BEING AND THE ELEMENTS OF BEING
ANIL MITRA PHD, COPYRIGHT © 2001, reformatted May 2003
Document status: May 16, 2003
Essential content absorbed to and no further action needed for Journey in Being; maintained out of interest
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There is just one version of Being and the
Elements of Being. It will have: |
CONTENTS 1. A
Personal and Universal Narrative. 2. Function of Being and the Elements
of Being 3. How Should the Individual Live 4. The Meaning of Being. Language. 5. What are the Potentials of Being as
Being? 6. Why “Elements”, what are they? |
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Following, below, is a tentative outline and, later, an elaboration. It must be written in such a way that it is expansible and updateable in various ways by simple and automatic introduction of material. It must be refined: [a] conceptually, [b] to be expansible and updateable with respect to the simple, compact core with technical foundation and narrative, details and elaborations of various kinds including technical elaborations, appendixes, glossaries..., directory of related documents or essays..., comments, planning and organization, and advertisement. It will also include and be expansible and updateable with respect to the following. First, the major divisions World and Being, Ideas and Meaning, Machines as Agents and Tools, and Social Action. Second, the major divisions of understanding, e.g., in western philosophy, Axiology, Metaphysics and Epistemology. Consider other possibilities for expansibility and updateability
Being and the Elements of being
Being and the Elements of Being is, in one aspect, a personal narrative, the story of my search for the possibilities - or limits - of being. Knowledge of possibilities is knowledge of limits
It is about understanding and more than understanding. I learned - and believe - that knowledge of the possibilities also requires action, requires experiment with and transformation of being - one’s own being
It is more than a story - it includes an account of what I learned, experienced and became
Being and the Elements of Being is more than personal - as experiment with the possibilities or potential and limits of being it is universal. It is also more than personal in speaking to others, to society; in urging others to join in the journey
This is implicit in the narrative, in reading and thinking through, in the experience - what you, the reader, receive is not a commodity but occurs through a process. It is not something that a writer gives a reader. Instead, the writer is sharing a process with the reader. It is the writer’s own process of understanding and becoming. The writer expects that sharing may add to the reader’s own motivation, understanding and transformation of being. I refer to “writer” and “reader” rather than “me” and “you” because I emphasize the common process rather than a “me” giving something to a “you”
Here is a brief account of some phases of the process. Some phases are: questioning what one would do or become; asking what is possible - what are the possibilities of individual being, a variety of possibilities, the limit; how to know what are these possibilities; and, how to arrive at what is possible? The phases include the origin and growth of awareness, knowledge, drive or motivation, person and being. “Phases” is more appropriate than “stages”. There is no definite place that the process starts - the origin of individual awareness is gradual and the phases develop in interaction. Here is an example of such an interaction: asking what one would become - what does one value - may lead to a consideration of what is possible and, with increased knowledge of what is possible one reconsiders what to become
The brief account is now elaborated and some additional issues inserted where natural or helpful. The question about the possibilities of individual being can be divided into two parts: first, what are the potentials and limits of being as being; and, second, of that potential, what is open to an individual being of a given kind? It is necessary to consider the meaning of being and useful to think about the nature of meaning and language in general. Understanding may be through elements of being
This can be asked in a number of ways. “How should I live?”, “What should I achieve?”, “What should I become?”, “What are the imperatives of a human being?”. Further, “What attitude should I take to these questions?”, “To what extent will my attitude be characterized by necessity and to what extent by freedom, play and choice?”, “What do I mean by and what degree of seriousness do I attach to the word should?”
What are the ways in which I can live? I can live for the good or the right, for beauty, or enjoyment... or for some combination of these. I can live in the moment - take situations as they arise. Alternatively, I can live constructively and proactively - attempt to construct something with or out of the whole of my life; I can go beyond my own life and attempt to involve the lives of others, to involve a society, a civilization... Living in the moment and proactive living are not exclusive. I would hope to avoid the negative aspects of each: living in the moment can become merely reactive living, proactive living can become joyless
What does “What should I become?” mean? One could take up a vocation - become a carpenter, an engineer, a doctor. But the question can mean more than that. If I am concerned with the limits of being I would like to know if I can transform my being itself? Am I destined to remain human - or can I become more than that? Are the possibilities described in the common human tradition and, if so, which tradition or combination of cultures and traditions? Do the possibilities transcend what is commonly held as human possibility? Do they transcend what is or has been held in any tradition of thought or belief?
