The Way of being – Master edition
(in-process)

Current editions: master (working)
Derived from the master: long (in-process) | axiomatic (essential content)
Not derived from the master: micro | informal version

Anil Mitra, copyright © first edition – 2002
this version – July 12, 2026

Contents

The words ‘sound’ or ‘strong’ associated with a title or text marks it as certain or likely inference, respectively, as defined in the text. Absence of such marking does not imply absence of certainty or likelihood.

Writing this document

The definitions

Import sources from other documents

Numbered styles

The metaphysics

Some sections and topics needing special attention

Reviewing this and making the outline document

Some details

Eliminating redundancy and excess detail

Ways

Pathways

Design

Alt words and phrases

Making the documents for publication

Part 3. Into the way of being

What is The Way of Being?

Wide angle view

What The Way of Being Is

What The Way of Being Is Not

Traditions of understanding and living

Secularism

Transsecularism

On the choice of ‘being’ and related concepts

Preview—a picture of the universe

Preliminary: limits of thought and reality

The picture and its truth

On the meaning of the picture

Some consequences for destiny

Some consequences for knowledge and understanding

Summation

Understanding The Way of Being

The essential concern

Some issues and responses in detail

The sequence of development

Overview

Definitions

The beginning in experience

Knowledge and argument

The metaphysical development

The categories as the culmination of the metaphysics

Applications

Return

On foundational systems for metaphysics

What is presumed

On axiomatic systems

Axiomatic systems for metaphysics

Part 4. The Way of Being

Definitions

Notation for the axiomatic system

The definitions

Being

Experience, existence, and being

Significant meaning and value

Knowledge and value

Knowledge

Language, concept meaning, and knowledge

A view of the role of knowledge in the world

Beings

Being and beings

The universe and its contents

Cosmoses

Laws

The void and its existence

Metaphysical possibility

Robust worlds

The significant universe*

Doubt and certainty

Topics in metaphysics and philosophy

Experience as universal and in detail

The concept of experience extended to all being

The fundamental nature of experience and reasons for its deferred treatment

How shall we extend the concept of experience?

Meaning and justification of the extension

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

We are ~~effectively~~ experiential beings

The form of experience

Free will

On consciousness and consciousness studies

The detailed structure of experience

The universe is ~~effectively~~ experiential

Identity, extension, and duration

Ethics and meaning

Introduction

Meaning and ethics

Ethics for The Way of Being

Categories and cosmology

Introduction – categories in philosophy and in this work

The categories and dynamics according to their levels and paradigms

Part 1. Planning^†

This document

The document

This and its outline are master to The Way of Being (TW) publication editions—short, long, and informal.

Notation

Done for now.

Done forever.

The main styles

1. For the short edition—Main-mini (Ctrl + 9), Main-mini-list (Alt + Ctrl +;), MiniOnly (Ctrl + 7), MiniOnly-List (Ctrl +;), Central, and Main (Alt + Z).

2. For the long edition—Long (Alt + L), Long-list (Alt + Ctrl + L), and LongOnly, a character style (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + L).

3. For the informal edition—styles to be determined if there is an informal edition.

4. For this document—Master (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + M) and the character style, MasterOnly (Ctrl + M).

The document template, journey in being.dotm, has a complete list of styles.

Writing this document

The definitions

Minimize.

What else to incorporate—Truth vs Assertion vs Fact…

Import sources from other documents

The main documents are

design and planning.docm

little manual.docm

Numbered styles

Improve ordering

The metaphysics

Frame—abstract (precise), general (inclusive), neutral (no slant or ideology) – powerful, reveals ideal value, yet only a universal frame and so reveals real possibilities but not how to achieve them

Pragmatic fill in—shows the how, and even if rough and in error, is the best we have and is more efficient than ‘random’ process

Some sections and topics needing special attention

the way of being - brief essence.docm for pathways, add Buddha and where to place Buddha / religion

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)

questions and answers.docm—is the way of being religion / a religion, the range of possibility under the real metaphysics, what are the significant possibilities,

Remarks about ‘strong’ and ‘sound’ not just under the main title.

Reviewing this and making the outline document

Line by line

Line by line long vs short, in parallel with outline:

1. * an incomplete div (sub divs may inherit) or paragraph.

2. ** a div that appears only in the long version

3. ^† for temporary sections (subs may inherit).

4. Min def, axioms, truths, etc, stabilize styles

5. Introduce ‘Auxiliary Elements’ to Definitions, consequences and so on.

6. Center out.

a. The universe and its identity are limitless

b. Consequences

c. Pathways

Editing

Refine, add commentary.

‘the way’ vs ~~TWB~~ vs TW vs The Way of Being… consistent use

‘I’, ‘we’, ‘it’

Mark sound, strong, and mere likelihood.

Some details

Ordinary language > precision > ~~logic~~ and argument

The void-universe relation as a candidate for one of the roots of quantum indeterminism and quantum action at a distance

In the chapter on metaphysics, take up ‘the range of possibility’ (and refer details to the supplement)

‘Minding’, ‘to mind’, ‘yoga’ (see reserve notes for ‘unition’ etc.)

Eliminating redundancy and excess detail

Specifically, contract and introduce coherence to experience (¿ethics?), ethics, categories, cosmology, pathways and their design.

Ways

Add truths

Pathways

Review and improve pathways. Make the template there inclusive and make ~~world.dotm~~ consistent with it.

Design

This document may absorb ~~design and planning.docm~~—all or part

Alt words and phrases

The Way

The Way of Being

Pathways

Yoga

Making the documents for publication

1. Long—eliminate Master, MasterOnly, and MiniOnly; then format All Caps in the table of contents definitions and paragraph indents.

2. Short—eliminate Master, MasterOnly, Long-list, and LongOnly, and possibly Right; then format All Caps in the table of contents definitions and paragraph indents.

a. In making the formal editions, attend to starred and daggered content and make sure to eliminate all long elements from the short edition.

3. Informal—see the existing informal version / use the short version..

Website

Minimize, layout for impact, realign to 2026, email, picture and picture size, httpd.conf, .htaccess.

Zero

Zero and in-the-world

Part 2. Notation

General notation

Comment 1. To be implemented—

The main divisions are ‘parts’ and ‘chapters’; ‘division’ and ‘section’ are generic for part, chapter, or subdivision. A star against a heading marks an incomplete part that is in-process or planned.

Important conclusions will be marked as sound or strong. While the terms are defined later, it is enough here to say that soundness indicates certainty and that strength indicates likelihood that ranges from low to high probability to certainty, depending on perspective.

Right aligned paragraphs are for (i) part of text to be spoken (ii) details. Hell

Small capitals indicate defined terms or abbreviations.

Comment 2. To be implemented—

TWB or TW – The Way of Being or The Way (if not capitalized, the terms will be within single quotes).

IM – The ideal metaphysics, i.e., the abstracted, perfect, and ultimate frame for the real metaphysics, which is derived from being, its properties, and related concepts.

fp – The fundamental principle of metaphysics, i.e., the demonstrated assertion that the universe is the realization of the greatest or, equivalently that the universe realizes all logical possibility.

TM – The real metaphysics or the metaphysics is the name of the metaphysics of ‘the way’. In what way is the metaphysics ‘real metaphysics’? It indicates (i) that metaphysics as conceived here is study of what reality is and of what is real and (ii) that ‘the real metaphysics’ is (asserted to be) indeed and successfully such a study.

New words

This section is not a vocabulary—its purpose is to present some neologisms, i.e., rather new terms and unusual uses of terms.

Be-ing – In TW, ‘being’ is abstract in the sense that after abstraction, what remains is precise. This makes the present concept of being trivial and shallow. This is a strength, for it is in its triviality that it is capable of precision and in its triviality that it is found to have an ultimate power. This is unlike ‘being’ as it is used in much of philosophy where it refers to the depth of things, which, while it makes ‘being’ a deep concept, also makes it difficult and possessed of ineffability. Here, what is deep is within ‘being’ but not essentially of it and this allows both depth and power. Therefore, a term that refers to the depth of things is needed. ‘Be-ing’ shall be that term.

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 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. What unition and yoga are will be defined and it is this to which ‘unition (yoga)’ refers.

This edition**

Material that is specific to the long edition is in light brown font.

The axiomatic system

Introduction

It is effective to develop the notation together with some discussion axiomatic systems in general and specifically for the metaphysics of the work. The discussion is placed later in on foundational systems for metaphysics and the notion is in notation for the axiomatic system. For convenience the notation is also presented here.

Comment 3. The notation is to be linked as a copy of the version in ‘into’.

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.

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

Axiom 1. Numbered style for axioms.

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

Assertion 1. Numbered style for axioms.

Thesis 1. Numbered style for fundamental theses.

Postulate 1. Numbered style for postulates. Identical to but now preferred over the Thesis style.

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.

Condition(s). A condition is a premise for a very specific consequence or system of consequences.

Preferred notation

The preferred styles are definition, informal definition, and truth.

The preferred styles are definition, informal definition, axiom, postulate, truth, consequence, and premise.

Part 3. Into the way of being

Comment 4. The old version of ‘into’ is in the backup in ..\2024-a\resources\.

This division is an informal introduction to The Way of Being (hereafter: TW).

What is The Way of Being?

If not universal, it is common to think that what is meaningful in a human life lies within the typical 73 years from birth to death. Some humans achieve satisfaction, some live brief painful lives. There is ongoing research into increasing quality and longevity of our lives. Though we are not close to it, some researchers think we may achieve biological immortality. But even if that were achieved and ignoring its problematic issues, the cosmos itself seems finite.

What are our true limits? The ultimate limit must have to do with ‘possibility’ in some sense. One way to think of TW is that it is an exploration of thought and action in a tension between limits and limitlessness.

What is the tension? We seem limited but if we are limited, perhaps our view of our limits is limited. The language and thought that we would develop to see us as dually limited and beyond limits – at least some limits – might require us to (i) hold a paradoxical view of ourselves as limited and limitless (ii) resolve the paradox without defusing the dual view.

Wide angle view

The way and its aim

Definition 1. The Aim of The Way of Being (hereafter: TW) is shared discovery and realization of the ultimate in, for, and from our world. The Way of Being itself is (TW) is (i) an attitude that sees our present place in the world and cultural traditions as transitional (ii) a system of knowledge that is ultimate in its precise capture of a framework revealing the universe to be limitless and our participation in that limitlessness and (iii) a way – pathways – to the ultimate that begins in our world and emphasizes the world, the ultimate, and the process (iv) the framework is augmented by fill-in with pragmatic knowledge such that the joint system, though not perfect as faithful knowledge, is perfect in that it is the best we have in terms of participation in the limitlessness.

Comment 5. The following is a rewrite of my version by a Microsoft AI agent.

Readers may expect to find:

1. Metaphysics and the immediate: A metaphysics in which the ultimate is without limit, yet meshes with—and deepens—the immediate (our world).

2. Relation to science and received knowledge: A development that engages standard scientific pictures while arguing—by reason rather than dogma—that the universe goes limitlessly beyond them.

3. What may change for the reader: You may need to revise and extend inherited views—(i) individual concepts and their system, and (ii) the range of what those concepts (with reason) can reveal.

4. Doubt, and how it is addressed: Although the development proceeds from experience and reason, doubt is likely. The essential doubt is not whether the ultimate is conceivable, but whether it obtains. The work addresses this (i) rationally, through alternative demonstrations; (ii) metaphysically, through postulation; and (iii) existentially, through the claim that living in light of the metaphysics can enhance our being in the universe and guide life in the world.

5. What is—and is not—promised: Living under these ideas does not eliminate pain or suffering, and any promise to do so is false. What is offered is (i) ways of negotiating pain and pleasure, (ii) living in truth, and (iii) a conception of ultimates as process—peak, dissolution, and repetition—so that there is no final nirvana or heaven, but rather continuing opportunity. This opportunity is not given as a formula; it is approached through paths to be negotiated intelligently.

The basis

TW is naturally based in interacting knowledge and action.

It sometimes seems that the knowledge of our civilization comes close to defining the universe and its nature. However, that knowledge is limited in two ways (i) imprecision (despite the great precision in some areas) (ii) incompleteness—it is consistent with experience and reason that the universe is the realization of the greatest possibility and that our world is small or even infinitesimal in relation to the universe.

