Significance of the concepts

ANIL MITRA, © November 2014

CONTENTS

Significance of the concepts

Aim

The concepts of the universal metaphysics and journey in being are developed, elaborated, and applied in detail in essays such as template and journey in being. The detail tends to obscure the nature of the concepts as well as how they stand together. The aim of this discussion is to bring out the meaning and significance of the main concepts and how they stand together as a system.

This will be done by focusing on meaning and significance rather than on detail.

A grouping

The concepts can cast neatly but somewhat arbitrarily into four groups.

Group 1: being itself: being, object

Group 2: awareness and interaction: experience, meaning, sameness, difference, identity, extension, duration, and interaction

Group 3: domain and knowledge: domain, universe, law, void, universal metaphysics, realism, and cosmology

Group 4: intelligence, agency, and commitment: journey, transformation, action, and existential attitude

Summary

Being—the quality of existence or existing.

Object—any being.

Experience—awareness of being.

Meaning—a concept and its object or objects.

Sameness and difference—the simplest content of awareness

Identity—sameness with or without difference.

Duration—marks difference without change in identity.

Extension—marks difference without duration.

Interaction—tendency change in proximity with another object. When two interactions of an object are in balance there may be no change.

Domain—part of being.

Universe—all being.

Law—a law is a pattern that is read in being; the Law is the pattern. Laws have being

The void—the absence of being; more precisely the null domain. As the complement of every domain relative to itself, the void exists.

Doubt—although there is neither paradox nor inconsistency associated with existence of the void, the magnitude of its implications suggests doubt.

The universal metaphysics—therefore the void has no Laws, i.e. from the void every state emerges. This is subject to:

Realism—the requirement on concepts that they refer to objects. This excludes those that contradict other concepts that obtain (e.g. facts) or that contain violations of logic. In other words, Realism asserts that the universe is the universe of possibility.

Cosmology—it follows from the universal metaphysics that (1) the universe has identity (2) the universe and its identity undergo acute, diffuse, and non-manifest (‘dissolved’) phases that recur without end and without limit to extension and variety of being and (3) that individuals inherit this power of the universe.

Journey—however, while in limited form universal power is only approached via a journey in being, a journey that is without end or limit in variety or extension (that is, the universal peaks of being are experienced only in transcendence of limits).

Transformation—the realizations of individuals is not a mere expansion of consciousness (at least as it is ‘normally’ experienced) but involves a very real transformation of individual being (e.g. human).

Existential attitude—concerns doubt regarding the metaphysics. From the existential point of view we may think as follows: the existential character of the undertaking is enhanced by doubt (the dullness of certainty).

The main system

Being—the quality of existence or existing.

What is the significance of being? Consider the term ‘matter’. Is there matter? The answer is rather obvious—Why yes of course there is matter! Let us grant this obviousness but ask whether the idea of matter is sufficiently precise and broad to be the foundation of all things. In its approximate form to say that is to say that our unanalyzed experience is adequate as the substance of all things. That may be useful as a practical attitude but we may have come nowhere close to experiencing all things. And this remains true if we take a philosophical approach to matter. Just as seriously we may wonder whether the experiential notion of matter is adequately precise even for proximate things. For precision we turn to science but surely, even though the precision of science is often something amazing, it is not perfectly precise. The problem with matter is that we are attempting to be precise and specific before we have grounds to do so. On the other hand being is perfectly adequate and precise by being non-specific—it is the quality of whatever exists. Perhaps there are no existing things—the notion of being allows that. Perhaps matter exists, perhaps mind… and perhaps not—being allows that. There is of course an obvious objection—being is so generically defined as to perhaps be rather useless. As is found in the development, say in the template, being is found to be immensely potent. Instead of forcing, the approach from being leaves open the question of what has being and thus could be trivial but in taking this risk the fact is that what emerges is an ultimately powerful metaphysics that shows the universe to be ultimate

Object—any being.

Experience—awareness of being.

Always ‘subjective’ awareness but this is perhaps too weak and loaded a term.

It is fundamental that experience is real—that experience has being. Thus given experience there must be being. This is Descartes’ argument and it is conditional. It does not say that there must be being but, rather, that given experience there is being.

Meaning—a concept and its object or objects.

Augmented in linguistic meaning by association with symbols.

Note that the idea of the object in abstract harbors potential paradox. In association with realistic concepts, however, there is no paradox.

Sameness and difference—the simplest content of awareness. Sameness and difference is not exclusive.

Identity—sameness with or without difference.

Duration—marks difference without change in identity.

Extension—marks difference without duration.

I will use the term extensionality to refer to both duration and extension.

Where identity is indefinite, extension and duration may be indefinite and their absolute separation may be incomplete.

Our experience shows there are space and time but not that there must be or that they be relative or absolute.

Interaction—tendency change in proximity with another object. Two interactions may balance so that the object does not change.

The question arises how interaction occurs. It seems counter-intuitive that two particles without structure should interact. Interaction suggests, therefore, that there are no indivisible particles.

