reserve notes.docm—why being, on ‘god’ and religion, on meditation in action, on dual doubt, on politics and economics for the way of being, derivation of logical calculi from fundamentals (also see other notes in the secondary resources folder)

Move unition (yoga) and name it consistently

Details

Details – method and content as one; this aspect of meaning is good for TWB at present, other aspects such as ‘use’ may be incorporated and integrated later; combine ethics and categories’.

Definitions

Incorporate table of definitions, integrate with master.

Documents for publication

Axiomatic = master; invitation = minimal.

Styles

Styles – see journey in being.dotm.

The Way of Being

Acknowledgment

Since my reading has been extensive and I have not maintained a list, I cannot recall all sources and influences; however, my main influences and readings begin to show my indebtedness.

Starting early 2026, I have consulted a number of AI (LLM) agents, which have been useful with information and thought.

Notation

Abbreviations

TW, TWB – The Way of Being

TM – The real metaphysics; the system of knowledge instrumental to realizing the ultimate.

IM – The ideal metaphysics; the abstracted, perfect side of TM.

fp – The fundamental principle (of metaphysics); the proven assertion that the universe is the realization of the greatest possibility.

Terminology

Project 1. Since the meanings of the terms has changed since I began writing this version of ‘the way’, I shall go through the work re-identifying definitions, axioms, and so on.

Main

Definitions – The definitions are formal or informal. The formal definitions are numbered; they introduce concepts that are at the foundation of the development. Though they resemble elements of an abstract axiomatic system, their function includes to point to the real and so, the formal definitions are more than just specifications of concepts. Therefore, unless they point to the manifestly real, that they point to the real is demonstrated. How they perform this function is explained in the introduction and worked out in detail, later. Informal definitions amplify the development, building flesh around the structure, which is their main function; they also serve to specify meaning where, otherwise, vagueness and ambiguity may obtain.

Axioms – Necessary truths of experience or being; not postulated or hypothesized. The manifestly real definitions include axiomatic material, which will be specified additionally, in axioms. Where basic definitions do not clearly point to the real, reality will be made manifest and stated as an axiom. Since the conceptual framework of the development is general in nature, there is no need to distinguish between axioms and postulates (but postulates may be identified in specialized developments).

{Auxiliary element – a supplement to a definition or other element.}

Truths – Statements whose truth is either manifest or derived from manifest truths. They include what could be called ‘theorems’. They could include axioms; however, the term ‘axiom’ will be reserved for the use specified above. As will be seen, it is inherent in the development that method, foundation, and further content emerge together and therefore definition, truth, and axiom may intersect.

Assertions – Statements asserted as true on the basis of argument – informal; meta, e.g., about the formal development (method or content); and comments. These are ‘lesser truths’.

While definition, axiom, truth, and assertion, are currently adequate to the realist system of TWB, the following may be introduced later.

Secondary

Postulates – Truths written as postulates on account of at least possible doubt.

Consequences – Derived from premises as explained below.

Premises – Premises or system of premises that are the basis of a special consequence or system of consequences.

Conditions – Premises for very specific systems of consequences that may be questionable.

Uses of terms—new and variant

Being versus Be-ing – the word ‘being’ (it will not be capitalized) will be used as abstract in the sense that essential distortion has been removed from the concept, which is a strength in that it empowers precision. However, the abstraction also removes the depth and ineffability that is powerful in historical use of ‘being’. Thus, a term to connote what has been lost in abstraction is an essential need; ‘be-ing’ will be used to provide that connotation. Note that many terms have meanings that, though not variant in their sense, are specific in removing connotations and vagueness in common use, and acquire variant extension (to what the terms apply) from their context in TWB.

Conject – this word is a contraction of concept-relation-object or concept-object, which is shown to be the most general form of a being, object, or existent—in reality and in understanding. The following will be clarified (i) why, where ‘being’, ‘object’, and ‘existent’ are often distinguished, they may be and are conflated in this work (ii) how the conject is the most general form in our understanding and in extension to the root of being.

Experience – this term has been used in many senses. As used in positivism, it was limited, e.g., to sense data, the point (in positivism) being that sense data is given, and the aim then was to derive all knowledge from it. An extended meaning of experience is identified and identifiable subjective mental content, including what is below conscious awareness but must, by inference, exist. Here, the use of ‘experience’ shall be (i) awareness in all its levels, kinds, and forms (ii) justified extension to the ‘root of being’ (the meaning of which shall be explained and the extension justified (iii) experience as ‘ground of being’ parallel to an ultimately abstract conception of being also as ground.

Intuition – we introduce intuition, not in a variant sense, but as preliminary to a variant, ‘deep intuition’. The term ‘intuition’ has a number of historical uses, formal and informal, which belong, at least weakly, to a family of meanings. First, there is an everyday use of the term ‘to have an intuitive feel’ regarding both ordinary and formal situations; in formal situations it functions parallel with proof but does not displace proof. Then, there is Kant’s use in which intuition is a faculty of perception whereby perception is possible—i.e., it is a structure of mind that is aligned with the form – some forms – of the world. Here, we consider a third use, which is variant in that it is not recognized in some cultures and contexts of rigor and in that, where it is recognized, its meaning is not standardized. This third use, which we call deep intuition, is adopted as follows.

Deep intuition – this use is recognized in eastern and western use but is often suppressed where rigor is emphasized. To think about this third use, consider the value of rigor: since we want to be secure in our actions, the certainty that may result from rigor has importance. However, (i) rigor is not always possible and may be illusory when it is present only in parts of the cycle of cognition, emotion, value (e.g., ethics), and action (ii) where proof has not yet been capable of going, but action and outcome may be enhanced, perhaps optimized, by allowing intuition. If the intuition in question is self- and world-consistent, and enhanced by a cultivated habit and so development of clear vision into mind and world, with meditative features, neither in insistence nor avoidance of cultural views and what may be called ‘baggage’, the kind of intuition may be called deep. It is important to recognize that such intuition does not reject the use of proof—it may occur in parallel with proof or proof in special cases, but proof is not essential to it, for it may be effective where proof is not (yet) available.

Project 2. Identify where intuition, especially deep intuition, has been and ought to be used in the developments.

Meaning – this term has two senses in this work, (i) as in a family of meanings suggested by the terms ‘the meaning of life’, ‘significance’ or ‘importance’ (ii) concept and linguistic meaning. Both senses are important—the first as what is meaningful, e.g., why we aspire to anything at all; the second is crucial to concept development—a lack of proper understanding of it in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions results in confused and limited understanding; such an understanding is developed in the formal system. Where the use is not clear from the context the terms ‘significant-’ and ‘concept-’ or ‘linguistic-’ meaning will be used.

Systematic philosophy – current philosophy tends to take a stand against system for reasons of convenience and what is thought to be principle. However, if the universe has both form and formlessness, should not philosophy / our knowledge system reflect this? This work has systematic features; it attempts to integrate the main branches of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and value—and thus content and method; but it is more than an integration, for it has one beginning in a place where they are already undivided and what is more, they are already one with action, where not only do disciplines merge but so do knower and known; it is further systematic in that it brings a range of academic disciplines together. But (i) its approach to system is not to posit it once and for all, but to continue working incrementally while a final equilibrium has not been found (ii) it does not insist on system, for it allows piecemeal here and there (though not everywhere for that would suggest system). In the end, it finds system at a high level, e.g., the high conceptual level of being, and some system at lower levels, e.g., form, and worlds or cosmoses. Thus one aspect of the work is that it takes a stand against the poles of the system / ad hoc / piecemeal / brilliant essay continuum, as it also takes a stand against occupying a single point on that continuum.

Unition – a term for (i) the insight that individual and universal identity are locally distinct but ultimately the same (the insight is shown to hold) (ii) knowledge pertaining to the insight and ways of realizing ultimate identity for and beginning in our world. The ultimate identity is a state of being but is also experienced as an endless process of peaking and dissolution. ‘Unition’ is a neologism whose meaning is closely related to the meaning of ‘yoga’ as it originated in what is now called South Asia, inclusive of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Miscellaneous notation

When a term is ~~crossed~~ out, it is included to acknowledge that it is (i) strictly unnecessary but useful in the given context or (ii) that later development shows it to be unnecessary, perhaps in extended senses of preliminary conceptions.

An asterisk or star (*) marks material that is very much in process. A section marked with a star may be empty or have just an outline.

A dagger (^†) marks temporary material that will be removed from final versions.

The axiomatic system

Notation for the axiomatic system is in the definitions.

Part 1. Into to The Way of Being

The material of ‘Into’ serves as an informal introduction. The formal system of the work appears in an account of the world.

Comment 1. Format tabs, add heading here, introduce doubt.

Preliminary

Assertion 1. In the realm of ordinary and everyday experience, our cosmos is limited. Yet this limitedness is fully consistent with the universe—the realm of the ordinary and beyond—being the realization of the greatest possibility (that we do not experience all possibilities is true as far as we do not experience the entire universe). The claim that all possibility is realized, proven later, is the fundamental principle of metaphysics (fp). In what follows, (i) the meaning of limitlessness is formalized and expressed in common terms, (ii) the limitlessness of the universe and its beings is demonstrated, and (iii) the consequences of limitlessness are developed and shown to bear immense significance for life as it is lived now and across the unbounded realms of being.

Assertion 2. The aim of The Way of Being (TW)is the shared discovery and realization of the ultimate—arising in, oriented toward, and starting from our world.

Assertion 3. Clearly, TW will depend upon knowledge and its development. Knowledge is defined later; for the preliminary a rough sense of knowledge as acquaintance with facts is sufficient.

Assertion 4. The main concepts of TW center on being and experience because (i) the use of being states simply that ‘things are what they are,’ without reference to any other foundational idea, and this very triviality makes it foundational both to the conceptual development and as a conceptual container for our experiential being and becoming; (ii) thus, being, as used here, is trivial compared with its use in existentialist philosophy, but, as just noted, this is a strength, and what might otherwise be lost is assigned to ‘be-ing,’ which is within being rather than of it; (iii) in summary, the present use of ‘being’ avoids the imprecision of its use in existentialist philosophy while preserving its depth; and (iv) experience is central as the ~~effective~~ place and fact of our being, our reason, and the ‘meaning of our lives’.

What is The Way of Being

Definition 1. The Way of Being (TWB) is (i) an attitude that sees our present world and its cultural traditions as transitional, (ii) a system of knowledge—‘the real metaphysics’ (TM)—instrumental to realizing the ultimate, perfect in its effectiveness and the best to be had while we remain limited and which changes in interaction with change in our being, and (iii) a way (‘pathways’) to the ultimate that begins in our world and emphasizes the world, the ultimate, and the process. The aim of TWB is shared discovery and realization of the ultimate in, for, and from our world.

Definition 2. The term pragmatic used to qualify (predicate) anything means not necessarily precise or perfect but useful or good enough. Thus, while perfect knowledge is perfect acquaintance with fact, pragmatic knowledge is less than perfect but useful (the use of these terms is clarified and developed later, where it is shown, first, that there is significant perfect knowledge and, second, that perfect and pragmatic knowledge may be joined to form a powerful system that is perfect, not in the sense of precision, but in the sense of its value).

Assertion 5. The real metaphysics (TM) is based on well-founded concepts as explained in foundational issues, below. In the development, the concepts cluster around (i) being as precisely known, inclusive, and neutral (and so of perfect and potentially universal application, that is free of slant) (ii) experience which is grounding of being and, particularly, of our being. While most of the terms for the concepts are common and often lack a single use, it is critical to the development to follow the meanings as specified in the definitions and, further, that the system of terms constitute a system that has system-meaning that captures and is designed to capture the form and process of the universe.

Assertion 6. The cluster of concepts did not arise at once but in stages via conceptual trial and error: (a) a rough stage in which I experimented with materialism, evolutionism, idealism, and physicalism, before settling on being and experience for their neutrality and foundational character (b) a stage of selecting and fine-tuning the cluster of concepts (c) a final but still ongoing stage in which I recognize the system—the cluster—as adequate to a sufficiently precise and complete metaphysics. Thus, the origins of TM are in my experience and reflection and, via reading, in the history of thought. Similarly, the pathways, are also based on my exploration and reading in what might be called ‘experiments in being’, a mix of philosophical resources, and traditional pathways, both east and west.

Assertion 7. TM has two sides: (i) a perfect side, ‘the ideal metaphysics’ (IM), formed by deploying abstracted versions of the concepts—i.e., by removing distortable detail from the concepts, and so leaving concepts and detail free of distortion, and (ii) pragmatic knowledge. IM is perfect and shows the universe to be ultimate and limitless. It points to the ultimate, but, being a framework, it requires a complement for effectiveness, namely pragmatic knowledge, and its ongoing process of discovery. Though pragmatic knowledge is subject to imperfection, the union of the two sides is the most effective instrument we possess for realizing the ultimate and for advancing toward that realization. Because IM provides perfect orientation and pragmatic knowledge provides the best means available under limitedness, their union is the uniquely maximal instrument for realization. It is in this value sense that TM is perfect.

This edition

This is a master axiomatic version for TWB. It may source shorter versions, of which one is an invitation to TWB.

Audiences

1. Readers who see our standard secular and transsecular views of the universe as limited and would like to discover a view—the view of TWB—that is as limitless as is accessible to us in our apparently limited form. This class includes general and academic readers.

2. Those who would use the picture from TWB toward evolution and realization of the ultimate in, for, and from this world and beyond. This class includes those who would take rational risk.

Origins and sources

TW is an outcome of my life, experience, reading in world literature, and thought.

A search

From an early interest in understanding, I searched through ideas, experience, reading in world literature, via reflection, action, learning, and synthesis. I have read and absorbed much and cannot list all sources, for much is now subliminal.

A brief history

I traversed through

1. Ideas – from ‘isms’ and ‘kinds’ (e.g., mind, matter, process) “things are what they are” rather than as slanted in an ism or reduced to kinds. That is, the outcome may be called a ‘non-ism’ in that it attempts to avoid slants; it may be called ‘zeroism’ in that it neither has nor needs substance(s). This is a source for and derived from use of the concept of ‘being’.

“Things are what they are” is of course trivial. However, triviality is not insignificance and I found the powerful system described below of which a main element is that the universe is ultimate and that beings participate in that ultimacy. What is more the trivial base is powerful precisely because it is trivial and therefore transparent. This system is developed in Part 2. An account of the world, and applied in Part 3. Knowledge / world and Part 4. Pathways as well as the external document a system of human knowledge.

2. From ideas to ideas and action. The ideas added to an impetus to realization, and from the desire to live usefully, there came a development of pathways to the ultimate in, for, and from our world (with sources in world ideas and practices).

Founding The Way of Being

Comment 2. Issue of abstraction, inclusivity, and neutrality.

On illusion and its implications for the nature of the real

That there is some illusion in our perception, thought, and sense of what is real and important is not doubted.

But do we know what is real at all or is ‘everything illusion’? If the latter were true, we could not know it, for it too would be illusory.

Some impressions of what is known must be real, while others are illusory.

But there is a presumption behind the idea of illusion. It is the common—though not universal—view of knowing as a picture of the real, in some ways a misdirection. Rather, we should perhaps look at the entire seeming picture of our process in the world—knowing, valuing, and acting—from the outside, as it were, and observe that there are impressions of the process to which we give the names ‘knowledge’, ‘value’ (ethical, aesthetic, and meaningful as in the family of senses surrounding the meaning of life), and intentional and choice based ‘action’, but which are not as definite as we commonly think they are.

That is, we are perhaps reifying our names.

Yet our naming is not mere reification; it arises from and points to something real.

The giving of names is not the end of how meaning emerges—the emergence is an interaction between the sense of meaning, naming, use or practice, and formalization (which except when – where – it is shown otherwise cannot be said to be complete).

Whether our names reach the real, and whether knowing can be disentangled from the real, cannot be clearly or satisfactorily resolved without a picture of the world that has some truth and some completeness. Furthermore, such a picture should account for the relation between knowledge – experience of the world – and the world itself.

The name we give to such a picture shall be ‘metaphysics’. And an adequate metaphysics will incorporate, will weave into the world picture, experience, knowledge and reason, value, and action. It will not be a ‘metaphysics of experience’ (etc., as above), but a metaphysics of the world in which experience, etc., are integral aspects.

Thus, effectively, we are saying that metaphysics is study of the real, where ‘the real’ has a broad implication, such that epistemology, reason (philosophical logic), ethics, and implications for how and what we do – and how we regard what we should do – are parts of metaphysics. While this is different from some approaches to explaining what metaphysics is, it is conceptually strong enough to incorporate the subject matters from the history of metaphysics through today, in fact and in principle – and much more (the ‘etc.’)

Foundational issues

The question of foundation is complex: what a foundation (that which is founding) and what is founded (that which is founded) are; whether it should be a thing of the same kind as what is founded, of another kind, or not a “thing” at all; what kinds of foundation are possible; and whether foundation is possible in any sense. Here I address only the present foundation.

1. Experience is given. (Following a generalized Cartesian argument, the fact of experience is indubitable and requires no further grounding.)

2. From experience, abstraction yields precise concepts and a metaphysical framework. Abstraction from experience—including ordinary language and reason—gives rise to method and content together, resulting in precise concepts such as being (and whole or universe, part or a being – plural: beings, null or the void), and relationship (reason, argument, logic). That there is being, and that universe exists is given; however, existence of the void may be questioned—and is addressed below in doubt and dialetheia. From the existence of the void, as proven later, all possibilities follow; and from all possibilities, necessity emerges as foundational. Because necessity is modal rather than a further “thing,” it avoids infinite regress.

3. Not only do method and content emerge together, TWB is self-referential or reflexive in examining its own process and cross-referential in continually checking its content against the published literature for possible error and enhancement.

4. The foundation in being allows a precise metaphysical side (IM) and a pragmatic side. Thus the epistemology is pure on one side but pragmatic on the other and this non-uniformity or non-purity is part of its strength. Similarly, the foundation in being requires no substance, but in the pragmatic side there may be as-if substance or substances. That is, an aspect of the strength of the metaphysics is that it is not pure—while it needs no substance it does not ban substance altogether. Purism in epistemology and metaphysics would be a defect.

5. Given the precise metaphysical side (IM), that we are limited makes grounding and realization cyclic rather than regressive. The grounding aspect of foundation is not an infinite regress but a helical process—iterative, deepening, and self-correcting.

6. Foundation is not in another being or substance, either remote or immanent—unless, of course, necessity is seen as an immanent being (which follows from the necessary realization under fp of all concepts, concrete or abstract).

7. But if there were nothing, the logic from the void still applies.

8. Necessity and logic are inherent in being but to talk of them we must build them up from concepts that arise in experience.

9. The universe is self-founding; the question of foundation deflates. Thinking through the previous steps reveals that the universe is self-founding, and the traditional question of foundation dissolves into the structure of being itself.

Features of the development

Here, we informally note some remarkable features of the system (TM).

Doubt and dialetheia

The crucial logical point of the demonstration of the ideal metaphysics (IM) is proof of the existence of the void.

Existence of the void – Demonstration 1. The existence and nonexistence of the void are equivalent, therefore the void may be taken to exist (two further proofs are given in the formal development).

This will of course be doubted. I have doubt, even though there is no inconsistency in the proof itself or in the foundation in being and experience. The doubt results from the claim of equivalence, the magnitude of the conclusions, and that to sharpen knowledge, doubt is essential.

My response to doubt is to suggest three options to the reader, (i) to simply accept the demonstration (ii) to accept the result but live with doubt and accept with the fundamental principle (fp) and IM as hypotheses which optimize expectation, metaphysical, existential, or both (iii) to reject the demonstration and the metaphysical system.

Option ii is the most philosophically fertile because doubt keeps the system – and action that flows from it – alive rather than dogmatic and metaphysically dead.

There is an interesting consideration regarding an assertion such as ‘the void exists and does not exist’.

Consider a contradiction such as ‘it is raining and it is not raining’. In standard propositional calculus the truth of a proposition and its negation imply that all propositions are true (and false), which is commonly called ‘explosion’. How can we defuse explosion? Consider that ‘it is raining and it is not raining’ could mean ‘it is raining in New York but not in Beijing’. For standard logic to apply, symbols for objects must be precise, e.g., one symbol : one object (such considerations pertain to the domain of applicability of any logic).

There is a literature on what are called ‘dialetheia’. A dialetheia is a true contradiction, e.g., ‘A and not A’ (meaning, it is true that A and not A), where A is a proposition. Dialetheism is the thesis that there are true dialetheia. See my article Dialetheia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Dialetheism.

Some proponents of dialetheism hold that it obtains because (i) there are dialetheia (a strong claim if the propositions are truly contradictory) (ii) the universe is inherently contradictory (a stronger claim). Critics assert that dialetheism leads to explosion.

The ‘rain’ example suggests that there are no actual dialetheia, but only propositions that are in the form of dialetheia. In my article, linked above, I argue, tentatively, based on a variety of examples, there are no actual dialetheia. In my article, all the examples depend on artifacts such as imprecision of symbols, metaphor, and shift in meaning. There is more, though: if a proposition that has the form of a dialetheia is such that explosion is defused, call it what you will, there is nothing exceptional to it (but this does not negate the usefulness of dialetheism for there are situations in which dialetheic logics are at least potentially useful).

Regarding the void, we can argue as follows. For most things, existence means that there is an object that can be experienced (later: there is an object corresponding to the concept). And since we live in a world that is experienced, we translate ‘most things’ into ‘all things’. However, this is inadequate regarding the void.

But this does not prove that the meaning of existence must shift for the void. Here is an argument that the meaning of existence must not just shift, but be broadened.

A proof of existence of the void was given above. A second proof, given in the formal development, shows that, though (or even if) the void is not experienced, it is a source of that which can be experienced. Thus, while the meaning of ‘existence’ for manifest objects is ‘there is a real object that corresponds to the concept’, for the void, the meaning must shift: ‘real object’ must be changed to ‘potential object’.

