To my detriment, I must say. I hope you’ve gotten accomplished everything you needed. I know what it’s like to get so busy that posting is very low on the priority listing. Anyway, I’m glad you’re back (if only for now).
And here’s where I say, “Color me surprised.” […laughter…]
Neither do I. Let’s look back once again at what I said. I know that my writing can be as thick as Hegel’s, and so I’ll forgive anyone for misunderstanding me.
I said that the ordinary definition of existence, “Existence is a state of being” is tautological. The definition. Not existence itself. The definition is a tautology. I didn’t say that existence is a tautology. But that’s why I offered a new defintion: “Existence is the emergence of that which is essential.” That definition is not a tautology like the other one was.
Consider “A bachelor is an unmarried man”. That is a tautology. No information is conveyed about the man in the predicate that is not already in the subject. Bachelor = unmarried man. Same same for “Existence is a state of being”. What we see in the predicate is nothing but a synonym for what we see in the subject. Existence = state of being. That is a grammatical tautology (a la Wittgenstein). We could reverse the subject and predicate and have the same information.
But my definition tells us something about existence. It says that something happens when existence unfolds. It says that something essential is becoming something existent.
I hope the above clears up the misunderstanding regarding existence.
As to my definition of “essence”, it is free to use the notion of existence — specifically the absence of existence — in order to convey the idea that (1) essence and existence are two different things, and (2) that a thing may have essence without existing. (The converse is not possible, incidentally. If a thing exists, it had an essence even prior to emerging.) Since my definition of existence is not a tautology, I can use a part of its predicate freely to define something else.
I can see that our debate will be lively.
No. No, that’s not the case. I did define “real”, but I did not define “eternal”. A thing is real if it is eternal, essential, and necessary. That is my definition of “real”. I will be defining the three terms in the epistemology thread. (That may seem ass-backwards, but either way, there would have been some temporarily undefined terms or else some backtracking.)
The great thing about you — and oh, how I regret the (many) times I put you off; I’m very sorry for those — is that you are willing to engage in this sort of exercise. You are willing to discuss Kant’s philosophy using Kant’s terms and propositions. And you are willing to discuss my philosophy using my terms and propositions. It is the mark of a man with a great intellect.
So many people refuse to let go of preconceived notions, and discussions end up being either ad hominem contests or boring sets of links to someone else’s opinions or worse yet, an unreadable hash of non sequiturs one after the other. They go something like this:
“I define force as mass times acceleration.”
“Oh, really. So did you see that mass times acceleration play by Derek Jeter yesterday?”
“What?”
“He had a force play.”
“I’m talking about physics.”
“Well, I’m talking about baseball.”
“You’re threadshitting.”
“You’re a dick.”
Tom intervenes, and so on. About you, MrDibble, I will say you are a good egg.
I see a couple of tricky things with this. I think we’ve agreed that a considerable portion of an experience is supplied by perspective and personal view. Too, in much the same way, something’s value can be held to be different between two different people - an object may have great aesthetic value for me, but little for you; a behaviour may have great moral value for you, but little for me.
The problem for me with this then becomes; how do we seperate something’s essence from what we have brought to it from our own perspective? Are, indeed, they two seperate things at all - I can think of scenarios where essential characteristics are merely perspective-based. And, since we’re talking about the role of perspective, how can we differentiate between the essence of a thing and the essence of an idea of a thing? If I imagine a unicorn, as we must do, how can I seperate that which is essential to unicorns from that which is essential to that idea of a unicorn, and from that which is essential to my idea of a unicorn?
Not as a point to argue on, but just so you understand where i’m coming from; I don’t believe there is such a thing as essence, or perhaps rather, I believe that essence is unique to each individual conception of the thing in question, and that we cannot generalise at all from it.
I know this is not a thread for arguing (per se), so i’d simply like to say that the journey outward is a journey inwards, and vice-versa.
I don’t see that your argument for eternity necessarily follows through. I have no disagreement that we cannot trust our senses as to what something is, and that even in the observation of that thing it changes, but I don’t see where the requirement of unchanging nature comes from.