The concern with “What should I
become, do with my life...?”is ethical. The
discussion above shows that ethics is not concerned only with the good and the
right but also with beauty, choice, creation and freedom - the distinction
between ethics and aesthetics is arbitrary. Additionally, as conceived above
ethics would not be piecewise, situational and reactive but proactive,
constructive and concerned with the entire life and being of individuals
In order to be able to think clearly about the possibilities of my being it is helpful to know what is being. Study of being, what “is”, has a long tradition in western thought. There are a number of meanings of “being”. In one meaning, a being is an entity. In another, related meaning, being is the quality of existence: what is it that makes one exist as one is. This, more fundamental meaning, seems circular. The circularity is due to the fact that the question “what is it that makes one exist as one is” is not answered in one step. What one is and what makes one be that way are answered interactively, here-now, not for all time. These questions “What is the being of entities?” and “What is the meaning of being?” are not answered independently
The [western] literature on being
ranges from Plato and Aristotle to the present time. Perhaps the deepest recent
discussion is that of Heidegger in Being and Time 1927
In talking of being we use language - words and other language elements - to convey meaning and knowledge. This, of course, is not the only use of language; and not all knowledge is or need be expressed in language. That, in turn, raises the questions of what is and what counts as language and as knowledge but, for now, take the common meanings. Even though not all knowledge is in the form of linguistic expression, such knowledge is important in the human world. Knowledge that is expressed through language - including logic and mathematics - allows many kinds of extension of more basic forms of knowledge. Further, even when expression through language is not necessary, language is an effective means of communication, of thought, of maintaining a common knowledge resource and a tradition. There is a literature on the meaning of words and other language elements. Here, I focus on one aspect - words as friends and enemies. The issue is simple. The most significant words in a language - in our language - are powerful. They express deep hopes, powerful ambitions, profound understanding. Human understanding, however, is never perfect. Words carry the “baggage” of imperfect understanding, of conflicted relationships to the world. Words carry incorrect understanding. The problem of words is their usefulness and their error. Words - and language - represent what we know and the errors in what we know. As such, words and meanings are necessarily in evolution. The idea of a fixed set of meanings and, correspondingly, an established set of words is a myth. That would be true even if it were the case that usage is determined by meaning. Whether focusing on meaning or on use, it is important to remember that words and systems of words are associated with multi-valence, ambiguity, incompleteness, and an in-process fluidity. This is not a statement that “all is fluid” but, rather, that there is a balance between stability and change. The balance is dependent on the context or sphere of activity. What seems constant from one perspective, over one period of time may seem fluid from other perspectives or over longer periods of time
There is an entire literature, in
philosophy and in linguistics, on the nature of meaning and use. Perhaps the
most influential, though not final, discussions are those of Wittgenstein in Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
1921, and the re-thinking of the nature of meaning and use in his posthumously
published Philosophical Investigations 1953
The phrase “Being as Being” implies that there is no restriction to any kind of being. Thus, the title of this section could be rephrased, “What are the Potentials and Limits of Being as Such?”, as, “What are the Potentials and Limits of Being in General?”, or, simply, “What are the Limits of Being?”