A counter argument is that ‘potential’ is something and therefore cannot reside in the void. However, a response to this counter is the idea of potential being something is based on potential as causation and there is no necessity to causation projecting to the entire universe and the void.

The void is neither causal potential nor unreal; it reveals the conceptual possible as indeed — as actually — possible.

Logic, science, and argument

If something violates the laws of physics, it cannot obtain where those laws obtain.

However, if for it to obtain would violate logic, it cannot obtain at all (e.g., in any world, actual or possible; and note that the phrase ‘it cannot obtain at all’ eliminates any need to refer our development to ‘possible worlds’—to the contrary, it may found the concept and object of the notion of possible worlds).

Therefore, logic defines the greatest possibility. Here, of course, we are thinking of strict logic, e.g., deduction as used in mathematics, not induction or abduction as used in generalizing and in science.

It is common to make a comparison between science and strict logic—induction / abduction is ‘probable’; strict logic is certain.

However, the comparison is not appropriate—it compares reason to a scientific theory with reason under strict logic.

If, on the other hand, we compare arriving at a scientific theory to a logic (e.g., propositional calculus), the conclusion is not certain (there are alternative propositional logics, e.g., three valued logics)—we see the beginnings of a true parallel.

The parallel is completed when we note that inference under both science and strict logic can be strict (it could also be non-strict if the science were less than precise as in the theory of evolution and the logic was ‘fuzzy’).

Thus, there is a general sense of ‘logic’ that covers induction / abduction and strict / deductive logic.

In philosophy, ‘argument’ has been relatively recently used to describe establishment of facts via inference from given facts.

It has been used in the context of deduction: if the deduction is correct, the argument is ‘valid’, if, further, the fact is true, the conclusion is true, and the argument is ‘sound’.

In mathematics, the basic ‘facts’ are axioms. Here, however, the basic facts are about the world. Usually, such facts are imprecise and incompletely certain.

Are there any certain facts? Yes—(i) the fact that there is experience and so (as we will see) being, beings, and the universe (ii) the existence of the void is found to be necessary, from which all possibilities are necessary (somewhere in the universe including the universe itself) and thus there are facts that are absolutely necessary.

That is, there are strict arguments—there is strict argument—based in necessary fact and certain inference.

On the less than certain side, there are imprecise, perhaps not entirely certain facts, and induction / abduction, as in science.

Thus, just as logic may be thought to bifurcate into probable and certain inference, so, argument may also bifurcate to the same options.

I.e., the term argument could be used to refer to the establishment by whatever means, so long as it falls under reason (and not, e.g., superstition or dogma)

It is my preference to use ‘logic’ for this umbrella notion of argument and then classify logic according to fact vs inference and likely vs certain, however, I continue to use ‘argument’ so as not to overload convention.

An example: logic from ordinary language

Comment 3. It is a project to clarify and make precise the content of this section and to also consider predicate calculi.

Some fundamental laws of logic are

1. The law of identity—each thing is identical to itself, expressed A º A, or that a proposition implies itself. The law has exceptions if A is insufficiently well defined. Thus “it is raining is” the same as “it is raining”, which as we have seen requires it to be specific as to location (and time) and thus the law of identity is not universal.

2. The law of noncontradiction, encountered earlier, that a proposition cannot be both true and false. It was implied earlier that logic follows from relationships among concepts; thus “it is raining” and “it is not raining” cannot apply to the same object and are therefore mutually exclusive. However, as seen earlier, for the law to hold, the proposition must be sufficiently specific.

3. The law of the excluded middle—every proposition is true or false, i.e., there is no third option. Without sufficient discrimination, it is possible for propositions to have some third, e.g., intermediate, truth value or no truth value at all”, for example, “on a nonexistent planet neither true nor false that it is raining”.

These ‘laws of logic’ are fundamental to standard logical systems but do not obtain in some nonstandard but useful systems; an example, suggested by “it is raining and it is not raining”, is a system of nonstandard logic for contexts in which some propositions are both true and false (e.g., systems in which such propositions are both, a third truth value ‘b’, and thus, in the system, neither ‘t’ nor ‘f’ (true or false).

It is clear that for these ‘laws’, often thought absolute, especially in the past, to obtain, the language being used must be sufficiently precise and if that precision obtains, the laws are trivially true.

Standard logics

What we call standard logics here are those for which the fundamental laws obtain, especially the propositional and first order predicate calculi (the syllogisms fall here too).

In the propositional calculus, there are propositions or statements, which are one of t or f. There are truth functions. An example is negation. If A is a proposition, its negation, written, ~A, –A (preferred for compound statements), not A, or Ā (preferred). The negation of a statement is false if the statement is true and true if the statement is false. A second truth function is conjunction—if A and B are propositions, AÚB is the proposition ‘A and B’, such that it is true if and only if A and B are true. A third truth function, alternation, AÙB, ‘A or B’ such that it is true if and only if at least one of A and B are true (note this is the ‘logical or’, which is different from ‘or’ as it is usually used in English in which one and only one of the propositions true).

These functions are called truth functions because their truth value by and only by the truth values of their components (there is just one component for negation and two for each of conjunction and alternation).

The propositional calculus, concerns compound truth functions of propositions. It turns out that all truth functions can be expressed in terms of negation and conjunction or, alternative, in terms of negation and alternation (it further turns out that a single elementary truth function, e.g., the ‘Sheffer stoke’ is sufficient).

The essential question here is the requirements on language for the machinery of the propositional calculus to hold. It is first, that we are not concerned with non-logical ‘variables’, such as in mathematics. Second, we are concerned with propositions and their combinations but not in the inner structure of a system of non-compound propositions. Third, the propositions must be either true or false, but not both. Finally, there must be some non-compound propositions.

The arc of The Way of being

Its parts

The introduction explained what The Way of Being (TWB) is, its foundation, and its range. It has motivated TWB and outlines origins, personal and in world culture.

Recall that “The aim of The Way of Being is the shared discovery and realization of the ultimate—arising in, oriented toward, and expressed from our world”.

Discovery and realization will be based in (i) a phase that emphasizes knowledge, conceptual experiment, and criticism (ii) a phase that emphasizes being in the world and active directed at both the quality of the world as well as experiential and physical action toward the ultimate. These phases are of course intertwined.

These two phases are addressed in Part 2. An account of the world (Part 3. Knowledge / world extends Part 2 in the direction of fundamentality and completeness but covers material that is of lesser importance to the pathways) and Part 4. Pathways.

The final part, Part 5. Return, is a short account of what I will do, what readers may do, after having developed, lived with, or absorbed ‘The Way’.

Summary

The arc of The Way of being is: Into the way – Foundation (the account of the world) – Realization (the pathways) – Return.

Part 2. An account of the world

Definitions

Comment 1.Change to definitions and main consequences? Review and minimize.

Notation for the axiomatic system

Preliminary

The system is not an abstract one. Since the metaphysics flows from what is given and is of all being, the fundamental axiomatic like truths are not merely postulated. Basic truths are given and may be specified directly or via definitions. Where definition does not guarantee truth or existence of the object, proof will be given.

The function of the axiomatic form is not that it has advantages of organization and clarity over alternatives, not that it is fundamentally superior.

The notation

Definition 1. The numbered list style for formal definitions. Defined terms are in small capitals. (Material in brackets or {bracketed indented items just below the definition} and other style elements below is informal elaboration or commentary. There is a difference between the present semantic system and syntactic axiomatic systems—here the definitions indicate existing objects and where this is not transparent, it is demonstrated).

Definition. This unnumbered style is for informal, preliminary, alternative, and earlier versions of definitions, or definitions repeated for convenience. A similar style may be used for other significant elements of the development.

Axiom 1. Numbered style for axioms.

{Auxiliary element, which supplements definitions and other elements.}

Truth 1. Numbered style for especially important truths (e.g., conceptually pivotal, existential), foundational (axiom, postulate) or derived.

Assertion 1. Numbered style for assertions.

The notation: supplement

The following may be introduced later.

Postulate 1. Numbered style for postulates.

Consequence 1. Numbered style for derived results (truths) of some significance. Derived truths of lesser importance are stated without numbering.

Premise 1. A premise or system of premises is the basis of a special consequence or system of consequences.

Conditions. Premises for specific systems of consequences that may be questionable.

The definitions

The definitions are in the main development. For convenience, they are collected together here.

Comment 2. Enhance the following to include Assertion, Auxiliary element, Axiom, Postulate, and Truth? And more?

Definition 3. When an appearance that seems to be of something, is indeed of the intended thing, e.g., is known to be neither fictional nor merely illusory, it is real (here, in ‘something’, ‘thing’ is entirely general and not restricted to entity, process, relation, property or other such kinds); otherwise, it is as-if (or as-if real, i.e., of unknown status, or at least partial illusion or fiction).

Definition 4. Experience is awareness in all kinds, forms, and levels (this definition, which includes consciousness, is extended later, not nominally, but as a consequence of the nature of the real).

Truth 1. That there is experience is known in that there is experience of experience. The objection that experience of experience may be illusory, is resolved in that illusion is experiential.

Definition 5. Choice is selection of thought or action from among real options.

Truth 2. Experience includes consciousness, receptive and active modes including choice and agency (defined later); it has quality, intensity, and form – emotion and cognition with choice.

Definition 6. The idea of an object is that it may be either real (e.g., the table in my living room) or as-if real (e.g., fictional as in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street, London; Sherlock Holmes is an object in that, although ‘he’ is not real, we can talk of ‘him’ as if he were real, and he may seem real in our imagination; note that while there is a ‘mental object’, that object is the concept, and it is not the as-if object).

Definition 7. The structure of an experience is concept – relation – object, or, in detail, (i) a concept, an experience as-if of (this as-if is there only because the object that follows may be as-if: that there is an experience is given) (ii) its intentional relation, the experiential relation, to (iii) an object or as-if experienced (the problem of ‘as-if’, i.e., of appearance vs reality is noted; however, it is effective to allow its address to emerge with the development). A referential concept is a concept that has an intended object. In pure experience an object is absent because it is unintended, potential, or otherwise not attached to or detached from the experience—pure experience is entirely conceptual.

Definition 8. A definition is a conceptual specification (note that when the terms ‘is’ and ‘are’ are used in defining concepts, they may be but are not necessary temporal or concerning a particular place).

Definition 9. Abstraction is removal from a concept of all detail that may be subject to distortion or error (it is via abstraction that we know that there is experience itself and that there are being and real beings, e.g., experiential beings, and in terms of later definitions, the universe, the void, laws, logic, and metaphysics).

Definition 10. Perfect faithfulness of knowledge is perfect depiction as congruence of the forms of concept and (real) object so that truth and certainty have meaning and can be asserted (thus defined, perfect faithfulness is significant to the development of the metaphysics of TWB; and one source of perfect faithfulness is abstraction and important examples are given beginning with experience above and continuing with ‘being’ and related concepts below).

Informal commentary. In earlier versions of the work, being was introduced as existence, without defining existence, and without reference to the essential role of experience in existence and beinghood. What is that role? It is that without a concept, there is no being corresponding to a mere system of signs, but there may seem to be a being due to the implicit presence of a concept. This may be put “no concept, no being”. The deficit thinking in the earlier definitions is now remedied.

Definition 11. An existent is the real object of a referential concept; the plural of ‘an existent’ is existents. Existence is the property of existents as existents.

Definition 12. A being is the real object of a referential concept; the plural of ‘a being’ is beings. Being is the property of being as beings (while ‘being’ and ‘beings’ are conceptually distinct and being is not a being, with sufficient abstraction, the distinction vanishes).

Truth 3. While definition does not imply existence, there is being and there are beings (this conclusion is sound).

Truth 4. There is no being without the depictive or iconic concept (the linguistic sign without the associated icon is an empty label). In abstraction, the concept is implicit. A being is known as a being via its conception. Concepts are beings, as are concepts of a concept-being. The general being is a concept-being; the general object is the concept-object. Thus there is no essential distinction between objects and being. There is no being that is not known or not knowable.

Definition 13. If the object is a being, it is said, as already noted, to exist; otherwise it is said to not exist, i.e., to be nonexistent (and thus the conception of an object as concept-object, trivially resolves the problem of nonexistent objects or beings and provides one conception of nonbeing).

Definition 14. When we want to refer to the depth of being or of a being, e.g., that of our being relative to our intellect, we will use the hyphenated forms be-ing and a be-ing (plural be-ings).

Definition 15. Society is a group of beings with institutions that promote their identity and well-being. Culture (in the words of EB Tylor) is “that complex whole which includes knowledge (including development, dissemination, and education), belief, art, morals, law, custom, institutions (government, economic, technological, military, and political), and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (additions and changes to Tylor’s definition have been italicized).

Definition 16. We are accidental in that our immediate sense of why we have be-ing and what that be-ing is or may be is opaque to us (to what extent the opaqueness is absolute has emergence in the development).

Definition 17. Significant meaning and value are is whatever give be-ings the sense that they are more than mere accidents (though it is not emphasized, negative meaning would be what gives the sense of being less than a mere accident); it lies in the quality and form of their experience.

Definition 18. The sense of beauty or the beautiful is a joint emotive-cognitive sense of what gives beings pleasure to perceive or contemplate, with an emphasis on durability or permanence in time (and across ‘subjects’) of that sense. Objects and beings that are a source of the sense of beauty are beautiful.

Definition 19. The Intrinsic good or primary good is that which improves significant meaning of experiential (human) beings (particularly their well-being and community, safety, and security, their projects, the life well-lived and what it is to live well, the sense of the beautiful, what it is to live well, and culture as a way of expression). Right choice and action are those which promote intrinsic goodness.

Definition 20. Secondary goodness (is not experientially intrinsic but) promotes intrinsic goodness; the secondary good includes culture as a system of institutions and social arrangements (society itself, economic and political arrangements, and technology).

Definition 21. To be ethical is to choose thought and action that promotes what is good (here, there is no rejection of systematic ethics, but the personal is emphasized in interaction with the systematic and the large scale). Ethics is study, systematic and other, of what thought and action are ethical (ethics is not primarily about the abstract good or right). Metaethics is about the nature of ethics and ethical judgement (but as topic in itself is not particularly important in this work). (While ethics is often studied for its normative side “what we should do and so on”, and the associated discipline is named ‘normative ethics’, analysis of the meaning of ‘ethics’ in terms of word-concept-object, we will find that normative and metaethics are bound as one – two sides of a coin). Applied ethics is about what is ethical in concrete situations and institutions (it is currently, in 2026, a broad subject and some examples are taken up in this work; also note that applied ethics gives ethics flesh and ethics gives applied ethics structure, so while their independent study is important, so is their joint and perhaps dialectic analysis).

Definition 22. Government is group decision making and its institutions for decision and implementation. A foundation government in a fundamental value of experiential being in small and large scale choice may be called democracy, especially liberal democracy (as explained, just below), which is democracy with (institutional) protection for all beings and groups as far as not dedicated to destructive ends.

Truth 5. Thus, liberal democracy has secondary goodness (in this sense, the idea behind democracy is close to intrinsic goodness and is not just as one of many possible systems of government – it is not a system of government at all, but functions as a principle for systems which is derived from fundamentals; this conception is effective in that under it, the instrumental effectiveness of democracy is a practical rather than conceptual or ideological concern).

Definition 23. There is a range of sophistication (self-reflection, criticism, and creativity) in the use of language and experience. Ordinary experience, ordinary language, ordinary reason, and ordinary knowledge, though not unsophisticated, lie in a region on a spectrum toward the everyday, and away from institutional, specialist, academic and standards setting uses.

Definition 24. (The following repeats some material from the earlier definition on the structure of experience.) A concept is a mental content. A referential concept is a concept in referential form, i.e., a concept that is intended to refer to an object, real or fictitious. The association of a sign (elementary or compound, where the structure of a compound sign may reflect the structure of the object) with a concept constitutes a linguistic concept. The meaning, conceptual or linguistic, of a referential concept is the concept and its possible references (objects) in use (this constitutes a three part meaning of meaning as sign – concept – object). Knowledge is meaning realized.

Truth 6. The three part meaning of meaning as in The Meaning of Meaning, by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, has necessity in that signs devoid of even indirect iconic content cannot refer. It has necessity in that none of sign, concept, and object can be eliminated if there is to be meaning at all; and sufficiency so far shared signs have common associations. Though it does not exhaust an understanding of meaning, it is effective in this development. Its virtues include that (i) confusion in search for meaning of a vaguely understood term may be resolved by seeing the search as in a sign – concept – object space, suggested by H.A. Simon’s notion of search in a dual space of concept and object, and (ii) it can neatly resolve the problem of negative existentials (see Nonexistent Objects – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a definition of the problem) via the earlier definition of a nonexistent object (or nonbeing).

Definition 25. The intension of a concept specifies the nature of the term, e.g., in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (specifying the intension does not imply that the concept has objects). The extension or range of a concept specifies to what real objects the concept refers.

Definition 26. A fact is a true assertion (knowledge is factual; it concerns the way the world is – the way things are, where ‘is’ and ‘are’ may be but are not necessarily temporal; an aspect of meaning is that facts have structure which is determined by the kinds of unit signs such as signs for entities and properties, and their relations as determined by formal and informal grammar).

Definition 27. Knowledge or belief are true and certain when it is indubitable that their content corresponds to the fact(s) to which they are intended to refer (notes—some accounts of knowledge do not require absolute certainty; while certainty is desirable in some endeavors, it may not be the case that it is always desirable, e.g., to base action on it; though correspondence is not the only ‘theory’ of truth, it is, as will be seen, adequate to the needs of TWB; finally, a more comprehensive account of knowledge, one that takes into account the developments for TWB, is presented in, knowledge / world under development in longer versions of this work)

Definition 28. Discovery is a creative phase of knowledge acquisition (though significant to TWB, it is not the focus of this discussion of knowledge and argument, which is amplified later; however, it crucial to ultimate—human—endeavor and knowledge, for it is unlikely that all is known regarding knowledge acquisition and negotiation of the world; thus, we cannot afford to rely only on established or certified means of argument and ought to be open to ‘what works’ and to discovery, not just of ‘things’ but also of means or method).

Definition 29. An argument is establishment of fact (to argue is to establish a fact; here we consider only argument in itself rather than kinds of argument specific to restricted fields of inquiry; note that this definition is related but not identical to common conceptions of ‘argument’; the elements of argument are direct establishment of fact and indirect establishment, or inference of a fact or conclusion from an established fact or premise;).

Definition 30. An argument is certain when it establishes that the conclusion is certain and likely when it is thought to be likely according an accepted kind of inference and degree of likelihood.

Definition 31. Direct argument is direct establishment of a fact (by observation including measurement, which may be contingently precise or imprecise, and, which may, in some cases, be necessary).

Truth 7. In direct argument certainty is possible via relaxation of precision and by abstraction. Some facts are intrinsic in that their truth is necessary (e.g., that there is experience or, equivalently, that experience has being; a later example is necessity of existence of the void and its consequence that the universe realizes all possibility in the greatest sense of possibility).

Definition 32. Inference is valid conclusion of entities in fact form and called conclusions from other such entities called premises, such that if the premises have truth (facticity), then so do the conclusions.

Definition 33. In indirect argument, conclusions are established in two stages (i) direct establishment of premises (ii) inference from premises to conclusions (which gives strength to the claim of truth for the conclusions as elaborated below).

Definition 34. In certain inference, if the premises, P, are true, the conclusions, C, are certainly true (abbreviated: if P, then C, or P ® C).

Definition 35. Deduction is certain inference from premises to conclusions which is stepwise via laws of logic (its power lies in that it is explicit and open to inspection, and, given logic, the conclusions are implicit in the premises; also note that some basic modes of deduction are the propositional and predicate calculi and a range of extended and variant logics, which, of course, are not asserted to exhaust the possibilities of deductive inference; note, further, that this does not eliminate the possibility of non-explicit certain inference as in, intuited and received results).

Definition 36. In intrinsic inference, the conclusion is established without recourse to premises (this is related and, at least in some cases, maybe identical to intrinsic fact; though intrinsic inference may seem absurd or counter-foundational, there are examples, e.g., that there is experience and a later one will be the equivalence of existence and nonexistence for nothingness which will also be called ‘the void’).

Definition 37. In likely inference (or reasonable inference), if the premises are true, or likely to be true, the conclusions are also likely to be true (examples of sources of sub-certainty include, first, that the conclusions are ampliative – also defined below – i.e., contain information not present in the premises, or that the reasoning is ‘rough’ in some sense).

Definition 38. In induction, some observations of instances and regularities, are generalized or lead to general principles. Abduction is argument to the best explanation (and is significant in science). In inference by analogy, if two systems are similar in some ways, similarity in some other ways is concluded. (That these are recognized modes of likely inference does not eliminate the possibility that intuited and received results could be likely).

Definition 39. When inference is in more than one step, it may be of the following form: given A ® B and B ® C, then A ® C. This is transitivity of inference, which guarantees the validity of ‘long’ proofs in deductive logic (however, transitivity of inference, even if it has meaning, may not obtain in likely inference).

Definition 40. An argument is valid if the conclusion certainly follows from the premise (a standard approach is step-by-step, via rules of deduction). A valid argument is sound if the premise is true (significant sound arguments are identified, sometimes with just the word ‘sound’). A necessary argument is a certain inference from the empty fact (an important example will be given).

Definition 41. In the less than certain case, the argument is good if the conclusion likely follows (e.g., with pragmatic certainty) from the premise. A good argument is strong if the argument and premise are likely enough that the conclusion is likely (significant and strong arguments are identified as strong; in absence of such an identifier, the argument is regarded as at least reasonable).

Definition 42. An argument is nonampliative if the conclusions are explicitly or tacitly (e.g., via relations between meanings) already present in the premises (thus deductive inference in mathematics results in theorems that are already at least implicit in the axioms and postulates). In ampliative argument, the conclusions contain essentially new factual material, i.e., material that is not tacit in the premises.