Yet,

Truth 1. TW begins with ordinary knowledge, language, and reason, for that is ‘where we are’, and it is from there that it is efficient to build toward both foundation and edifice of knowledge of the world, our place and process in it, and our destination—whether in the world or beyond.

Developing the way

This section outlines the development of TW without proof or elaborate explanation (provided in the main body of the work).

From ordinary knowledge, language, and reason, TW is developed as follows.

1. Precision of reference and inference begins by abstraction—i.e., removing ineliminable distortion from concepts,

2. Completeness is introduced via neutrality of the main concepts, especially that of ‘being’, which is both trivial and powerful (contradiction is avoided by the abstraction),

3. This leads via the concept of the void to an abstract framework im (the ideal metaphysics), which is precise in its capture of the real, and shows (i) the universe to be the greatest possibility (this is named the fundamental principle of metaphysics, abbreviated fp), cycling through ultimates of peak being and dissolutions (ii) for being that is apparently without awareness or agency there are (apparently) blind ways to awareness and agency (e.g., life on earth) and (iii) for beings with agency there are paths to merging with / as the ultimate (if there were no such paths, it would imply that the universe does not realize the greatest possibility).

4. im is joined to our pragmatic, imprecise, and incomplete knowledge to form a system, tm (the real metaphysics), which is perfect relative to the value of realization because error and failure are the normal way to the ultimate.

5. In our limited (‘ordinary’) form we are not aware of shared awareness of all being—given the (seemingly) discrete, specific, and singular nature of our being, it is hard to imagine such sharing or peaking. However, (i) from fp, the sharing / peaking must obtain (ii) for which one mechanism is collapse of spacetime (which follows from realization of the greatest possibility but is beyond the domain of though – perhaps – at the root modern physical theory).

6. As conceived above, tm is the basis of development of a system of knowledge and realization, culminating in the pathways (and return from ‘high ideas’ to enlightened ordinariness).

7. Since TM is immanent in ordinary knowledge, it can hardly be said to have been ‘discovered’ but is nonetheless ultimate. As it occurs to a human being it must be limited unless we break out of our as-if limited form even though it touches the ultimate. However, for ultimate being this knowledge is ultimate, and that includes our being should / when we achieve the ultimate,

About precision of reference and inference

Precision of reference is obtained via abstraction. Once there is precision of reference, standard logic (laws of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle; and standard propositional and predicate calculi), follow when there is stable identity and definiteness of reference (for example ‘it is raining’ is indefinite because a location is not specified but it becomes definite when either a location is implicit or specified, e.g., ‘it is raining in my garden’).

It is important to note that we will encounter significant exceptions to the law of non-contradiction that center around the concept of the void as the absence of being, for which existence and nonexistence are the same.

Summary

The development may be summarized in the sequence (i) ordinary knowledge (ii) abstraction (iii) precision (as faithfulness to the real) (iv) neutral concepts and completeness but, for limited being, only at a high level of abstraction (v) abstract framework, i.e., an ideal metaphysics, which shows that all beings realize the ultimate (vi) a join of the ideal framework and ordinary or pragmatic knowledge, results in a real metaphysics, which is perfect relative to the ideal value of ultimate realization (vii) pathways to the ultimate in, for, and from the immediate (viii) return.

What The Way of Being Is

1. A way and system of understanding and knowledge critically developed, showing the universe to be the realization of all possibility, with peaks and dissolutions, with all beings merging in the peak states at which the identity of all being is manifest.

2. A way of realization of the ultimate beginning in, for, and from our world. That is, the neither the ultimate nor the immediate is sacrificed for the other.

3. Based in individual and general experience, reading, imaginative and critical reflection, action, and learning. Though it does reflect personal experience, it is written for general reading as an account of the world and a way of life within and beyond it.

What The Way of Being Is Not

1. A concrete or abstract science but straddles the abstract and the concrete and is based in experience and our being in the world as elaborated in the work.

2. A simple panacea pain and evil, or a simple recipe for realization of the ultimate. Its way of realization has suggested prescriptions but is fundamentally a way that must be worked out in shared endeavor, and recognizes that we work with both pleasure and pain—accepting pain within reason rather than hesitation due to imperfection—and that TW begins and is for the world.

3. A religion in the sense of a system of belief or dogma and is not developed into an institutional system. However, it has a way of being in the universe, which attends to all dimensions of being—physical, emotional, and cognitive.

A guiding principle

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.

This edition

This is a brief axiomatic version of The Way of Being. For elaboration, explanation, historical context, and special topics, see the long edition.

This is a long edition of The Way of Being. It has elaboration, explanation, historical context, and special topics. There is also a shorter version that omits the elaborations.

Audiences

The general appeal should be to readers to whom the following vision appeals and have a desire and willingness to put in effort to work toward it. TW is a way and vision that has an ultimate framework joined to a detailed system such that (i) the framework is perfectly faithful to the real and is not limited by the standard views of world cultures but does not reject what has validity in them (ii) the join has pragmatic perfection relative to ultimate knowledge and realization.

TW is specifically intended for the following.

1. Readers with a general interest in what the universe is truly like, unfettered by their unnecessary but often unrecognized limitations.

2. Readers who would grow beyond their culture and human status, which means that they would enter into an evolution of being.

3. Readers with a conceptual orientation, including academic readers, who would see that standard views of the limits of our knowledge and being are severely limited and would grow to conceptual systems beyond the standard to, as far as we can, ultimate views.

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.

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’. This idea and its significance is further elaborated in on the choice of ‘being’ and related concepts.

2. “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 the definitions through categories and cosmology and is applied to understanding in knowledge and the world.

3. 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).

Traditions of understanding and living

The interest is in understanding – knowledge, reason and inference, values and their interaction with ways of living. Experience is where understanding begins. One aim of this work is to find and push toward final boundaries of experience.

Secularism

Informal definition. Secularism is a family of traditions that is (i) built from ordinary experience subject to criticism (ii) naturalistic in that its conceptual constructs are close to experience, e.g., as in science, but not as in speculative myth or religion.

This tradition or family of traditions builds from ordinary or common experience subject to criticism. Where it is imaginative, as in science, it requires contact with ordinary experience.

In that ordinary experience does not define its boundaries, there is a motive to seek beyond it, but a region beyond experience and science is often denied in secular thought, sometimes tacitly and sometimes forcefully and explicitly as in logical positivism, which flourished in the early twentieth century.

A key to valid thought a region beyond experience and today’s science is that it is consistent that there is more than just common experience. What we will find is that while some transsecular thought may be at best useful fiction, it can have foundation in experience. We elaborate on this below in observing that the concepts of ‘being’, ‘universe’, and more have basis in experience. This leads to transsecularism.

Transsecularism

Informal definition. Transsecularism is an approach to understanding and living that emphasizes (i) recognition of arbitrary limits in common views of ‘ordinary experience’ (ii) is neutral with respect to the limit imposed by naturalism (the term ‘transsecular’ is neutral in that encompasses approaches from experience and reason as well as from dogma and myth; thus transsecularism, as understood here, is not distinct from secularism but includes it).

Religion as transsecular

A second class of traditions may be labeled ‘transsecular’ or metaphysics as study of the real and conceived broadly. In this sense, understanding goes beyond ordinary experience. The religions of the world are metaphysical in this sense; though they provide meaning and culture, their speculation almost always includes arbitrary dogma.

This failure of religions as a faithful account of the real is not a failure of the idea of religion itself. However, the term ‘religion’ has acquired prejudicial meaning and thus its use to describe the real would be conflicted.

Constructive metaphysics

There is another kind of metaphysics, exemplified by Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality, which hypothesizes fundamental elements of the real and builds a system on that base. Such metaphysics is like the sciences in that it has hypothetical elements and that if conclusions contradict experience, there is doubt about the hypotheses and search for revision.

In that there is postulation (hypotheses), both the sciences and metaphysics of this kind of metaphysics are hypothetical or speculative. They are also rational in that when consequences do not agree with experience, new or modified hypothesis must be found and thus their theories are always open to revision (unless shown final). A distinction is that in science postulates have consequences that are measurable by material instruments (including the senses), but the postulates of metaphysics seek what may be regarded as real.

Real metaphysics

There is still another approach to metaphysics, which is named ‘the real metaphysics’ in which the only appeal is to experience, acknowledging that it may be only seeming. That is, such metaphysics—content and method—shall flow of necessity from the data of experience (even though part of it may be seeming). An initial phase of real metaphysics is to select what experience is a true datum and reasons for that selection.

On the choice of ‘being’ and related concepts

When I identify my experience with the world, I may be in error. One approach to metaphysics has been to postulate fundamental kinds or forms, called substances, which has been productive, but is also subject to error, for to appeal to substance is to say that a thing belongs to a hypothetical class such as matter, mind, process, energy, or word-as-object. And if that class is good for some purposes, i.e., ‘approximate’, it may be altogether useless as a fundamental class.

So how shall we select a fundamental class or classes? We do not need to. In fact, at the beginning we ought not for (i) we do not know whether there are such classes (ii) even if there are, to choose an unanalyzed class, is not just to invite error, but may be entirely mistaken. On the other hand, perhaps there are adequate classes or kinds. To begin, therefore, we ought to be neutral to class.

The idea of being as used here starts with the idea that ‘things are what they are’ – roughly, being is ‘that which is’ or, better, ‘the quality of that which is’. To say something has being is to say no more than ‘it is’. That is, to begin with being is to be neutral to class and kind.

But there are problems (i) when we have an appearance how and when can we know that there is an object (ii) is not ‘it is what it is’ trivial? The responses to the problems are as follows.

In outline those appearances are real, which are abstracted from their details, so that distortion is eliminated. That this can and is developed powerfully and richly is detailed below.

The system requires other concepts, which flow from being—beings (being is their essential quality), the universe (all being or beings), the void (the absence of being), meaning (linguistic as well as the ‘meaning of life’), and even logic.

How does the idea of being give power to the other concepts? Let us use the universe as an example. A common definition is ‘the universe is all space and time and its contents such as matter, motion, and energy; another is ‘the universe is all the facts’. The first t is problematic in that it presumes space, time, matter, energy as real and as exhaustive. But being as ‘the quality of that which is’ allows what is real, e.g., space, time, the rest, and more to emerge if they are real and also to emerge as as-if approximations if useful but not strictly found real. The second omits reason. Of course, this could all be trivial but we will find it to be ultimately powerful in capturing the real and its extent.

The move from substance metaphysics to being is analogous to the move from simple arithmetic to algebra—in the move from known to unknown quantities. In not saying what things are in advance of analysis, being allows us to deal with the initially unknown character of things (and thinghood). Further, we will find fact and reason to be one.

A potential problem with the present conception of being is that it does not speak of the depth, ineffability, and mystery of being, that is found attractive in some of the metaphysical literature (e.g., in the writing of Heidegger). Here, the present conception is especially powerful for (i) in not defining the depth and so on into being, we avoid the contamination of vagueness and imprecision but (ii) we allow the depth and so on to emerge from metaphysical analysis—from a metaphysical algebra.

That is, in pushing the move from substance to being, beyond a move from postulated to unknown depth, we move to the trivial. We move to that trivial which is transparent, significant, and a container for the depth and the profound.

Preview—a picture of the universe

The preview is stated without demonstration, which is given in the body of the essay.

Preliminary: limits of thought and reality

A beginning: standard vs mythic views

An instructive place to begin is with the big bang view of our cosmos from observation and modern relativity and quantum theory, without commitment to its truth. It is thought to be the best current view, even though there are unanswered questions and we tend to think we do not know what lies beyond the boundary of observation (e.g., remoteness in time, space, and interactivity with our world).

Because mythic pictures have been promoted as dogma, many people refuse to contemplate what lies beyond.

Beyond the beginning: logic

But we can ask a preliminary question—what is the limit of what lies beyond, a limit beyond which even rank speculation cannot hold? If A is a sufficiently specific assertion (regarding the intending and intended reference), then it cannot be true that both A and its negation, ~A, are true. That assertions cannot be both true and false is called ‘the law of non-contradiction’ (lnc)and is a law of logic. Later, we will encounter other elements of logic.