What does it mean to ask the question, “What are the Potentials and Limits of Being as Being?” Consider any entity or being - the first meaning of being, above. The entity may undergo change. What are the forms of being - in the second and fundamental meaning - open to the entity. The potentials of being are the forms of being that are open to some entity - at least one entity or group of entities. The limits of being are “forms” that are open to no entity
It is not being claimed that the potentials of being as being are known or even knowable. However there are two positions that I maintain regarding the potential of being as being in Being and the Elements of Being. The first position is tentative, it is that the potential of being as being is available to human being. In what way is this position tentative? In considering what is actually open to human being, it is useful to consider what are the extreme estimates of forms of being open to human being. The maximum extreme is that the limits and potentials of human being are the same as those of being as being. There are philosophies and literatures devoted to this position. The range of views include that there is a process by which human being can achieve “ultimate” being and that human being is already identical to the ultimate and needs only to realize the fact. Modern secular and academic opinion is, of course, that human being is significantly limited relative to whatever may be ultimate in being - it is even regarded to be in poor taste to talk of ultimate being. Note, however, that to regard talk of the ultimate as being in poor taste it is necessary to think of it or the concept of it. Furthermore, even coming from the modern academic tradition, it is possible to reflect on the possible relationships across time among organisms related through common origins and constituted by similar material elements. It is possible that in order to demonstrate the truth or otherwise of the various kinds of identity between human and ultimate being, those positions need to be held as a hypothesis. What kind of hypothesis? The hypothesis could be held intellectually as an assertion, that is, as a proposition. Alternatively, it may be necessary to live out the hypothesis - perhaps to have belief in it. The idea of living out a position is not a new one in intellectual history; however, what may be new is precisely what positions to live out and how those positions may be lived out. Furthermore, what kind of commitment is required? Would it be blind faith; or would it be valid to balance different ways and positions to live out? The answer to these questions may be in the process. These are the ways in which I mean that the position that the potentials of human being and being as being are identical
The second position is that there is an approach to discovery of the limits of human being. This approach, the “method” of incremental limits, is elaborated in Being and the Elements of Being. In this approach it is found that at least some boundaries that are considered to be limits to human being are not true limits. When a limit is thus discarded a further limit appears that may again be found to be only an apparent limit. In this way, and from other considerations such as those above, it is not clear that there are any limits to individual beings other than any limits of being as being. In this way the approach of incremental limits is also a possible approach to discovery of the limits and potentials of being as being
In earlier versions of Being
and the Elements of Being, I have called the thesis of the identity of
individual being with being as being the hypothesis of being or the ontological
hypothesis. I called the idea that the movement from human to ultimate
being is the deepest source of meaning the hypothesis of ontological
psychology. The hypothesis of ontological psychology is not a denial of
common human values if one believes that the ultimate is immanent in the
present
Imagine the following extremes: [1] A universe with no boundaries, no distinctions; and [2] A universe with so many distinctions that there is no repetition, no pattern - all is chaos. Neither of these extremes can sustain existence, sentience [awareness] or life. A real universe will have sufficient distinctions, boundaries to permit variety and structure; but not too many distinctions so that entities are mere ephemeralities. [Ephemeral: brief, short-lived, transient, fleeting, passing, momentary, temporary.] A real universe will have repeated structure and variety. This is close to but not precisely an atomic theory according to which the variety is built up of repeated structures
Details of an actual atomic
theory require data from the actual world. It would be interesting to develop a
set of limits and possibilities that any atomic theory in any universe must
satisfy. How would this be done? One ingredient would be symmetries that would
need to be satisfied for stable existence; the symmetry would have to be a near
symmetry to allow coming into existence. A second ingredient might be the
requirement of variety - there would need to be a sufficient variety of
elementary structures to permit variety in the world. A third ingredient might
be some kind of mechanism of formation - that would require an element of
indeterminism for absolute newness will not come about within a deterministic
framework. The mechanism of formation would be something like the variation and
selection formula from evolutionary biology that has been applied, for example,
in physical cosmology to study the origin of “the” universe. The actual variety
in the world would not directly correlate with the variety in the atomic
structure for the actual variety would come about by an historical process. Of
course, the description above is a two - perhaps more - stage process: the
indeterministic origin of the elements with sufficient detail and the
indeterministic and historical origin of the variety of the world. The
description given in this paragraph covers a number of points: the idea of a
development of atomic and evolutionary theories from first principles; and the
approach to such developments. The result will not be the actual world - that
will require data - but possibilities and limits on any world. Understanding of
the actual world will require a mesh of factors from different levels of
description: I call these local and global or universal ontologies that include
the present and the remote. What kinds of objects or modes of description will
the ontologies contain: will the local ontology be physical, will it contain
mental elements or will it be or contain local being - something like
Heidegger’s Dasein? What of the universal
ontology - will that contain actual or abstract elements or a combination?
