I disagree that understanding or proving either love or ‘God’ can only be achieved by intuition and belief. We can subjectively ‘prove’ or at least affect the probability of the awareness of both love and ‘God’ existing for others by how we relate to them and to the world. It’s not scientific (not yet), but the potential is there, at least.
— Possibility

How or what are some of the cognitive tools we can access in proving or understanding the EOG? — 3017amen

I’m only saying that we shouldn’t dismiss the capacity of the scientific method (minus the classical assumptions) to reach an understanding of the absolute possibility of the universe that is referred to as ‘God’. It certainly won’t be a classically devised proof. But we can reliably calculate certain potentialities, so if we don’t automatically discard the low probability information in these calculations, but rather find some way to include them in our understanding of the universe, then we’re on our way to recognising the ‘illogical/improbable possibility’ in the universe that points to the absolute possibility that exists beyond logic.

An example of this is the efforts scientists go to in measuring the minute energy signatures of neutrinos and other particles in the universe, because we now realise that they matter to our understanding of reality. This discovery began from a vague awareness of an improbable or ‘low value’ possibility, that mattered to the extent that we developed a collaborative potential to relate to this possible existence by relating to elements in the universe that have greater potential (or attribute more significant value) in how they relate to what is insignificant to us, such that it changes the value of our relation to what is sufficiently significant to us, so that we notice it. Love as a six dimensional relation is the same thing: recognising that what is significant to you but is insignificant to me matters in relation to its relation to your significance to me.

In this same manner, we approach an understanding of the existence of ‘God’ by relating to the world to the extent that what matters, (what is ‘loved’) is not just everything I think or believe I could ever value, but everything that could ever be valued by everything I could ever value, whether or not I think or believe that I could, or that they could.

The current understanding of ‘time’ as a number of interrelated variables in relation to three dimensional information, rather than a single measurement of the universe, is another example. This opens the way to understanding ‘value’ or ‘potential’ as a number of interrelated formulae (probability calculations) in relation to three or four dimensional information. Managing the relative uncertainty of our predictions is already beginning a paradigm shift in how we do science. Recognising that what we understand as ‘value’ or ‘potential’ is not necessarily numerical I think is the next big hurdle for science.

Yes we do pass moral judgement on thinking. Take a look at the ten commandments for example, half of them are concerned with thinking; don't take the Lord's name in vain, honour, and don't covet. And if you read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, you'll see that he names "contemplation" as the highest virtue, this makes thinking itself an act. — Metaphysician Undercover

Passing moral judgement doesn’t make it justified. The Ten Commandments are not moral judgements - they are precepts to avoid moral judgement, which can ONLY be conducted on the actual behaviour such thinking leads to. Its failures are well documented. Likewise, contemplation as the highest virtue is a principle upon which one morally judges the behaviour that follows thinking. Judging the thinking and not the actions leads us to condemn based on assumptions without evidence, which has been the most damaging abuse of the Ten Commandments.

I just got done with my second reading of the republic. Anyways, plato mainly speaks of the ideals under the absolute of "good" and that they lead to a perfectly, united-absolute-oneness which he calls God. When he touches on their opposites he only goes so far as to show, essentially, the negative effects they have on your soul, not necessarily where those ideas lead-besides reincarnations into a more unreasonable state; Or why they even exist in opposition to the ideals.

If his god represents the absolute of the good and just, why does the bad and unjust exist? If his god was perfect, why would these opposing ideas exist? Is there an opposite God of evil?

This makes me think plato never completed his meditations which would have logically led him to the buddhist concept of the cycle of death and rebirth, where all of this good and bad are simply our own creations, which is a whole other discussion. — One piece

I think we all have a general tendency to want to exclude what we consider to be ‘evil’ from our world - or at least from our conception of it. Plato was no different in this respect. I think that the ‘problem of evil’ derives from what we exclude or isolate from a subjective ‘ideal’ or complete concept of the world.

There is a distinction between what each of us understands this united-absolute-oneness CAN be potentially, and what is POSSIBLE - but language as a system doesn’t point out the distinction to us very well. If we rely on language or logic to enable us to understand everything, then we will always fall short, despite our best efforts.

‘Evil’ is an exclusion of potentiality, a negation of what CAN be in the world. Acknowledging the existence of ‘evil’, ‘bad’ or ‘unjust’ even as IDEAS - that some things in the world SHOULDN’T exist, even though they CAN - is the creation of ‘evil’ in the first place. And this creation is always subjective.

I think it is perhaps the logical nature of Plato’s meditations that limit his ability to grasp this aspect. Buddhism reaches this deeper understanding of the world by venturing beyond what each of us considers logical: by allowing our connection to the universe to ‘show’ us what exists beyond our own capacity to understand. It seems like Plato’s philosophy, being entirely of his own devising and focused on the individual, is necessarily limited in this respect.

So, rather than end racism, you are advocating making everyone suffer from it?

'Misguided', you say? Hmm.

Surely there's a much better way to improve the racial relations in the US aside from glorifying and further perpetuating it's(racism) existence. — creativesoul

Wow - if you really think I’m glorifying racism by what I’m suggesting, then either you haven’t been paying attention, or you’re misunderstanding me.

I’m not advocating making anyone do anything, least of all suffer. We all experience humility, pain and loss anyway - there’s no avoiding that in general. It’s when we have the courage to acknowledge this suffering alongside the suffering of others, without trying to deflect it, attack it or retaliate for it, that we can collaborate on dismantling the social and conceptual structures that perpetuate and contribute to it.

