This is the template version

MAIN CONCEPTS FOR THE WAY OF BEING

Anil Mitra © May 2019—June 2019

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MAIN CONCEPTS FOR THE WAY OF BEING

the system of concepts is also a template for the essays

an essential set of concepts for The Way (with some main related concepts in brackets) and core of all versions is—purpose (tradition), Being (beings, the universe), reason (experience), metaphysics (the void, the fundamental principle of metaphysics, cosmology of Being and identity), the imperative, the way, templates for realization, prospect

this is the briefest version of concepts for The Way (and template for the briefest version of The Way—the intent will be to provide a guide to action) the templates for realization are relatively detailed

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purpose

to have purpose is to intend, with some confidence or realism, to achieve a better state of Being; ‘realistic’ in ‘realistic purpose’ is redundant; in elaboration: to have purpose is to realistically hold that it is feasible to conceive and by design act toward some better state of Being—e.g., a better world; purpose characterizes individuals, societies, and civilizations to varying degrees; it occurs in different ways—e.g., (i) this existence is all there is but it can be improved and (ii) there is a greater existence that is knowable and achievable

tradition, which includes knowledge and practice—i.e. culture, is what is valid in the endeavor of purpose for all cultures over history

in the traditions, there is a casual approach to purpose that regards this life as good enough or better and leaves questions of ultimate purpose open; this permits the following ways as superstructure to the casual way

secular or scientific humanism appeals to science for the real and ‘higher’ human nature for values; science is empirical and therefore cannot be complete (yet a scientific world view is regarded as complete by many because its theories, limited by the empirical, are naïvely projected beyond the empirical); values based in human nature may be admirable but cannot be claimed ultimate; therefore, while some thinkers and others regard the program of humanism as ultimate—our best possible, humanism leaves ultimate questions open

myth and religion have attempted to answer ultimate questions but even where it is not dogmatic, its cosmologies and ethics are hardly ever ultimate, in part due to metaphysical assumptions at their foundations; yet, if religion were to be regarded as rational exploration of the trans-scientific region it might become potent

there is an extremely limiting double bind due to the juxtaposition of science and religion in the modern world; we saw that science ought to be open ended; however, the dogma of religion as alternative to science tends to shut down both motive and vision regarding the ultimate; this intellectual burden is inherited by many educated persons in the west; and their economic circumstances are too comfortable to spark them out of their comfortable attitudes to the world

traditional systematic metaphysics provides yet other ways of looking at the world; the approach typically builds a rational superstructure on some empirical elements of the world; yet their look at the elements of the world is not deep enough, their imagination not rich enough, and their rational criticism not critical enough; which has resulted in systems that are impressive but not ultimate and that are touched by reason yet not fully rational; perhaps the greatest vision is that of the Vedanta, a system of Indian Philosophy, that sees the universe in terms of an ultimate and eternal entity, Brahman, in which we participate, but though imaginative and not rationally absurd, it is not fully rationally grounded either; and therefore the ideas are of limited potency in touching our lives

aim

purposes of interest—aim—in The Way of Being concern the small and immediate to the ultimate and their interaction; changes of interest range from the incremental to the ideal; the aim of the system of ideas is to go beyond the above systems if we can, and find a rationally grounded ultimate understanding (of which, if it is fully ultimate, there can be only one)

the aim of The Way of Being is to know and achieve the greatest existence—that is, the aim is not just the development of a system of understanding but also in using the system to see and realized the greatest existence; the aim values and begins in but is not limited to ‘this world’; the way will be grounded in tradition but it is effective to begin from neutral ground