An organism that can negotiate - survive - in a real universe will have some means of negotiating the structure of that universe. At the level of understanding, that will require some reproducibility - elements - of understanding. Although understanding and world are frequently taken as distinct, this distinction is not clearly absolute. So, a distinction between repeated elements of the world and elements of understanding exists, but the location of the boundary is not clear. It is not clear that a distinction between world and understanding exists in all descriptions of the universe. Yet, it is clear that elements exist and are necessary for both understanding and existence. There are elements and categories. The categories are a form of element
What are the elements? There are elements of the world - or universe - and elements of understanding. Here are some examples. Being exists in extension and duration and is bound - this is coherence and continuity - in relationship. Thus a form of description is state [extension, space] - relationship [cause, force... ] - change [process, time.] The literature of western philosophy abounds with [is full of, is] sub-cases of this fundamental elemental description. A generalization, an human interpretation of this elemental description of being is: being [the first meaning, above] - meaning [relationship] - action [process]. The elements of being [first meaning] have the following descriptive dimensions: nature, society, mind and spirit - including emotion, and being [universe] itself. That is not circular for being [universe] is the unknown part of being. These dimensions nature, society, mind/psyche, being/universe [NSPU] are not merely ad hoc. [Ad hoc: off the cuff, makeshift, informal... ] They are, for example, stages of growth - of individual “evolution”... of biological evolution
Notice that the dyad of space-time
should be replaced by the triad space-force-time. A more fundamental triad is
extension-cause-duration. Extension can be replaced by displacement or
translation and duration by change. At the level of being, the triad becomes
being-meaning-action
This question is now interpreted to mean: What part of - the potential of - being as being is open to an individual? What can the individual do and become?
What do I mean by an individual? I mean, primarily, a human individual but much of what about being is said also applies to - other forms of life, to a society, a civilization, life as a whole... These, too, can be regarded as individuals
In asking, “What are the Potentials, Possibilities of an Individual Being?”, I am thinking primarily of human beings. This issue was considered in What are the Potentials and Limits of Being as Being?, above. The range of possibilities that we can consider are defined by the following extremes: [1] An absolute minimum. This may be taken to be what is accepted as possible by most people, and most traditions; and [2] An absolute maximum. The limits of the individual are identical to the limits of being as being. In the previous section, I reflected on [2] as a knowledge claim and on an approach - that of incremental limits - to testing limits which is a possible approach to discovery of the limits and potentials of being as being
Understanding and knowledge are interactive with action and becoming. In the process of becoming, knowledge claims may be made. What is the Relationship Between Knowledge and Action and what is - the Meaning of - Knowledge? In so far as there is a foundation in or dependence on knowledge, What is the Foundation of Knowledge Itself? How do I know what I know?
Knowledge is important for it is through knowledge that one is aware of the potential of being. How far, in terms of knowing the potential of being, can we go according to various criteria for what counts as knowledge in various traditions and using the established and hypothetical systems of knowledge of those cultures? And, shall our criteria for what counts as knowledge include the critical elements of all cultures or shall we take a liberal approach? Perhaps a balance: liberal in imagination, critical in conclusion
The freedom of the human mind in constructing hypotheses - pictures of reality - leads to a feeling that knowledge is insecure, unsubstantial... despite accepted knowledge having been selected over the history of a civilization. Does that feeling accurately depict the nature of knowledge? Is knowledge itself unsubstantial or is it interwoven with or a form of being? Is knowledge that has origin in hypotheses the only kind of knowledge?