Your essential point I disagree with in base, but I agree that, accepting it, your logic follows through fine for me.
But I don’t see why a thing must be assured actuality. Why can it not only be predisposed to actuality, or even be incredibly unlikely to occur, yet occur?
If I’m not jumping the gun again, the only questions I have about essence revolve around how essence gains its identity. Who or what identifies it? If there is no who or what involved, how is it identified?
Gregory Bateson once said that "Information consists of differences that make a difference”, and that’s what I’m trying to find out: How is (my, your, the Unicorn’s) essence differentiated as, not only essence, but this specific essence?
That cleared up a lot, but I still have a circularity problem - you’ve (non-tautologically) defined existence in terms of essence, and essence in terms of existence(or its absence, but same-same). Standing alone, each is not tautological, but I still feel there’s a circle somewhere.
But no matter, it doesn’t stop me following along and we can hash it out afterwards. Intuitively, what you’re saying makes sense to me based on your earlier definitions.
That’s what I meant. Cool, I can wait for the epi thread.
Your idea about how we bring our perspective to bear is an important one.
Let’s take the example of Shelley, a young blond college sorority girl. We might all imagine various “essences” that really are only opinions. To you, she might be essentially beautiful and attractive. To me, she might be essentially stuck-up and conceited. To her, she might be essentially a fun loving friendly person. To one of her friends, she might be essentially a back-stabbing bitch. There are many things about Shelley on which we all might disagree.
But the question of essence is, as I alluded to before, a question of individuation. This notion ties essence to existence, as Miller explained when he tore apart Kant’s proposition that existence is not a predicate. There are certain aspects that, collectively, we might likely all agree on. For example, we might likely all agree that Shelley is essentially a female (Simone de Beauvoir notwithstanding.) Another thing she certainly is, is the accumulation of her life experiences. But at this point, we don’t even know whether she knows what her life experiences even are. (We’ll cover that in the next thread.)
And so, as Miller would put it, Shelley is individuated by her “bounds”. That is, her existence and her essence are the same. (Which makes sense, since the essence was there before the existence emerged.) That is why anything not individuated by its bounds is imaginary. It has no experiences (life or otherwise) which can be identified. And in fact, identity may be considered a functional synonym of essence.
If that were true, then what you are essentially saying is the same as what I am essentially saying. And yet, we contradict.
Well, you’ve put just a bit too fine a point on it, and thereby missed the point, I believe. Were you to sense something eternal, it would be exactly the same as it always has been and always will be. That is due to the nature of your senses, and not due to the nature of the eternal thing. “Eternity” will be defined later, but for now suffice it to say that eternity does not mean the whole of time. In fact, it has nothing to do at all with time. Literally. That’s because it is timeless. Time is a ratio of distance and rate. So if something has infinite distance, and is not in a locomotive process, time for it is mathematically undefined. (Rate would be zero — division by zero is undefined.) An eternal being does not exist for all time; an eternal being exists outside of time. And so there is nothing to preclude it from changing per se, but only from changing with respect to time (and space — spacetime).
Why is this imporant for reality? Because long after all else is gone, the eternal thing will remain. It was there — more precisely, it IS there — even before the universe emerged from its singularity (assuming that theory is true.) If something disappears, then how is it real? It isn’t even there anymore. Reality should concern that which has existed, does exist, and will exist without end points. Otherwise, we are saying that reality includes (or will include or has included) nonexistence (not to mention non-essence).
It can. A thing can be possible without being necessary. It can even be epistemically possible or metaphysically possible — two different kinds of possibility.
For example, consider the statement “It is possible that there is a chicken on the roof.” There are two different things you could intend that statement to convey. (1) There might be a chicken on the roof for all we know. That is an epistemic possibility. It is simply a matter that you don’t know whether there is or is not a chicken on the roof — but it’s possible. (2) The other thing you might intend to convey is that it is possible FOR a chicken to be on your roof (or any other roof, for that matter). In other words, chickens can be on roofs. They are light enough. They can jump with limited flight from one elevation to a slightly higher one, and with enough of these in succession can end up on your roof. Here, you are stating a metaphysical possibility — the fact that whether or not there is a chicken on the roof right now, and regardless of your knowledge about there being a chicken on your roof; nonetheless it is possible that there could be a chicken on your roof.