Being

existence (verb to be), neutrality (with regard to place, time, posit of spacetime, entity-relation-process, trope), extension (generalization of spacetime extension to sameness-difference-absence as immanent and coeval with Being); a being(plural: beings; existent, generalization of ‘object’ as existent)

the hypothetical being that does not have any affect on a given being is effectively non-existent for that being; the hypothetical being that affects no being (or is affected by no being) is non-existent

givenness (foundational), abstraction-neutrality (precision-inclusivity but non-specificity though not non-concrete), knowledge (the concept of Being is perfectly faithful to the existent of Being due to conceptual immediacy of abstraction; note: the concept of knowledge may be assumed here because justified as used but will be conceptually established and developed later), conceptual power, instrumental remoteness (due to non-specificity of abstraction)

pragmatic existent (good enough as-if faithfulness for a limited range of Being), pragmatic knowledge (concrete; note: the abstract and concrete are not opposed but a continuum—the are of the same kind and their reference is in the to-be-established-one world or universe), working knowledge (appropriate join of the pragmatic to the perfect is ideal in having virtues of both)

pragmatic knowledge is typically not faithful with unlimited range and may not be validly assumed so (unless otherwise established)—e.g., a pragmatic view of human life is that it is bounded by birth and death and restricted by putative physical and organic limits… but it may be, and will be established later, that human being and beings—and human civilization and civilizations—are essentially and ultimately (all) Being

the universe is all (that has) Being; it has Being—it is a being; there is one universe; the cause (creative ‘force’) of the universe cannot be another being (there is no other being)—the universe has no creator; mere possibility (‘that which can be’) cannot be seen as a cause of the universe for under mere possibility, its (manifest) existence could be otherwise; therefore if there is a cause, it may be seen (as the non-standard cause named) necessity (‘that which must be’)

except the universe, a being is a part of the universe (except in an extended sense in which wholes are seen as parts and in which case a part that is not the whole is called a proper part)

reason

experience (subjective awareness or consciousness), feeling (an essential component of experience), therefore experience is core Being (e.g., the core of our Being) and place of significant meaning (as in the “meaning of life”); there is experience, therefore Being

the hypothetical being that has no affect (“never has an affect”) in my experience is relatively non-existent to me; the hypothetical being that has no affect on any experience at all is effectively non-existent

experience is attitudinal, pure, or agentive (capable of action toward an end); even pure experience is internal and potential external relation (interaction); therefore experience is relational; (this suggests that and will be found to be the case) knowing-acting-becoming are essentially inseparable except in the abstract case or as a pragmatic (approximation)

individuals do not get outside their experience, which suggests solipsism as more than just interpretation; yet, within the experience of individuals there is a map of experience: experiencer or self, experienced or world, world as self–other (you, they, ‘other minds’) – environment

interpretations of the map: (1) map as working knowledge, (2) standard secular view (SSV)—individuals in a material environment: impossible on substance view but just bizarre on permissive view, (3) solipsism—individual experience as world—seemingly bizarre but logically possible, (4) world as field of experience (FOE)—potential realistic interpretation: bizarre vs non-bizarre as experience of the limited vs limitless, (5) extended standard secular view (ESSV)—standard view with environment as experiential at zero to low level: non bizarre special case of world as field of experience)

bizarre vs non-bizarre interpretations are dilemmas and at least seeming paradoxes which can be instrumental in imaginative thought (by presenting hypotheses) and critical analysis (by resolving conflict and general critical principles) in conceptual thought in revisioning knowledge at its core and boundary—note that what is bizarre will almost always be relative to a world view and that the absolutely bizarre will turn out to be violations of necessary or deductive logic

resolution of the question of interpretation vs the real must depend on what the world is like—i.e. on metaphysics (our sciences are pragmatic knowledge, therefore at most suggestive regarding the real); but metaphysics as knowledge of the real has been suspect since the empiricism and rationalism of the modern period—therefore the question is deferred to interpretation vs the real; however, on an open view—open metaphysics—that is not committed to any metaphysics, including scientific and systematic metaphysics, we may say that any interpretation that is logically permissible is not disallowed

