, Method including the discussions of Logic and meaning

The first existential problem of being—whether anything exists

Resolution. Experience and its objects

The second existential problem of being—what exists

Resolution. The forms of experience… and their objects… and the theory of Objects

Observation. The necessary forms of experience include experience, existence, being, all, difference, mode of difference, space, time, local description, global description, form, law, domain, complement, void

Objection. The forms of experience cannot be said to define objects. Counterargument. The necessary forms are empirical-rational. For example ‘all’ refers to the a-granular empiric of the whole of experience and its intuitive extension. Similarly, the void refers to the experience of emptiness; however, given all, the void can be derived as done above and elsewhere

Note. The concept exists as concept, i.e. the concept is also an object, but that does not imply the existence of the object of the concept—proofs of existence are given above. The purpose to mention of this point is to emphasize that there is no other space or world of concepts or ideas or mental phenomena reside; as concepts they reside also as objects-in-themselves in this-one-world

Observation. The foregoing note applies to existence itself

Generic counterarguments. The Kantian or sufficiently faithful concept. Action theory and the concept-in-process. Note that these do not supplement the specific counterarguments but stand independently and ‘below’ the specific counterarguments-in-success-and-failure

Doubts about the nature-existence and proof of the nature-existence of the Universe

For details of the objections and counterarguments see The second existential problem of being—what exists, above

Doubts about the nature, existence and proof of existence of the Void

Doubts and objections regarding the existence of the Void

The original proof. It was shown that the complement of a domain relative to the universe is a domain that also exists. The universe is a domain and its complement, the void, must therefore exist

First objection. The idea of ‘part’ is conceptual and the content of a concept should not imply anything about the world. Counterargument—if the part is defined by a conceptual property, the particular part may be conceptual (it has been seen that concepts are not intrinsically non-empirical but we allow that some concepts may be non-empirical.) However, when the existence of the domain is the result of recognition of variation, the part is empirical and not merely conceptual in nature. The universe is empirical in nature and therefore the void exists. if existence is merely recognition of variety, part is not merely conceptual (if part is defined by a conceptual property, the particular part may be merely conceptual)

Second objection. Although the complement of any existing domain other than the universe itself—the whole—clearly exists, such domains are ‘substantial.’ However, the complement of the universe relative to the universe is ‘emptiness’ and it is questionable whether that exists. Counterarguments—a variety of alternative proofs. (1) A variant proof. The complement of a part exists. As the part approaches the whole, the complement exists at every stage of the approach and its limit is the void. This proof is open to the objection that for a sequence of concepts that exist—i.e., has a corresponding object—it does not follow that the limit concept exists. Therefore, consider additional proofs. (2) That the void exists is not intrinsically paradoxical. The existence of the void is equivalent to its non-existence; therefore the void may be taken to exist; this implies the fundamental theorem—which was the essential consequence of the existence of the void; therefore the actual existence of the void is not as significant as it might have been had the fundamental theorem not been forthcoming; however, the existence of the void is a trivial consequence of the fundamental theorem. (3) Attaching the void to an entity makes no difference to the constitution of the entity; therefore the void may be taken to exist

Third objection. Intuitive doubt regarding the existence of the void. This is not a formal objection but may be a block to acceptance of the existence of the void. Heuristic counterargument. (4) In physics the zero force may be said to exist; it is the ‘force’ that does not change a state of uniform motion; this of course is not a proof of the existence of the void but shows that existence may be assigned to a quantity of zero magnitude. This is of course a heuristic rather than a proof but is given so as to address intuitive rather than formal doubt. A second heuristic counterargument from induction. (5) Induction is generalization from a limited set of data. Since generalization may be done in more ways than one (Hume) some informal principle guiding principle is necessary; such principles include intuition, symmetry, and a minimum of hypotheses or simplicity. Consider that the succession of fundamental laws of physics encompass larger and larger domains. The limit case is that the fundamental laws will cover the largest conceivable domain. What ‘law’ yields the largest domain? It would be the ‘law of Logic’ which disallows only impossible states of being. The law of Logic, then, is the inductive generalization of the progression of scientific—physical—law. This conclusion is also an unconventional application of Ockham’s principle of minimality with respect to hypothesis. This unconventional, perhaps perverse application of this minimality principle, is that no contingent law is universally true from which it follows that the only universal truths are the principles of Logic (capitalized because as it will be seen this direction of thinking implies rather than derives from a conception of logic.) That the only universal law is Logic at once implies the existence of the void and the fundamental principle