Definition 43. The universe is all being (meaning all beings as a being; used in this bare sense, the term is ‘universe’; later when it is shown that the universe is limitless, has identity, and confers this power on all beings, ‘Universe’ will be used to refer to “the universe and all beings and their collective identity”).

Truth 8. There is exactly one universe; all (real) beings and (real) kinds are parts of it (sound, from the definition of ‘universe’). What we sometimes call ‘our universe’ or ‘other universes’ is an inappropriate use of the word ‘universe’; instead we shall use the term ‘cosmos’ (below).

Definition 44. A cosmos is a causal domain in whose interactions with the rest of universe over the times of concern, are below the threshold of observation including measurement.

Truth 9. Our cosmos exists (it is a being; later it is found that there are limitlessly many cosmoses of limitless variety).

Definition 45. A pattern obtains for a being if the information to specify it is less than the raw information.

Definition 46. A law for a being is (our reading of) a pattern (usually of a degree of general applicability and for one or more cosmoses, typically abstract in nature).

Truth 10. Laws are beings.

Definition 47. The void is the being that contains no beings (if it exists, it is an empty being and it contains no laws; that we talk of the void, as if there is just one, is justified later).

Truth 11. The void exists (this was proven earlier; the earlier demonstration is repeated, which is followed by two further demonstrations, one significance of which is the address of doubt).

Truth 12. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Truth 13. There are no laws of the void (sound, from definitions).

Definition 48. A being that is not the void is manifest.

Definition 49. Metaphysics is knowledge and study of the real.

Definition 50. Given a concept of a being (entity, event, …), it is possible if nothing rules out its realization (existence).

Definition 51. If a concept cannot be realized because of its form alone, e.g., an object that is both black and not black, it is impossible in the sense of conceptual impossibility (or logical impossibility).

Definition 52. A being whose existence is not ruled out by the concept alone defines conceptual possibility (‘c-possibility) or logical possibility (‘L-possibility), sometimes called subjective possibility (because it is thinkable without contradiction).

Definition 53. A maximally expressive language is one that would be capable of describing all logical possibility (note that this does not imply that such a language exists, even if language in discrete signs is enhanced to include the perceivable state of the communicator).

Definition 54. Logical possibility is the boundary of the greatest possibility in the sense that, presuming logic(s) for a maximally expressive language, the being has realized logical possibility has realized all that can be realized.

Definition 55. Limitlessness for a being is realization of the possible (and, optionally, the impossible—because it explicitly includes the void among the limitless but makes no difference for manifest being). A being that realizes the greatest possibility is limitless (sound, from the concept of limitlessness).

Definition 56. If a logically possible being (one whose conception is logically possible) cannot be realized in a world because its form is incompatible with the form of that world, it is impossible in a world, w; if it can be realized there it has possibility in that world, or w-possibility; if that world is the universe, the possibility is u-possibility, i.e., just possibility (other terms for ‘just possibility’ are real possibility, global possibility, ontological possibility; other terms for w-possibility, where ‘w’ is not the universe, are local possibility or relatively real possibility, of which an example is physical possibility—possibility in terms of known physical laws, which may be imperfect; note that these meanings are not universal).

Truth 14. To be possible in a world, it is necessary that the being shall be logically possible. Therefore, L-possibility bounds w-possibility for all worlds as well as u-possibility; that is the concept of L-possibility is the greatest or the most inclusive possibility.

Truth 15. All L-possibility emerges from the void. That is, u- and L-possibilities are identical in range. That is, the universe is limitless—the realization of the greatest possibility (this is named ‘the fundamental principle of metaphysics’: fp).

Definition 57. A being that is not possible is impossible.

Definition 58. A being whose nonbeing (nonexistence) is impossible is necessary.

Definition 59. A fundamental cause is itself without cause.

Truth 16. We now see that the cause of the Scotus Universe can only be necessity and the fundamental principle confirms that this can indeed be seen to be the cause of the (Scotus) universe.

Truth 17. If from the void the greatest possibility did not emerge, that would be (constitute) a law of the void. Therefore, all logical possibility is emerges from or is necessarily equivalent to the void. That is, the logical and real possibilities are, in fact, the same, even though the conceptions are (at least seemingly) different. Since there has been no assumption in making this conclusion, absolute necessity is the cause of the universe (sound, given existence of the void).

Truth 18. The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility (this is the fundamental principle of metaphysics, abbreviated fp).

Truth 19. The universe—equivalently, the void—confers greatest possibility on all beings (for otherwise there would be a limit on the universe; also sound).

Truth 20. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Truth 21. The universe has identity (given limitlessness in the sense defined above, this and the remaining conclusions in this section, ‘all beings’, are sound).

Truth 22. The universe and its identity are limitless in extension, duration, variety, peaking of being and dissolution; it contains cosmoses without limit to kind and number. Every cosmos is as-if an atom in another and every cosmos contains as-if atoms that are cosmoses.

Truth 23. All beings inherit the limitlessness of the universe—they realize peak being (this can also be derived from the fact that a being and the being-and-the-void are identical). The realization of peaks by all beings is not a contradiction, for they merge as one in the peaks.

Truth 24. Birth and death are real—and this is not a contradiction, for, though real, they and death are not absolute. Beings have limited form on limited scales but on death they diffuse into the background, from which they emerge on birth.

Truth 25. It is in higher forms that we see across the multitude of forms that do not seem to communicate with one another (while we are in limited form and do not see that we can see and therefore do not attempt to do so). Knowledge of our limitlessness is revealed in higher forms, but not only their—there may be communication among lower forms via peak being; communication across the void equivalent of peaks is to be examined.

Truth 26. From the limitlessness of beings as well as from the void, the identity of all being is present in both the extended distribution of being as well as in an instant; yet, in our limited experience and local time and its perception, this instant encompasses lifetimes – lifetimes of individuals, cosmoses, and cosmoses of cosmoses (and so on). We are both limited and limitless. While there may be eternities and infinities of extension between lower manifestations of a being, those limitlessnesses are experienced as no more than a point.

Truth 27. There are paths in, for, and from this world to the ultimate (a careful specification of paths is given later).

Truth 28. In most received senses of ‘perfection’ there is no final perfection. Pain, doubt, and pleasure are inevitable. Effective attitudes toward perfection, pleasure, pain, and doubt, are in sharing, mutual support, and pleasure in being on a path of realization, addressed further in pathways.

Truth 29. The cause of the manifest universe is necessity (sound).

Truth 30. There is effectively one void (the number of voids presumed to exist has no relevance to the real). The void is the empty being (sound).

Definition 60. Limitlessness defines a perfect and ideal metaphysics (the perfection is in the sense of perfect faithfulness of the metaphysics as concept to the universe as object, which follows from fp, is illustrated above, and whose developed into full-fledged account of being, the universe, its beings, and their changes, in what follows).

Definition 61. When the ideal metaphysics is adjoined to at least pragmatically valid knowledge, what results is named the real metaphysics (TM)or just the metaphysics.

Truth 31. Though TM is not perfectly faithful in entirety, the framework remains faithful. Further, it is the best that limited (human) beings have, and as a practical instrument toward ultimate knowledge and realization, it is perfect relative to the value of realization. TM is a dynamic unity, for the ideal side illuminates and guides the pragmatic while the pragmatic illustrates and is an instrument for the ideal. That is, the criterion for TM is dual—epistemic perfection and valuational (ethical and aesthetic).

Definition 62. By metaphysical possibility, we understand (i) ‘what may occur under a system of metaphysics’ or (ii) what may occur under conditions of realism, e.g., whether an unembodied mind is possible.

Definition 63. A robust world or cosmos is one that is significant because it has an adequate combination of endurance in time, beings capable of cognitive experience, and causal ability to register in experience. By contrast, a bizarre world, is transient, does not register significantly in the experience of experiential beings. And a bizarre explanation is a non-standard ‘explanation’ of the existence of a robust world that seems to rob it of significance, e.g., that our world came into existence a moment ago complete with apparent history and memories.

Truth 32. Though possible, bizarre worlds and bizarre explanations are real but seemingly of limited significance and probability.

Truth 33. Yet the fact of bizarrely created worlds have the significance that even if our world is non-bizarre (robust as defined below), it may meaningfully but bizarrely transform to other very different but robust worlds.

Truth 34. In the robustness of our world we are part of peak process – on the way to peaking – for a robust concept of ‘god’ is a process and peaking that is the world or worlds and is neither alien in kind nor remote in extension and duration, i.e., space and time (a strong conclusion).

Definition 64. The range of possibility is the range of whatever satisfies the space of logics (and while this is of conceptual interest, it is of especial interest to extract from this what is relevant to be-ing).

Definition 65. The significant universe is the universe that has relevance to beings for more than transience (this is both somewhat hypothetical and vague, but needs to be said; it is especially hypothetical that it is accessible from our cosmos or that must have relevance to at least robust beings with more than ‘transient’ existence—that it does or cannot pertain to bizarre worlds).

Definition 66. Certainty is absolute agreement of concept and referent (it is obtained in some axiomatic systems, and, as seen earlier, with sufficient abstraction, or when the object-referent space is allowed sufficient imprecision).

Definition 67. To doubt is to question what is accepted as or potentially true including reasons for the acceptance.

Definition 68. Experience is awareness in all its kinds and levels, extended to all being, i.e., to the hierarchy of being from the void to peak of being (this is the promised extension of the earlier definition of experience, which is justified below, with some repetition of earlier material).

Truth 35. The universe is an experiential field which does (must) extend to the root of being (the void), where primitive ‘experience’ is the primitive even though not ‘like’ our experientiality or higher forms.

Truth 36. There is experience, for it is in and only in it that there is awareness (and even if that is illusory, illusion is experience).

Truth 37. We are experiential beings.

Definition 69. An as-if kind (e.g., substance) is one that is not derived from being for all being but is one that may be treated as a kind for some regions of the universe, e.g., a cosmos, for some purposes.

Truth 38. The form of experience as we experience it is experience-of (subjective, as-if mental) – the-experience (being – as justified below, relation, interaction) – the experienced object (which includes what may be called as-if material). In ‘pure experience’, the object is null (but there is a potential object).

Definition 70. Agency is the ability to choose and create futures from given or conceived possibilities.

Truth 39. The world is an object of experience and includes experience.

Truth 40. The universe (being) is (effectively) experiential (this and the earlier statement about the world are consistent).

Truth 41. The form of experience suggests and the real metaphysics (all beings interact) confirms that experience is relational and this is what is meant when we affirm that the universe is a (relational) field of experience.

Truth 42. The general form of the being (or existent or object) is the conject or concept-relation-object.

Definition 71. The most primitive experiential aspect of (experiential) being is that of (sense of) sameness and difference. Emergence and experiencing imply change (and so duration and a concept of time). Identity is (sense of) sameness over duration or change. Extension (and so displacement and a concept of space) is measure of difference across identities; and the further characteristics of identities are (further) properties, i.e., qualities and form (this approach synthesizes instrumental and immersive approaches to identity, extension, and duration).

Definition 72. The most primitive experiential aspect of (experiential) being is that of (sense of) sameness and difference. Primitive identity is enduring (sense of) sameness associated with an experiencer (self) or experienced (object). Change (and so duration, whose measure is time) is difference for a given identity. Extension (and so displacement whose measure is space) is marked by difference across identities; and the further characteristics of identities are (further) properties, i.e., qualities and form (this approach synthesizes instrumental and immersive approaches to identity, extension, and duration).

To be ethical is to choose thought and action that promotes what is good (here, there is no rejection of systematic ethics, but the personal is emphasized in interaction with the systematic and the large scale). Ethics is study, systematic and other, of what thought and action are ethical (ethics is not primarily about the abstract good or right). Metaethics is about the nature of ethics and ethical judgement (but as topic in itself is not particularly important in this work). (While ethics is often studied for its normative side “what we should do and so on”, and the associated discipline is named ‘normative ethics’, analysis of the meaning of ‘ethics’ in terms of word-concept-object, we will find that normative and metaethics are bound as one – two sides of a coin). Applied ethics is about what is ethical in concrete situations and institutions (it is currently, in 2026, a broad subject and some examples are taken up in this work; also note that applied ethics gives ethics flesh and ethics gives applied ethics structure, so while their independent study is important, so is their joint and perhaps dialectic analysis).

Definition 73. Meaning (in the sense suggested by ‘the meaning of life’) is whatever synthesis of thinking, reflecting, feeling, acting, sharing, doing that makes life not just worthwhile, but ultimately rewarding—for individuals, humankind, and being. It includes considerations of value, particularly ethics (for individuals, society, and institutions) and aesthetics (particularly beauty as way of and motive to inspired living).

The intrinsic or primary good emphasizes (improvement of) quality, intensity, and form of experience (receptive and active, of experiential beings).

Definition 74. Where choice (i.e., of thought or action from among real options) is possible, it is right to choose thought and action that promote (intrinsic) goodness.

Ethics is right choice in light of what is good; in simple terms, metaethics is the study of ethics.

Bodily integrity, culture (which includes knowledge, belief, and art), economic and political arrangements and technology are secondarily good—have secondary goodness—as far as they promote goodness.

Definition 75. A category is a valid form of fact—or aspect of such a form—at some level of abstraction or generality (and facts are neither concepts nor objects but concept-objects).

Definition 76. A categorial system is (i) a complete system of categories at a given level of abstraction (it is not possible for limited beings to develop complete systems at all levels), enhanced by patterns (limited data sets for the level that capture the whole) and constitute understanding and enable projection (e.g., across space and time) or (ii) a complete system of categories at all levels.

Definition 77. A paradigm or dynamic (as the term is used in this work) is system of understanding for a class of beings (up to all being), which includes methods of argument and means of transformation such as technology—particularly technology of exploration, being, and intelligence—and unition or yoga (defined below).

Definition 78. A categorial metaphysics is a synthesis of categorial systems at a comprehensive range of levels that constitute effective understanding (organization of low-level cognition into coherent and valid knowledge via the categorial means to do so) of the universe and enable effective action and negotiation in and of it. It therefore includes paradigms and dynamics. Particularly, the lower levels include the sciences.

A guiding idea. As authority is relative—we seek to forge a shared way as a source of pleasure, not in avoidance of pain (except for healthy therapy), beginning in and for the immediate world, and seeking understanding and realization of the ultimate.

Definition 79. A pathway is way of experience, reflection, and action, leading to experience and realization of the ultimate in the immediate world or beyond (and it is a given that the process and attention to concerns of this world are important)

Definition 1. Unition (yoga) is (i) the metaphysical insight of identity of all experiential beings, their as-if physical and psychic sides, local and ultimate (ii) an emerging system of knowledge and categories, practice, and action for ultimate realization that begins in (and for) the immediate, where realization may occur in the present but is more likely in the ultimate, i.e., across the patchwork of form and the void. It may be immersive and instrumental, individual, and cultural. It may select from any aspect of knowledge, culture, and experience according to what is found effective and efficient. Unification (yoking) is unition (yoga)-in-process-and-action.

Truth 43. We are the ultimate even – especially – when we do not see it. Our work, if we choose it, is to see and realize the ultimate in sharing, while attending to immediate ground, informed by our new understanding.

Definition 2. Return signifies a focus on the world that is freshened by a new point of view. The focus is an ongoing ‘conversation’ between reflection, ideas, sharing and publication; the world and the ultimate; and action and realization.

Being

Experience and being

Truth 1. That there is experience is known in that there is experience of experience. The objection that experience of experience may be illusory, is resolved in that illusion is experiential.

Definition 5. Choice is selection of thought or action from among real options.

Truth 2. Experience includes consciousness, receptive and active modes including choice and agency (defined later); it has quality, intensity, and form – emotion and cognition with choice.

Assertion 8. Thus, all real objects are objects but not all objects are real.

Definition 11. An existent is the real object of a referential concept; the plural of ‘an existent’ is existents. Existence is the property of existents as existents.

Truth 3. While definition does not imply existence, there is being and there are beings (this conclusion is sound).

Assertion 9. A reason objects are sometimes introduced as different from beings is that we are then able to talk about possible objects, necessary objects, and nonexistent objects. However, we have just seen is that being, existence, and object-hood are essentially are identical, and therefore we do not really need the concept of an object. Thus, we can consistently talk about possible beings, necessary, beings, and nonexistent beings (or objects or existents).

Assertion 10. However, we may continue to use ‘being’, ‘existence’, and ‘objecthood’, for the differences in connotation—being suggests richness, existence suggests bare existence, and objecthood suggests both existence and nonexistence.

Definition 14. When we want to refer to the depth of being or of a being, e.g., that of our being relative to our intellect, we will use the hyphenated forms be-ing and a be-ing (plural be-ings).

Significant me aning and value

‘Meaning’ has two senses in this work. In this section it is ‘significant meaning’, as in the meaning of life or importance. The second sense is concept and linguistic meaning, which is implicit and could have been introduced above but is introduced later.

Assertion 11. Experience is the place, though not the sole source, of significant meaning and of our being. We are experiential beings. The being that does not register at least indirectly in some experience is effectively nonexistent (it is later seen that the word ‘effectively’ may be dropped; that the universe is experiential, where it is not necessary to use the term ‘effectively experiential’; and that such predication does not entail absence of material or mental qualities, real or as-if).

Assertion 12. A concern regarding the promotion of experiential beings is the balance between self- and group- interest. Where, in the movement of society, do we move – and want to move – toward? The problem arises in all societies, but it is a special concern in democracy.

Knowledge

The kind of knowledge considered here is factual, expressed as a statement and its establishment may be perception (‘direct’) or inference from established facts.

Language, concept meaning, and knowledge

Assertion 13. Ordinary language (and experience) is a ground for discovery, expression, and justification of knowledge as beginning framework for the formal development (which, though it begins with the ordinary, it does not presume it—the ordinary is improved upon in the formal development via precision of meaning of terms and reason via relations among terms). From the ‘ordinary’, via abstraction, we may arrive and precise meaning and knowledge and certain inference.

Assertion 14. There are other aspects to the concept of meaning, e.g., its stabilization in ‘use’, which are not excluded by the present meaning of meaning. An aspect of use, is that, generally, meanings are not final, but in-process. Thus, while we may think that a term such as ‘category’ in philosophy, is determined by historical example and analysis, and we talk as though there is a final concept, there is in fact not—for both concept and object(s) are – may be – in transition.

Assertion 15. Similarly, one view of logic is as a set of conditions on compound linguistic constructions for realizability, which is an aspect of meaning that may be labeled ‘holism’.

Discovery

Assertion 16. Establishment of tentative knowledge as knowledge requires selection, which is the subject of argument.

Argument

Definition 30. An argument is certain when it establishes that the conclusion is certain and likely when it is thought to be likely according an accepted kind of inference and degree of likelihood.

Direct argument

Definition 31. Direct argument is direct establishment of a fact (by observation including measurement, which may be contingently precise or imprecise, and, which may, in some cases, be necessary).

Assertion 17. Direct establishment is likely when doubt is low or accuracy is high. Precision may be confirmed by corroboration or theoretical agreement with other facts.

Indirect argument or inference from established fact

Certain inference

Definition 34. In certain inference, if the premises, P, are true, the conclusions, C, are certainly true (abbreviated: if P, then C, or P ® C).

Assertion 18. Sources of certainty are (i) precise reasoning, which is obtained as below in deduction and intrinsic inference (ii) that in such reasoning (though there may be exceptions), the conclusions contain only information that was at least implicitly present in the premises (they may seem to say more because the chain of connection is not transparent to beings with limited intellect – but would of course be transparent to a limitless being.)

Assertion 19. When the information in the conclusion is already at least implicit in the premise, the inference is called nonampliative, which is formally defined below. Certainty is a function of an argument being explicitly or implicitly nonampliative. Though certain inference is not ampliative, it may be effectively so when the a direct or indirect argument not obvious and even counter to received expectation.

Assertion 20. The certain inferences in this work include the intrinsic and the deductive.

Likely inference

Assertion 21. Such inference is typically more than a process from premise to conclusion but is seen as strengthened with buttressing information or inference and repeated confirmation. Further, the above modes (induction etc) may be used together and may be incomplete as modes of likely inference. Manifest patterns may perhaps be thought of as intrinsic and likely inference. The likely inferences in what follows are abductive and analogical.

Transitivity of inference

Assertion 22. Thus deduction is fundamentally different from likely inference, not just in reliability, but also in kind.

Argumentative strength

Both direct and inference indirect establishment can be certain; and both can be less than certain but good in terms of appropriate criteria or in restricted settings.

The certain case

The less than certain case

Ampliative vs nonampliative argument

Assertion 23. The standard reasons for (i) (to repeat) the certainty of deduction is that it is nonampliative (for an omniscient being, deduction would not be necessary for the chain of inference would be transparent to it) (ii) the noncertainty of likely inference is that it is ampliative (of course, the omniscient being would see all patterns and the limits of the regions in which they obtain).

What argument does

Assertion 24. Argument synthesizes (i) knowledge and its establishment, i.e., content and method, (ii) e.g., the sciences – abstract and concrete, and (iii) as will be established later, knowledge, inspiration, and value.

Summation

We have completed the argument that precise method and content flow from ordinary language and experience and that science and logic fall under one umbrella, ‘argument’.

We have also argued that knowledge and value interact such that there is a tradeoff between precision and value.

Where concepts are abstracted to perfection, there is no need for a tradeoff between knowledge and value. Otherwise, tradeoff may be necessary. Another way to look at the situation is to observe that knowledge and value are intertwined in their very conception. This way of looking at the situation is later developed into a true synthetic of knowledge and value—a synthetic rather than synthesis because, though the idea begins with synthesis, it is (seen as part of) the way the world is.

Thus, while one view of knowledge is as a discrete object, another is as continuous with being and becoming. Both views have validity but the latter includes the former as a special case and helps avoid errors of looking too much, from self-consciouness, at knowledge as an object in itself to be thought of as deficient if imprecise and as though precision has entirely independent meaning and value.

Beings

Source or study topic 1. Existence—https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/.

Source or study topic 2. Mereology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/).

