Robin—this introductory section is primarily for my use… so that if decide to later use this note it later I will not need to comb through it to discern what is new and useful

The nature of this note

I wrote this for Robin but of course it is also an exercise in clarification of my thought

What’s new

1. The epistemology—Establishment of an epistemology through Improved analysis of knowledge

2. Some clarifications, insights and minor ideas:

The Ambition

Why Being?

What the narrative is—peripheral functions

A Metaphysics and an Epistemology

New Conceptions of Metaphysics and Philosophy

An Applied metaphysics

Why, then, the use of the title Journey in being?

A Journey in being

In what way is The Journey a journey?

Although the name, methods and goals have evolved with my evolving understanding and experience, the core ambitions of adventure and contribution have been and remain constant—as one side of the process

There is another side in tension with the first. It is the desire and the occasional expression of enjoyment of the moment

Perhaps it is not a real tension and the two sides enhance one another

…

A journey may be characterized by a sentiment—adventure, excitement, discovery—but if it has goals they are not fixed. The path is not given or fixed. And there may be many side-trips taken at random and perhaps guided by the sentiment; and they are important because the way is not known and, so, accumulation of experience that is not fully goal-oriented enhances the journey. Said another way, if the goals are diffuse, the way will be diffuse. It must be a search in a dual space of ends and paths. Inevitably ‘main trips’ will become ‘side trips’ and it is most efficacious to allow trips that follow instinct, intuition, andor process-goals such as adventure itself

Although there may be large driving goals, we are not single mindedly fixed on them. The process is a goal

‘Journey’ is elaborated below

The Ambition

Although we focus on the idea of journey, there are there are ambitions and goals. Human being is a creature with foresight… even if it is not perfect we think it would not be there if it had no function. In having ambition we are living out our nature just as we are living out another complementary side of our nature by being-in-the-moment

The greatest thing

The overriding ambition has always been ‘the greatest thing.’ My conception of the greatest thing has, however, evolved as my understanding of what is possible and what is good has evolved… as my understanding of what is most meaningful to me has evolved

The beginning… through the final ambition

In the beginning (Hijli) the greatest thing was doing what I wanted not what a parent wanted… based in some romantic vision of the world. Of course, many childhood vague parts to this dream which with IIT evolved into science and mathematics and philosophy and a little poetry and a little travel (summer practical training, inter IIT meets.) Then, later, serious science and philosophy… and independent thought until finally the realization that I was thinking of the ultimate in ideas in realization but that ideas are only part of Being. Therefore the ‘final’ ambition—made possible by the emerging ideas—identity of self and all being, i.e. the individual becomes the universe and the individual looking out on the world is the Universe contemplating itself

The adventure

Though there were vague earlier thoughts along those lines they could not become serious until the theoretical developments below had been accomplished

Also, ‘final,’ above, is in quotes because (1) Once you are the Universe, so what? Maybe boring. It is the adventure through many worlds along the way that is the adventure. And the being-in-the-present and the levels in between the present and the ultimate

Why Being?

A simple term

Although the term is sometimes surrounded by mystery it is essentially simple. Being is what is there. It is the simplicity and non-specific character that makes it powerful. Unlike the ideas of mind and matter, appeal to Being is not an appeal to understand the world in terms of something under the surface and an appeal to something under the surface inevitably—it is found—invites appeal to something still deeper below the surface. In appealing to ‘Being’ we are admitting ignorance at the outset and so not committing to some way the world is (matter, mind, process…) at outset even before investigation has gotten under way

The power of the idea

Thus ‘commitment’ to Being is an abandoning of a priori (outset) metaphysical commitment but also not a muddled eternal commitment to never being able to arrive at a nature of Being. Here lies the dual mistake of materialists and other traditionalists—by being overcommitted at outset they are closed down to emergence of truth

Mystery

The mystery regarding Being is that it is mystery—not as a puzzle but in the sense of how then do we talk of it without going to another level below the surface? To carry on the metaphor, the idea of surface makes us think perhaps of the ocean but the surface of the ocean is the interface between sea and sky so there is no real surface therefore no underneath a surface. Another source of mystery surrounding Being is the getting carried away with mere words of a number of philosophers e.g. Sartre—whose thought I detest—and Heidegger—who has some deep thoughts… but that someone else is confused does not mean that the idea is confusing

