Home | February 21, 2006

Hi Joan,

Thanks for your letter and earlier emails

I am and have been fine but quite preoccupied with some projects

The first project has been working on a computer automation system for some documentation at work. I am going to submit a proposal for this project tomorrow. The automation developed so far is a stand alone application for the standard Treatment Planning form that we use to state the patient’s main problems, goals to be achieved, and interventions to be made. The proposal also suggests the development of a more comprehensive integrated document system. I have described the benefits of the integrated system and said that I would be keen to work on it if they are interested – but that that would have to be in a capacity other than my present position. This would be personally necessary for without this proviso I would essentially be doing two jobs (which is what I essentially have been doing for about three months) and getting paid for one (at the rate of pay for the lower paying position)

I have spent some time writing a letter to my brother. Some time ago he had said that I had lost confidence in myself and that this is why I have not gotten an engineering job. I wrote eight versions of the letter and it is only the most recent one that I found satisfactory. What he said had upset me but it took some time to recognize what the reason for the upset was. It was not the criticism itself for out of the people that I know there are a number who hold similar opinions and this does not upset me. I recognized that whereas I had assumed that my brother understood what it was that I was doing and that, even if he was not particularly interested in my work, he shared the spirit of the enterprise. I then realized that I had, perhaps, been living under a delusion. My letter pointed out this as a possibility. I also described my project, what it does and says, why it is significant, how difficult the work has been (requiring huge amounts of study and reflection, requiring a number of stages of evolution of my thought, each necessary for the next, and each requiring periods of confusion, incubation, resolution, and elaboration,) how much passion and diligence has been required, and, finally that the appeal of the external factors of other kinds of work (money, influence, prestige) has never been absent and that ‘courage’ (sustained by passion) has been required to continue on these past twenty one years. My brother called yesterday to say that he had misunderstood my situation since when we talk, once every two months or so, the conversation remains at a casual level and I don’t talk much about my inner life…

The third project, and the most important, is my writing. It is interesting that in writing to my brother I had some good ideas and, further, that I reaffirmed my commitment to ‘Journey in Being.’ You may recall that I gave you a copy of ‘Journey in Being’ in 2004. That version was written under the inspiration of the new ideas that I had had regarding ‘being’ in 2002. I had written a long version in 2003 but it was in 2004 that I began to see the fundamental idea as not merely founding being (and therefore being deep) but as having two further aspects. The first is that the fundamental idea itself can be cast in an analytic form; and the second, which follows in part from the first, is that there is an infinite breadth of application. The version of 2004 was written under the inspiration of these thoughts. After completion of 2004, I continued to have ideas and the volume of ideas became difficult to manage. I had had a similar profusion of ideas after the 2003 version. I began to feel a burden. How would I manage all this information, how would I write it up as a clear, coherent, appealing whole? The problem included that, the ideas touch upon just about every significant human concern, and have consequences for the entire human tradition of ideas and action as a whole and every significant discipline within that tradition. There are two further problems. First that the work would not be written at the level of passion that had guided the earlier versions because the fundamental discoveries were over. Second, I have been wanting to be more social. The solution to these problems was to write the work from scratch. I would write an outline and then flesh it out mainly from scratch and I would then incorporate what I thought was important from the bulk of the pre-existing manuscripts. This is the process in which I am currently engaged and I am estimating that the writing will be complete before spring 2006 is over

I recall your difficulty with ‘something from nothing.’ I am interested in hearing more about this difficulty. This is because I am sure I will encounter others who will have similar questions about my work. If you were to elaborate upon your difficulty (I mean difficulty in accepting but not in understanding) my attempt to address it, even if not satisfactory to you, would be an education for me. Here is how I would cast my questioning to you. When you say, ‘I can’t accept the idea that something might emerge from nothing,’ do you mean (a) that you can’t see how that might happen or (b) that you know (or can even prove) that it is impossible? If ‘a,’ why can you not accept it? Do you have in mind a picture of how the world is that does not allow something from nothing? ‘Picture’ includes intuition, logic, science… If ‘b’ how do you know that it is impossible. Clearly ‘b’ would be harder to show than ‘a;’ for ‘a’ requires only a picture of the world while ‘b’ requires the demonstration that the picture of the world is complete and accurate