Fourth objection. The fourth objection is that so much should come from so little, i.e. the existence of the void implies the fundamental principle and all its consequences. This objection is taken up below

Objections regarding the character of the void

First objection. It is essential to the development that the void contains no object, i.e. no entity, no law and so on. The argument seems to depend on the Universe containing all objects. At relevant point of the argument, however, the Universe has not been shown to contain all logically possible objects. Therefore, the void does not contain any actual object but could contain non-existent but logically possible objects. Counterargument. However, that is not the proof. The proof is from the concept of the void. The void cannot contain any object!

Second objection. The quantum vacuum is the ultimate in physical nothingness but is far from empty. Counterargument. The quantum vacuum obeys certain laws, i.e. the quantum vacuum is the nearest that the universe can approach nothingness if the universe obeys certain laws. However it is not given that the universe obeys those laws but only that certain domains of space, time and phenomena obey the laws

Formal problems concerning the fundamental principle

The fundamental principle and its consequences

First objection. The main objection is that the derivation appears to have no premise, i.e., it appears to be a derivation from a concept rather than a fact or basic proposition. Counterargument. The counterargument is that a fundamental empirical content has been found—that there is experience; that existence is at root a name for the condition that, perhaps among other concerns, allows experience. This kind of (counter) argument is found again and again, e.g., in the existence of the universe and of difference. The counterargument raises the ‘meaning’ of meaning and the nature of concepts. Meaning is not devoid of empirical nature and this is fundamentally the case in the experience of the necessary objects (this empirical aspect is suppressed in standard epistemology and analysis of perception.) Therefore, ‘concepts,’ i.e. meaning has consequences and since experience is so immediate some of these are deep… and this analysis is deep in revealing this and aspects of the nature of concept, meaning and experience

What is learned about meaning. This further raises the ‘meaning’ of meaning and the nature of concepts. Meaning is not devoid of empirical nature and this is fundamentally the case in the experience of the necessary objects (this empirical aspect is suppressed in standard epistemology and analysis of perception.) Therefore, ‘concepts,’ i.e. meaning has consequences and since experience is so immediate some of these are deep… and this analysis is deep in revealing this and aspects of the nature of concept, meaning and experience; that grammar has rational-empirical content is related to and a generalization of this point

Second objection. The use of the void in the derivation seems to be artificial. The objection requires no counter argument but has a resolution. Alternative proof. The alternative proof does not use the artifice of the void. The proof introduces the idea of the necessary and the possible concept. A concept is necessary if it must be realized. A concept is possible if it could be realized. What, however, does ‘could be realized’ mean? Consider the entire universe. A concept A is not realized but it is said that it could be realized. What does that mean? There are two classes of concept—those that are realized and those that are not. There is nothing outside the universe; therefore if a concept is realized, it must be realized—it is necessary; if it is not it could not be realized. The implicit meaning of ‘is not but could be realized’ is that there is another world in which things are sufficiently different that the concept is realized. However there is no other world. Therefore, every possible concept is realized, is actual; the obvious and only exceptions the contradictory propositions. The concept of the void is implicit in the proof; it is the other world. Relation to atomic propositions. Consider Wittgenstein’s ‘from the truth of one—atomic—proposition, the truth of another does not follow.’ Here, atomic means logically independent. Since the contentless proposition is atomic, the thought becomes ‘atomic propositions are true in some worlds and untrue in others.’ Here, world means sub-domain of the Universe. Therefore, every atomic proposition is realized. Heuristic proof from Ockham’s principle. The heuristic proof is already given as a heuristic proof of existence of the void and need not be repeated. The value of the heuristic ‘proof’ is in addressing intuitive objections that the principle is counter-intuitive

