[MD] Dualism and Eagleton's God Delusion

[David M]

Hi DMB

See comments below,
David M

> dmb says:
The short, unpacked answer is
that there is something rather than nothing because thoughts and words
create distinctions. These distinctions are the cause of all things, or
 rather they ARE all things. Every distinction creates a limit, a border, a
 definate slice of reality that is somehow distinquished from everything 
that
 it is NOT.

DM: The distinction 'the stove is hot' do you see this as a thought or word
or neither?

> In effect, the Many, the world of the ten thousand things, is an
> interpretation of the One. The One take the role of the other pole in the
> question. It is Nothing. But this is not to be confused with empty space.
> Nothingness in this sense should be understood as No-thingness. This the 
> the
> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, the primary empirical reality. In 
> this
> formulation, of course, the One is DQ and the things derived from it are
> static quality.

DM: Are static qualties a non-primary reality then? Are they created by
interpretation of the primary undifferentiated one?

>
> The idea that reality is composed of opposed forces has appeared in just
> about every culture. We can see it in the YinYang symbol, in Taoism and 
> even
> in Hegel's or Marx's dialectics. But I suppose this is just one more
> indication that dualistic thinking is basic to the distinction-making
> function of thought and language. Even more interesting, I think, is that
> there has been a long line of mystics who assert that our world of things 
> is
> illusory and insist on the inclusion of the underlying unity from which it
> all springs. The MOQ's basic structure, then, reflects this. As a form of
> philosophical mysticism and of the perennial philosophy, the MOQ is an
> intellectual description of what the wise guys have been saying for a 
> mighty
> long time...
>
> "The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the 
> mother
> of ten thousand things."  Lao-tzu

DM: So is the world created by naming? In the beginnning was the world?

> "The ultimate truth transcends all definitions and descriptions, 
> transcends
> all comments and disputations, transcends all words." Nagarjuna

DM: And when you remove all differentiation, what are you left with?

>
a     "When difference is not evident, there is neither difference nor 
identity."
     Nagarjuna

b    "In the ultimate dark Abyss of the ..primal ground or Urgrund, there is 
no
      differentiation but only pure identity." F.W.J. Schelling

DM: Do a and b above contradict each other? Or does no identity=pure 
identity.

>
> "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word 
> was
> God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by it; 
> and
> without it was not anything made."  John 1:1-3

DM: Are there qualities prior to words?

>
c           "The root of all things is difference."

DM: But I thought you said there was a One before difference?

"The whole of existence is
> imagination within imagination, while true Being is God alone." Ibn Arabi

DM: Isn't this theology? DMB how could you?

>
> "Everything is of the nature of no thing." Parmenides

DM: But c above tells us that the nature of things is difference. Does 
difference=nothing?

>
> ""the one and many ..run about together, in and out of every word which is
> uttered."
>
> I vaguely recall a legend from the East which says words are what bring
> things into existence.

DM: The bible says Adam names things into existence too.

The impression is that this worked on the level of a
> folk tale so that uttering a word could bring the thing into existence. So
> it seems to me that this basic insight has had some form of recognition
> since the very ancient time of magical thinking.
>
> By the way, this would be approximately the opposite of "essentialism"
> insofar as it seeks some kind of essence underlying things rather than a
> no-thingness as the source. So it seems quite unlikely that Ham's view 
> would
> illuminate this issue.

DM: I agree. Although is there anything essential about HAM'S essence,
he never seems to answer this question.

>
> And finally, we return to Eagleton's notion of God as "the condition of
> possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the 
> answer
> to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not
> add up to two, ...He is what sustains all things in being by his love; and
> this would still be the case even if the universe had no beginning..."
>
> What I see here is an attempt by Eagleton to say something similar, but he
> is operating with both materialistic and theistic assumptions.

DM: I think you're right about Terry. The left have generally seen 
materialism
as essential to their values, along with secularism and science. The MOQ
undercuts many of these assumptions and helps explain the failure of left
politics due to flawed philosophy. I think the the word 'entity' above 
points
to the SOM problems here, it objectifies patterns and repeats that occur,
in (what we need to see as more dynamic) processes.

Here we see
> God as setting the stage for a universe of entities like some kind of
> postmodern Deist rather than a mystic. Interestly, I think, in the 2nd
> chapter of his Literary Theory, he takes Husserl to task along with 
> several
> others and basically says that anyone who tries to deny the subject/object
> distinction is a reactionary crank. See, my complaints about his Marxist
> Catholicism aren't a personal attack. I think his frame of reference
> basically rules out any similarities between his views and the MOQ. As I
> understand it, his "conditions of possibility" are unrelated to the basic
> assertion of mystics.