Trying to ‘end racism’ by broadening the concept is not a solution. This is why it’s called a ‘diversity’ workshop, not an ‘anti-racism’ workshop. It doesn’t help to label what they’re trying to reduce with this kind of intervention as ‘racism’. We have to question and critically examine the underlying conceptual structures - the thoughts, beliefs and feelings - that enable these experiences to persist. To do that, everyone should be roughly on the same page:

1. These experiences (whether or not we label them ‘racism’) devalue one’s conceptual identity;

2. We should reduce experiences for each other that devalue one’s conceptual identity.

If they had simply stood up and said, ‘racism is bad’, then everyone would have said ‘they’re not talking to me because I’m not racist’. Likewise, if they had drawn a line in the sand and stated ‘this is racist behaviour, so stop it’, then there would have been plenty of argument against the definition. What they did was create an environment where ‘white people’ could show compassion for their ‘minority’ co-workers by expressing an experience of humility in recognition of the humility that minorities experience every day - regardless of whether or not this humility was caused by the actions of their co-workers.

The implication of ‘racism’ as such seems to have come from responses by several ‘white people’ in the sessions, which led to interpretations that they were overreacting to experiences which shouldn’t be labelled as ‘racism’. I agree that they shouldn’t be labelled as such, but I also disagree with comments that they shouldn’t have expressed their experience of humility as a ‘white person’. It may not have been well-received by their ‘white’ co-workers who may have felt discomfort or resistance at the thought of identifying with that humility, but I’d be willing to bet this expression of compassion would have been felt by their minority co-workers.

For all the animosity it appears to have caused, I think it did establish an environment that made it particularly uncomfortable for people to perpetuate an ‘us vs them’ environment (identifying either as minority or majority), and did so without defining ‘racism’ or singling out specific behaviour to attack or label as ‘racist’. I think those who participated should all be spending some time asking themselves honestly why they were uncomfortable with what was said, as @Marchesk is clearly doing here.

Of course, illogical concepts are possible in the dualistic state of Reality, but not in the unitary state of Ideality. Eternal LOGOS includes all logical possibilities, including negations, which offset to neutralize each other to Zero values. But space-time opens Pandora's Box to all kinds of illogical and irrational mentality. — Gnomon

I don’t find this consistent with what you were saying here:

in my thesis, the next higher level above immanent EnFormAction is simply transcendent G*D. — Gnomon

and here:

Since the infinite potential of G*D is all possibilities, S/he is necessarily both Love & Hate, Good & Evil, Male & Female, Positive & Negative. Any comprehensive philosophical worldview, could be turned into a religion for the masses, only by choosing one side of the coin, and by taking its metaphors literally : "God is Love". Also, by turning the abstract deity into Santa Claus or Satan. — Gnomon

I’m a little confused by your use of ‘potential’ and ‘possible’, and how they relate to G*D, enformaction and spacetime. Because I don’t recognise mentality as being IN spacetime, so I’m not sure how this ‘illogical and irrational mentality’ suddenly becomes ‘possible’ in spacetime, when it’s not possible ‘in the unitary state of Ideality’.

Describing this unity as ‘ideal’, as ‘including all logical possibilities’, implies an exclusion of anything illogical or less than ideal, which is then NOT unitary. As much as I respect and admire your efforts in putting all of this down, I guess I’m just not quite seeing how it all fits together. It seems to me like your BOTH/AND principle lacks the unity you think it does.

I refer to Evolution as Ententional, because it has a direction of progression toward some unknown future state. I can only guess what that "Omega Point" might be. (see Graph below) But, because Evolution is progressing in a zig-zag path via Hegelian dialectic, I assume that the end-point is not pre-destined, but only the parameters of success --- as in Evolutionary Programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_programming). It's just a guess. — Gnomon

This is more where I’m at - and I would interpret the ‘fitness function’ of the algorithm simply as maximal awareness, connection and collaboration.

Since G*D is presumed to exist infinitely and eternally, the "ALL" characterization includes all logical possibilities, but the "LOGOS" label prohibits "illogical possibilities. Yet, again, I'm just guessing. — Gnomon

But the ‘LOGOS’ label applies only at the level of potentiality, which ‘collapses’ the infinite and eternal possibility of G*D to five dimensions. It is at this point (in the ‘mind’) that all illogical possibilities are ignored, isolate or excluded from the eventual actuality of the universe, but not from G*D.

I think it’s important to recognise that G*D is inclusive of BOTH logical AND illogical possibilities, as well as BOTH love AND hate, and BOTH ‘good’ AND ‘evil’. This transcendent G*D is also immanent in my theory - which is not panENdeist, but understands this six-dimensional G*D as reality. The relationship with the world is ongoing, because the actual, measurable universe is simply a limited account of all possible information that IS G*D. The human capacity to relate to illogical possibilities and to all possibilities inclusive of ‘evil’ or ‘hate’, are crucial to the fitness function.

With respect to the definition of super natural I'll offer this:

It seems to me that the supernatural (whatever it may be) is outside of space and time and thus the laws of nature as we know them do not apply to the supernatural. By laws of nature I refer to strong force, weak force, gravity, EM force.

The 'supernatural' could describe anything which cannot be observed or proven by any classical means, but only by intuition and belief. Such as the presence of love, or for some people, the existence of God. You cannot classically devise a "proof" of neither but it exists only in our minds and in the way we believe. We can't prove we love someone, we just know that we do. And so I believe that love and God are examples of supernatural "entities". — 3017amen

I accept your definition of ‘supernatural’, but I think the classical axioms upon which the term is based undermine its usefulness in a discussion such as this. Remember that the ‘laws of nature’ used to be Newton’s, so already the definition has shifted away from a classical view of ‘nature’ and what is ‘natural’.

If we’re to better understand these ‘laws of nature’ you refer to, then even science needs to recognise them as ‘evidence’ of a reality that transcends time. These ‘laws’ set the potential energy/entropy access of the unfolding universe, and point to a five dimensional aspect to reality. Our scientific understanding of this dimension starts with probability wave calculations, but the role of the observer can no longer be ignored or concealed in science. It opens the door to studying the effects of things like ‘belief’ or ‘affect’ on probability wave calculations using scientific method, and better understanding consciousness as a five-dimensional aspect of the human organism.

