Being and Nonbeing

[Metacrock]

right. Hartshorne god Tillich to accept using exsit of God if you mean it metaphorically, I oten don't bother make it clear when I've told everyone a thousand times what my views are

I know you aren't saying that God or being 'exist' the way pencils and trousers exist. But you've said that being is, it partakes of being, even if it's not an existent. If we could enumerate all the things that are, would being be among them? Maybe 'being' in the broader sense of being real, not in the sens of being an instance of itself(?)

I speak of it as an aspect of being. If you think of something that is not confined to a localized existence and that in a sense is conned to everything, yet the nbet effect of this thing is purple and meaning, understanding will, it seems like a bundle of contradictions and like it could not be, you could not say it exists in thinghood or thingness. yet the net effect in terms of our perceptions woudlbe thie same as God as weconckve of him,

[Magritte]

Okay, I shall try, just for the sake of conceptual clarification. Even tho, yeah, what you ask for would be really hard, & the best I can try for is only to blur the lines between 'something' and 'nothing', I think.

I agree that behind QM theory, there still seems to a statistically describable stasis, which does seem like a 'something' (something of some kind that could be described, like eg, in string theory) but what if we broaden the idea? What if, along the lines of French philosophers Meillasox and Deleuze, we try to think 'ground of being" as just a vast glob of 'irrational becoming', an uncountable (non)set of purely spontaneous, unlimited possibilities, of "anything at all can happen"? That seems to me, perhaps, not quite 'something' - but not really 'nothing' neither. If you agree with this, does that suggest the concept of 'being' (and even being the ground of being) infers some limitation?

The fecund cornucopia, the infinite plenitude, the unrestricted fountainhead of possibility you're postulating sounds like precisely the opposite of nonbeing.

IOW, does 'being' always infer 'being something'' ... ie something in particular?

Being transcends the particular.

edit: there are aspects of being, I think, that preclude it from being complete boiled nonsense, but that's for another thread imo.

[Magritte]

right. Hartshorne god Tillich to accept using exsit of God if you mean it metaphorically, I oten don't bother make it clear when I've told everyone a thousand times what my views are

I know you aren't saying that God or being 'exist' the way pencils and trousers exist. But you've said that being is, it partakes of being, even if it's not an existent. If we could enumerate all the things that are, would being be among them? Maybe 'being' in the broader sense of being real, not in the sens of being an instance of itself(?)

To make a crude analogy, it's like the difference between the Lego system and things made of Lego. Now you're asking if the Lego system is made of Lego. No, it IS Lego itself.

(note: I am NOT saying that everything's physical, or that being is limited to the physical, or that the analogy of lego or the category of physicality conceptually exhausts being)

[Jim B.]

right. Hartshorne god Tillich to accept using exsit of God if you mean it metaphorically, I oten don't bother make it clear when I've told everyone a thousand times what my views are

I know you aren't saying that God or being 'exist' the way pencils and trousers exist. But you've said that being is, it partakes of being, even if it's not an existent. If we could enumerate all the things that are, would being be among them? Maybe 'being' in the broader sense of being real, not in the sens of being an instance of itself(?)

To make a crude analogy, it's like the difference between the Lego system and things made of Lego. Now you're asking if the Lego system is made of Lego. No, it IS Lego itself.

(note: I am NOT saying that everything's physical, or that being is limited to the physical, or that the analogy of lego or the category of physicality conceptually exhausts being)

It sounds as if you're saying that 'being' is the conceptual 'container' rather than the container that somehow contains itself. Since it wouldn't be made of Lego, to extend the analogy, I assume it wouldn't be in the set of things that are, although it would be real. That's sort of in line with what I was thinking.

[met]

Okay, I shall try, just for the sake of conceptual clarification. Even tho, yeah, what you ask for would be really hard, & the best I can try for is only to blur the lines between 'something' and 'nothing', I think.

I agree that behind QM theory, there still seems to a statistically describable stasis, which does seem like a 'something' (something of some kind that could be described, like eg, in string theory) but what if we broaden the idea? What if, along the lines of French philosophers Meillasox and Deleuze, we try to think 'ground of being" as just a vast glob of 'irrational becoming', an uncountable (non)set of purely spontaneous, unlimited possibilities, of "anything at all can happen"? That seems to me, perhaps, not quite 'something' - but not really 'nothing' neither. If you agree with this, does that suggest the concept of 'being' (and even being the ground of being) infers some limitation?

