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Randolph Thompson Dible II
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| The Dible - Prototype |
[25 May 2009|11:46am] |
The Holy Dible, or simply, The Dible: The Completed Metaphysical System
Hon. Rev. Randolph Thompson Dible II, U.L.C., Sentinel, Tarati
Randolph Thompson Dible II, alias, The Incredible Credible Randy Dible
Forward
Eternal verities are true in all possible universes. They give us an ideal objectivity. There is a hierarchy of them:
Ultimate Reality is the Absolute Infinite, and it is Pure Objectivity, objectivity without an object. It is what would be pure and radical Nothingness, always already. It is the source of all valuational qualia. Call it the Axiological Axiom, Profundity, Superjectivity, and Very Value, yet it is All This. Get used to it.
Pen-ultimate Reality is Pure Self-Reference, Pure Subjectivity, the very oneness of the One. Call it the Infinitesimal, Unity over Infinity. It is Being-in-Itself, Difference-in-Itself, the First Distinction. It is the Self, the Same, the very Subject of Subjectivity. There can be only one.
The first extension of the First Distinction is the First Dimension. And so ensues the ontological procession of dimensionality, requisite for the extensive continuum of any construct.
In taking existence for granted, we need to be reminded that every object requires a subject; every form is the content of a frame. And all subjective forms come from pure subjectivity.
Randy Dible, May 18, 2009, New York
The Dible
Only the supra self-evident can truly be axiomatic. That is the axiological axiom. There is only one 'thing', so to speak, that it could be: ultimate reality is the source of all value, meaning, and significance, just as pen-ultimate reality is the source of all finitude and form. For there is only one idea that could be truly "supra-self", and it is the Beyond of Being, and only in its ultimacy is it "evident".
Axiology, the theory of value, needs a grounding axiom such that the 'overwhelming-ness', 'overflowing-ness', so to speak, of profundity itself is the ultimate reality from which are derived values and all their range of meanings. This ultimate reality is none other than the ultimate reality, 'Reality', so to speak, but this Reality is beyond any construct, formless, dimensionless, and infinite, it is none other than the very Absolute Infinite itself, of which can only be predicated its superlativeity, for it has not even Being! This is because Being-in-Itself is penultimate reality, the very Negative of the superlativity which is the condition of its (Being's) possibility. You see, in the purely abstract unmarked 'state' (so to speak*), there cannot even be, ideally, a point of reference, much less a point of perspective. Any two possibilities in that state would reduce to one, and that one would have to reduce to nothing at all. This ultimate reduction (a key term now coined as a thought experiment: Ultimate Reduction) is what leads to knowing that there indeed would be something like "Pure And Radical Nothingness" if there only could: Being obviates, Nothing-ness obliterates, obliviates! It is not even imaginable, so not imaginary, for it is the only "thing" nothing could be: Ultimate Reality. But for lack of a better conception, it is none other than the Absolute Infinite. The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality. This ultimate fact allows for what we call Being; differences in value. All value is imaginary. A difference requires there to be an oscillation in reference, and that requires, by the strict ontological principle, a logical contradiction. There will be more on this lesson later, when we are ready to discuss the imaginary value in logic, and as the source of all this technical and wide-ranging framework Professor Spencer-Brown points out, the metaphysical identity of this so-called i is "the first time", or time itself, as extension of the frame of reference, to allow extensive form or dimensional contents: it turns out that i is dimensionality.
Pen-ultimate reality is the principle of all principles, the 'center of the universe', 'on the ball', 'in the zone', so to speak, but really the reality beyond these idioms, the very center and source, the ever-present origin: the presence of the present, the self, the same, the first distinction.
Question your axioms. Like Descartes, you'll likely come to something like his conclusion, but here's how he got it wrong!: (we have a better perspective now, and it is easier to see how to improve the prototypes) it's not thinking of the self that is inescapable, but the fact of its immanence. The self we refer to however, is abstract, the Self (the Spirit which animates us), so it is never absent (there is always a perspective, a perspectivity), and is the horizon rather than the field, so never truly objectified
* "So to speak" is an idiom I must employ in the subject of matter of this book, as it is all abstract, and so words fall short, and ultimately fail to signify what is really meant, but do indicate it, or refer to it. It is only ostensibly that I can allow such psychic transference-- only by pointing, so don't mistake my metaphorical finger with what I'm trying to indicate.
But allow me to restart, in case we are being too technical, too obscure.
The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality. Oh dear, it’s hopeless. Hopefully, it will become clear, if, it isn't.
The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality.
The Infinitesimal is Penultimate Reality. But this notion of Infinitesimal connotes the wrong thing! Leibnitz knew he was metaphysically wrong to say that there are infinitely many infinitesimals, which appears evident, but he didn't realize how badly he'd mess up the identity of the Infinitesimal, Unity Over Infinity, and the One. They are the same. In fact, they are One and the Same, but moron that later, so to speak.
Let me get to my point, the point of it all is that there can be only one. There can be only one.
There can be only one.
My Point
The Infinitesimal is the One. The nature of this notion is such that any hypothetical other One would have to 'reduce' to being the same one. Here's a thought experiment to clarify (I promise this time!):
In yogic meditation, there is only one true state of Samadhi, the very State of Being, Being Itself, so to speak. But there is distinguished in Sanskrit two types: Samprajnata Samadhi, which means it is gotten to with support, as it is conditional, and so dependent upon external means, and the other is Asamprajnata Samadhi, which of course if independent or Real, True Samadhi. In so far as these are both Samadhi, they are profound concentration, focus, but one is only imaginary, arguably less imaginary than the so-called real world (the construct in which values are seen to differ), but imaginary still. The experiential difference is that in one use is made of external centering devices, visual aids and the like (in the case of mantra, it is the self-similarity of an auditory cue), such as yantras (geometric designs) and mandalas (elaborate centered designs) which utilize the mind-satisfying patterns (food for thought) which lead by harmonics to the center which is the real aid to Samadhi (if you can appreciate the harmonies, you can get to the center, to meditation without the mediation), but you come to realize that the center is not truly a physical entity, but an ideal state, and if you try to realize that, you find that you can't without completely identifying with it. For the point of consciousness or perspective which imagines is ever-present to the objects imagined.
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| Sorry to Neglect Livejournal |
[24 May 2009|03:16pm] |
I promise the material for the Holy Dible will be posted here.
In just a couple days we'll be in SD. We saw Cirque du Solei last week, and tonight we go to the fair, and bring David Dilworth's acclaimed Rose wine (he grew it)! Thank you Humboldt stuff. Time to pack.
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| Trypt |
[04 Jan 2009|05:03am] |
I once bought Dimethylsomethincensored for way too much, like 170 bucks, when I didn't have much money, and had to split it with a guy. Its aura in psychedelia is that of a king, or kernel, an essence. So I figured it did cost that much, and was as rare as I found it (only that one time). But just recently I began to have faith in the authenticity and sufficiency (sufficient purity) of what my friends claimed to have. I didn't believe them before, or at least thought its quality couldn't compare to what I spent too much on, but after my ten dollar dose and high, I know it is available, and what a powerful tool! You want God or Nature? ten bucks. You get the pattern-life-forms of becoming in all their freedomain. And your communion has consequences of grace and glorious awareness of the chaosmos (order and chaos of becoming noisy order) which extends beyond what you get to directly experience, what you know is ever-present in more or less solid forms. Its like the peakiest plateau of the mushroom trip, concentrated, for that minute and a half of so (it seems) you experience the patterns (or 'the aliens', 'the spirits') or 'the becoming' of Nature. Whats more, it wasn't nearly as harsh as they said it would be. It was like as harsh as weed, way less than speed or salvia. It was short-acting like salvia, I'd love to do DMT and salvia in the same bowl, gotta google doing that, hmm, maybe on e, and SOMA! What a recipe for channeling God!
I know a lot of interesting things, but what I thought first of was the whole 2012 thing. I have to go back to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure my first subtile discourses with the patterns was a confirmation of the structure of the cosmos I inhabit, which included the likelihood of significance of such an attractor-point. My secondary thoughts were surveys of what I know of a cosmic conspiracy of consciousness regarding the manifestation of God, and the cover story, the cover-up, the veiling of the truth, the fronts hiding the behind-the-scenes ultimate reality. This included the possible aliens, the human situation of earth in man-made societies, in Nature, in the continuum, the analogies to themes of movies I'm in such as The Matrix, The Nines, and others. I'm the Star, the Creator, the Producer, the Processor, the Conductor.
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| Ketchup and Insights |
[04 Jan 2009|02:50am] |
To Act, to Articulate is to presume a condition of pre-determination or intentionality: the medium and the extremes. Everywhere, whatever the dimensional framework, the One Whose movements become possibilities of being is ever-present. What is present as consciousness or representation ...(in this sense they are the same; yet in Pre-sence they differ, for what is meant by 'consciousness' could also be the awareness of the Presence-Itself)... is the Spirit which animates us, pure subjectivity, for this pure subjectivity (the Same) is the Presence (the Being) of the present (the beings: the presently given scene, as the unity of multiplicity; the gestalt of 'all-[given]-experience-all-at-once,' which is not yet true unity, unity-itself, the One. ...
Just wanted to remind you all about that.... um...
Its been a real long time since I posted anything, which is fine, but presently interesting.
My last post regarded Luka's arrival. Everything is moving swimingly! He has proved to be incredibly happy and intelligent, physically, psychically, and emotionally, no doubt mimicking his environment! That's the Dibles in a Nutshell. Remember? Incre-Dible? Innmost-Creator-Dible! Just Playin'. The state of the plateau, the peak that is a whole world, or a higher perspective, nay, The Higher Perspective, The Peak: The State of Being, the center of the universe, on the ball, most-conducive [at what have you], ... all this is the state of the orchestrator of the dramaturgy, the conductor of the music.
God, in all His Glory, arrives for the Self forever, which is merely to say that The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality. Infinity, God, is the Axiom beyond the One Principle. It is the Axiological Axiom, so embrace your true Megalomania, in the Harmony, Grace with Nature [The Nexus, The Matrix, The Patterns, The Forms, the Play of Differences] that you Enjoy. Everything else is imaginary, Glorious Imagination! Creativity! Activity! Whatever The Supreme you wants!
But I am biased, you ought to think about it yourself. If you figure anything out, let me know. Let me tell you about other, more worldly things!
Luka, as I said, is in a state of a very-developmentally-healthy kind of elation. Besides the normal teething nights (he's just broken the skin on the lower front left), he sleeps very well, through the nights (a couple feedings and burps being a normal routine for Becky), and takes good long naps daytimes, most days. I can't say he's really been terrified or physically hurt or otherwise traumatized by the world, so you could imagine his state. But I've been in school during most of the weekdays, and working overnight or sleeping daytime on the weekends much of the time, until about a couple weeks ago, when my semester ended*.
* I got three As in my major (1. Emerson and Schopenhauer, 2. Vedanta and Buddhism, 3. 101 survey of metaphysical systems) and a B in History of the American West. A 3.75 GPA is pretty damn good for such effort I put into it (I could have done better, just didn't want to spend time on studies which could be used on the budding children: regret doing papers last-minute like, towards the end of the semester I just stayed up all night a couple times for papers I began the day before they were due!). OverAll, I give myself an A + (its genetic: that's my blood type!). This is especially so because Stony Brook is a really good school, with many great teachers and lots of reading and writing (training) opportunities ('requirements'). That was my second semester there. My first semester was good too, but this beats that. My next semester is already well-scheduled out (and as any good student knows, to do that is none other than to know how to do it all yourself, every relevant aspect of determining one's schedule of courses for a semester, requirements, necessities of the meta-program of your own educational experience and training, interests and desires of the experience to-be itself, and all other aspects to be judged: professors, opportunities, the opportunity cost in time and requirements to be met, the kinds of energy they will require.... I just make it all up and proceed by making it all up, you know, within constraints I set up, and discover, only that I had set up more. Its all a set-up! Staged!
We had a party, and two excellent friends came, joining my nuclear family, my wife's parents and sister who animate the house we live in, and my family who came from across town where they live. We celebrated the Solstice, as part of our program to be followed and become tradition, a Dible family tradition we are starting, to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes, and our birthdays (I know, isomorphic to Nature-worship, but this is not our religion, just our scheduled party times.) We also had gifts at my mom's house for Christmas, and celebrated Ead with Becky's syster, and we partake of Ayyami-Ha and the Bahai New Year with her parents.
We plan on a trip to Boston either this week or next, and a trip to the city (NYC) somewhere before next semester. We've been lagging on pictures and videos, but this vacation of mine is the opportunity, and we are going to take it.