‘Being’ is elaborated below

What the narrative is—peripheral functions

A Metaphysics and an Epistemology

In this narrative, metaphysics is not the study of the occult

As you may know, the term ‘metaphysics’ has a use as knowledge of the occult and if you go to the new-age section of some bookstores or the philosophy section of new-age bookstores you will find books on metaphysics that are studies of auras and crystals and so on

This narrative uses metaphysics in a different meaning

A classical meaning and analysis of metaphysics… and epistemology

Metaphysics as the study of the real

In philosophy, however, metaphysics is the study of the real

This meaning may be criticized as to whether metaphysics is possible at all and whether it is the meaning of metaphysics in philosophy

We show below that, contrary to a line of thought beginning with Hume and Kant, this metaphysics is possible

Metaphysics has a number of related philosophical senses and its indefinite character in philosophy is due the development of the subject in the traditions of philosophy being incomplete. In this narrative the treatment of metaphysics is definitive and final—in ways that will emerge—so that it should be unnecessary to regard the present conception of metaphysics as tentative or speculative

Where is metaphysics developed in the narrative

The chapters Intuition through Cosmology and the chapter Method constitute a metaphysics and an epistemology

The analysis of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy

In traditional philosophy metaphysics is, roughly, the study of the way things are; and epistemology is the study of knowledge—what is knowledge, how do we know the things we know (which intersects psychology) and how do we justify our claims to knowledge (psychology, science, logic and other topics)

In modern philosophy—the enlightenment to the present time—epistemology and metaphysics are often regarded as independent branches of inquiry. The philosopher Immanuel Kant made what amounts to a fairly obvious argument that goes—in a simple version—as follows. All knowing is in our head (mind) and since knowledge of a thing is not the thing (object) that is said to be known, it follows that direct knowledge is not knowledge of the thing-as-it-is. At least, we do not know that knowledge is knowledge of the thing-as-it-is. Further, any method of justification is not of the object but of operations on and around the object. Therefore we never have certain perfectly faithful knowledge. I.e. we do not know things as they are

Since Kant, then, metaphysics as such has generally been regarded as impossible—suspect to say the least. Therefore in more recent philosophy—in the school of analytic philosophy that is the dominant mode in the English speaking countries and Scandinavia—philosophers talk of a metaphysic (singular) of experience. I.e., OK so all we have experience and we can never transcend it, the account goes, so at least we can talk of the elements of the system of experience and provide some kind of account of it

Simultaneously, since Kant, with metaphysics-as-knowledge-of-the-thing became shattered, epistemology became the jewel in the crown of philosophy and metaphysics which had previously been ascendant was relegated to a lesser place

Metaphysics and epistemology should and can be developed together

I have long felt that metaphysics and epistemology should not be entirely disentangled. Further, being an optimist in general, I have always had the feeling-hope that things can be known, that what is out there in the wide universe is more important that critical thought about what can and cannot be known. I agree of course that critical thought / epistemology is important and especially so in some endeavors and is important in education and, further, that I should not and will not make claims to knowledge—either privately to myself or in my writing—unless I am able to justify them according to some strict standard. Critical thought is important so that we can know what we know and what we don’t and that is important because knowledge would otherwise have no reliability. That is of course not the whole story because knowledge and the ability to have knowledge arise in adaptive evolution—and begin before criticism begins—and must therefore have some degree of faithfulness

We see below that an interactive development of metaphysics and epistemology is possible

A source of the—new—metaphysics of the narrative

In the last few years I have been able to make some advances that justify a claim that some things are known perfectly while others are known ‘sufficiently well’ (and still others ‘inadequately’ if at all. The result is an interactive development of the approach to metaphysics and epistemology and a development of an actual metaphysics

Establishment of a metaphysics

The first advance was the establishment of a metaphysics. The centerpiece of the metaphysics is the concept of the absence of being which I label the Void and prefer to not use the word ‘nothingness’ because I do not like Sartre or his thought and I do not want to be associated in any way with Sartre’s existentialism (forgive the little rant but additionally I have not found anything in Sartre that addresses the issues that I am addressing.) I will not detain you with the details of the Logic, the objections of various kinds, and the counterarguments—these are in the various versions of the essay on the Internet. Simply though, I show that the Void must not only contain no things but also no Laws (this turns out to amount to the claim that a Law is also a thing—if a law is the description of some pattern then what the law corresponds to in the world or universe itself is a Law, i.e. we are admitting patterns as things and though this is not entirely unreasonable the justification comes in the chapter Objects.) Then I ‘prove’ that the Void exists (which I debate and counter-debate.) Then, if there is any concept of a state such that the state does not emerge from the Void, that would constitute a Law of or in the Void. Therefore, the Universe contains every state that is conceivable state

