Being and Nonbeing

[Magritte]

thereby implying there is some Godlike part in us

I don't know about God, but there's certainly some being in man, or more properly, man is "in" being, so being is not in principle unknown to us.

[Magritte]

You wrote that being exists:

No. Being cannot come from non being, Some form of being must exist eternal. Ground of being is necessary.

What gives? Did you mean beings?

I think we're just bumping up against the limitations of language here. As well as some shooting from the hip on a messageboard. My reading is that Metacrock means that transcendent being necessarily *IS*, that it is real, that it is actual, not that it "exists" in the sense of a being alongside other limited beings.

[Metacrock]

You wrote that being exists:

No. Being cannot come from non being, Some form of being must exist eternal. Ground of being is necessary.

What gives? Did you mean beings?

I think we're just bumping up against the limitations of language here. As well as some shooting from the hip on a messageboard. My reading is that Metacrock means that transcendent being necessarily *IS*, that it is real, that it is actual, not that it "exists" in the sense of a being alongside other limited beings.

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

[Metacrock]

thereby implying there is some Godlike part in us

I don't know about God, but there's certainly some being in man, or more properly, man is "in" being, so being is not in principle unknown to us.

being is not an adative like some chemical.

[Magritte]

thereby implying there is some Godlike part in us

I don't know about God, but there's certainly some being in man, or more properly, man is "in" being, so being is not in principle unknown to us.

being is not an adative like some chemical.

Sure, I was being a bit facetious when I said "there's some being in man". Any limited thing that is, is in being, or exists only because there is being, or is contingent on being, or however you'd like to phrase it. I think this relationship is related to what you call utter dependence.

[met]

thereby implying there is some Godlike part in us

I don't know about God, but there's certainly some being in man, or more properly, man is "in" being, so being is not in principle unknown to us.

That's interesting....what more exactly do you mean?

IOW - can contingent processes grasp necessities and, if so, how?

[met]

Either there just is and always has been being in some manner, or else being can come from nonbeing.

Do we all agree on this, or are there third, fourth and fifth options I've overlooked?

In a sense, perhaps....what about the Copenhagen interpretation of QM? Non-realism, aka "reality is quantum, get over it" - suggesting "being " only exists as potentialities in the absesnse of an observer?

If so, how does that affect your "being/non-being" dichotomy here?

[Magritte]

Met, the scenarios you're describing presuppose and implicate being.

I think the shortest path for you to undermine the necessity of being would be for you to describe a way that things could go from a situation of utter and absolute nonbeing to a situation of anything whatsoever. This is not a rhetorical request. I'd like to see you do this.

[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?

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

[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(?)