Objection regarding the abstract character of the fundamental principle and its consequent Universal metaphysics

Objection. The development is abstract and does not appear to tie-in to experience… or to the world. Where is the individual / sentient being located in the world of the apparently abstract metaphysics? The question of the object and faithfulness of experience. Counterargument. Understanding and analysis of the idea of experience. The non-viability of solipsism; that experience must be a relation and not a unitary object. The problems of experience. The objects of experience. Sufficiently faithful and necessary objects—details are in the discussion of Objects under Ideas

experience, intuition, symbol

The possibility of metaphysics

Since Kant a fundamental objection to actual metaphysics has been that genuine knowledge must begin in experience. Kant allowed the ideas of pure reason ‘vernunft’ as pointing to truth but not as genuine knowledge. However, it is here seen that the ideas of pure reason are not distinct from experience and seeing this requires analysis of the different meanings of those ideas such as ‘all’ or ‘universe:’ and the differences concerned here are specifically the meaning in which knowledge of universe is knowledge of all things and the alternate meaning in which it is knowledge of a whole (ness.) An alternative approach to this knowledge is via the Universal metaphysics / Metaphysics of immanence which is tied into experience through analysis of experience (objects)

We have seen definite limits to science. How can metaphysics go beyond them? The limits to the limits to science are precisely those stated in the previous paragraph and therefore the two approaches to metaphysics stated in that paragraph are two approaches to the transcendence of science (not Science) by metaphysics

Metaphysics has been seen as abstract—and it is so but it is necessary to see what is meant by abstract. Here, abstract means what refers to all being without reference to distinctions… and is thus most immediate, most general. First metaphysics is most immediate; within this there is room for the everyday and the common and the remote and the esoteric

Problems of adjusting the fundamental problem and its consequences to realism

Does the metaphysics say anything of significance?

Objection. Does the metaphysics say anything? Response. See consequences and significance of the metaphysics in Metaphysics through Faith

Violence to common reality

The position in this narrative is that there is one reality but many views of it. Since, as has been shown, the Universal metaphysics does no actual violence to reality, the phrase ‘violence to common reality’ means either ‘violence to common views of reality’ or ‘violence to locally valid descriptions of the world’

There is violence done to common reality including science only (1) on the invalid assumption that that ‘reality’ must extend to all being, i.e. to the entire Universe and (2) on the invalid assumption that the Universal metaphysics is in disagreement with common realities in their domains of validity

Objection. Violence to common reality. Counterargument. The concept of the normal. Analogy to progress in science

Something from nothing

The problem of something from nothing is an example of violence to common sense / reality

Objection. Something from nothing does violence to common reality. Counterargument. As above for the objection that the fundamental principle does violence to common reality. Second objection. Something from nothing violates common sense; this objection is close in nature to the previous objection. Counterargument. The normal. So much for common sense. Real counterargument—common sense and intuition are local; the metaphysics of immanence is universal and is entirely consistent with common sense. This is built in at the beginning in ‘every consistent concept obtains’ which includes that the world is not other than it is. Third objection. Something from nothing violates conservation of energy. Counterargument. Not necessarily because of the negative energy gravitation can balance the other energies resulting in zero net energy

Residual doubt regarding the ultimate character of the foundation

There may be residual doubt resulting from the ultimate character of the foundation

