[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

SA and D. Morey --


Although he is opposed to any concept of an essential source, David (whose
last name I carelessly misspelled in my note to you) has been coaching me
from the sidelines and seems interested in joining our discussion.  I think
it could be beneficial, as his inputs can provide the kind of "logical
interference" we both need to avoid getting carried away by our intuition
and arrive at a reasonable hypothesis for Nothingness.  Agreed?


> Ham,
> You said in your last posting:  "Perhaps
> Nothingness is the Essence we can't experience,
> and Beingness is the experienced image of our
> own negated Essence."
>
> This is the line of thinking I am having, as
> mentioned in my last two postings.  Our
> discussion is trying to pin-point what is mentioned
> in my last posting.

Let me copy here what I consider the most significant (tr. "fundamental")
points you made:

> I am saying saying E=O, but only in the sense of how we sense Essence.

Absolutely.  That's why I said: "In the sense that Essence is
incomprehensible, it is the same as nothingness to us."

> This Nothingness that I am able to perceive or
> experience (Nothingness being the absence of events)
> is only a finite experience for me.  Why?  Because I
> don't know what will come into existence from the
> Nothingness that is being.

I would say that experience of the future condition of being is unknown,
hence is a temporal kind of existential "nothingness".  I would add that the
dimensions of both time and space also represent the nothingness of human
experience.

> [T]o try to know what will happen in or out of
> Nothingness, before it happens, is beyond
> comprehension, and is not something I can sense,
> thus, this that is beyond what I can sense
> (remembering I can sense Nothingness) is Essence
> where All is (Essence is what I cannot sense, but
> can as Nothingness).

I followed this up to your final parenthetical statement: "Essence is what I
cannot sense, but
can as Nothingness".  Are you suggesting that we sense Essence as
Nothingness?  That throws me for a loop.  I have problems associating
Nothingness with Value, for one thing; and, while nothingness (as a void) is
intellectually knowable, I don't think we can say it is experienced.

> [T]o put this in a linear context it could be as this:
> Essence (E) to Nothingness (N) to Event (EV)
> [and in the example the EV is black cherry].
>
>  -  Thus, E to N to EV
    -  Yet, this IS NOT this as follows:  Black
cherry is Essence that has transformed into
Nothingness that transforms into what it is - a Black
Cherry.

I think you're only amplifying the "future condition" of being here, which
we agree is part of our experiential nothingness.  (If you have something
else in mind, please explain.)

> from what I've said above, it does fall in line
> with what you said is negation as "the 'carving out'
> or delineation of being from Essence by nothingness."
> Yet, this kind of explanation suggests nothingness
> exists on its' own outside of Essence, which nothing
> can, not even Nothingness.

Ah!  But that's precisely what I DO want to suggest.  The ontological
paradigm of Essentialism is an awareness estranged from its Essence.  Self
and other are absolutely divided.  This is fundamental to man's autonomy and
enables the individual to choose values without bias.

The problem, of course, is that it makes Nothingness the "operative agent"
in the life experience.  But an "Essential" Nothingness could account for
awareness, as well as the dynamics of our existential reality.
Metaphysically, this would seem more logical.

> I would say finitude is a carving up of Essence,
> but how this happens is put into question at the
> end of this posting. ...
> We do have a way of only seeing part of what is
> going on, or we could delve into experiencing
> everything that is going on - yet this latter would
> be a collage of events that would only come through
> to us as Nothingness or Silence.  How then could
> focus, concentration, delineation, negation, and finite
> experiences take place in an Ultimate Reality that is
> really none of these things, because it is continuous
> and has no distinctions of events?  Where does focus
> come from or how could it exist in such an environment
> (this environment being the Ultimate Reality we are
> calling Essence)?  How can anybody concentrate upon
> anything in particular with an Ultimate Reality
> beating down all walls of distinction, knocking out
> any particulars that could exist, because in time any
> focus is gone, any particular event is gone, yet, how
>does it last as long as it does in the first place?

That's indeed a litany of questions, reminding me of Death and
Transfiguration, and the mystery of transcendence which will, I'm sure, make
David nauseous.  He said, by the way:

> I think the concept of 'is' has no place
> in any realm beyond the here and now.

You see, my thinking is the exact reverse.  I think the concept of 'is' is
lost to us in the maze of appearances.  What we perceive as being in
existence is an illusory manifestation of what really 'is'.  Which is why I
say existence is only a fragmented appearance of what 'is', and that what
'is' is absolute and undivided.

Try to explain that to David!

You've given me for food for thought, SA.  But we're not quite there, yet.

Regards,
Ham