Such laws are widely but not universally accepted. Regardless, though, we can begin to think of logic as defining what can and cannot be, just from the structure of a description and not from what the description is intended to depict.

We can then conclude that logic defines the boundary of all valid descriptions, scientific or other.

What we will find is that the real boundary of the universe is – specified in – logic.

This will require us to tighten the meaning of ‘logic’—does logic define the limit of possibility or vice-versa or both. In particular, (i) if logic defines the greatest possibility then (ii) while lnc obtains for sufficiently specific assertions, it need not for others. For example, (a) “it is raining and it is not raining” can be true if it is meant as “it is raining in New York and it is not raining in London” and (b) “internally consistent dreams are real and not real” can obtain if ‘real’ and ‘not real’ refer to different worlds. These examples are trivial, but there are non-trivial examples, of which one that we will encounter is “the void, i.e., nothingness exists and does not exist”. And there are other ways in which standard logics need to be tightened so as to be exception proof. Thus while logic is universal, the logics have contexts.

This begins the discussion of logic and the real, which is continued in the essay.

The picture and its truth

The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility – it is far greater than in received secular or transsecular pictures. This is shown to be true and consistent with what is valid in experience and knowledge. Doubt is expected, acknowledged, and addressed.

This picture will be developed into the real metaphysics mentioned earlier.

On the meaning of the picture

How do the real metaphysics and the standard pictures mesh? Does the real metaphysics imply falsity of the standard picture?

The falsity of the standard picture is not implied. Rather, the real metaphysics implies that the standard picture obtains, at least as an approximation, for a limited domain of the universe, e.g., for our cosmos.

The mesh may be described as follows—

1. Our cosmos and similar cosmoses (e.g., as described in ‘multiverse theory’) are structured and limited in variety.

2. They are embedded in the larger universe that is limitless in size, duration, and variety. The large universe is not essentially structured but contains structures, which form, typically by emergence in which structure has stability and therefore has a ‘life’ beyond mere transience (but occasionally arises in a small number of steps or saltations).

3. The embedding is not just that of structured cosmoses as a bubble in a sea of transience. Rather the universe and the void are equivalent and in communication, which may occur at a level of interaction below the main interactions of a cosmos.

4. Therefore the paradigms of form and process for a cosmos are not adequate to describe the universe but may, however, be suitable for some forms and processes, especially for those that have significance for experiential and intelligent forms. Rather, the paradigms, as will be seen are (i) those of pure logic, necessary fact, and of experiential being projected so far as necessary to the universe (ii) a range of sub-paradigms derived from our experience that are applicable in our world and may be projected beyond the world but not to the entire universe.

5. While we may seem insignificant and isolated from the rest of our cosmos due to seemingly vast reaches of space and time, we are in part of universal peak being, for which in communication via the void, eternities and limitless extension are instants and points. Further, our individual beings are limited extensions of the limitless peaks, of which we may be unaware due to our limitations but, on account of limitlessness of the universe, of which we can become aware, perhaps by reflection and meditation, and realize in communicating via and merging in the peaks.

6. The meaning of our being includes that all that happens is necessary, which is not contrary to there being action, intentional action, and (sometimes), positive outcomes. It is not contrary to realization of peaks in saltations or via pathways. Pain, too, is given, and meaning is not to be obtained by its avoidance, but (i) seeing it in balance with positive achievement and living (ii) acknowledgment, living through, and using pain as a catalyst (c) appropriate therapy (d) the strong and the fortunate helping the others (e) shared realization. Imagine an infant that is born malformed, in pain, who lives only for a few moments. Imagine a life of constant and unbearable pain. What is their meaning? Their meaning for us, and the meaning of our own pain, lies in the fact that universal process has imperfection, but that even in imperfection, which is a necessary part of process, what it achieves is far greater than what is thought to be achieved by the perfect Gods of some religious views.

7. That is, while the standard picture and the real metaphysics may seem distinct, they represent two levels of description of the one universe. Becoming familiar with the real metaphysics does not involve rejection of the standard but requires practice at meshing the two levels.

Some consequences for destiny

The universe has identity; the universe and its identity are limitless; they cycle eternally through limitless peaks and dissolutions; all beings merge in the peaks; understanding this requires us to think beyond our limits in space, time, birth, and death; we are eternal and though there is repetition, the ‘spaces’ between recurrence are limitless; there are effective paths in, for, and from our world to the peaks.

To follow a path is not to abandon our world or other beings, for effective paths—are shared and address issues of our world, especially the meaning and quality of life, a better world and society, culture, value, politics, economics, technology and more.

These consequences are elaborated in throughout the work, especially in metaphysics, pathways, and return.

Some consequences for knowledge and understanding

The universe as limitless is basis of an understanding that—

1. Provides meaning and understanding of life and the world, where our standard or received pictures are inconclusive,

2. Is developed into a coherent and well-founded view of the universe and knowledge a whole that is (a) closed regarding foundation and depth but (b) eternally open in variety and peaking (c) occasion for adventure while we are limited beings, which, given peaking and dissolution, is without end, and

3. Provides a pathway to resolution of fundamental issues in knowledge, e.g., in philosophy and its branches, and in logic, mathematics, science, the sciences, and technology.

The resolution of issues is not uniform across the fields of knowledge. It is greater when the disciplines incline toward the abstract and the inclusive. The real metaphysics of the work is a join of (i) an abstract framework that is perfect in the correspondence between the forms of the conceptual system and its object, the abstracted universe and (ii) pragmatic knowledge such that (iii) the combined system does not have the perfection of the abstract framework but is perfect relative to the value of realization of the ultimate.

Consequences are elaborated throughout the work, especially in metaphysics and knowledge and the world.

Summation

TW presents a picture of the world and a way of life that goes limitlessly and significantly beyond standard received pictures – to the ultimate – with respect to content and (in some ways) validity as well as method.

The picture is metaphysical in the sense of metaphysics as knowledge of the real. It is not intended as religion in the traditional sense of required belief, yet, as noted, it offers a way of knowledge and a way of life in this world and what lies or may lie beyond.

Understanding The Way of Being

The essential concern

The picture presented in of TW is contrary to most tacit and explicit modern and traditional world views.

This raises concerns of (i) the meaning of the picture of TW, i.e., what it is really saying in terms of significances and consequences and (ii) its truth.

The meaning of the picture

The following is a brief overview of the meaning of the picture, which was detailed above in preview—a picture of the universe.

In our day to day experience as well as in secular and transsecular thought, we are limited beings. Yet TW finds us to be unlimited. How is this possible? And how can we be both limited and unlimited.

Two responses to this issue are (i) familiarity with the development in the essay will help with the critical, imaginative, and intuitive sides of understanding (ii) seeing that we are limited on ordinary scales of being (e.g., time, space, and degree of interaction) we are unlimited on multiple scales, from the infinitesimal to the limitless.

The truth of the picture

Acceptance of the truth is enhanced in seeing that the picture (i) is consistent with ordinary experience and scientific pictures (ii) is demonstrated (iii) gives symbolic truth to the meaning of mythic and religious pictures while it shows new ways to assess their truth in the entire universe in and beyond our cosmos.

I acknowledge that this will not remove all doubt, for I still have doubt despite decades of familiarity with TW.

Responses to doubt include (i) alternate attitudes to truth—seeing TW as a postulated system whose truth shall or shall not emerge or seeing it as basis of an existential and moral attitude toward living (ii) to resolve to live in the shadow of doubt.

Some issues and responses in detail

Issue—TW makes large and counter-intuitive claims relative to the nature of the universe and our being, which raises doubt makes understanding difficult.

Response—the claims are demonstrated and shown consistent with experience and all valid understanding. This begins to address doubt. The issue of intuition and understanding is addressed below.

Issue—the claims and positions are contra to our modern cognitive relativism, i.e., a prevailing view we might not know being as such and therefore we ought to be focused on our conceptual understanding and language rather than on what is real.

Response—so far as claims are objective, they are argued; the very notion of the ‘real’ is founded; our limits as limited beings (at present) are acknowledged – in fact seen as essential to our being; where doubt may remain, it concerns power of proof rather than consistency. Thus, the view presented is not fundamentally absurd despite doubt and therefore alternate attitudes to certainty of the views are argued.

Issue—the system is counterintuitive and developing a Gestalt difficult.

Response—intuition is addressed in the following issues; a Gestalt may be developed by familiarization.

Issue—the meanings of the terms is often vague.

Response—the vagueness is the result of the indefinite structure of modern thought; here the terms are given precise meaning. Readers are advised to follow definitions.

Issue—the modern vagueness of meaning results from indefinites of the world as we know it.

Response—the terms constitute a system, which as a complete metaphysics, justifies the individual terms. Furthermore, this is done in terms of a concept of meaning that is justified as part of the system.

Issue—a complete metaphysics of everything would seem impossible; it would require complete knowledge, not only of things, but also of knowledge itself – and of knowers.

Response—by completeness we do not mean knowledge of every ‘element’ of being. Rather, we mean a system that begins as abstract over things and kinds, from which flows an understanding that is precise over broad categories of relevance, and includes, in principle, all possible categories.

Issue—true difficulties of the system. An example—most of us seem to experience ourselves as separate, limited in ability, bounded in time by birth and death. Yet the real metaphysics sees us as transcending these boundaries and limits. How is that possible and even if it is accepted, how does it mesh with the ordinary experience of limitedness? Then, if we accept the fact of transcendence is it something automatic, i.e., to wait for, or something in which to engage.

Response—I continue to face this difficulty. However, I have come to partial resolution over time, of which a part is familiarization. Further resolution is in (i) critique of received views and noting that if limitlessness seems absurd, so does limitedness (ii) noting that limitedness is not empirical but a projection of everyday experience and science beyond their realms of validity (ii) to holding both ordinary and extraordinary views in mind, while realizing that in eternity, i.e., in limitless time, and in limitless space, there are connections that may be without occurrence in limitedness. Finally, as shown via the metaphysics, the ordinary and the extraordinary are two levels of thought that we can have about the world. In fact, we can imagine hierarchies of being, with many levels. However, given that there is one reality, the levels, if seen correctly, would be one.

The sequence of development

Overview

The arc of TW begins in the immediate – here and now – with our experience but immediately shows that the immediate and ultimate are already merged.

Beginning with a preliminary conception of experience, some main points of the development are the emergence of concepts and meanings of—(i) the real, in terms of being and beings (ii) elements of reason, i.e., direct and indirect establishment of fact (see the following paragraph) (iii) a ‘real metaphysics’ as a proven and ultimate picture of the universe with consequences for knowledge and ways of being in the immediate on the way to the ultimate (iv) an extended conception of experience (v) development of ethics and ‘the meaning of life’) (v) categories of understanding as summary descriptions of aspects of being that leverage comprehension and prediction (vi) application to knowledge and pathways to the ultimate.

What are direct and indirect establishment of fact?

Direct establishment is establishment without reference to other facts.

Indirect establishment is with reference to other facts, of which a standard way is inference (but the role of intuition will also be considered and not just as a source of hypotheses).

Both direct and indirect establishment of fact may be (i) necessary or certain (or both) or (ii) contingent or incompletely certain or both.

Definitions

As the work is presented in an axiomatic framework, it begins with a collection of definitions.

As the work is about the world, unlike system of signs, as in some treatments of mathematics and logic, the definitions have content.

At the same time, there is an abstract framework, which is not a mere system of signs, because the abstraction has removed details subject to distortion, leaving the abstract but descriptive framework.

The framework is fleshed out in the work and while the ‘rich’ material is epistemically imperfect, (i) the system is perfect in a value sense to be explained (ii) the abstract framework remains epistemically perfect in a correspondence sense.

The beginning in experience

It is essential in talking of things, that there is a triad of language structure (e.g., words and sentences), iconic concepts (that permit recognition of the things), and the objects or things themselves. Linguistic meaning requires this triad.

Without the iconic concept that is formed in the experience of things, talk is empty.

Experience is also fundamental to meaning in its important sense as it is used in ‘the meaning of life’.

Metaphysics does not transcend experience or go beyond it. Generally, the form of perception and conception, is interwoven with experience. At a high enough level of abstraction, objects are still objects of experience but their form is independent of experience. Thus, it may seem that metaphysics goes beyond experience at these levels of abstraction.