We plan on a trip to San Diego this summer. We get rich three times a year (tax time and grant time), and those are when we pay bills forward and finance such extravagances. Otherwise, I have to work and go to school, but those are both fun too. (Work is fun because I am a security guard at sites that are all secure and have nice accomidations and amenities... better than Einstein's situation in the patent office, perfect for a student.) We want to make this vacation a whole month long, and it will be incredible showing off the kids, besides being back in San Digeo. I plan on bringing and doing DMT a bunch, SOMA, probably not amphetamines, definitely a nice mushroom experience or two with Becky (and the kids? no, I was a mature 5 years my first time, perhaps they are not ready, just kidding, of course they are!) I will definitely be getting up early on weekend mornings for yard sailing OB and PL. There will be a big bike ride through my old stomping grounds with the wife and kids and whoever else wants to join, all they way to Mt. Soledad, and into La Jolla. But many revisits to MB and PB routes and attractions will also be. Perhaps Scott will be down for some taking-advantage-of-the-wealthy, targeting the Catamaran. We will need to borrow some kind of two-kiddie-carriage for the bike, a bike trailer, so hook us up!
I have so much more to articulate. Let this be the revival of my postings.
I just did DMT for the first time.
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| Luka Thompson Dible (He's Here!) |
[18 Jul 2008|11:28pm] |
Wednesday morning Becky woke me up around 9am to tell me her water broke. So all day we were getting mad ready most conducively. yet all day there were few contractions. So our midwives told us to come in by 9 or 10pm to check dilation. By then our contractions increased, and she got all hooked up in the labor and delivery room (she didn't want to be hooked up at all, but certain small risks necessitated IV access and external fetal monitoring). Lily was sleeping at home with Becky's mom on guard with baby monitor at ear's reach. All night we were monitored, but we remained only like 2 cm dilated (of around 10 cm total, complete dilation). We waited, and endured more contractions, which were getting more painful, but seemed to be making little progress on the dilation, so we talked with our midwife on duty and had to cancel our birth-naturalness, on account of the water rupturing over 40 hours before, to avoid infection and ceasearian section and NICU separation. Right, so not really an "all-natural" as in durg-free labor/birth/delivery, for we decided on contraction-empowering Pitocin and an epidural (spinal anesthetic, for the mother's pain, without affecting the baby) (first we tried the Pitocin alone, to help dilation, but it didn't, it just hurt real bad). It was very difficult for me to go against my Bradley training and feel okay about opting for the drugs, but I had to support Becky, it's just that I was trained to be prepared for her feeling like she couldn't go through with it at the "transition stage" where a mother just isn't herself, when the contractions seem strongest before the "second stage labor" where actual progress is made and the baby is on the way out. ...
Anyway, Luka was born vaginally at 12:46am Friday June 18th. He weighed 8 lbs, 10 oz, and was 20 inches long. (They change so quickly I used past tense.)
Today is Friday, actually now Saturday early morning, and I just put Lily to bed. I was with Becky for a couple days going into labor, but Lily couldn't stay at the hospital, so Becky's mom Marie was watching her. Today I am playing Mr. Mom, and I have to say I did a great job, despite a difficult point of having to do bedtime twice because she threw up out the side of her crib the first time, but with a couple calls to Becky, I got a handle on it and Lily fell asleep in my arms. Tomorrow morning Becky and Luka get discharged from the hospital, so I go pick them up, and I can't wait for Becky to be back. It will be a whole new experience with Luka here. Alteration of routines and god knows what else. I'm more exhausted than excited right now, or else I'd be up all night, but I was up all day, so I'll save the excitement for the actual moments, tomorrow. As much as I believe pride itself is too rampant in our society (especially nationalistic pride, which is mostly ignorance, don't get me started), I am a proud papa, once again.
For those who knew severe hemophilia was a 50/50 possibility, lucky Luka don't got it. No hemophilia, just a healthy, happy baby boy, whose cries, from the very beginning, and continuing, are more like questions than anguish. He looks like he's already a few weeks old, you know? like robust, for an infant.
And Lily is getting cuter and cuter, expressing more and more personality, nearing her seventeenth month, for instance: just a few hours ago she surprised me by walking into the room with my sandals on her feet, correctly with the toe-piece between the big toe and the rest, on the correct feet, and just walked up to me with a big grin and we both cracked up.
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| Poop |
[16 Jul 2008|01:24am] |
To save money, not the water bill, but diaper money, cloth diapers are the way to go. That no longer means pins and special foldings, for now there are "g diapers" and "bum genius" diapers which are cloth and have absorbant inserts and velcro, we use both, and we hang em up to dry in the sun (after a regular wash in the washing machine), which disinfects them. We even face the inside to the sun for maximal disinfectancy, in fact. Now, when this is your set-up, you're gonna have to have a system to do the initial cleanings so that you don't have poopy and peepee diapers in the laundry (nor a nasty separate laundry heap, not that nasty), of course. When we switched from "g diapers" (which have a disposable, even flushable (it dissolves) insert) to the absorbant-insert "bum-genius" diapers, we needed to improve our system for initial clean-up. So we bought a bidet, not a fancy in-the-toilet tickler, but a simple hand-held sprayer on a thin tube that connects to the back of the toilet and hangs on the wall. We turn a lever where it connects to the toilet and wash that shit into where it goes. This may sound like a bit much for those not familiar with the theses of feces, and to them I must apologize. But to the others, including many open-minded parents, I must say the subject of this post is my learning that I could adjust the intensity of the sprayer. For I had to clean up a lot tonight, unnecessarily, and when I came upstairs and told Becky of my trauma, she told me I could adjust it. She said (I'm paraphrasing), you know that lever you turn to turn on the sprayer? just don't go all the way. I can't explain how happy I am, only the circumstances.
Happily yours,
Randy
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| A More Personal Post, This |
[06 Jul 2008|06:46pm] |
SO... Lets see... I'm got an astronomical playground for starin' to the void: I got a job doing security for a community four blocks from my house, and its got no street lights, and a big field by the Bay, where I lay and observe, real meditative. (and I've been listening to radio broadcasts of Alan Watt (not Alan Watts, which also I'd listen to here) of "Cutting Through the Matrix", which is conspiracy theory stuff, like David Icke and like Coast to Coast, as it is a mobile patrol with nobody around, so I just listen to my shows. I could even do what I have to do on bike sometimes.
But the biggest news is the status on our son: he's not out yet, but he's officially due any time now. Lily was ten days before her due date, and now is ten days before Luka's due date. We're maximally pregnant, and of course, I'll let you all know when it happens and how it goes. We're going all natural, and I'm studying hard, becoming well read on babies and toddlers. Yesterday we tried the spicy foods method of induction, and we're doing moxabustion acupuncture and trying to reason with him.
Also, right now my mom and sisters, and Dexter and his girlfriend are back in San Diego. Dexter's girlfriend Tia has never been there before, so he's showing her around, and it is very exciting for me to think about. I had such a ball showing Becky around San Diego for her first time. What a difference it is out there! Especially from out here! I can't wait until we're back! The plan is for me to complete school out here, and a lot of it, after this BA, a couple MAs and even a PhD!, so it'll be quite a while! But I am in the fast track, with a great situation for doing it. After all that I should be able to take a professorship back into SD, doing philosophy professionally, and writing books on my metaphysical system! Then, we shall buy a house! Which is quite a commitment! And to the system at that! Our last trip to SD was a wonderful two weeks in February, and we'll next wait until Luka is more independent to show him off out there, probably next summer, probably skip the winter. But this way we can plan on a longer trip too.
Things out here are going great, Becky's winning cooking competitions at our local farm co-op, and at home, and Lily's sixteen months now, as cute as could be, enjoying Winnie the Pooh, dancing to Bob Marley, buckling (almost unbuckling) straps, and pushing buttons all the time. Eveything is set for Luka, the Crib, his clothes, blankets, gear, tools, gadgets, etc. And I'm doing security (free time for research and development) ordinarily 34 hours a week, now on a nice schedule (except for a couple overnight shifts, but thats at a hotel, and I get to sleep and chill with people (I mean I get to chill with people and I get to sleep, each seperately)), which I only put that way because I do get to sleep (a couple hours, if I want), and when I'm not sleeping, there are lots of people who I can talk to to keep me awake, including my night manager who is older and very New Yorkish, but cool despite all that, and random people from all over the country and world. Everywhere I "work" I have the internet for research, and get to read and watch DVDs and smoke pot if I'm so inclined and endowed, or drink or whatever. Most of all, despite the stupid uniforms (none at the hotel though!) I get to be myself which is totally weird and proper, ever interested,
Randy
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| Something to Someone |
[06 Jul 2008|06:36pm] |
Thanks for the nice surprise! I would have gotten back sooner (in the day!) but I had a full day! How did you get me? Just curious? And tell me more about your self.
I’m not as familiar with Buckminster Fuller. Does his view of natural analytic geometry being based on tetrahedral intrigue you as it does me? I am not versed in this, although, noting the inherent knowledge of forms or patterns, the archetypes, I would guess that he means this is how the coherence of this dimensional continuum of subjective experience is maintained, by all geometric forms being fundamentally tetrahedral. That’s just an excited first conjecture of mine, upon reading the Wikipedia article. (And I’m writing this as I rad what you wrote, so my comments are often not from finishing the reading) The article also says that Stewart Brand was a proponent of Buckminster Fuller’s ideas, and of course the Whole Earth Catalogue is one of the first places Laws of Form is advertised.
On the Plain Plane
It is plain that the mark is drawn on a plane, but this is mere convention. To avoid this we must bear in mind the distinction between distinction and indication of distinction or the difference between difference itself and reference itself (reference to difference). Your problem, and it is a problem and I will offer my solution, is that you imagine the first distinction in a dimensionally phase-locked space, that is in a mathematical or geometric phase space. You do this to be precise and that determination could be respected, but: The first distinction is formless! It could also be taken as pure form, perfection of form, but this is to say it is of an altogether different category than the extensive form (mere traces of the first distinction) that we experience-- yet not exactly “the formless”, which would include the unmarked state or “pure nothingness”, by any other name ultimate reality. This means that it is dimensionless, for how can anything exist, particularly a frame of reference, particularly a multiplicity or plurality, before the first distinction. The first distinction, difference in itself, preceeds everything. The first distinction, as I go to explain in my metaphysical system, is being in itself, it is Being, it is anything “in itself”, for it is the “in” or “out” itself, the “first” in or out, only indicated by these metaphors, only indicated by any imaginable event or entity, for it is cloaked in the very nature of our imaginability, the chaulk or robe of God, of ultimate reality, or if you prefer, of “pure nothingness.”
My Solution: Absolution
The first dimension, a merely imaginary ideal, but so is everything, is linearity, which we can only imagine by noting that the line inside a higher-dimensional space we imagine (be it on a plane, or in a black 3d representational space, as on a computer screen) is the mere indication of it, not the reality of it or the being of it, or the being it, as if it were alive in the sense of experiencing what it is to be only a line without higher or second dimensionality, just as we ordinarily experience our three space and four dimensionality, not five space for instance, or infinitely-dimensioned space by extension. This is the first extension of the underlying principle that we must notice the difference between difference and reference (or repetition, or representation), or as GSB makes clear at Esalen (transcripts online) the distinction between distinction and indication.
Noting that, we must recognize the impossibility of nothingness. The unmarked state is not a ‘representation’ of an underlying ideal of nothingness, what “it is” George Spencer-Brown does not claim to know, and when I told him what it is he got furious and stopped talking to me, and I haven’t heard from him since. It is the only thing it could be: The Absolute Infinite. The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality. The first distinction is penultimate reality. What’s more; the first distinction is the underlying, singular reality of the mathematicized notion of the Infinitesimal that the calculus is based on. Rather than an infinite plurality or multiplicity of infinitesimals (to account for the plurality of the world), There Can Be Only One such entity. Yes, the Highlander. He was right, so was the Jesus the Christians worship (although they’re wrong), as is every megalomaniacal sentiment that ‘I am’ the only center of the universe, which is then civilized or tamed by the thought “… and so is everyone.” But in penultimate reality, this is only one One, the unicity of unity, the unity of the unit(s), the singularity of being is pen-ultimate reality. The pen’s mark, that thou art, the articulation of Creativity, the Act of distinction, as only the underlying or overseeing principle or ideal of Actuality inherent in all activity, these are the synonymous notions of the One, mere indications as notions, but to indicate the indication… ad infinitum… of distinction, by the notion of ‘the first distinction.’
