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I recently employed your essay on mumorphism in a discussion on another forum. Here is some of the reply I received:
neoplatonist1 wrote:However, mumorphism presents formlessness as pure Act, while form is pure Potential, and both require self-awareness. However, this cannot be, for God is all He can be, and thus, as per Aquinas and Cusa, God cannot contain any potential, or, rather, God is potential-itself, which precedes the potential-to-become necessarily created by God prior to His creation of all actual entities which become, since nothing can become which did not have the potential to become. God is therefore purely actual, and His unity, equality, and connection are all actual. Furthermore, being all actual, they are all self-aware as Persons, such that that awareness does not exist as a single Person in the Trinity, but rather is unified, equalized, and connects each Person to each other.
Yet, this does not destroy mumorphism, rather only amends it, such that formlessness (unity) and form (equality) require that which connects them together, namely love (connection), for without connection formlessness and form would exist separately, which is impossible.
Thus, efficient cause (formlessness, energy, substance, unity) and formal cause (form, equality) combine through love (connection), to form the most perfect mumorphic Trinity.
In turn, actually created things are unified, equalized, and connected by God and in God, posterior to the potential-to-become, which is the nature of what Aristotle termed "prime matter". Thus, we see in each created thing efficient cause (unity), formal cause (equality), final cause (connection), and material cause (potential-to-become).
I am just wondering what your thoughts and/or responses are. I am also linking the discussion thread below. Thanks!
neoplatonist1 wrote:However, mumorphism presents formlessness as pure Act, while form is pure Potential, and both require self-awareness. However, this cannot be, for God is all He can be, and thus, as per Aquinas and Cusa, God cannot contain any potential, or, rather, God is potential-itself, which precedes the potential-to-become necessarily created by God prior to His creation of all actual entities which become, since nothing can become which did not have the potential to become. God is therefore purely actual, and His unity, equality, and connection are all actual. Furthermore, being all actual, they are all self-aware as Persons, such that that awareness does not exist as a single Person in the Trinity, but rather is unified, equalized, and connects each Person to each other.
Yet, this does not destroy mumorphism, rather only amends it, such that formlessness (unity) and form (equality) require that which connects them together, namely love (connection), for without connection formlessness and form would exist separately, which is impossible.
Thus, efficient cause (formlessness, energy, substance, unity) and formal cause (form, equality) combine through love (connection), to form the most perfect mumorphic Trinity.
In turn, actually created things are unified, equalized, and connected by God and in God, posterior to the potential-to-become, which is the nature of what Aristotle termed "prime matter". Thus, we see in each created thing efficient cause (unity), formal cause (equality), final cause (connection), and material cause (potential-to-become).
I am just wondering what your thoughts and/or responses are.
Some remarks:
I think the first thing to say is that while it makes sense to say that formlessness in itself can be called "pure act", the problem is that formlessness is never "in itself". It is always energizing form. So while one can form the concept of "pure act" nothing ever is "pure act". Therefore, as I see it, it is incorrect to say that God is Pure Act.
Similarly, there is no "pure potential". In the essay, I reversed Aristotle's assignment of actuality to form and potential to prime matter to say that a form is potentially a thing and is made into a thing by the actualizing power of formlessness. But, again, this is a way to conceptualize the relation, but it is never the case that a form has not been actualized. In fact, my inclination is to simply remove the word 'potential' from any ontological account. The word is obviously useful in saying, say, that an acorn has the potential to become an oak, but its original introduction into metaphysics by Aristotle as "potential being" to account for the existence of change is, I think, unneeded, once one grasps that change does not need to be accounted for. Change, as a node in the triunity which is conscious activity, is fundamental.
I can't see how the word 'equality' serves as an alternative for 'form'. The polar opposite to "unity" is "multiplicity", or in verb form, one opposes "unifying" with "differentiating". I'm not sure what the word 'equality' does that is not just the law of identity.
neoplatonist1 says "Furthermore, being all actual, they are all self-aware as Persons, such that that awareness does not exist as a single Person in the Trinity, but rather is unified, equalized, and connects each Person to each other." This seems to me to be a misconception of what a triunity is. I added 'self-awareness' to formlessness and form because one can conceptualize the interplay of formlessness and form without there being awareness. There has always, and probably always will be, a problem in naming the three whatevers of a triunity ('modes', 'aspects', 'nodes', 'persons', etc.) but whatever they are, they are not three distinct beings which might or not be "aware". That would be tritheism. Hence one can expand the original Heart Sutra formula, and say "formlessness is not other than form and self-awareness", "form is not other than formlessness and self-awareness", and "self-awareness is not other than formlessness and form" to emphasize this.