But, and now this is going to get a bit technical, but for purposes of this discussion (for my sake, not yours — I know that you would be perfecly capable of understanding the full Monty technical treatment) I’m going to simplify it just a bit to consume less time and space. Without resorting to symbology, let’s just say that actuality implies that something is necessarily possible. In other words, if a thing actually exists, then it is necessary that its existence is a possibility. This sounds intuitively obvious, of course, and it is. It means that in a world where Thing1 is related to Thing2, it is safe to say that Thing2 is also related to Thing1. (Just in case you wonder, this is called the B Axiom, or the Brouwer Axiom, after an accomplished philosopher and logician.)
However! The reverse is not necessarily true. Just because something is necessarily possible does not mean it is actual. The example we just covered should suffice to convince you of this. Just because it is necessarily possible that a chicken is on your roof does not mean that there actually is a chicken on your roof. On the other hand, if there is indeed actually a chicken on your roof, then it is necessarily possible for there to be a chicken on your roof. (The B Axiom).
But there is one and only one condition that *assures *actuality. That is, of course, necessity. Again, without symbols, if it is necessary that a thing exist, then that thing will actually exist. (Otherwise, it wouldn’t be necessary.) Using the same sort of terminology as before, this means that if Thing1 is related to some world, then Thing1 is related to that same world. This is called a “reflexive frame” for rather obvious reasons, and is the general Modal Axiom (also called the T Axiom in some Kripke nomenclature systems). If it is necessary that there be a chicken on your roof, then there is a chicken on your roof. You need not look. It is not a matter of your knowledge. If it is necessary that it be there, then it simply cannot not be there.
And so, reality is of this quality: whatever is actual had to be necessary. The mere possibility of a thing (as shown just above) leaves open, for example, both the epistemic and metaphysical possibilities that unicorns actually exist. Just because you don’t know of one reflects, not on unicorns, but on your knowledge. Instead, whatever is here, whether we know about it (yet) or not, is here by necessity. Just as black holes were here even before we knew about them and before Einstein deduced that they were out there. Black holes did not emerge upon Einstein’s knowledge or logic. They were there all along.
Reality, it seems to me, needs to be something that is assured, not merely possible.
Essence and identity are functional synonyms. A thing may be identified by its essence. Now, you and I may see different essential qualities of the same thing. For example, you might think watersports is essentially fun and exciting, while I might think it is essentially weird and horrifying. Who is to say which of us is right? Well, there is no need for arbitration, because we both are right. In your subjective frame, pissing on people is fun. In my subjective frame, pissing on people is revolting. This sort of treatment of essence takes us back a bit to morality, and the fact that I have no standing to judge yours. (And vice-versa.)
There are, however, certain essential charactieristics of watersports about which we most likely both agree; otherwise, we can’t know what we’re talking about. If you disagree that watersports essentially involves urination, then how can we discuss it? It may be said that watersports is identified by its essential nature.
(In retrospect, I’m sure I could have chosen a better, more palatable example.)
Once again, there are certain perceptions of essence. To a little girl, a unicorn may be a romantic and marvelous thing, while to an old man, it is just another fairy tale. But if we are to talk about unicorns at all, then there must be some essential thing or feature about it, such that you know what I’m talking about when I talk about unicorns. Otherwise, if you are ignorant of these essential features (like a horn on the forehead of a horse), then when I use the word it is as meaningless as if I had been talking about sethoogles.
That’s true, dear. But let’s try to keep this thread about the nature of reality and existence, please. Thanks.
That’s the thing about definitions that has driven philosophers crazy forever. (And even people like Godel, for specialized vocabularies.) The tree structure of a definition can get out of hand very quickly, and might even return eventually to its original wording.
