[MD] Fundamental Reality and Creation

[Ham Priday]

Marsha and Platt --

[Marsha]:
> Which reality would that be, the inorganic reality, the biological 
> reality, the social reality, the intellectual reality or the code of art 
> reality? The "absolute reality is a solid block of concrete" analogy 
> sounds absurd. According to the MOQ reality is value/process/experience.

[Platt]:
> I have trouble imagining a solid block of concrete without boundaries
> because it is boundaries that make it possible to conceptualize blocks
> and solids.  I think in essence (no pun intended}, your theory says
> from one comes many, or from a whole comes parts. No argument there.

There is no question that the concept of a concrete block as ultimate 
reality is absurd.  I used the analogy of a monolith to make Essence more 
tangible to the materialistic mind.  And, unlike Marsha, for whom reality is 
apparently a tetrad, I view reality as one monolithic absolute.  (If there 
were four realities, none of them could be absolute.)

Platt's reverse take on 'E pluribus unum', "from one comes many" is 
technically correct but suggests no means of transition.  The point I was 
trying to make is that there is no division without nothingness.  Since all 
existence is divided, it is a multiplistic system in which nothingness is 
the differentiator.  I've defined nothingness as an "agent" of creation, 
which has caused consternation on the part of logicians who challenge me 
with the 'ex nihilo' principle.

Indeed, nothing comes from nothing, in the sense that nothingness cannot 
generate the essence of a thing (essent).  But, given the potentiality to be 
(which is essence), nothingness delineates, abstracts, or patterns the 
essent to actualize discrete entities (i.e., beings and events).  This 
patterning or abstraction of objective otherness is of course the work of 
the intellect which, in turn, produces the images or impressions we call 
experience.  To what extent is this process "creation"?

I maintain that we are all working off our individual sensibilities to 
Value.  But we don't "create" value, we only objectivize it. 
Value-sensibility is the essence of awareness represented in the objects 
experienced.  Is THAT "creation"?   As a phenomenalist I find it just as 
difficult to pin creation down as it is for the MoQists to peg the 
intellect.  I'm left with to conclude that what is created is only the 
"appearance" of reality, which is the result of difference, which is a 
negation or "reduction" of Essence as opposed to something "added".

That's why (like Sartre) I say that experiential reality is riddled with 
nothingness, and I can only speculate that we ourselves are its source. 
Perhaps that's what Eckhart meant when he said, "To create is to give being 
out of nothing."

Any thoughts?

Thanks for your inputs,
Ham