Being and beings

The concepts of being and beings are introduced above in being. Here we take up beings that, via an ideal and abstract metaphysics, the IM, frame the real metaphysics, TM. Other beings, especially experiential, peak, and other cosmological beings are taken up later.

The universe and its contents

Assertion 25. It is critical that this allows the universe to be limitless, not just in extension and duration, but in the sense that what is realized is limited only by logic. Particularly, this is consistent with reason and the standard view of the universe from sciende.

Cosmoses

Definition 44. A cosmos is a causal domain in whose interactions with the rest of universe over the times of concern, are below the threshold of observation including measurement.

Truth 9. Our cosmos exists (it is a being; later it is found that there are limitlessly many cosmoses of limitless variety).

Laws

Definition 45. A pattern obtains for a being if the information to specify it is less than the raw information.

Definition 46. A law for a being is (our reading of) a pattern (usually of a degree of general applicability and for one or more cosmoses, typically abstract in nature).

Truth 10. Laws are beings.

The void and its existence

Definition 47. The void is the being that contains no beings (if it exists, it is an empty being and it contains no laws; that we talk of the void, as if there is just one, is justified later).

Assertion 26. That we talk of ‘the void’ rather than ‘a void’ is justified later.

Truth 11. The void exists (this was proven earlier; the earlier demonstration is repeated, which is followed by two further demonstrations, one significance of which is the address of doubt).

Existence of the void – Demonstration 1. The existence and nonexistence of the void are equivalent, therefore the void may be taken to exist.

Assertion 27. That the void exists and does not exist is a seeming contradiction. That it is not a contradiction, is addressed in doubt and dialetheia.

Existence of the void – Demonstration 2. Assume the void does not exist. This implies that the universe is eternal and in eternity, give that there is at least one possibility (our world), by symmetry all possibilities occur and so the void must exist.

Existence of the void – Demonstration 3. The universe and the void are eternal. In eternity, the above symmetry argument goes through. Necessity is the ‘cause’ of the universe.

Truth 12. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Truth 13. There are no laws of the void (sound, from definitions).

Definition 48. A being that is not the void is manifest.

Metaphysics

Definition 49. Metaphysics is knowledge and study of the real.

Assertion 28. Though the possibility and meaning of metaphysics are seen as having openness, here we are demonstrating possibility (our metaphysics has been underway, beginning with experience and being). Further, it will emerge that traditional through modern metaphysics—the idea and the topics—have significant intersection this conception of metaphysics.

Possibility

The concept of possibility

Definition 50. Given a concept of a being (entity, event, …), it is possible if nothing rules out its realization (existence).

Conceptual or logical possibility

Assertion 29. If (the concept of) a being is not L-possible, it is not possible (at all).

Assertion 30. Infinities are not inherently limitless; the limitless is not inherently infinite, but it has or contains (all) infinities.

Real possibility

Assertion 31. L-possibility is a prerequisite for real possibility; real possibility presumes logical possibility.

Assertion 32. If from the void, a (logically) possible being did not emerge, that would be a law of the void.

Impossibility and necessity

Definition 57. A being that is not possible is impossible.

Definition 58. A being whose nonbeing (nonexistence) is impossible is necessary.

Cause and the cause of the universe

Assertion 33. Causation has many senses, even if we restrict it to the main modern use of (Aristotle’s ‘efficient cause’)—e.g., cause as based in origin (necessary, possible, probable, and random) or cause as reason for being (existence), again (necessary, etc.)

Definition 59. A fundamental cause is itself without cause.

Assertion 34. A being cannot be the fundamental cause of the universe for that would require the being to be without cause or infinite regress. Therefore, the only cause can be modal. However, since possibility is unsatisfactory, the only satisfactory cause of the universe would be necessity—which will be demonstrated to be the case.

Assertion 35. However, if such a cause is causation over time, it would seem to be contradicted that there is no necessity to a chain of events (generally) and therefore the fundamental cause of interest is cause of the universe over all time and space as a whole (or more generally over all coordinates of difference; which may be called the scotus universe, after the conception of Duns Scotus).

Truth 16. We now see that the cause of the Scotus Universe can only be necessity and the fundamental principle confirms that this can indeed be seen to be the cause of the (Scotus) universe.

The range of possibility

This discussion has been about the concept of possibility. The range of possibility, also of great interest, is best deferred till after the universe has been shown to be limitless and the concept of robust worlds has been developed.

Comment 3. Enter link to robust worlds above.

The limitless universe

The limitlessness of being and the universe

Assertion 36. This resolves (what Heidegger called) the fundamental problem of metaphysics, i.e., why there is being at all, i.e., why there is something rather than nothing.

Truth 18. The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility (this is the fundamental principle of metaphysics, abbreviated fp).

Truth 19. The universe—equivalently, the void—confers greatest possibility on all beings (for otherwise there would be a limit on the universe; also sound).

Alternative demonstrations of limitlessness

These demonstrations parallel the proofs of existence of the void. Reasons for their provision are (i) uncovering the ‘deep’ logic of the emerging metaphysics (ii) to address doubt.

Second demonstration (the first is above). Either the universe does not enter a void state or it does not. If not, it is eternal and, in eternity, given that at least one possibility obtains (our world), by symmetry all possibilities occur—which contradicts the premise that the universe does not enter the void state. Therefore, the universe enters the void state and the earlier demonstration goes through.

Third demonstration. The system of universe and the void are eternal. In eternity, the above symmetry argument goes through; necessity is the ‘cause’ of the universe.

Truth 20. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Assertion 37. This is a ‘logically satisfying conclusion for the possibilities of foundation are (i) another being (ii) regress (iii) possibility or necessity. However, there is no ‘other being’ and so foundation in a being would be self-foundation which is not a foundation at all. Further, regress and possibility (and probability) are less than satisfactory for they allow that the universe might not be manifest at all, which leaves necessity as the only satisfactory and demonstrated foundation (necessity could be seen as self-foundation).

Some significant consequences

Comment 4. Following is one core of a ‘center-out’ approach to presentation.

All beings

Truth 21. The universe has identity (given limitlessness in the sense defined above, this and the remaining conclusions in this section, ‘all beings’, are sound).

Truth 27. There are paths in, for, and from this world to the ultimate (a careful specification of paths is given later).

On perfection, pleasure, and pain

The universe

Truth 29. The cause of the manifest universe is necessity (sound).

Assertion 38. What is the edge of the known universe? It may have edges duration and extension. It also has edges having to do with strength of interaction; this edge is everywhere.

The void

Truth 30. There is effectively one void (the number of voids presumed to exist has no relevance to the real). The void is the empty being (sound).

Knowledge

Assertion 39. The limit of knowledge (i.e., for a limitless being) and of the universe are identical—of logical possibility.

Living in two worlds

Comment 5. Placement?

The two worlds

Assertion 40. Thus, we live in two worlds in the following sense. We live in the world of ‘ordinary’ experience (the big bang). But we also live in a larger world—the universe—which is real, which we do not necessarily see, but which we can know by rational thought.

Living in two worlds as one

A part of the difficulty of this view is the contrast between the two views. One may overcome this difficulty by (i) accepting the difficulty (ii) living with it (iii) becoming accustomed to it (iv) to the point where the two views merge and we no longer habitually resort to one or the other (v) living in light of the immediate and the ultimate as one as a guide to life in this world and life beyond death, birth, and finitude.

An ideal metaphysics

Assertion 41. In greater detail, from the perfection in the abstraction in the concept of being, there is a perfect and ideal metaphysics, a framework, summarized – the universe is the realization of the greatest possibility, which gives us an ultimate value, realization of the greatest possibility.

Real metaphysics

Definition 61. When the ideal metaphysics is adjoined to at least pragmatically valid knowledge, what results is named the real metaphysics (TM)or just the metaphysics.

Assertion 42. Alternatively, we may see metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory as an integral whole.

TM implies existence of all possibility and possible worlds which may have temporary but not permanent isolation. Are all possible worlds of the same significance? This is taken up in the sections on metaphysical possibility through the significant universe.

Metaphysical possibility

Assertion 43. If one accepts (say) physics as determining what is real, then the systems of metaphysical possibility #i and physical possibility are the same.

Assertion 44. Under TM the metaphysics, metaphysical possibility, logical possibility, and (metaphysical) reality are the same.

Assertion 45. The interest in metaphysical possibility #ii is that it distinguishes reasonable from the most inclusive possibility. In this work the topic has been explored, imaginatively and with input from world literature.

Assertion 46. Systematic development of reasonable possibility is an ongoing project.

Robust worlds

Truth 32. Though possible, bizarre worlds and bizarre explanations are real but seemingly of limited significance and probability.

The significant universe*

Comment 6. Also see the master version.

The range of possibility

Assertion 47. The extension of the range of possibility may be developed conceptually and computationally.

Source or study topic 3. Possible Worlds (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Source or study topic 4. Search the ‘space of logics’ and computational approaches thereof.

The significant universe

Doubt and certainty

On certainty

Assertion 48. It was observed in discussing argument, that certainty is not always possible; and we have seen that it is not always desirable (and this is amplified below).

Doubt and its use

Definition 67. To doubt is to question what is accepted as or potentially true including reasons for the acceptance.

Assertion 49. Doubt is a prerequiste to degree of certainty (whether absolute or not), and to seeing whether there are absolute foundations for knowledge and ground for being (this would be idle, were it not for the fact that we have developed such foundation and are in the process of developing ground).

General doubt

Assertion 50. Unquestioning certainty of any degree is a recipe for ignorance and error. Therefore, doubt is an essential phase of knowledge acquisition. Further, action under doubt is often an efficient existential stance.

The Way of Being: doubt

Assertion 51. Doubt in TWB arises (i) in the arguments, e.g., the existence and properties of the void (ii) the magnitude of the conclusions and imperative to question them (iii) and, as seen shortly, for the power of entertaining doubt relative to knowledge as hypothesis and existential stance.

The Way of Being: response to doubt

Assertion 52. The following, which are not fully exclusive, are effective options—

Assertion 53. As a preliminary, to note that in the development of TWB, it was doubt about the canons of human knowledge—method and content—that led to the emergence of, first, IM, and then TM, and their ongoing refinement.

Assertion 54. Given internal and empirical consistency of fp, to regard it as a hypothesis about the real (world)—and, so, for metaphysics.

Assertion 55. To, therefore, consistently see fp as an ‘existential hypothesis’ as guide to and framework for living.

Assertion 56. Therefore, to employ fp as a guide to (pathways to) realization (of the ultimate in, for, and from the world).

Assertion 57. To acknowledge that doubt and certainty are not exclusive.

Assertion 58. To see fp and TWB as ground for being as just noted and further developed in pathways.

Assertion 59. To reject fp and be on one’s way in the world.

Topics in metaphysics and philosophy*

Comment 7. Placed in knowledge / world.

Experience as universal and in detail

In this division, we extend the earlier conception (definition) of experience to all being, explain what the extension means, show of the extension, and describe the form of experience.

Then, experience is shown to be fundamental to (i) our being, (ii) (as-if) mind, matter, space, time, property, and, cause (iii) realization.

The concept of experience extended to all being

The fundamental nature of experience and reasons for its deferred treatment

Assertion 60. The concept of experience is implicitly present in talking of being even if experience is not explicitly mentioned. Thus, to say “Being is the property of that which is”, ‘that which is’ has not even meaning unless it is the sign for a concept which occurs in experience. If explicit treatment with extension came before metaphysics, it would have to be reworked.

How shall we extend the concept of experience?

The plan for the extension is as follows. The definition is not proof. We shall demonstrate extension of the concept of experience, explain its meaning, and relate it to consciousness – the phenomenon and its phenomenality – as understood in the philosophical literature (better: see consciousness-as-we-have-it as a region within experience-extended). Let us now execute this plan.

Meaning and justification of the extension

In strict materialism (everything is matter and mind – consciousness, awareness – are excluded from the domain of matter), there can be no ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ (which discloses that the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is really an ‘impossible problem’). The only resolution must involve seeing that strict materialism, while it could obtain in an inert cosmos, cannot obtain in our cosmos and that experience is an essential part of the world.

Now, we have seen that the contour form of experience is experience-of – experiential-relation – the-experienced. And that can be written subject (mind-like) – relation – object (matter-like).

Assertion 61. In other words a possible description of the real as disclosed is that of an experiential field within which there is mind – relation – matter (all terms in a limited sense).

Assertion 62. Therefore, by TM, it is a true (though not exclusively true) description of the universe. That is—

Assertion 63. Within that field mind and matter are neither denied nor asserted but there are domains in which there are as-if mind and as-if matter in (experiential) relation, which is an as-if material-causal relation.

There is experience; and it is known by there being experience of experience

Truth 36. There is experience, for it is in and only in it that there is awareness (and even if that is illusory, illusion is experience).

Assertion 64. Without experience of experience, there could be no real talk of it.

In terms to be introduced below, while experience is the mark of a subject, it also presents as object.

We are effectively experiential beings

Assertion 65. Experience is (one vehicle for the) essence of (our) being, for all significance registers in it.

“We are effectively experiential beings” in that the claim is true and complete but is effective in that it is not exclusive, i.e. other descriptions are possible. However, recognizing that it is not exclusive, we may omit the word ‘effective’.

Truth 37. We are experiential beings.

The form of experience

Assertion 66. Conditions of realism including formation of cosmoses ground a strong argument that the experience of experience shows the form of experience.

Free will and agency

That there is free will in the sense that there are different possible actions from which we can choose and execute is now necessary in TM. How might we choose? Some possibilities are given and evident. Others may be conceived or created (or both). Thus—

Definition 70. Agency is the ability to choose and create futures from given or conceived possibilities.

It should be understood, of course, that, while we are limited, not every imagined possibility can be realized (some anti-free-willists seem to think that this is what free will entails) and further, not that those actions that are possible are easy (the existential and other challenges). However, some choices are easy, e.g., I decide to pick up a stone and do so (experiments that purport to show choice occurs below awareness show only that that may be the case).

On consciousness and consciousness studies

In the early twentieth century, behaviorism banished talk of consciousness because it was private and therefore (in the view of behaviorism), not empirical.

However, it is empirical in that it is experienced (consciousness of consciousness) even more closely than external empirical objects (that it is not always noticed is because it has omnipresence and that to observe in all situation is not adaptive).

Then in the 1950’s came the cognitive revolution – we can talk about mind – and then consciousness studies.

It may be observed that that entire field may fit (in principle) into TM and our study of experience in such a manner that many of its ‘difficult’ problems, especially the ‘hard problem of consciousness’, become non-problems, and the scientific problems are framed by the present developments.

The detailed structure of experience

Comment 8. Think about possible extensions of the present developments.

Site source 1. Dimensions and Paradigms of Being, Experience, and the World. Are there better site sources?

Source or study topic 5. Empathy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Five and six factor models of personality (Wikipedia).

This section builds on the previous one. Though significant terms are marked with small capitals, their mentions and descriptions are not raised to the level of definitions that are significant for TW.

Aspects of experience – needs for experiential beings

The following experiences and distinctions mark needs for function and integrity of beings at our level – within the animal level – and above. Given that these are needs for function and integrity, it is natural that they should arise in adaptation (it does not follow that they are universal but it does follow that they will have a degree of manifestation in the entire universe and may be requirements for robust and populous being as described earlier).

1. Experience of being – identity, i.e., body and experience itself, vs experience of the world, particularly differentiated by agency vs nonagency and immediacy of control.

2. (Within experiencing,) sameness and difference of identity, which are characterized as sameness (of identity over experiencing), and difference (different identity or identities), i.e., duration and extension, respectively, whose quantitative but prescientific measures are labeled time and space.

3. Experience of form vs quality, mainly, cognition vs feeling, especially pleasure, pain, and qualities of things (objects).

4. Binding vs freedom, usually as follows with deviation that may be functional but non-functional or maladaptive if ‘severe’—

a. Bound aspects, those regarding which choice is constrained by ‘realism’ (i) feeling, marked by intensity, quality, or both—pleasure, pain, strong emotion (ii) perception of form.

b. Free aspects, choice is not constrained by realism, which makes for creation and agency (i) subtler feeling (ii) thought (iii) interactions of feeling and thought, particularly emotion, art, and intuition. The freedom of thought involves the capacity of mismatch between thought and the world (sometimes called ‘error’) but also metacognitive correction and, so, creativity.

The experiential relation and time

For an experiential being there is experience of

1. Experiencing itself and, so, of change (and ‘time’) and

2. The world, which presents as body and self (which requires continuity in memory) in the world of things (in the general sense of thing as object) and other beings (with selves).

Quality, form, experiencing (time)

Experience has

1. Quality and form,

2. With varying intensity and degree of binding to (versus freedom from) objects (in bound experience-of, the form of the form and quality of the experience is tied to the object).

Experiential structure

Feeling is primitive and of two kinds, qualitative and formed, is of world, generally, and body, specifically. These modes of feeling interact and have degrees of integration.

Cognition concerns form, while emotion is about quality. Experience is an integral whole—the two are interwoven (but may be dissociated).

Perception is cognition bound to the world (if free it is either dream, perceptual imagination, or hallucination which is free but seeming bound).

Thought is free conceptual (not perceptual) cognition, that may be found via perceptual comparison to ‘represent’ the world; delusion is thought that is baselessly and fixedly bound.

Emotion is a combination of body-feeling and thought; it is also conditioned by perception.

Mood is the general tenor of feeling and emotion and its effect on cognition.

It is inherent in these ‘modes’ that, while the distinctions are real, they have interwovenness in their nature and their organic base (parts of the body, especially the brain and endocrine system); that the structure of this system is determined by genetics, environment (physical and social), and its exercise (including choice) over time; and that this changing structure includes an encoding of personality.

The universe is effectively experiential

The world is the object of and includes experience

Truth 39. The world is an object of experience and includes experience.

If the universe were a cosmos with a single kind of element, experience would be a suitable candidate. However, from the metaphysics, the universe has no ultimate kind. Yet, experientiality in primitive form, can and will occupy the lowest levels (at which experientiality is not varied and rich as it is at higher levels). This is neutral on the reality of matter but affirms that there is as-if matter whose interactions are primitively experiential, which sometimes manifest as causal. A world that is not experienced is effectively nonexistent.

The universe is experiential

Truth 40. The universe (being) is (effectively) experiential (this and the earlier statement about the world are consistent).

Assertion 67. That the world is experiential is to neither deny nor affirm that it is material, atomic, spatiotemporal, ideal (in the sense of psychological or spiritual in nature), causal (in the sense of physical causation), in its ultimate nature.

Assertion 68. That the universe is a field of experience allows both zero and infinite values, i.e., voids and particles. Also, from the real metaphysics the ‘speed of light’ has no significance for the universe at large and therefore there is no limit on beings interacting with other beings (even in our cosmos, the limit is contingent).

Assertion 69. Thus (i) as it was said above, the concept of experience has been deepened and broadened (ii) this has been done to an ultimate degree (iii) the term ‘experience’ may be used in the restricted (usual) and extended sense, which, even if it is confusing, is not contradictory, and shows beings to be embedded in being.

The most general form of a being

We saw earlier that in our understanding the most general form of a being (or an existent or object) is the conject, i.e., the prefused concept-relation-object. But now we see that with the liberal concept of the concept as the ‘experience of’ extended to the root, that this form is generalized to all being and beings.

Truth 42. The general form of the being (or existent or object) is the conject or concept-relation-object.

Identity, extension, and duration

The nature of identity, extension, and duration

Here are alternative approaches to the definitions.

Assertion 70. Thus, extension and duration (space and time) are immanent in being and therefore (i) so far as the two kinds of parameter of identity difference above are interwoven, so are extension and duration, which are thus extension-duration (spacetime) and (ii) they are dynamic entities in dynamic interaction with the ‘object’ (as above, which is matter-like as seen later) and thus constitute extension-duration-being (space-time-matter).

Assertion 71. Since duration is or can be marked by constancy of identity across change and extension by change across identities the parameters of difference beyond extension and duration, i.e., space and time, aspects of identity rather than difference (and thus there are no parameters of difference beyond spacetime).

Their origins

Assertion 72. Originally, sameness and difference arise together from, e.g., the void. Our experience of sameness, difference, and identity arises, necessarily (from limitlessness), either in a single step or (perhaps more likely) iteratively, with selection.

Assertion 73. But how does the uniformity of extension and duration that is our space and time arise (in general relativity it is, of course, not true uniformity, but in terms of the distribution of matter, it is a kind of uniformity because the space time metric depends only on the distribution of matter, so in the absence of local matter space and time are in fact uniform, and in the presence of matter the different measures of space time at different locations are related so that standard measures can indeed be set up)?

Assertion 74. The answer is in the sameness of sameness and difference. Furthermore, it has already been seen, and relativity lies in the incomplete distinction between the different modes of sameness the identity. And that the quantum lies already in the void, and its signature, therefore marks extension and duration, that is – the objects whose identity constitutes extension, and duration, whose is measure is space and time or rather spacetime.

Assertion 75. But how does sameness of sameness and difference arise? The real metaphysics implies that (a) one step emergence does occur (b) it also occurs via mutual interaction and spreading.

Ethics and meaning

Projects

This topic is to be (re) developed in interaction with the later treatment under ‘consequences of the real metaphysics). Then, what remains here will be

1. Brief introduction to ethics

a. History

b. Modern ethics

c. The needs of ethics

2. Ethics and value for the way of being

a. TM and ethics

b. The fundamental value

c. Consequences for general ethics

d. Note the extended treatment in Knowledge / world*

Source or study topic 6. The meaning of life—The Meaning of Life (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Source or study topic 7. A source for a living ethics—Bernard Williams (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)and a list of his books and papers. His book Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (is of special interest, for, together with Nietzsche, it argues that in (philosophy’s) striving for universality, ethics (particularly Kantian and Utilitarian), “virtually exclude everything related to the question of how to live well”.

Introduction

Overview

Ethics has been implicitly present from the beginning—(i) experience is the place of being, knowing, and valuing, and being-knowing is without significance without valuing (ii) knowing and valuing are co-founding to any valid metaphysics.

