The way of being

Anil Mitra, Copyright 1986 – 2025

Home

Contents

About this document

Metaphysics

The way of being

About this document

The document has an alternate treatment of two sections, experience, and dimensions and paradigms of being, from the document essence of the way.docm.

Metaphysics

Experience

Experience is implicitly but necessarily present in talk of anything at all and especially in talk of being and beings. We will find that experience, in suitably generalized form, is fundamental to beings and being. Further, experience is basic to the Dimensions and paradigms of being, which are fundamental to further understanding of being and are significant in using the real metaphysics and being for explanation and prediction of the trajectory of beings in the universe.

Though experience could have been introduced earlier as motivation, it is effective to introduce it here to make the development more efficient.

Experience and being

Experience is awareness in all its kinds and levels.

We are experiential beings—it is in experience that all significance registers and without experience we are effectively nonexistent.

The hypothetical being that does not register in experience is effectively nonexistent.

It will now be seen that the word ‘effectively’, just above, may be omitted.

Why experience

We are experiential beings

From the metaphysics as justified by the metaphysics—

We are experiential beings—it is in experience that all significance registers and without experience we are nonexistent.

The hypothetical being that does not register in experience is nonexistent.

Being is essentially experiential.

The universe is a field of experience

From the metaphysics, it may be ssen that—

The universe is effectively a field of experience – from limitlessness, experientiality (i) cannot be inherently pervasive but (ii) can reach down in primitive form to elementary objects (i.e., to elementary levels of description) (iii) is therefore, effectively pervasive as an experiential, i.e., subject-relation-object field.

The main structure of experience

The structure of experience is (a) experience of – the subject or as-if mind (b) the experience – the experiential relation (c) the experienced – the object or as-if material.

Comments

In what is called pure experience there are no real objects but may be potential ones.

Matter and mind are neither affirmed nor denied but may be regarded as ‘as-if’ ways of speaking about experience.

Elementary distinctions

The structure will be based on the following aspects and distinctions

The little manual has finer distinctions.

State

Bound – free (if there is free attachment to objects, there are intention and free will; that there must be free will follows from the metaphysics),

Quality – form,

Imperative (high intensity) – contemplative (low intensity),

Self – world (inner – outer),

Elementary – compound, reflexive.

Process

fast (seems like state but integrated) – slow (observed) – quasistatic (so slow as to not normally be observed per se but noticeable on introspection or retrospection, e.g., as in personality formation, growth, and change)

The structure of experience in detail

Collect and finalize detail.

Experience itself

See experience

Experience of experience and memory

Subject aspect

The subject side has reason (perception and thought via intention to fact and inference), emotion (with feeling, and enjoyment, especially pleasure and pain), value (e.g., ethics and aesthetics, which results from reason, emotion, and selection), and will to action.

Object

The object side includes person (self, body, mind), community, and world.

Relation

The subject side connects to the object via intention, will, and action.

High-level structure of the world (universe)

Here, ‘world’ is used in the sense of ‘universe’.

Introduction

As experience as experience is co-dimension with being, the structure of experience reveals the structure of the world (i.e., universe).

But how?

At a high enough level, where sufficient abstraction reigns, the structure of the world and of experience are identical.

At lower levels, the pragmatic and approximate structure of the world is inferred from experience.

Beyond experience?

If we think of (as-if) matter as entity-like and experience as relation-like, then a higher order as-if kind would be relation between experience, which is experience.

Therefore the as-if kinds are matter and experience—there is no kind beyond experience.

Rather, there are levels of experience.

Extension, duration, and relation

Introduction

The property of having being does not distinguish or refer to (i) kinds (if any) (ii) change (duration, time) or other-ness (extension, space) (iii) entity, relation (cause), process or property thereof.

The most basic experience

The most basic experience is of sameness and difference

Derivation of extension, duration, and cause

From sameness and difference, the following can be derived – duration, identity, extension, relation, and property

Dimensions and paradigms of being

Aristotle’s Categories, Categories, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

See essence of the way - short for details of headings and content.

The concepts of dimension and paradigm

Dimension

Dimensions are similar to categories (the highest genera or kinds, just under being understood as the most inclusive real). A system of dimensions (categories) would be a complete list of the kinds. However, there are differences of concept and emphasis—

The dimensions will begin with being itself – existence or existents without further qualification. This is not traditional. However being can be regarded as the kind that transcends kinds (thus disagreeing with Aristotle’s argument that there cannot be a highest kind but also agreeing with his point). Therefore, being will be regarded as a level 0 category or dimension. Further, since being is experiential being, an equivalent level 0 dimension is experiential being (it could be called a co-dimension or co-category).

Also, as has been seen, the structure of experience has subject – experience – object aspects, while the metaphysics has pure and pragmatic (high and low level) aspects. This gives a principled way to highest level distinctions—the high-level dimensions as developed and justified below.

The dimensions will also include low level and pragmatic aspects of being, e.g., as known in a world or cosmos; the low level may go down at least to specific theories from science.

The aim in identifying dimensions emphasizes explanation and prediction, which segues into the concept of paradigm.