DM: Here you go again, Mr black and white & overly simplistic.
How can a frame of reference rule out any similarities? It will rule
out some perhaps but unlikely to rule out any. Even MOQ does
not rule out the value of SOM based science, it just seesit in a new
light. I doubt all his views are incompatible with the MOQ.

>
> As I understand it, dualistic thinking leads to all sorts of error and



 it  seems to me that the notion of possibility and/or potentiality as real
> things is one of those errors.

DM: Utterly disagree with this last bit. What does dynamic mean if it
is not about the emergence of new possibilities and potentia?

Logic allows us to negate things and we
> thereby create fictions and fictional problems.

DM: Negation of the actual ishow we recognise the possible/possibilities.
They are not actual but they are real. If negating presidency of George
Bush was not a real possibility we would really be in deep trouble.

Every concept can generate
> its opposite and so we end up asking questions like, "Why is there 
> something
> instead of nothing?". But again, there is something because we make a
> distinctions such as the distinction between something and nothing, which 
> is
> what generates the question. Unlike the nothing of dualistic thinking, 
> which
> is merely the opposite of something, our No-thingness is quite something.

DM: Yeah, with MOQ, discovering possibilities is discovering real 
possibilities
not unreal illusions.

 It  generates all things. It does not the conditions of possibility, but 
rather
> is the mother of all that actually is.

DM: You are very confused. The possible is the mother of all
that is actual. Experience is entirely rich in the possible and the actual.
You see an actual lion coming your way, the experience/meaning of lion 
includes
the possibility of it eating you, without this real possibility you might 
forget to avoid
hanging around too long. You see some nice dinner, what would dinner be 
without
the possibility of eating it, is this possibility actual before you eat the 
dinner? No
it is a real possibility that has yet to become actual but is utterly 
present in your
experience of having a dinner before you.


>
> "the unreal never is: the Real never is not" Bhagavad Gita

DM: The possible is and so is real yet may never become actual.

>
> Most of this quotes were gathered by Thomas McRarlane of the California
> Institute of Integral Studies.
>
> Ken Wilber's work was also helpful and covers much of the same ground. Of
> the figures in the West, his favorite mystics are Plontinus, Schelling 
> and -
> surprizingly - even Plato gets some good press on this account.

DM: Funny how you never got what Scott used to say about Coleridge
and Coleridge's ideas about experience all came from Schelling.
Andrew Bowie's book on Schelling is excellent and includes a
challenge to Rorty's anti-metaphysical views too.

>
> But the point here is to illuminate the MOQ's basic structure, the
> static/dynamic split. This is a dualism, as any intellectual description
> MUST be, but notice that this split does NOT entail opposed forces or any
> kind of ontological gap. Instead, two forms or kinds of the same reality
> with one kind basically being a subset of the other, a derivation of the
> other. I mean, this dualism has a unity built right into it. Both aspects
> can be known from experience too, so that we don't have to speculate about 
> a
> realm where possibilities reside or otherwise get lost in fictional
> abstractions.

DM: Agree with most of this until you wrongly start associating
the possible with some realm disconnected from experience. This is where
you are going wrong and getting confused. The distinction possible/actual
simply applies to experience just like DQ/SQ. EG mathematicians can be
said to explore what is possible, and this has a dynamic creative and static
differentiating aspect. Mathematicians and other forms of knowledge
help us to map both what is actual and what is possible and how these
two aspects of experience-reality relate. And experience=reality,
it's all real, actual experience and possible experience. There is some
connection here to the inner/outer distinction where we can share 
experiences
of actualised reality where as our explorations of what is possible is 
experienced
internally and is a rich source of DQ, innovation, discovery.

If the static world is built of analogy upon analogy,

DM: How do we build, what do we build with, if not possibilities?
no possibilities no DQ I'm afraid. Surely DQ is real DMB?


if it is
> a creation of imagination, then creativity is and always was the 
> "condition
> of possibility",

DM: Imagination what is it? Is it not the exploration and differentiation
of what is possible? The leading edge of differentiation that is beyond
what is merely actual and creates new actualities?

not the universe as a stage set for entities. The latter
> puts the cart before the horse, if you will.

DM: Yes entities are mere ripples and repeats in a larger process.

>
> As far as I can tell, Aristotle has nothing to do with it.

DM: We all make mistakes. That's what happens when you
pick the wrong possibility.

>
> Did I weave some threads together here, or just make a mess?

DM: You have all the right threads in your grasp, but can you pull them 
together?

>
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