I am also linking the discussion thread below. Thanks!
Thanks for the response. Makes sense to me. I'm just going to post a link to your response here and maybe he registers here to continue the discussion. He proceeds in good faith as far as I can tell so he would likely make a good addition here.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Embracing an ontology involving the Totality (God + universe) forever changing (as per Heraclitus) is essentially Nietzschean: all is Becoming, there is no Being. The deadly practical social implications of such a philosophy aside, such is metaphysically problematic because it implies the universe, while it can’t be eternal in the traditional sense of timelessness, but, rather is infinitely old (i.e., a “bad infinity”). The problem with this is that from Time=Now, the universe’s past must be of infinite duration. But, nothing can be larger than infinity, so, if we wait one day, the universe would be infinity-plus-one-day old, which is impossible. Ergo, the universe had a beginning. As that which is eternal does not change and that which changes is not eternal, the changing universe must have an eternal Origin, which is Being.
The Origin, or Being, or, as Cusa terms it in several locations, the Not-Other, is One or unified, and thus is unity. But, unity is equal to itself, so it is equality. And, unity and equality are not other from each other, so they are connected by connection, which flows from them both. All conceptions of the divine Origin must be so, even if that Origin is comprehended only incomprehensibly; that is, we can know only, here, that-it-is such a Trinity or Triunity if you prefer, is thus trine in this way, but, not what-it-is specifically.
I agree that formlessness and form are neither “in itself,” but, rather, wedded akin to Aristotle’s hylomorphism, separable only in abstract. But, I disagree there is no “pure potential.” Preceding all that becomes must be the potential-to-become, which cannot create itself, for all becoming is posterior to the potential-to-become, nor can the potential-to-become be eternal, because potentiality is not actuality and only actuality can cause a potential thing to pass into actuality (i.e., into actually becoming). Thus, the potential-to-become needs creating, which was accomplished by the Origin as referred to above. Ergo, God is purely actual, He is all He can be, for it He contained potential, he would be temporal rather than eternal, which is impossible, for the reason given above.
By saying, “it is never the case that a form has not been actualized,” you appear to hold (interestingly enough!) to Parmenides who said change is unreal. Thus, it appears you hold change and no-change exist simultaneously. Fair enough as a hypothesis. As your claim that the notion of change does not need to be accounted for relies on God Becoming, it does not stand to reason as shown above.
That said, I do not wish to come across as giving your ideas short shrift. In human terms, your description that, “it is never the case that a form has not been actualized” is accurate if we refer to the monado-volumological method of Leibniz and myself, wherein all entities are monads or unities, and created things combine potential-to-become with form to form a different sort of hylomorphic unity than Aristotle describe—a more fundamental hylomorphic unity, as it were. Thus, all things, in this level of understanding, exist whether manifested into the sensorium or not. (There is an exception to this, but it doesn’t bear on the issue at hand, so I will reserve it.)
On equality, I have already shown that it is a necessary aspect of the triune One. As that One precedes all duality, however, there is no “polar opposite” to it in itself, but, only in the created world. Thus, the One is unity, equality, and connection, whereas the created world is multiplicity, inequality, and division. (There is more to it that this, but that is the broad stroke.) Equality is not the law of identity because it is of the One which is indivisible yet triune, as shown. Rather, equality is that which gives form to the substance granted by the unity, which together subsist through connection. All three are necessary to have entity; the law of identity echoes equality, but is other than it, for the following reason:
On adding “ ‘self-awareness’ to formlessness and form because one can conceptualize the interplay of formlessness and form without there being awareness” violates the principle of sufficient reason, for, such an addition of self-awareness is not necessarily intrinsic to the interplay of formlessness and form. However, as I, and, I believe, ashvinp claim (and perhaps you do, too), all entity is necessarily substantially mental, which means a non-self-aware (or just non-aware) Trinity or Triunity would lack substance, and therefore could not be.
I challenge you if by “[the three whatevers of the Triunity] are not three distinct beings which might or not be "aware" ,” you mean they are not persons in any meaningful way. Granted, when I say Persons I mean this only analogously, as God is immune to the categories as such, preceding personhood and nonpersonhood, and, so, God is self-aware only analogously and incomprehensibly. So, I, too, reject tritheism.