An objection to the existence of the void

Objection to the claim of the existence of the Void. This was the most serious objection—I had earlier claimed that the existence of the Void followed purely from logic. Response. The various logical and para-logical responses are now unnecessary since there is no deduction purely from logic as I had claimed in earlier writing and here is one strength of the use of Intuition

Some preliminary details of the metaphysics—variety

Since every conceivable state exists, the Universe could not have greater variety

Now what does the existence of all conceivable states entail? It entails, first that the Universe could not have greater variety. Sometime, my identity will be the Identity of the Universe. On the way there I will pass through infinitely many worlds. There are green unicorns. Jesus Christ did transform water into wine (not necessarily on this Earth but on another Earth'.) The laws of physics which we know only as excellent approximations in the known part of the Universe—that is part of what makes it the known part—are far from being universal. There are local cosmological systems with vastly different laws…

The principle of variety remains a little vague since the criterion regarding the phrase ‘could not’ is not yet clear—is it logical, physical or otherwise? It will emerge below that it is logical

The apparent violation of science and reflective common sense… and its resolution

Now a second round regarding what is entailed. It is entailed that science and common sense are violated in the extreme—at least apparently. However, there is in fact no violation. The universe as we know it in science and common sense does exist (i.e. there is something that corresponds roughly to our science and educated critical common sense.) Therefore it is allowed by Logic. Therefore our known corner of the universe must exist. How then does it mesh with the infinite variety? First, it must and does. That exceptions to physics and common sense are at best rare within common observation is rare—since science etc is generalization / projection we cannot say there are or can be no exception one aspect of which, after all, is the progress of science and scientific revolutions. And the explanation is via the introduced concept of the Normal—which is a reinterpretation of all our non-Logical ‘necessities’ such as physics and common sense but not Logic as at most immense probabilities (i.e. very close to 1.) We say common behavior is Normal behavior (and note that—known—Normal depends on the state of knowledge—what science allows today might have been regarded with incredulity 200 years ago

The fundamental principle of metaphysics—first version

Therefore, one version of what I call the fundamental law of metaphysics—the Universe contains the greatest possible variety of being

An intuitive objection based in the magnitude of the conclusion… and responses

Objection. Magnitude of the result—so much from so little! Response. The demonstration, the concept of the Normal, faith as being-in-the-present in a way that maximizes expectation of outcome (the appeal to certainty certainly does not maximize outcome as does not ignorance)

Logic and the fundamental principle of metaphysics

Let’s analyze the statement ‘the Universe contains every conceivable state’

Introducing the role of logic

Well we can conceive of an apple that is entirely green and entirely not green (at the same time.) I can conceive of it in the sense that I can construct a sentence that describes such a state (even though I cannot or at least have difficulty visual the possible apple in question.) The principle of non-contradiction which is probably the most important law of logic (two other important ones being the law of the excluded middle and the law of identity) is the principle invoked in saying that there is no simultaneous entirely green and entirely not green apple. So clearly, the concepts that correspond to actual states must satisfy logic

What if a concept satisfies logic and there is no corresponding state? That would be a law of the Void for there is nothing in necessity that is preventing the existence of the state. However, we know that the law of the excluded middle and the law of identity have been subject to criticism. Recently there have been non-alethic logics that allow violation of non-contradiction

As you know, however, in standard logic, allowing a contradiction A and not-A results in X and not-X for every proposition X. The proponents of non-alethic logic argue, therefore, well and good, but there is fertility to be gained, e.g. by allowing the possibility contradiction for some of our more esoteric mathematical systems—especially those involving infinities and for which consistency has not yet been shown—may contain contradiction but are still fertile and we do or have not encountered the contradiction because, somehow, we are so far walled off from the quicksand of contradiction

What is logic? Introducing Logic

The capitalization of ‘Logic’ indicates that it is a conception rather than an implementation of logic