How could it be nothing? Pure and radical nothingness is as impossible as there is anything. This is where what GSB has said on the topic (although more was left unsaid in the expression of the unmarked state by simply intentions of ‘left blank’) is wrong, although it is a hard one to get so I’m sure he did his best with the resources available to him. He makes it seem as though ultimate reality is nothingness, when at Esalen he refers to the British astronomy program where at the end the narrator wickedly asks what is ultimate real, and says something like ‘there is no universe.’ GSB seems to share these sentiments, which aren’t all bad, especially in contrast to most other people’s beliefs about there being anything, which usually leads to a naïve materialism. But if ultimate reality were pure and radical nothing, then by necessity there could not ever be anything, yet here at least is something. Rather, the form of it is correct, it is an underlying ultimate reality beyond the forms of the first distinction, all pervading and omnipotent, although intentionally left blank, but it is the ideal notion of the Infinite. Not the mathematical infinite which there are many ways of approaching or interpreting, but the metaphysical infinite, that is the Absolute Infinite.
A Note on Time
The First Distinction is the first time there is a difference, but time in itself is this notion of the square root of negative one, the oscillation without duration, the flippety of Boolean circuitry, from a presupposed state unmarked to the mark, for the square root of negative one (not-one) is the imaginary number, which to arithmetic is a problem whose solution is both one and not-one, so ontologically it is an altogether different category than being and nothingness, it is the becoming which allows either one to be! You see, these three most simple notions exist together, at once, to form the very contexture or logical domain (see Gotthard Gunther) of Being. Speaking of contextures, this guy Gotthard Gunther’s idea is that the sum of all possible logical domains is called poycontexturality, and this to him is pure subjectivity.
Continuing on The Subject
To me, pure subjectivity, life in itself, pure formless subjective ‘being’ (beyond ‘experience’) is the first distinction, the oneness mystics refer to. This penultimate reality again, the One. But of course the One would be meaningless without a corresponding notion of Nought (not-one), so pure superjectivity is imagined, although here’s a term that has lost its use and been replaced by the familiar word “Objectivity”, which ordinarily refers to empirical verification, which I support as an Organic Realist (Whiteheadian), although there is an ideal state of objectivity and of concretion beyond the material objectivity, and it is necessarily ultimate reality. So, putting it all together, for me, ultimate realty, the Absolute Infinite, is pure Superjectivity.
I didn’t know B. Fuller was such a systems theorist, and one dealing with issues very Spencer-Brownian. I would be interested in getting those references, the source of those quotes from you. I especially like that he is also into abstract dimensionality, as these are all very similar things, but too abstract for most people to speculate about without a system already in place to be the framework (such as cybernetics or systems theory and the Laws of Form, and always mathematics, of course). Also, I didn’t know Stewart Brand was such a Fullerian. Your friend Mike Murphy had GSB over at Esalen back in the day; were you there too? Alan Watts and John Lilly (my childhood hero) sponsored his trip to CA.
To be nit-picky, the second quote from B.F. you gave me has him saying that an area is “a nothingness”. I just want to comment on this because it is not as rigorous a notion of nothingness that most people deal with when they use the term, a colloquial notion of nothingness, I could say. I prefer to give it the phrase “pure and radical nothingness”, which of course, it could not possible be, not even possibly, and this is the problem of negative theology as well, anaphasic (can’t be – said) theology, at the core of mysticism, which is absolutely correct to deny any form or articulation of God or Ultimate Reality, and the metaphysical Infinite [(as opposed to the ‘colloquial’ Infinite, the mathematical infinite, which, to give due credit to mathematicians, is further subdivided into the countable and denumerable and other notions of Infinity, such as Cantor’s transfinite—Cantor, another mathematical George, did however appreciate the notion of the Absolute Infinite as the only appropriate notion of God)] and it is also the very precisely put “distinction between distinction and indication” Spencer-Brown cites. [I like to quote him, or maybe it’s a paraphrase, on that, and add my own synonymous clarification “difference between difference and reference”.] On second thought, I think I was a little confused between the quote and your writing, but I’ll just leave what I wrote on my mistaken assumption.
Now I’m commenting on your summative points about the fourness of life… Generally, this is a natural intuition reflecting on our dimensional circumstances, and C. S. Peirce did the same with his scheme of Thirdness, and was very similar to GSB in regards to his writings of Firstness (which the First Distinction would necessarily fall into), in fact, his “existential graphs” are identical to Spencer-brown’s part of the book where he uses circles to express the axioms. I must admit that I disagree with the abstractions you present, which is good, because we can’t all write the same page! My view of Life in and of itself is that it is the observer, which you’d agree with, but this is precisely pure (formless) subjectivity, identical to the first distinction, penultimate reality, the Infinitesimal, Being, pure self-reference, Oneness, and this is not something already extended, and not the dimensional frame of reference of our continuum, however I see the confusion of your view (as from mine it is a confusion! Forgive me, we differ!) and it is that the continuity of the continuum of all continuua, and that includes the continuity of this particular species (4-space-time), but this continuity is itself separate from fourness, as continuity is oneness! I do believe it is a common stumbling point as this is all very abstract, but I am familiar with these notions and other systems theorists, and have talked with Spencer-brown on this as well, and still consider certain notions of mine as quite unique and correct, infallibly useful notions! I plan on going through all my metaphysical studies to the doctorate level with these original contributions, writing books articulating them… Allow me to share: A fundamental distinction (not THE fundamental, first distinction, THE distinction, DISTINCTION itself, ITSELF, that is, the SELF, for that is the very center and basis of it all; which I most generally call pure subjectivity, and add all those synonyms and their connotations in their respective technical fields…. And of course I must add that the center and basis is absolute different from (for it is DIFFERENCE ITSELF) ultimate reality, which I call pure superjectivity, the Absolute Infinite, taking the place of pure and radical nothingness, so this center and basis, which is I add Ever Present, or simply Presence, is merely pen-ultimate reality, although this very point of it all is no moot point of course, it is formless, so prior to all form, pattern, and anything of dimension and plurality))… oh boy, let me start over: A fundamental distinction is that between Distinction and Dimension, which of course is to say Distinction Itself (Difference Itself) and Dimension Itself (Dimensionality, the ideal abstraction of extension, extension which is its own extension, the very frame of reference itself, and you know re-ference comes after difference of course). Distinction and Dimension! Of course! Of course there must be a distinction between distinction and dimension, and between every dimension another distinction. GSB’s five orders or levels of eternity, which he goes on about in the Esalen conference, and equates to mystical orders of angels in Only Two, are the mathematical systems he explains them as (the void, then the first distinction, then the axioms, then the primary arithmetic, then the primary algebra, in which we get self-reference in the way GSB intends, as re-entry), but I mean self-reference as way more expansive than mere re-entry of the whole system into itself as in any particular observation we find in life as we know it; no, rather, I mean that the self-reference IS life itself (rather than life as we know it, in the limitative non-animistic sense) and occurs at every instance of very being! It all starts in pure life, pure self-reference, the ever-center and ever-basis of reference, at every level, so my system is totally animistic. I am also an organic realist, a la Whitehead, so I do maintain my coherence with the concrete world in deed. So these orders GSB describes can also be seen as dimensions, in other words, it’s five right here at this level, but really there are infinitely-many (the quantified infinity of mathematics, meaning ever-countable or never-ending, an arithmetical infinite, or simply the common notion of the infinite, this use here) orders (dimensions) or continuua of possible subjective experience, and necessarily so.
Your last comment on these metaphysical notions is the primary of the connective content as opposed to the divisive distinction-oriented thought, and I agree with that sentiment completely, but recall that the two sides are mere convenient compliments and the reality is the coin. Indeed my metaphysical system is that the subject-superject is the actual entity, which comes from Whitehead, and beyond Whitehead into the abstract beyond the organically concrete analysis (found in Process and Reality), postulating “pure” subjectivity and superjectivity, as I do.
I hope to hear more from you and about your report on GSB’s talk there, and I have tapes of the first three of four transcript sections (I forget the exact numbers, but I am missing the most significant one, the last one where he goes into the five orders) if you’re needing them, but there’ll be some postage involved, as I’m in NY. I am glad you’re able to do this, and I really want that last tape! Jokingly, that. More, I want to know all about whatever jewels GSB revealed. I am always down for a talk of metaphysical matters, but be prepared to see my metaphysical system already stated from those other angles! By the way I am quite publicly advertised on my myspace and facebook, but I have many articles I wrote on Livejournal, all these under the user name “mostconducive”… don’t know where you heard of me, probably just researching online. But in case you didn’t know, I’m a philosophy student at SUNY Stony Brook. Although I’m being merely refined there, most of my content, and all of my metaphysical system and its original formulations comes from my own research online and via books, a little talking to GSB and systems thinkers and cyberneticists, mostly from my own intuition motivated by studies of mystical traditions and sometimes in my development aided by the powerful engines of psychedelic and pharmaceutical devices and interactions! Ok, get back to me!
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| Attention CA friends of old ' : RE; FACEBOOK |
[22 May 2008|09:38am] |
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Do any of my old friends from CALIFORNIA have *facebook*??? I just recently found one of you with myspace, and therefore all of you, as some of you may know by the 'friend' notice. Hook me up!
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| A Beginning |
[19 May 2008|10:39pm] |
I must begin this now, in the midst of study, expressing uncompleted research and development, for the sake of immediacy. The nature of action is actuality, the act is immediate presence, and yet the firstness, rigorously described by C. S. Peirce, exists in the midst of action, as a dynamic, and arbitrary or conventional spontaneity. The experience is always present unto itself, even if it is experience of memories, memories of normal moments, of dreams, of imaginations or of anything else that can be recalled or called forth.
I must begin this project now, in the present, by these pressing fingers, for it is in the midst of life, and of any project, that products come to exist. But all projects fall short of the finished product in abstract. The ultimate project is never completed unto itself, for then there wouldn’t even be one there to know it, fewer to interpret and invest into it interests, no representations where there is no presence. Otherwise could never have been. Nothing simply doesn’t exist. Ultimate reality is always already. Penultimate reality is ever present. And it is within this presence that all things come, to pass. Always is this presence itself present, but this oneness is not ultimate reality. The Absolute Infinite is ultimate reality.
This is just a beginning.
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| A Survey-like Thingy, Copied From Robyn's Journal |
[11 May 2008|10:06pm] |
Copying Robyn’s “I'll admit it: I like to think and talk about myself. Can you dig it?”
Who is your best guy friend?
Guy – I haven’t talked to Scott in years it seems like, but I’d say him. Contemporary friends? Um, no, I mean people love me, and want to get to know me better, but I’m so busy, and want to spend all my time with Becky and Lily. I hang out with interesting people at school, but I’m doing all the talking, even when we smoke after school (which I call hanging out ‘outside school’). I have hung out with Andrew from Suffolk (my previous school) at the hotel I work at, and we smoke and it’s fun, but it’s been a little while. At school, I have mostly been wanting to and actually hanging out with my professor, David Dilworth, and now my soon-to be professor James Corrigan (who may read this actually). I recently met some real cool students: Manni, Manneli, Asad, Kyle, and many other philosophy majors, most of whom are graduating. I’m writing this to see that it is true, I mostly like interesting people, and get the most out of interesting people who have philosophical interests similar to my own, regardless of any other qualities… I guess Becky and Scott are of a different category altogether, and so are my friends of old, in SD, and the close ones who dispersed throughout CA (including, but not limited to Robyn who I stole this idea for the posting from, Charlie, Stacy, Jackie, Evan’s not in CA, I’m gonna include my siblings and my parents.
Girl – Becky and Lily, none other. I mean aside from old friends I mentioned under ‘guys’ who are actually girls.
If someone were to tell you they like you right now, would you care?
I wouldn’t be concerned, I’d appreciate it. If ‘liking’ means the old childish infatuation, I’d be flattered, and take advantage of that person by talking up a storm, telling them all about the subject of subjectivity etc.
Do you have a best friend?
Again, although I haven’t spoken to Scott in a very long time, and not real had close contact in many years, I’ll just default to say him. Really, Becky and Lily are my best friends, but I guessed that’s not what the surveyor was asking for.
Do you remember what you were like a year ago?
Pretty similar, enjoying my baby, and then it was very new, a four-month old experience, and working at Leisure Village, getting stoned as usual and I didn’t have the Stony Brook experience behind me. I love my new school’s philosophy situation!
Who was the last person you cried in front of?
Becky, long enough ago. I don’t want to get into it, of course.
Where are you right now, and how do you feel about where you are?