Experience is an aspect of interaction. In speculating on substance, Spinoza considered that there may be further term in the sequence matter, mind… or extension, thought… However, this shows that there are no further fundamental terms although there may be an unlimited series of kinds or qualities of extension and thought.

Domain—part of being.

Universe—all being.

There is nothing outside the universe.

Thoughts, feelings and so on—the things we think essentially mental and often non-material—have being. Concepts, experience, meaning, interaction… and all the objects listed below have being.

Extension and duration cannot be external grids to the entire universe but may be locally external.

Law—a law is a pattern that is read in being; the Law is the pattern.

In the following, capitalization as in Law will be suppressed.

Laws have being.

Here is an instance of the power of being. The ‘physical universe’ has laws but does it contain laws? Probably not but what then is the status of the laws? Where are they? Using being as fundamental renders moot the question as to the location of the laws—since they have being they are in the universe.

The void—the absence of being; more precisely the null domain.

Although it contains no being, the void has being (proof: as the complement of every domain or object relative to itself the void exists). That is, the void has being even though it contains no being.

Doubt—although there is neither paradox nor inconsistency associated with existence of the void, the magnitude of its implications suggests doubt.

The universal metaphysics—therefore, to continue from previous paragraphs, the void has no laws. Now if there is (a concept of) a state that does not emerge from the void that would constitute a law and therefore there are no such states. However, this needs to be subject to a provision that now follows.

Realism—the requirement on concepts that they refer to objects. What concepts of states are incapable of reference? They are those that contradict other concepts that obtain (e.g. facts) or that contain violations of logic. In other words, Realism (which I shall also write as realism) is the requirement of possibility on concepts and simultaneously the guarantee that the universe is the universe of possibility.

One way of saying this is that realism is the law of the universe but that since there are no universal laws (a universal law would be a law of the void) it is the only law. This sounds paradoxical but is not, for after all, realism is not a law at all. It is the constraint on concepts for objects to be possible in some world and therefore, under the metaphysics, for them to be real in our universe. Another way of saying this is that the universe has no limits—that realism is not a limit but a constraint on the freedom on concept formation for them to refer.

There must be being. / The universal metaphysics also shows that there are phases of being and of lack of manifest being (something from nothing).

It shows that there must be experience. / It shows that while it is counter-intuitive that there should be interaction without structure, the same (interaction without structure at some fundamental level) will be basic in some instances. / Therefore it also shows that experience is in some cases a basic quality of being. / That is, while ‘mind’ is not a substance it sometimes behaves as if substance like.

It shows that there must be extension-duration. / The universe has no absolute space-time grid but there may be local grids set up by one part for another.

The universe has no creator or creation. There is no god of the universe but there may be gods in the universe.

Origins of complex systems may be one step. However, reflection suggests that incremental traverse through relatively stable-near symmetric-well adapted systems results in most complex systems, at least in their early stages. / Reflection further suggests that the advanced stages of complex systems are marked by committed intelligence working in unison with the incremental traverse described above.

Comment. This appears to contradict our experience of limits including death, limited power, and science as a constraint. However, the fundamental principle implies that there will and must be experience of such limits but, further, there will and must be transcendence of the limits. There are various other paradoxes whose resolution is given in the narrative—one is that more than one individual realizing universal power appears contradictory but is not so because simultaneous realization is also coalescing of the identities.

Action—while ultimate realization is given, it is reasonable to anticipate that its greatest enjoyment and efficiency occurs via intelligent and committed (feeling, emotional) engagement of the entire being. Thus the significance of understanding and developing a mechanics, system of elements, and program of transformation. The significance of intelligence and commitment pertains not only to the individual and human civilization but also to universal civilization and universal identity. That is, relative to an elementary (roughly, ‘material’) phase of being, while initial transformation (‘evolution’) may be without (higher) consciousness, the higher phases of transformation are anticipated from considerations of effectiveness of evolution to most generally involve both material and intelligent evolution.

Comment. This does not at all contradict our experience and science thus far on Earth.

Comment. This does not explain pain away or suggest that there is a place without pain. However, it gives meaning to pain—even to pain that seems meaningless for pain is a general adaptation. Further, it suggests a ceiling to pain—if pain is a function of deviation from what is good (adaptation) then pain will not normally exceed the good.

Existential attitude—concerns doubt regarding the metaphysics. The metaphysics is consistent with Realism (‘fact’ including science and experience and ‘logic’) and doubt is ameliorated by multiple proof and heuristic. However doubt is made significant by the magnitude of the conclusions—but since there is no inconsistency involved we may adopt the following attitude: action under the metaphysical paradigm that heeds immediate and ultimate and their interaction has far greater expected outcome than concern with only the immediate or only the ultimate. That is, the universal metaphysics is the ideal of all real principles of action. From the existential point of view we may thing as follows: the existential character of the undertaking is enhanced by doubt (the dullness of certainty). From a pragmatic point of view, action in light of the universal metaphysics—in light of the ultimate and the immediate—is optimizing expected outcome.