Hey Mark --
Yup, still with you. I got distracted by some nonsense on another post, but now I'm back and in tune. Let me just say that I like your ontology in terms of the pictures it provides me. I seem to get stuck at places where there is a jump. Where the actual point of negation occurs is one such place. But, I am asking questions that haven't been successfully answered to my satisfaction yet, so perhaps the question is the wrong approach. I do have a tendency to obsess. Sometimes a good thing sometimes not.
OK, you are hung up on the question of exactly where negation occurs. Let me try to explain why I regard Differentiation as the negation of an Absolute the Source.
If you accept the idea that pluralistic "existents" (i.e., the perceived objects of existence) are the creation of a monolithic source, then it is apparent that Difference is the primary operand of existence. By this I mean that since everything in existence is divided or polarized -- including the apperception of self and other, before and after, here and there, good and bad, life and death, being and nothing, static and dynamic, etc. -- what we call existence is a differential aspect or mode of the Creator. I think what you're asking is: What STARTS this differentiating process? How do we get from an absolute unity to a pluralistic universe?
Many solutions have been suggested in this forum, the most popular (based on the MoQ) being that DQ gives rise to "patterns of Quality" (the static existents), while Quality itself is a unity ever moving to "betterness". Some hold out for the theory that there is no primary source, that the universe simply emerges from chaos or nothingness. Others have adopted the New Age theory that our world is just one of "multiple universes" that have always existed with no need of a Creator.
All of these theories, including mine, are flawed for various reasons. I have posited an absolute source that is both undivided (not-other) and unchanging (immutable). This ontogeny doesn't have the "dynamic" advantage of Pirsig's Quality which allows for its division into patterns to account for creation. To resolve the paradox of an immutable source performing acts of creation, I make the Source (uncreated Essence) primary and relegate "the acts" of creation to Nothingness (the created negate). Think of negation as the cleavage in an infinite ball.
In my ontogeny Essence doesn't have to "create" anything; it only has to possess a "negational mode" as its potentiality to actualize Nothingness and create Difference. Expressed as a logical premise: Essence creates Nothing; (Nothing is created by Essence.) Now, I know dmb and others will accuse me of simply playing with words in order to make sense out of nonsense. But hold your skepticism for a moment.
Nothingness has all the attributes of Essence. It also is absolute, unchanging, and indivisible. Essence and Nothingness are the two primary metaphysical antonyms, except that the former IS and the latter IS NOT. The only way the Not-other can create Other is by exclusion, denial, or negation. Notice that creation is this context is not an act "exercised" in time and space by Essence but, rather, the very mode of its absolute potentiality. In other words, Essence is "negational".
In Eckhart's terms, IS-ness negates Nothingness. And from that negation Difference and its concomitant appearance of Existence is born.
I'll get to your other comments later, Mark. But does the above explication draw a clearer picture of the "where the actual point of negation occurs"? Is my ontogeny logical by your standards? If so, I would say we're making progress.
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