The beginning in experience permits and encourages discussion of existence, being, meaning in its two senses as used in this work, and ethics and democracy.

Knowledge and argument

It also permits and encourages treatment of knowledge and argument, which are important to the development of the work.

It is convenient to place this material in a division of its own.

The metaphysical development

The foundation thus far enables further development of the concept of being (as well as treatment of beings, especially the universe and the void), a metaphysical core (in a division named ‘metaphysics’), experience (in greater depth and breadth than its first treatment), and the categories (developing the metaphysics into an articulated understanding of our world and the universe).

Thus the concepts and their articulation emerges with the work, of which the main concepts are being, experience, and the forms of being.

The categories as the culmination of the metaphysics

The categories are a culmination of the metaphysics, intended to apply to the real, such that essential structure is distinguished from and entails other derived structures. Examples are (i) that while the power and richness of experience is different at different levels on a ‘hierarchy’ of being, there are no kinds beyond experiential kinds (ii) that space and time are not fundamental to the real but emerge as structures in a world where experience is able to recognize differences in persisting identities vs differences between different identities.

All metaphysics is an expression of experience. However, as it has been seen, there is a level of abstraction at which forms are independent of the objects being experienced. This is the highest or most inclusive level. At lower levels, while experience and forms are interwoven, a value (e.g., ethical) argument finds such interwovenness to not be an impediment to some important uses of the metaphysics, e.g., as in realization.

Therefore the categories are developed after an integrated development of experience, meaning, and value, especially ethics.

Applications

The ‘applications’ are extensions of the development to knowledge and pathways of realization.

Return

This division is primarily a prospective—i.e., having developed a view of the world and our way in it, it looks to a return to emphasis on being-and-becoming-in-the-world-and-universe.

On foundational systems for metaphysics

What is presumed

Informal specification. The ground of The Way of Being – especially its metaphysics – (the place from where they begin), is ordinary language and experience. Though TW begins there, it does not presume it or stop or end there, for it will critically refine it, from which flow precise language, concepts, and reason that result in ‘the real metaphysics’ which is adequate to the ultimate and immediate purposes of TW.

TW develops a precise system which is then fleshed out from pragmatic knowledge from our cultures and experience. The joint system, the real metaphysics, is shown perfect relative to derived ultimate values. The perfection is and must be in-process for limited beings such as we are.

On axiomatic systems

Abstract axiomatic systems are useful for (i) precision and study of abstract structures (ii) potential to capture a real structure with some precision.

Euclid’s Elements, generally recognized as the earliest extant and fully developed system, there are definitions, postulates (basic facts of geometry), common notions (of reason), and theorems. Once regarded as about our space, we now recognize Euclid’s work as abstract and as one geometry among others, which are one set of axiomatics among unlimited axiomatic possibilities.

In modern systems, there are primitive terms, well-formed formulas, axioms (formally unfounded foundational formulas), and rules of inference and definition, and theorems. An axiom may be regarded as a theorem derived in zero steps via the rule: If A, then A. A system is consistent if there is no theorem that asserts A such that ‘not A’ is also a theorem.

Axiomatic systems for metaphysics

In western philosophy, there is a history of abstract axiomatic systems for metaphysics. However, we regard metaphysics as about the world and seek a system which is directly about the world. Given the issues of whether thought can be about the world and of error, it is necessary to question the possibility of an axiomatic but real metaphysics.

The approach is to set up a precise framework via ‘abstraction’, which is to remove from a concept details that may result in distortion. Two paradigms of abstraction are Descartes’ Cogito argument and Aristotle’s study of being, both rendered precise. The result is a powerful framework that is ultimate in precision and in showing that the universe is the realization of all possibility in its most inclusive sense.

The framework is filled in with pragmatic knowledge which give it richness. The joint system is of course not precise as representation of the real. However, the framework itself shows ultimate values in terms of which the system is perfect in process.

Notation for the axiomatic system to be developed is in definitions > notation for the axiomatic system.

Part 4. The Way of Being

Definitions

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

Notation for the axiomatic system

Preliminary

Truths are of two kinds—basic atomic-like truths or facts and basic relationships among such truths or principles of inference, which are often seen as different.

However, since the metaphysics flows from what is given and is of all being, these two kinds of truth are not fundamentally different. Furthermore, since, in the metaphysics, definitions are specifications of the real, truths may be specified explicitly or implicitly via the definitions. Such truths may be further specified in sub-definitions or as axioms or postulates. Whereas modern abstract inferential systems typically distinguish principles of inference and fundamentals for a given system, in the metaphysics, all such kinds fall under a single umbrella and the distinction between axioms and postulates is for convention. We follow Euclid in specifying axioms (rules of inference) and postulates (fundamental theses).

In the present work, a system is presented in axiomatic form. Because it is intended to be ‘real’, it is not enough for the system to be syntactic. Definition alone does not imply existence. Therefore, where existence is not transparent it must and will be demonstrated.

There is an issue of certain truth and certain inference vs likely truth and likely inference (where likely may range from weak to strong). This is addressed later.

As the metaphysics is open, the following system of assertions is designed to be most likely more than will be needed.

The notation

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.

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

Axiom 1. Numbered style for axioms.

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

Assertion 1. Numbered style for axioms.

Thesis 1. Numbered style for fundamental theses.

Postulate 1. Numbered style for postulates. Identical to but now preferred over the Thesis style.

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.

Condition(s). A condition is a premise for a very specific consequence or system of consequences.

Preferred notation

The preferred styles are definition, informal definition, and truth.

The preferred styles are definition, informal definition, axiom, postulate, truth, consequence, and premise.

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 2. 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 3. 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 2. 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 4. Choice is selection of thought or action from among real options.

Truth 3. Experience includes consciousness, receptive and active modes including choice and agency; it has quality, intensity, and form – emotion and cognition with choice.

Definition 5. 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 6. 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 7. 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 8. 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 9. 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 TW; 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 10. 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 11. 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 4. While definition does not imply existence, there is being and there are beings (this conclusion is sound).

Truth 5. 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 12. 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 13. 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 14. 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 15. 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 16. 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 17. 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 18. 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 19. 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 20. 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’, we will find that normative and metaethics are bound as one – two sides of the 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 21. 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 6. 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 pragmatic rather than conceptual or ideological concern).

Definition 22. 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 23. (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.

Definition 24. 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 25. 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).

Definition 26. 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 Th Way of Being; finally, a more comprehensive account of knowledge, one that takes into account the developments for TW, is presented in a supplement, knowledge and the world).

Definition 27. Discovery is a creative phase of knowledge acquisition (though significant to TW, 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 28. 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’).

Definition 29. 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).

Definition 30. 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 31. 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 32. In certain inference, if the premises, P, are true, the conclusions, C, are certainly true (abbreviated: if P, then C, or P ® C).

Definition 33. 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 34. 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 35. 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 36. 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 37. 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 38. 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 39. 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 40. 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”).

Definition 41. 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.

Definition 42. A pattern obtains for a being if the information to specify it is less than the raw information.

Definition 43. 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).

Definition 44. The void is the being that contains no beings (if it exists, it is an empty being and it contains no laws).

Definition 45....................................... A being that is not the void is manifest.

Definition 46..................... Metaphysics is knowledge and study of the real.

Definition 47. Given a concept of a being (entity, event, …), it is possible if nothing rules out its realization (existence).

Definition 48. 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 49. 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 50. 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 51. 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 52. 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 53. I 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).

Definition 54................................... A being that is not possible is impossible.

Definition 55. A being whose nonbeing (nonexistence) is impossible is necessary.

Definition 56........................... A fundamental cause is itself without cause.

Truth 7. 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.

Truth 8. The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility (i.e., the universe is limitless; a sound conclusion).

Truth 9. The universe confers greatest possibility on all beings (for otherwise there would be a limit on the universe; also sound).

Truth 10. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Truth 11. The universe has identity (given limitlessness in the sense defined above, this and the remaining conclusions in this section, ‘all beings’, are sound).

Truth 12. 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.

Truth 13. 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).

Truth 14. 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 15. 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 16. 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 17. There are paths in, for, and from this world to the ultimate (a careful specification of paths is given later).

Truth 18. 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 19. The cause of the manifest universe is necessity (sound).

Truth 20. 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 57. 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 58. 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 21. 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 59. 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 60. 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 22. Though possible, bizarre worlds and bizarre explanations are real but seemingly of limited significance and probability.

Truth 23. 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.

Definition 61. Certainty is absolute agreement of concept and referent (and is obtained in some axiomatic systems and, as we have seen, empirically when the object-referent space is allowed imprecision).

Definition 62. To doubt is to question what is accepted as or potentially true including reasons for the acceptance.

Definition 63. 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 24. 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 25. 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 26. We are experiential beings.

Definition 64. 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 27. 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).

Truth 28. The world is an object of experience and includes experience.

Truth 29. The universe (being) is (effectively) experiential (this and the earlier statement about the world are consistent).

Truth 30. 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.

Definition 65. 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 66. 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 67. 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 68. 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.

Definition 69. A dynamic for category or categorial realm is a description of its structures and their changes (it is useful for the descriptions patterned, i.e., based in a small number of parameters or principles, and therefore make for efficient determination of the structures and their changes).

Definition 70. 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 71. A system of categories and paradigms is a classification of being into kinds at all levels, which derives from real metaphysical knowledge, and—especially—enables understanding, prediction, and transformation (via the paradigms).

Definition 72. 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.

Definition 73. 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)

Repeated definition. 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.

Definition 74. 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

Comment 3. This chapter incorporates the two older chapters—Being and experience’ and ‘Knowledge and argument’.

The aims of this chapter include provision of ideas that are significant in themselves, foundation for the later metaphysics, and direct grounding in experience. Of these, some, especially the concept of experience, are in preliminary form that will subsequently further deepened and have their range of reference broadened.

Since experience and knowing are crucial to the ‘being of being’, the chapter could be named Being and Experience or Being and Knowing.

Experience, existence, and being

The concepts

This defines the real for the purpose of this work, in a preliminary manner.

4. But does it truly capture the real? If we wish to say something non-circular we ought not to think of it (the real) either as something objective ‘out there’ or in terms of something else. But it may then be asked “is this not arbitrary”. No, for (i) it is aligned with the account of meaning presented and argued later (ii) though the individual meanings in a system may be suggested by and compared against extant meanings, the ultimate test is of the validity of the system as a whole and the functioning of the individual meanings within the system.

5. It is preliminary in that (i) ‘appearance’ will be broadened shortly to ‘concept’ (ii) the real notion of ‘thing’ will be formalized as the concept-object (iii) under that notion the void, i.e., nothingness, will also be found to be a thing.

Comment 4. The following is to be a listed consequence.

Truth 2. 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.

Note that while we have begun with the idea of experience as our experience, the concept of experience will later be extended to all being, even primitive and elemental being (this overloading of the term is not essentially problematic).

Definition 4. Choice is selection of thought or action from among real options.

Comment 5. The following is to be a listed consequence.

Truth 3. Experience includes consciousness, receptive and active modes including choice and agency; it has quality, intensity, and form – emotion and cognition with choice.

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

As it is the aim here to describe the real, it is not be enough to present an abstract axiomatic system. As defined, definition does not imply existence. Therefore, where it is not transparent, existence must and will be established.

Comment 6. Add to the list of beings in the next definition.

Where there is an apparent being, but there may be distortion, is there a real being? If precision is demanded, we do not know that there is a real being, but, except when there is total error, such as in a hallucination, we may say that there is a real being for pragmatic purposes. We can and will do better than that vial the introduction of value in significant meaning and value and significantly better, later, when the real metaphysics reveals an ultimate value.

Definition 10. 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 4. While definition does not imply existence, there is being and there are beings (this conclusion is sound).

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 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).

That is, a being is that which is, in the most inclusive but real senses of ‘that’ and ‘is’ (on this account). Thus (in the present system) existence and being are identical (in intension and extension). However, the class of objects is broader, since it also includes fictitious referents of concepts.

Thus, as used here, existence, being, and real objecthood, are identical. This avoids (i) association of being with ineffability and depth and thus (ii) introduction of ineffability at the foundation of the developments. Why, then, should we use the term ‘being’ at all? We do so (i) to remind ourselves of depths that we may wish to associate with or find within being and the connotations of the term ‘being’ (ii) to place this work in the metaphysical tradition.