I’m only making 8.75, so not too proud, but I don’t have to do anything at all and I get internet and a TV (TV is used only here, once a week, for Simpsons, family guy and south park, and whatever may be in between)
Have you ever changed clothes in a vehicle?
Yes, it’s a fetish, I admit.
Who did you last go out to eat with?
Becky and Lily took my mom out to our fav Thai place: Phayathai.
Do you have unlimited texting?
Robyn said; “No. Does it affect my life? Hardly.” And I agree.
When is the last time you took a nap?
Sometimes, because my I work 32 hours on the weekend, I call it sleep, and sometimes it’s just a nap that I call sleep. Friday night I took two melatonin (that’s a lot) and had intense dreams (the non-sexual aspects of which I’ll get into in a response to a later question, the sexual aspects I’ll leave out, but that’s what I dream about: sex and abstract philosophical-type explorations) and deep deep sleep.
Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?
My mom. Other than the ususals, I spoke on my dad’s cell’s answering machine, which I’m not sure he knows how to check.
Do you talk about your feelings or hide them?
I talk about them usually, if not, it’s because it wouldn’t be productive.
Where did you get the underwear you are wearing right now?
My wife got them for me.
What are you looking forward to in the next month?
Camping, a lily hiking, no school, reading whatever I want, having more time! Getting ready for the next baby, and possibly having James Corrigan and Elisabeth over for dinner!
Is the sun shining?
Always!
What are your plans for later?
Robyn said: “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” To which I’d add, studing for the Gary Mar-brand philosophy of math final tomorrow.
Do you have a Boyfriend/Girlfriend?
I can call her a girlfriend.
What are you doing tomorrow?
Vacuuming Becky’s possibly merely-psychological spiders (most of them anyway, possibly; some are definitely real) out from under the bed, and completing another class, leaving only one fun paper to write and one fun test to take.
Are you happy with life right now?
Yes! Sometimes I want more of something private that’s none of your business, but that’s not up to me.
Would you ever smile at a stranger?
Yes, of course.
Are you currently jealous?
Nope.
Do you wish you were someone else?
Way no.
What jewelry are you wearing?
My great Grandpa’s (Al Capone’s brother) tie clip.
What is your favorite Beatles song?
Either It’s All Too Much, or It’s Only A Northern Song; Most of them, especially Yellow Submarine, especially the cartoon, and especially The World According to Garp’s employment of When I’m 64 (it makes me cry)
Can you lick your elbow?
Yeah, I used to do a lot more yoga, so I’m one-upping Robyn on this one. Plus I can do things most men can’t and most women want to, but can’t (and find it physiologically impossible)
Last thing you bought?
Gas! Before that, antibacterial sanitizer for mothers for mothers day, and tomorrow I’m gonna buy the PedEgg (as seen on TV) for Becky.
If someone looked ON your bed, what would they find?
A mess of blankets, and my eye mask and leaf-blower earphones.
Are you a cuddler?
Like Robyn said before me, yes, and especially now that I have babies to cuddle! (I’m living in your shadow on this survey, … and that’s alright)
What would someone find UNDER your bed?
A lot of stuff, including a door and possible spiders.
Who will you see the most this weekend besides family?
Weekend done: the night manager at my hotel, unfortunately, but I guess he’s alright.
What is the last movie you watched?
NETWORK… Watch it!!!! Seriously. That one from the 70s. I also highly recommend “The Nines”.
Do you think you will be in a relationship 3 months from now?
Yes, definitely, stupid question, especially considering I’ll have a second baby by then.
Who were the last 2 people to call you?
Becky and Becky. Other than Becky? My brother Dexter.
Who's the fifteenth text in your inbox from?
Yes, dumb question, reflective of our overly-mediated culture (a few years ago I’d have said ‘generation’).
Do you drink tea?
No, I try it sometimes, and I don’t think my Soy Chai option counts.
What were you doing at 10pm Friday night?
Waking and showering for work.
What are you looking forward to in the next few months?
Luka and no school! Camping… I think I just answered this same question.
It's midnight, who are you talking to?
What? Rephrase it. Oh well, if it’s midnight and I’m talking, it is to Becky of course.
Have you ever wanted something you couldnt have?
Yes, but I luckily restrain myself, and thank God I’m not drunk at that time, or the devil.
Do you have siblings?
Yes, Tiffany and Tessa are ten years younger than I and Dexter is five years younger than I. Plus now there’s two sister in laws.
Where did you grow up?
CA: Mission Beach, also Pacific Beach and La Jolla, plus some Mexico. And I was living in OB for a few years, on and off, and yes, still immature there.
Who taught you how to ride a bike?
My inner guru, and my parents, I guess.
Who was your best friend in first grade?
I had a romance with a girl named Ruth: she’d chase me around the playground at Bird Rock, the sandy one with slides and swings and stuff in the front of the school behind the big fence. I lost touch with Ruth, but kept up with Nate Anderson and Peirce Mackey, who are now surfer dudes. I wasn’t really close though.
Do you still talk to them?
I sometimes to find Nate ‘cause I know he works at Liquid Foundation back in my home town.
Burger King or McDonalds?
Only the Burger king Fish Sandwich, and guess what, that’s the only meat I eat… I grosses most people out, oh well, it’s the full truth. Tartar sauce and all.
Who do you trust most in your life?
My wife, and my family in general. I guess it could be said I trust Lily, which is a thought so silly, but I do.
Do you want kids?
Yes, four: Lily Marie Dible, Luka Thompson Dible, Ella Jane Dible and Una Lee Dible… and I’m almost half way there!
What is the color of your walls?
Like Robyn’s eggy walls, I have light blue walls in our playroom (baby safe room), I don’t recall the specific name.
Winter or summer?
I get all of them now, and they’re nice sometimes, and rough sometimes, but overall I prefer San Diego: 72 degrees, sunny, etc.
What's the number one thing you want in life right now?
Robyn said: “To transcend the bullshit.” I agree in perhaps a different sense. I also want to be filthy rich.
How late did you stay up last night and why?
All night unfortunately: work.
What was the first thing that you thought of this morning?
What Midnight? Some stupid work-related bit about making coffee or doing a few dishes (after an hour of that crap I read and stuff, all night/morning.
Have you ever, in any way, been betrayed by someone you trusted?
Actually, I don’t really think so! Wow, I must be so very lucky! And I’m pretty overly-trusting. Well, one time these guys I thought my dad knew were checking out our yard sale (at which I sold Salvia Divinorum to the famous lawyer Dan Jacobi of “Jacobi and Meyers”) and were looking at our motorhome and said they were gonna go buy a car today, but liked the idea of a motorhome, and even though all our possessions were there, I let them borrow it, taking it for a test drive. After far too long they came back, and I was like thank God! And they asked if they could take it to their Mechanic across town, so I trusted them and nope, they went to Mexico and my dad and I went looking for it around town on bikes and I was also on crazy amounts of soma!!!! It was o much fun, plus a lot of adrenaline! (au natural) and I was ready to beat those big guys up, with my kung fu aiki jiu jitsu intelligence, and I was so precise with my somadelic high, even had time to be super fly for some ladies I work with in front
of People’s Coop, and then resumed my super fly high until I actually found it, right when we had to leave with our photo albums, for our west coast baby shower with our People’s peeps. It was parked wrong, out in the road, and everything was everywhere, and the keys were gone (one set of them) and the only thing they stole (as we knew exactly what we had) was the DVD player. Yeah, they went to Mexico, and there were beer cans everywhere. We had a great baby shower, and I was still super fly high on somadelics, even still.
When was the last time you were given roses?
Nobody gives me roses. Becky has given me flowers before though.
Do you give second chances?
Yeah. I never have to though.
Do people ever make stupid mistakes when spelling or saying your name?
They always think it’s spelled with two bs, Dibble, and they read Dible as Dibbble.
When was the last time you saw a cop?
Who cares.
Have you made a mistake in the past week?
Yeah, I should have studied a wink for logic. Oh well, I think I’ll pass. I hope so.
Is there anything you regret about your past?
Yeah, my bad. I’m a mega optimist, but I wronged someone I love getting used to the monogamy thing. It haunts me worse than anything else, maybe I need a therapist.
Do you sleep with the light on or off?
Preferably, in an absolutely silent isolation tank, in reality, or in existence/ experience, with them off, plus an eye mask for those annoying electronic dots and those leaf-blower ear phones if I’m the only one sleeping.
Do you have any pets?
DK and Pumpkin (gatos) and a fish name Beta (as in Run Lola Run; “Beta, beta” means “hurry, hurry”), who I need to treat betta (I’m a neglet).
What were you doing at 11 AM?
DEEPly sleeping on metatonin.
What is your favorite thing to dream about?
Stuff usually goes sexual after a while, but that’s not necessarily my favorite-in-general (at the moment it is of course), but far out trippy stuff can happen in dreams, and it is real, authentic experience and existence unto itself. One time I started talking to some people about the Laws of Form, but I woke too soon to really get into it. Sometime I can go through a tunnel and end up in space, and sometimes I’m swimming like a shrimp, and it’s cold and empty and lonely except for possibly scary microbes and slightly-bigger-than microbes, and sometimes I’m all-powerful. Often I fly, and often I control the flying, sometimes I control the dream... The best set ups are the ones where I dream about waking up or going back to sleep. Dreams have the most potential!!! I mean that most generally. My theory is that the waking life maintains its coherence by the organism doing so (Whiteheadian Organic Realism) and dreams are other parameters expressing their freedom on other levels, but in between all these must occur between states, and between all these phenomena and the seemingly void deep stage of sleep, everything occurs, all possible lifelines and combinations, we only stick to, remember, through the positive feedback of the one state of consciousness doing the remembering at the time (state-specificity of consciousness) the ones we structurally couple with. But everything else is always already, and ever present, and that’s why I’m an abstractivist. Yet there is an ultimate reality, as there appears to be presently, ever-presently, but is isn’t what appears, it is abstract, pure and radical objectivity, superjectivity, the Absolute Infinite.
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| Some references to Guenon (in this reply) |
[11 May 2008|06:41am] |
1=0.999(9)
I was looking up new concepts on infinity and found this old blog : http://broodsphilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/comprehending-10999/ from 2006. I thought it was a fun read. I was wondering if there are any new ideas on this concept since 2006? Also, does this idea mean that nothing is truly one and nothing is truly infinate within itself, or/and that based on perspective anything can be defined as one and/or infinate? I know this is probably a stupid question, but it is a question that just popped in my mind and I haven't given it a great deal of thought yet.
.999 and infinity, part 1
mostconducive
2008-05-11 10:39 am UTC (link)
As 10x=9.999..., then x=.9, and as 9x=9, then x=1: therefore 1=.999...
and that's all I have to say about that.
I don't share your taste in "fun reading" material, if that site is one of them truly. It sounds like articles by mathematician Louis Kauffman from the ASC journal "Cybernetics and Human Knowing", which I think you would enjoy, and I enjoy the other articles, including ones in which Louis Kauffman speaks english (I just don't like it when people speak maths, personally), particluarly his series of articles on the subject of 'the first distinction.'. And you might just enjoy the follow up lines from that journal, from George Spencer-Brown's maths, from his "Laws of Form," a source of great insight and controversy to many (although this is a matter of perspective).
I'm mainly interested in the Absolute Infinite and the Infinitesimal, as I have a metaphysical system with these notions as foundation.
A major proponent of the philosophia perennis, Rene Guenon, critiques the tradition's earlier node, Leibnitz, in his book "On the Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus", from which I shall educate us now:
"According to Guenon, the concept of 'Infinite number' is a contradiction in terms. Infinity is a metaphysical concept at a higher level of reality than that of quantity, where all that can be expressed is the indefinite, not the infinite." Samuel Forh, editor
In the Preface, of relevance to this post, Guenon writes of the lack of meaning he intuits in the mathematics of today's Kali Yoga or dark age of quantification, wherein number theorists lack a theory of the meaning of the numbers, focusing instead on the merely arbitrary, conventional use of numbers. But "this is a true impossibility, for one never establishes a convention without having some reason for doing so, and for doing precisely that rather than anything else; it is only to those who ignore this reason that the convention can appear arbitrary... the more extreme consequences of the absence of principles, which can even cuse the sciences- or what is so called, for at this point it no longer merits the name in any respect- to lose all possible significance. Moreover, by the very fact of the current conception of science as exclusively quantitiative, this 'conventionalism' has gradually spread from mathematics to the more recent theories of the physical sciences, which thus distance themselves further and further from the reality they intend to explain; ..."
