Greetings, Ron --
On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 8:53 AM, "X Acto" <[email protected]> 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
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