For example, let’s define force as “mass times acceleration”. (Three words to keep it relatively simple.) Someone demands then that we define mass. So we say, “mass is a measure of an object’s resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied.” (Cite.) Well, mass is defined there in terms of force, but that does not cast any dispersion on either the definition of force or the defintion of mass. It is just the nature of definitions.
Now suppose someone demanded not only that we define each of our three words in the original definition of force, but that they demanded also that we define the seventeen new words introduced in the definition of mass. And then, God knows how many words we will have introduced in those seventeen definitions, each of which someone might insist that we define. Before long, our defintions, having expanded at an extreme exponential rate, will require thousands or hundreds of thousands of words until we reach a point at which all the words in the lanuage have been used, whereupon someone insists that we define all of them. At that point, we no longer have any choice but to use terms we have already used.
And so, definitions are circular by nature, actually. That is why they are not allowed to be used as premises (or axioms, or postulates). Although circular arguments are always valid, they are never sound. In a formal proof, we must first define our terms, then state our premises, then draw our inferences. Our last inference is our conclusion. And it may not match any of our premises; else, it is circular. Now, that is not to say that the line is always clear. Many people believe that Euclid’s statement about parallel lines not intersecting (on a flat plane) is a postulate. And even people who know better, often treat it as a posutlate (or axiom or premise). But the fact is that Euclid’s statement that parallel lines do not intersect was a definition! (Definition number 23, in fact.) (Cite.)
(Note that Euclid’s definition does not postulate the existence of any parallel lines. It merely says what they are.)
I really wanted to jump all over this (doesn’t change imply time?), but I remembered you’ve got the Big Bang in your corner as an example. Out of curiosity, are there any other examples?
Well, that’s what I’m getting at. Let’s say the little girl and the old man are having a conversation about Bob the unicorn. They have different perceptions, opinions, valuations, etc., about BTU, but they can have a coherent conversation because they’re essentially talking about the same thing (literally).
But that just tells me that they can identify BTU as BTU, not how they differentiate essence (or essential features) from changeable properties, perception or opinion, or how they differentiate this essence as specifically BTU essence.
I think that this is the point on which we disagree. I don’t believe that there is an essence of something that must be true for all examples of that thing. Perspective and our own biases play only part of a role in how we sense something, but, collectively, we may cover every part of the possible sensed subjects on that thing. We can’t identify anything in solely it’s own terms, and that’s what I meant by saying there’s no such thing as essence; everything is open to interpretation, and so there is no fixed characteristic of a thing. If I imagine a unicorn that looks like a ferret with wings, we can’t say that it lacks the essence of unicorn-ness, and by that we can’t say that a horse with a horn has it.
That would only be true if we were measuring an eternal thing with an eternal tool, which our sense aren’t. In fact, since our senses are almost guaranteed to change, our perspective guaranteed to be different at 10 than it is at 40, I would say that anything that is sensed to be exactly the same at both of those times must, logically, have changed. Something eternal must not appear eternal.
I think you’re correct, but too tightly defined. Yes, a thing which no longer exists isn’t real - but it was. A thing which does not yet exist isn’t real - but it will be. You don’t have to define reality as including non-existence, but likewise just because something is only real for a time is no reason to consider it not-real at no point. Something is real when it exists, and not real when it does not. I would say that if you define as real only that which always exists, then you are defining reality as excluding, on occasion, existence.
I’m afraid you’ve lost me again. I follow your arguments perfectly up until this paragraph, but i’m still not seeing where you’re getting the idea that what is actual had to have been necessary from. It seems like a long train of (entirely sensical) logic, and then a sudden jump - I think i’m missing out on that final piece of logic that leads to this conclusion. Would you mind dumbing it down a bit for me?
Not to labour the point, but if I was going to use the f=ma definition of force in an argument, when someone asked me what I meant by mass, I would not define it in terms of force, I’d go with the “measure of the amount of matter” definition which remains true regardless of any force reference frame. Resistance to acceleration is a measure of mass, not a conceptual definition. Or, in other words, inertia is what mass does, not what it essentially is.