Lastly, if "formlessness is not other than form and self-awareness," and "form is not other than formlessness and self-awareness," and, "self-awareness is not other than formlessness and form," then such definitions hinge on the “not other.” As God is not other than Himself—i.e., the Not-Other is not other than the Not-other—He defines Himself and all other things. However, since the other is not other than the other, and man is other, and creative reason can only exist in terms of self-awareness, and created entities are monadic hylomorphs as reference above, your three descriptions are correct, for man.
Embracing an ontology involving the Totality (God + universe) forever changing (as per Heraclitus) is essentially Nietzschean: all is Becoming, there is no Being.
First off, my ontology is only concerned with embracing conscious activity (CA). I do not presuppose that 'God' or 'universe' are meaningful terms. (They can become so, but are not presupposed).
Secondly, I regard Being and Becoming to be a tetralemmic polarity, so I am not privileging one over the other.
The deadly practical social implications of such a philosophy aside, such is metaphysically problematic because it implies the universe, while it can’t be eternal in the traditional sense of timelessness, but, rather is infinitely old (i.e., a “bad infinity”). The problem with this is that from Time=Now, the universe’s past must be of infinite duration. But, nothing can be larger than infinity, so, if we wait one day, the universe would be infinity-plus-one-day old, which is impossible. Ergo, the universe had a beginning. As that which is eternal does not change and that which changes is not eternal, the changing universe must have an eternal Origin, which is Being.
You might want to read my Time essay, in which the alternatives given here are deconstructed. In short, I argue that eternity (meaning timelessness, not time everlasting) and time are a tetralemmic polarity. This universe is indeed a creation, and is being created in our "now". And, for the record, I deny the existence of actual quantitative infinities. God is qualitively infinite in the sense that there is no limit to what can be created (other than "round squares" and such), but that does not mean that all that can be created is created.
The Origin, or Being, or, as Cusa terms it in several locations, the Not-Other, is One or unified, and thus is unity. But, unity is equal to itself, so it is equality. And, unity and equality are not other from each other, so they are connected by connection, which flows from them both.
I'm afraid that this makes no sense to me. Why should I think that the fact that unity is equal to itself somehow generates anything, in particular anything that needs connecting?
All conceptions of the divine Origin must be so,
I have never observed "Being", but I have observed conscious activity, which is observation of beings and events (becomings). Why should I hypostasize beings into Being and not becomings? If one raises just Being into the ontological prime one now has no way to explain the existence of changing multitudes (see below).
even if that Origin is comprehended only incomprehensibly; that is, we can know only, here, that-it-is such a Trinity or Triunity if you prefer, is thus trine in this way, but, not what-it-is specifically.
On the other hand, calling the ontological prime "conscious activity" raises no problems of incomprehensibility with regard to the Origin, requiring the use of analogy.
I agree that formlessness and form are neither “in itself,” but, rather, wedded akin to Aristotle’s hylomorphism, separable only in abstract. But, I disagree there is no “pure potential.” Preceding all that becomes must be the potential-to-become, which cannot create itself, for all becoming is posterior to the potential-to-become, nor can the potential-to-become be eternal, because potentiality is not actuality and only actuality can cause a potential thing to pass into actuality (i.e., into actually becoming). Thus, the potential-to-become needs creating, which was accomplished by the Origin as referred to above. Ergo, God is purely actual, He is all He can be, for it He contained potential, he would be temporal rather than eternal, which is impossible, for the reason given above.
All of this is a manufactured problem stemming from naming the ontological prime "Being". As noted above, one then lacks an explanation for the exitence of beings (and events), and so one has to resort to potentiality. Which, once boiled down merely says "there are beings because there can be beings", which is not an explanation.
By saying, “it is never the case that a form has not been actualized,” you appear to hold (interestingly enough!) to Parmenides who said change is unreal.
No, because forms include change. Events are forms, such as the form: acorn turning into an oak.
Thus, it appears you hold change and no-change exist simultaneously. Fair enough as a hypothesis. As your claim that the notion of change does not need to be accounted for relies on God Becoming, it does not stand to reason as shown above.
Yes, change and no-change are mumorphic, as described in my Time essay (linked above).
On equality, I have already shown that it is a necessary aspect of the triune One.
Not to me, other than its being a tautology (law of identity).
As that One precedes all duality, however, there is no “polar opposite” to it in itself, but, only in the created world.