So much from so little

Objection. So much appears to come from so little. This is not a logical objection. One attitude to this objection is that the basic argument is logical and the ‘counterargument’ is not and therefore no response is required. First response. Although the arguments are trivial once presented, the fundamental arguments regarding the empirical content of concepts and the insights regarding the properties of the Universe, the Void, Domains, Objects, Form, Identity and the Normal are far from being ‘so little.’ Second response. It may be added that many of the immense consequences are the sweeping of the mistaken sophistication of millennia and therefore some of the ‘so much’ is merely apparent. In order to take away the sense of shock, alternative ‘derivations’ such as the application of Ockham’s principle are given; however, the purpose of these ‘derivations’ is explanatory rather than argumentative. Third response. Finally, it may be observed that the immense positive consequences are not so immense after all when it is recognized that they are thought but not realized. The program of realization remains open

This is a source of a need to ‘turn away’ from thought and toward action, transformation and realization

The here and now

Objection. The developments turn away from the immediate, the here and now and what is valuable in this life. Response. This is simply not true. The developments find greater worth in the universal and the immediate from their interaction

Anxiety

Objection. The ultimate character of the foundation is bound to raise anxiety. Response. This is not an objection. Anxiety and doubt are occasionally necessary conditions of being. Resolution of anxiety and personality concerns are not insignificant but pale before the magnitude of the potential of the individual. The normal individual may die unresolved. Perfection in this life is not an ultimate goal. We may die imperfect in the search for ultimates. This is said in the full knowledge that the imperfect death has no final but only a normal meaning

Meaning and post-modernism

Objection. A doubt regarding meaning. This doubt includes a wink at post-modernism and deconstruction that question grand narrative and stability of meaning. Response. There is in a sense no grand narrative here. Hegel posited his narrative. The narrative here begins with ‘lowly’ and immediate but necessary experience; not even ‘base’ matter is posited. Then, for example, the granularity of experience is ignored. This results in the idea of the Universe. From these low beginnings a scheme emerges in cold logic at temperature absolute zero. You may call this scheme grand; I call it magnificent and ultimate. However, these qualities are the result of investigation; they are not its premise or its goal. Then there are such deconstructionist questions such as a privileged meaning of terms, e.g., ‘universe.’ This question is immediately resolved by the consideration of one word, many symbols; and if the objection comes from politics then I may be happy to change the word while preserving my symbol… and relegate the politically charged word to a dictionary… this would no doubt excite the deconstructionist to search for the hidden narrative

Objection to the Universal metaphysics from determinism

The appeal of determinism—millennia of deterministic theology and centuries of deterministic science; simplicity; control and power; obsession with understanding

The psychological reasons will be seen to be illusory

Yet the reasons are so powerful that determinists stop at nothing to construct artificial explanations of how determinism can explain the appearance of indeterminism. It is ignored that novelty is indeterministic in principle. The psychology of determinism like that of materialism, the holding on to a mode of reasoning for no good reason, is interesting…

Indeterminism is not a holding on because it is the inclusive case for it allows that some processes may be deterministic

Mechanism: the problem of structure from random process

The problem of structure is that random process—indeterminism—cannot, allegedly, result in structure

Practically this is shown to be incorrect in the origin of structure from indeterministic processes in quantum theory and biology. It is interesting that quantum theory explains structure in cases that classical theory cannot

Logically the thought that indeterminism cannot result in structure is absolutely false. Indeterminism obtains when from a given state (of the world) future outcomes are not fully determined. Consider absolute indeterminism—future outcomes are not at all determined, i.e., no state is ruled out in the future. Then, a structured state cannot be ruled out. Thus absolute indeterminism is a form of absolute determinism. The logic provides no mechanism; for mechanism turn to examples from the world—the origin of life, the origin of a cosmos, the origin of a novel idea

