[MD] The other side of Value

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Ron --


On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 8:53 AM, "X Acto" <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:

> Ham said to Joe:
> For me, the answer lies in the theory of Negation. If the Absolute Source
> (God) is the perfect unity of all that is or can ever be, then the 
> potentiality
> of this identity is negation. That is to say, what is by nature absolute 
> and
> undifferentiated can create only by "negating nothingness" to produce
> difference. Once Difference is established as the subjective mode of
> experience, relational otherness becomes the value construct of a 
> cognitive
> agent who himself relates valuistically to his Creator. Also, inasmuch as
> nothingness is antithetical to Essence, the principle of negation is 
> consistent
> with the essential ontology.

Ron:
> Again the old problem of the one and the many and again you try to solve 
> it
> by somehow introducing "nothingness" into the "absolute" like a character
> in a play.
> You said: "what is by nature absolute and undifferentiated can create only
> by "negating nothingness" to produce difference."
> Some questions you need to address in your ontology:
>
> 1. If what is by nature absolute and undifferentiated, how does 
> "nothingness"
> appear out of it?
>
> 2. Since nothingness can not logically exist within what is absolute and
> undifferentiated how may it be negated?
>
> 3. Any negation of nothingness is going to logically result in 
> nothingness.
> something can not logically come from nothing.

I don't claim an ability to "describe" the ineffable, but simply to explain 
its "dynamics" in a context that logicians like you can accept.  It's 
obvious to me that although we can't experience "nothingness" in our world 
of appearances, it nevertheless accounts for the differentiation and 
contrariety of our experience.  Like the proverbial "zero" which 
mathematically represents "nothing", it doesn't exist; yet existence is not 
experienceable without it.  One could say that nothingness is conspicuous by 
its absence.

Likewise, I could say that the Absolute doesn't possess nothingness BECAUSE 
Essence negates it.  This would, of course, make Essence "negational" in a 
logical sense.  As I consider Difference to be the experiential ground of 
physical reality, and negation its 'actuator', I have no problem with the 
idea that the world of appearances is the "negative mode" of Essence.  After 
all, moral judgments are based on the relation between good and evil, and 
experience is based on the contrariety of light and dark, large and small, 
attraction and repulsion, birth and death, self and other, and a whole host 
of opposites.

Something has to account for the antithetical equivalent of Absolute 
Essence.  What else but nothingness represents that antipodal state?  Were 
Essence to disappear, what else would take its place?  Moreover, we know 
that man's sensory apperception is limited.  To a blind man, vision is 
nothingness.  It seems to me that being limited to five senses deprives man 
of other sensibilities that are regarded as nothing at all.  To complete the 
ontology of Essence, there needs to be a free agent that can experience 
reality as an otherness to itself.  Since negation is the power of the 
Absolute to make such a perspective possible, I submit that we are created 
by a negational Source.

I'll leave the logic of this ontogeny to you, Ron, unless you can provide an 
alternative.

Thanks for the query,
Ham