While I would say that the created world is form which is not other than formlessness.
Thus, the One is unity, equality, and connection, whereas the created world is multiplicity, inequality, and division.
That is dualism. My endeavor is to show that unity and multiplicty are nondual.
On adding “ ‘self-awareness’ to formlessness and form because one can conceptualize the interplay of formlessness and form without there being awareness” violates the principle of sufficient reason, for, such an addition of self-awareness is not necessarily intrinsic to the interplay of formlessness and form. However, as I, and, I believe, ashvinp claim (and perhaps you do, too), all entity is necessarily substantially mental, which means a non-self-aware (or just non-aware) Trinity or Triunity would lack substance, and therefore could not be.
Since the whole argument for the reality of formlessness was based on there being awareness of form, I am not "adding" awareness to the stew in the sense of "oh, now I have to account for awarenss". Rather, in my argumentation I had established the reality of form and formlessness, but if I want a complete statement, I am merely noting that the starting point (that there is awareness of form) needs to be included in that statement. And since awareness is not reducible to either form or formlessness, it must be a third node of a triunity.
I challenge you if by “[the three whatevers of the Triunity] are not three distinct beings which might or not be "aware" ,” you mean they are not persons in any meaningful way. Granted, when I say Persons I mean this only analogously, as God is immune to the categories as such, preceding personhood and nonpersonhood, and, so, God is self-aware only analogously and incomprehensibly. So, I, too, reject tritheism.
Yes, I accept that you reject tritheism. But I see no reason to call the three nodes of the triunity "persons", even if analogously. But then, I have no need to attempt to align my triunity with Christian terminology either. I would just say that a 'person' is partially self-aware localized conscious activity, while God is fully self-aware unlocalized conscious activity. No analogies needed.
Lastly, if "formlessness is not other than form and self-awareness," and "form is not other than formlessness and self-awareness," and, "self-awareness is not other than formlessness and form," then such definitions hinge on the “not other.” As God is not other than Himself—i.e., the Not-Other is not other than the Not-other—He defines Himself and all other things. However, since the other is not other than the other, and man is other, and creative reason can only exist in terms of self-awareness, and created entities are monadic hylomorphs as reference above, your three descriptions are correct, for man.
I would say they are correct for any conscious activity.
Bear with me as I expound on the nature of God, which I will apply to mumorphism at the appropriate time in this post. Also, although I don’t resent your chop-and-reply style, I endeavor to reply to everything as a single flowing post, so my quotations from you will be minimal. So,
I acknowledge that you “regard Being and Becoming to be a tetralemmic polarity, so I am not privileging one over the other.
I agree with you that eternity for the purpose of our discussion refers to “timelessness, not time everlasting,” and, further agree (as an aside) both that God is qualitative infinite (at least) “in the sense that there is no limit to what can be created,” and, that, “[not] all that can be created is [or was] created.”
In God, His unity is equal to itself. That is where equality comes from, from that equality of God is God. Thus there are two “aspects” to God, just as in the human mind the Knower, to attain to knowledge, looks at itself, treating itself as an object of contemplation, called the Known. The Knower knows the Known, which is itself. This is a similitude of God’s unity being equal to itself (i.e., to unity): unity is equal to unity.
On connection, as the unity equals itself, and both the unity (the “Knower”) and its equality (“the Known”) are the same, then they are both connected in that sameness. Unity is not other than God, and equality is not other than God, thus connection flows from both.
Note that unity does not create equality, it begets equality as an unavoidable rational consequence of unity being equal to itself. Similarly, neither unity nor equality beget or create connection, but, rather, connection flows from and connects them both.
In other language, the One (unity) is the One (equality) and both Ones are One (connection).
Strictly speaking, God precedes all duality and the names we give for His qualities are only imperfect names. Thus, when I speak of God as Being, it is analogical, for God precedes both Being and Becoming, just as He precedes being and non-being, largeness and smallness, time and timelessness, and all dualities in His “coincidence of opposites”. That is, He does not combine being and nonbeing, for example, but precedes them in His divine simplicity. And, He precedes the simple and the complex, being a absolute simplicity outside of any duality. So, God is ultimately unintelligible, and we can speak most clearly about Him only in privational or apophatic terms. In this negative theology we come to a better understanding of our ignorance regarding God and therefore incomprehensibly comprehend the incomprehensible.
