[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Ham Priday]

OK SA --

I want to return to your 2/20 post in which you expressed some agreement in
your thinking with this suggestion:


> Perhaps Nothingness is the Essence we can't
> experience, and Beingness is the experienced
> image of our own negated Essence."

In thinking this over myself, I decided I've got it backwards.  That is, it
now seems more reasonable to hypothesize that Beingness represents the
Essence we can't experience (since it's "universal"), and Nothingness is our
own negated Essence (the proprietary "negate").  You put me onto this when
you questioned my earlier assertion:

> "It must be that 'not' in the not-other of Essence
> -- in other words, that which is negated or 'denied'
> by Essence to create existence."  This explanation
> seems to depend on a use of one word (which is
> "not" in not-other of Essence) to provide an explanation
> about negation, but this kind of explanation does not
> provide a firm answer.  Negation or nothingness in
> comparison to Essence is a renegade put into existence
> by finitude itself.  Yet, to have finitude nothingness
> needs to be present.

You are absolutely right, and your criticism is valid for two reasons: 1)
the copula 'not-other' cannot be disassembled or reduced to its
constituents.  It means just that -- "not-other" -- and to break up the term
violates its intended meaning, and, 2) as you suggest, an absolute can not
have relational attributes or conditions.  Therefore, since Essence is all
there is, it can only negate itself.

Let me now present a new theorem (which is actually closer to the one I
started with before reading Cusa).  See how this appeals to your ontological
sensibility ;-).

Essence is absolute potentiality, the undifferentiated primary source of all
actualization.

Essence negates itself because it is 'negational'.  The negation is timeless
and constant because it doesn't occur in time and space but is the very
nature of Essence.  As a definition: Essence is what negates itself.

This negation results in the creation of Difference -- Cusa's 'contrariety'.
But since Essence is One ALL, Difference is essentially a not-other to
Essence -- an "actualized dichotomy" in which the negate (Awareness) is
divided from its essent (Otherness) by an apparent nothingness.  I now have
to say that Nothingness is the proprietary Self that stands between
Awareness and Otherness.  [Note that this makes nothingness "essential" but
also relative to the negate and its estranged Essence.]  Nothingness is the
self excluded or "denied" by Essence in its negation of Difference.  (That
way, we can say Essence denies Itself.)

This gives us a revised paradigm for relational existence.  Given this
differentiated framework, we can now describe Creation in a space/time
perspective.  Eckhart said: "To create is to give being out of nothing."
Guided by that precept, I suggest that because Awareness is separated from
its essent by an infinitestimal divider (proprietary selfness), the object
of its awareness is perceived as finite, differentiated Beingness, while
proprietary Selfness is actualized as a multiplicity of selves, each of
which "attaches" to a specific biological being (organism).  Thus, the
individual is born into a multiform experiential world.

The remainder of this ontology follows the valuistic scenario laid down in
my thesis.  As the Self negates ("carves out") its freely chosen reality of
things and events from Otherness, its nothingness is incrementally exchanged
for the value of its estranged essent.  This ultimately restores the Essence
denied in the primary negation, canceling the Nothingness and completing the
identity of the Self with its essential Value.

I'm not sure I like making Awareness, rather than the proprietary Self, the
negate in this scheme and having to deal with three components.  I'd rather
combine the two as Self-Awareness and simply define it as "proprietary".

Perhaps you can reconfigure this scenario in a simpler fashion.  (It's
putting me to sleep, and I'm way past my bedtime.)

More later,
--Ham