Topics from the history of ideas

Philosophy and metaphysics

Problems

What is philosophy? What is its nature? What does it mean to ask ‘What is philosophy?’ and how may this problem be addressed. This problem generalizes, of course, to the question of what it means to enquire into the nature of any discipline… or even any concept. An aspect of the response to the question is the fact that such questions are or may be seen as questions of philosophy. While the question ‘What is physics?’ may be addressed by philosophers, physicists and others, the question is not one of physics but is one of philosophy. There is often some inter-disciplinary resistance regarding such issues but there need not be for it is not at all being suggested that a philosopher is in a position to instruct physicists as to the nature of their own discipline. A physicist may well provide a better characterization of the discipline but the point is that the best answer is likely to be informed by particular, general and philosophical concerns

What is the nature of questions ‘What is the nature of X?’? An example of this is the question of what it means to ask what philosophy is. The generic question is philosophical. Consider it for a range of—classes of—X. What is universal to the question for all X.

What is metaphysics? Is metaphysics possible? The two questions are intertwined. One response to the problem posed to metaphysics by Kant and the empiricists is to focus interest on a metaphysic of experience over a metaphysics as such. However, the present work shows (1) that metaphysics as such is possible and (2) the question of the possibility of metaphysics cannot be adequately addressed without the development of metaphysics. For it is the results of the metaphysics that show that the thoughts that found the argument for the impossibility of metaphysics are themselves without foundation even though they may seem reasonable (further the development of the metaphysics is from such a direction that it assumes neither those founding ideas nor their negation.) Kant himself identified the region of metaphysics in question ‘the pure ideas’ but since he did have the insight to work out any the relevant consequences he (and the entire tradition since that time or even before) did not see either (a) the deep and original connection—even identity—between pure ideas and experience or (b) the way to develop the metaphysics

Main concepts

philosophy, metaphysics, history of philosophy, Indian philosophy, Western philosophy, Greek philosophy, scholastic philosophy, modern philosophy, recent philosophy, approaches to study philosophy—sense and reference, analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, academic philosophy, the philosophical tradition, metaphysics of immanence

Commentary: philosophy and metaphysics

Metaphysics as the discipline whose concern is the outer limits of being; whose method—the method of the empirical-logical analysis of meaning and experience—shows how to study at those outer limits; and which is revealed as a study of being of ultimate breadth and variety

The goal of metaphysics may be said to be to bring all experience—and intention and action—including the forms of experience into a single coherent system of description of the universe. The final concept will not include all forms because, due to consistency the requirement, there is no object that is the object of all forms. However, the final object will implicitly contain all forms of experience. Metaphysics may be said to be the result of this goal

Philosophy as the discipline whose limits are the outer limits of being; whose method shows how to study within those limits—the method of metaphysics and the interactively modified methods of less general contexts; and which is revealed as a study of meaning but also of fact and significance and a study in lateral analysis but also in analysis via depth. The firmness of the foundation of metaphysics is carried over to the foundation philosophy where the limit of firmness or certainty is the modified firmness or certainty of the special context or discipline

Objects that are fundamental to the metaphysics

These include:

experience, being, universe, form, law, difference, domain, void, the fundamental principle, and the normal

Objects of intrinsic interest in the metaphysics

These include:

universe, cosmos, nature, life, experience, the forms of experience, intuition, symbol, society, identity, variety, exploration

 The problems of metaphysics

The nature of the problems of metaphysics

A first set of problems, noted immediately above, concern the nature and possibility of metaphysics and possibility

Is there a way to characterize the problems of metaphysics?