Where does this leave us regarding logic? What is logic? Well one way of looking at logic is that it refers to the properties of concepts or propositions must have in order that there is a possibility that they may refer to anything at all. ‘The green unicorn,’ as far as we know, does not refer to anything in the known Universe but it has the possibility of referring to something. ‘A green apple,’ refers to lots of things. However, ‘the apple that is simultaneously entirely green and entirely not green’ cannot not, as far as we know per logic, refer to anything. But that is what is in question. So we change the perspective a little and define Logic to be the set of principles that concepts and propositions must satisfy so that there is the possibility of referring. Since it’s a definition, it doesn’t tell us much. However, the definition is not a pure out of the blue definition for classical and modern logics are at least some kinds of approximations to it (a law is our formulation of a Law)

The fundamental principle of metaphysics—second first version

I.e. the only law of the Universe is Logic; alternatively, the Universe has no universal Laws

Establishment of an epistemology

The second advance is the establishment of an epistemology that frames the metaphysics. It is not an epistemology for common knowledge and science and so on but an epistemology for the metaphysics (‘common’ epistemology comes later in the development.) It is convenient and effective however to begin with a framework for all epistemology which I now do

Analysis of knowledge

Traditional approach—fact, induction, science, explanation including conceptual and mathematical analysis

Alternative but equivalent formulation—simple and complex fact, Logic

Improved analysis of knowledge

Knowledge is a system of facts

Knowledge is made up of facts—period. Until a few days ago I would not have said this quite this way so you are here privy to the ideas as they undergo refinement. The Logic of course does not concern facts but the minimum requirement on all factual knowledge for it to have even the possibility of being knowledge (in any limited corner of the Universe for as we have seen if ‘knowledge’ satisfies Logic, in the Universal context, it is knowledge)

With that out of the way, why do I say knowledge is made up of facts? What about the vast systems of science?

Facts are simple or complex

The response is that facts are simple facts and complex facts—since last week ‘complex and compound’ has been replaced by complex because a compound fact is a kind of complex fact. ‘Complex’ is often used to refer to non-uniformity of a single kind, while compound refers to multiple kinds; but there is no reason to not regard, if we will, the complex as including the compound

Simple facts

If there were atoms in the sense of Democritus (indivisible unitary objects) the statement ‘that is an atom’ would be the ultimately simple form of fact. When I perceive a tree, I can see it as a simple—the tree—or as a compound—the trunk, branches and so on. Perception is like that. It evolved and since it evolved in interaction with its environment, it is adaptive to see functional objects as simples even though they can be analyzed into non-simples. We do not know from science whether there are any ultimate simples and the metaphysics we have developed says that there are not

Complex facts. Theories of science as complex facts

Now what of the theories of science? Consider the mechanics of Newton. Vast tracts of behavior are explained and predicted—the solar system, planes, trains, and automobiles, Boyle’s Law, classical statistical mechanics. Then comes the mechanics of the quantum which does not say that classical mechanics was entirely wrong but that its domain (not just spatio-temporal but also its particle-energy domain) is limited. Therefore Newton’s Mechanics is a fact over a limited domain (of course we expect from science and know from the metaphysics that quantum theory and relativity must also be restricted to a limited domain and therefore our knowledge of the precise domain of Newton’s Mechanics is imprecise.) And what’s more it’s not so different from our simple facts which are also, at root, approximate complexes. Therefore I say that knowledge is facts. The simples of perception are ‘arrived at’ through evolution and adaptation of the organism to the environment and the conceptual complexes which can be seen as simples are arrived at via evolution and adaptation of ideas to the expanding known world

Given a simple fact—the positions and velocities of the planets and the sun—and a complex fact—the Newtonian or the Einsteinian constitution and dynamics of matter—the evolution of the solar system follows as a matter of logic (mathematics)

The treatment has skirted Induction as method

In so doing the issue of two kinds of inference—deduction and induction as if they were both fundamental though different—is erased. Induction is simply the smart generalization that produces complex facts and we need not think of it as inference at all if because it isn’t really inference but tentative generalization subject to correction

Naturally, it is not being said that the immensely creative process of coming up with scientific theories is not important

That logic and induction are empirical

On the other hand with logic as a matter of tautology it might seem that we have gotten rid of real inference altogether except however that it is Logic that the only tautology but we don’t know Logic… it is logic that we know and while the application of logic simulates tautology so does the application of the scientific theory while the derivation of neither logic nor scientific theory is necessary inference and therefore of similar status