Definition 13. 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).

A result of the conflation of existence and being is that the present use of ‘being’ is shallow and trivial. Two criticisms arise: shallowness may imply (i) triviality, emptiness, and conceptual impotence (ii) loss of the profound sense of depth, ineffability, and even mystery that has been associated with being.

Let us first address the problem of triviality. It has two virtues. First, that in being trivial, it does not introduce the problematicity associated with depth and ineffability and it empowers the depth and power that emerges later in this work. Thus triviality is a feature (i) in empowering transparency (ii) in empowering depth and power. Triviality is not insignificance.

Additionally, the present use of ‘being’ avoids (i) a persistent feeling that one has not quite captured the ‘true and full sense of being’ (ii) the paradox of ineffability (the property that something cannot be validly thought of or spoken of, which has been claimed to be paradoxical for in calling being ineffable we are saying something valid about it).

Regarding the criticism of the loss of depth, there is in fact no real loss for depth will be found to be within being rather than of being as such.

It is true that while we are limited, we do not capture the full depth of being. However, this is found to be an essential characteristic of beings under becoming – a feature, not a problem. That is, we are in process in the range of a hierarchy of beings on a scale from primitive to ultimate.

Regarding ineffability, there was no true paradox, for we ought to say that “being has some ineffability for us” rather than “being is altogether or absolutely ineffable for us”, which, while we are in a process of becoming that has some directedness, ought to be the case (there is a similar resolution of generic paradoxes of absolutes, e.g., that ‘there are no absolutes’ is an absolute). That is, not only is being not absolutely ineffable, it is in the process of becoming effable.

It is worth noting that there are similar resolutions for many paradoxes of absolutes.

Source or study topic 1.Well-Being (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

On the concept-object conception of being

Though it is redundant to say so, the being exists when the reference is not null (empty); otherwise, the being is (may be called) nonexistent (which includes fictional reference). Given this conception of being, argument is immanent in being.

That it ‘normalizes’ the idea of a nonexistent being, is one reason that the ‘improved’ definition is indeed improved. But, though it is not as obvious, it is also improved in the case of existent beings. For, without the concept, no being is identified. Particularly, a name alone identifies nothing (for philosophers, the idea of a ‘rigid designator’ involves a fallacy—one that could be named ‘the fallacy of the nonexistent subject’; to put it in other words – no concept, no designation).

An aside—‘object’ has two philosophical senses. Here, it is the same as ‘a being’. Another use, not used here, is when the object is ‘as-if’, e.g., a fiction which may be spoken of as though it is a being.

Consider an ordinary ‘thing’, e.g., a football. We might say that the-football-as-a-football does not exist before it is made. However, it does exist in the sense above, without further qualification. That is, it exists and does not exist. This leads to a distinction—global existence (the definition above) vs local existence which entails only existence at some places and times but nonexistence at others. These considerations result potentially in a can of paradoxical worms, which shall not be opened here—but see Dialetheism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Dialetheia (this site), and a long version of this work.

Though knowledge of being as such is synthetic (concept-object and not merely in the concept or analytic), it is perfect and true via the abstraction in the concepts of being and beings.

Significant meaning and value

Comment 7. Give reasons for this and the next excursion – it is too good to pass up.

‘Meaning’ has two senses in this work, (i) the sense in this section as in family of meanings suggested by the terms ‘the meaning of life’, ‘significance’ or ‘importance’ (ii) concept and linguistic meaning, to be introduced in a later section.

Where it may be unclear or where emphasis is appropriate, the intended sense will be indicated by the terms ‘significant meaning’, ‘concept meaning’, and ‘linguistic meaning’.

Significant meaning may lie in may be in accepting accidentality, or, in seeing that beings may be in a process toward whatever is ultimate. Of course, the sense of meaning requires that whatever it is felt to be ought to have truth. While a feeling of accidentality is at least initially genuine, our ultimate nature shall also be revealed.

Comment 8. The following is to be a listed consequence.

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).

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 and value

Comment 9. See the section on demands and values in Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and modify the discussion accordingly.

Knowledge (with sophistication and precision) and value—as things in themselves—are not without intrinsic merit. However, in considering knowing, valuing, and becoming in interaction, there may be a tradeoff. The tradeoff is explored in what follows, beginning in the next chapter. A (‘high’) level of being and becoming is found at which knowing and value are interwoven, and at which imprecision is not imperfection.

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.

Knowledge

Comment 10. Improve argument (and update its discussion in a system of knowledge).

Source or study topic 2.Language. Discrete and linear versus continuum, multidimensional, and intuitive, roughly in the sense of Immanuel Kant. Are discreet language and logic epiphenomenal to being? Representational versus evocative.

Source or study topic 3.Argument, logic, sets, and mathematics. At least through predicate calculi. Other logics and dialetheia. ZFC and alternatives. Syntax and semantics.

Source or study topic 4.Non-deductive methods in mathematics (where is linear thought and logic as justification headed)—Non-Deductive Methods in Mathematics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Source or study topic 5.Argument | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

This chapter considers some aspects of knowledge, its validity, and acquisition for the purpose of TW. It is a continuation of the previous chapter and could be part of it but, on account of its detail, is a separate chapter.

The kind of knowledge considered here is ‘knowledge that’, e.g., something is true, and the sense is that of correspondence. Other topics – kinds of knowledge, criteria for validity, measures of significance, how knowledge is acquired – are taken up in a supplementary chapter, knowledge and the world.

This chapter is primarily about method. Subsequent chapters are content (the system of TW). But the two are not distinct, for (i) knowledge is in the world and (ii) method and content emerge together (iii) method is an aspect of knowledge. Just as we use the neutral term ‘being’ to refer to what is real, we will also be neutral to the concept and nature of knowledge, and the nature of those concepts will emerge with the development.

Language, concept meaning, and knowledge

Comment 11. Was ‘Concepts, reference, language, and knowledge’ and could be ‘Linguistic meaning and knowledge’.

Comment 12. About grammar. Chess and scrabble have rules which are absolute (in some sense). However, even if ‘life’ or ‘the world’ has rules that specify it, we do not know them completely. If grammar and semantics (formalized or not) – so far as they are attempts to capture those rules – must be incomplete and imprecise. Therefore we ought not to think that the following are the essential or only objects of study (a) natural language and its ‘rules’ or (b) formalizations thereof. Of course, in response one might ask, “But then what are the objects of study? Are there any other?” And a reply is “Of course there are. For one, there are the processes of language – its origins, evolution, and its study (and the study of all those); and for another the relations of those studies to the world.

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).

Comment 13. Review the bracket formatting in styles; decide whether to keep the format below.

{This three part meaning of meaning, as in The Meaning of Meaning, by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, is crucial as follows.

There is a sense of its sufficiency and necessity, brought out below, and while nowhere near exhausts the literature on concept and linguistic meaning, it is justified for the purposes of the real metaphysics.

It reminds us that bare signs can have no meaning, e.g., bare words or names and that some concept, perhaps not always explicit, is essential.

The absence of recognition of the meaninglessness of signs in many discussions of the meanings of terms leads to unnecessary and resolvable confusion (leaving true issues open to investigation). This confusion occurs when we wonder what ‘something’ is but we do not know what it is that we are looking for.

On the other hand, we should see that in such cases of confusion, what are indeed looking for lies in a dual space of concepts and objects (terminology due to the late economist H.A. Simon).

It neatly resolves the problem of negative existentials. That problem is that to say something does not exist is already talking about the thing and apparently presuming existence. The resolution is that to say something X (sign – concept – possible object) does not exist is to say that there is no object; and on the other hand to say that exists is to say that there is the intended object.}

It has been remarked that language made precise via abstraction may yield (i) perfect depiction (this is in-process, as is the issue of what constitutes perfection, more generally, as is the issue of the use of imperfect depiction) (ii) perfect reason (deduction) as relations among linguistic elements (with address of the sense of ‘perfection’ and less than perfect reason as well).

Source or study topic 6.The following may be pertinent for this and subsequent discussions of language: Philosophy of linguistics (Philosophy of Linguistics – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Linguistics (Linguistics - Wikipedia), Philosophy of language (Philosophy of language - Wikipedia).

The knowledge of interest at this point in the development is whatever may be regarded as fact (defined below). Though there is a traditional distinction among fact (knowledge-that), knowledge-of (acquaintance), and know-how (as in ‘I know how to walk’, the distinction has been questioned. Such kinds may be understood – though not encompassed – by knowledge-that and this is sufficient for the present purpose. The actual nature of knowledge as it ‘resides’ in the knowledge-holder and other issues pertaining to knowledge are discussed later in the chapter, consequences of the metaphysics.

This unsophisticated conception of knowledge is sufficient for developing the metaphysics of TW as the metaphysics is an abstract and perfect framework with pragmatic fill-in; details of this explanation will emerge. Sophistication and its significance is taken up in consequences of the metaphysics, after the main development.

In what follows most concepts are referential and unless otherwise stated ‘concept’ shall mean ‘referential concept’.

The following definitions will be useful later.

Source or study topic 7.Language - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language). Theories of Meaning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/).

The concept of knowledge above is depiction or correspondence. The concept is problematic for it is itself specified depictively and, further, so far as knowledge is depictive, precision is not guaranteed. However, the work will further develop a concept of knowledge that is a mosaic and that will be perfect relative to concepts and criteria that will emerge naturally.

Though the structure of language, particularly of grammar, has depiction of the real as one of its functions, we shall not be explicitly concerned with grammar, except in the long version of TW.

Definition 25. 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).

Facts are simple (e.g., atomic facts if there are any), compound, and complex (as in theories).

Discovery

In worthwhile knowledge endeavors, one need is for tentative theories and ascertain significant factual data. This stage is ‘discovery’ and is interactive with the establishment phase of knowledge. As an example, the system of TW was arrived at over many iterations. Here, we focus on establishment of theories and data (justification).

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

Argument

Comment 14. Laws of logic to go here (propositional, non-contradiction, etc.)—unless they are already somewhere else in this document.

Comment 15. Argument = establishment of fact + formal inference + semantics?

{The elements of argument are direct establishment of fact and indirect establishment, or inference of a fact (conclusion) from an established fact (premise).

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 29. 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).

Certain or precise

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; further examples will be given).

Likely or nearly precise

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 direct argument and inference

Certain inference

Definition 32. In certain inference, if the premises, P, are true, the conclusions, C, are certainly true (abbreviated: if P, then C, or P ® C).

{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.)}

Deduction

{When the information in the conclusion is already at least implicit in the premise, the inference is called nonampliative, which is formally defined below.}

Intrinsic inference

The Way of Being

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

Likely inference

Certain inference is not ampliative, but may be effectively so when the conclusions are not intrinsically obvious or not obvious inferences from the premises.

Induction, abduction, and analogy

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 Way of Being

The likely inferences in what follows are abductive and analogical.

Transitivity of inference

Proof is often in more than one step and 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.

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

On some special cases considered above

Direct establishment of fact is a special case of argument (in which inference has zero steps).

In intrinsic inference, there is inference from an empty premise (no facts presumed) to a (non-empty) conclusion. Is such an argument possible? An important example will be given: existence of the void will be shown to be certain and necessary.

These special cases exhibit arguments where the difference between observation and inference is minimized.

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

{The standard reason for (i) 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

Argument synthesizes (i) knowledge (fact) and its establishment (‘method’), (ii) the sciences – abstract (logic, mathematics) and concrete – regarding content and method, and (iii) as will be established later, knowledge, inspiration, and value.

Though there is difference, argument (‘method’) and content (fact) are not distinct for (i) discovery and knowledge are part of the world (ii) argument is part of the structure of being (see discussion of being, just below).

Language and logic

Nomenclature

In formal logic and mathematics, ‘logic’ refers to certain inference. In philosophy, its reference is broader and includes ‘likely inference’. Here, unless otherwise stated, ‘logic’ will refer to certain inference, whose standard modern (western) paradigm is deduction.

Laws of logic

Comment 16. Ponens and tollens.

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.

2. The law of noncontradiction, encountered earlier, that a proposition cannot be both true and false. 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.

