ScottRoberts wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 11:54 pm
doesn't BK reject a metaconscious MAL? Unless he has changed his position. Last I heard he equates MAL with Schopenhauer's blind will.
Yes you are right! I even wrote it myself not so long ago. I guess it’s a case of wish that overpowers remembrance
Scott wrote:As for triangles, I can accept that "re-create" is not the best term. Re-imagine? I am thinking of the moment when one thinks "triangle". Yes, one is involving one's thinking with the eternal, single concept of triangle, but putting the three sides together is an act of imagination.
Beyond vocabulary, I would suggest a slight rephrasing: "I am thinking of the moment when I think "triangle". Yes, I am involving my thinking with the eternal, single concept of triangle,
and putting the three sides together is an act of imagination."
The way I see it, these two acts are the same thing. If we zoom out of physical existence for a moment, and focus on the imaginative creation (let’s say that) of the triangle, we have to say: within reality, there only exists ideational
activity, that is, dynamic, willed. The activity is willed by “whatever is responsible for our and our environment's existence”, by God and God’s ideational organization (=reality), of which I am necessarily a part, since I exist. I am an integral part of this organized ideational activity, including now, as the creator of the triangle.
So, yes there is our intentional creativity, but the substance, the structure (concept), the process that allow for the finished product-triangle have to flow in from somewhere. Just because the triangle is ideational and not a piece of matter, doesn’t mean it pops up out of nothing, as non-referential creation. Otherwise we can just as well say that the whole of reality is
nothing, since it’s all ideational. But obviously ideal substances and activities
are something, and no part of reality is non-referential.
Scott wrote:However, I can't say that I can agree with calling the triangle concept a "being", in the sense that we are beings. Does it think? will? Feel?
Yes it's a being/a concerted interplay of beings. Not in the sense that we are beings, since we have a gross material layer, but in the sense that you have described in your essay, speaking of God and His activity. The difficulty arises if we think of things or triangles as “thoughts of God” sort of like secretions, expelled units that are not living by themselves, that God has to “maintain in existence” from an
external position. But if we recall ideas like concentricity, articulated interplay, and extend God’s living (willing thinking feeling) quality to the whole of reality, then, I believe, we come to a more helpful image.