That said, we strive to give God ever-less-imperfect names, and the better ones are eternity, beauty, goodness, love, light, perfection, magnitude, etc., and the names Origin, the One, the Creator, the Not-Other, etc. I ask you to bear these things in mind that this is how I approach God, when I say that God is Being as distinguished from Becoming. That is, God is the actual-potential in that He is all He can be, His every potential is actualized, and, so, there is no potential in Him that is not actualized.
As that which becomes must have had the potential to become, God must have created the potential-to-become, which is an actual potential, but as potential cannot act and therefore cannot be said to create itself, nor is it eternal on that count, but rather perpetual once created. God as actual-potential is, by another name, then, potential-itself. That is, that which God has, God is, and being purely actual with no unused potential, God therefore is potential-itself (i.e., God does not carry potential with him as if in a suitcase or something, God is potential-itself, which is actualized fully).
I introduce this because of what the potential-to-become is itself made of. Whereas all created things are a hylomorphic combination of form, as Cusa said, “[the] archetypal world in the eternal mind of God,” with prime matter (the perpetual potential-to-become which precedes all that becomes; i.e., precedes all temporal things), the potential-to-become is a hylomorphic combination of form (also from the eternal mind of God) and the potential-itself, which is God.
In other words, the potential-to-become was created by the Logos (or “Word,” “God the Son,” “the Known,” or “equality”) when the potential-to-become emanated from the Trinity into the potential-itself via the Logos. The potential-to-become is thus a form in the eternal mind of God combined incomprehensibly with potential-itself (God) as the potential of every potentially becoming thing.
Cusa: “To the potential-itself nothing can be added, since it is the potential of every potential.” Thus God (form) and God (potential-itself) combine mumorphically to create the potential-to-become.
potential-itself (eternal) -> potential-to-become (perpetual) -> becoming things (temporal).
In this sense then God is incomprehensibly Being (which does not change) from which the Becoming (which changes) is created out of nothing, for prior to the universe there is nothing other than God. Since as per the monadology all monads lack extension and material substance, all of Creation is a zero-dimensional point, and thus requires no “space” to be “put” by God, nor any “matter” (as science understands matter) to be made from, but, rather, the universe, which is other, is created by the Not-Other such that the Not-Other is not other than the universe, even though the universe is other than the Not-Other. Thus, mumorphically (incomprehensibly), the universe is distinct from God, yet (panentheistically) made from God (the form in God’s mind, which is God, combined incomprehensibly with the potential-itself, which is God), in a way that is not pantheistic, for the universe is not God, even though God is “everything in everything” (Dionysius) and if we sublate God, nothing exists.
Now onto the relationship of the above with conscious activity, such as the human mind. Because God precedes duality, He can neither be said to be conscious nor unconscious, he neither has conscious activity nor unconscious activity. Humans being a similitude of God, have a mumorphism about them, but they do have conscious activity, so what applies to God cannot be directly applied to man.
That said, first, I agree with your Time essay that there is an “awareness of change,” and that “minds undergo change”--this is why I hasten to add that God precedes mind and mindlessness and, so, does not undergo change, and that God is aware of change only from the standpoint of eternity and timelessness, such that the entire history of the universe exists unchangingly in His eternity.
Second, I agree with your conclusions regarding your tetralemma regarding time, except, again, it cannot apply to God except analogously, because God precedes change and no-change, time and timelessness. These dualities only apply, here, to the human mind. Because the human mind is made in God’s image, this is why man’s mental mumorphism can exist: mumorphic mind is analogous to the incomprehensible and unintelligible nature of God.
Third, because of this, man’s mind is ultimately unfathomable. In Cusa’s terms from On Learned Ignorance (Book 1), God is the Absolute Maximum, and the universe is the “contracted Maximum,” while man is the Minimum. Man’s mind reflects the entire universe in time, analogous to how God’s mind reflects the entire universe in eternity. Again, both God as Mind and man’s mind are both unfathomable and unintelligible.
Fourth, as a fellow idealist I agree with you that time is an “area” not a “point,” and nothing is outside experience.
Fifth, on past and future, I term the past a “scar” on the present, and the future as a “dream” of the present, but, strictly speaking, there is only the “present moment” (what Lyndon LaRouche termed the “simultaneity of eternity” for all “present moments” enfold into eternity just as they have unfolded from eternity).