a concept is a mental content (and an existent), referential concept meaning is—exemplified by—a concept and its potential and actual objects, a sign is an existent associated with a concept (the sign and concept may be atomic, simple, or compound—but it is not assumed that there are atomic existents), a symbol is the sign-concept, referential linguistic meaning is a symbol and its potential and actual objects (referential meaning is sufficient to purpose of the way and its metaphysics, ‘meaning’ will be used for ‘referential meaning’), linguistic meaning is efficient in representation (with or without formalization and its advantages of precision-linearity-inspectability, and disadvantage of non-specificity), the ground of meaning is immanence (use among the communities of experiential beings)—which is capable of perfect foundation on the abstract side and pragmatic foundation on the concrete side), concept meaning is obtained from linguistic meaning when the sign is absent, where meaning is potential it is open, where actual, it is closed

knowledge is closed meaning, knowledge claims may err in internal structure and in reference, necessary logic is the (compound) condition on internal structure for reference at all (i.e., in some world—this is co-extensive with deductive logic), necessary logic may be extended to include establishment of necessary fact and the extension will be (temporarily) labeled Logic

science (which presumes deductive logic) is a corroborative means (between concept and object by observation and inter-subjectively—i.e. in repetition of observation by different observers or experimenters) of establishing pragmatic reference (which is factual in the empirical domain, but hypothetical if projected beyond)

abstract science is science where the concept-object (or plural) is sufficiently abstract for precision (this is an extension of a standard view that regards only the concrete sciences as science)

the concept of Logic may now be extended to the sciences, abstract and concrete, and will be called logos or reason

(from the nature of experience, reason is not of intellect alone but is essentially conceptual and active experience in interaction)

questions of the perfection and purchase of logos or reason are deferred to the consequences of the ‘perfect metaphysics’

metaphysics

metaphysics (knowledge of the real), possibility by construction—preliminary metaphysics (Being, reason) is metaphysics

meaning in metaphysics starts with ordinary meaning, which is (must be) then refined and extended while maintaining two kinds of consistency—(i) internal, i.e. among the concepts and (ii) external, i.e. between the system of concepts and the world; should the consistency be perfect—for metaphysics it must be but note that the meaning of perfection, and therefore knowledge-of-the-real, is under development as part of metaphysics: for understanding of a metaphysical system it is essential to see that (i) meanings must be specified and, except by coincidence, cannot be the same as received meanings; (ii) the meanings constitute a system and therefore understanding is incomplete without seeing the meanings in relation to one another; and (iii) meanings ought not to deviate from received meanings more than is necessary and useful toward the main insights behind the metaphysical system

the void (existence—demonstration, the void is a being… a part of the universe, importance of fact of existence, doubt about existence of the void but consistency with logic – science – and common reflective experience, given necessary fact or foundational ontological principle, existential action principle)

natural law, laws have Being, possibility (“that which can happen”, possibility cannot be self-contradictory), physical possibility, logical possibility, the greatest possibility (the greatest possibility is equal to or less than logical possibility, and equal to logical possibility on a restricted sense of logical possibility as equivalent to the actual), the fundamental principle of metaphysics (demonstration), reason as perfect (but dual abstract-faithful – concrete pragmatic and perfect in its own realm, with dual perfect epistemology that revaluates but does not supplant traditional epistemology)—the perfect metaphysics (the abstract side faithfully reveals an ultimate and illuminates the pragmatic; the pragmatic illustrates and is the perfect and only instrument of realization)

preliminary metaphysics (Being, reason)—revaluation, development

general metaphysics (necessity of manifest Being, true fundamental question, principle of sufficient reason, Logic, reason revisited, logos), unless otherwise established the ‘highest’ Being is in process rather than achieved (or: it is achieved as process), all beings interact—the universe is dynamically one, experience and Being are essentially relational, knowledge-action is essentially one, the hypothetical being that affects no experience at all is non-existent (this does not say that experience creates or is responsible for existence but that Being is essentially relational-experiential, at least at a low intensity of experience); the perfect metaphysics – logos – reason are the means of Be-ing, realizing, and realization