This whole work is largely an exposition of the "so-called mathematical or quantitative infinite, which is the source of almost all the difficulties that can be raised against the infinitesimal calculus, or, perhaps more precisely, against the infinitesmal method..." and there is also, the related but seperate "erroneous or insufficient conception of the notion of the 'limit,' which is indispensible if the rigor of the infinitesimal method is to be justified and made anything more than a simple method of approximation." (page 4, Preface)
... bla bla bla, gold gold gold...
(Reply to this)
part 2 of 2
mostconducive
2008-05-11 10:40 am UTC (link)
Comment Posted Successfully
In the first chapter, Guenon explains the difference between the "Infinite and [the] Indefinite" (chapter title) which is echoed in the distinction between 'the metaphysical Infinite' and the merely indefinite notion of the 'mathematical [so-called] Infinite'. The Infinite is logically and metaphysically necessary, and not contradictory.
Big-ass paragraph number two, of the first chapter begins: "It is true that the Scholastics admitted what they called the infinitum secundum quid [the infinite in a certain respect], and that they carefully distinguish from the infinitum absolutum [the absolute infinite], which alone is the metaphysical Infinite... for to say that something is infinite only in a certain respect... is to say that it is not infinite at all. [and here he adds that Spinoza is as guilty for his notion of 'infinite in its kind'], and Big-ass paragraph number two ends with this sentence: "To seek to place the Infinite within a formula, or, if one prefer, to clothe it in any form whatsoever is, consciously or unconsciously, to attempt to fit the universal All into one of its minutest parts, and this is assuredly the most manifest of impossibilities." (page 9, "Infinite and Indefinite")
The next chapter is called "The Contradiction of 'Infinite Number'", ... and in the intervening pages, he reveals his position, that of the perennial philosohy, that metaphysical Unity is pure Being itself (page 21, chapter 3)... and on page 22, he explains that Leibnitz defines the Infinite (a sin exposed on page nine, in the "Big-ass paragraph" I refer to earlier) as other than the whole, other than the All, which indeed is "the metaphysical Infinite itself, the only true Infinite." He says L. does this to avoid contradiction within his system: "the 'indefinite multitude' that Leibnitz envisages in any case only makes sense in a restricted and contingent domain of a cosmological and not a metaphysical order." I love that line!
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Allow me to address your speculations regarding the infinite: ultimate reality is not one, oneness is penultimate reality, which is significant, as it is included in the nondual, formless order, but to conflate oneness and the Infinite is to succumb to metaphysical ignornance, of which very few are not guilty, so don't feel bad! Spinoza, although I have much more study before me, Spinoza has this concept of the "Infinite One" which says it best! In my system, the One is the Infinitesimal, metaphysical Unity, Being-in-itself. The Absolute Infinite is ultimate reality, which is not in terms of being (and for the contents of the contexture of being, the differentiated beings, the ontic differentia, the beings, the consequent and derivative world, the antecendent) but becoming, that is, becoming being from non-being and non-being from being; a system having no place at all for nothingness. In this system of mine, the Absolute Infinite can be imagined as pure and radical nothingness, an impossible feat! Inifnitely better to simply call it ultimate reality and leave it at that!
NEW DEVELOPMENTS:
My system! I'm researching and developing it as I proceed with my schooling in continential philosophy and the perennial philosophy, and some mathematics!
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| Quantum Mysticism |
[09 May 2008|09:50am] |
I'm gonna post most of my school products on my journal, for me and you, but this one I thought was kindof boring, so I'm gonna try that lj-cut trick, forgive me if it doesn't work because I don't know quite how to do this. The class was called "The Quantum Moment" with Stony Brook professors Crease and Goldhaber. Robert Crease is the philosophy department chairperson, an analytic philosopher and historian of philosophy, from what I get of him, and Alfred Goldhaber is a theoretical physicist.
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Quantum Mysticism:
Transgressing the Boundaries;
Quantum Levity and Quantum Gravity on Quantum Mysticism
Reverend Randolph Thompson Dible II
“The Quantum Moment” with Professors Crease and Goldhaber
May 2008
There are plenty of interpretations of quantum mechanics that depart from the standard, but many of them betray the physics, and this is a great sin. We must weed through these by an actual understanding of the physics and mathematics of quantum mechanics, with an eye for people ignorant of physics, without relying on credentials, nor shunning the perspectives of people without credentials. This process of discriminating the real good stuff from that of the physics abusers is a real pain in the arse because it entails understanding quantum phenomena in the context of physics itself, which may not be practical for non-physicists. But this process must ensue in a culture where references to quantum physics are everywhere, often with an ideological price-tag. One new quantum cultural phenomenon is called “quantum mysticism”, and I will explore this by instances, with some critical arguments in mind.
I will examine some speculations of the founders of quantum mechanics regarding the nature of their subject, the implications quantum mechanics seems to have for our normal notions of space and time, matter and energy, and, most controversially, the implications it has for our lives. These ideas are examined in Fritjof Capra’s popular work The Tao of Physics, as well as Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters where the speculations of the founding quantum physicists are further developed into connections between the mysticism of Eastern religions and interpretations of quantum mechanics. These works in particular are analyzed by professors of our university in a book edited by Patrick Grim called Philosophy of Science and the Occult, which I will use to shed light on the subject. All this business of interpreting interpretations and renormalizing the science is like walking on eggshells if we choose to not entirely throw away “quantum mysticism,” which will be the careful enterprise of this paper. The best I can offer is my well-informed opinion motivated by the spirit of speculative philosophy and logical and critical reasoning, because there has not yet been the final word on quantum mysticism.
The table of contents of Ken Wilber’s book Quantum Questions reveals the speculations of many founding fathers of quantum mechanics as to their mystical or spiritual lives. From Heisenberg we get titles like “Scientific and Religious Truths” and “Science and the Beautiful”. Schrödinger has essays titled “The Oneness of Mind”, “The I That is God”, and “The Mystic Vision”. Einstein has titles such as “Cosmic Religious Feeling” and “Science and Religion”. De Broglie has “Aspiration Towards Spirit” and The Mechanism Demands a Mysticism”. James Jeans wrote “In the Mind of Some Eternal Spirit” and “A Universe of Pure Thought”. Max Plank wrote “The Mystery of Our Being” and Wolfgang Pauli wrote “Embracing the Rational and the Mystical”. And Sir Arthur Eddington wrote titles such as “Beyond the Veils of Physics”, “Mind-Stuff”, and “Defense of Mysticism”. Even without knowing the specific contents of these essays, we see that many of the most well-respected physicists were interested in seeing how a physical reality of quantum phenomena could also be an aesthetic and spiritual reality of mystical import, showing that the two very different realms of physics and metaphysics are not at odds with each other. We must also keep in mind, however, that Ken Wilber’s compilation doesn’t seem to suggest that these thinkers are writing about the quantum physics they helped create when they wrote these letters on the mystical experience.
In the 1930s, at Cambridge University, Sir Arthur Eddington, Sir James Jeans, and Alfred North Whitehead were entertaining an idealist interpretation of the physical world. On the whole, geometrical concepts were replacing arithmetic and algebra, but the geometry was non-Euclidean: an extreme example was Einstein’s matter-tensor in which mass-energy (‘matter’) could be replaced by fields of curved space, which is a purely geometric notion of ‘form’. Before World War II, the revolutionary ideas from physicists Einstein, Plank and Heisenberg compelled Eddington to state “Religion first became possible for a reasonable man of science in the year 1927.” Unfortunately, the outbreak of war in 1939 diverted scientific thought into military endeavor, including the atomic bomb project, and this philosophy of Cambridge disappeared.
I had several discussions with Heisenberg. I lived in England then [circa 1972], and I visited him several times in Munich and showed him the whole manuscript chapter by chapter. He was very interested and very open, and he told me something that I think is not known publicly because he never published it. He said that he was well aware of these parallels. While he was working on quantum theory he went to India to lecture and was a guest of Tagore. He talked a lot with Tagore about Indian philosophy. Heisenberg told me that these talks had helped him a lot with his work in physics, because they showed him that all these new ideas in quantum physics were in fact not all that crazy. He realized there was, in fact, a whole culture that subscribed to very similar ideas. Heisenberg said that this was a great help for him. Niels Bohr had a similar experience when he went to China. – Fritjof Capra, interviewed by Renee Weber in the book The Holographic Paradigm (page 217–218)
The manuscript Capra refers to in the above quotation was published in 1975 as the best-seller The Tao of Physics. There is another book along these lines. Often thought of as a sequel to Capra’s The Tao of Physics is Gary Zukav’s 1979 The Dancing Wu Li Masters; a chapter of which also appears in the SUNY book, Philosophy of Science and the Occult. In the S.U.N.Y. book Philosophy of Science and the Occult, two chapters are reprints of chapters from The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters. These are “The Unity of All Things” and “Einstein Doesn’t Like It”, by Capra and Zukav, respectively. In “The Unity of All Things”, Capra makes assertions such as this: “The crucial feature of atomic physics is that the human observer is not only necessary to observe the properties, but is necessary even to define these properties.” (The Tao of Physics, page 126) And Gary Zukav even goes so far along these lines to state that: “According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity…. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature… nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way around.” (The Dancing Wu Li Masters, page 56)
Robert Crease and Charles Mann make a humorous point in their chapter of Philosophy of Science and the Occult, called “The Yogi and the Quantum” by first presenting a quote by the actress Shirley MacLaine. They tell us “MacLaine’s approach to quantum mechanics [from her book Dancing in the Light] is mixed in with lengthy accounts of her affair with a Russian director who is her son in at least four past incarnations and her experiences with a woman named J. Z. Guest [J. Z. Knight], who lives in Yelm, Washington, and is the Charlie McCarthy for a 35,000 year old superbeing named Ramtha. Despite the odd packaging, MacLaine’s quantum mystical views are utterly typical of the genre: modern physicists and Eastern mystics are saying the same things in different languages, and their basic message is that human beings and the world are melded together is some kind of cosmic ragout.” (Page 306, Philosophy of Science and the Occult, “The Yogi and the Quantum”) This 35,000 year old superbeing is actually a warrior spirit from Leumeria, a neighbor of Atlantis. Ramtha is channeled by Judith Darlene Hampton, a.k.a. J.Z. J. Z. first met Ramtha in the 1970s, in her kitchen, when she was “experimenting with the power of crystals.” (From “What The Bleep Does Ramtha Know” by Jennifer Saylor) J. Z. Knight was one of the first to start the New Age trend even before it became popular. Let’s hear more about Judith Hampton from Jennifer Saylor’s article:
“She has been married at least five times. Her last name is from her last husband, who died of AIDS in the early 90's. Ramtha told him not to trust Western Medicine and use the breathing techniques of the RSE [the Ramtha School of Enlightenment] and he would be healed. He died, but he and Ramtha were already divorced, her having bilked him for much of the estate they had built together, but he was unable for health reasons to finish the suit.”
In 2004, a moderately low-budget film about quantum mechanics and religious mysticism, as well as other New Age topics, called “What The Bleep Do We Know?” made it big, popularizing quantum mysticism for all of America. No matter neither the reasoning is full of holes and sensationalism, nor that it was produced by our 35,000 year old Leumerian warrior, America loves weird. And what a weird confirmation of quantum mysticism the movie makes quantum science out to be! From the Wikipedia article:
“Scientists who have reviewed What the Bleep Do We Know!? have described distinct assertions made in the film as pseudoscience.[18] Amongst the concepts in the film that have been challenged are assertions that water molecules can be influenced by thought,[3] that meditation can reduce violent crime rates,[8] and that quantum physics implies that "consciousness is the ground of all being." The film was also discussed in a letter published in Physics Today that challenges how physics is taught, saying teaching fails to "expose the mysteries physics has encountered [and] reveal the limits of our understanding." In the letter, the authors write "the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum 'insights' that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35,000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense." It went on to say that "most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided," a situation which the authors attribute to how in the current teaching of quantum mechanics "we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered.”