Raising the issue of the faithfulness of all facts

So far we are talking of the knowledge process in which the faithfulness of alleged facts is has not been the issue of focus. A classical view of knowing is that faithfulness is the meaning and essence of knowledge. There is another view in which being instrumental is the meaning and essence of knowledge. The views are connected because one view of faithfulness is that of replication but when we realize that replication itself may have no final meaning we can abandon the idea of faithfulness or change its meaning. This line of thought could be used as a reason—excuse—to avoid the issue of faithfulness and some thinkers have done so—the pragmatists and some romanticists… However, even if I am interested in the instrumental use-view of knowing this does not mean that I shall not be uninterested in faithfulness as replication—instrumentalism does not eliminate correspondence. Further replication or correspondence do not mean perfect replication or correspondence. However relinquishing perfect replication does not mean that we are suggesting that all knowing is or shall be approximate. It is consistent with relinquishing a priori replication that we shall find a range from altogether imperfect to altogether perfect (of which uniform absolute perfection and uniform absolute imperfection are logically possible on certain accounts but practically impossible)

The Kantian critique

Enter the previous Kantian criticism of our knowledge. Nothing of the foregoing system is knowledge of the world as it is. All facts are mediated by the experiencing knower. And Logic is not fact but the form that factual knowledge must assume. Well that’s a fact. True, but we don’t know Logic—we only know logic which is empirical over the domain of the facts of knowledge which, after all, are in the world

The Kantian critique does not imply that there is no practical knowledge

But it all works with some degree of success and that’s as far as the best general epistemology even though the philosophers would have you believe that we are in a better position. We don’t need to be in a better position however, because the position is quite a good one. But we don’t know how good. This is one reason that we are about to engage in serious refinement at the end of which we will say, see that’s how good it is and in principle we can do no better and we will then say that if we can’t do better we shouldn’t want to and what’s more that we can’t do better in the realm of here-and-now-knowledge means that the rest is adventure and wonder and mystery-in-the-positive-sense

The Kantian critique implies that from external justification the best conclusion is that we don’t know what we know

The Kantian critique does not invalidate knowledge. The argument simply shows that we don’t have an ultimate handle on the reliability of knowledge

More precisely, the critique implies that there is no such ultimate handle from the method of external justification. That all justification is external justification is an implicit assumption of the Kantian critique and much of modern and common epistemology

A common and naïve conclusion is that therefore we know nothing. That this follows from the Kantian critique is false

A conception of Abstraction. Abstraction is empirical and results in necessary knowledge of certain Universal Objects that will frame the Universal metaphysics

Now introduce a notion of abstraction. A common notion is: replace the real thing in concept by a token or stick-like figure. E.g. the stuff of being is replaced in Newtonian theory by point particles. Well, comes a response, token or not, Newton’s system did a pretty good job. We have already acknowledged that but what we are doing here is going for perfect knowledge and we know that Newton’s system was no better than pretty damn good. So introduce another conception of abstraction. Here there is no replacement. Here we look for those features of the world and its objects that are so simple that we can regard our knowledge of the featured objects as empirical and faithful or necessary (but not a priori or given in advance.) Some such Objects are the Universe or All being, the Void or absence of being, Domain or part of being, Complement, difference, and Logic

Refer to essays for details of abstraction and establishment of the above Objects as necessary

An objection regarding the concept of All being and its resolution

Objection—there are an infinity of ways to decompose All being into objects. Response. This is a common and valid analytic and logical objection to careless use of the term ‘everything.’ However, here ‘all being’ means the abstracted version which has but one ‘decomposition’

The metaphysics. That the metaphysics is immensely rich

Now, the metaphysics follows and is grounded in experience. It is therefore a Universal metaphysics and, simultaneously, a metaphysic of experience (over a rare network of experience)

The system—chapters Intuition through Cosmology and Intuition—could be written as a Treatise on Ultimate Metaphysics and its Epistemology

It may be thought that the resulting metaphysics is sparse and skeletal. We see below that it is not so—the demonstrable variety is immense. However, knowledge of it is indirect and outside direct factual knowledge

Practical knowledge

Further our factual knowledge of this world is not metaphysics. However, we see in Worlds that an interactive union of the metaphysics and the traditions—the academic and other knowledge disciplines including those such as art whose knowledge component is oblique—results in potential and in some important cases actual raising of the discipline to its intrinsic limit of faithfulness and may shed significant light on its variety

Substance

The metaphysics is ultimate in being faithful knowledge and ultimate in showing that the Universe itself is ultimate in its Variety