Sixth, to this: if I understand this rightly, “Pre-cognitive time is real, in that awareness is real, and awareness is mumorphic -- the tetralemmic polarity of time and timelessness. Cognitive time is real in that all cognitions are real. But this does imply that cognitive time is malleable. If all our present moments were to somehow include different memories, and reading different texts, history would be different. That is, cognitive time is not absolute, rather it is fully dependent on the contents of our present moments. But it is real, in that it conditions our present moments to include expectations in our present moments,” I would suggest that a clearer name for pre-cognitive time would be “SOE time” (“simultaneity-of-eternity time”) and for cognitive time would be “C time” (“constructed time”). But, this is just a suggestion.
Seventh, you say, “While I would say that the created world is form which is not other than formlessness,” and I would add, “in terms of the human mind’s experience of the created world.” That is without arguing about the objective world (if there is such a thing), but, just speaking to the subjective world of a given human mind.
Eighth, you say, “My endeavor is to show that unity and multiplicity are nondual,” to which I respond, yes, in God as preceding both unity and multiplicity incomprehensibly, and also in the human mind in terms of its faculty of creative reason (i.e., the aspect of the mind by which we can truthfully say man is made “in the image of God”).
Ninth, “Since the whole argument for the reality of formlessness was based on there being awareness of form, I am not “adding” awareness to the stew in the sense of “oh, now I have to account for awareness”. Rather, in my argumentation I had established the reality of form and formlessness, but if I want a complete statement, I am merely noting that the starting point (that there is an awareness of form) needs to be included in that statement. And since awareness is not reducible to either form or formlessness, it must be a third node of a triunity.” I agree entirely, with the caveat that this describes the human mind at its highest incomprehensible level as made in the image of God’s mind, in His divine simplicity that precedes form and formlessness, rather than describing God Himself, Who is incomprehensible. Your “triunity” is thus analogous to unity (formlessness or substance), equality (form that makes a thing equal to itself), and connection (awareness which connects them both). If we agree on this, I believe we largely understand each other, here.
Tenth, for the purpose of this discussion I will not press the issue of whether or not the “three nodes of the triunity” are “ “persons”, even if analogously.” However, because God precedes awareness and non-awareness, we do need to resort to analogy when we say something like “God is aware of form and formlessness” which is strictly speaking untrue for God, even though it is true for us. I would apply this also to the statement “God is fully self-aware unlocalized conscious activity,” whereas a person (i.e., man) is literally “partially self-aware localized conscious activity” provided we admit that man is (1) made in the image of God, and (2) reflects the entire universe within himself, such that he is, in that sense, a localized locationless being, located only in himself and in God.
Eleventh, you say, "I would say that [the three equations of formlessness, form, and awareness as being not other than each other] are correct for any conscious activity." I entirely agree, provided we exclude God, who is only analogously conscious and incomprehensibly so.
Finally, about the human mind: I propose the concept of Quality (courtesy of Pirsig), which precedes all division into subjective-objective, but, instead, is the undifferentiated combination of conscious, preconscious, and subconscious qualities of the mind, and also the undifferentiated combination of all sensation, conception, emotion, and action, such that both sets are combined undifferentiatedly. The three degrees of Quality are its inclination towards conscious experience (i.e., consciousness of Quality) which is akin to having a deeply entranced “music bath,” towards preconscious experience (i.e., preconsciousness, (“tip of the tongue”) of Quality) which is akin to a nocturnal dream, and an inclination towards subconscious experience (i.e., almost-subconsciousness of Quality) which is akin to a dreamless slumber.
I submit this as a way of better understanding mumorphism in phenomenological or experiential terms: the experience of undifferentiated Quality is penultimate to mumorphic experience, which itself is strictly and necessarily unintelligible and incomprehensible, as an image or similtude of the divine simplicity which itself is analogously mumorphic and beyond all duality and tetrality (i.e., dilemmas and tetralemmas).
That’s about all I have to respond to your post. This appears to be a fruitful discussion. Thank you for your ongoing engagement! I look forward to your reply.
It seems our differences stem from differing starting points. My endeavor is to work out an empirically-based metaphysics. I start with the fact that there is conscious activity (thinking, feeling, sensing, dreaming, etc.). I then make the idealist assumption that there is no non-conscious activity (for reasons that it is not necessary to go into in this discussion). So the first problem is that it appears that we are using 'conscious' in different ways.
For me, 'conscious' is used in its utmost generality: we are conscious, animals are conscious, plants are conscious, and perhaps so are atoms (they might instead be products of consciousness, in the way that a thought like "2+2=4" is a product of consciousness but is not itself conscious -- such thoughts, and maybe atoms, are nevertheless "within" consciousness).