I disagree that understanding or proving either love or ‘God’ can only be achieved by intuition and belief. We can subjectively ‘prove’ or at least affect the probability of the awareness of both love and ‘God’ existing for others by how we relate to them and to the world. It’s not scientific (not yet), but the potential is there, at least.

To speak to one's logic of it all, I would have to default to Kant's idea of the noumenal realm, when trying to understand the true nature of this thing called Love and/or the super natural. — 3017amen

Well, the way I see it, the noumenal/phenomenal divide is narrowly anthropic, and a clearer understanding of how we relate to this ‘noumenal realm’ (of which we are a part) through conceptual structures needs to take into account the way animals, plants, chemical reactions and molecules relate to the same ‘noumenon’. Because we don’t just relate to reality conceptually, but also on other levels, which continually influence the structure of our ‘phenomenal world’.

I think your definition of "moral" is incorrect. Morality is concerned with what is good and bad. And since it extends into judging thinking in this way, and thinking is not properly "behaviour", but related to behaviour, morality has a greater extent than what you claim. — Metaphysician Undercover

Morality does not judge thinking, but is concerned with the actions that follow thinking; with what is good or bad behaviour. I have yet to come across a definition of ‘moral’ or ‘morality’ that does not mention behaviour, customs or actions, so I stand by my definition. Feel free to demonstrate otherwise. Judging thinking or people is a misuse of moral values - a way to define, control or oppress others, motivated by fear.

This casts doubt on your claim "I disagree wholeheartedly that we cannot value other than morally". Evaluating is an act of thinking, and acts of thinking may be judged as good or bad in relation to moral ethics. Morally "good" thinking will produce good value judgements, and bad thinking produces bad value judgements. If you think that there are value judgements which themselves can be judged as correct or incorrect, without reference to moral principles then the challenge is yours, to demonstrate these. Before you proceed, consider that correctness and incorrectness in value judgements is normative. — Metaphysician Undercover

Apart from the fact that I haven’t asserted any claim but expressed a disagreement, you’re referring to value and value judgements as if they’re the same thing. They’re not. I’ve already addressed the various types of value that have nothing to do with moral principles:

Value (noun):

1. The importance, worth or usefulness of something.

2. Principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.

3. The numerical amount denoted by an algebraic term; a magnitude, quantity or number.

4. The relative duration of a sound, signified by a (musical) note.

5. The meaning of a word or other linguistic unit.

6. The relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular colour. — Possibility

Value (verb): to consider something to be important or beneficial. — Possibility

Something doesn’t have to be judged morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to be considered important or beneficial, so I maintain my opinion that we can value other than morally. I can value money, which is morally nether ’good’ nor ‘bad’. I can also value knowledge, certain possessions, mealtimes and much more...

I'm not sure what you mean by
Love is pure relation
— Possibility
. There may well be pureness in actualization of love but it is also, quite often impure. The mother who backhands her child whom she indeed loves is an example. In such a typical scenario that parent has held onto the delusion that her love is "pure" and thereby turned a blind eye to building resentments and anger which thus grow to a point where they trigger her. — jambaugh

Pure relation is not necessarily pure love - I’ll agree to that. Anyone who says their love is ‘pure’ is attempting to express a pure relation, but talk is cheap these days. I’m starting to see what you’ve been trying to say here. There’s no reason for you to believe what I’m saying about the love I have for my child - it manifests only in my words and behaviour - in how I actualise this relation to my child. Fair enough.

If I can offer a clearer example of what I’m trying to get at, it would be those things we do that have no recognisable value (or even have negative value) for ourselves, yet are meaningful to achieve simply because they actualise potential in (or have value for) the one we love. We tend to ‘rationalise’ or logically explain these actions any number of ways, because otherwise they suggest a negation of the value of self, which is viewed as ‘low self-esteem’ in our social reality. Explaining love as ‘moral judgment’ is one such explanation - one that reduces meaning to only what has moral value. Evolutionary psychology explanations of altruism and self-sacrifice are also feeble rationalisations of love that are ignorant of a six-dimensional level of pure relation or meaning.

one may take the ideal of pure love so to heart that one may amplify self critique into self loathing and be unable to accept love in any form. My first girlfriend had this in spades. I presume she grew past it as she's now (happily so I presume) married. I only wish I'd not be so immature at the time to have dealt with it better. I only knew that "my love was pure" and its very existence was all that mattered. Now after several decades I recognize that that love, that value, is only meaningful as it places value on my actions. If I fail to act it becomes meaningless. — jambaugh

I can relate to where your girlfriend was at, to some extent. At the time I certainly didn’t recognise it as self-loathing, but I was fully capable of subconsciously sabotaging almost any chance at love. Fortunately for me, I was loved by someone with courage and integrity in spades.

The way I see it, love is always possible, but its meaning comes from how we relate that possibility to reality. It isn’t only awareness of love, but the courage to connect and collaborate without limitations that enables us to act with love towards others. Love is a way of actualising potentiality that relates to the world without fears or boundaries. That’s the real challenge, I think.

I accept that most people are unaware of any distinction between what is meaningful and what has subjective value. If we’re lucky, we can get away with love at this level of awareness. But we can also be blindsided by a love that ‘vanishes’ when our potentiality or perceived moral value takes a hit: if one of us is suddenly incapacitated, we lose a child or make a poor choice that threatens our future, for instance. I think it helps to develop love to the point where we understand the difference between value and meaning - where we recognise that what has value for you may not have value for me, but is meaningful purely because of how I relate to you. I think that this kind of love can withstand anything.

By granular, you mean discrete? The discrete is like a unicorn. It doesn't exist. Does it have size or not? Is it something or nothing? Those questions refute the opponents of Zeno and Parmenides — Gregory

No. By granular, I mean NOT infinitely divisible. Quanta represents a particle of the smallest actual measurement (Planck scale), but quanta are only mathematical representations of the granularity of matter, not actual objects. Objects are three dimensional relations to an observable event.