I accept of course that there should be some difficulty in accepting ‘something from nothing.’ In fact, if there were no difficulty at all then the fundamental discovery to which I have been referring would not have significance and would be obviously true. Heidegger called the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ the fundamental problem of metaphysics. If you look up various encyclopedias on philosophy and metaphysics, the constant refrain is that ‘we don’t have a solution to this problem, we cannot even see how the problem might be solved, and we do not expect to ever see a solution to the problem.’ I claim that there is a solution to the problem and that the formal side of the solution is trivial. What is not trivial is seeing how to arrive at that solution, checking and rechecking the reasoning, and answering the myriad questions that arise regarding the solution. Clearly, any solution must go against deeply ingrained belief. This is something with which I have struggled. I have discussed the formal aspects of the solution and their elaboration in ‘Journey in Being.’ These will be improved in the next version of JIB. However the solution must entail the following. The difficulty of SFN (something from nothing) follows from our picture of the universe. More accurately it follows upon our picture of the empirically known universe enhanced, perhaps, by science. Therefore, if SFN is true, the universe must be larger than the known universe. What I have shown is that the universe must be infinitely (the term is to be taken literally) larger than the empirically known universe. I have also shown that whereas the picture of the EKU (empirically known universe) is essentially deterministic (modified somewhat in the quantum picture,) the universe must be essentially indeterministic. It is this essential indeterminism that shows not only that SFN may be true but that it (after analyisis of the nature of indeterminism) must be true. It is then necessary to show how the essentially deterministic EKU may arise out of the essentially indeterministic background. I have done this. It now becomes apparent why and how every element of the human tradition of ideas and action must be modified in light of the ideas that I have developed

Are my ideas true? I have worked and reworked the ideas from numerous directions including the inclusion of the current world picture in the new and have not been able to find contradiction. From the positive side, my ideas permit understanding of a vast array of problems and puzzles that arise on the view that the EKU is the entire universe (TEU.) These include the problem of existence, the problem of novelty (how do new things arise,) the problem of form vs. substance (neither is fundamental, rather it is the void or absence of being that may be seen as fundamental,) and the mind-matter problem. Thus, even though counter to the intuition based in the picture that the EKU is TEU, I have been unable to fault my ideas

Are my ideas new? There are glimmerings of the core idea in the thought of Leibniz and Wittgenstein, and in the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Vedanta. There are glimmerings of the logical component in the writing of Hume and Kant – in the famous saying ‘From the truth of one proposition, the truth of another does not follow’ which Wittgenstein modified as ‘From the truth of one atomic proposition, the truth of another atomic proposition does not follow.’ Plato and Aristotle may have sensed the core idea. However, none of these writers has seen the full logical necessity and implications that is found in JIB; and none has developed the core idea into an entire metaphysics founded in logic and the simple fact of being alone; and none has worked out the implications of the entire metaphysics for the entire human tradition of thought. Whereas Hegel based his system on his intuition I have also based my system, originally, in intuition but I then spent some ten years discovering how to analytically formulate the intuition and to demonstrating the truth of the analytic formulation. I have shown that the theory of being (the core of the new metaphysics) is explicitly ultimate with regard to depth (foundation) but only implicitly ultimate with regard to breadth (variety) of being. Thus, my system does not display the full variety of being; however, I have shown, using the system, that the full variety can not be explicitly displayed; the demonstration assumes the cardinality (size) of the system of being is greater than that of the system of expression. What I have shown however, is that the variety of being that can be explicitly displayed is infinitely (literal again) greater than what has hitherto been thought to be possible (on EKU = TEU models, on substance / form based metaphysics, on models that are essentially deterministic)

I think about you approximately every day. The foregoing preoccupations explain why I have not come over. I have, except occasionally after work, been completely asocial. I am sure that some day I will come over and if, at that time, your (my old) computer is still not up I will see what I can do. I don’t think I will be able to do much (except perhaps take it to a shop) because I don’t know much about the nuts and bolts of the insides of computers

Love

Anil