[MD] Perhaps the One is impossible Mr Ham

[Ham Priday]

Hello David --

> Hi Moqers & especially Mr Ham
>
> Take a look at this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Alain_Badiou
>
> Is the one impossible?

Perhaps.  Then again, perhaps not.  "Mr. Ham's" first axiom is that 
subjective cognizance is a precariously balanced see-saw on either side of 
which lies ultimate truth.  The individual is free to lean in either 
direction, but is restrained by the force of gravity from accessing absolute 
truth.  Neither relational logic nor, certainly, Alain Badiou's saying so is 
going to prove what is absolute and unfathomable by the finite mind.

Leaving aside his leftist leanings as a member of the Socialist Party, and 
(for the moment) his association with the French existentialist school 
(Sartre, Beckett, etc.), here's how Wikipedia summarizes Badiou's argument 
that "the one is not".

"He proposes as the solution to this impasse the following declaration: that 
the one is not.  This is why Badiou accords set theory (the axioms of which 
he refers to as the Ideas of the multiple) such stature, and refers to 
mathematics as the very place of ontology: Only set theory allows one to 
conceive a 'pure doctrine of the multiple'.  Set theory does not operate in 
terms of definite individual elements in groupings but only functions 
insofar as what belongs to a set is of the same relation as that set (that 
is, another set too).  What separates sets out therefore is not an 
existential positive proposition, but other multiples whose properties 
validate its presentation; which is to say their structural relation.  The 
structure of being thus secures the regime of the count-as-one.  So if one 
is to think of a set - for instance, the set of people, or humanity - as 
counting as one the elements which belong to that set, it can then secure 
the multiple (the multiplicities of humans) as one consistent concept 
(humanity), but only in terms of what does not belong to that set.

"...(This axiom [of foundation] states that all sets contain an element for 
which only the void [empty] set names what is common to both the set and its 
element.) Badiou's philosophy draws two major implications from this 
prohibition. Firstly, it secures the inexistence of the 'one': there cannot 
be a grand overarching set, and thus it is fallacious to conceive of a grand 
cosmos, a whole Nature, or a Being of God."

It is well to remember that Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" established the 
metaphysics of existentialism, the primary tenet of which is that Being 
precedes Essence.  (This, of course, is directly opposed to my Essentialist 
ontology.)   Mathematics and formal logic (including 'set theory') are 
capable of dealing only with relational systems, which means that statements 
like "a set cannot contain or belong to itself" are invalid as applied to 
what is absolute.  So, for all his sophisticated analysis of forms and sets, 
Badiou's conclusion is nothing but an elaborate smokescreen concealing the 
fact that difference is the beginning of multiplicity, without which there 
are no relations.

A much simpler theory was proposed by the Pre-Socratic philosopher 
Parmenides 2500 years ago: Nothing comes from nothingness.  Since it cannot 
be denied that existence is something, it must have a primary cause or 
source.  And since nothingness does not exist, the nothingness that 
differentiates things must be the insufficiency (or void) of subjective 
experience which perceives in parts what is in reality whole and undivided. 
To conclude that the source of existence is itself created is to pose the 
paradox of an infinite regression of causes.  Which is why I maintain that 
the source is primary, absolute, immutable, and --yes, David--not only a 
"possible" one but the "essential" One.

Thanks for the Wikipedia link.  Badiou was new to me.

--Ham