I don't quite get this part? For me "take the hit" was just accepting that things have been favoring white males for a long time so we should accept that the pendulum may have to swing the other way before we get to the right place. I don't need to "learn" through an affective experience that black people have been given a hard time in America/Australia...that's what history books are for (I entirely understand that most people need to "feel" something before they "understand" it...I have found that I do not experience emotions with the same intensity as most, so maybe that explains my confusion here). — ZhouBoTong

Not everyone can understand the effect of humility at this level of awareness, so I think it does certainly help for people to experience it in order to relate, not just to the fact that black people have been given a ‘hard time’ (which they can certainly get from history books), but understand that this continues to impact on their conceptual identity, even when there is no active or conscious discrimination taking place.

like this bit, but unfortunately, I don't see humility being particularly valued by society (we don't even demand the appearance of humility from our leaders anymore). Humility is just taken as a lack of confidence. So, while I get your point (and agree), I would expect to see some humility in pop culture before I see it becoming a norm. Heck, if we look at anyone who considers themselves to be "woke" - even those who do somewhat understand the minority experience have no idea what humility is. — ZhouBoTong

I agree, this is a problem. Why do we have to wait to be shown the value of humility in pop culture before we can see the value for ourselves? It’s a task for philosophers, I would think.

I'm not sure how you arrive at that multi-dimensional hierarchy of Information. But, in my thesis, the next higher level above immanent EnFormAction is simply transcendent G*D. — Gnomon

G*D : other terms for the axiomatic First Cause : LOGOS, ALL, BEING, MIND, Creator, Enformer, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. These names and associated qualities are attributed to the unknown unknowable deity as logical inferences from observation of the Creation. — Gnomon

This makes some sense to me - although your list of alternative terms suggests prior knowledge of an endpoint, which I dispute. The way I see it, this transcendent G*D refers to a relation of all possible information, including illogical possibilities, such as squaring the circle, and love.

Objects are infinitely divisible, so they have infinite parts. Hence Zenos paradox. Belief in God is about desire, not knowledge. People want more. They are not satisfied with annihilation. But what does it even feel to speak of an "order beyond the material"? The idea of prophecy is justified with molinism or compatabilism. The former makes no sense, because it makes people having made choices without existentially existing. The latter makes God a monster. — Gregory

If you’re referring to actual objects, then I dispute this. The material universe is both finite and granular (according to quantum mechanics) and it also seems to be the case in relation to time. Belief in God doesn’t require knowledge, but it’s not about wanting more. It’s about recognising that the way we relate to this awareness that there IS more to reality is ultimately what matters. To speak of an ‘order beyond the material’ is to devalue illogical information about reality.

Both Molinism and Compatibilism are ignorant of the capacity for the human mind to map causal conditions beyond time by relating to potentiality. Determinism refers to measurable relations within time, while the ‘freedom of the will’ refers to our capacity to ALSO relate to reality beyond time, and integrate this information in predicting, evaluating, determining and initiating action.

Sure, the phenomenon called Love is beyond logical impossibility, yet to describe it in a proposition, puts it into an axiom or construct of logic and language. Thus, when trying to verbalize Love, it becomes a logically impossible (or ineffable) phenomenon. Or at least a metaphysical one, that in theory, would include a 5th dimensional force (as you suggested), as even Einstein would posit. — 3017amen

Love is always possible, but not always logical. Using language to describe love is fraught with error because the process is necessarily reductive: six dimensional information must be reduced to five-dimensional information and then ‘fit’ into a particular language structure. The difficulty is similar to drawing a table: it takes a certain amount of skill to reduce one’s relationship with a table to a relationship of shapes (2D) or even lines (1D) on a page, without losing important information that expresses its 3D aspect - let alone any aspect of time (4D) or value perspective or perceived potential (5D), or what the table or the moment or its value/potential or simply the relationship itself means to you (6D). And that’s just a table.

Love always involves a reductive process. Personally, I tend to describe an act of love as actualising (4D) a relation (6D) of potentiality (5D). Like the drawing of the table, it’s only when we recognise that what people call ‘love’ always points to more a complex relationship of information than what we’re looking at, that we can get a sense of what that ‘love’ is.

But I haven’t suggested a fifth-dimensional ‘force’ as such. It’s more accurately described as a relation - in much the same way as a 3D object is a relation of space to shape to length from a variable position in time. Where this relation pertains to ‘force’ is the notion of ‘metaphysical will’, which I tend to describe as the faculty by which action is determined and initiated. This 5D relation I see as three ‘gates’ between potentiality and actuality - awareness/ignorance, connection/isolation and collaboration/exclusion - which control the flow of energy/entropy.

And so all we are really alluding to there, in an anthropic way, is the complex nature of consciousness, and the theory that conscious energy is 'out there' only being filtered by the brain. (That of course being in opposition to say the materialist view that the brain excretes substance to do its job of cognition-within itself as a self contained thing in itself.)

And that thought process of entropy would, I believe, also align with Schop's philosophy of a Metaphysical Will in nature.

So, to embrace logical impossibility (as a Christian Existentialist) as irony would have it, only supports my world view of the super natural existing-Love. (Which it turn, relegates Atheism to a pathology inconsistent with natural phenomena or otherwise in denial of the human condition.) — 3017amen

I don’t think love is ‘super natural’ at all. Super-logical, ultimately, yes. Ineffable, absolutely.

The complex nature of consciousness refers to our current capacity for awareness, which is not the same for everyone. Most of us have at least some awareness of a five-dimensional relation of value/potential to time to space to shape to length, and our relative position of experiencing subject: an integrated relational structure of the human organism as ‘mind’. The complex nature of love refers to awareness of six-dimensional relation of meaning to value to time to space to shape to length. From the relative position of an experiencing subject, our understanding of love is necessarily a reduction of information, understood as something ‘super natural’ - an actualising of potential, of ‘God’ - because what we understand of the universe is only what consciousness relates to, not what conscious IS. In the same way, most animals understand their universe as only what the living organism (as an event) relates to (ie. as response to stimulus), not what it IS.