Briefly, substance is that simple therefore unchanging and uniform thing that generates all being and which is implicitly though not generally explicitly recognized as deterministic generation

It is a simple argument to invalidate all substance theory (which as Heidegger recognized has dominated western metaphysics for 2000 years)

However, there is an alternative foundation in the Void which is a non-substance foundation since the Void is indeterministic—it is equivalent t every state—but is terminating and therefore not relative (to something else.) If you are not conversant with the ideas of relative versus non-relative philosophy you may not recognize that this is a momentous result

Very brief introduction to the theory of Objects

I’m not going to develop this topic in detail at all except to note that the fundamental principle entails the principle of reference, that every Logical proposition or concept has reference. This enables the theory of objects of the narrative that clarifies and unifies kinds of Objects and so deepens the understanding of the nature of object and further founds the theory of variety

Very brief introduction to General cosmology

Again no detail at all except to say that the above founds a theory of variety or general cosmology that includes a theory of process, evolution and mechanism. Topics enabled include variety and origins, process, identity and death, mind, space, time and being

New Conceptions of Metaphysics and Philosophy

The new conceptions of metaphysics and philosophy

We are able to re-conceive METAPHYSICS as the study of being and the limits of being and PHILOSOPHY as the discipline whose limits are the limits of being

On modern nihilist trends in philosophy and metaphysics

Contrast to recent pseudo-nihilism

All this over and above the nihilism of later modern philosophy and the reactionary it’s-nihilistic-but-let’s-celebrate-in-the-release-from-grandiose-claims-of-the-past of post-modern philosophy (even though they all prematurely and largely in the shadow of the failure of the Idealistic systems of metaphysics and political theory—Marxism—conclude the impossibility of such systems… which conclusion is not logical but a psychological admission of failure that is PTSD or at least rather analogous to it)

I call it pseudo-nihilism because it has no rational basis. We lost trust in things that we had no basis for trust. Therefore we cease to trust without discrimination. That is the intrusion of a kind of post traumatic stress intruding into the realm of ideas but also the occasion for merely self-serving and pseudo-sophistry

And, per the present analysis knowledge never was pure because it never truly and fully separates from being

A modern metaphysics… a modern philosophy

In the light of the new metaphysics, Robin, an immense catalog of alleged problems of metaphysics has received definitive response. The philosophical catalog is a little diffuse and less developed but the immense potential is there

Therefore it’s A modern metaphysics and A modern philosophy… or a post-post-modern or a metaphysics / philosophy for the twenty first century… or the bloody dawn of a new era of thought if you want (I’m taking off into grandiose though not unrealistic mode, i.e. it’s psychologically grandiose but not epistemologically grandiose because, first, its Logical, and, second, I admit of and entertain objection and objections)

It is a correction to the excesses of modern analytic philosophy and modern continental philosophy

Modern analytic philosophy

Modern analytic philosophy is the dominant mode of philosophy in the English speaking and the Scandinavian philosophy. Its origin is in (a) the rejection around the end of the nineteenth century of the excesses of British Idealism that derived from the immensely speculative and imaginative Idealism of Hegel and (b) the weight of accumulating developments around the same time primarily in symbolic analysis especially logic and the mathematics but also in science. The main founders of analytic philosophy were Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein and they drew inspiration in the developments in logic and the understanding of logic and the foundations of mathematics especially the work of Gotlob Frege

Wittgenstein’s first main work is a treatise on the world as fact (and logic.) In his second he rejects the first in favor of a piece-meal approach where every topic is approached individually because contexts are essentially different and because (therefore) there can be no over-system or metaphysics. Whereas Kant said metaphysics is impossible because of the limits of our ability to know even simple things, the later Wittgenstein is saying that the world is just too bloody complex and compound to know

Obviously I have disagreement with Wittgenstein’s position but in his hands many insights resulted. Wittgenstein set a trend for a way of thinking in which the concept of ‘same’ has no meaning, every minute topic is approached separately, the approach is, to put it sarcastically, let us see how a school-boy thinks about so-and-so topic and this will be our source of data as obviously the school-boy andor the man-in-the street is more profound than the philosopher because of the immersion-in-life… and the result is a series of trivial exercises (with occasional jewels) which never rise above the trivia because—this is one reason—of there compartmentalization. Obviously I think this is puerile and further rigorous and detailed dissection is available in the essays