Why do we not simply let the physicists set things straight? Because there is no straight path from the mathematical formalism to the normal world of human experience and culture. In “The Yogi and The Quantum”, Professors Crease and Mann state:
“Some physicists, including Schrodinger, felt that it was possible and even imperative to develop an intuitive comprehension of quantum mechanics…. Others, including Werner Heisenberg, argued that quantum happenings were sufficiently alien from those of our ordinary, macroscopic world, that the human mind lacked the appropriate nonmathematical concepts; the attempt to picture these quantum events, they claimed, would in fact confuse and mislead physicists.” (Introduction)
Later, commenting on how the beliefs of quantum mysticism could have arisen:
“Unfortunately, when Bohr and his colleagues tried to decide precisely what constitutes an observer their philosophical discussions were less rigorous than their physics. The use of the term “observer” proved treacherous, for it appeared to introduce subjectivity into physics.… It was only a short step from this position to the conclusion that the existence of the world depends on consciousness– that, indeed, reality is our creation.” (Page 306)
A later chapter of Philosophy of Science and the Occult contains an “attempt to throw cold water on the alleged idealist implications of quantum mechanics.” By throwing cold water upon these implications, the author, Professor Marshall Spector, means to awaken the dreams of quantum mysticism in The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and by this he doesn’t mean to debunk the whole enterprise of quantum mysticism, he is being more careful than that, more logically rigorous in attacking only certain claims, which he makes explicit, from these particular works. He does this in a general way, briefly summarizing the framework of Western metaphysics, particularly the role of physics in that, then the new points of quantum physics, in how it differs from classical physics. Specifically, he outlines the following five points of departure from the Newtonian paradigm: 1. the wave-particle dual nature of dynamic masses, 2. the statistical nature of the world, 3. Essential incompleteness. No complete non-probabilistic description of the world is possible, in principle. 4. No complete (non-probabilistic) description of physical systems is possible in principle. 5. The particular manner in which one chooses to measure, detect or observe a subatomic parameter, entity or event determines (to some extent) the nature of that parameter, entity, or event.
In the section called “The Role of Mind in the New Physics”, Marshall Spector analyzes the implications of these new characteristics for the implications expressed by quantum mystical works above. It turns out none of them are as confirming of the idealist implications of quantum mechanics as quantum mystics would hope. In the first case, that of the wave-particle duality, we learn that nature does not consist of discreet entities called particles and waves, but that they are both the same physical substance, and have nothing to do with mental substance, simply because they make no such claim in themselves. The second case, regarding the statistical nature of the world which isn’t fully deterministic, called “quantum indeterminacy”, is not supported by argumentation simply because Spector doesn’t think this one requires argumentation: “Mind is not just a more ethereal kind of matter working its will when matter can’t decide what to do or where to go.” The third point is not taken seriously by physicists, says Spector. That quantum mechanics will one day be made [classically] complete by the addition of the mind as the hidden variables is simply not a serious claim. In particular, De Broglie’s hidden “guiding waves” were not mental waves, whatever those might be. Non-separability might imply a radically new view of space and time, but these are still physical concepts, not mental. He cites David Mermin’s call to question the existence of the Moon when nobody observes it as a point of controversy on this fourth point. And his fifth point is the main point, regarding the observation of quanta (which idealist interpretations take to be the creation of quanta). “Observations,” “measurements,” and “detection” in quantum mechanics are not the same as observations by human sense organs. These, again, are material things. It is their use which renders them ‘data’ for a human observer.
“If my observations and arguments are correct, then there is nothing about the new physical aspects of quantum mechanics… that has any implications for the mind-matter distinction of the Western metaphysical tradition since Descartes. If we accept a mind-matter distinction, then quantum mechanics – the new science of matter - has some evolutionary things to say about the nature of matter. But it says nothing about the relation between mind and matter, and certainly nothing about the nature of mind.” (p. 344)
Proponents of idealist metaphysics could argue against Marshall Spector’s views expressed herein as of a materialist bias. To some idealists, matter is merely effete mind, and so all new implications of matter are new implications of mind. Indeed, whether subjectivist or objectivist in bias, the more comprehensive metaphysics is neither, or both, as in Alfred North Whitehead’s system. In Whitehead’s Process and Reality, the basic element of existence and experience alike is what he calls the ‘actual entity.’ The ‘actual entity’ in Whitehead’s system is what he calls “the hyphenated subject-superject”, and he adds that it is what is meant by the common use of the term ‘subject’, which is to say the self, applied to persons as well as places and things and topics. In fact, anything can be a subject, at least as a ‘subject of discourse,’ at most oneself, where ‘thing’ means any distinct thing. And here, ‘distinct’ means that the distinction between the system and environment is abstract, precisely the distinction between subject and object, which is a most rigorous definition of distinction or difference. In such a case as this metaphysics, there is ideally no bias toward the objective perspective, nor the subjective perspective, although Whitehead’s system is often taken to be more idealist, it is mathematical certainly, as was the trend at Cambridge, but his system is called “organic realism”, which is as objective as the concrete organic self and world. Often the neo-Whiteheadians are from theological schools which try to bend Whitehead’s metaphysics towards their religious (idealist) views, for Whitehead was influenced by his upbringing in Christianity, but this is not a consequence of his strictly metaphysical basis. And Whitehead’s isn’t the only metaphysical system that combines the best of the subjectivist and objectivist positions. Another instance would be Charles Sanders Peirce’s metaphysics of “Objective Idealism”, from which we get the phrase “matter is effete mind”. From Peirce we get semiotics and pragmaticism, to say the very least. It would be very interesting if these metaphysicists were alive today to comment about the new physics, and to re-align the implicit metaphysics of today’s philosophy (analytic philosophy in particular) with the non-biased basis of a metaphysics of difference as pure subjectivity, with pure superjectivity as ultimate reality, and a consequent understanding of the nature of distinction as distinctions of subject from object.
Resources for further research:
Books:
F. Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism; 1975, Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
P. Grim (editor), Philosophy of Science and the Occult; State University of New York press, 1990
C. S. Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce; edited by Justus Buchler, 1955, Dover Publications
Jennifer Saylor, “What The Bleep Does Ramtha Know?” at http://freelance-writers.cn/What-The-Bleep-Does-Ramtha-Know-Jennifer-Saylor-Freelance-Writer
A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929). 1979 corrected edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, Free Press
K. Wilber, Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists; 1984, 2001, Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
G. Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics; 1979, William Morrow & Company, Inc., New York, New York
Movies:
Mindwalk; based on The Turning Point and other books by Fritjof Capra; Bernt Amadeus Capra, Paramount, 1998
What the Bleep Do We Know; Mark Vicente, Betsy Chasse, William Arntz, 20th Century Fox, Captured Light & Lord of the Wind Films, Inc., 2005
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| C. S. Peirce's "The Principles of Phenomenology" |
[05 May 2008|01:48am] |
Chapter Six, "The Principles of Phenomenology," from Justus Buchler's "Philosophical Writings of Peirce"
Randolph Thompson Dible II
Charles Sanders Peirce is himself a first rate man of science, 'science' here meant in a more expansive sense than the reductive nominalistic sense of empirical scientists. This is the best way I can qualify Peirce, in so few words, other than merely saying he is one of the greatest philosophers and original, systematic thinkers. The most pervasive system to his thinking, as best I can discern, are the three categories, the most general countable categories, easy as one, two, three. Buchler does his best in this chapter to describe Peircian phenomenology informed by Peirce's three categories, in Peirce's own words. The first section is "The Domain of Phenomenology," the second section is "The Three Categories: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness," the next section is "The Manifestations of the Categories," the next three sections are each one of the three categories, then, the seventh section is "The Categories in Consciousness," and the last section is "The Interrelationship of the Categories." From this selection, we can see that Buchler expresses Peircian phenomenology in terms of the manifestation in consciousness of the three categories and their interrelationships.
Our first task toward an intuitive grasp of the three categories is to step away from this text, and indeed any text or context, away from any manifestation, away from the world, and imagine (as it is only within that which is known as our 'imagination' that we can entertain such abstractions) such general essences as the first three countables. Metaphysics may be appropriately qualified by the philosophical term "first principles," the science of "first principles," or principles which have priority of order over other principles in other specialties. Firstness is the first principle, although we often find it in Peirce's phenomenological applications, as a characteristic of the phaneron ("...the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not." Chapter 6, page 1, Buchler's page 74.) Peirce further explains that this science of phaneroscopy he develops describes the "formal elements" of the phaneron in general.
Phaneroscopy, Peirce's phenomenology, appeals to our common sense because, says Peirce, "there is nothing quite so directly open to observation as phanerons" (as he begins the third paragraph.) These observations and their generalizations, for Peirce, "signalizes several very broad classes of phanerons," and furthermore their character proves that we can discern the broadest categories and their features. Even so, "phaneroscopy has nothing at all to do with the question of how far the phanerons it studies corresponds to any realities. Perhaps here it would be appropriate to recognize a significant distinction Peirce makes between reality and existence, in "The Concept of God" (as he begins the second paragraph.) Peirce takes existence to mean "reaction with the other like things in the environment." The word reality, on the other hand, "is used in ordinary parlance in its correct philosophical sense...."
Peirce begins, at the beginning of the second section, Buchler's "The Categories: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness" "My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are [respectively,] the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law...." He begins by taking up actuality, qualifying it as brute actuality. Peirce says that actuality, as he describes it, is second because it occurs as a particle in a particular context. This more pure sense of actuality necessarily occurs in a mode of being "of one thing which consists in how a second object is" (Buchler, page 76.) Then, taking us Firstness, which Peirce describes as the mode of a subject's being positively such as it is regardless of anything else. Since it is independent of any context, it is not actual; it is a "positive qualitative possibility," which has priority over any instantiation, "before" any moment of time (logical priority, priority of order.) Thirdness Peirce associates with prediction, in this sense; "This mode of being which consists... in the fact that future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call Thirdness" (top of page 77 in the Dover edition.)
Here Peirce describes the categories of elements of phenomena. The first such elements are qualities such as red, bitter, hard, redness, redness itself. The second category are 'actual facts,' individuals, immediate incidents at specific instants. Matters of fact are brutal in that they resist our will. We directly (immediately) observe 'actual facts' by way of reaction, which mere unmaterialized qualities cannot. The third category of elements of phenomena, when we think about them from the outside only, are laws, but when we consider both sides are simply known as thoughts. In a certain respect, the first category of phenomenal elements are feelings, and the third are thoughts, when the Thirdness is separate from the subject.
In Whitehead's theory of prehension, feelings are what he calls "positive prehensions" and thoughts are "negative prehensions." Perhaps, if any connection between these systems in this respect is valid and revealing, the inter-activity of Secondness are the acts of distinguishing thoughts from feelings, acts which exist intercoherently with the nexus of other actualities, or as Whitehead would say, the 'actual entity' which is the 'subject-superject,' self and world in togetherness, a unity of signifier and signified in an act of distinction, the 'unit act' in the ontogenetic matrix. I believe there is a valid underlying connection of these metaphysical systems, and of other good metaphysical systems, and more than valid, only one ultimately sound system is possible, employing various aspects of these and other systems, until one day when the completed system can be articulated in one correct metaphysical system, and generalities of the Eastern and metaphysical systems, their key distinctions, are closest to this view. An overlapping such system is found in the systems theory whose source is attributed to the act of drawing a distinction, most generally, called the 'first distinction,' severing the "unmarked state" (Peirce's "page of assertion" in his existential graphs, which is not a graph, but the empty, dimensionless background) into a self-referentially phase-locked state distinguished from the "unmarked state," which comes from logician George Spencer-Brown's "Laws of Form" (1969,) as connected to Peirce by (second-order) cyberneticist Soren Brier as the thesis of his "Cybersemiotics." I believe this is a sound connection, insofar as I understand the logic as semiotics, and I believe the implications of the Spencer-Brownian mystical connection to what he calls the "Triplicity" of the act of consciousness. This follows into the seventh section on the categories in consciousness, and my connections to other systems I found sound, such as the most general formulation of consciousness as the subject-superject, itself distinct from the unconscious which includes the subconscious and super-conscious realities precisely in inverse relation to the reality of consciousness. And in Patanjali's yoga sutras we find that ultimate reality is clearly distinguished from a penultimate reality which is the central ground which acts as a spring-board to access ultimate reality from any non-ultimate reality including all derivative and consequent finite experience. This is the essential method of meditation as the complimentary of mediation, of experience mediated through consciousness. In this regard, more than merely in the Zen nature of tychism, Peirce's metaphysical system of synechism from semiotics and mathematics, and his phenomenology of the Three categories are indicative of the reality Eastern philosophy and mysticism alike express. I am reminded that synechism and synthesis come from the same prefix which indicates connection in recognition of continuity, the same method of inner verification used by mystics or anyone independent of external corpuses. These different systems are alike in the categories of elements of phenomena, in their different ways of expressing a phenomenology, because they share mediation of (or thinking about) what Peirce calls "synthetical consciousness" (at the very end of section 8 on consciousness) and "mind" (at the very end of section 2 on the categories.) Peirce's "The Law of Mind" from The Monist, chapter 25 in Buchler, begins with his connection to the Eastern cosmogony in his tychism and synechism.