The fecund cornucopia, the infinite plenitude, the unrestricted fountainhead of possibility you're postulating sounds like precisely the opposite of nonbeing.

IOW, does 'being' always infer 'being something'' ... ie something in particular?

Being transcends the particular.

edit: there are aspects of being, I think, that preclude it from being complete boiled nonsense, but that's for another thread imo.

Well, we can usually nounify a concept, as you did, but in the case of possibilities I don't know if that makes them 'be'?

[Metacrock]

right. Hartshorne god Tillich to accept using exsit of God if you mean it metaphorically, I oten don't bother make it clear when I've told everyone a thousand times what my views are

I know you aren't saying that God or being 'exist' the way pencils and trousers exist. But you've said that being is, it partakes of being, even if it's not an existent. If we could enumerate all the things that are, would being be among them? Maybe 'being' in the broader sense of being real, not in the sens of being an instance of itself(?)

To make a crude analogy, it's like the difference between the Lego system and things made of Lego. Now you're asking if the Lego system is made of Lego. No, it IS Lego itself.

(note: I am NOT saying that everything's physical, or that being is limited to the physical, or that the analogy of lego or the category of physicality conceptually exhausts being)

what are you saying?


you are saying itself

[Magritte]

Okay, I shall try, just for the sake of conceptual clarification. Even tho, yeah, what you ask for would be really hard, & the best I can try for is only to blur the lines between 'something' and 'nothing', I think.

I agree that behind QM theory, there still seems to a statistically describable stasis, which does seem like a 'something' (something of some kind that could be described, like eg, in string theory) but what if we broaden the idea? What if, along the lines of French philosophers Meillasox and Deleuze, we try to think 'ground of being" as just a vast glob of 'irrational becoming', an uncountable (non)set of purely spontaneous, unlimited possibilities, of "anything at all can happen"? That seems to me, perhaps, not quite 'something' - but not really 'nothing' neither. If you agree with this, does that suggest the concept of 'being' (and even being the ground of being) infers some limitation?

The fecund cornucopia, the infinite plenitude, the unrestricted fountainhead of possibility you're postulating sounds like precisely the opposite of nonbeing.

IOW, does 'being' always infer 'being something'' ... ie something in particular?

Being transcends the particular.

edit: there are aspects of being, I think, that preclude it from being complete boiled nonsense, but that's for another thread imo.

Well, we can usually nounify a concept, as you did, but in the case of possibilities I don't know if that makes them 'be'?

Particular, limited, contingent things might be or not be. Are you confusing that with being itself?

[met]

Calling it 'being itself' seems quite clearly question-begging. But we could change that to call it 'shaloom-itself' or hat ever and still have the noun-ification problem.

Can an utterly unbounded 'thing' exist? Can a 'thing' without at least a conceptual opposite exist? Does being depend on non-being?

Zizek, btw, has a passage on quantum cosmology in one of his books where he kinda hegelistically synthesizes 'something' and ''nothing'

...[this concept of] broken symmetry resides in the identity between nothingness (void, vacuum) and the infinite wealth of potentialities.

[Metacrock]

met do you have the slightest idea why it's"itself?" sorry man I'm losing patience,

[Magritte]

Calling it 'being itself' seems quite clearly question-begging. But we could change that to call it 'shaloom-itself' or hat ever and still have the noun-ification problem.

Can an utterly unbounded 'thing' exist? Can a 'thing' without at least a conceptual opposite exist? Does being depend on non-being?

Zizek, btw, has a passage on quantum cosmology in one of his books where he kinda hegelistically synthesizes 'something' and ''nothing'

...[this concept of] broken symmetry resides in the identity between nothingness (void, vacuum) and the infinite wealth of potentialities.

Physics is not metaphysics, vacuum is not nonbeing, and you should read this review of Lawrence Krauss's book A Universe From Nothing before proceeding:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books ... rauss.html

Krauss got owned so hard he had to have a "property of David Albert" tattoo removed after reading the review.