In the historical pursuit of metaphysics and the disciplines—and in the present development—various objects and categories have been identified (the theory of objects has shown that the distinction between object and category is one of kind of object rather than categorial)

The essential problems of the discipline of metaphysics concern the nature of these objects—and categories—and the problem of fitting them into a coherent (consistent) system. A review of the actual problems reveals this to be the case and it is not necessary to re-list the problems to prove the point

The question of the nature of mind is an example of the former and the mind-body problem is an example of coherence among the understanding of the objects. Naturally the questions of nature and of coherence are related. One source of difficulty is not seeing or forgetting this. Thus, if a modern philosopher were asked ‘Do we understand mind and its nature?’ the response might be that surely we have some understanding but equally surely there is some doubt regarding its nature. Reflecting on matter, the philosopher might give a similar answer. However, when reflecting on the mind-body problem, the same philosopher might revert to received notions of mind and of matter. While this may be natural, it would be better to approach the dual problem of the nature and coherence of the objects in question. In fact it would be infinitely better for the alternative misunderstands the nature of the question and is almost certainly doomed to failure

Although a listing of problems would be mere repetition, it is valuable in light of the foregoing to classify the problems

Classification of the problems of metaphysics

The first problem class is the meta-problem set entailed by the questions ‘What is metaphysics?’ and ‘Is metaphysics possible?’ These are philosophical problems but metaphysics is sufficiently close to philosophy that we may think of them as metaphysical problems. In the broadest valid sense of metaphysics they are indeed metaphysical. It may be repeated that the two questions constitute a dual question set—the answer to one depends on the answer to the other and therefore any answering must be a dual or simultaneous answering. This appears to make the problem more difficult but after becoming familiar with the dual approach to concepts we find it clarifying and simplifying

A second problem or concern is to identify the important objects of metaphysics. These fall into two classes—those fundamental to the development of the metaphysics and those that have intrinsic interest or importance (to human beings.) These classes are, of course, not altogether distinct

Some further problems of metaphysics

The problem of final or ultimate explanation

The problem of a non-relativist philosophy without substance… The problem of ultimate explanation

The nature of the ultimate breadth and depth of metaphysics

The problem of ultimate explanation that has no application. I—knowledge of the ultimate affects our attitude and is practical in this way. II—the practical / ultimate distinction is itself impractical in that what is often thought ultimate or merely metaphysical has often turned out, via investigation whether shamanic or scientific, to be immensely practical. A less immediate but not less real example is the error of the ‘practical meaning of death.’ III—the ultimate explanation of the Theory of being / metaphysics of immanence has intensely immediate and practical application

The problem of mere being. There is no such thing as mere being—except as approximation. Human being is not mere being. Greatness does not require being greater than

The fundamental problem of metaphysics. This is the problem of why there is anything. Its resolution; it is fundamental no more

The objection that there is no such thing as experience

Concepts regarding the problems of metaphysics

metaphysics, universe, context, discipline, method, dissonance, coherence

A system of human knowledge

Main concepts or areas of knowledge

symbols, knowledge, understanding, universe, artifact

Commentary

As a consequence of application of the Metaphysics of immanence, each area assumes a form that has an ultimate aspect

Being and identity

Introduction

The concern is transformation of being and identity. Ideas are important as mode of being, mover, and place of knowledge identity… but, as transformation, are a limited mode

Main concepts

kinds of transformation, virtual transformation, actual transformation, technological transformation, the immediate, path to the ultimate, saltation, incremental transformation

The kinds of transformation are virtual or transformations in ideas and actual or transformations in being and identity. Technological transformation is a secondary actual transformation but may merge with being and identity

Transformation

Action is included under transformation

Problems

The problems of transformation in (1) ideas and understanding—experiments in conceptual development, (2) being-as-being—experiments in the individuation, merging and general transformations of being and beings, especially, individuals and identities, the universe and identity, (3) society—experiments in social and psychological transformation via charisma and influence, and (4) organic and material being—experiments in forms and degrees of life, mind, and intelligence: theory, design, simulation and construction of being

History and underlying theory

History may be used as an approach to developing a ‘complete’ list of types of transformation

Theories

Bhagavad-Gita, Vedanta, and Samkhya

Theories of being and of Human world…

Concepts—systems

Western systems, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, mysticism, logic, mathematics, science, technology, Shamanism and  other systems that date back to prehistory, Indian systems, Upanishad, Bhagavad-Gita , Samkhya, Yoga, meditation, Vedanta

