[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

SA --

I'm must confess complete ignorance of the MD's archiving procedures and
only came upon the 'opensubscriber' listing by accident.  Why don't you ask
Horse about it?  Thanks for re-posting yesterday's message.  (I'm still
mystified by why I didn't receive it while the subscriber list did.)  If its
OK by you, I'll try to tackle your latest questions here, holding the
previous ones in abeyance for a later time.  These seem more relevant, and
also overlap the earlier post in which I noted a certain tendency to wax
poetic ;-).

> I understand what you are saying.  I guess my
> conundrum is still even if I use your model like this.
> The crack occurs.  Essence stays infinite.  To
> Essence the crack is not present.  Yet, Essence had to
> crack.  How does something happen outside of the
> control or realm of Essence noticing that Essence is
> All that can be?
> The only way I saw out of this is to look at the
> definition of what Essence is and what Nothingness is,
> which was in the posting I resent.  Essence has no
> distinctions.  Nothingness has no distinctions.

That is an astute observation which has also occurred to me recently.  In a
parenthetical note in my Creation hypothesis I say: "It is worthy of note,
and not coincidental, that these holistic attributes [uniform, unchanging
and limitless] also apply to nothingness-the negate."  Yes, Essence and
Nothingness have this "lack of distinctions" in common.  It's the reason
that several here (and I'll not name them) have concluded that Essence is an
"idol", a fantasy of the imagination that is superfluous to metaphysics.
But I think you're on to something, and I intend to take this up with
Professor Miller when he gets back to me.

If Essence and Nothingness are both absolute as well as mutually exclusive
of each other, isn't this metaphysically significant?  It's almost as if
they pop out as the fundamentals (or, as Pirsig likes to say, "building
blocks") of existence.  Existence is a reality carved out by nothingness;
it's the ground of our being.  If we could negate nothingness, we'd be right
back to the "absolutely converged" Essence.  But we don't because we can't:
we negate "beingness" instead.  (Do you understand why I say all creation is
negation?  It's a difficult concept to explain.)  I had a go-around on this
issue with Reinier (a Dutchman) shortly before you signed up here.  He, too,
was a "thinker", as demonstrated by his second message to me:

> If space exists it's either an entity or an attribute
> (excuse the lingo, English is a foreign language to me).
> Suppose it's an entity, eg. it exists independent of other
> things, then why would it limit itself to our expanding
> universe? Or why did it not exist before the big bang?
> From those questions [I'm] more likely to consider space
> as an attribute of matter, substance. There has never
> been a direct experience of space. We experience space
> because we experience substance in dimensions. So let's
> say space is an attribute of substance. Then what's
> between the substance? Given the fact that the actual
> substance as a percentage of what we see becomes
> smaller and smaller (a molecule is mostly empty,
> as is an atom), then space being an attribute of
> substance isn't very likely.

Reinier also said this.  (Bear in mind that his "space" is the "nothingness"
we're discussing.)
> I think we experience space because we experience
> substance. In an empty universe there would be no
> space to experience. ...
> You need to be able to be aware of 'not the object'
> to be aware of 'the object'.  An experience of 'A' will
> always be accompanied by the experience of a possible
> 'not A'. This implies you need a limitation in either time
> or space of the experience. This implies you need a
> concept called time and space, but this makes space,
> in my opinion, not equal to nothingness.

Reiner was firm in his conviction that reality is always in opposition:
Every actual thing presupposes a possible not-thing.  He would not buy the
Cusan principle of a not-other that is ultimately the coincidence of
opposition.  (I don't know why he left us; he would have enjoyed this
discussion immensly.)

Now, to your comments:
> Only when being begins does nothingness have
> distinctions to be aware of.  Meanwhile Essence stays
> (always according to your thesis) with no distinctions.
> Since Essence and Nothingness share a similar definition,
> then something is similar about them.  Before being
> occurs, Essence and Nothingness are the same, but
> after being, nothingness still has no distinctions,
> yet, what nothingness is aware of is distinctions.
> Essence is never aware of distinctions.  Would this
> work?

I could never equate Essence with nothingness, despite their common lack of
attributes.  Essence is absolute fullness; nothingness is absolute
emptiness.  (Now I suppose you'll ask, fullness of WHAT?  To which I would
have to answer, fullness of what nothingness is empty of.)  What they do
have in common is absoluteness.  One might also say that nothingness is the
only aspect of existence that does not exist.  That's why I say that
nothingness is an illusion of the finite mind or intellect.

If nothingness isn't negated, my question back to you is: What does Essence
negate to create existence?   I had at one time considered Value; but value
requires the evaluation by a subject of its object, i.e., a uniquely human
sensibility.

Anyway, think that over, SA.  When we come to a hurdle like this, I know
we're making progress.  As my son would say, "this is getting intense".

--Ham