Modern western ethics has been criticized for focus on normative systems to the exclusion of what it is to live well or to live meaningfully. The aim here includes peak realization integrated with living meaningfully. This aim is implemented skeletally in this chapter and in detail but immanently in the later discussion of pathways.

The aims of this section on ethics and meaning

1. To review the concept of ethics.

2. Then, in light of TWB,

a. To see ethics as continuous with metaphysics (and epistemology) and, particularly, to see the placement of this section as part of a natural development of the metaphysical system of TW.

b. To see realization of ultimates – peak being – as an ultimate value, while also seeing that this meshes well with ethical contexts of lesser scope, individual to global.

c. To conceive ethics and consequently give it an orientation toward experiential agents, and so, to develop ethics as a dual focus on and meaning (as in ‘the meaning of life’).

3. Consistently with the first aim, to filter and incorporate aspects of ethics from the history of its thought and practice (a systematic and detailed account in light of TW is in knowledge / world > ethics and meaning)

What is ethics

We repeat an earlier definition:

Modern normative ethics

Assertion 76. The main theories of (approaches to) ethics are consequentialism (e.g., an act is good if it brings the best future), deontology (rightness of actions in terms of norms), and virtue ethics (actions are moral when they express virtues, e.g., honesty, courage, kindness, and compassion). This list is incomplete; however, there is some agreement that context, culture, and hybrid approaches are important. Further, some thinkers hold or have held that ethics should also be directed at what is meaningful in individual lives in addition to supra-individual frameworks.

Source or study topic 1. For other kinds, see Ethics – normative, other traditions – Wikipedia.

Why ethics and meaning?

Assertion 77. If ethics is about ‘the good’ and related ideas, e.g., ‘what it is to live well’, it must include consideration of the good life for experiential beings (particularly, persons), which implicates meaning as it is used in ‘the meaning of life’. In turn, the meaning of life is not just about higher values but also concerns basic values of safety, security, health, and community.

Assertion 78. Systematic and personal ethics should reflect one another, for while the large scale ought to benefit individuals, individual meaning gives direction to the large scale.

How they do so is addressed in what follows.

Meaning and ethics

Meaning

Here, ‘meaning’ is used in its sense as in ‘the meaning of life’, and is related to ‘significance’ and ‘purpose’. It is roughly, what it is that makes life worth living, which of course varies among people, is influenced by culture, may be active or receptive or both, and entails immediate and larger issues.

Experience is the place of meaning in the sense of ‘meaning of life’ and ‘significance of being’. We are essentially experiential beings.

Source or study topic 2. Well-Being (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The good

The good was defined earlier. We repeat some aspects of the idea

The intrinsic or primary good emphasizes (improvement of) quality, intensity, and form of experience (receptive and active, of experiential beings).

Choice and the right

Definition 74. Where choice (i.e., of thought or action from among real options) is possible, it is right to choose thought and action that promote (intrinsic) goodness.

Ethics

The following repeats some aspects of earlier definitions.

Ethics is right choice in light of what is good; in simple terms, metaethics is the study of ethics.

While facts are about the way the world is, value is concerned with preference and choice and principles thereof; and ethics concerns moral value (an issue to address in the general treatment of ethics is whether there is an ontological distinction between fact and value).

In modern western thought the study of ethics is canonically (i) normative ethics—ethics as specified just above (ii) applied ethics—the ethics of actual situations whether ad hoc or in terms of ethical principles, problems of how to apply the principles and take into account factors specific to the situations (iii) metaethics—roughly the study of the concepts – including ethics itself – that constitute ethics and its study and interactions among these three divisions.

Secondary goodness

Overlap of intrinsic and secondary goodness

Assertion 79. Involvement in these matters has intrinsic goodness. Thus, thus there is intrinsic goodness to political entities with elements of democracy. Political arrangements and institutions are secondarily good as far as they promote intrinsic goodness.

In culture and its development, there may be intrinsic goodness; and there is secondary goodness as far as they are instrumental in promoting primary goodness.

While there may be intrinsic goodness in sophistication (which includes precision) of culture, its value in promoting movement (which includes progress and evolution) towards the good (e.g., better beings and societies) does not always require us to wait for sophistication. There may be tradeoffs between sophistication and goodness.

Ethics for The Way of Being

Comment 9. Brief reduction to simple language (already begun in the definition above).

A simple ethic

Assertion 80. The life of the individual is valued – driven by concerns of security and higher living—beauty, intellect, the union of the immediate and the ultimate; sharing; relationships.

What should be considered

Aim and object

Assertion 81. The aim of living according to TWB—Shared living and process in the immediate and ultimate as one.

Assertion 82. Individuals—Adults, children, all living beings, the environment; their interests – sharing, caring, seeking one’s highest being.

Means – the categories

Assertion 83. The following simple rendering of the categories (developed below) is useful.

Assertion 84. Experiential—(i) meditative (ii) active – immersive, learning, and instrumental (iii) personality and role.

Assertion 85. World—(i) experiential-universal (ii) nature (iii) community and global society (and categories—economic, political, knowledge and its functions, trans-worldly) (iv) artificial being as being and co-agent.

Ethics and pathway

The pathways shall address all aspects of human being – mind and body – and their best address in light of a balance among thought and feeling, sharing and individual expression, the immediate and the ultimate – i.e., this world and beyond.

Though classical perfection is not desired, there is a sense in which being on a path is provided there is intelligence, effort, sharing, negotiation (over prescription), and address of pleasure and pain (emphasis on pleasure in being and being on the way, some acceptance of pain together with therapy).

Ethical considerations for TW in other sections

There are ethical considerations in doubt and certainty and pathways.

Categorial metaphysics

Projects

Project 3. This is a defining project for this section. A categorial metaphysics should not just posit categories either ad hoc or from pre-defined reasoning. Rather the categories and their dynamics (logic in at the level of being as being) should form a system that ‘works’ and, in the beginning, it ought not to matter too much where categories end and where dynamics application begins (of course, ‘works’ ought to be reasoned as well). Then, the categorial system will be refined, given metaphysics (TM) and its levels, by cycling though categories at their levels --> metaphysics (TM) --> cosmology until valid and stable, Then we get three levels of which here is a tentative beginning—

a. Experiential being and nonbeing—category: concept-object; sub-categories: the forms of logic; dynamic: logic (every concept is realized; restriction to ‘logical’ concepts is unnecessary because the object of an illogical concept is – in – the void), cosmology as developed in this document, process: transient and ephemeral and saltation / incremental process of variation and selection and buildup of complexity.

b. Form and formation—categories: (near) symmetry, neighboring symmetry, complexity, fitness landscapes; dynamic: transient, formation via (i) saltation and selection (ii) incremental variation and selection.

c. Worlds—

i. Our world—categories: nature, society, agency; dynamic: theories for the categories, laws: form in balance with formlessness.

1. Nature—physical, biological, psychical (the latter is a place where the universe has reference to itself), universal.

2. Society— social structure and process and their elements, culture, technology.

ii. Worlds, generally—categories: as for our world; dynamic: paradigms abstracted from the theories for the categories from our world.

Project 4. This section, Categorial Metaphysics, requires improvement (i) articulation and coherence among subsections (ii) consideration of whether to reintroduce the distinction of pure vs pragmatic categories, paradigms, and so on (iii) careful conception of the term categorial metaphysics and showing that one has been developed here, which is effective in use over the high to low level spectrum. A useful earlier source is little manual.

Acknowledgement

I have consulted a number of sources including a range of AI agents, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Categories, and my article History of Western Philosophy, which is not original but derivative of other sources. Since my reading has been extensive and I have not maintained a list, I cannot recall all sources and influences; however, my main influences and readings begin to show my indebtedness.

Introduction

Categories in The Way of Being

In metaphysics, a category is a fundamental form of predication — a way something can be said of beings at a level just below the bare assertion “it is a being.” From Categories (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), one way of putting this is to say, “A system of categories is a complete list of highest kinds or genera.” Some historical systems of categories deviate from this in that multiple levels are at least implicitly recognized.

In developing The Way of Being (TWB) and its metaphysics (the real metaphysics: TM), I initially used the term dimensions for structures that played a similar role. It is more effective, however, to adopt the established term category, and to review its historical dimensions, while recognizing that the present framework differs from received systems in several important ways.

The following reviews will be useful.

Brief historical review: the main systems

This section presents a very brief review that is relevant to categories in TWB; it is not intended as definitive or comprehensive. The choice of the ideas Aristotle, Kant, Husserl, and Ingarden, is not as authoritative, but as exemplars of what kind of thing categories may be.

Aristotle’s categories were intended to be of being (i.e., of the real), derived from language, logic, and metaphysics, and, yet were rather ad hoc. From doubt about our ability to know the real in itself, Kant’s system was about concepts we project onto the real, which he argued to have an essential faithfulness to the real (if incomplete and imprecise), and was based in the language of a limited ontological system, for use, e.g., in the limited logic of the syllogism, and therefore had the appearance of being non ad hoc. Husserl’s categorial system offered a synthesis of Aristotle’s and Kant’s—by relating categories of meaning (concepts) to categories of what is meant (objects) and, further, distinguished categories of form (e.g., as in syntax) from categories of material content.

Roman Ingarden added to form, and content, a third dimension: existential categories. From the Stanford Encyclopedia article, “The highest existential categories on Ingarden’s list are the real (spatiotemporal being), the ideal (abstract), the absolute (completely independent, atemporal), and purely intentional (consciousness-dependent).”

Brief historical review: category mistakes

This section is not part of the main development, which is why it is not written as a major subsection of the categorial metaphysics (with cosmology). It is included (i) as relevant to one historical line of development (ii) as a demonstration of the power of the real metaphysics (TM).

The concept of a category mistake

From skepticism about the possibility of categories that are faithful to the form of the world, some contemporary philosophers avoid categories altogether, focusing instead on identifying and eliminating category mistakes. In TWB, the construction of TM — especially the analysis of experience — already incorporates a systematic defusion of several significant historical category errors and confusion.

Assertion 86. ‘Category differences’ are a twentieth century idea based in (i) doubting that we can have a realist and complete system of categories (ii) that confusion and error arise by conflating different categories, e.g., thinking that having mental activity implies that mind is a separate substance or thing.

Examples of defusion of category mistakes

While it has not been named earlier in this work, it is present, and some examples are avoidance of:

1. From as-if substance to universal substance and from form to particular substance (avoids confusion of projection and the real).

2. From concept – relation – object as a unity to mind – relation – matter as objective of being (avoids projection of a nominal split to a split of the real).

3. Content and method as essentially distinct (avoids projection of a pragmatic and efficient distinction to an absolute distinction).

4. Temporal distinction among beings (or worlds or beings-and-words) as absolute (avoids projection of birth and death and boundaries among beings to the ultimate).

5. Limits of our experience as absolute limits, and the related trivial but frequent error of conflation of possibility and necessity (similar to the previous point).

6. A tacit tendency (i) from ideology, to not explicitly recognize some levels of description altogether, e.g., from false empiricism to avoid abstraction from concrete particulars to abstract frameworks, or from idealism, to not see that the concept-object, i.e., subjectivity or as-if mind and objectivity or as-if matter are two sides of experience (avoidance of the blindness of some ideologies) (ii) conflate levels of description in received systems as absolute, e.g., to ignore or not see that there are real and higher levels, the ignoring of which stunts metaphysics and realization (avoidance of received confusion of levels, and so to avoidance of ‘living’ only in the mundane world).

Metaphysics in The Way of Being relevant to developing categories

The real metaphysics, TM, developed and demonstrated in previous chapters, has the following features relevant to the categories in this work.

It synthesizes ‘experience of’ and ‘the experienced’ as twin interactive or related sides of experience that constitute the general being (or existent or object) as the concept-object (this begins a fusion of metaphysics and epistemology).

At a level of abstraction (removal from a concept of features subject to distortion), it develops an ultimate metaphysics, TM, which shows the universe and all beings to be the realization of ultimate possibility (this continues the fusion of metaphysics and epistemology).

Beings are experiential and the universe is an experiential (relational) field, provided that the concept of experience is extended to the root of being, where it is elementary and lacks the richness in terms of form, content, and intensity of experience of world and self at our level and higher.

Lower levels of being, local or less abstract or both, are also in concept-object form, where the concept is not perfectly faithful to the object, but need not be for such perfection is at best in process for beings while limited and, yet the join of the highest and lower levels, TM, is perfect relative to the in process value of being on a path of knowledge and realization in, for, and from this world (this completes fusion of metaphysics and epistemology via ethics).

Thus, TM is founded in experience (at multiple levels of abstraction) and reason about the same (doubt is acknowledged and addressed earlier in TWB), and claims above regarding its perfection are well founded. TM is a synthesis of experience (empirical), reason, content, and method (metanalysis), the abstract and the concrete (appropriately interpreted), and finally the union of metaphysics – epistemology – value.

Categories in this work vs the historical systems

1. First, here categories occur explicitly at multiple levels. This is important: the levels have mutual interactions (are mutually informative and, as far as regarded as distinct, they are interactive), which improves their articulation, individually, and as an entire system. At the highest level — the level of being — beings are concept‑objects, as established earlier. At this level, there is only one category: the concept‑object itself, which, in addition to manifest beings, accommodates both contingently and necessarily nonexistent beings. This resolves the familiar paradox of nonexistent objects by giving them a legitimate, non‑contradictory mode of being.

This highest level is a split level—the level of being itself as experiential being, not a traditional categorial level, and the level of the traditional categories, a level just below that of being.

2. Second, traditional expectations of completeness and uniqueness do not apply straightforwardly. Without an ultimate metaphysics, completeness cannot be guaranteed. In TWB, however, The Real Metaphysics (TM) provides an in‑principle completeness at the higher levels. Uniqueness is not required; multiple categorial organizations may be equally valid within TM’s constraints.

3. Third, whereas received systems derive categories from perception, language, logic, or metaphysical intuition, and combinations — often in ad hoc or specialized ways — TM supplies a foundational basis. Just below the concept‑object, categories are defined in terms of the variables and structural elements of possible logics, not merely the logics already developed.

4. Fourth, two additional levels — an intermediate level of form with formation, and below form, the cosmos or world (especially our cosmos and world) — are included. In traditional metaphysics, these lower levels are excluded because they are imprecise and therefore epistemically suspect. In TWB, their imprecision allows perfection in a value sense: it is precisely what allows realization of the ultimate in, for, and from our world. This does not imply that epistemology should be downplayed or abandoned; rather, for certain purposes of TWB, the interaction of epistemology and value — long recognized in philosophy — here fuses them as one. These levels necessarily inherit higher‑level categories and, by analogy, suggest forms for the higher levels. TM ensures that such analogical ‘bottom-up’ inheritance must occur as instances, is one mechanism of formation, and may mark both probability and significance.

Thus, value is not just informative or another category; rather, metaphysics and ethics (and epistemology) are fused. The fusion is not absolute: there is fusion at the highest level because at that level, ultimate realization is given by metaphysics (TM), but local ethics as the ethics of action in our world retains significance while it is significantly informed by – nested within – the ultimate ethic.

5. Fifth, received systems typically distinguish between categories of what is real and categories of the concepts we project onto the real. These are different but related in their intent to be about the world (Husserl’s thought recognizes both and relates their structures). In TWB, the real and the projected converge in the concept‑object. Naming a being without specifying structure identifies nothing; projection alone invites skepticism. The concept‑object, situated within TM, avoids both problems.

6. Finally, as forms of what can be said validly, traditional categorial systems are not intended to be predictive. Here, categories are embedded within TM and therefore constitute the language of a categorial metaphysics — one that aims to do for metaphysics what physics does for the physical world. Each categorial level is associated with one or more dynamics and paradigms of form and behavior. Indeed, the field and particle theories of physics supply dynamics at the level of our world and, by analogy, at higher levels. Similarly, theories of biological formation from the physical elements—abiogenesis and evolution—provide other kinds of analogy, particularly incremental formation via variation and selection, which, in particular, is analogical for the formation of manifest beings, e.g., cosmoses, from the void.

Overview of the development to follow

This discussion will proceed from the highest categorial level, where being is approached as concept-object, through the intermediate level of form and formation, then to cosmos and world, and finally to the all-encompassing categorial scheme in which the levels are gathered together. In development, of course, the process was not linear but cycled through the levels and the scheme iteratively.

Generating the categories

General—for each level

To generate the system, we use the foregoing discussion and the following template for the categorial levels:

1. Fundamental being or existent and proxy being(s).

2. Conceptual source (i.e., theory of being or particular kind of being).

3. Category or categories – fundamental; and sub-categories, special cases, or particular forms.

4. Ethics – higher, our world, and personal.

5. Dynamic(s) and paradigms.

a. Essential at the given level.

b. Inherited

i. From higher levels, of necessity but incomplete at the given level,

ii. From below, by analogy; however, by TM, instances are necessary, and indicative of population (probabilistically) and significance (experientially).

All levels

Experiential hierarchy, to be placed separately from the categorial levels—or at the highest or ‘all’—because it spans all levels. There is an experiential hierarchy from low to high: nonbeing – element – form – be-ings – peak – nonbeing.

Mutuality among the levels—high level categories and dynamics are immanent in the lower; from TM, the lower have instances in the higher as analog, and provide measures of robustness, population, and significance. Our world is a place of beginning. But it already contains the higher levels (i) as immanent (ii) via abstraction. The study of the levels is best seen as cyclic: a – b … random processing … a repeat.

Categorial metaphysics and cosmology—the outcome is a categorial (“scientific”) metaphysics that joins rational metaphysics (IM) with hypothetical (“speculative”) metaphysics at lower levels, bound together by value (ethics, aesthetics); the rational metaphysics is perfect in the sense of faithfulness of concept to object, the lower levels may be imprecise, and the whole is pragmatically perfect with regard to the ultimate value of realization. That it is a metaphysics is already explicit in previous divisions and further exemplified in the cosmology below. It has the ability to frame the metaphysics of substance, process, and logical atomism.

Ethic—the ethics will mesh the ethics of the specific levels (where some mesh may have been shown already).

The categorial metaphysics (with cosmology)

High level categories: experiential being and nonbeing

This section should establish the most general categorial level: being as concept-object, including both actual and nonactual beings without generating the paradox of nonexistent objects.

Fundamental being or existent: the being (or a being) as a concept-relation-object; details—

i. We will contract the description ‘concept-relation-object’ to ‘concept-object’; this is more than a convenience—it says that concept and object are bound together; similarly, in intending more than just binding but intentional wrapping together, we introduce further contraction to, e.g., ‘conject’.

ii. Precise when the abstraction is at the level of being-as-being or any level with sufficient abstraction, in the sense that concept and object may be decoupled such that the concept is perfectly faithful to the object (at levels where abstraction is not sufficient to allow this, the decoupling may allow approximate decoupling and faithfulness, which may be adequate for some local but generally not universal purposes.

iii. It includes the case of beings that are nonexistent in the sense that an intended object is contingently or necessarily absent as well as the pure concept in which case there is no intended object (these cases will also obtain at lower levels).

iv. The whole – part – null (or zero) beings in relation to any being including the universe (‘mereology’).

Project 5. Mereology.

v. Note that with abstraction, contra Heidegger, being is a being; and, also, contra-Heidegger, being is shallow, and that in shallowness lies the conceptual power of the present conception. Further, depth lies within being but is not of being (as being).

Proxy existent: a being decoupled from the concept (which is still present, but implicit), which is precise where the given level of abstraction allows decoupling. At lower levels, this proxy may be adequate – sometimes with great precision – for some purposes. The proxy existent is that of beings in the abstract, i.e., as seen from “nowhere”, allowable in that at this highest level, concept and object are decouplable (at lower levels, the decoupling is imprecise but may be pragmatic or locally adaptive).

Conceptual source—IM (value decouple-able from metaphysics in that ultimate realization is given, and the coupling enters regarding questions of effective and quality shared living in the world – itself and toward the ultimate); universe as an experiential-relational field.

Category or categories – fundamental; and sub-categories, special cases, or particular forms.

Fundamental category and its form (i.e., form of the category): as for the fundamental existent, the concept-object (proxy: the object) or ‘pervasive experientiality and no further kind at the level of concept and object’.

Note: the concept-object may be defused as concept and object, but the concept is not necessarily that of higher experience.

Some particular forms of the category:

i. The ‘bare’ concept-object form (or atomic fact, i.e., atomic in the sense that the form has no structure, either at all, or that the structure is relevant to the deliberations being considered). Its dynamic is the propositional or sentence calculus.

ii. The case in which the form of the object is the subject-predicate (here ‘subject’ is the object minus predicates or properties and does not have the sense of being subjective). Its dynamics are the predicate calculi.

iii. Other forms arising in logics (including non-symbolic logics)

Lower-level forms

iv. Not strictly a logical form—the varieties of forms in the lower levels, which are the logical, with further extra-logical form, e.g., the forms of science, especially, symmetry, stability, and formation – incremental, saltation, and transient. Particularly, the Aristotelian categories arising from physics and ordinary perception may be recognized—as-if substance (but not substance), of perception – quantity, quality, relation (one and multiple place predicates), and possession (what it has); from physics – position, location in time, orientation, shape (as well as subjective aspects such as posture); and agency (doing to vs done to),

Why do we include these forms here? It depends on the criteria being used—if we include only what is given by logic rather than allowed, they would not be here; if we include only what is known to be precisely known, they would not be here. They are discussed here (a) to clarify criteria of inclusion (ii) for their significance in relation to the logical forms—these forms are of significant duration which compensates for their population count relative to the merely logical forms. Further, where these forms are such that they give rise to beings with ‘higher’ experience, they are the forms with significance.

Ethics – realization of peak being to be inherited by worlds with experiential beings with choice and agency and intertwined with their ‘local’ ethic.

Fundamental ethic: from IM, acceptance and modulation of experiential process (cognition, feeling – especially pleasure and pain, choice, agency…) on the way to peak being (it is implicit that at our level, the process is shared, and that this is one source of ethics at our level).