I guess what I’m saying is it *should *be possible in laying out a logical argument to avoid self-reference in your premises, and a failure to do so should cast some doubt on the whole shebang (which , BTW, is why I view essence and existence as tightly bound)
Once again, I’m still OK with moving on, just pointing out things that I’ll be returning to later.
I really think that’s more of a neurological question. You’re asking, not about what they know or how they know it, but about how they differentiate. Specifically, how they differentiate the essence of an object from properties that are not essential.
Consider, for example, a snake. He begins high in the tree on a limb. He winds his way down the trunk until he reaches the ground, and then he continues on his merry way. What evidence is there that the snake differentiates the tree from the ground? Perhaps its brain either does not notice or does not care that properties of the tree are different from properties of the ground. For the snake, they’re both just navigation surfaces. But unlike the snake, man perceives a different essence with the tree as opposed to the ground.
And so essence depends on some agency making an identification. Recall that I defined essence as that which something would be even if it were not to exist. That definition is an attempt to improve the grammatical construction of Aristotle’s “the what it was to be.” Essence depends heavily upon perspective and point of view, not only of the person or thing contemplating the essence, but upon the thing itself.
For a snake, the essence of everything from rocks to trees to yards to barns is as some king of navigation surface, and nothing more. But man differentiates all those things. And the reason I say that your question might be a neurological one is that a rock, for example, doesn’t perceive anything, including essence.
Essence is what cognative agents use to identify things. And I think the how of it lies in the human cerebral cortex, particularly the frontal lobe. If there is an objective essence, then it must be identified by an objective agent.
What is there to differentiation besides the knowledge that this is not that?
A snake’s (and many human) behaviors are likely pure physical reflex; they’re reactionary, not discriminatory. But essence is not physical. It can manifest physically, if I’m understanding you correctly, but that just means that if I encounter its physical manifestation, my brain will get input from my senses of the physical aspects of its manifestation.
Assuming the differentiation we make in identifying essence from non-essence, and this specific essence from that specific essence, is not just a matter of sensory-reflexive differentiation (like the way we differentiate air from water by automatically holding our breath when submerged), how do we differentiate the physical manifestation of the essence from the essence? How do we know one from the other?
See, now this, I can get behind without any quibble whatsoever.
Although I disagree about your characterisation of the snake. I think a snake would distinguish between things like trees and ground in some fashion, even if only on a “mm, rough-cohesive-vertical vs gritty-noncohesive-horizontal” basis. Even bacteria respond to changes in their surroundings in a way I’d call “recognition of an essential”, even if that essential is just a chemical gradient. And snakes are much more sophisticated than that.
I think you can tell I don’t particularly think there’s anything unique about human cognition.
Please allow me just a moment to vent. This has got to be the worst software on the market in terms of responding to posts. Not only do my quotes that you are quoting not appear, but your entire post is one big paragraph with nary a line break to be found.
I don’t know what the problem is. But I imagine it to be a typical case of a software house functioning without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing. “Let’s add multiple quotes,” someone either lamented or cheerfully suggested. So the team that wrote the single quote response treated a carriage return (what is it, A0 or something?) as nothing more than a flag to stop writing. That was team Hoohaa.
But then the person who assigned the multiple quote feature assigned it to team Foofaa. Team Foofaa assumed that team Hoohaa had taken care of carriage returns within the method (or function) that takes care of rendering the text onto the screen. But Nooooo. Team Hoohaa decided their function would be overloaded (pun) with work if it had to do two things: render the text and handle the carriage return. And so they wrote a separate function to do a line break when A0 is encountered. So Hoohaa called some kind of line-writing function with no more documentation than the occasional useless comment (“the following code processes the loop”, etc.), then called a line-feed function, and so on until the end of the stream. But when Foofaa got Hoohaa’s code, they had no knowledge of this, and so for multiple quotes, all they called was Hoohaa’s writeLine function, assuming that a function named writeLine{} would validate its end of fucking line. Apologies to the mods for this unfortunate rant.