With this meaning of consciousness, since God is active (creates), then God's activity is conscious activity. As opposed to what the materialist assumes is non-conscious, or mindless activity, like water flowing down a river. In other words, given the idealist assumption, there simply is no "preconscious" activity, and what we call "subconscious" is conscious activity where we are not cognizant of it as such.
But hold on, as the reality of God has not been established. All one can say from the fact that there is conscious activity (CA) and the assumption that there is no non-conscious activity is that there is more CA going on than occurs in us and other physically embodied beings, for example, the CA which is the cause of our seeing flowing rivers. Now the Scholastics have their arguments that, ultimately, that cause is God, and give various characterizations of God (e.g., as Love, Intellect, Creator, Unchanging, and Simple). I agree with some of this argumentation, but not all. In particular, I reject the argument that God must be unchanging. I gave my reason for that in my last post (that the supposition that change required explanation does not hold). I note that you did not respond to that reason, rather you have just assumed that the argument for an unchanging God is valid, and reasoned from that. Which means that if we want to align our respective views we would need to go through that argumentation. But in the end, I think it would just reveal that we start from different assumptions.
On a pragmatic level, I would say my way is preferable. It does not go beyond the empirical, and it avoids what I call the manufactured problem resulting from arbitrarily (as I see it) privileging the unchanging over the changing. It also shows (once one has followed the logic to accept mumorphism) that all this talk about the "inconceivability" of God, and that God "precedes" this and that is uncalled for. I regard it as avoiding the question of how the poles of a polarity relate (by accepting the fourth horn of the tetralemma: "neither X nor not-X"), rather than facing the question. Of course, the CA that can create a physical universe is undoubtedly vastly more awesome than our own, and we cannot conceive what such CA is "like", much as our CA is very "unlike" that of an earthworm, yet it is still CA.
A note on the "unity/equality/connected" business. Why not just use the "knower/known/knowing is one" similitude instead? That makes sense to me, while the other doesn't. A peach is a unity that is equal to itself. To which one's response, or so it seems to me, is "so what?"
I see what you are saying. Your essay on divine and local simplicity and the question of will I found most interesting. To address your points:
First, we use the word "conscious" in different ways. I treat consciousness as a quality of the mind (monad), the field of words and concepts. Preconsciousness, I treat as a quality of the mind, a field associated with emotion and preverbal thoughts which I call wairds. Subconsciousness, I treat as a quality of the mind, a field associated with the will. I say “quality” because monads lack parts, so we could think of this as flushes of color rather than discrete strata.
Second, we disagree on the existence and nature of God. I could make an argument that what changes is not eternal, and what is eternal does not change. The universe changes, ergo it is not eternal. Since it is not eternal, it requires an explanation for its existence, where did it come from? The only answer is, something eternal. Since this eternity created the universe, I term it the Creator.
Third, we disagree on the usage or utility of word "preconscious". I have already outlined what I mean by it, and its utility should be obvious: it better defines the makeup of the mind such that we can, for example, trace the progress of a valid, creative hypothesis from the subconscious (will), to the preconscious (emotion powering the development of the hypothesis) to the conscious (the arrival of a newly-discovered thought-object or principle proven by a successful proof-of-principle experiment).
Fourth, we disagree on whether or not the unity/equality/connection trinity is relevant or useful, and you hold to pragmatism rather than the delectable fullness of expandedness, which is why I pursue such an explanation. “Pragmatism” is like having engineering without science; one never knows the relevance or usefulness coming out of scientific play.
Fifth, we disagree on the nature of the "self" as related to God. It appears, if both God’s mind, and man’s mind, are mumorphic, then they are in principle indistinguishable in their essential mumorphism. Under the principle of identity of indiscernibles, then, two things that are in principle indistinguishable in essence, are the same thing, which means that any difference between them is, in Aristotelian-Thomistic terms, accidental rather than essential.
Sixth, I skipped directly answering your supposition that change required explanation does not hold. I have addressed this in the Second, above. Change requires an explanation because that which changes cannot be eternal, etc. The only seeming way out of this trap is to assert that change is an illusion, but, even if it’s an illusion, it’s a changing illusion and so this does not solve our problem. The changing illusion itself requires an explanation, of something eternal that does not change which is its source.