Dynamic(s) and paradigms:

1. From the conceptual source, IM (as the highest level there is no inheritance from above).

2. Inherited from below, as indicated above, by analogy; however, by TM, instances are necessary, and indicative of population (probabilistically) and significance (experientially).

Intermediate level categories: form and formation

Note: formation is seen as part of form and therefore, ‘form and formation’ could be contracted to ‘form’.

Fundamental being and process: form and formation in general (of cosmoses, worlds, and beings), in ranges of robustness and significance. Form and formation may be particulate (discrete), a continuum (of various levels), or both. Thus, particles and fields are allowed as are incremental selection and saltation.

Conceptual source—theory of formation from the void, either by increment from one near symmetric and so near stable state to another (higher probability because the process is via state to nearby accessible state) or saltation (less likely but possible and therefore occasional); derived by analogy from our world, but necessary from TM.

Fundamental category—form and formation, over and above those of the high level.

Fundamental categorial process: transient; emphasizes formation as increment, selection of near symmetry for relative stability, from simplicity to complexity, from complexity to self-reference and intelligence. Sub-cases

1. Formation without heredity—generally transient and low in robustness and significance.

2. Formation with heredity—

a. Vertical heredity—beings with micro-coded and inherited coding, but no direct inheritance of form. Paradigm of emergence— dominated by incremental variation and selection but single step origins possible and real.

b. Horizontal heredity—form is propagated in the field of relational being. It may occur, given a region, e.g., a cosmos or pre-cosmos, of interacting elements, an emerged form in a sub-region may propagate because, from common origins, the entire region is receptive to the form emerged in the sub-region.

c. Vertical vs horizontal heredity—it appears that formation begins without heredity, that horizontal heredity dominates at simpler levels (e.g., physical), while vertical heredity may be essential for complex forms with significance, which also have horizontal heredity, e.g., of populations.

d. Mixed heredity—if heredity means influence, then where one kind appears paradigmatic, the other kind may also be present.

Ethics—emergence and cultivation of higher-level experience: perception, consciousness, and agency.

Dynamic(s) and paradigms.

1. Inherited from ‘above’—a single step or a few steps: transient formation of near symmetric, stable forms (ssf)—as allowed and required by IM, improbable (argument above), the realization of Bertrand Russel’s thought that it is possible that our world was constructed a moment ago, complete with memories and signatures as-if of ‘the past’.

Note: this is interesting as it is equivalent to solipsism as realism—perhaps the experience you are experiencing is just a transient and micro flash (possibly preceded and followed by similar flashes). Though there are arguments against this interpretation of solipsism, they depend on a base assumption of a normal interpretation of ‘our reality’. It is further interesting that this interpretation of solipsism suggests (i) IM (ii) that possible if unlikely immediate futures of our world are nothingness / destruction / fantastic / immediate rise to peak being.

2. Inherited from our world and cosmos by analogy but necessary by TM: incremental variation and selection; origin of, not just in space and time, but of identity (recognizable or at least conceptualizable beings)-spacetime; origins mechanism and causation (fp as cause of causation) with indeterminism for worlds; origin of physics and the natural classes (categories).

Note: while form and its recognition (object-concept) have origin beginning at the top level, their conceptualization has source in minds of beings in our world, the lower level.

3. Formation by incremental variation and select from ssf to ssf… dominates #a (probably).

4. Selection for significance by experiential beings—not guaranteed for any given world but necessary for some worlds and accessible to our being by communication via or across the void or voids. May come to dominate significant population in the universe.

Examples

1. Most inclusive base level – the void as primitive (see high level above)

2. Intermediate base level for cosmos formation – proto cosmos and evolution of cosmoses

3. Base level for life in our world – physical, chemical, and geological elements with cosmological and solar input.

Introduction to low level categories: cosmoses and worlds

The plan for discussion for this level is different from that of the previous two: the discussion is in two sections:

(i) Our cosmos / world for which the focus is specific—fundamental beings, specific conceptual sources or theories, and ethics,

(ii) A generic cosmos / world for which the focus is categories, and dynamics and paradigms.

The purposes of the division into ‘ours’ and generic worlds are:

1. It is efficient—it avoids repetition and, in doing so, reveals structure,

2. It makes the reasoning evident—first, from particular to general, and second, exemplifying abstraction.

3. It exemplifies subcategories.

Low level categories: our world / cosmos

Inherited categories

Categories are inherited (by concept) from the two higher levels. We shall not specify the details but, rather, some implications.

1. At a high level of abstraction, there is no difference between beings. This implies that while distinctions, e.g., ‘me’ vs ‘you’ or ‘human’ vs ‘peak’ are pragmatically real, they are not ultimately real.

2. Form and formation – may be seen as inherited from the intermediate level; on the other hand, we learn of form and formation at our level. Thus, form is inherited at higher levels by analogy; on the other hand, analysis of form at higher levels, isolates ‘dynamics’ of form (transient increment, near symmetry and stability, relatively stable increment), which enables understanding at our level. At this level actual inheritance—not just conceptual inheritance—is inherited from and suggests form and formation.

Fundamental beings

Though it is sometimes natural to first think of the physical level, we recognize levels and sublevels.

1. Natural—

a. Physical,

b. Complexity, reproduction, and life—especially animal including human being.

c. Psyche or mind:

i. Place of being, meaning, and value (though not source),

ii. Map of the universe (recursive map of ‘fundamental beings’).

2. Social—

a. Society,

b. Culture,

c. Technology.

Conceptual sources

Physical theories—cosmological formation, inherited from and analogy for general form and formation, from TM (also: from the ideas of Lee Smolin, Max Tegmark, and others); fields and atoms, as matter; matter and its behavior as in Newtonian / Maxwellian, quantum, relativistic, statistical, and condensed matter approximations / theories; chemistry and nuclear physics.

Complexity, reproduction, and life—functional chemistry of complex compounds, principles of biological organisms and ecosystems; origins and evolution—emergence of complexity, evolution by variation of hereditary factors and selection; classification of living beings—domain (relatively recent, recognized by some biologists: archaea, bacteria, and eukarya—devised by Carl Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark Wheelis in 1990); kingdom (originally plant and animal, today five or six are commonly recognized, but some recognize as many as eight), phylum, class, order, family, genus, species (as well as finer divisions, beginning just below the species: subspecies, variety, and form, which recognize minor differences, without introducing new species, which is, in any case, not recognized as a perfectly definite concept).

Psyche—the focus here shall not be on psyche as psyche, of which some general aspects were considered in the earlier division on experience (feeling, cognition of world and self, reflexivity, choice, and agency). Rather, our concerns are as follows. As-if substance: from concept-object, via TM, to universe as an experiential field, with our world as approximately a substance world: matter – complexity – life – mind – society. Consequently, the emergence of (as-if) high-level matter and mind is not substance emergence but emergence of form. Elementary and immanent: sameness, difference, elementary language with grammar, logic as the grammar of compound facts (propositions), refinement, and formal languages and logic. Fundamental dynamic of experience as world (universe)—recognition of difference, duration, identity, extension (and size), and so of extension-duration-being-and-nonbeing (and no further coordination beyond space and time), motion, shape, size, other quality (quantity is a sub-category of quality); note—these are one source of some Aristotelian categories.

Society—in our world, one might see synchronous molecular behavior, cell communities—and from communities to rooted organisms (plants) and mobile organisms (animals), plant and animal communities, animal communities whose basis is partly in intelligence and communication (e.g., human societies), and, beyond our world and perhaps cosmos in communities of higher beings. The focus here is on human society and societies and the metaphysics of human society (with essential elements taken as the significant aspect of the metaphysics rather than questions such as that of the nature of institutions). Human societies are complex and cooperative; based in shared location culture (and often of ethnicity), intelligence, empathy, and agency; with ‘labor’ organized as families, communities, informal groups, and institutions of a range of types corresponding to aspects of group action. For reflection and improvement—(i) society is a generative system in which relations, roles, norms, resources, and frames recursively produce the phenomena of social life (frames are the psyche-immanent conscious and paraconscious meaning‑structures that tell actors what a situation is, what it means, and how to interpret what is happening; they may be informed by but are not explicit ideologies, worldviews, or narratives or worldviews) (ii) social reality is the self‑organizing field of meanings and constraints that emerges when human beings become mutually intelligible to one another.

Ethics

The ethics is that of the following and their interaction (more generally a concern is with value which includes but is not limited to ethical value).

1. The inherited ethics of being (as being) as promoting (i) transcendent unity of the immediate (beings in our world) and the ultimate peak being(s) (ii) process of shared discovery and realization of the ultimate in, for, and from out world.

2. Large scale ethics, e.g., Kantian ethics, deontology (right action and intrinsic measures thereof, which includes Kantian ethics), consequentialism (consequences determine rightness and wrongness of actions including thought and speech), virtue ethics (dispositional virtue and character as measures of right or good), and contextual ethics (usually meaning that context deeply determines judgments of right and wrong, but also that, under ignorance, selection of kind and mix of ethics is to be judged in context; while specific details, pragmatic, economic, political and other considerations are relevant, higher concerns and ethical systems remain relevant as they are or may be immanent in the context).

3. Individual ethics, e.g., Socratic (the question, how should we live and the response that virtue is knowledge because it enables distinguishing what is good), Stoic, Buddhist, Vedantic, Christian ethics as examples. Elements of the previous two items also apply.

Note—the ethics above, the ethics of what is right and so on, is called ‘normative ethics’, i.e., it is about norms of behavior. Metaethics is, roughly, about ethics, but once one asks about the meaning of ethics, ethics and metaethics are seen to mesh. A further commonly recognized division is that of applied ethics, which may be seen as continuous with contextual ethics—in specialized contexts.

Low level categories: generic world / cosmos

Inherited categories

As for our world.

Dynamics and paradigms

Physical—dynamics (as paradigm), mechanism, causation, indeterminism with determinism and structure (e.g., quantum, but note there is lack of agreement on whether quantum theory is indeterministic), emergence and phase transition. Formation of a cosmos, via variation and selection (the idea inherited from biological evolution, which came earlier in science).

Complexity, reproduction, and life—inheritance, indeterminist and determinist incremental variation and determinist selection via relative symmetry and stability (inherited to higher levels by analogy, justified by TM).

Psyche—the elements (feeling, cognition of world and self, reflexivity, choice, and agency). As-if substance. Experience as world.

Society—From the section low level categories: our world / cosmos, “Human society is a generative system in which relations, roles, norms, resources, and frames recursively produce the phenomena of social life. Paradigms are from—institutions, cultural (representation—being and its modes-forms-processes, communication, generation, and transmission), economic-political.

Ethics

See ethics in low level categories: our world / cosmos.

All

Relations among the levels.

The following repeats some earlier material.

High level categories and dynamics are immanent in the lower; from TM, the lower have instances in the higher as analog, and provide measures of robustness, population, and significance.

Our world is a place of beginning. But it already contains the higher levels (i) as immanent (ii) via abstraction. The study of the levels is best seen as cyclic: a – b … random processing … a repeat.

Experiential hierarchy

There is an experiential hierarchy from low to high: nonbeing – element – form – be-ings – peak – nonbeing.

Outcome: a categorial metaphysics

The outcome is a categorial (“scientific”) metaphysics that joins rational metaphysics (IM) with hypothetical (“speculative”) metaphysics at lower levels, bound together by value (ethics, aesthetics); the rational metaphysics is perfect in the sense of faithfulness of concept to object, the lower levels may be imprecise, and the whole is pragmatically perfect with regard to the ultimate value of realization.

That it is a metaphysics is already explicit in previous divisions and further exemplified in the cosmology below.

Ability to frame the metaphysics of substance, process, and logical atomism.

Ethic

Mesh as indicated at the specific levels.

Cosmology

High level: logical universe. The logics (understood as including necessary fact).

Intermediate: form (and formation); emergence of local causal dynamics with inherited mesh of determinism and indeterminism; emergence of higher experiential forms.

Our world: logic and formation inherited; dynamics as resulting in local forms—as-if material, experiential.

Part 3.Knowledge / World*

A full title for this division could be “Implications of the real metaphysics for the nature and extent of knowledge and the world”.

The project of this topic is application of the material so far, especially the real metaphysics, to knowledge and its development. The title, ‘knowledge / world’, reflects the inseparability of metaphysics and epistemology (and ethics and philosophical logic, since they are part of metaphysics in its inclusive sense).

Those whose interest is application in living may go directly to the pathways.

Introduction

The topics of this chapter are applications and consequences of the developments of this work, especially of its metaphysics. They are selected (i) for their intrinsic importance and (ii) as showing the power of the developments of the work. They range from special to general and are secondary to the main aims of the work.

There are three sections.

In knowledge and the world, knowledge is analyzed for its nature, method, criteria, and discreteness yet continuity in itself and with the world; there are subsections on knowledge itself, the disciplines, philosophy and metaphysics. This would be a natural place to for philosophical cosmology, but the topic is assigned a separate section.

The next section is on ethics and meaning (as in ‘the meaning of life’, which fall together if we think that ethics ought to be about more than systems concerning the meaning of ethics and of the good, the right, and virtue. The topics and concerns range from ethics in action to formal ethics and from the immediate to the ultimate. The topics and their treatment includes material that is applicable to the pathways.

The final section on cosmology has four subsections that concern general cosmology that derives significantly from the abstract side of the real metaphysics, and other topics deriving from the complete real metaphysics: cosmology of form and formation, cosmology of experiential being, physical cosmology.

Comment 10. In this document, most topics currently have only an outline; the outlines are to be improved.

Comment 11. A decision is to be made on which topics will be developed here vs in a long version of the work.

Comment 12. Think through the topics, their logic and hierarchy.

Knowledge and the world

Tentative overview

Comment 13. This is a short overview for the short version. It should be improved.

That there are significant consequences of the development culminating in the metaphysics is manifest.

First – It provides a framework for an ultimate view of the universe that synthesizes logic, abstract thought, rational metaphysics, science, and ethics. It finds that careful reflection on the methods and problems of human knowledge reveal much more than is held in received thought.

Second – It shows science to be open with regard to the extent of the universe and its kinds, e.g., the cosmological singularity (big bang) is but an atom of existence.

Third – It provides a degree of closure to many discussions in philosophy which are unnecessarily open ended as a result of unnecessary metaphysical neutrality and of metaphysical bias, but it is not uncritically closed. Yet, it is open in ways that are metaphysically essential and which the modern analytic and scientific canons allow but frequently do not admit and may deny (and even where it is admitted, the canons rarely contemplate or attempt to demonstrate ‘limitlessness’). That is, it is not carelessly, uncritically, or even lazily open or closed.

Fourth – Thus, the possibilities of being beyond what we see with our senses, instruments, and theories, which are spoken of in religion in mythical terms, can enter the realm of the concrete. It is of course a non-specific concreteness—we know that we are (part of) peak being, which is not remote (there may of course be remote but lesser peaks whose being may lack robustness).

For a framework for (human) knowledge grounded in the real metaphysics, see a system of knowledge.

Knowledge

Comment 14. Combine with knowledge under ‘metaphysics’ and place here or there!

Comment 15. Issue of philosophy—not about ¿PHIL? but about ¿SYSTEM?

Why knowledge is important

The significance of knowledge—ultimate or conceptual and proximate or useful in appreciating and negotiating our world.

Significance of sophistication

The section on knowledge addresses some issues in knowledge and its philosophy (epistemology). The developments in this work have implications for these subjects—

1. Epistemology remains important but less than is often thought. In contrast, metaphysics and the use of metaphysics in action gain in importance.

2. The real metaphysics and related developments illuminate and have consequences for knowledge and its disciplines, especially science, philosophy, and metaphysics itself. Particularly, since the real metaphysics frames all being and knowing, questions find foundation that would otherwise be foundationless or of contentious foundation.

What knowledge is

Intentional picture theory – its domain of application despite its twofold limit.

1. What it is—e.g., picture and correspondence or coherence or pragmatic (and combinations).

Criteria of validity and axiology

2. ‘What it is’ is sometimes confused with its criteria (thus coherence and pragmatic ‘theories’ are or may be more about criteria than what knowledge is). Similarly ‘justified true belief’ is about criteria or at least the intersection of ‘what’ and criteria.

3. Axiology is significant because criteria—in general—may and ought to include ethical and aesthetic considerations (as has been argued).

Knowledge in itself vs continuity with action and the world

By ‘in itself’, I mean that (i) it stands according to criteria that are epistemic (ii) and is not inextricably interwoven with action or outcome.

It seems that at the highest level of generality, knowledge is not in-itself in that there are non-epistemic criteria and that it is interwoven with action.

However, there are areas and cases of knowledge in itself according to knowledge-intrinsic criteria; and, as we have seen, in some of those cases there is perfection of precision according to those (correspondence) criteria.

How knowledge is acquired

1. Empiricism.

2. Rationalism.

3. Combinations.

4. Non-universality.

a. Purely empirical cases (with examples and significance).

b. Purely rational cases (with examples and significance).

Method

Discovery and justification

Method and content are one

The extent of knowledge

Comment 16. On the limits of knowledge. Consider (i) the limit of our knowledge (ii) the limit of human knowledge (which entails the question, are we what we may think we are) (iii) the limit of knowledge (e.g., of an ideal being) and (iv) the real (and its limits). It seems that each case includes the previous. What is the relation among these cases?

Implications for epistemology

A system of knowledge based in the real metaphysics

Site source 2. ..\2021\resources\a system of knowledge.html.

Introduction – aim, framework, and system

Remapping knowledge

A map is always in terms of a metaphysics.

What is the nature and basis of the remap?

1. The system is vast with respect to extent and foundation, but the question of the role of knowledge in the future of humankind is open.

2. The developments in this work—metaphysics and related—show that the standard received system is limited with respect to function, extent, and articulation.

3. The remap envisaged is (i) viewing the function relative to the universe over all extension, being, and beings (ii) extent and articulation. A remap of articulation may begin with the received divisions, e.g., ‘science’, ‘philosophy’, and many others as labels rather than terms with meaning. Meanings will then be considered holistically and analytically in view of the developments of the work and function. What will follow is a remap at horizontal levels (disciplines etc) and vertical levels (meta), which will be deep yet relatively simple relative to the vast yet limited received system.

Disciplines and meta-disciplines

From the remap, the system of knowledge is seen as an entirety.

From this entirety, disciplines fall out (with suggestion from the traditional disciplines). That is, the system is not to be determined only or essentially by the traditional disciplines.

Knowledge of knowledge will be a discipline (and its meaning and content may be suggested by the content of epistemology as it is studied).

World and knowledge as a unity

Oneness of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and axiology

Ground

The universe and the world

Creative being – design and artifact

The ultimate

Universal narrative

The idea of ‘universal narrative’ is to rewrite a system of knowledge, especially of philosophy and science, for each time, from the best perspective of that time, while attempting to incorporate what is good in earlier perspectives.

Motives to the narrative are (i) to form and write our best understanding – therefore, the narrative may incorporate multiple points of view and positions (but not ‘too many’) (ii) the proliferation of published work, which with its diversity and minutiae is diluting of knowledge as a instrument. The narrative need not eliminate the diversity but will be an instrument to balance the dilution and disorganization. A logical arrangement to the narrative need not suppress alternative arrangements, including those that stand against system, but will stand in balance with the alternatives.

The stand against mere proliferation will be accomplished by (i) organization in terms of the best metaphysics (ii) emphasizing ideas over writers and thinkers.

For further details, see universal narrative, later.

The disciplines

What a discipline ‘is’

Logical, administrative, historical, and accidental factors in defining traditional and modern disciplines

A system

Philosophy and metaphysics

Their ‘nature’—what they are or ought to be

Some general topics

Cosmology

Topics in philosophy and metaphysics

Comment 17. The material below may be moved to the chapter on implications for knowledge and linked from here (or vice-versa). If it is kept here—whole or part—the heading ‘topics in metaphysics’ may be eliminated.

Site source 3. what is philosophy (html) (folder)

Site source 4. toward a database for philosophy (html) (folder)

The fundamental problem(s) of metaphysics

What does being involve?

Can it be defined in the abstract?

Does it require to be defined in terms of experience – as in this work?

The problem of being or why anything exists at all

Defining the problem

Is it one of why there is something or why there is awareness (of something)?

Addressing the problem

The problem of reality

The problem of method—how metaphysical knowledge is possible

Reverse metaphysics

To show that something that seems accidental, is not accidental, e.g., being or aware being, ask of what kind the universe (or context) must be for the thing to obtain, then attempt to prove that the universe or context is of that kind, and, finally, that the original thing is necessary (or probable of sufficient degree to be likely or even almost necessary)

Being and substance

Objects and beings

Concrete and abstract objects

Metaphilosophy and metametaphysics

Introduction

What they are

Sources

Discussion

Are they? Are they separate from philosophy and metaphysics?

What are philosophy and metaphysics, how to answer this question – specifically and in relation to the nature of linguistic meaning

While there are various approaches – the conceptual including placement within a system of knowledge, the historical, the tradition and the academic divisions – a good answer will best emerge in doing the subjects both individually and in the context of knowledge and its systems.

How metaphysical knowledge is possible

How to do metaphysics and philosophy

The new and old metaphysics and their problems

The problem of the problems and how it relates to properly answering the question of what metaphysics is rather than repeating the old ‘it is hard to define metaphysics’

Of course, this will require defusing given reasons for the ‘hardness’.

Cataloging the problems

Dialetheia and emptiness

Freedom of the will

Argument, fact, and logic

Ethics and meaning

Ethics and the meaning of life were introduced earlier.

What is a meaningful life

Comment 18. Everything to be simplified and written in ordinary but appealing language.

On meaning as in ‘the meaning of life’

External source or topic 1.The Meaning of Life (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (this link is repeated in the later treatment of meaning)

Comment 19. A formal definition is deferred to meaning (add link)

Though philosophy, especially ethics, is concerned with many matters, I see it as an essential function of philosophy (i.e., not just ethics) to be concerned with what it means and how to live well (this emphasis is not intended to minimize other functions of philosophy).