But from a possible position beyond the self, relating without limitation or fear to the full potentiality of the universe as an integrated system, we recognise this relational existence as love.

Atheism usually relates specifically to the notion of ‘God’ as an actuality beyond time. I think calling it a ‘pathology’ is unnecessarily judgemental. It derives from a lack of awareness, but then so does every religious doctrine it refutes.

If I approach an object, first i have to go half the distance. Otherwise I am there. And half that, otherwise i am there. Laws of identity say this goes on forever. So objects are infinite. Yet they are finite to us. The division of a whole into parts gives us exactly that sum when combined. We can say things are merely potentially infinite like Aristotle's said. But nothing could then be truly actual, because it would only potentially have parts, which is absurd. Heraclitian fire is the solution — Gregory

Not sure I follow you here. Objects are not infinite.

I'm questioning where the line is between clear discrimination, and inferred discrimination because of all the little things. As I said, one minority person in the meeting did say regarding the being ignored incident that people with those experiences are conditioned to interpret things that way, and the white response to immediately try and recognize them after that was the wrong way to go about this whole thing. Probably for several reasons, one being that the white people are acting too anxious not to appear racist, which doesn't accomplish anything. — Marchesk

We don’t like the implication that we’re being ‘racist’ - as I said, it sounds like the concept of ‘racism’ as we collectively understand it was not being addressed in the workshop, but rather an attempt to understand the subjective experience of minorities. I think there’s something about the experience of humiliation and guilt that we’re unwilling to openly express it, too - particularly in a litigious society, or in a workplace where admitting to ‘feeling bad about it’ could compromise one’s strategic political position within the company. To ‘be seen’ as NOT doing what is implied as ‘bad’ seems like a natural response, given the circumstances. I think the most difficult thing about doing this in the workplace is that, even though the managers are not facilitating it, the fact that they’re present doesn’t eliminate the work politics - I think perhaps that’s more what was going on here than a general response to this kind of intervention.

But I'm mostly annoyed with the white people who spoke up during that meeting. This was the only minority statement (the one about the person being ignored being hypocritical on the white people's part). But I think perhaps this person was annoyed with the meeting in general, and just was expressing their frustration, and were using that as an example. — Marchesk

I don’t know - I think as ‘white people’ that expressing this feeling of humility is important. I see humility as simply a recognition that where we are is not where we believe we could be. It’s part of life, like pain and loss, and more of a sign that we’re making progress than you might think. Experiences like pain, loss and humiliation are shared experiences of human beings - regardless of whether we’re rich or poor, black or white, minority or majority, we ALL have these experiences. What gets our attention is seeing these experiences in the lives of people we’ve been led to believe DON’T suffer like we do: celebrities, the rich and powerful, the majority, etc. The sense of schadenfraude this realisation elicits is just mis-conceptualised - it’s actually compassion: ‘suffering with’. It’s quite normal to feel a sense of ‘joy’ that we’re not the only ones who feel humiliated by the cognitive dissonance between our perception of the ‘racial situation’ and the experienced reality. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I think perhaps this might be the main reason the minorities were mostly silent - and the one comment you mention may have simply been someone conscious of an imbalance in contributors and trying to make sense of it.

I think when it’s done properly, reaching this point of shared humility allows us to see the problem as one of shared conceptual systems that we can effectively rewrite by listening to each other with our defences down.

My problem is the automatic assumption of sexism or racism in these situations where you really don't know someone's intention. — Marchesk

This ‘permission to be offended’ situation is damaging to unleash onto a work environment. It sounds like they were trying to do too many things at once, and their approach seemed to demonstrate fear on the part of the facilitators more than anything. It’s sounds like an opportunity to create a more inclusive work environment has gone begging here.

On the other hand, this reminds me of those ‘marriage counselling’ sessions you see in movies, where the counsellor has clearly decided who’s the victim and who’s the villain, and effectively facilitates a full-scale, one-sided attack. It’s a scene portrayed specifically from the POV of the villainised hero/heroine, to engage the viewer’s sympathy and support. People tend to see only their own pain, loss and humiliation, particularly in emotionally-charged situations that are facilitated by deliberately disconnected, impartial parties. Your frustration is valid, but I tend to take a one-sided account of such an emotionally-charged situation with a pinch of salt. I’d be interested to hear how minority participants felt about the sessions, particularly if they corroborate your evaluation of certain discussions.

Another thing that bothers me with this is so what if strangers glance at you sideways or move a little out of the way? It's not entirely unique to minorities. I've had women cross the street when they saw me. Maybe it was because I was male. Maybe it was because they needed to be on the other side. Who knows. Should it be something to get upset about? Certainly random strangers have given me weird or grumpy looks or turned away when I tried to say hi on occasion. Again who knows why. Does it matter? — Marchesk

I think the fact that you don’t have a clear prediction of motivation for their response to you is at least part of the difference. When it happened, you clearly noticed - it was unusual enough to warrant your attention. Can you imagine if it wasn’t so unusual? If it was such a commonplace occurrence that it no longer deserved your conscious attention? And if you’d worked out the most likely reason common to all of these occurrences - even if it was simply the fact people think you look hideous (hypothetically speaking)? Then should it be something to get upset about? Would you get upset anyway?

What about if your workplace gave you permission to be offended by it? Would it matter then if all, most or even ANY of those occurrences happened at work? To be honest, probably not. Something that has been niggling away at your subconscious, quietly frustrating your efforts to feel like you matter, building tiny, insignificant experiences on top of each other - that something is suddenly validated as ‘worth being offended at’ by those in your life who appear to have the most power - your employer. Does that matter? How do you think you would you read your ‘majority’ coworkers’ frustration at this news?

There's a clear difference between someone spitting on you and calling you a racist, sexist, homophobic word, and someone moving out of their way or looking at you wrong. It's just a fact of life that not everyone is going to be pleased to see you, for whatever reason, which could be many. So should we be that sensitive about everything? — Marchesk

If someone being spat on or called racist words was occurring in your workplace, that would warrant a different response by management than a diversity workshop, don’t you think?

