Sunday 24 April 2011

lets get metaphysical....

These notions appeal to me:

1. Neutral Monism
2. Everything is One or Unity at the deepest level of reality
3. The universe is manifest through a dialectical process - the interaction and synthesis of opposites
4. The 'force' of nature is 'creativity' or the 'will to be and self transcend'
5. There is no presiding 'mind' directing the cosmos instead there are 'fundamental principles and laws'
6. Though everything is a unity, the manifest universe is a 'process': the 'events' and 'incidences' of the underlying, primordial substrate. The closest analogy is the relationship of surface waves to the ocean as a whole.
7. There is only one 'substance' and everything is a 'mode' or 'appearance' of that substance.
8. The 'spirit' of something refers to its essential being, vitality and conscious state (including the unconscious)
9. The spiritual aspect of the world is its 'interiority'. Spirit is not 'out there' but the depths or ground of being.
10. Physical evil 'apparent' because what is evil to the individual may not be evil as regards the whole.Death and Chaos drive 'evolution'. The dialectical process also causes temporary imbalances and conflict before it is resolves. Sometimes physical evils may be the result of imbalances in health or ecosystems caused by human behaviour.
11. Moral evil is the result of a false notion of 'autonomy' and a refusal to accept the 'other' as essentially the same as ourselves. This leads to self-aggrandisement and finally injustice.
12. Injustice is exceeding our bounds or proper place  in the 'dance' of existence. It is the result of hubris or arrogance. It is demanding more than we need, taking more than our proper share, or interfering with another's integrity and capacity to fulfil their potential. The golden rule follows from the principle of equality, which in turn follows from the principles of identity or sameness and unity, and thus it is derived ultimately from the kind of 'monism' espoused above.
13. By the same token Justice seeks to recover sameness and unity, and to acheive this it is 'restorative' and sometimes 'equalising'. Thus who have taken too much must make amends by returning what they have taken. Where the damage to another individuals' integrity and capacity is more serious, a common view of 'justice' is that it appears to require that the damager experiences a punitive consequence of corresponding severity that detracts from the damager's integrity and capacity e.g. loss of freedom. Thus punitive justice tries to 'equalise' the pain and deriment of the offence  between victim and damager where it cannot be other wise be 'undone'.
14. Every actual incident or event has both a physical and mental 'aspect' (but not a dual  nature) - this notion is derived from Process Philosophy.  Essentially everything that exists has an interior mental aspect. This is not the same as saying everything has a cognitive mind or the ability to think. The mental aspect may be 'unconscious' but all beings would appear to have a 'subjective' mode - thus it is meaningful to talk about what it is like to be a 'rock', a 'tree' and so forth. The primordial universe  - the universe before the manifestation of space and time -  is 'unconscious' and potentially conscious, it becomes conscious only through the evolution of sentient beings who are conscious. Sentient beings collectively represent the 'consciousness' of the universe. However there is in our space and time no 'over mind' but sentient intelligence may one day evolve into an 'overmind', an intellectual 'omega point'.
15. Eschantologically, the 'omega point' over mind - the final state of sentient life in the universe - may become so cognitively advanced to be able to transcend all physical limits.It is possible this omega point over mind can also  transcend time and space, which opens the possibility of the ultimate paradox: that the self caused universe. However I consider this notion entirely speculative.

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