[MD] Food for Thought

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA --


[Ham, previously to Platt]:
> You can choose your metaphysics based on personal
> "satisfaction" or what seems most plausible.  I lean
> towards plausibility.  But I don't deny the satisfaction.

SA:
> Here, Ham, you're just stating how you lean
> towards plausibility, not satisfaction.  Yet, what of
> the everyday experience, the non-Plato's cave and
> Essence that is not part of this world, yet, we
> discuss it, thus, we make it part of this world via
> discussion, or else our discussion is not part of this
> world, I don't know. ... Yet, you mention
> plausible.  How do you argue plausibility?  Don't get
> frustrated if I may have not made myself clear,
> especially the 'I don't know' that I mention and
> experience here, but my point is valid.

Very little of our discussion is not part of this world.  Too little in my
view.  The MoQ is entirely a description "of this world".  As I've stated
before, a philosopher has to get beyond otherness in order to reveal what is
essential.  The "finitude in flux" that we call existence is an intellectual
construction fabricated from the value of Essence that we sense
differentially.  Existence is a reduction of Essence -- a negation of the
Whole -- which creates the self/other dichotomy as well as the value that
holds it together.

SA:
> Of course, and yet my point was you somehow know
> everything about essence, talk about essence, but your
> not essence.

I don't presume to "know" anything, let alone everything.  I only offer an
alternative perspective based on my own hypothesis which, I think, can
resolve some of the fuzzy issues discussed in this forum.

[Ham, previously]:
> We only observe flux (being in transition) -- right.
> That is the mode of human experience.

SA:
> ok, yet, you observe only flux in essence, then,
> right?  You use word ONLY.

There is no flux in Essence, so how can I observe it?  An hypothesis is a
concept, not an observation.  None of us needs to describe existence; we
already know what it is.  On the other hand, we don't know what the primary
source of existence is.  We can only arrive at an explanation intuitionally.
That, my friend (and not pontification) is what I'm trying to do.

[Ham, previously]:
> Essence always has to have been that way, with no
> beginning ...
>
> Any "thing", any "change", represents a reduction
> [negation] of the Absolute.

SA:
> ok, and I figure what you mean by us only
> observing flux is a jump to noticing an absolute that
> has no flux, and this no flux dominates and is better
> than flux since it is the source of flux.  Why do you
> choose 'no-flux' to be dominating 'flux' and even
> giving 'flux' existence?

Why do you assume the flux has no cause or source?  Physics teaches us that
every action has a cause and an effect.  Are you denying that existence
itself is exempt from this law?  What creates existence?  What creates you?
Is it just "poof!"...and existence appears?

SA:
> How does nothing do something, as in separate?

WE do the separating; Essence makes Difference possible.

SA:
> Where is this nothingness 'outside' of essence.

There is nothing outside of Essence.  Nothingness is the denial of Essence
that there is an other.  It is this nothingness which divides the subject
from its object, creating the appearance of otherness -- existence in
transition.  But its source -- Essence -- does not change or separate;
Essence is the not-other. That's what Cusa, Hegel, Avital, and I mean by
"negation".

> Essence can't change, yet, suddenly negation happens,
> nothing appears, negates more and more, and then a
> beginning, yet, essence didn't change.

I'll say this once more for the last time -- "suddenly", "beginnings", and
"endings" are intellectualized states or conditions of existents as they
appear to us.  Essence is not an existent, hence these terms have no
relevance to the absolute source.  Negation does not occur at a "beginning";
it is a constant principle of the immutable source.  From the existential
perspective, creation is always happening.

> This nothing is doing so much, comes from somewhere
> outside of essence or did essence 'choose' to negate?

What is "choice" on the part of a perfect source?  Choices are options open
only to imperfect, created beings.  Yes, one could say that man was created
by Essence to sense value and make free choices.  That, for me, is the
purpose of life.  But it is not for man to extrapolate into the "perfection"
of Essence.  Such metaphysical truths are not accessible to man.  If they
could be known, they would violate the principle of individual freedom.

> And so I say, not this and not that, and mu.  I know
> what you say though must be it, and that's the
> difficulty.  It's what you say with an affirmative
> knowledge stating:  know this and you will understand.
>  I say don't have to no anything.  I don't need to say
> anything to you.  I don't even have to be here and
> yet, you will live this and eventually die this.  It
> is quietness that I don't speak.

I'm mystified by what you call my "affirmative knowledge" and what you mean
by "quietness that I don't speak".  If stating my personal convictions is an
offense to you, I'm sorry.  But isn't this what a philosophy forum is for?

[Ham, previously]:
> Essence is the not-other: it has no nothingness
> because it has [is] the power to negate it.

SA:
> Essence negates.  Negates what?  I thought
> essence is everything?  And doesn't even change.  When
> essence negates, is essence losing something.  If it
> loses nothing, then nothing can't do a thing, not even
> separate.

Essence negates nothingness (i.e., not-Essence).  It's the only "thing" that
Absolute can negate without reducing itself or "losing something".
Nothingness is the "not-" of Essence.  It is not a void in Essence but a
"hole in being", as Sartre suggested.  The unreality it causes is the
subject/other dichotomy.  If you can't accept nothingness as an active
agent, then consider it responsible for reducing the One to "the many" in
our subjective experience of an objective world.  I've used the analogy of a
prism to illustrate how the negate (awareness) differentiates value in
sensory experience, just as the glass prism refracts white light into its
many colors.  These relative values, having been separated by nothingness,
are what we use to objectify "things" and their properties in the world of
experience.

[Ham to Platt, in response to his opinion that the MOQ was "more
descriptive" and "satisfying"]:

> Descriptive, yes.  Satisfying, perhaps.
> Metaphysically plausible, no.
> My bet is on a transcendent primary source from
> which all otherness is negated.

SA:
> Plausible again pops up.  You decided
> plausibility here due to your knowing everything about
> essence, yet, I thought nobody knows everything about
> essence.  If it is the latter, then I get it for I'm a
> tiny skull getting nothing of it... so, mu, mu, mu,
> all the way home.

I should be flattered that you think I know everything.  Truth is, I'm
discouraged that your rebuttal never changes.  You keep coming back with the
same questions, which shows that nothing I've explained has sunk in.  Have
you ever considered that your mental block concerning metaphysics may be the
result of excess communing with Nature?  Perhaps the "world is too much with
you."

Anyway, Cheers and Happy New Year!

Ham