I could be missing out on the bigger picture, if all the little things daily add up to a clear pattern that I don't experience. But part of me is like what the fuck can you really expect of people? — Marchesk

It sucks that you felt villainised. It’s a crap feeling, but it’s one that some people experience every time they walk out the door. Be thankful that you can post your frustration here and almost guarantee sympathy and support - that your experience won’t be trivialised as being overly sensitive about something that isn’t that big of a deal.

I think you are hitting the nail on the head here at the end in that the fundamental disagreement between us is here where you say:
but I disagree wholeheartedly that we cannot value other than morally
— Possibility

The format here is pretty straightforward. I've made a universally qualified claim, you assert an existential counter example. So now I ask for that example. Give me some examples of values you personally hold which have no moral basis?

Mind you, we may find our disagreement is fundamentally semantic or definitional. I am, ultimately defining morality to be our value system so by my cooked definition I win the literal debate. The big question is whether there is validity and utility in my definition. I think it is a relevant question in this era where we are stepping back from authoritarian ethics. If morality is not defined by the church or the state or the dude with the biggest baseball bat, then what? — jambaugh

Perhaps, let’s see...

Value (verb): to consider something to be important or beneficial.

Value (noun):

1. The importance, worth or usefulness of something.

2. Principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.

3. The numerical amount denoted by an algebraic term; a magnitude, quantity or number.

4. The relative duration of a sound, signified by a (musical) note.

5. The meaning of a word or other linguistic unit.

6. The relative degree of lightness or darkness of a particular colour.

The way I see it, you’re attempting to structure ALL value relations using a specifically moral valuing system, and finding it insufficient for an accurate understanding of reality as we experience it. That’s to be expected. We use many different value systems in our understanding of reality. Understanding the dimensional relation of potentiality is a matter of understanding how these different value systems relate to our experiences and to each other - and recognising that there is no single value system ‘to rule them all’.

I will not go as far as saying "we should use racism to combat racism"...but since I have not seen any great examples as to how to end racism, I am not immediately offended by the attempt. — ZhouBoTong

I tend to think the focus here to ‘combat’ or even ‘end’ racism is misguided. The theoretical aim of the workshop is to increase ‘awareness’ of minority experience - it’s just poorly executed, or poorly understood by the facilitators.

What I mean by ‘minority experience’ is basically an experience of humility, or devalued conceptual identity that is common to minorities. The resistance to it is normal, but the capacity to experience this kind of humility is important to understanding the subjective experience of racial disadvantage, even when active discrimination does not occur.

What if the participants decided, rather than resist and deflect by blaming managers or the decision-makers, to ‘take the hit’ and experience the humility and sense of persecution that comes with their conceptual identity being devalued. “I am harmful to minorities for no other reason than that I am white.” Forget the question of whether or not this is accurate, and just go with the affective experience of humility and guilt that comes from attributing significance to the thought itself, and the impact of cognitive dissonance it creates in relation to how you see yourself.

Now, let’s change the conceptual identities: “I am harmful to whites for no other reason than that I am black.” What I understand from the expressed experiences of minorities (particularly here in Australia) is that this fairly closely matches the information they receive from the sum of their everyday interactions with our shared conceptual systems.

It’s not anything one can isolate as active or conscious discrimination - rather it’s the little things that add up: the flash of body language, sideways glance or facial expression that we hardly realise we’re even doing, that we may suddenly be conscious of and chastise ourselves for, then dismiss as too small to be noticed. These little interactions are felt more than consciously noticed, but they all inform our shared conceptual systems, in particular the affective response we have to our conceptual identity: the value and significance we attribute to who we are.

So the behaviour we understand to be ‘racism’ or ‘injustice’ is not what the workshop would be trying to address, in my view. Perhaps people shouldn’t get so defensive.

It sounds like you're Spinozian, with a twist from Plotinus. Plotinus thought the ultimate reality was potentiality. Aquinas said actuality was prior to potentiality because otherwise potentiality could not get started. I think this is wrong, and it is part of the flaw in the botched arguments of deists like Devans99 in trying to prove there is a transcendent God. Potentiality being prior to actuality is in a lot of philosophies and theologies. Just think of the traditional idea of Heaven in China! The world flows from potentiality. There doesn't have to be an eternal being of Act. Potentiality doesn't have to "choose" in order for something to come from it — Gregory

I certainly wouldn’t refer to myself as ‘Spinozian’ - I’m not all that familiar with his theories - but from a cursory understanding, I do think he was onto something in many respects. Nevertheless, it looks like we are in agreement on this point that pure potentiality begets actuality from beyond time.

Having said that, I reiterate that a sixth dimension takes reality beyond potentiality, into the realm of pure possibility. The illogical notion of ‘squaring the circle’, for instance, is nevertheless an imagined concept in the realm of possibility that lacks any recognisable potentiality. If one can imagine it, then technically it isn’t impossible, even if it can never be actualised in our universe. Squaring the circle matters because it points to the human capacity to relate to the universe in ways that transcend all the conceptual systems of human ‘knowledge’ or ‘understanding’ we can reliably construct. From this position not just outside of time but outside of potential or value as we understand it from our perspective, we can more ‘objectively’ examine the structure of our value systems and perception of potentiality - in relation to that of the ecosystem, for instance - and make conscious and deliberate adjustments to our motives that matter: regardless of their perceived anthropocentric, political, cultural or personal ‘survival’ value, and regardless of any ‘logically’ calculated probability of success.

I disagree. We each value differently and you can value possibilities the same as you can value immediately actualities. Their current behavior is included yes, but everything they can possibly be is not included in their current behavior. Thus you, the wise parent value the possibility, see it as the goodness in them that lets you overlook their current, typically self absorbed behavior. You value, morally value, their potential, and thus you love them in spite of their being, at the moment, less than model citizens of the world.