In section three, on the manifestations of the categories, Peirce tells us the manifestation of Firstness occurs in freshness, life, and freedom. "Freedom can only manifest itself in unlimited and uncontrolled variety and multiplicity... Firstness is predominant in feeling, as distinct from objective perception, will and thought." Next, Peirce says in the idea of reality, Secondness is predominant, as in actuality, for "the real is active... the actual." He explains the sources of these words in two parenthetical notes: 1. "Remember that before the French word, second, was adopted into our language, other was merely the ordinal number corresponding to two." and 2. "This word [the actual] is due to Aristotle's use of ... action, to mean existence, as opposed to a mere germinal state."
The explanation of the Third expressed here, in the third section on the manifestation of the categories, is very assertive, a great source for explaining Peircian Thirdness: "By the third, I mean the medium or connecting bond between the absolute first and last. The beginning is first, the end second, the middle third. The end is second, the means third. The thread of life is third; the fate that snips it, its second.... Continuity represents Thirdness almost to perfection. Every process comes under that head." The way Peirce speaks of continuity and his synechism can thus be set in reference to the Whiteheadian process as the experiencing subject itself, myself, the continuity of myself. "Action is second, but conduct is third." The opposite of conduct is product, making conduct the same as process, which holds here, in Peirce. In this distinction, Peirce again has the same structure as the aforementioned systems theory of distinction where the act of drawing a distinction is second to the distinction itself, as an indication of the distinction, as the medium between the distinct and the continuous aspects.
In section four on Firstness, the focus is on pure qualitative feeling. Of course, these are not actualized, "mere may-bes," not realized, not actually experienced. Quality, or suchness, does not inhere in a subject. "A true general cannot have any being... A quality of feeling can be imagined to be without any occurrence, as it seems to me. Its mere may-being gets along without any realization at all" (Buchler, page 81.) What Peirce says about Firstness that is positive is general, meaning it is vague. H speaks of feeling that it "is all that it is positively, in itself, regardless of anything else." And again we must be careful to distinguish feeling itself from any feeling in particular, or feelings in finite plurality, although in it's occurrence lies the indications of the quality. A feeling is simply a quality of immediate consciousness, and immediate consciousness is always present in any mode of consciousness. We cannot gain knowledge of any feeling by introspection because the feeling is our immediate consciousness. Peirce quotes the poetry of Emerson to express the impossibility of introspection to grasp feeling. Emerson says "Of thine eye I am eyebeam.... Thou are the unanswered question ; Couldst thou see thy proper eye, Always it asketh, asketh, And each answer is a lie." "[Man's] whole life is in the present" (Buchler, page 83.) But the present is infinitesimal, gone already from consciousness. "...feeling is nothing but a quality, and a quality is not conscious, it is a mere possibility.... there is no resemblance at all in feeling, since feeling is what it is, positively and regardless of anything else, while the resemblance of anything lies in the comparison of that thing with something else...."
Peirce continues this section asking what a quality is. He begins his answer by saying what it isn't. Conceptualism holds that quality is dependent upon sense, that quality is what actuality makes it to be. Peirce calls this the great error of all the nominalistic schools. "It is the error of maintaining that the whole alone is something, and its components, however essential to it, are nothing" (Buchler, page 85) A quality is one of the three categories of quality, fact and thought. A quality is the idea of a phenomena considered as a monad, the total phenomena as a unit, without reference to it's parts or components within, and without reference to anything else without. "Anything whatever, however complex and heterogeneous, has its quality sui generis, its possibility of sensation, would our senses only respond to it" (end of section 4.)
Peirce goes on to speak of change, shock and resistance as fact. In this regard, Peirce has something to add to his use of the word "experience." "We experience vicissitudes especially. We cannot experience the vicissitude without experiencing the perception which undergoes the change; but the concept of experience is broader than that of perception, and includes much that is not, strictly speaking, an object of perception. It is the compulsion, the absolute constraint upon us to think otherwise than we have been thinking that constitutes experience." Going on about the necessity of resistance for there to be constraint and compulsion, and the necessity of change for there to be resistance, Peirce insists his logical conclusion that experience in general involves an oppositional element of volitional effort is there, although overlooked, since we yield to this resistance as soon as we can detect it. He is so sure that what he says about experience is logically sound, he challenges interested parties to figure it out. Infinitesimal changes necessitated by the continuity of processes and activity are not perceived, but experienced as events, which Peirce explains, cannot be directly perceived, only experienced intellectually. The cognition of change involves a volition of resistance to the inertial state. And, furthermore, this resistance is an element of struggle.
By "struggle" Peirce means "...mutual action between two things regardless of any sort of third or medium, and in particular, regardless of any law of action" (Buchler, page 89.) He begins with the example of the simple feeling. Even in the simple feeling there is a struggle, and it is the vividness of the feeling. The vividness is "a sense of commotion, and action and reaction, between our soul and the stimulus."
Lastly, in the fifth section on Secondness, Peirce writes about fact, most generally. He says that first it is necessary to exclude one category from fact; that of the general, and along with the general, the permanent or eternal, and the conditional. "Generality is either of that negative sort which belongs to the merely potential, as such, and this is peculiar to the category of quality; or it is of that positive kind which belongs to conditional necessity, and this is peculiar to the category of law. These exclusions leave for the category of fact, first, that which the logicians call the contingent, that is, the accidentally actual, and second, whatever involves an unconditional necessity, that is, force without law or reason, brute force." Critical of this, he continues, "It may be said that there is no such phenomenon in the universe as brute force, or freedom of will, and nothing accidental.... but granting that... it still remains true that considering a single action by itself, apart from all others, and, therefore, apart from the governing uniformity, it is in itself brute, whether it show brute force or not." (Buchler, page 90.) So fact is not the whole unity of the phenomenon, which is eternal and general, but an element of it which is particular, in space and time.
In section Six, Peirce writes about Thirdness. Peirce explains that it is our meaning or intentionality which moulds the future by the conformity of conduct to the form of the mind. And every triadic relation involves this meaning. "We are too apt to think that what one means to do and the meaning of a word are quite unrelated meanings of the word "meaning...." Peirce means by meaning the mean or middle term of such a relation, and this meaning he connects to the normal usage. Then Peirce sketches a thorough proof that the idea of meaning is irreducible to those of quality and reaction. The two premises are that meaning is a triadic relation (which can be seen in reference to Peirce's system of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, wherein Thirdness involves a medium between two other substances,) and that triadic relations are inexpressible as dyadic relations alone. The proof itself is perhaps beyond the scope of this analysis. Suffice it to say that Peirce employs his existential graphs from his logical work to illustrate this proof graphically, as he also explains it. The manifestation is the sign. "Now, a sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C" (Buchler, page 93.) Peirce's semiotics is purely triadic.
Section Seven is about the categories in consciousness. "So far there is nothing in my argument to distinguish it from many a Kantian. The noticeable thing is that I do not rest here, but seek to put the conclusions to the test by an independent examination of the facts of psychology, to see whether we can find any traces of the existence of three parts or faculties of the soul or modes of consciousness, which might confirm the results just reached." (Buchler, page 94.) Since Kant, says Peirce, three departments of mind have been generally recognized. They are Feeling, Knowing and Willing. Peirce says this is surprising, as it did not originate in Kant, and Kant adopted it as a dogmatic concession. Peirce outlines objections to these categories. For instance, he subtracts desire from Will and thus reduces Will to merely involuntary activity. He also says that of pleasure and pain, they are not true feelings, but judgments. Peirce says of activity that the only consciousness we have of it is the sense of resistance, which involves reaction.
Revising these categories after his criticisms, Peirce restates the true categories in consciousness. They are: first, feeling, second, consciousness of an interruption into the field of consciousness, and third, synthetic consciousness. The first is passive consciousness of quality, immediate consciousness. The second is the resistance of "another something," an external fact. And the third is thought as the sense of learning through higher synthesis.
That form of cognition which is the consciousness of a process cannot be immediate, but is the form of consciousness which binds our life together, through synthesis. Restated, the three are immediate feeling, the polar sense, and synthetical consciousness.
In the lasts section of this chapter, "The Interrelationships of the Categories," Peirce introduces terms for the three categories' modes of separation. He does this because he says it may not be right to call these three categories conceptions, but rather, hints or tints of conceptions, since they are so intangible. The first mode of separability is called dissociation, "...two ideas may be so little allied that one of them may be present to the consciousness in an image which does not contain the other at all." Dissociation is not so deeply contrary to association. The second is called precession. Precession occurs when "...even in cases where two conceptions cannot be separated in the imagination, we can often suppose one without the other, that is we can imagine data from which we would be led to believe in a state of things where one was separated from the other." His example is that of color and space. We can suppose space without color, but not color without space. In the case where one element cannot be supposed without another, but they may still be distinguished from one another, Peirce calls this mode distinction. Distinction is present in the other modes, as it is primary, synonymous with difference, the fundamental separation. Peirce is the author of many dictionary entries, as is evident here.
I have read deeply into Peirce, and have the greater part of a lifetime to continue this project. Perhaps some specificities of the connections I perceive in Peirce are too hasty, as he has expressed volumes of work, and all expressions unfortunately fall short of his opinions, which are now inaccessible. We must continue to read into Peirce and reconcile his systematic analyses and inventions with the true metaphysical system as best we can, to get a better feel for his contributions.
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| Metaphysics Paper on Buddhism... B=; I like it, but the ending is abrupt and I let some points hang |
[11 Apr 2008|08:18am] |
Negotiating the Way from Dogen's Shobogenzo
Randy Dible, April 2008
Metaphysics, David Dilworth
In Bendowa (Negotiating the Way), Dogen advocates zazen sitting practice as the supreme of all Buddhist activities. Okubo introduces Bendowa by stating that in it, Dogen “gives a concise exposition of the jijuyu samadhi” and traces the great transmission of this Samadhi from Shakyamuni Buddha's flower sermon at Vulture Peak, down through the line of Zen masters.
Buddha-tathagatas, Dogen explains, transmit the Jijuyu Samadhi directly from Buddha to Buddha as the means of "supreme and complete awakening" (from page 8 of the translation of Waddell and Abe). To achieve this Samadhi, Dogen says proper sitting in Zazen meditation is the right entrance. "The Dharma is amply present in every person, but without practice, it is not manifested; without realization, it is not attained." By this Dogen means that all people, and by extension, all beings, are the Absolute Infinite, are Ultimate Reality, but they may not know it if they don't practice meditation, and do not "manifest" the Dharma (from the root "Dhr-" meaning "to hold" or support, as the Infinite does for the finite), if they do not practice the relatively difficult discipline of proper meditation, by the strict regulations as outlined in the sermon of Zazengi (The Principles of Zazen), also found in this translation of Shobogenzo. By the use of "manifest", Dogen must mean "making a reality" in existence, what was once only in the imagination (although not the "imagination" as is used colloquially to deny the reality of imaginations; rather, I am employing this term to best express the un-manifest reality beyond existence). Peirce makes the distinction between existence (which I take to be technically synonymous with 'manifestation') and reality, in his paper on God (The Concept of God), denying God's existence without denying God's reality, and with this I agree, and extend to all other entities which are un-manifest. I also agree with Dogen if he meant by his use of “manifestation” that we create a reality in the imagination by drawing distinctions, and that our reality, and any reality, is but one corner of a greater imagination (used here to indicate the actualization of all possible forms, not in this universe, but realized elsewhere as required by the continuity of the finite within the Infinite), the tip of the iceberg. I agree with the metaphysics here set forth, but I am in less agreement with the necessity of the specific technique of meditation outlined by Dogen, which is his conclusion from his study of the other Zen practices and their origins in the sciences of his time. Whatever the source of these rigid specifications, I do not believe they are necessary for enlightenment. In the Lin-Chi lu, another text of the same school of Buddhism, there are given many accounts of illuminations occurring spontaneously (more than would even be proper to cite). It may be that the monks who achieve spontaneous enlightenment have been primed by their meditation practice, but this seems unlikely to me. I believe the truth of Dogen's insistence on Zazen for achieving transcendence lies in the fact that transcendence from the relative phenomenal experience of forms to the formless ultimate reality must be set-up for those who seek ultimate reality. But in thinking themselves away from reality, they only deserve (by their karma of thinking themselves away from their own ultimate reality) the difficult path of sitting , but still do not require it. Sitting in the way specified may be the best set-up for the human body's general parameters, and for those of the human mind in general, but every body is different, it is the pure formless subjectivity which is the same. This divergence from Dogen seems to be supported by the words of Dogen following the last quotation: "it is not a question of one or many; let loose of it and it fills your hands.... all living beings use it unceasingly..." (page 8).