The positive criticism of this mode of thought is the production of a positive system of metaphysics of my writing (and perhaps some others.) I think the man-in-the-street maneuver has its brilliance but it is a one-up-man ship and not a philosophical brilliance. The analytic philosopher is saying, first, that the man-in-the-street even in his naiveté has a superior handle on the world than thinkers including (other) philosophers and, by implication, that the writer has a better handle than street-man and armchair-man (thinkers.) It then follows that since these analytic philosophers see what is known as barren they are the Lords and keepers of a desert and that this role as keeper of the keys entrenches their positions as philosophers of a wasteland who are superior to all others but need to do no real work at all

The analytic philosopher has set him or her self apart from street-man and I think that is a terrible mistake even though it is fostered by the immense specialization of modern civilization. Philosophy begins when reflective street-man turns critical or when he or she turns an eye toward greater things. It is a process already begun in the street even though we have a caricature of street-man as dirty and unreflective. The history of thought reveals that it is certain individuals and not certain professions that have the original and great insights…

It shouldn’t be the function of critical philosophy to establish all knowledge as empty or all the standard disciplines as fully valid. The function of criticism is to separate what we know from what we don’t, what we can know from what we can’t, and to evaluate the significance of that separation

Modern continental philosophy

There is brief criticism of modern continental philosophy in this piece

An Applied metaphysics

Thus far the metaphysics is still rarefied. It contains an embarrassment of riches but is still remote even though we have grounded it

Another grounding is needed

Now we go back to knowledge. It is facts, simple and compound. That covers the entire human tradition of knowing (the valid part)

However, the entire tradition can be framed in terms of the metaphysics. The aspects of knowledge are the phenomena or simple facts, the theories and so on or complex andor compound facts, and the explanatory system or mathematics / conceptual analysis / logic

What emerges—details on the web—is that the metaphysical frame encourages the facts to go to the root of all depth and so move on away from their ad hoc elements and that this development simultaneously illuminates the framing metaphysics. The prime example is the philosophy of mind where I have been able to resolve numerous problems and the problem of the nature of mind that are regarded as ‘difficult.’ Then, significant advances regarding the ideas of space, time, other physical concepts and much potential

What’s more, we are approaching the stage and in some cases arrive there at which we can begin to say that’s the best we can do and therefore the rest is adventure (at which point the armchair and academic thinkers with their vested interest begin to say the rest is silence)

A treatise on Human knowledge and applied metaphysics

So it’s also a treatise on Human knowledge and Applied metaphysics which by the way includes an outline of the knowledge of any knowing agency

What the narrative is—contributions to an encyclopedic variety of topics and disciplines

I’ll just write them down as quotes from the essays. The essays show the extent of the contribution while paying attention to kind and extent of contribution

Topics

The Metaphysics is developed as an articulated system and the topics of Intuition, Logic, Objects, Cosmology, (Normal) Worlds, Method, and Being (that has the capacity for the experience and loss of significance) are built up in interaction with and around it. These topics are enhanced by the ultimate character of the metaphysics; and the limit of the enhancement is the inherent limit of the topic. For Intuition, Objects, Cosmology and Method the achievement is close to the inherent limit that becomes visible under the light of the metaphysics and the Logic. Along the way a number of topics are touched by the ultimate aspect of the general ideas; these include Logic itself, Mind, Substance, the idea of God—traditional thought in theology and philosophy essentially treat God as a substance but real discussion cannot even begin until all particular characteristics of the idea of God are relinquished, Determinism and Indeterminism, Abstract and Particular Objects, Evolution, Mechanism, Space, Time, Causation, Consciousness, and Free Will. The foregoing topics may be treated from a Universal aspect; they stand as magnificent edifices of Universal thought, apparently remote from our world

Disciplines

However, they are not remote; our world is one of necessarily infinitely many harbored in the womb of the Universe. The Logic of our world, necessarily particular, is a particle of the Logic of the Universe. We experience a boundary—sometimes known as opportunity, sometimes as challenge, and sometimes as ignorance—between our world and the background Universe. The boundary is Normal rather than absolute. Knowledge of our world has limits that are inherent in the nature of its particularity. This knowledge has, in interaction with or illuminated by the Universal metaphysics, the potential to be raised to its inherent limits. Thus the following disciplines are touched by and, in turn, illustrate the Universal metaphysics: Science and the sciences—Physical, Biological and Psychological; the study of Society, Culture, Institutions, Language, Religion, Faith, Secular Humanism, Ethics and Value, Economics, Politics, Civilization, and History and its design which is the participation of being in its being—becoming—and includes as a particular case the discipline known to us as ‘Policy Study’ and that has common analytic elements with all planning and design disciplines

What the narrative is—contribution to a System of human knowledge

Once again I simply quote from myself

Why, then, the use of the title Journey in being?