Paradigm

The paradigms are general patterns to which being and beings are subject. We have seen that there is no general world paradigm to which being is subject. However, understanding (prediction, explanation) regarding being is subject to logic. Therefore, logic is the paradigm corresponding to being as a dimension or category—logic will be regarded as a (the) level 0 paradigm.

In a sense that will emerge, logic as paradigm will be later rendered ultimately inclusive.

Principles

How ought the dimensions and paradigms to be decided—i.e., arrived at and justified?

First, there is the question of kinds. Aristotle’s approach was to ask what can be predicated of subjects. Second, the problem of subjectivity: in writing down distinctions that we think to be real, are they in fact real or artifacts of our understanding or both? Aristotle thought of the categories as real but since Kant, the idea of categories as pertaining to our conceptual system has been emphasized (Kant thought of his categories as both real and artifact, i.e., as real artifact, and this is what will be done here). Third, one would like ‘the’ categorial system to be complete and perhaps unique.

We will address these issues via the real metaphysics and the concept of experience to be introduced in the next section.

Experience is pivotal in introducing the dimensions and paradigms, which are real at high enough levels (while also being artifacts), which at lower levels are artifacts of our understanding but also of the local structure of the universe, and which are complete at the highest level, fairly comprehensive at our local level, but completeness at levels between the local and the highest is not known. This incompleteness is the result of the limitations of our being in its present form.

The concepts of dimension and paradigm elaborated

Paradigms

The paradigms are paradigms of understanding—explanatory and predictive. Paradigms corresponding (number wise) to the dimensions above are

Logic and theories of abstract sciences, particularly logic, mathematics, and formal metaphysics; absolute indeterminism of emergence from the void (which is also absolute determinism)

The integration of experience in structure and process with pure and pragmatic sides. Understanding from philosophy, art, history, and that spirituality which sees the world-universe as one, not divided as kinds of being or planes of existence.

Paradigms from the sciences (incremental evolution via variation and selection, mechanism and causation, individual and group behavior); down to specific theories of physics (relativistic, quantum-wave, and their classical approximations), biology, psychology, and the social sciences.

The dimensions and paradigms

In the following, entity, relation, and process are implicit.

Pure – experiential being

Experiential being, which subsumes subject – experience relation – object.

The general paradigm—as realization of possibility under logic (as explained in possibility).

An inclusive path paradigm is yoga understood in a broad sense, in process, inclusive of philosophical (and scientific) and technological categories. For western and Christian readers, yoga may be supplemented by mysticism in action.

Pragmatic

Pragmatic dimensions are categorized (i) according to the above aspects of experience (ii) and then, according to divisions of human knowledge and experience (pure or abstracted aspects included).

Object aspect of experience

A western emphasis emphasizes disciplines and paradigms from philosophy and the science (with justification from the metaphysics).

Metaphysics and abstract sciences

Metaphysics

Metaphysics as science (with epistemology, ethics, and logic), i.e., philosophy as general knowledge.

Abstract sciences

Abstract sciences – symbolic systems, linguistics, ideal metaphysics as an abstract science, formal logic, mathematics, computer science.

Paradigms for metaphysics

General logic

Concrete sciences

The sciences

The sciences – physical, life, social, and psychological; and their application including exploration of space, time, and the universe.

The social sciences and technology

Some detail on the social sciences and technology is relevant, especially to exploration of the universe from the as-if material side – sociology (individual and group, one and all, few and many), politics, economics, law, technology, exploration, resource location and extraction, and culture.

Culture is conceived as knowledge development and transmission and includes tradition, art, religion, and entertainment.

Paradigms from the concrete sciences

Paradigms include indeterminist (random) process; formation by incremental variation and selection to form (e.g., void to transients to structures to cosmoses and particles to molecules to replicators to species to species); causation and mechanism – with and without probabilistic process; groups – formation and process.

What is the role of these paradigms? Logic in its pure form allows worlds and beings that we would normally think of as absurd; the paradigms enable estimation of probabilities or likelihood.

Subject aspect of experience

Exploration of and with mind – metaphysics (knowledge, its development, and paradigms) and meditation (yoga is implicit, for though yoga transcends the subject-in-a-limited-sense, in reality the subject is not separated from the object).

Paradigms are similar to those of the object side.

The subject side is elaborated in the structure of experience in detail > subject aspect.

Joint considerations—subject – object relations

Immersive approaches to the object aspects—e.g., economics as study of value; spirituality as creation of value which is limitless but for the cost in risk and pain.

General logic as paradigm

In possibility, logic was deductive logic. It may be extended to further include establishment of necessary fact, e.g., that the void exists. Parallel to the notion of argument, this extension may be called necessary or formal argument. While the establishment of logics is inductive, argument under them is deductive. Similarly, establishment of scientific theories is inductive, while deriving conclusions under them is deductive; and the establishment of facts and conclusions under then constitute argument which is good in some sense but not necessary. Given this parallel between necessary and good argument, they may be collected under one umbrella notion and labeled general argument or general logic. General logic contains both necessary and good but not necessary establishment of fact and inference.

General logic is the paradigm of being.

Category Theory, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Essence of the dimensions and paradigms

Dimension—experiential being.

Theory—real metaphysics.

Paradigm—general logic.