Now, back to business. This is not so much for you as for others, Rev. But you’re here, as they say, and so…
Disagreement is interesting but irrelevant. I deeply apologize for the bluntness of that remark, but I’ve sort of reminded people of it already a couple of times, and even headered the OP with bold red letters that this was a “witnessing thread”. Again, forgive me. I do not wish in any way to impede your input or, God forbid, discourage you from participating in the thread. Your contributions have been among the most interesting.
If you will take this in the manner it is intended, I would greatly appreciate it. But this thread is about you trying to understand the theory(ies) that I am espousing. It isn’t a debate. I’m offering definitions of terms that I will be using, and there will be some things I say with which you may disagree. But the point of the exercise right now is for you to figure out what it is I’m saying. Then, at some point, we will debate any and every issue about my theories regarding the Aesthetical Jesus.
Just as I’ve promised. I will open a debate thread the moment we are finished with the epistemology thread (which will be Part IV). I guess that means the debate will be part V. We are still on part III. The organization goes like this:
I. Aesthetics.
2. Ethics and morality
3. Metaphysics and ontology (or reality and existence)
4. Epistemology
5. Debate
If we jump ahead, then we risk missing key definitions when the final theory is given in number 5, complete with inferences including a conclusion. How will you know what I mean by “essence” or “existence” or “goodness” or “love” if you did not take the time to examine them, rather than debate them. I’m telling you what I mean when I say this or that so that when we debate, you will not inadvertently raise a straw man, for example, or post a non sequitur.
You will be debating MY philosophy. Just as you would use Kant’s terms to discuss Kant’s philosophy, or Aristotle’s terms to discuss Aristotle’s philosophy, or Hegel’s terms to … well, okay, not Hegel, but still. I want to make a statement about the Aesthetical Jesus. It is only right that if you want to discuss my philosophy, which I have expressed in my terms, that you be familiar with those terms and meanings.
Now, you can, if you wish, compare my philosophy to that of Augustine or whoever, but when I say “goodness”, then even in debate it is inappropriate to assign any meaning to goodness other than “that which edifies” as along as it is MY philosophy that you’re talking about. So please don’t take this the wrong way when I say that this is a time for asking me questions, or offering to reword something (without changing the meaning or the context that I used.)
Truth be told, I would have unfairly singled you out, because others are doing the same. There is a new participant, kanicbird, who, so far as I know, has not read either Parts I or II. Nor does it seem that he or she has read much of Part III. He or she has begun to drop non-seqiturs into the discussion. He or she is not using any of my definitions. I would advise him or her that it is a simple matter to start a witnessing thread if he or she has something to say about some philosophy of his or her own.
Again, I apologize about refusing to engage in debate at this point. But if you do not concede that I have defined essence in terms of a metaphysical phenomenon, then you will not be talking about my philosophy. You’ll be talking about someone else’s. Your own perhaps. In any case, if you want to argue that your point of view is superior to mine, then it is first necessary that understand what I mean by what I say.
Now, as a Southern Gentleman, I cannot ignore the whole of your post, despite its essentially argumentative nature. I can guarantee you one thing: if you start talking about a ferret with wings, then a unicorn is going to be one of the last things I think of. How you can say the two are essentially the same is beyond me. But that doesn’t matter here. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree at this point. It matters only that you comprehend.
Thanks, and again, that was not addressed to you in particular. I apologize for using your post to make the point.
Well, I don’t know about that. You might be right. Certainly, what I bring to bear will be my life experiences, and I will have had many more of those at 40 than I will have had at 10. My perception of eternity might change (and in fact it has), but eternity itself was what I defined. It really has nothing to do with perception. I define eternity as a state of timelessness.
I wanted to hold off defining these terms until Part IV. But I think it is important that I do so now. That way, if we are going to dwell on this point for a while (which I hadn’t anticipated) you will know what I mean by the terms:
Eternity: a timeless state
Essence: a pre-existing identity
Necessity: a metaphysical certitude
My concern is that these definitions will raise some epistemological concerns, and so I was going to define them there. But here they are.