These ‘laws of logic’ are fundamental to standard logical systems but do not obtain in some nonstandard but useful systems; an example 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

Comment 17. The discussions of logic should be collected together in two main places—a preliminary and a full treatment, with the other discussions being mainly reference to the two main discussions.

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.

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

Science

Early modern thought, typified by Francis Bacon’s ‘Baconian Method’, sought a method of induction that would be as certain as deduction.

However, as long as there are unknown patterns in the universe, scientific theories are either strictly local or not known to be universal.

Science could be absolute

4. If we had the intellect and capacity to know all things (which might involve having to deal with infinite regress). However, in a universe in which there are unknowns relative to the cognition of limited beings, regardless of whether the universe is limited or finite, not all things are known or knowable.

5. If as in the ideal metaphysics developed later, science were developed as an abstract framework (which suppresses the unknown or, equivalently, focuses on a finite representation via abstraction).

A view of the role of knowledge in the world

One view is that knowledge that (i) we possess knowledge and (ii) it is useful and used toward ends—ends that may be seen as positive, neutral, or negative in terms of value. This view sees knowledge as instrumental (though not necessarily only instrumental).

Another view of knowledge is not as a discrete kind of ‘thing’. Rather, it sees the world as a interactive system in which, somehow (e.g. instrumentally or through mutual evolution), the parts of the world bear the marks of other parts which influences mutual process. One of those bearers of the marks of the world is labeled ‘knowledge’. This is an organic and immersive view.

Beings

Source or study topic 8.Being—shallow and trivial, yet deep and ineffable.

Source or study topic 9.Mereology—What is a whole—are there objective wholes– or is wholeness a matter of object, perception, and of function? Mereology, atomism, and coded wholes. The void or null part the issue of possible contradiction.

Source or study topic 10.Existence—https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/.

Comment 18. The issue of non-deductive proof where deduction is standard.

Being and beings

The concept of being, its significance, and its subtlety (or otherwise) has been introduced earlier, in the section on being.

The concept of ‘a being’ and its plural ‘beings’ was also introduced, which is now taken up in greater detail.

Source or study topic 11. Mereology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/).

The beings considered here are those used to develop the abstract framework of the real metaphysics developed later.

Other beings, especially experiential, peak, and other cosmological beings are taken up later.

The universe and its contents

The definition of the universe without reference to kind (e.g., mind, matter) or space and time is critical, for this is essential to its undistorted conception, particularly avoiding the distortions and reductions of kinds, while permitting their emergence as it may arise, whether real or as-if.

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).

Examples of kinds are mind, matter, spirit, process, relation, concept, word, trope; of those, whether the kinds that are objective in nature exist is (left) open (such kinds include mind, process, and matter).

A proper part of the universe is a being that is not the universe itself; the universe may be considered to be a part of itself but not a proper part (but the distinction between part and proper part is not significant in this development).

The universe has parts, which include itself (not regarded as a proper part), other real beings (proper parts), and, if it exists, the empty or ‘null’ part or void (should it exist, it will be a proper part).

Cosmoses

Definition 41. 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.

Our cosmos exists (it is a being).

If they exist, other cosmoses are beings (it will be seen that there are limitlessly many cosmoses of limitless variety).

Laws

Definition 42. A pattern obtains for a being if the information to specify it is less than the raw information.

Definition 43. 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).

Laws are beings (sound).

The void and its existence

Definition 44. 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’ rather than ‘a void’ is justified later.

For the beings introduced so far, existence was implied in their definition, and it was not necessary to explicitly establish existence. This is not the case for the void.

Existence and nonexistence of the void are equivalent (this is not a contradiction, for the meaning of ‘existence’ is different for the void than it is for other beings). This is a central truth of the development (sound—except for doubt).

Doubt of this equivalence is natural, even imperative, and taken up in doubt and certainty.

The void exists (it is a being; sound if existence of the void is sound).

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

Definition 45. A being that is not the void is manifest.

An apparent paradox

The equivalence of its existence and nonexistence is saying that the void exists and does not exist. Is this not paradoxical?

The apparent paradox that existence and nonexistence of the void are equivalent—that the void exists and does not exist—may be defused by observing that the meaning of existence for the void should be different than it is for manifest or non-void beings.

What is the source of the apparent paradox? It is that for a being ‘x’, to talk of x without a concept of x has meaning. This thought is an immense source of informal confusion and of paradox.

There is a confusion regarding questions such as ‘what is metaphysics’ where we expect both history and reason to define what it is. In fact, in the general literature, such confusions may be difficult to avoid. However, in a particular system or work, one ought to define terms, of course to attempt to have the definition be inclusive, but to go with reason—for it is the system that counts more than its ‘atomic’ constituents. Generally to think there is meaning without a concept is to depend on convention, which is almost guaranteed to lack full consistency.

There are paradoxes arising from thinking that there is meaning without a concept. One is the paradox of empty reference in which such reference can have any property whatsoever—and thus be, for example, both black and not black, or even color and no color. A second is the paradox of negative existentials – the paradox that to talk of something that does not exist one must assume that it exists (otherwise talk of nonexistence is empty). But, here, existence means that there is a real object that is identified by the concept and nonexistence means that there is no such object. A famous case of this paradox arises in Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God where Anselm argues that ‘a God that is both real and in the mind must be greater than a God that is just in the mind’. The error is that ‘God in the mind’ is not God at all but a concept of God and to join ‘in the mind’ and ‘in the real’ is to make a category error—the error of equating a concept and an object.

Just as such confusions and apparent paradoxes are defused via the concept-object concept of meaning, so is the apparent paradox of the existence and nonexistence of the void.

Here, we shall here say no more except that simultaneous existence and nonexistence of the void suggests that it grounds the vacuum of quantum field theory. This is further brought out in a long version of this work and below in metaphysics > limitlessness and what follows that chapter.

Metaphysics

Comment 19. Include limitlessness? Possibility? Everything—i.e., metaphysics began at the beginning, with knowledge and argument? Even the preliminary discussion of meaning raised metaphysical questions.

While ‘meta’ often signifies transcendence or self-referentiality, in its origin the term ‘metaphysics’ did not and is not used to signify a relation to physics. However, we will see that some metaphysical study does transcend the sciences.

Definition 46. Metaphysics is knowledge and study of the real.

Though this definition is explicitly close to that of ontology as the study of being, given the real metaphysics developed below, its applications and the range of what is considered to be metaphysics are implicit in it.

Clearly some metaphysical knowledge with a criteria of precise correspondence has been established. The issue of whether this can be extended and according to what criteria is addressed below in the development through the real metaphysics.

Source or study topic 12.Metaphysics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/).

The study of metaphysics has already begun with being. Indeed, metaphysical questions and informal discussion have been present from the beginning of the text. In this chapter, we derive the metaphysics of TW, give it explicit formulation, and begin to derive consequences.

The possibility of metaphysics has been called into question over the history of thought, but we have just seen the emergence of metaphysical content, beginning with being. The content so far is perfectly faithful – ideal – by abstraction (a sound conclusion).

Possibility

Source or study topic 13.Possible worlds and beings—The location of possible worlds. Issue of paradox. Conceptual generation of possible worlds. Metaphysical possibility and necessity.

Source or study topic 14.Possible worlds and objects—Possible Worlds (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Possible Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The concept of possibility

Definition 47. Given a concept of a being (entity, event, …), it is possible if nothing rules out its realization (existence).

The concept may rule out realization (existence) if (i) the concept is inherently unrealizable (e.g., it is self-contradictory) or (ii) the nature of the universe (or locale of the intended object) rules it out.

For the possible to occur cannot be contradictory. However, a description that is intended to be of the possible may be contradictory. For example, let us assume that ‘I am finite’. But if possibility is realized, then it is true that I am limitless. Is there a contradiction? Not if the ‘I’ in the finite case refers to ‘my present form’ while the latter ‘I’ refers to my participation in universal being. That is, the apparent contradiction in ‘I am finite’ and ‘I am limitless’ is not a true contradiction.

Conceptual or logical possibility

It is inherent in logical possibility that there is no inconsistency with either experience or within the concept (the seeming contradiction that “it seems logically possible for this world to be other than what it is”, is addressed below). Though ‘consistency’ and ‘no inconsistency’ are different for some uses of ‘possibility’, for logical possibility, they are identical.

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

Formal or symbolic language is limited relative to language in use. In use, the symbols are bound to a world of intuition (in the sense of Kant) and therefore language in use, i.e., communication is not (necessarily) just the discrete set of symbols—the symbols communicate part of the being which may be a continuum and are heard because the receiver’s being is similar to that of the communicator. Thus, while (human) natural language is not maximally expressive, formal languages are likely less so. On this account, while limited, beings are incapable of expressing all possibility. Is this an ultimate limitation on human being? Even though our worldly knowledge is not perfect in ordinary senses of perfection, in the real metaphysics, we find a sense in which it is not an ultimate limit.

But it is important to see that, while the symbolic has great power (with which we are naturally impressed and perhaps over-impressed) as (i) it is transparent and (ii) can denote but perhaps not entirely represent infinities – continuum and higher, such power is (as seen, e.g., in the Löwenheim–Skolem Theorem regarding first order logic) indeterminate. Further symbolic thought is not entirely rooting in being and most likely incomplete. The future movement of our region of being must lie in symbolic and extra-symbolic thought and their join. It is likely that this join should incorporate machine thinking and robots (machine being).

If empirical knowledge is what is given by the senses and rational knowledge is what is given by reason, then a claim that the greatest possibility is realized is consistent with the empirical, the rational, and their combination (this is of course not a proof that the greatest possibility is realized).

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

Real possibility

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

‘Metaphysical possibility’ is a term whose use in the literature is not well-defined; therefore it will be discussed later in the chapter on metaphysics.

Comment 20. Is it helpful to have the definition above.

Impossibility and necessity

Definition 54. A being that is not possible is impossible.

Definition 55. A being whose nonbeing (nonexistence) is impossible is necessary.

Cause and the cause of the universe

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 56. A fundamental cause is itself without cause.

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.

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).

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

The discussion of possibility above is the concept of possibility; we are also interested in the range or extension of possibility.

It is convenient to take this up later, in the significant universe, after establishing that the universe is limitless in the sense of limitlessness that emerges below.

Limitlessness

The limitlessness of being and the universe

Comment 21. Add discussion on ‘God’ from, reserve notes.docm and other documents, e.g., the little manual.html (../2022/theway/little%20manual.html) and combine it with the discussion of peaking and God in robust worlds.

Since there has been no assumption in making this conclusion, absolute necessity is the cause of the universe (sound, given existence of the void).

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 8. The universe is the realization of the greatest possibility (i.e., the universe is limitless; a sound conclusion).

Truth 9. The universe confers greatest possibility on all beings (for otherwise there would be a limit on the universe; also sound).

The limitlessness of all beings also follows from the identity of a being with the being-and-the-void (the implied identity of all beings is an apparent contradiction, which is resolved in that it holds on sufficiently large time scales or, alternatively, at a level of description above time).

This is not a contradiction, for, as will be seen, individuals (i) transcend birth and death (ii) merge in realizing the greatest possibility (a sound conclusion).

Greatest does not mean ‘best’ but it includes the best. It does not mean absence of pain or a promise of eternal heaven or nirvana but it does mean that there will be peaks of being as well as destruction. It does not mean that better and best are given but it does mean that realization must be ‘worked’ for. It does not mean that every limited region will realize ultimates within its boundaries but it does mean that it will realize ultimates in transcending those boundaries, which is best achieved by beings working intelligently working toward the ultimate with integrity and care.

Alternative demonstrations of limitlessness

Readers are likely to doubt the demonstration of limitlessness above.

To improve understanding and strengthen confidence, we provide alternative demonstrations (doubt is further addressed, in doubt and certainty).