Meditation and Yoga

See Systems, above

Vision-quest

See Systems, above

Foundation—psycho-physiological basis

States of physical and psychic fluidity, engagement and sensitivity

Nature and types of state

dream, hypnosis, vision, perceptive state, cognitive fluidity, elective body alteration, death

Sources, methods and cultivation

focusing, integration, logging, opportunity, election, learning, increment, saltation

Kinds of method or approach

isolation of psyche, meditation, excitation of psyche, freeing of psyche, exposure to archetype

Enhancing or inducing factors—imposed or elected—external

physical isolation, physical deprivation, environmental extreme, exposure, shock or trauma, pain, fear, crisis

Enhancing or inducing factors—imposed or elected—internal

exertion, exhaustion, diminished sleep, march, rhythm, dance, inaction, fasting, diet, psychotropic substance, anxiety

Uses of altered states in transformation

fundamental principle, the normal, feasibility, knowledge, morals

Sensitive individuals

disturbance, personality, disposition, state, individual transformation of personality, splitting, group transformation of personality, social transformation

Savant individuals and states

The idea of the elective savant syndrome is based on (1) the reasonably well founded idea that at least some savant phenomena are the result of liberation rather than compensating development or special talent and (2) experiments in the savant phenomena that suggest its possibility in typical individuals

elective savant syndrome

Growth

theories of growth, arching, dynamics of being

Foundation—Dynamics of being

Dynamics of being may be dynamics of transformation-becoming-action. In Dynamics of being, metaphysics expands to dynamics-action-transformation

Dynamics of being is the essential theory of transformation. The theory is based in the Universal metaphysics but also derives from special knowledge about specific or human being

The theory includes the theory of identity (a source for the idea is Vedanta but the present demonstration goes beyond Vedanta) but also a theory of process

Earlier yoga including meditation, mysticism, science, vision-quest and crisis sense were presented as a series of ‘ways.’ Here, however, they are modes andor means and should appear as such

Uses of altered states in transformation

fundamental principle, the normal, feasibility, knowledge, morals

Sources, methods and cultivation

focusing, integration, logging, opportunity, election, learning, increment, saltation

Growth

theories of growth, arching, dynamics of being

System of experiments

Dimensions

place, mode

Transformations

ideas and understanding, being-as-being, arching from the present to the ultimate, journey, social and psychological transformation, charisma and influence, transformation in organic and material being, life, mind, and intelligence, simulation of being, construction of being, design of being

Minimal system

Transformations so far and their further Design

Main concepts

universal knowledge, personality and influence, arching from the immediate to the ultimate, yoga

Truths

Formal truths of the Universal metaphysics

Ideational truth… a label for the ‘new’ forms whether arising out of and sympathetic with science, or religion, or…

Fundamental theorem

Substance—there are no final substances; within this cosmos, certain elements may approximate to substance(s) for certain purposes

Form is immanent in the entity (object.) The form of an object is not other than the object. There is no separate world of forms (or of mental objects.) The form of an entity is an entity. From the fundamental principle the forms are necessary

Objects—all objects are necessary in some sense: clarify this (Kantian, other…) There is no object distinction of particular and abstract objects—the distinction is one of what is the most convenient approach to study: particular objects are typically best studied empirically, abstract objects symbolically; however it is often the case that both approaches combine for the best outcome; it is also often the case that one or other approach is present but given rather than instrumental. An object may be abstract at one time and particular at another time in history. Abstract objects are not necessarily non-temporal or non-spatial; some abstract objects are non-temporal, some non-spatial, some both. It is not given that particular objects are spatial or temporal even though most are. Abstractions from particulars are often suited to symbolic study; particulars to empirical study. Logic, theories, values, properties, mathematical objects ‘are’ abstract

Identity in experience of the empirical and conceptual character of the fundamental concepts