My advocacy of Samadhi does not uphold any form of Samadhi, only the formless. In his introduction of Bendowa, Okubo says that Dogen “gives a concise exposition of the jijuyu samadhi.” The characters “ji”, “ju” and “yu” translate respectively as “in himself” (“in itself” perhaps?) “receives [the Dharma]” and “employs”. In footnote number 1 on page 8, “jijuyu” is compared with “tajuyu”, which means the joy of aiding others to awakening. So, we could interpret the technical sounding title “jijuyu” as simply “the joy of awakening”, which isn’t so technical, and doesn’t necessarily mean that the greatest way of concentration, Samadhi, is connected with Zazen as it is described in Zazengi. This is Dogen’s advocacy, not mine. If I am to advocate any technicalities within the paradigm of Samadhi meditation, I refer to Patanjali’s yoga sutras (Rammurti S. Mishra's translation in his The Textbook of Yoga Psychology, from Concentration and Samadhi, translations of aphorisms 17 and 18), wherein, two ‘forms’ of Samadhi are distinguished as ‘Samprajnata Samadhi’ (Samadhi with external aid, with support) and ‘Asamprajnata Samadhi’ (meaning without support). This distinction, and the bit of Sanskrit I learned as a consequence, means to me that the use of mantras, yantras, mandalas and the like are secondary to the underlying practice of transcending the duality of the relative and conditioned world. And to me this also means that however you sit is secondary, however you place your tongue is secondary, because these are all ‘beside the point’, and that is to say, off-center. I believe what Dogen was getting at in rigorously defining the state of the body for Samadhi was that often stress and consequently ‘mind-stuff’ is held in the body in postures and specific positions of limbs and other organs, and we must do our best to sit ‘empty handed’ and thus ‘empty-minded’.
This way of ‘practicing’ Asamprajnata Samadhi does purify subjectivity of the illusion of distinctions of objects from subjects, but it is not in itself complete, leaving pure being, leaving only one subject, which is pure subjectivity, the ‘selfhood of the self’, or being in itself, the ‘in’ itself, the self, pure self-reference, which is formless Samadhi. And Samadhi is only the means to the end. A means is a process, a Whiteheadian process and the ontological category of being as well as precisely the living, the experiencing subject itself, the subject experiencing itself. Pure subjectivity is not Ultimate Reality because that leaves pure superjectivity (pure objectivity) unaccounted for, and it is only, in Whitehead’s system, the hyphenated subject-superject that is the ‘actual entity’ (, the fundamental reality that is usually indicated merely by the term ‘the subject’ [pure subjectivity] (which is the thesis of his “Process and Reality”). The Radical One (there can be only one), asamprajnata samadhi, if it is pure subjectivity, is, therefore, penultimate reality, and Nirvana, Moksha, is the end of the process, the end of all process, ultimate reality. This is the “philosophia perennis” of East and West. And pure subjectivity is found to be the same as pure objectivity, and there is what seems to be a radicalized notion of nothingness, pure nothingness, the so-called ‘fecund’ or ‘full’ void, or simply, ‘the void’. I contend, however well this works, that a better term is ‘the Absolute Infinite’, and it is found to be same as the finite, phenomenal world and all the imagination, in other words, Nirvana is found to be the same as Samsara. Pure being is not ultimate reality, I contend, but penultimate reality, whereas the absolute infinite is ultimate reality, which is the beyond of being in a positive sense of “being” so overwhelming, fundamentally overpowering that not even a distinction has yet been drawn, not even unity can emerge, much less any dimensional extension! Whitehead's ultimate reality is creativity itself, novelty, becoming (Whitehead, Process and Reality, Chapter 2, section2 on Creativity, the principle of novelty, and section 4 on the actual entity as the abbreviation of the subject-superject or 'actual entity.')
Once again, Dogen says "without realization, it [the Dharma] is not attained". Realization, however, is not the end in and of itself, once again, it is the means, the "wonderful means". Samadhi is the springboard, I like to say, to Nirvana. One must pass the camel through the eye of the needle, to get to Heaven, so to speak. But Heaven is all around, for we are cosmic, heavenly bodies on heavenly bodies under the influence of larger heavenly bodies. Just because we are ‘down to earth’ doesn’t mean we’re not cosmic. Likewise, just because our world is concrete, this does not mean it isn’t abstract and pure. Everything is pure and abstract. Shutsuro means transcending realization (footnote number 3 on page 9): “As long as one remains within realization after transcending the realm of differentiation, complete liberation is unachieved. Complete liberation requires transcending realization as well as reentering the realm of differentiation in order to work for the salvation of others.” (ibid). “Buddhahood means not abiding in Buddhahood, but rising above the concept and consciousness of Buddha to save others.” (footnote 22, page 12, Bendowa).
At the top of page 19 in Bendowa of Waddell and Abe's translation of Shobogenzo, Dogen tells us "Some among the deva multitude now present in the heavens actually witnessed the ceremony that took place many years ago during the assembly at Vulture Peak, when the Tathagata entrusted his right Dharma eye, his wondrous mind of nirvana, to Mahakashyapa alone.... those deva hosts devote themselves to protecting and maintaining the Buddha Dharma throughout all eternity." "The Buddha transmitted his teaching to Mahakashyapa in the presence of a congregation of humans and devas. For the devas known as trayastrimsa (Japanese, toriten) one year is equal to 500 years in the human realm, making it possible that they are still alive." (Footnote number 44, on page 19.) Dogen refers to these devas again on page 25 in a somewhat utopian political comment: "When the authentic Buddha Dharma spreads and is at work throughout a country, it is under the constant protection of the Buddhas and devas.... Under a benevolent reign, with the country at peace, the influence of the Buddha Dharma is bound to increase." These passages make it sound like some alien species, or other heavenly bodies, from outer or inner space observes us, which is a very curious statement. What is the truth of this mythic understanding? On page 28, Dogen writes: "the spread of Shakyamuni's teaching through the 3,000 world universe took only about 2,000 years. The lands making up this universe are diverse. Not all of them are countries of benevolence and wisdom. Certainly their inhabitants are not all astute and sagacious." (Page 28, Waddell and Abe's translation.) The presence of a deva can be detected by a human whose "Divine Eye" (the 'Divyacaksus', and 'True Dharma Eye') has been opened, so they can see other planes of existence. But Siddhi powers and deva multitudes are distracting. Let me leave you from something towards the end of Bendowa; "If people just practice with right faith, they will achieve the Way..."
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| Message to Thomas McFarlane |
[04 Apr 2008|03:44am] |
I'm contacting you beacuse you're familiar with the paradigmatic elements I've developed into a very interesting system, I call the completed metaphysical system, to give it a grand title. Let's see who it came from: me, foremost, and indeed it is uniques from the other sources; Whitehead, Spencer-Brown (a friend of mine), Merrell-Wolff, and the perennial system... Rene Guenon, particularly from his "Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus"... I use Cantor's "Absolute Infinite"... Anyway:
The Absolute Infinite is Ultimate Reality, and it is pure superjectivity as overwhelming overflowingness (superfluous, etc) although most akin to pure nothingness, the fecund void, and experienced not in thought (Whitehead's negative prehension) but feeling (Peircian firstness, zen reality, Whiteheadian positive prehension) as the originary source of all meaning, value, significance, content, quality, etc, the axiological axiom Profundity, pure and abstact... as a matter of fact, everything is pure and abstract, even the concrete experience of the normative, and this is best put: any and all realities are part of ultimate reality in which all imaginable possibilities are manifest, and certain ones are selected due to genetic and other factors agreed upon by a consense of subjective forms ("spirits")... in other words, the imagination is the greater reality, based upon the "flippety" (GSB's word for the square root of negative one, the unit of change from one to zero, zero to one, in the Boolean algebra, as described at Esalen, see transcript), the Whiteheadian ontological category of becoming (as opposed to being and non-being), i, for all value is imaginary! And all form is merely disguised value, of course, all quantities are qualities (not vice-versa, unless you ant to force the imagination of it, it could probably be done, but normally, I'd say, at the risk of sounding less than strangely correct) just as all concretions are pure and abstract, although their pure and abstract aspects are hidden sometimes. And this "flippety" or "oscillation without duration" ("the first time", all to quote GSB at Esalen), is a flip between the sattes of on and off, one and zero, however you choose to represent it. Well, I find it most conducive to express it as teh oscillation in reference between pure self-reference and pure hetero-reference, or subjectivity and objectivity, which are the two sides of the actual entity in Whitehead for instance, which I define radically:... Pure superjectivity is ultimate reality, the Absolute Infinite, which takes the place of the old zero, the beyond of being, now in a positive sense, for the old being value of one is a negative, the negation of the Absolute Infinite (the unmarked or pure state) which (this one) is none other of the Infinitesimal. The calculus is based on a non-monistic inifnitesimal(s), a plurality or multiplicity of them, but these are second-order reflections of the firts distinction, within the first distinction, selves within pure subjectivity, points of reference within pure reference itself, pure self-reference, this is the Infiniteismal, and this Infiniteismal is One, but the radically One One, the only one, the singularity of the unit, the unicity of unity, the oneness of the one of all ones, if you will, and Levinas, for philo-poetic instance, speaks of the same as "negativity within God", and "the horizon of the Infinite", as if it were the event horizon "protecting" the "universe" of multiplicity and plurality from the singularity, the eventity horizon, if you will. ... The significance of this view is not merely one of correct-sounding nomenclature, but the terms reveal more beyond themselves: the first order fo distinction beyond the first distinction is the first dimension, and another crossing of distinction reveals teh second dimension, planitude, and so on, until we find a statement of our normal dimensional continuum of subjective experience corresponding to Spencer-Brown's mathematical view of reality, that we emerge at the "fifth crosisng of of distinction, counting the firts distinction as the first" (I'm paraphrasing) hence the four-dimensional continuum, as produced in the imaginary coordinate system of abstract agreement among aspects, of well, it's always already God isn't it? Ever-present in this oneness, the negativity within God, the Spirit which animates us, pure subjectivity, the Infinitesimal... and the more mathematically inclined metaphysicians who incorporate this system could revela a lot perhaps by application of the calculus... just a thought... what do you think? It is worth all the technicalities because what is revealed is actually quite elegant, isn't it? What other worth do you see? And hey, thanks for reading! -Randy (in Long Island, New York, representing Ocean Beach, San Diego) Dible
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| Differentity, Differ-Entiation |
[28 Mar 2008|02:06pm] |
Lily is a year old, a year and a month, and almost a week on top of that. Luka is due in July, July 16th. Rebecca is enjoying being pregnant again and watching Lily while I'm at work (for instance, right now), or when I'm at school. I'm going to Stony Brook, and allow me to break that down:
4 classes, all philosophy. One is my favorite yet, and it's with my favorite professor, David Dilworth. He's the most senior member of the faculty, director of undergraduate studies, and the only one there who is established in the reality of the Eastern-philosophy metaphysical system. There's one other professor who comes close, being interested in the work of the early American transcendentalists/ pragmatists, and Schopenhauer, who represents the view of the East in his area, but these thinkers are not the same as the Knowers of that metaphysical system. Most of the faculty here are world-class in continential philosophy, which is interesting to me, especially the postmodernists like Derrida and Deleuze, and from other fields, Luhmann and Gunther. Of course, I can enjoy learning about the views of the popular guys from Plato to Descartes, etc, but I really wish to be exposed to the Eastern view more. ... I just had my logic midterm and philosophy of mathematics midterm. I can't wait to find out how I'm really doing, I'm actually pretty curious. I used to be able to tell that sort of thing as I go along, but not yet this semester. Well, I know Dilworth's course of metaphysics is going, I am getting an A, and that's becsue I love every part of it. Allow me to break that down for you:
It's a 3 part course; the first is a reading of C. S. Peirce's Collected Writings, which is totally awesome! I wrote a good paper of that, actually, on a certain chapter on Peirce's phenomenology. The second part is one Zen Buddhism, and from that we read the writings of Master Lin Chi, and I'm now reading Dogen's Shobogenzo, probably gonna do my paper on Uji, Being-time (the time being), but I haven't finnished it yet. And the last part will be on a book by a graduate student there, Corrigan, called "An Introduction to Awareness", which David Dilworth says is "straight out of Hinduism". And this guy, James Corrigan, went into philosophy from a successful background in computer software, with a strong interest in metaphysics, aligned with my interests in Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form and other new age interpretations of science and mathematics. Very excited! ... I'm not done, and I'll finish later.
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| Luka! |
[05 Mar 2008|09:02am] |
It's a boy!
Luka Thompson Dible! Due July 16th!
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