1. Either the universe enters a void state or it does not. If it does not, it is eternal, and in eternity, given that at least one possibility occurs (our world), by symmetry, all possibilities occur (but in this case, the universe does enter the void state, which is contradictory, and so rules out not entering the void state, which is true but not instrumental in this demonstration). If it does enter the void state, the void exists, and the earlier demonstration of limitlessness goes through. Note that in terms of many extant concepts of existence, the void does not exist. But here, again, we find that the void exists. However, if we give weight to the extant concepts, then there is an apparent contradiction, noted earlier, that the void exists and does not. What is the resolution of this apparent contradiction. One resolution in the philosophical literature is that there are true contradictions (called dialetheia). However, I have argued, in dialetheia, that many, if not all, such seeming dialetheia are defused by introducing specificity of meaning. A trivial case is “it is raining and is not raining” which is resolved if the first ‘is’ refers to one place and the ‘is not’ to another. The present situation is more subtle. The standard meaning of ‘existence’ must be broadened from its reference to manifest being to include nonmanifest being, which is necessitated by the demonstrated potency of the void (note, by the way, that under standard causal paradigms, potential is a ‘thing’, but this is and need not be the case for the potential of the void). Note that this broadening of the concept of existence is already implicit in the earlier definition of a being as the real reference of a referential concept.

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

The foundation of the being of or ultimate of the universe in another being is unsatisfactory as it requires that being to be without cause or there to be infinite regress. Further, a contingent cause, whatever it may be, cannot be a satisfactory foundation. The above demonstrations provide a resolution to the issue of the ultimate cause of the universe.

Truth 10. The rational foundation of the being of and cause of the universe is necessity.

Some significant consequences

Comment 22. Following is one core of a ‘center-out’ approach to presentation.

All beings

Truth 11. The universe has identity (given limitlessness in the sense defined above, this and the remaining conclusions in this section, ‘all beings’, are sound).

Truth 12. 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.

And every cosmos is as-if an atom in another and every cosmos contains as-if atoms that are cosmoses.

Truth 13. 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.

And while particular manifestations may be limited, limitlessness, which is potential in the background, is realized in the ‘sum’ of the manifestations.

Does emergence as peak require an eternity? Perhaps, but even if so, in the diffuse state between death and birth, whether of a person, a world, or a cosmos, eternity is as-if an instant (and the life of a cosmos is an instant in eternity). We might speculate that despite pleasure, pain, and striving, all forms of life that we know, including ourselves, have both significance and triviality relative to the peaks.

One visualization of our cosmos is as ‘immense beyond comprehension’ and therefore of the universe as ‘incomprehensible incomprehensibility. However, given the limitlessness of periods of potential existence, that visualization is but one perspective. The relatedness, oneness, and all is here and now, of the universe and its beings resides in – is potentiated by – the limitlessness of the void.

Truth 17. 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 19. The cause of the manifest universe is necessity (sound).

What is the edge of the known universe? It has an edge in duration and extension. There is another edge which has to do with strength of interaction, which is everywhere.

The void

Truth 20. 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

We begin and will continue to see, especially later in consequences of the metaphysics that the limit of knowledge and of the universe are identical, i.e., that of logical possibility. This constitutes a framework for ultimate knowledge, which is ultimate in depth but ever open for breadth or variety (as long as the knowers are limited beings; sound).

Living in two worlds

Comment 23. Placement?

The two worlds

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Systematic development of reasonable possibility is an ongoing project.

Robust worlds

Truth 22. Though possible, bizarre worlds and bizarre explanations are real but seemingly of limited significance and probability.

Via inclusion of pragmatic knowledge, the real metaphysics incorporates all valid (human) knowledge. This inclusion suggests that while many possible worlds are transitory and do not register strongly in experience, our world—the world of common experience—is likely robust (but not eternal) in endurance. While robust worlds may be statistically infrequent, they are the most commonly experienced (a strong conclusion). Though we may not peak in this cosmos, it is certain that, in diffusion, we are part of peak process (also strong).

Though imperfection in cognition suggests the impossibility of perfect metaphysics or pragmatic metaphysics of the ultimate, both have been demonstrated.

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).

The significant universe*

The range of possibility

Introduction

Here we are interested in the range or extension of possibility (in contrast to the intension or concept of possibility), i.e., the range of what things are possible.

If we are interested in what may occur in the universe, the range of possibility is of interest.

We have found that the universe is limitless in the sense that the greatest possibility is realized—that is, the range of possibility is what is realized. That is, the range of possibility specifies the universe.

What is the range of possibility in its greatest sense

It is what is allowed by logic. The reference below has three approaches to specifying the range that do not meet the full range.

Source or study topic 15.Possible Worlds (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

A full approach would require a ‘full logic’, which may be specified intensionally as (after study of limitlessness below) ‘in principle specification of what exists’. An extensional specification is beyond the scope of limited beings. We may say (after study of limitlessness) that logic (argument) and theory of being are one.

It seems reasonable to assert that the greatest or logically possible cannot be specified constructively by limited beings.

The approach adopted in what follows emphasizes what is qualitative.

Generation

Significant worlds are most often generated by ‘standard mechanisms’ described later, in development of the categories and cosmology.

The significant universe

The significant universe is robust and experienced by sufficiently capable beings, such that it has significance to them. This would eliminate ‘bizarre’ worlds and bizarre explanations of our world, e.g., it came

Doubt and certainty

On certainty

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

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

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

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

The following, which are not fully exclusive, are effective options—

1. 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.

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

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

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

5. To acknowledge that doubt and certainty are not exclusive.

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

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

Topics in metaphysics and philosophy

This material is 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

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).

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).

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

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

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

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 26. We are experiential beings.

The form of experience

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

Free will

That there is free will in the sense that there different possible actions from which we can choose and execute is now necessary in TM. 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 24. 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 16.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 28. 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 29. The universe (being) is (effectively) experiential (this and the earlier statement about the world are consistent).

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.

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).

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.

Identity, extension, and duration

The nature of identity, extension, and duration

Here are alternative approaches to the definitions.

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).

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

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.

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)?

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.

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

Comment 25. This topic is to be (re) developed in interaction with the later treatment under ‘consequences of the real metaphysics).

Source or study topic 17.The meaning of life—The Meaning of Life (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Source or study topic 18.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

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?

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.

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 68. 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

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.

Overlap of intrinsic and secondary goodness

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

A simple ethic

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

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

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

Means – the categories

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

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

b. 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.

Categories and cosmology

Comment 27. Implications of ethics are to be included if not already present. The treatment of categories in this chapter and that in pathways are to be brought into closer alignment.

In this work, the foundational elements of metaphysics are argument, abstraction, being (existence), universe, beings, the void, possibility, which are known precisely (in abstract, which is all that is needed at that foundational level of discussion). A further element, is the system of knowledge and ethics, for which certainty and precision are valuable but not necessary.

Early in the development of the work, the foundational elements were used as explanatory and predictive. The form of the explanation was to recognize levels and aspects of being, which were called ‘dimensions’ and paradigms or dynamics of explanation or ‘dynamics’ in some generalized sense. It was then recognized that these were close in conception to the philosophical concept of category. In this version of the work dimensions and paradigms or dynamics are replaced by categories and categorial explanation or paradigm and dynamics.

Just as metaphysics is study of the real at all including the highest of levels, so, in this work, categories are elements or ways of understanding at all levels (this deviates from received use as explained and justified below). Thus, the study of categories has already begun—at least implicitly and without especial attention to systematic study. Here we will explicitly develop a concept and system of categories.

Here, the categories (i) depend on chapters through metaphysics and then, especially, on experience and ethics and meaning (ii) enhance the metaphysics – its use in understanding-with-prediction and realization and. Therefore the categories are placed here, after experience and ethics and meaning. There is some freedom in where to place this chapter, but the categories should come before the chapters on implications for knowledge and pathways and programs, where the categories have significant use.

Introduction – categories in philosophy and in this work

The received concept of the categories and its function

The concept

As introduced by Aristotle, a system of categories is a complete—and perhaps unique—list of highest genera or kinds of being or of understanding (or of both being and understanding as manifest in Aristotle’s work).

In modern use, as emphasized by Kant work, skepticism about knowledge led to emphasis on categories of our conceptual system, language, or knowledge and acknowledgement of limits to such kinds.

Comment 28. Comment on category ‘differences (SEP).

Function

Categories are useful in recognizing and forming systems of logic, understanding, and valid thought about and descriptions of the world at a high conceptual level; their use is commonly in but not restricted to philosophy.

With Aristotle, the categories were real but derived from language as the most general predicates and were thus useful in formulating his syllogism.

From considerations of it being difficult to distinguish appearance and reality (‘phenomena and noumena’) Kant begins with an attempt to identify all possible forms of empirical judgment, from which he hopes to discover the categories employed in the cognition of objects (Categories – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Some recent work has focused semantic category distinctions as a way of dissolving various mistakes and paradoxes in the use of language and logic.

Categories in this work – categories vs categorial levels

Origins

In earlier developments of TW, tools of method, understanding, and realization were precursor to its categories.

n early developments of TW, a number of aspects of being arose as useful tools, which I named ‘dimensions’. They were similar but different from categories, so I did not use the term ‘categories’.

The dimensions were associated with dynamics or paradigms of understanding. For example, at the highest level of abstraction, the paradigm is that of certain fact and inference. A paradigm or dynamic that would be useful in transformation would be a ‘means’.

Since I wanted the dimensions to be useful in I emphasized not just dimensions, but dimensions and paradigms and, later, dynamics.

Determination and function

Being itself was seen as (rationally) deserving of regard as a category, as were levels below that of traditional categories, for the latter are essential tools in the real metaphysics and its use.

In using the real metaphysics, its abstract structure and the structure of experience is useful in understanding the high level structure of the real and employing it in action and transformation. At the highest level a paradigm or dynamic of understanding is, by the real metaphysics, sound argument (certain fact established directly or indirectly by inference).

Some low level structure can be understood by abstracting the essence of and generalizing paradigms or dynamics such as causality and evolutionary selection from our world. When projected beyond our world, e.g., to form and formation, (i) such projection provides one representation of the real, which is or is seen as likely, perhaps highly likely, but not unique (ii) the effective likeliness is enhanced by a formed world being, most often, a prerequisite for emergence of high level experiential beings.

The dimensions would be determined by working top (abstract) – down by particularization, as well as bottom (concrete, our world) – up, by analogy and corroboration. In doing so, it is effective to regard being itself as a category at a level just above that of the traditional categories.

Categorial levels and dynamics (paradigms) rather than just categories

Consistent with the origin and use of the idea in this work, it is seen functional to recognize not just a high-level system, but (also) levels and their systems and paradigms.

Further, given how the real metaphysics splices together experience and reality, the categories will be experiential and this will be both Aristotelian and Kantian in spirit.

That is

1. The categories will be experiential.

2. As in Aristotle and Kant, at the level of being, categories will pertain to description and logic.

3. in analogy to physics, so far as they may, categories should contain a dynamics, if only implicitly.

Thus, the dimensions would not just be at the highest level (just below being itself) but also at the level of being, at the traditional level, and perhaps other intermediate levels, down to a concrete level.

In determining the dimensions I found that it would be effective to (i) include being itself as a level above the traditional highest level (ii) have intermediate dimensions.

Though it might seem that the higher levels derive from the concrete, it has been seen in the development of the metaphysics, that we do know being itself directly as abstracted from the entire world rather than from something remote in the real or in our concepts (we also saw that this frames what might be deep in the world and therefore permits depth to emerge without suggesting that there is depth or otherwise).

Nomenclature

It is now found that it is effective to talk of categorial or paradigmatic levels, and categories and paradigms (the latter includes ‘means’).

Deploying the real metaphysics

It is effective to have being itself as a category as this invokes (i) all, part, and null (ii) nonbeing including contradictory being, which does not affect considerations regarding manifest being but makes explicit the fact of the existence of the void (iii) possible being and argument, especially sound argument.

The high level or ideal metaphysics, affords a true and realist system at that level. At that level, there is a uniqueness of paradigm or dynamic (sound argument) but the question of uniqueness in how the paradigm or dynamic is worked out (what logics there are) and need for it at that level remains open.

Our understanding of the universe as experiential (at least effectively) enables incorporation of both old and new notions of category (elements of being and of dynamic understanding).

The real metaphysics encourages the idea and introduction of categories at multiple levels, e.g., (i) the level of being (ii) the level of manifest being (iii) robust being (iv) our world. The determination will be (a) top – down (i.e., abstract – manifest – concrete) (b) bottom – up (concrete – abstract, with our world and its paradigms as analogy, buttressed by reasons).