I very much appreciate your criticism in that regard, but I don’t tie reality to existence. Existence is one thing, and reality is another. That’s why we use ontology to study the former, and metaphysics the latter. And truthfully, adding a very loosely defined (in fact pretty much completely undefined) temporal logic to the mix is hopelessly knotted up in irrelevant stuff. Thanks all the same, but I’m just going to define reality as that which is eternal, essential, and necessary.
Oh, stop it. You do not need it dumbed down. I was just answering your question: “But I don’t see why a thing must be assured actuality. Why can it not only be predisposed to actuality, or even be incredibly unlikely to occur, yet occur?” My response was that it can, but that there is an important difference between an epistemic possibility and a metaphysical possibility. I gave an example about a chicken on the roof. I ended up by saying that the only way to guarantee that there is in actuality a chicken on the roof is if it is necessary that there is a chicken on the roof.
That’s fine by me. Inasmuch as I will not be using the term (at least in that sense) how you define it is moot. My point was not about mass, but about the circular nature of definitions, and the ability of a person, once he has demanded your definition, then to demand, for example definitions of “measure” and of “matter” And when you define those (please don’t; this is a hypotheticl), then the person may demand that you define words in those definitions also. Eventually, the entire language will be exhausted. As Wittgenstin said, “Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.” I am doing my level best to present mine, and the more I have to debate here, the longer it will take to debate what I’m actually saying when I’ve actually said it.
Hang on just minute! I have yet to state a premise of any kind, including a self-referential one. I will state my premises when I give my theory. Right now, I am laying out definitions only. (And definitions cannot be used as premises for reasons stated earlier.)
Well, I hope what you’ll return to is my philosophy. It is not possible for you already to have formed an argument when a statement has not yet been made. Just because I define reality as being that which is necessary, eternal, and essential does not imply that such a reality actually exists — if “exists” is the right word, and I don’t believe it is. I could have hosted one thread, perhaps, and provided a glossary. But all these questions in all these threads would be asked. It would be too unwieldy for me to manage.
Do you understand how I defined “reality” and “existence”? I would advise you to read Parts I and II, and then all of III.
Surely, you are not unaware that ignorant people differentiate.
I’m afraid that that’s an epistemological question. It appears that you have no interest in the nature of reality and existence. There are many theories of knowledge, and a particular one that I prefer. I’m going to ask you to wait patiently (and I do appreciate your patience) so that this particular thread can move forward. Thanks, other-wise.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean by this sentence or how it relates to my question.
Well now, I wouldn’t say that. For something to be real, it must be essential (as well as eternal and necessary), and you’ve defined existence as the emergence of the essential. So when it comes to the nature of reality and existence, it seems to me that essence is dead-center in the spotlight. But as I said, I have no problems taking all this up at a later date (except for that statement above… I can’t parse it).
Okay, fair enough. The whole purpose of these threads is to avoid the “ships passing in the night” kind of discussion that so often takes place when people don’t understand one another. So let’s review the question and response, this time with expansion.
You asked, “What is there to differentiation besides the knowledge that this is not that?”
In my mind, I diagrammed your question this way: “What” was the subject; “is” was the primary verb; and “to differentiation besides the knowledge that this is not that” was the predicate. Your “this” and your “that” were italicized, which indicated to me that you were concerned about a differentiation between two separate entities, one labeled “this” and the other labeled “that”. Your subordinate prepositional phrase, “besides the knowledge”, conveyed to me that knowledge was a prerequisite to making the aforementioned differentiation.
It was, for me, like the question, “Who, besides George W Bush, was our worst president ever?” Such a question would lead me to believe that you did not wish for me to include George W Bush in my response. (It is what I take from the meaning of “besides”.)
Therefore, from my perspective, it seemed like you were asking me to name something other than knowledge that might empower someone to make differentiations, as between one thing and another.
And so, I responded, “Surely, you are not unaware that ignorant people differentiate.”