interpretation vs the real: from the perfect metaphysics (1) world as field of experience—FOE—is real and the most general view, (2) solipsism with the individual as a—limited—human individual is (logically) possible but bizarre; however with the individual as the universe in a sapient state it is identical to world as field of experience, (3) as noted earlier the standard secular view—SSV—is impossible on a substance view, bizarre on the general metaphysics in that realization of the view occurs but would be infrequent and unstable, and (4) the extended standard secular view—ESSV—is the case of a cosmos typified by this cosmos: a non-bizarre special case of world as field of experience—FOE

cosmology—the study of the variety and extension of Being, essential cosmology for the way—the cosmology of Being and Identity (the universe has limitless Being and identity; human being merges with (is) this identity; there is a way of realization*), for every being there is a ‘higher’ sentient-sapient-designed being, general cosmology (cosmology without specializing conditions; far greater than modern physical cosmology but unfortunately, secular philosophy today largely but erroneously subscribes to modern physical cosmology as the cosmology), form-and-formation (spacetime, space, and time), physical cosmology; it is essential to recognize some essential and pragmatic distinctions—dimensions or categories of Being (divisions within Being beginning just under Being in generality and neutrality; note that the following will not be traditional categories), which begin with an essential split into experience and experienced; the latter is the world which includes experience; these can be written as psyche and world; we choose to see the world in modern secular terms—nature (physical and elementary; and living, which is complex and also experiential—of psyche—at a high level), society (and civilization); and beyond the secular—the universal or Being-as-Being without limit… and the unknown

* in detail, the universe has identity; the Being and identity of the universe are limitless in variety and extension (the greatest possibility is realized); there are peaks of Being and dissolution, limitless in magnitude and variety; there are arrays of cosmoses, limitless in count, magnitude, and quality—e.g., physical law; human being merges with—is—this ultimate identity; which may go unrecognized in some lives and cultures; but there are ways of realization, which may be grounded in this life

imperative

from the fundamental principle: there is an imperative to engage in realization and there are effective paths to realization

purpose and purposive thought and action are not necessary to realization; pragmatically, we observe (infer) life arising from primordial origin, acquiring ‘advanced form, feeling, sense of purpose, and cognition that can be deployed toward at least local purpose’; that is one local function of cognition; we therefore propose to consider that employment of human ability toward realization of the ultimate will make the process of realization effective and enjoyable—optimally so in some sense; the fundamental principle implies that this must be so in at least some cases

the way

Vedanta begins the paths begin with in-principle identity of Atman and Brahman; given the temporal limits of Atman, process is necessary; the paths may be developed and followed via reason—reason is the instrument (means) of realization; thus, since every culture and every individual faces realization afresh, paths ought to be in template form which can be revised or approached afresh (the template forms may of course be filled in with some detail); which pertains also to—

Buddha—the paths are effective when enjoyed—with ecstasy and pain in moderation; paths are occasions of ecstasy; this follows from the fundamental principle; however, there is pain; this, too, is necessary from the fundamental principle; pain is pragmatically necessary as well—an adaptation that may be seen as channeling local purpose—and therefore as incompletely discriminatory, pain is imperfect—not always functional, e.g. in the pain of the innocent and the dying; further modern (2019) advances in medicine-psychology-psychiatry are pertinent; the proper pragmatic address of pain is: it is to be alleviated where possible; it is to be regarded with tolerance where tolerance effective in achievement—but of course it is not and end in itself (as it is in some ‘traditions’); however the greater approach to pain, where possible, is as on the way to the ultimate; similarly, ecstasy for its own sake is counterproductive to realization—often productive of just the opposite; does this mean that there is to be no positive experience—not at all: being on the way in-this-world is enjoyable, worth enjoying-in-process, integrates pain, is productive of local and ultimate enjoyment

logos or reason is the net means of realization; this generality is good—for it is clear, encompassing, and devoid of the hair splitting and diversionary detail of an excess of scholarly sophistication; however to be effective it is essential to recognize real and functional distinctions—dimensions of Being introduced earlier; thus the means are intrinsic (of Being-psyche) and instrumental (of the form of Being); in detail, the means are both intrinsic (of experience and identity which may be employed to growth and merging of identities in greater to ultimate identity); and instrumental (physical and social, including the economic, political and technology; which may be employed as support for the intrinsic, e.g. in the spread of civilizations across the universe)