Cosmology—variety: a sample…

The conceptual disciplines

A system of (human) knowledge

Science—emphasis on the empirical

The symbolic representation of common truth is nested in the formal

‘What is there?’ as the fundamental problem of philosophy because it is only the problems of variety that remain open; the problems of depth are trivial and therefore closed

The triviality referred to above is of an interesting kind that has profound implications, especially, in that it cuts through millennia of sophisticated substance theory and reveals a much simpler though perhaps difficult to see foundation

Common truths… significance of the formal truth of the Universal metaphysics

‘Common truths’ everyone / thing knows—every individual must recreate, is recreating / sustaining all the time… one time ‘theory’ is not enough

Day-to-day-here-now-contingent and eternal-ultimate-necessary

Return to meaning: human being as significant and effectual. This significance is essentially intrinsic, i.e., the thought that human being is more significant than other being is without sense

Common truths… implications of the formal truths for the common or general arena

The whole picture is simpler than the collection of the pictures of the parts

The continuity within the formal and of the formal and the common—follows from an examination of religion, myth, faith, science, logic, secular humanism… and an examination of the content and function of religion…

From Journey in being there must be doubt about secular humanism, about all rubber stamp views

The world today

What is often though informally thought to be impossible is merely difficult; and what is informally necessary is merely very probable… many truths of science would have been thought fantastic one hundred and fifty years ago—it is now 2008… however, to talk of science is to scratch at the surface of the matter—except for logical contradiction there is no impossibility or non-actuality

The purpose is to know and be what is real—this subsumes all other ‘purposes’ including other directed purpose

Tat tvam asi—the perennial philosophy

Aldous Huxley, following Leibniz, finds a Perennial Philosophy that appears in every age and civilization and that can be summarized in three statements: (1) there is an infinite, changeless reality beneath the world of change; (2) this same reality lies at the core of every human personality; (3) the purpose of life is to discover this reality experientially… that is good as far as it goes but I have concerns

A caution—even though prescriptions have value there is something perverse about them

The idea of the infinite, uniform, changeless substance might equally be ‘an emptiness’ or ‘absolute emptiness’

Although there is appeal to the idea that the real is at the core of the individual we do not want to exclude those who suffer on account of ignorance

The purpose of life? Experientially? I would rather say that being may reside in Being—but may equally reside in finitude. That requires correction. It is a temporal statement. In the atemporal aspect being is Being

At the core? It lies in every part, central and peripheral! And ‘peripheral’ is used in a certain way! Where is the center? In a moment of perception, in an appropriate ‘state of mind,’ there is no felt distinction between the individual and the sky

If I believe what the critics say is unknowable, I cannot want to know it

The Future

The individual. This journey (me)

The universe / universal

A map for the Journey

Problems

Theories of being, science, and the human world

Problem of charismatic action—principles of: repetition; risk and opportunity; cultivating emotional resourcefulness; meditation, premeditation, and intelligence; confessing faith

Main concepts

The main concepts concern the mutual application of human knowledge and action with theory and dynamic of being

system of human knowledge, logic, science, conceptual biology, theoretical physics, foundations, physical law, space-time-being, quantum theory, art, literature, human being, society, social institution, psyche, language, grammatical form, emotion and will, individual and identity, charisma, influence, principles of persuasion, intelligence, life, mind, metaphysics of immanence, narrative form, presentational form

Theories—and disciplines—local

science, human world, philosophy, art, literature, technology, religion, history

Theories—universal

Science, Being, Dynamics of being, Metaphysics

The system of local and universal theories is elaborated in the text. The main work for the future is (1) the general refinement, elaboration, and application of the universal theories and the refinement and address of criticisms and (2) the working out of select local theories and disciplines—and the system of disciplines—especially in light of experience, the traditions and the universal theories… and implications and insights that these special projects may hold for the general or universal ideas

The way ahead

Appendix

Dictionary

Common

established, putative, normal