The answer to the last question is “no”, and this is discussed in the html document, Kinds of Knowledge. In that document I discuss other modes or kinds of knowledge which show knowledge to be part of the constitution of being. That is true, also, for the kind of knowledge that we may feel to be insubstantial
The following question is important. I will introduce the question by an example. Consider the concept of force. The origin of this concept is in everyday life. Everyday, every moment, human beings experience a kind of exertion, or pressure that is called force. This is the source of the concept of force in physics. The concept begins as one with terrestrial application but, then, through exploration and discovery it generalizes - along with generalized meaning - to the universe as a whole. Now consider knowledge. The word is used to describe an everyday human function. What happens to the concept when we generalize from the social realm to the universe - what is the nature of knowledge at the abstract level of the universe as a whole, of being as being?
The answer to the question of the nature of knowledge is important. It affects what are the forms that we accept as being available to being. In the next section we see that knowledge of forms and becoming are not independent; in creating forms we are also creating knowledge
A “toolkit”. A variety of civilizations and life forms. Their practical and theoretical arts, e.g. technology and science, and their forms of thought [symbol systems] and life, e.g. art - esoteric and worldly, language, logic, philosophy, law and politics
Language is effective in expressing, recording, generalizing, communicating and using knowledge by description. Offshoots of language such as mathematics, when applicable, are especially effective
A preliminary to effectively understanding the way language is used in knowledge is to understand meaning
Given what the individual has chosen to do or become, and given the knowledge that that is possible What is the Means or Process of Realization? To What Degree are these three Elements - Choice, Knowledge and Process Separate or Separable?
“How to get there?” The process chosen may be one of understanding or of becoming. I noted above that real understanding requires becoming... and for human being, becoming without knowing has no content. The ultimate in becoming is a cumulation - the result of a process or of processing
In some ways the ultimate is, finally, inescapable
There is a variety of human
attitudes and personalities. Accordingly, there is a variety of paths - think
of the yogas
The fundamental approach is described above as the method of incremental limits
This approach permits entry into
the dynamics of being or of reality. The implication is that being and reality
are themselves fluid and under construction as being negotiates what seem to be
limits
The text of Being and the
Elements of Being will contain a variety of examples of application of
incremental limits. Of course, I will not lose sight of the fact that Being
and the Elements of Being is about a single application - the construction
of individual and the paths to ultimate being
Experiments in [alteration of] physical and mental state
Construction of a life through meaning, ends and projects
Arching from human to ultimate being through limits, understanding, overcoming and awareness
[The primary reason for focus on
human being is the fact that it is the form of being with which I am most
familiar. This is an interesting statement. Consider the mammals. As a member,
I am most familiar with that relative to other groups. Or consider myself.
Relative to other human beings I am most familiar with myself... Why do I
choose to identify with human being. This is, in part,
arbitrary. It is also, in part, due to my personal sources of meaning and
identity
Experiments in alteration of
mental state could include animal consciousness and being.]
The first three kinds of
experiment are described in Vision.
Describe other, related, kinds
These three kinds of experiment are experiments with [human] being. The following are with alternate forms of being
Machines as beings. This includes computer simulation of being; and computers or computation as being
Social action: society - or civilization - as experiment. The individual and society; the individual in society. Stages of growth: natural - biological and physical, social, mental..
Liberal
interpretation of the practical and theoretical arts and symbol systems of
cultures as experiments in being.
[There is a conservative interpretation of the function of thought that it is
the justification of culture.] In the modern world, the practical and
theoretical arts include technology and science. The symbol systems include
painting, sculpture, literature, religion... The meaning of liberal
interpretation is that the elements of these arts are used constructively
rather than critically. The variety of cultural approaches is significant, not
due to relativism, but because there is no final anchor of objectivity.
Criticism occurs separately. The practical and theoretical arts may be used as
a knowledge tool-kit
The practical and theoretical
arts of a culture, or in general, may be regarded as a form of being. From one
point of view, they may be placed under “Human Being”
A convenient classification of these kinds of experiment is:
World and Being
Ideas and Meaning
Machines as Agents and Tools
Social Action and Being
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