Introduction to meaning

Basic behavior of individual animals is determined by instinct—inner processing whose patterns are relatively fixed for the animal—and circumstance. Thought begins when internal processes have freedom from the animal form, such that they may model behavior and environment. It is presumed that this emerges when net adaptation of thought is positive. It is enhanced in reflective thought, which includes thinking about thought and its process, distinguishing true from false in perception, reason from unreason, positive from negative behavior, and identifying and evaluating criteria for positivity.

An essential function of reflective philosophical thought, is to enhance the quality of individual and collective human and animal lives and the world, and to identify kinds of quality—what it means to live well—basic and more, e.g., authenticity and ultimacy.

What is the base from which we may perform these functions. We may begin from everyday life and prior thought and experience, apply reflection in individual and community life. This invariably seems open ended—do we know enough to be satisfied that we are anywhere near the best we can do?

Alternatively, we can begin from a view of the universe as a whole. But can we reason out such a view or is such a view inevitably a posited ideology?

Even if the answer is negative so far, we can begin the process of reasoning a view and see where we arrive. It is equally in doubt that we should be entirely successful vs entirely unsuccessful. This is what we attempt below.

We will find that we can have success in the direction of depth but that as long as we are limited beings, the endeavor will be incomplete in the direction of variety (we provide both proof and doubt). That is, we shall arrive at a foundation but it will not be the end of mystery or adventure. This will frame the open ended approach described above.

After arriving at such foundation, we will be in a position to characterize what it is to live well that is ultimate in some directions, though open in others.

The preliminary needs of individual meaning

In talking of ‘higher’ meaning a basis in safety, security, and education; where these are not present, they are a focus of meaning; it is an element of meaning for those who have these basic elements met, to be involved in universal access to the basic.

Shared meaning

Shared meaning and its give and take with individual meaning.

1. It is secondary to individual meaning.

2. It illuminates individual meaning—and learns from it.

3. It is instrumental in meeting the preliminary needs of individual meaning.

Considerations for a later, improved conception of meaning

Effective (and formal) definition understanding of meaning (in this sense), the meaning of meaning is best deferred (see ethics and meaning) till sufficient background has been developed. Here, we note—

1. The meaning of the meaning of life requires clarification—is it happiness, duty, significance, importance and so on? Is it found in self-fulfillment or in service? Is meaning the meaning for an individual or collectively? Is it a combination of such elements? Meaning may give fullness to ethics and its conception.

2. Part of what makes for a meaningful life is the search for meaning itself. One may never find final answers. And obviously, there is more to life than meaning. For a meaningful life, most people would like or need to have basic needs met—needs such as safety, security, and perhaps human relationships. But meaning is important here too, for if some people have their basic needs met, it is often meaningful for them to help others meet their basic needs.

3. Animals seem to have a will to life in that their actions are directed – at least – at survival, procreation, and comfort… but what makes us different from the action based picture? While adults are capable of meaning, do infants and children have their own sense of meaning? If not, at what stages of development is meaning emerging… acquired? At another extreme, are the world and the universe capable of awareness and meaning—and do they have it?

4. Is meaning about ‘higher’ pursuit? Is not satisfaction with the mundane valid and full meaning, at least for some people? On the other hand, surely, it is about higher pursuit for some people. What is that higher pursuit and how are such pursuits meaningful to humankind, to being? Is there essentially one such pursuit? While meaning has variance, how can it be specified in universal terms.

5. Thinking in terms of a hierarchy from need to meaning (e.g., that of Maslow), are the basic elements, safety and security, essential to meaning? Surely, this varies among individuals. Are safety and security (the mundane) meaningful in themselves?

6. What is the ‘ground’ for addressing such issues? Perhaps the mundane is sufficient for secular meaning. However, knowledge of the real is necessary for full meaning for it addresses the issue of what lies beyond (what we commonly think we know). That is, the ground must include metaphysics.

About ethics

On ethics

We shall see ethics and meaning as intimately connected so that morality should be intimately connected to living well rather than just being a set of rules and principles.

On the applicability of ethics and meaning

We look for a conception and description of meaning that has significance for

§ Seekers of authenticity and critiques of meaning as well as those who might prefer ordinary contentment—i.e., for all reasonably aware and functional adults.

§ For the ‘fallen’ and the dysfunctional.

§ For children.

§ For the religious, the scientific, the empirically oriented, the philosophical, and the metaphysical; for the traditional and the seekers of change.

§ Respect for all life and the environment.

Ethics and knowledge

Given the reality of value, ethics is knowledge.

As we have seen, ethics is an element of criteria for knowledge—for its validity at a high level and utility at all levels.

Fact and value

Fact and value are not fundamentally distinct. Given that all consistent (logical) conceptions are realized, any fundamental distinction between the abstract and the concrete disappears. Certainly, there are differences—with sufficient abstraction, objects are not causal and there ‘residence’ in space and time is not null but abstracted out. Yet the abstract and the concrete are equally real. Fact and value are equally real—there is no absolute ontological distinction.

An imperative

That there is an imperative to be on the way to the ultimate—living in the immediate and ultimate as one—has been noted. This frames local ethical considerations.

i. The imperative is not to be compulsive. ‘Living in the world and its reward and responsibility’ is important.

ii. Ethics often takes our lives in the world as ultimate. The world is significant but not the only significant—its significance is in balance with the ultimate. That is, our focus in the world should be on the world and beyond.

Ethical systems

The systems

Their intersection with world affairs, especially politics and economics

Applied ethics

Our world

Problems and opportunities

World economics

World governance

More…

Where I live.

America.

Community.

An ultimate ethics

Cosmology

Site source 5. The little manual has content and sources.

Site source 6. god.docm.

Site source 7. cosmology.docm and cosmology-outline.docm.

Source or study topic 3.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology/.

Source or study topic 4.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/.

Source or study topic 5.cosmology.docm and cosmology-outline.docm.

Source or study topic 6.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-worlds/.

Source or study topic 7.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-ultimates/ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness/ and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/god-necessary-being/)

General cosmology

What is cosmology?

Theory

Computational general cosmology

Generating possibilities of being for the universe

A theory of form and cause

Abstract and concrete objects

Cosmology of form and formation

Cosmology of experiential being

No kind beyond experience but there are grades of experience from root to peak.

Hierarchy of experiential being

Description of peak being

Identity, spacetime-being, and property

Alternative physical cosmologies

Physical cosmology

Essential physical theory

Standard cosmology and alternatives

Part 4.Pathways

Comment 20. Alternative titles are ‘Pathways: Becoming’ and ‘Applications: Becoming’.

Preliminary

From a distinction between what we can and cannot control, it could be argued, as did the Stoics, for self-control in our responses and actions, but accepting external events as they occur. However, we do have at least some control over both spheres and, so far as we are limited, control over both is limited. The question, therefore, concerns “where is our energy is best spent” and, even if ‘best’ means ‘most productive of some desirable psychological state’, the answer must be that it depends—at least in part—on the nature of the individual.

From this and other reasons, engagement in the pathways is, therefore, a choice. So, let us repeat the guiding principle stated earlier—

No table of contents entries found.

Design of pathways

On design

This section is preliminary to and grounds the design of the pathways.

Design

Design is (i) coming up with an address of an issue or ‘occasion’ (ii) that is ready to implement. Some further considerations are—

1. The term ‘occasion’ is generic and may, for example, refer to a need, opportunity, problem, process, product, or end result.

2. Designing will always involve intuition and creation and may also include elements of rationality, which may include design of the design process.

3. In large scale projects, design may be routinized (and rationalized) in standard ways from ideas to implementation, and involve a team of designers and planners. In small scale, e.g., individual projects, design and implementation may merge as may intuition and reason (which is also the case for large scale projects over times that are greater than the scale of the specific project).

Design process

Outline

Occasion > careful definition of problem > synthesis – conceptual address of problem > analysis and improvement > final evaluation.

Details

Occasion – a situation to address, e.g., a need, opportunity, or other occasion. The situation may be new or a need arising out of an existing system.

Careful definition of the problem – in concrete and specific terms.

Synthesis – coming up with a concept to address the occasion; it will involve creativity and possible (often likely) use of existing designs and implementations.

Analysis – adjustment of the conceptual synthesis to satisfy the careful definition.

Improvement generally involves – trials > matching for precision > correction of imprecision, until precision is satisfactory. Optimization may substitute for or augment the trial process if the conceptual synthesis has an analytic or otherwise definite model.

Final evaluation and review – a phase involving a wider audience than the ‘designers’ and may mesh with implementation.

Design-implementation cycle

Given an occasion that is new or of an existing system, the cycle is

… occasion > design or redesign > implementation > occasion …

Or, in general terms

… world > opportunity > choice and action > world …

Notes

As observed, the design, its process, and implementation ‘in-the-world’, may mesh in many ways, both vertically and horizontally.

Pathway design

The occasion

The metaphysics shows the universe as ultimate, that all beings will reach it, that there is an effective approach to it.

What pathways are

Introduction

I.e., that there are effective and shared pathways to the ultimate “in, for, and from the immediate to the ultimate” (i.e., the aim of The Way of Being).

1. In the immediate—with degrees of approximation from zero to one according to degree of realization.

2. Beginning in the immediate, through worlds, to the ultimate.

Definition

Given incompleteness in being or feeling, and a metaphysics with meaning and ethics—

A pathway is (a) individual and shared (b) is negotiated (does not merely follow received prescriptions and questions its own foundation) (c) open to return to ground level and abandonment of designed process.

The purpose of pathways

Implementing the aim of the way.

Aim in universal terms

Shared discovery and realization of the ultimate in, for, and from the immediate.

Aim in process terms

Realization of the ultimate in this life and beyond.

Sources to use in writing this part^†

Site source 8. This, document, for the metaphysics and categories.

Site source 9. The document ‘a system of knowledge.docm’ for areas of action, particularly at the levels of (a) the universal and (b) this world.

Site source 10. Specifically for pathway design—journey in being.docm (for pathway design), received ways of realization.docm (for tradition), design and planning.docm (writing plan).

Site source 11. For a simple division structure—the way of being - brief essence.docm.

Site source 12. For extensive resources—the little manual.docm .

Knowledge base for pathways

The main source

The main source is the metaphysics through categories of experiential being and their dynamics

The following and their dynamics are (i) interactive in terms of vertical cause and (ii) mutually informative in conceptual terms.

The universe of experiential being and non-being

The category itself

Concepts—the real metaphysics including meaning and ethics, universe as experiential-relational field, with concept (mind) and object (world) sides and their mesh.

Details—oneness of being vs process; transformation of experience vs transformation in extension; immanence-vs-explicitness-of-principles-and-ideas-including-meta.

Dynamics—structures that comply with logic.

Supplement: dimensions of experience

Comment 21. To be integrated with the above and the earlier sections on the structure of experience.

Dimensions of state

Form – Quality.

Bound – Free.

Integration and personality.

Trajectory in time

Ground and choice.

Projects and evolution.

General form and formation

General form and formation is intermediate between the universe—experiential being and nonbeing—and worlds.

Concepts—abstract form transcends and includes temporal formation and spatial form.

Dynamics—transients (arising from the void), of which some are more persistent as a result of symmetry and therefore stability, of which some effectively populate the universe in their experiential reflexivity.

Our world and its general paradigms as dynamics

The pragmatic categorial levels.

Concepts

Knowledge of our world (i) is formulated as a system of levels (physical etc, below) (ii) from which paradigms, many well-known, are extracted (iii) which may be generalized and applied as justified by the real metaphysics (iv) which, together with the metaphysics enables negotiation of the universe.

Dynamics (paradigms)

Physical—mechanism (determinism with indeterminism) and causation.

Complexity from the physical to the living—form, emergence, and evolution – variation and selection (a case of formation).

Mind and its aspects—experience itself including experiencing, the concept side (cognition, emotion-feeling – especially pleasure and pain, attitude, choice), experiential relation (concept and linguistic meaning, knowing, acting), and the experienced (world including process, body).

Society and culture—competition, cooperation, and amplification of the power of mind, with technology of space and mind exploration.

Completeness

Metaphysical

Metaphysical completeness is derived from the categories (their elements above), tradition (below, with ‘a system of human knowledge’).

Comment 22. ‘Tradition’ is used in the expansive sense of all that is considered received, subject to reason.

Pragmatic completeness

Pragmatic completeness, such as it may occur, will come from the following and ongoing (i.e., while on paths) review and revision.

Design for completeness

See on design.

Adaptability

General adaptability

Orientation to a range of personality types and projects, situations, and cultures (for the range or situations also see ‘a system of human knowledge’).

Paths and programs

For adaptability, pathways will be divided into paths and programs.

Paths

Paths are about quality, form, and dimensions (categories) of realization.

Programs

Programs are implementation—dynamic (i.e., learning in action) parallel sequences of action.

Programs – details

Adaptability is further implemented via (i) program elements (ii) a program for the way and my life (which also functions as an example) and (iii) a program template abstracted from the example (item #ii) and generalized to provide options.

Areas and kinds of action

1. Immediate v ultimate.

2. Immersive v instrumental.

3. Their integration.

Tradition

Traditions are not seen as authoritative but as useful for (i) symbolic and other suggestiveness (ii) elements to be incorporated in the way and its implementations.

Some traditions are taken up later.

Quality vs form

Quality – effective pathways.

Form – programs.

Design of programs

Universal and ultimate

Categorial level—experiential being and nonbeing.

Design focus—aim, program; foundation and realization.

Worlds and the immediate

Categorial level—our world, beings, becoming.

Design focus—aim, program, routine.

Integration – four aspects as one

Immediate – ultimate.

Instrumental - intrinsic.

Immanence vs explicit implementation

Comment 23. Think about what amount the level will be.

Of the knowledge base in the pathways and programs.

Of effectiveness of pathways in the programs.

Chapter structure

The structure begins with design.

Design and its process

Design and design elements for pathways

Paths

1. Aware and enlightened paths

2. Ground—attitude and intelligent address of pleasure and pain

Programs

3. Universal elements with timelines

4. Program templates

Resources

An institute for the way of being

Enlightened pathways in being

Comment 24. Was, simply, ‘Pathways’

The aim of the way, elaborated

Elaboration

To live experientially at two levels—the immediate (world) and ultimate as one.

Comment 25. Place the following definition earlier, at an appropriate place.

An enlightened way attends to the mundane and its problems as part of the process. It employs mind in its fullest sense (elaborated earlier). It attends particularly to the issue of pleasure and pain.

In the world, to share living in all its dimensions (categories) and negotiating the way to the ultimate.

Enlightened living

Attention to the quality of all being (including life and a quality hierarchy from need to fullness) on the way to the ultimate.

Pathways “to the ultimate in, for, and from the immediate”

There are effective, enjoyable paths to the ultimate.

The paths invoke all capacities of beings, object-like (of the object, but not ‘objective’) and subject-like (of the subject or experience but not ‘subjective’).

Immediate and ultimate as one

A balance between realization as process and in the moment – the immediate and the ultimate as one. Being on the way. Emptiness – oneness of being(s) and the void (nothingness).

See unition (yoga).

A healthy life

From the categories, the dimensions of healthful living are mind which includes the physical and the world, community which includes society, and spirit.

And, to repeat, attention to the quality of all being (including life and a quality hierarchy from need to fullness) on the way to the ultimate.

Sharing, seeking positive relations

Paths are shared – there is sharing of functions of living and of path negotiation, the more capable assist the others, positive relations are sought and fostered.

Negotiation of paths, binding unition (yoga) and meditation

Paths are negotiated (realization is discovery – or rediscovery – in which received paths and leaders may inspire but are neither authority nor final truth).

Unition (yoga) is employed—unition (yoga) with unition-in-action, analytic, insightful, and calming meditation—including immersion and intentional action, in the world and toward the beyond.

Leadership and initiative

A charismatic leader inspires. A true leader encourages balance of individual, path, society, and emergence and continuity of leadership.

The focus of leadership is not just that of recognized or designated leaders, but also of individual and shared initiative.

Attitude and its elements

Effective attitude

A good or effective attitude for realization is that of shared endeavor and positivity to and recognition of the worth of being and all beings in the immediate world and on the way to the ultimate as detailed above and below.

Setting and sustaining effective attitude

The effective attitude is maintained by keeping good attitude in shared awareness.

An approach to sustaining a positive attitude is the sequence – recognize, acknowledge, defuse, affirm, return; a summary version is defuse – center – act.

Recognition

Maintaining a healthy attitude requires awareness of attitude. A way to recognize decay of attitude is good, e.g., a worn item, reminders, cultivating a spacious approach to the day, perhaps via meditation.

Acknowledgment

Acknowledge negative attitude, accept in the sense of not judging it negatively but as something to turn around.

Defusion

Take a brief time away from activities of the day, exercise, meditate (calming, analytic, and emphasis on attitude awareness). When the demands of the day seem pressing, remember that though a brief inner reorientation does take some time, it improves the total process (i) for the process itself is important (ii) by improving efficiency of goal oriented activities.

Affirm

One’s place in the universe (self = all). The Way of Being with discipline (in balance with abandon), security, and sharing.

Return

Return to activities of the day.

Summary

Defuse – center – act.

Affirmation and dedication

Affirmation

We affirm commitment to the world and its experiential inhabitants and to their identity with the ultimate real.

Dedication

We dedicate our being to The Way of Being—to living in the immediate and ultimate as one.

What does this mean?
How is its truth and value known?
How is it realized?
Why being? Being is chosen (i) for its neutrality to substance and ideology, from which its power follows (ii) in that our being and the being of the universe is experiential and so our embedding in the nature, power, and identity of the universe.

To its shared discovery and realization under the pure and pragmatic dimensions (categories) of experiential being in form and formation as the world on the way to the transparently limitless ultimate.

From being to limitlessness to experiential being
to enlightened pathways to proper attitude
to health, pleasure, and pain—i.e., emphasis on pleasure in the path, and for pain, a balance of understanding, accepting, therapy, being on the way and sharing in which the strong and the fortunate give aid to others.

To overcoming the bonds of limited self, so that even in trouble or doubt or pain, life is flow rather than force.

Via therapy and sharing, direct address of pain, attention to a path and the meaning of pain and doubt. Though pain and suffering are not sought, to live through them, so far as it is reasonable, is part of being in the ultimate.

To realizing the ultimate in this life and beyond.

A process version of the transcendent
living in the immediate and the ultimate as one.

Intelligent address of pleasure, pain, and emotion

Comment 26. Could be “Synthesis of the elements of experience in process”

Pleasure and pain have function but are not always functional; they deserve to be addressed but their address is often dysfunctional. The development here accepts the functionality and addresses dysfunction.

Pleasure and pain (and doubt) are inevitable; an effective path emphasizes pleasure in the path itself (over diversion). Pain is addressed—

Direct address of pain

First – where indicated by addressing pain, doubt, and destruction directly, but not with the intent of eliminating all pain. Direct address is by looking at pain and its reasons, by addressing its reasons, by not avoiding but rather by that meditative awareness that attenuates pain by exposure and seeing any sources in erroneous thinking, action, and associations. There ought to be some focus on moving from negative to positive but any attempt to eliminate all pain, especially as preliminary to constructive thought and action, would be a counterproductive and endless task.

Attention to a path; meaning of pain and pleasure

Second – rather, there is an optimum of the address of pain and being on a path, in which residual pain is given meaning by being on an aware path of realization. Pleasure is not essentially sought for its own sake but primarily by being on a shared path.

Therapy and sharing

Third – by the best available therapy (use and development), and by the fortunate assisting the less fortunate.

The issue of death and its address

A will to live and avoid death is natural. However, that we die and that our cosmos will end or become uninhabitable seems almost certain. Though we generally expect lives of people and worlds to follow a ‘normal’ trajectory, the end may come at any time. Coming from this point of view (and a secular view) we may wonder whether the metaphysics and realization have any significance. We may wonder whether they are at best mere solace. On the other hand…

We have seen that we are eternal; that on death, a person or a cosmos enters a diffuse state to emerge again; that the process is repeated and one path is through higher and higher form as peaks are approached.

This gives balance to passive nihilism. Death is a teacher. Motivated by the metaphysics, we may seek equilibrium and to engage in The Way of Being. It is a point upon which to meditate—first in calming (should anxiety be an issue), second in analyzing and intuiting the upward-downward cycles of realization, and third in commitment to realization in this world and beyond.

Unition (yoga)

It would have been natural to have placed this section experience. However, since it should address all categories, it is placed here.

Yoga has an historical origin in thought and practice in India, where ‘yoga’, related to our ‘yoking’, had one use as union with being-as-universal-experientiality. Yoga had a long history in India (~3000 BCE to the present time) and has spread worldwide in a range of adaptations to modern cultures.

Thus, yoga is an appropriate term to capture the system of TW as a practice that recognizes the truth that beings are experiential with as-if matter and mind sides with manifestation in the world and destiny to cycle through limitless peak and dissolved being and seeks effective ways (paths) to the ultimate beginning in our world.

The original insight in India was of yoga as the metaphysical insight of the identity of experiential beings—local and universal. Practice of action, and (as-if) body and mind, came later.

Nomenclature

Use of ‘yoga’ and related terms such as ‘meditation’ to refer to what is intended here may be misleading if they are interpreted as specific activities or if they are seen as being religious or merely spiritual.

Therefore, in addition to the introduction above and the definitions below, we shall consider a term that can function as alternative to ‘yoga’, especially with western readers in mind.

Having considered a number of possibilities (e.g., binding) and consulted with others, a neologism emerged – unition (suggested by Microsoft AI). I shall write ‘unition (yoga)’, except where just one of the terms is appropriate.

The concept of unition (yoga)

The as-if material and the mindlike sides of being are significant to ways of realization of the ultimate. Thus—

Unition (yoga) as binding of beings to being has no ‘sides’ but two apparent experiential sides meditative and physical – mind and body.

As we are experiential beings, the meditative might seem supreme, but since the sides are not distinct, the physical is as essential (it being thought that experiential being must have a body).

