[MD] The Edge 2006 Annual Question

[Ham Priday]

Scott, Arlo, David, and all --

David has been quoting statements I've made to Arlo and Scott in past
discussions.  I'd like to put them back in context, along with a more recent
comment from Scott, so they'll possibly make more sense to others who may be
following this thread.

On 2/7 I asked Scott to define his fundamental reality.  This is what he
replied on 2/8:

> There is no distinct "fundamental" reality.
> There is no "source" distinct from what is.

Now, this sounded to me like classic nihilism, and I told him so.  But then,
in a note to Arlo on 2/10, and almost lost in a flurry of comments loaded
with such terms as "hardening", "monomythism", and "tetralemma", Scott makes
a pitch for contradictory identity (CI):

Scott:
> Another way to avoid hardening is to have metaphors
> that don't harden. That's why I preach the logic of
> contradictory identity (LCI), and the Buddhist
> tetralemma the LCI is based on. One can also find it in
> Coleridge's 'polarity' and Derrida's 'differance'.

I don't know what the 'L' stands for (Logic, maybe?), but it would seem that
if one believes in a "contradictory identity", he has at least affirmed his
belief in an 'identity' of some kind.  Isn't this identity the "it" we are
attempting to define?  At the risk of being a nominalist, I'll now ask Scott
why this isn't his fundamental reality.  I think there is some commonality
in the Buddhist 'tetralemma', Coleridge's 'polarity', and Derrida's
'differance' with Cusa's coincidental 'Not-other'.

Cusa's 'first principle" is that which "cannot be other either than an other
or than nothing and likewise is not opposed to anything."  God is "not
other", he theorized, because God is not other than any [particular] other,
even though "not-other" and "other" are opposed.  But no other can be
opposed to God from whom it is derived.  Cusa argued that, although the
primary source (Reality of God) is indefinable, it can be stated that the
world (differentiated existence) is not God but is not anything 'other' than
God.  In other words, the Creator or source is the only entity of which it
can be logically said that it is 'not-other' with respect to anything else.

Now, Scott will find this objectionable for two reasons: it mentions God,
and it suggests that opposition is "derived" from a higher source.  But,
leaving that aside for the moment, Cusa went on to postulate that if the
possibility of contradictory otherness is always present (in the source) and
becomes actualized when there is an awareness to experience it, then it this
actualization that we call existence.  Scott, if this isn't the logic of
'contradictory identity' that you are preaching, please tell me why.

I suggested this to you back on 2/2:

> What you are proposing is a unitary subjective reality
> whose finite differentiation is caused by nothingness.
> That's also the ontology I've laid out in my thesis.

But you rejected it on 2/3:

> No, I am not proposing a "unitary subjective reality whose
> finite differentiation is caused by nothingness". I deny that
> there is a "subjective reality". Rather I say that subject and
> object are a contradictory identity. I deny that differentiation
> is caused by nothingness. Rather I say that nothingness
> (no-thingness) and differentiation (thingness, for example)
> are a contradictory identity.

Subject and object are, of course, contradictory, as are being and
nothingness.  But these are the contradictions of existential experience,
which (as we know) is not fundamental reality.  I submit that if
contradiction has a non-contradictory identity, that identity is the Source,
by whatever name you choose to call it.  Cusa called it God; Pirsig called
it Dynamic Quality; you call it Contradictory Identity; I call it Essence.

Aside from your rejection of nothingness as the differentiating factor,
Scott, are we really so far apart in our ontologies?

Regards,
Ham