I could have (and probably should have) formulated that sentence without the piled-on negation, and stated it this way: “Surely, you are aware that ignorant people differentiate.” In either case, the purpose was to make the point that knowledge, which is something ignorant people lack, is not a deterence to differentiation. That is why some random Christian fundamentalist thinks I’m going to hell, but that Dick Cheney is going to heaven. They have made a differentation despite there being a nearly complete lack of knowledge about Jesus and His teachings.
If I misunderstood your question, then please rephrase it, and I’ll give you another response.
I do indeed agree with you that essence is dead center in the spotlight. But you once again asked about people’s knowledge, in this case their knowledge of differentiation. I think it is appropriate to discuss the nature of essence, but only irrespective of what people know or how they know it.
Let me explain to you, briefly, why I am leaving epistemology until the end, and avoiding addressing it like the plague — especially since it is coming up fairly soon now anyway. Epistemology studies the source and nature of knowledge. This could go one of two ways primarily (infinitely many ways in actuality, but still) — (1) you could decide to debate what I am about to say, or (2) you could decide to accept for the sake of argument what I’m about to say. But the source of knowledge that will be used in Part IV is the knowledge (or lessons, or parables, or statements, or what-have-you) that we have received from Jesus almost exclusively through John the Beloved.
I have been adamant about participants accepting my terms and definitions about my philosophy because I intend, in the very last thread, the debate thread (Part V), to present a somewhat loose proof (meaning non-formal — it would take a long time to write a formal proof, and it would be made fun of by people anyway) that Jesus taught that man should concern himself with aesthetics, rather than morality: that, in fact, Jesus and His Father are themselves concerned with aesthetics rather than morality.
Thus, the title of the series: The Aesthetical Jesus.
The whole point of using these threads up through Part III was to share with people the definitions of the terms I will be using, so that they will understand what I am saying. This series was deliberatey designed to eliminate both the Bible thumping and the anti-theistic Bible “authorities” (well, at least, they fancy themselves to be) from jumping into Parts IV and V, screaming this and that about how John wrote his texts much later than Mark, and glazed-over-eye links to Biblical scholars from both sides, and much broohaha about nothing.
I am already aware that (most of) what was written by John the Beloved postdates most of the Bible, but I have no interest in any debate about the Bible. It was to be hoped that we could accept the meanings given of certain terms, like “goodness” and “essence”, and move from there to examine what John tells us that Jesus taught. (There will be one or two exceptions to the John source, particularly when they amplify or shed light, but they will be rare.)
Since I am hog tied from identifying particular people in Great Debates, I will present caricatures of them, and you can decide for yourself who they are. (Speaking of differentiation…) There is the one who will jump in to say, “No. That verse is of questionable origin on account of research done by Dr. Myside.” Or he will say, "The New International Version translation of that verse is wrong / misleading / incomplete because the Greek word “X” meant “Y” more often than it meant “Z”.
Then there will be the one who drops in only to remind us all that there is no God, and that Christians are evil to the bone, having many times over nearly destroyed civilization for nefarious causes and motivations. Then there will be the one who drops in to leave nonsensical poetic references and personal anecdotes about the afterlife — a topic only tangentially related to most points of the discussion. And then there will be the one who drops in to condemn us all (and me especially) for twisting the words of Jesus to suit myself.
Of the last one, I might well plead guilty because there is no question that my view of Jesus’s teachings is renegade to say the least. But my hope is that, to some people — strike that — to the people who have participated from the beginning, an understanding will begin to emerge of how I think and why I think it. It will be only you few who will go forward with an understanding of why I think what I think. And given who you are, I could not be more satisfied and relieved.
And so, I’ve put you off so many times about epistemology because of what I have expressed above. I respect you so greatly that I violated my own organization of the discussion to digress just a bit forward so that you could know why epistemological questions will be entirely moot until we look at our source of knowledge: Jesus through the writings of John.
I hope all this will assuage your impatience and even perhaps increase your interest in the metaphysical and ontological discussions, which will wrap up as soon as we have discussed freewill. And that will be soon, depending on how quickly people grasp what I mean by existence, essence, and necessity, and how they comprise reality. Not whether they agree or disagree, but merely whether they understand.