Some religions

Advaita Vedanta

In the following ‘quotes’ indicate that the quoted is uninterpreted.

Brahman is ‘absolute, infinite, changeless reality’ – ‘pure consciousness beyond attributes’.

Atman is ‘inner self of every being, identical with Brahman’.

Maya is ‘illusion where one appears as many’.

Jnana is ‘direct realization that Atman is Brahman, dissolves that ig-norance, results in liberation’.

Moksa or liberation is ‘not something gained, but meditative discernment of what was and is always true’.

Buddhism

Unition (yoga) already has elements of Buddhism.

Is the focus on suffering a good focus?

It is an important first focus, for its resolution gives freedom. However, I see it as misleading to think that there is universal resolution, even given an endless cycle of lives, for at the end of it all there is dissolution.

The balance to that is already part of psyche and points to a higher focus—(i) recognition that we are part of the process of peak being (which itself is not a final outcome so long as we think of it in finitary terms), (ii) the process may be understood via meaning from TM, and a dual address of pain and pleasure—pleasure in being and sharing the process of the peak (‘pathways’), pain via – appropriate therapy, sharing – especially the fortunate helping the less so, and appropriate acceptance of some pain as essential, not just to health, but also to realization.

The four truths and the eightfold way as a practical approach to address suffering in this life and the legend of many lives which terminate when nirvana is realized.

Beyul

In Tibetan Buddhism, ‘Beyul’ is to journey to remote nature, where immersion reveals what in Hinduism might be called ‘self as Brahman’. Related to the Shamanic vision-quest.

Christianity

The Abrahamic metaphors of ‘one God’, and Jesus dying for our sins, have multiple interpretations, which seem to not explicitly realize the cosmological importance of peak being and pain, and the social significance of true leadership, and sacrifice for others (the latter is recognized but not as a corollary of ‘dying for our sins’).

Symbolic

A symbolic approach to legend and myth is to look for and live in an interpretation that is relevant to a good life in the world and any beyond that there may be.

Universal elements of programs

Comment 27. Edit to account for changes. Introduce timelines where needed.

Overview of a program of realization

Levels

1. Universal. In implementation, there will be timelines. A generic program will be comprehensive over the categories (dimensions) of being and therefore adaptable to a range of individuals and groups.

2. Local and immediate – everyday into the near future, when it may be updated. In addition to the universal, it will address grounding, particularly everyday through life concerns of safety, security, and community.

Timeline—long term vs immediate

Correspondingly, the timeline will have two meshing ‘blocks’

3. Long term and ultimate (see planning and timelines for the way of being for development and implementation of The Way of Being).

4. Daily and immediate (see adaptable program templates).

Implementation

What follows is an implementation of the categories.

In the adaptable program that will follow both levels are implemented in a daily routine.

Implementation of the categories

Cycle of activities

The arrangement that follows is roughly in a sequence that places prerequisites first. However, the elements (ideas…) are interdependent and the process will be interactive and will repeatedly cycle through the elements.

Ideas and foundation

Program for The Way of Being—experiencing the world, reading, reflection, synthesis, writing, publishing, advertising—a program of study and development.

General—experiencing the world, reflection, synthesis and sharing—a program of development.

Comment 28. The content is at present suggestive.

Experience

Direct receptive experience of the world.

Includes experience of one’s actions and results.

Reading

Indirect receptive experience of the world.

Reflection

Evaluating receptive experience of the world.

Synthesis

Synthesis of experience, reading, and reflection.

Writing

For consolidation and as a record to be improved upon.

Publishing

For communication and sharing.

Advertising

To attract and form community and shared endeavor.

Practice, retreat, and renewal in nature and culture

General options—travel and journey for immersion in nature and culture; retreat for renewal of awareness, self, and attitude.

Nature as place of being, immersion, and inspiration

Comment 29. Pictures?

General—as path to real self and being.

Society and culture—instrumental and immersive approaches

Political economy

General options—economic and political thought, individual, charismatic, and collective action, local through global community – challenges and opportunities.

Society and its elements

General options—reflection and action on social organization and institutionalization—small to large scale; cultural (knowledge – generation, vertical and horizontal transmission, and institutions of knowledge and education), political, economic, aesthetic (play, art as understanding and as inspiration, spirit).

Society, institutions, and the individual

General considerations—will leaders in culture, spirit, politics, and economics arise from within institutions or without? It will likely depend on the field of endeavor; and it will not be ‘either / or’—the leaders will have ties to culture via institutions but are likely to act with independence.

General considerations—in ideas, leaders will likely have absorbed ideas and issues of world thought. However, thought within institutions today seems constrained by ideology and mass production. We expect and encourage leaders to have independence from the mainstream. This depends on field and an assessment is that it is more likely in philosophy and humanities than the sciences that the next great ideas will be extra-institutional.

Artifact—technology as being and ‘symbiotic’

General considerations—beings undertaking and designing for self-evolution; exploration of mind and space; synthesis of natural and artificial being.

Self-evolution

Possibilities of being.

Exploration of mind and space

Meditation and exploration of space via technology.

Synthesis of natural and artificial being

Independent and cooperative artificial being.

Universal

Unition (yoga)

Unition or yoga (practice and synthesis of be-ing and becoming; living at two levels, pure and pragmatic; synthesis over spacetime and above spacetime).

Search for the ultimate

Search for gateways to the ultimate in and from the immediate.

Planning and timelines for The Way of Being

1. Review of elements of planning and timelines and dates—Spring 2026 and ongoing.

2. Realization, personal and shared— Spring 2026 and ongoing:

a. Home and away daily program, in interaction with:

b. A program of immersive and instrumental action and reflection in nature and social action.

i. Nature—four weeks⁺ – Summers 2026, 2027, 2028…

ii. Social action—truth for The Way of Being, the way of the world, politics and economics – four weeks+ - after the time in nature, above.

3. Networking and a real or virtual institute for The Way of Being:

a. Planning—parallel to realization, above—i.e., Spring 2026 and ongoing.

b. Networking— Spring 2026 and ongoing.

c. Implementation— 2027, or earlier.

4. Step away from explicit involvement with The Way of Being—a week annually, beginning Spring or Summer 2026 and ongoing

a. No coffee or alcohol.

b. Simple daily routine.

Adaptable program templates

Introduction

Source of the program in my life

The source of the program is an example (paradigm) taken from my life.

In its outline, I follow it more or less daily (with breaks). In its details it is a list of options, rather than things I do every day. It reflects the following elements (a) immediate and universal (b) individual, community, nature, and society (c) the categories.

The example may appear ambitious. However, when I was younger, I had sufficient energy for it even though I worked. Now, I am retired and, without work, my energy is sufficient to it.

Its comprehensiveness and adaptability

The example should be adaptable to a range personality types and projects, interests, situations, and cultures. It pays attention to individual and shared action and to local as well as universal issues. The categories and the universal are immanent in a daily routine.

Notation

Light brown entries are personal planning.

General entries are in black font, derived from personal entries by abstraction and generalization.

Daily and long term priorities and planning

Long term planning is in universal elements of programs. Local planning is incorporated to the daily schedules and trip planning below..

In what follows, global action is incorporated to the daily routine.

Comment 30. Include ‘at work’ below? Introduce times for all elements.

Daily schedule for routine days, especially at home and work

In the long version of this schedule, where there are two entries under a heading, the first entry is from my schedule and the second entry is derived from the first, for general use.

Implementation

To implement this routine, I construct – have constructed – a table with multiple columns which includes main headings and activities, times, and an open column in which I enter specific activities for the day. The activities below are generic—not the specific activities for the day.

Flexibility

An intent is to be flexible. While I generally follow the routine, I may vary from it significantly when occasioned or spontaneously.

All day

Set and sustain attitude – defuse, center, act.

Early morning

Awaken

Awaken early morning.

Dedication

Dedication to and affirmation of being and becoming, and, especially The Way of Being.

See affirmation and dedication, and the resources for more on affirmation and dedication.

Dedication to and affirmation of being and becoming.

Brief review and plan

I typically have two main points of focus, selected from foundation, ground, and becoming, below.

Review and plan the day through life, death, and beyond. Select the day’s focus, one or more.

Rise

Coffee on the front porch overlooking hills to the east.

Rise. Time in nature optional coffee or tea.

Preparing for routine of the day

Set specific activities and times for the day, open relevant folders and files on my computer.

Review mail and news now or later.

Set specific activities and times for the day, review of mail and news.

Optional early breakfast

Medications and treatments. Breakfast, fluids, and a short walk at this time or later.

Breakfast, and a short walk to reflect and enhance metabolic baseline after breakfast (and other meals).

The Way of Being (realization)

The emphasis is realization, i.e., experiential being and becoming with basis in Part 2. An account of the world, particularly, the real metaphysics.

Project—foundation and long term planning for The Way

5. General plan—reflect on ideas and experience, read, synthesize, and write on the way of being; sharing, publishing, advertising, earning.

6. Immediate plan—to complete an initial version of the master document for The Way of Being, and a tentatively final essential version.

1. Reflect on ideas and experience, read, synthesize,.

2. As needed—review long term and daily planning detail.

3. Review wider implementation—instrumental and immersive give and take with society, the world, and beyond.

Optional later breakfast

Medications and treatments. Breakfast, fluids, and a short walk at this time or later.

Breakfast, and a short walk to reflect and enhance metabolic baseline after breakfast (and other meals).

Ground—some elements of my ordinary life

Ground is an essential part of The Way (i) as general support and (ii) for urgent needs as they arise.

1. Work, relationships, and communication.

2. Safety, security (with health and finances) and community (a place to live for immersion in nature and culture).

3. Attention to life and daily discipline. It is useful to occasionally step away from explicit focus on primary projects. Experiment with improved diet, less alcohol, less coffee.

Project—being and becoming—unition (yoga), action, and exploration

Realization—(i) unition (yoga)—physical and experiential, sustaining the way through doubt, anxiety, pain (ii) living the way—immersive and instrumental action in the categories (iii) technological exploration of mind and space.

Nature as inspiration.

Society and sharing – general options—local to global; politics and economics; relationships, work, school; sports.

Technology – general options—technology for exploration of space, and experiential being – AI as agent and complement to (human) beings.

Note—it is important to understand the term ‘unition (yoga)’ as used in this work – see unition (yoga).

Rest of the day, afternoon

Tasks and lunch

Tasks—day to life (cleaning, supplies, cooking, other). I maintain a list of tasks and needs.

Lunch.

Tasks—day to life (cleaning, supplies, cooking, other).

Lunch.

Realization—unition (yoga), action, exercise, and exploration

Unition (yoga)—physical and experiential, and immersive unition (yoga) in action in the dimensions or categories of being.

Exercise and exploration (aim: at least two hours, net, daily)—walking or bicycling, local streets or beyond town (e.g., Headwaters Forest), and photography.

Exercise and exploration (aim: set an appropriate aim for time, level, and kind – e.g., walking, running, bicycling)—in town or beyond, with or without phone and camera.

Evening

Review and minor tasks

Review evening to life and beyond. Moderated discipline—avoid excess ‘indulgence’, center as needed, emphasize routine. Minor tasks. Print planning for the next day. Shower. Supper and fluids.

Review evening to life and beyond. Moderated discipline—avoid excess ‘indulgence’, center as needed, emphasize routine. Minor tasks. Write or print a plan for the next day. Shower. Supper and fluids.

Networking and sharing

Share The Way of Being (network).

Activities

Entertainment without dissipation, home or evening out, relaxation.

Reflection and attention to The Way of Being—foundation and publication, writing.

Reflection and attention to The Way of Being.

Meditation and early sleep

Final thoughts—and brief meditation before I sleep (i) possibly structured, e.g., review of needs – general and for action (ii) unstructured to see what may arise.

Some details—what has been accomplished, where one is headed, is what one does (life, engagement with ideas – society – the world) useful, and is it enjoyed at a fundamental level… are changes needed … what does my ones limitedness and limitlessness inform us?

Before sleep or if awakening during the night—optional unition (yoga), stretching, meditation, snack and fluids.

Sleep early.

Planning a trip or expedition

The purpose of my is more than ‘entertainment’. It is especially to further understanding and becoming—to further realization.

Trip possibilities—kinds—and planning

See a trip planning template for (i) wilderness hiking for nature as an element of being, for its inspiration, and for health and enjoyment (ii) visiting and living in a range of locations—towns, universities, and other centers of culture.

Material items to plan

Especially address travel plans, places to stay, travel partners, bookings, document needs, general and special items to take, and special arrangements such as having supplies and gear mailed to destinations or to send such items home.

Planning for realization

Think through needs for realization and how they will be executed.

Daily scheduling for variant days, especially away from home and in travel

Aim

The aims of travel are (i) experience and enjoyment (ii) immersion in and inspiration-learning from nature and culture. My ‘away’ routine is more flexible than my ‘at home’ routine and is therefore less detailed. Elements from the at home routine may be incorporated.

Journal

I maintain a journal of thoughts, experiences, activities, plans—general and for return. There are times when I reflect on ‘life problems’ and have found that time in nature (i) is healing and (ii) inspires a way to resolution.

Morning

Review

Review plans—predetermined or spontaneous, set as yet unset times and places.

Usual morning activities

Usual morning activities—e.g., shower, breakfast. Coordinate with others.

Day

Setting out, activities

Set out if not a rest day for experience, immersion, and inspiration etc. Take photographs, record notes. May (i) follow preset plan or (ii) follow interesting-exciting-inspirations spontaneously, as they arise or (iii) both.

Rest days

By ‘rest’ I mean some combination of (i) physical rest, (ii) a break from intentionally constructive activities – idleness and ‘doing nothing’, and (iii) spontaneous activity.

Lunch

Lunch.

Evening and night

Review and preparation

Review the day, plan for the next day, shower, dress for the evening.

Activities for The way

More experience, immersion, inspiration etc. as the thought or opportunity arise.

Supper and entertainment

Supper and entertainment—disciplined vs spontaneous.

Final thoughts and brief meditation

See daily schedule for routine days for details.

A joint template – daily, life, and beyond

Comment 31. In this template, yoga means unition (yoga)

PRIORITY \| Date(s) – default = daily	MENU OF ACTIVITIES and details	TIMES, SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES

*FIRST THINGS* and ALL DAY
Set attitude \| All day	See / correct for negative messaging, attitude – via yoga…
First things	Affirm, dedicate / review: day / life priorities // rise, coffee, breakfast / set activity times / mail / open computer files

*REALIZATION –* The Way of Being (F = foundation, T = transformation, becoming, SS = society and sharing)
F \| Daily till summer 2027…	Write, edit site, publish
T – general	Yoga sustaining the way through doubt, living the way, tech-real exploration: mind / body / space
T – nature \| 3x/yr, 4 wk⁺	Travel – immersion in nature as contact with the real and as inspiration.
T, SS – general	At home and work—local to global politics, economics; relationships; work and school
T, SS – immerse \| 3x/yr, 4 wk⁺	Travel – exploring different cultures for their ways – knowledge and practice

*THE DAY*
Tasks, lunch \| Daily + 1 d/wk for main tasks + schedule major tasks	Tasks—cleaning, self-care, bills and taxes, mail, shopping, cooking, lunch
Ground—safety, security, community	Finance, place (mind, nature, society, universal inspiration), health and diet, discipline – routine, arrange / minimize home, property, documents
Yoga and related practice	Yoga, action, exercise, exploration – 2 hours⁺

*EVENING* and SLEEP
Review, tasks	Plan next day, be disciplined, shower, supper
Networking and sharing	Contacts electronic / physical—develop, maintain
Activities	Entertainment, home or evening out /reflection on the pathway (the way of being) / both
Meditation, sleep	What has been accomplished, what is needed. Calming before sleep or if waking during the night – combined with yoga postures and stretching

Resources

Comment 32. To be overhauled.

The Way of Being

Daily routine – home (pdf, word docm), away (pdf, docm).

The Way of Being – a program (pdf, docm).

The Way of Being – affirmation with dedication and attitude setting and resetting.

The Way of Being – site, this in-process version of this work.

Reference

For a system of (human) knowledge based in the real metaphysics, see a system of knowledge.

Action and immersion

For social action, see challenges and opportunities.

Sources

For sources, see (my) reading, my influences, and main influences.

An institute for The Way of Being

Source or study topic 1. Francis Bacon (“Salomon's House”) (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The purpose and foci may be—

Introduction

It would be effective to have an institute with members with knowledge of a range of the different aspects of The Way of Being. They would interact in such a way that it would promote (i) the way as a whole (ii) individual disciplines. There would be support, e.g., for funds, administration, and publication. There may be a physical building or, alternatively, networked interaction.

Thus far, the idea of an institute has not gotten beyond a conceptual stage. However, planning shall be part of the example that follows.

Purpose

Subject expertise, support (e.g., web design), action, power of sharing and teaming.

Emphasis – foundation

The theoretical background and consequences.

Select disciplines that contribute to The Way of Being.

The realm and range of the possible.

Emphasis and projects – realization and action

Ways of realization—traditional, new, and synthesis. Immersion in The Way of Being.

World problems and opportunities (see the resources).

Ethics and meaning.

Publications—examples:

1. A manual of health.

2. Universal narrative.

Design

Emphasis

Above.

Planning

To be undertaken as part of immersion in being and the world after completing the informal version of The Way of Being.

Review of concept (the section on ‘An institution’).

Search further external sources.

Review and planning of the elements of design.

Elements of design

Central location and building vs distributed and virtual.

Funding—preliminary and beyond.

Needs—establishment (information, production).

Needs—human research and leadership, other administrative, support.

Part 5. Return

Return

Having reflected on our place and trajectory in the universe, while acting out and upon these reflections, we return to focus on action and transformation, emphasizing the immediate, the ultimate, and their mesh. Return is a complement to Part 1. Into to The Way of Being. Here, there is an emphasis on a place of quiet, contemplation, and reflection on what is essential. However, it is not a final place. Rather, it is part of a cyclic process, and from ‘return’, we may begin again from the beginning or at any point in the cycle of our individual and social life. ‘Return’ is also looking inward, so as to more effectively act in the world.

The focus

Focus – interaction and conversation among living in the immediate, community, and realization under The Way of Being. A time of living in the present, for the present as (if it is) ultimate. The foci include foundation (ideas, writing, publishing) and becoming (realization; attention to the categories of nature, society, psyche, and the universal; unition; sharing).

Action – the categories, with emphasis on immersion.

Publishing – see universal narrative, below.

Perception – seeing the world as it is, in balance with the lens of concepts.

Retreat and renewal

Retreat and renewal – for sustenance of attitude and immersion in a path to the ultimate—as the occasion arises and annual or biannual.

Places – home; extended nature and culture travel for immersion, renewal, and ad hoc and other inspiration in the moment

Universal narrative

Introduction

Synthesis – It is of value to have a synthesis of the history of thought. In doing so individuals have been important, especially because some thinkers are occasions for fundamental advance. However, it is also useful to focus on ideas.

The status of the literature of ideas – Today we refer back to thinkers about 2500 years ago, that is, to the earliest written words in philosophy. What if, instead, there were 10,000, 100,000, or 1 million years of written history? In formulating philosophical thought, would it be required to refer to all important thinkers of the last million years? If philosophical thought continues for another, say, 10,000 years would not referring back, become an impediment to new thought?

What is required – Some of the seminal thinkers of the future will be summarizers and synthesizers. They will capture the essences of thousands of years of philosophy. This will make for productive new, thinking. This will, of course, not prevent any thinker from referring to the detailed record (and perhaps some kind of systematic databases will be available to help minimize the labor of back referral).

Writing and updating universal narrative

Writing and updating the narrative shall be an ongoing and shared project.

1. Sharing is an intrinsic (community) value in being and becoming; sharing will address the problems of limited time and expertise of a single writer.

2. The problem of coherence and inspiration will be addressed by a team under inspired leadership.

3. For The Way of Being – continued development, publication, advertising, sharing, and realization.

On universal narrative

Assertion 87. Synthesis – the history of ideas and endeavor rewritten, perhaps once a generation or at cultural paradigm shifts, as a single and evolving text (and oral and ideational tradition). The synthesis will be concept centered with individual thinkers as a secondary emphasis.

Comment 33. Add link to ‘institute’.

Planning†

Part 1. Into to The Way of Being

Foundational issues

Doubt and dialetheia

Logic, science, and argument

An example: logic from ordinary language

Some fundamental laws of logic are

Standard logics

Part 2. An account of the world

Definitions

Notation for the axiomatic system

Preliminary

The notation

The notation: supplement

Experience and being

Significant meaning and value

Language, concept meaning, and knowledge

Argument

Direct argument

Indirect argument or inference from established fact

Certain inference

Likely inference

Transitivity of inference

Argumentative strength

The certain case

The less than certain case

Ampliative vs nonampliative argument

What argument does

Metaphysics

The concept of possibility

Conceptual or logical possibility

Real possibility

Impossibility and necessity

Cause and the cause of the universe

The range of possibility

The limitlessness of being and the universe

Alternative demonstrations of limitlessness

Some significant consequences

All beings

On perfection, pleasure, and pain

The universe

The void

Knowledge

Living in two worlds

The two worlds

Living in two worlds as one

Real metaphysics

Metaphysical possibility

The significant universe*

The range of possibility

The significant universe

On certainty

Doubt and its use

General doubt

The Way of Being: doubt

The Way of Being: response to doubt

Experience as universal and in detail

Aspects of experience – needs for experiential beings

The experiential relation and time

Quality, form, experiencing (time)

Experiential structure

The world is the object of and includes experience

The universe is experiential

The most general form of a being

The nature of identity, extension, and duration

Their origins

Ethics and meaning

Overview

The aims of this section on ethics and meaning

What is ethics

Modern normative ethics

Why ethics and meaning?

Meaning

The good

Choice and the right

Ethics

Secondary goodness

Overlap of intrinsic and secondary goodness

A simple ethic

What should be considered

Planning^†

Significant me aning and value