Where appropriate, terms for categories used in the philosophical literature may be explicitly incorporated here (e.g., substance, process, entity, relationship…).

Note that two kinds of substance are recognized in the history of philosophy (i) the substance of all being, i.e., as that of which all being is made or of which it is understood and which is denied by the real metaphysics (as-if substances are permitted and useful for some purposes, e.g., in a cosmos) (ii) the substance of particular kinds of being, for which I prefer to use the idea of form (Aristotle’s use of ‘substance’ in this regard is close to Plato’s the idea of form), which is immanent in the one universe rather than, as in Plato, existent in an ideal world (and further, since forms with perfect symmetry may be static, their realization is approximate even where the form is perfectly symmetrical).

We will not strive for explicit completeness in this version of TW, but allow what completeness there is to remain partially implicit (the term ‘argument’ includes much that is implicit).

Comment 29. Thus, work remains to be done for the open version of TW.

The categorial and paradigmatic levels

The categorial and paradigmatic levels of being (and understanding, prediction, and means of transformation of beings) will be:

Experiential being and nonbeing—the highest level known via abstraction

Universe field of being, (effectively) as an experiential-relational field.

Whereas, the traditional categories are one level below being, here we include being itself as the highest categorial level.

We admit nonbeing or nonmanifest being to being (from discussions of existence and manifestation).

Form(s) of (experiential) being – a continuum

Includes formation as a form.

Emphasizes special forms that are relatively stable as a result of near symmetry – and mechanisms of formation (variation and selection) over random formation (which is also possible and therefore does occur but is – far – less likely).

The formed forms yield categorial levels just below being itself. The dynamics of their formation is, as stated above, variation and selection. The dynamics of their behavior, resulting from formation, is analogous to the dynamics seen in our world.

May include singularities and voids.

Emphasizes a hierarchy of experiential being from primitive to animal and human to higher and to peak being.

We want the categories to be more than mere classification but also to provide structure and dynamics. For this we introduce ‘general form’, as below.

Our world

Our world as depicted in our better knowledge and its paradigms.

Our world from which we derive pragmatic metaphysical levels – the physical through the universal and paradigms of perception and understanding, e.g., spacetime and causation as well as their specific forms in science.

The categories and dynamics according to their levels and paradigms

Site source 2. The little manual has details on some aspects of the categories (under ‘dimensions of being’), especially social categories. Though rough, the detail may be useful.

This chapter begins the actual system of categories in this work.

Cosmology, later treated explicitly in cosmology, enters here via paradigms (dynamics). explicitly later in cosmology.

All (levels of) being

The main paradigms or dynamics

The main paradigms or dynamics—the following are inherited by all levels: general argument and the real metaphysics; fact, imagination, analogy across levels with imagination, criticism, and corroboration as a paradigm or dynamic of understanding.

Kinds of argument and levels from abstract to concrete.

Inter-implications among the paradigmatic levels

Lower level paradigms or dynamics that have necessity at their level (relative to the domain of observation), have non-universal instantiation at higher levels where more inclusive paradigms or dynamics obtain.

On the other hand, paradigms or dynamics for higher levels, of which some have necessity, obtain at lower levels, where they are constraints, but do not completely determine structures and events.

Experiential being and nonbeing

Nonbeing

Inclusion makes no difference to manifest being but identifies the void as the object of contradiction (illogical form).

Beings

Beings and whole – part – null (or nil or zero) items and relations.

Universe as an experiential-relational field

Universe as an experiential-relational field.

Dynamics and paradigms

See the main paradigms or dynamics for all (levels) of being, above.

General form

Form in general as change or changing of the experiential relational field (experience-of – the experience – the experienced).

The change and field may be described by the terms ‘continuous’ and ‘continuum’ where those terms allow abrupt change and regions of continuity, particles (as singularities or excitations), and voids.

Formation

Formation as a form—details follow.

A range from increment-and-selection to saltation in a single step or a few steps.

Correlates with the above stasis-symmetry-stability-robustness continuum.

Formation without heredity

Generally transient and low on the above continuum.

However, there are exceptions.

Formation with heredity

Vertical heredity

Beings with form that is micro-coded with inheritance of coding, but not directly of form.

Paradigm or dynamic of emergence—dominated by incremental variation and selection but single step origins possible and real.

Horizontal heredity

Form is propagated in the field of relational being.

How might this happen? 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.

Vertical vs horizontal heredity

Is it likely that in some or many cases, one kind is dominant but the other is also present?

Relation as form

Form and paradigm or dynamic—beings as concept – experiential relation – object.

Formed forms

The form of (concept-) objects marked by slow enough change to be perceived as static and lying on continuum of more to less stasis, symmetry, stability, and robustness.

Paradigm or dynamic—saltation is possible but effective population determined by (nonlinear) interaction of degree of experientiality and robustness; robustness determined by stability and so by symmetry.

If, as is reasonable, perfect symmetry is static, while absence of it is rapidly transient, extremes are rare.

Elementary forms

E.g. field of relational experience, which permits voids and atoms as special cases.

Sameness, difference, identity, extension, relation, duration, and property.

Comment 30. Fill the above out.

Particular forms

Particular forms (corresponding to as-if substance as a kind of entity)

Hierarchy of experiential being

Comment 31. See this topic under ‘our world’, below. Abstract from that topic.

A beginning to this topic is in our world, below.

Our world

Approximated by an experiential field describable by as-if matter in primitively experiential relation, i.e., approximated by (as-if) matter that is primitively experiential.

Consequently the emergence of (as-if) high-level matter and mind is not substance emergence but emergence of form.

The experiential field ranges in quality and magnitude from nil and minimal as in bulk (as-if) matter, to complexity (molecules), to elementary life, to plant life, to animal including human being, to higher forms and peak being(s).

The physical or material level

Behavior

Field, atoms, bulk matter and its behavior as in quantum, relativistic, statistical, and condensed matter theories. Chemistry and nuclear physics.

Paradigms or dynamics – mechanism and its origins – determinism and indeterminism, residual indeterminism and quantum theory; sameness – difference – identity – extension – duration – cause – property.

Paradigm or dynamic – the object side of experience as seen in the natural and social sciences and their paradigms or dynamics (e.g., evolution by variation and selection, mechanism, causality).

Extension and duration

Cosmos, origins, history; cosmological structures (galaxies etc), solar system(s) and planets.

Multiverse theory.

Mathematical and logical universe (not restricted to physical theory).

Complexity and life

Complex molecules, abiogenesis; replicators, coding, and genetics.

Life and its kinds and levels through conscious and intelligent organisms.

Function—life as it is

Paradigms or dynamics—functional chemistry of complex compounds, principles of biological organisms and ecosystems.

Origins and evolution

Paradigms or dynamics—emergence of complexity, evolution by variation of hereditary factors and selection.

Domains and kingdoms

With ‘kingdom’ as the highest level of classification, two kingdoms, animals and plants, were recognized early in biology (this is what I learned in school).

But then, more kingdoms were, recognized, depending on criteria. With the idea of a kingdom as a major branch with a common ancestor, today it is common to recognize five or six kingdoms (in textbooks around the word), but as many as eight are recognized.

Today, a higher level than kingdom, the domain, is recognized by some biologists, as in the three domain system—archaea, bacteria, and eukarya—devised by Carl Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark Wheelis in 1990.

Commonly recognized current taxonomic divisions are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Since this work is not one of biology, and the distinctions are neither absolute nor static, there is no further conceptual discussion of the divisions of life at this time.

Experiential hierarchy

As-if material, dominated by physical law.

Mid-range and human, both experiential and physical.

Paradigm or dynamic – the subject side of experience and its transformations as in unition (yoga) and meditation and as seen in psychology of experiential being.

As-if spiritual, dominated by ideas as container and propagater of hereditary form.

Societies

Comment 32. The content is at present suggestive.

Primitive molecules and organisms

A paradigm or dynamic of synchronous cooperation.

Plant

From societies of organisms to rooted entities.

Animal – primitive through higher

From societies of organisms to mobile entities.

Human

Site source 3. little manual.docm.

Intelligence and physiology as preliminary to elements of culture, communication, and cooperation.

Higher

Transcending our beings, societies, and cosmos.

Universal

Comment 33. Work this out via imagination, synthesis of foregoing elements, and criticism.

Paradigm or dynamic – integration of the subject and object sides in understanding and means of realization—particularly transformations of self, as in unition (yoga), aided by technology (space exploration and artificial intelligence).

More on paradigms and dynamics

The dynamics are further elaborated in cosmology.

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 very 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 a Microsoft AI agent). 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).

Part 5. 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 34. In this document, most topics currently have only an outline; the outlines are to be improved.

Comment 35. A decision is to be made on which topics will be developed here vs in a long version of the work.

Comment 36. Think through the topics, their logic and hierarchy.

Knowledge and the world

Tentative overview

Comment 37. 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 1.Combine with knowledge under ‘metaphysics’ and place here or there!

Comment 2. 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 3. 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 4. ..\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 4. 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 5. what is philosophy (html) (folder)

Site source 6. 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 5. 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 6. 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 7. The little manual has content and sources.

Site source 8. god.docm.

Site source 9. 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 6. Pathways

Comment 7. 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—

Design of pathways

On design

Pathway design

Enlightened pathways in being

The aim of the way, elaborated

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

Attitude and its elements

Intelligent address of pleasure, pain, and emotion

Universal elements of programs

Overview of a program of realization

Implementation of the categories

Planning and timelines for The Way of Being

Adaptable program templates

Introduction

Daily and long term priorities and planning

Daily schedule for routine days, especially at home and work

Planning a trip or expedition

Daily scheduling for variant days, especially away from home and in travel

A joint template – daily, life, and beyond

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 10. This, the master document, for the metaphysics and categories.

Site source 11. 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 12. 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 13. For a simple division structure—the way of being - brief essence.docm.

Site source 14. 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 8. 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 9. ‘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

How traditions are viewed

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

Real – Buddhism (insight on pain, the eightfold way), Yoga (unition), Advaita Vedanta (identity of self—discrete and local with distributed and universal), Christian mysticism.

Symbolic – the meanings of nirvana and the remote God.

On unition (yoga) and unification (yoking)

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 10. 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

4. Aware and enlightened paths

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

Programs

6. Universal elements with timelines

7. Program templates

Resources

An institute for the way of being

Enlightened pathways in being

Comment 11. Was, simply, ‘Pathways’

The aim of the way, elaborated

Elaboration

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

Comment 12. 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 13. 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.

Universal elements of programs

Comment 14. 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 15. 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 16. 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 17. 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. The Way of Being, 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.

4. Reflect on ideas and experience, read, synthesize,.

5. As needed—review long term and daily planning detail.

6. 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 18. 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 19. 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, in-process long 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 essential and informal versions 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 7. 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 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.

Having reflected on our place and trajectory in the universe, we return to focus on action and transformation, emphasizing the immediate, the ultimate, and their mesh.

The return is a complement to Part 1. Into the way of being—the difference is one of emphasis… ‘into’ emphasized ideas, here we emphasize action and looking outward, beyond our temporal being.

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.

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 (yoga); 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

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 rather than person centered.

Part 1. Planning†

Line by line

Editing

Part 3. Into the way of being

The way and its aim

The basis

Developing the way

About precision of reference and inference

Summary

Religion as transsecular

Constructive metaphysics

Real metaphysics

On the choice of ‘being’ and related concepts

Preview—a picture of the universe

A beginning: standard vs mythic views

Beyond the beginning: logic

The meaning of the picture

The truth of the picture

On foundational systems for metaphysics

Part 4. The Way of Being

Definitions

Notation for the axiomatic system

Preliminary

The notation

Preferred notation

Being

The concepts

On the concept-object conception of being

Significant meaning and value

Argument

Direct argument

Certain or precise

Likely or nearly precise

Indirect argument or direct argument and inference

Certain inference

Deduction

Intrinsic inference

The Way of Being

Likely inference

Induction, abduction, and analogy

The Way of Being

Transitivity of inference

On some special cases considered above

Argumentative strength

The certain case

The less than certain case

Ampliative vs nonampliative argument

What argument does

Nomenclature

Laws of logic

Some fundamental laws of logic are

Standard logics

Being and beings

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

Limitlessness

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

Part 1. Planning^†