In all your arguments for your love of your children you are stating exactly why you value them, and I assert that is an expression of your morality. You are not a hedonist annoyed that they interfere with your immediate pleasures. Your ethics looks forward beyond such immediate gratification to see the virtue in your children as what they can (especially with your guidance) become. It is still an actualization of your personal moral values.

Remember that my position is that morality is a personal thing, an individual's value system. You express yours as you express the love of your children as likewise you express your love of all whom you grace with that emotion, and as I posit, with that moral judgement. — jambaugh

You are describing love at the level of potentiality - ‘what they can become’ is an awareness of potentiality, but not of possibility. It’s quite common to view them as the same, but ‘potential’ is not the same as ‘possible’, and ‘could’ is not the same as ‘can’. ‘In spite of’ is not inclusive - this type of love still excludes or ignores behaviour I disagree with as ‘not important’, as something ‘we just won’t talk about anymore’.

Love is pure relation that can be as trivial as how I relate to a dress, or as complicated as how I relate to the unconditional possibility of the universe. It doesn’t have to go beyond personal moral values to be called ‘love’, but it certainly has that capacity. Love isn’t always a matter of overlooking current behaviour and focusing only on the potential in them that has moral value for me, but of seeing them also for the potential in them that could have moral value for them at the time (but not for me), and loving them for that, too. It’s about recognising that this is far from the last time they will do something I don’t agree with - but their personal moral values and the behaviour that comes from that is part of what makes them unique and special. It’s one of the more difficult parts of parenting: to let go of the assumption that my personal moral value system will be duplicated in my child.

I recognise that we each have an individual structure of value systems, but I disagree wholeheartedly that we cannot value other than morally (and I’ve had a similar discussion about this in relation to logical evaluation). Moral is, by definition, related to behaviour, so we can only value morally what relates to behaviour, although by extension we also have a tendency to morally value events (and people understood as events). Moral value is also often a reduction of value information to a binary system: good/virtuous or bad/evil.

But more importantly, the recognition that we each have different moral value systems is the reason why ‘love’ as pure relation has the capacity to go beyond our personal moral values. What is morally valued by you, but is not morally valued by me, can still matter to me simply because it matters to you, who matters to me. That doesn’t necessarily change how I morally value it.

I argue that your statement here just makes my point. You say you love your child, because... and state what you value namely "everything they can possibly be" over "their [current] behaviour". You have expressed your value system here to explain why you lover your child. — jambaugh

To call this a ‘value system’ is a reduction of what it means to relate to possibility. Their current behaviour is included in everything they can possibly be. The way I’ve worded it does, however, suggest that the ‘moral judgement’ is not included - it is, but is such a minor factor in ‘what matters’ that its ‘relative value’ is comparatively less than that of ‘everything they can possibly be’.

Think about it in relation to drawing a table: The 3D table is much more than what I can reproduce in even a skilful rendering of a 2D image. If you were not aware that the 2D shape represented a 3D object that existed, then you would see only the 2D shape, and not the table. Likewise, if you were not aware that my expression of 5D value represents 6D meaning, then you would understand it only as 5D value. Language is necessarily a 5D structural relation - it can represent meaning in the same way that the 2D image can represent the 3D table, but the representation is only one aspect of the total information.

My thought there would be that, isn't the concept of God-being outside of time-and thus logically impossible, consistent with other logically impossible phenomena associated with consciousness itself? Like various existential phenomenon including; contradiction, unresolved paradox/self reference, resurrection, love, metaphysical will, and so forth(?)

Or asked in another way: is creation ex nihilo logically impossible? And if so, is that consistent with conscious existence and timelessness(?). — 3017amen

Actuality is, by definition, temporal existence. There is nothing actual outside of time. Everything that we think of as existing outside of time - that is, eternal - we relate to as either valuable, potential or possible, but never actual. Whatever actuality it refers to is either a relation of value or potential, or it’s a relation of imagination or meaning to what has value or potential.

I don’t use the term ‘logically impossible’ because I don’t think it makes sense. Something can be illogical and still possible (like love), but not both logical and impossible without exposing some level of ignorance. The way I see it, there are two dimensional levels of awareness and existence outside of time that tend to get confused A LOT. And it’s understandable, because we need to be at least vaguely aware of existing outside of potentiality to be able to distinguish it from possibility. Most people tend to experience ‘phenomenon’ as whatever exists outside of a knowledge structure we call ‘logic’, but it’s more complex than that. And ALL the phenomenon you mention I believe are consistent with a fifth and sixth dimension to reality.

In other words (using logic), embracing the logically impossible is desired, otherwise we would already have a theory of everything and therefore there would be no need to invoke God in the first place. — 3017amen

Logic relates to reality from a position outside of time. By quantifying or attributing logical value to all information, we can structure our experiences in a way that enables us to better understand reality and make predictions about future interactions. But logic rests on the assumption that all of reality can be structured four-dimensionally. The biggest problem with this is that WE can’t - not entirely. Our capacity to employ logic, language, mathematics, science and creativity demonstrates that our mind, at least, relates to reality from outside of time, suggesting that our mind must exist, to some extent, outside of time. What that points to is that the universe we experience is at least five-dimensional.

But we have long demonstrated this with desire, anger, fear, hatred and other ‘emotions’ that are unique to humanity, suggesting hierarchies of value we attribute to internal experiences, memories, events, etc, regardless of when they occur. So there is not only a dimensional awareness beyond time, but this awareness is relative to our unique set of experiences across and even beyond our own temporal existence, and it can’t always be structured logically, let alone four-dimensionally.

Just as we have found that ‘time’ is not a single variable but consists of a number of interrelated variables relative to the position of an observer as an interrelating event (Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’ gives a useful explanation of this), so, too, ‘value’ is not just a single value structure of ‘logic’, but several interrelated value structures relative to the accumulated events of an experiencing subject. Understanding how these value structures relate to each other requires us to embrace the illogical.