Seventh, you hold that I am (as you see it) arbitrarily privileging the unchanging over the changing. Yes, I am, and it’s not arbitrary, for the reasons given in Second and Sixth.
Eighth, you assert I am avoiding the question of how the poles of a polarity relate (by accepting the fourth horn of the tetralemma: “neither X nor not-X”, rather than facing the question. I’m not sure I understand your objection, but, will try to answer what I think you mean; if I’m misunderstanding you, please correct me. So, we can see the “that-it-is” of murmorphism, but, not the “what-it-is” of mumorphism, or, closer to your terminology, the “what-it-is-like” of mumorphism. And, this is necessarily so.
The question then appears to orbit whether or not man is God, albeit a limited manifestation of God, or God a magnified manifestation of man. That is, is God simply different from man in degree rather than in kind? To this I say, no, God is not merely different in degree, He is different in kind, for the following reason. God’s nature is, in principle and in fact, ultimately incomprehensible and unintelligible to man’s intellect, yes. Man can only know intelligible notions like the species of triangle, the principle of least-action, etc. However, man’s mind is itself, in principle and in fact, ultimately incomprehensible and unintelligible to man’s own intellect.
The problem here, is one of God’s limits. If God is the Absolute Maximum (God) to man’s Minimum, and if man is made in the (cognitive) image of God, then, if we say the mumorphism of man’s mind equates to the mumorphism of God’s mind, then we must admit that God understand neither man’s mind nor His own, because mumorphic minds are incomprehensible and unintelligible in principle for man’s mind, and God’s mind is merely different (and more powerful) than man’s mind by a matter of degree, not of kind.
A God who cannot understand His own mind, cannot Know, and, therefore, cannot have a Known, and, so, cannot be a Knower. God would simply “be;” all we could say is that He simply “is” and He incomprehensibly and unintelligibly “created” the universe, including ourselves in his image. Yet, such an uncomprehending God could not be said to be capable of creating anything, not in the way that human beings define creation in intellectual terms. Instead, God would be begetting the universe automatically, as if He were a biological mother parthenogenetically “giving birth” to something made of the same “stuff” as He. Thus, God would properly be referred to as a She.
This She would be noncognitive, and, so, essentially unreasonable and insane by our standards. This unreasonableness and insanity brings down all hope in the universe, because the Creatrix, while she may have a sort of internal, biological-like logic or rhythmicality to Her processes is, because she is mumorphic, remember, unintelligible and incomprehensible even to Herself, and, so Her actions, which are all-powerful, would be indistinguishable from pure chaos.
But, it gets worse. Chaos is properly defined as broken order. A smashed vase is more chaotic than a whole one. A dead body is more chaotic than a living one, etc. The ultimate chaos would be that which cannot be broken any further, and, if the universe is infinite, the product of an infinite Goddess, no matter how broken it was, it could always be broken further. The only answer is that pure brokenness, pure chaos, would be nothingness itself.
If the fundamental nature of the Goddess is chaos, then, then Her “creativity” would consist of the generation of nothing. Any order would violate Her nature and, so, never arise.
But, it gets even worse. If by some accident Her chaos “broke itself” and she begat a universe, such as our own, remember that we are only a matter of degree different from Her, rather than a matter of kind. Consequently, our own mental processes would be fundamentally chaotic, which by nature would produce only brokenness and nothingness. Because of this, any rational power (as to philosophically speculate, say) would be operating on the basis of nothing but lucky guesses about the fleeting state of a fundamentally chaotic universe, about which no true knowledge can be had.
In conclusion, if we hold to the legitimacy and potency of Reason, we must conclude that the universe’s Creator, Who is also Reasonable, is of a different kind than we are, and, therefore, if our mind is mumorphic, His cannot be, but, rather, is supra-mumorphic in some incomprehensible and unintelligible way. Thus, the mumorphic human mind is a similitude of God’s supra-mumorphic mind, but, one that differs not in degree, but, in kind. QED.
Change requires an explanation because that which changes cannot be eternal,
Where does the "that" come from? How do you know that there are things that change, and not just change that our mind hallucinates as things? Well, one might say there are our minds, but all we observe of our minds is an ever-changing "now". What we can say is that while any particular change requires an explanation, change itself does not, as it is ever-present. And we can say that awareness of change requires a "that" which spans a change (timelessness). But we have no reason to state that one (change or timelessness) pre-exists the other, and if we do we run into unresolvable problems.
