Krimel --
While I await your theory of "energy transduction" as it applies to Quality and/or Value, I'll try to mediate your "vigorous disagreement that we have a 'sense of Essence, the uncreated non-existent source of existence'." Since neither of us can offer "proof" of our respective ontologies, I don't expect to change your view, but will offer a plausible argument for my reasoning that may make more sense to you.
What reason can you give for suspecting the existence of an uncreated Absolute unchanging source or whatever it is you are evasively calling God?
I start with the premise that nothing comes from nothing, 'ex nihilo nihil fit', which is attributed to Parmenides and is the basis for the theory of first cause. Since experience tells us that everything in existence had a beginning, including the experiencing subject, we have no reason to assume that physical reality, or the energy of which it is composed, has always existed. Cognizant beings and things do not create themselvces. Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that the appearance of finitude (what we call "existence") is the result of creation. If man and his universe are created, then it is also reasonable to assume a Creator.
Now, because it is unfashionable in our "enlightened" age to acknowledge the possibility of a creator, postmodernists have bent over backwards to come up with theories from the Big Bang to "parallel universes" in order to discredit or mythologize this notion. Pirsig has attained some success in establishing DQ as the source of reality, but his aversion to theism and his avoidance of metaphysical definitions have not helped his cause.
By contrast, the essentialist view of Creation is based on a primary source that is absolute and immutable, which means it has no boundaries or divisions and is not subject to the conditions of space/time causality. Essence is not an 'existent", so technically it doesn't "exist", in the same sense that "nothingness" doesn't exist. However, Essence is the antithesis of nothingness. My ontology is supported by Cusan logic. The 15th century neoplatonist logician and astronomer Cusanus argued that, although God is indefinable, it can be stated that the world is not God but is not anything _other_ than God. God is 'not other', he said, because God is not other than any (particular) other, even though 'not-other' and 'other' (once derived) are opposed. But no other can be opposed to God from whom it is derived. The Cusan 'First Principle' -- not-other is the coincidence of all contrariety -- rules out Divine Being, anthropomorphic deities, or any external entity as a causitive ource or creator.
In fact, Cusanus left us with a workable definition for the ineffable Source whose attributive nature is otherwise indefinable. Possibility and actuality, he said, are co-dependent in existence but coincide in the non-contradictory Source-ultimate reality in which opposites like 'positive and negative', 'subject and object', and 'being and nothing' are not mutually exclusive but equivalent. In the Oneness of Essence, all difference is eliminated. There is no "other" for Essence because Essence itself is not other. Moreover, because the ultimate source transcends both differentiation in space and change in time, it IS absolutely. That is to say, Essence is primary, absolute and uncreated, whereas any created thing (essent) is reductively derived as a "secondary" manifestation of Essence.
I have outlined a hypothesis for creation in my website which you probably won't read. But insofar as you question my reasons "for suspecting an absolute source"', this is the best I can do in this limited space. Meantime, I look forward to learning more about your energy-transducing ontogeny (epistemology?) when you have the time.
Regards, Ham Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