the means are elaborated as a system of knowledge for use in realization; see http://www.horizons-2000.org/0. 2019-site/essential resources.html

templates

the principles of the templates are (1) the templates derive from reason (logos) and its dimensions (of Being)—the means of development and living the templates is reason… and all dimensions are to be reflected in each template, (2) the everyday template will be based in a daily routine or routines that should be adaptable to a range of situations and non-compulsory but open to general and immediate review, (3) the universal template shall be a program of realization in terms of dimensions of reason; which will naturally be reflexive and flexible; the choice of focus for individuals, societies, and civilizations will be according to need, circumstance, and disposition; some focus on psyche is essential to significant meaning

here are outline templates: everyday template: rise before the sun, review with meditative reflection, realization, tasks, experimental yoga, exercise, evening universal template: ideas relation, knowing; becoming (i) Pure Being, community (ii) nature with psyche (iii) civilization and society (iv) artifact (v) universal, unknown; Being universal

outline templates with detail: everyday template rise before the sun dedication to The Way; affirmation of the aim review-meditate reflect on realization, priorities, and means; employ simple reflection, meditative emptiness for re-orientation of purpose and energy, contemplative or analytical meditation to see what is essential now and in other time frames; see ‘experimental yoga’ below realization work; relationships; ideas and action; yoga-meditation in action (see experimental yoga, below) tasks daily-long term; meals; attitude—an element of realization; light; yoga in action experimental yoga a time to practice for realization in the immediate and the ultimate; the practice developed in yoga, reverberates in everyday and universal life; see very short essay-pragmatic version.html for experimental yoga exercise–aerobic in nature, photography, explore; Beyul—a tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is travel and being in nature, sometimes to remote places, in search of extended experience of self and the ultimate, with openness to inspiration evening rest, renewal, planning and review, realization, and community universal template Being dimension: Pure Being, community; detail: everyday process Being-ideas dimension: relation, knowing detail: reason; art becoming dimension: nature with psyche detail: nature as ground: Beyul-the universal in nature becoming dimension: civilization and society detail: shared immersion; intrinsic and instrumental thought (social-political-economic philosophy and science) and action becoming dimension: artifact detail: artifactual Being as Being (realized) and as adjunct; science and technology of advanced civilization on the way to the ultimate becoming dimension: universal, unknown detail: transformation aimed at the universal Being dimension: universal detail: being in the universal

prospect

the following are from future of the site.html: for The Way of Being—share and be on the way to realization of the ultimate in the immediate and beyond; continue to develop the ideas and paths; continue to communicate the way with intent to contribute and share—to find and experiment with effective ways of sharing; for sharing—experiment with effective content and form of expression and publication, (i) find an editor, publisher, promoter, joint writer; web skills will be useful; note: this is an aspect of sharing, (ii) informal spoken and written, (iii) media with careful preparation and selection of setting, (iv) internet presence—the website, blogs, podcasts, social media, (v) print publication, (vi) promotion of the ideas and implication in the widest range of applicable spheres (see system of human knowledge…), and (vii) promotion to a wide range of influential persons and institutions; for myself—search and share my truth and understanding of Being, the universe, and destiny; be passionate about life and love of people and the world

resources

follow the links in above (for print versions enter them to the address bar of an Internet browser)

for further information, see http://www.horizons-2000.org/0. 2019-site/essential resources.html

further resources on the current version of the above website—the main five: the pragmatic version.html, analytic version.html; concepts-details.html; a short text essay.html for essentials and temporary text essay the way of being.html for ideas and form; the long outline and its local version)

on the 2017 version of the site— selections from essays.html (backup and secondary material:index.html)—especially, canonical dilemmas.html, fresh.html, my journey.html, system of human knowledge, reason, practice, and action.html, the way - world problems and opportunities.html (with main source in journey in being-detail.html), the way of being - essential version.html