For a number of reasons

Reasons already stated

Approach—methods—and goals evolved along the way

The path and goals are—have been—diffuse

…and involve the individual or whole being as well as ideas

…and include, derive from and give to ideas but are not restricted to ideas

The discovery of the ultimate journey has been a journey

That ultimate is the merging of individual processes

Because of the revelations of the metaphysics

Because the metaphysics now reveals the possibility of a journey into the ultimate and of which the beginning is narrated in chapter Journey

Because of the limitations of ideas

Because the idea—in limited senses—without transformation of being is incomplete and I feel it to be incomplete

Because of limits to the academic ideal

Because the academic ideal of knowledge, wonderful as I have felt it to be and continue to have some feeling of it to be, is, when taken as an end in itself, I now feel to be a lie

Because the academic style of writing suggests an incomplete view of knowing

Because I am tired of the academic style of ‘treatise’ writing even though my writing includes the academic

The academic style suggests a knowledge that is separate from action and the world. As we know this is incomplete

Because of doubt

Because, despite the Logic, I am not altogether convinced of the system. It’s not empirical in the way science is—at the boundaries, however, science becomes empirical in a different non-crawling non-laboratory way e.g. as in physical cosmology where laboratory experiments cannot be done. However, I can undertake a path / program of realization in light of the metaphysics and this might provide some experimental proof—and this is or shall prove to be empirical in a way that is closer to the non-laboratory of the edges of conceptual physics, biology, and understanding of mind even though the focus is self-world and not just world where world is used in the sense of external-world-as-object

And, that would be exciting in two ways—the proof and experience

Because faith complements doubt

The meaning of doubt… and faith

See the section The role of faith below

A Journey in being

A micro sketch of chapters Journey and Pure being

In outline the journey is the sum of

An individual discovery of the necessity of the realization I am the Universe and—this is tautologous—the individual looking out on the Universe is the Universe looking at itself

The undertaking of this realization via ideas and transformation and in which individuals have confluence in the Universe—all being—but that the real adventure is the travel through infinitely many worlds of infinite variety through pleasure and pain on the through the Universal

Dynamics of being

This is the core method which derives from the Universal metaphysics and involves experiments in which one learns about the path and the dynamics itself… so that the journey is incremental and iterative though large change is not ruled out

There is anchoring in this world via self, intuition, tradition—chapter Worlds

So far

The journey above is my ambition for the future

Approaches from the traditions. The catalysts

I have gathered together from modern and ancient traditions and my own experience—you must have some too—some approaches and catalysts (e.g. stress) that are tools

Ideas

Experiments—ideas—the story of the entry into and transcending traditional systems

Experiments in transformation of being and identity

Experiments—transformation—some experiments in awareness, healing, medicine of the kind in which the self—rather than some system or in combination with system—is instrumental and want to turn this toward the ends of the journey itself

Experiments with society

People—it is recognized by others but apparently not by my family that I have charisma and I have used this and want to turn it to the ends of the journey itself

Experiments in construction of being

Ideas but very limited in artificial intelligence and its generalization in to life and the ways in which it might become instrumental in the journey

The role of faith

Faith is a complement to doubt. Knowing, doubt and faith make us whole

Knowing by itself is incomplete

Doubt begins the process of completion—but doubt alone does not imply the possibility of completion. That possibility and its dimensions—we find completeness in some directions—emerge in the exploration and the analysis

Faith complements doubt. It does not refer to faith in any received idea—the way of science, a scripture, a dogma… It is analogous to animal faith. It is animal faith raised to the level of a particular animal. It is recognition that the animal is not the mere-animal-of-a-reductive-science. Where doubt is the efficient-approach-to-incomplete-knowledge, faith is the efficient-approach-to-action-that-maximizes-or-enhances-realization-in-light-of-incomplete-knowledge… or, faith regards knowing as a relationship rather than something that stands by itself and is therefore a place where doubt is not immediately relevant

The future

Continue…

Pure being (chapter Being)… approach to closure and realization as far as may occur in this life