I think a comprehensive theory of everything would necessarily include a fifth and sixth dimension, such that invoking ‘God’ as a concept would be unnecessary, but understandable - in the same way that talking about ‘time’ as a single concept is unnecessary but understandable.

I think when you say that the macro tendencies are predictable, but not the individual tendencies, there is a big difference between human tendencies and the corresponding physics theory of indeterminism. In the human response, individuals can be predicted for their responses, after getting to know the individuals. On a sub-atomic level, this is not possible. — god must be atheist

A human being, unlike quanta, is an integrated system of interrelated potentiality. So yes, there is a big difference. Predicting the tendencies of interpersonal interaction involves much more complex awareness than predicting the tendencies of quanta, which are deliberately isolated in experimental situations, and depend on mathematical calculations of probability to even ‘know’ they exist. The fact that we’re capable of predicting human responses after getting to know the individuals suggests that we’re capable of relating to and predicting reality based on immaterial information that’s unobservable and immeasurable in spacetime: potentiality (value), and meaning.

Love is much more than recognising potentiality, and it’s certainly more than ‘moral judgement’. I love my child not because they’re ‘good’, but because everything they can possibly be means more to me than any moral judgement of their behaviour. Because of this love, I will always act on my potential to increase awareness of, connection and collaboration with their potentiality, and will do what I can to predict and set up causal conditions for them to actualise their potential, so that others are aware of it as well. It doesn’t mean I ignore or cover up their ‘bad’ behaviour, or blame it on others - but that I teach them that a moral judgement, like a behaviour or action or punishment, is a finite event in time that doesn’t define them, and doesn’t alter my love for them.

No mysticism necessary, @jambaugh.

Ignorance is bliss?

Our developing awareness of the relationship we have with the unfolding universe, our growing capacity to understand and relate to this unfolding beyond our physical existence, and our recognition of the extent to which our existence is dependent upon the manner in which we relate - all of this brought about the written word.

For all of our missteps, we cannot blame the written word - it is our fears that brought about disaster after disaster, not our capacity to communicate or express our understanding. And we wouldn’t even be able to recognise that truth if it weren’t for the written word.

Without the written word, we would not be able to look back on our past, value or retrieve what we have lost along the way, learn from our mistakes or collectively imagine, map and create a valuable future. But it isn’t the solution, it’s only a tool - we need to remember why we developed this tool in the first place: to increase awareness, connection and collaboration.

The nature of the relationship between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ and all of reality is precisely what I’m looking at. This ‘metaphysical information’ you’re referring to is the result of what I have been calling interaction, whether it’s between possibility, potentiality, events, objects, two-dimensional or even analog information. It appears to ‘fill the vacuum between particles in space’ because it IS what space consists of, at the level of potentiality. But it’s also more than that.

If you read Rovelli’s books, you’ll understand that he doesn’t refer to ‘spooky action at a distance’ because he recognises reality as consisting of immaterial events rather than objects: as ‘interaction’. So when he talks about a ‘physical system’, he’s not talking about particles as objects, but as systems of interaction. What he doesn’t recognise in his books is how easily this lends itself to a metaphysical continuum, by understanding ‘interaction’ as a metaphysical relation.

In writing this, I’ve noticed that my use of the term ‘interaction’ may be mistaken for an event in time, rather than the metaphysical relation I’ve been meaning. This is why I find it useful to persist with these discussions - it allows me to refine my use of language in approaching shared meaning. I apologise for the confusion.

This ‘power to cause change’ you’ve named ‘EnFormAction’ refers to potentiality, which is a fifth-dimensional level of relation between metaphysical information. This is the level that most people relate to reality, even if they only understand reality at the level of objects in time and space, or like Rovelli, as interrelated events occurring in quantum ‘fields’. Or even like yourself, understanding reality as the result of immaterial, mental relations of a ‘universal mind’.

But there is a six-dimensional level of relation, which is meaning as pure relation, or ‘love’, from which all potentiality - as a reduction of all possible metaphysical information from all possible relations - is manifest.

In a high school dance, where everyone went solo, not in couples, back 50 years ago, every boy first asked the prettiest girl to dance. Or dreamed of it. The girls, on the other hand, talked about the tallest, strongest, most dapper boy, in hushed voices, throwing glances at him and telling each other "I will absolutely DIE if he asks me."

This is a perfect predictability of whatever. Manifestation of potential to love.[/quote]

As I said, predictable on a macro population scale. On an individual level, the best you can say is ‘probably’, but you’d be wrong to presume this to be the case.

The most difficult part of experiencing a paradigm shift is trying to explain it to everyone else. You need to meet readers where they’re at first, and then allow them to go on a journey with you. If your current disdain for conventional human culture is obvious from the start, then readers will struggle to identify with your position.

But this need to reject an objective ontological paradigm also manifests for systems which are so actively sensitive to their environments that one cannot repeatedly observe them and retain the assumption that they are not changed by the act. Entities that grow and learn and adapt, living entities and most especially persons cannot be reduced to objective states. This is not to say there is some additional mystical aspect to them but rather that they are simply outside our usual and useful but limited technique of objective analysis.

It is an error to objectify people for the very same reason it is to objectify quanta though many quanta are fundamentally identical while people are fundamentally unique. That error is that it simply doesn't work. The behavior of neither can be fully or even maximally predicted by objective analysis. But we can do better by treating them as behaving entities rather than a parameterized sequence of objective states. And we can do this within the full rigor of science without invoking mysticism.

So, for example, I can within this active paradigm understand love in part and recognize its existence without either ascribing some extra-natural substance to it or pretending it is a peculiar manifestation of a particularly complex objective mechanism following its deterministic clockwork program. Love is a moral judgement made by moral judging entities which by definition are not reducible to objective states of being. — jambaugh

The indeterminacy of both quanta and people relate to the potentiality of their objective or ‘measurable’ states of being. The human capacity to predict that potentiality to some extent, and to set up causal conditions based on probability calculations - to effectively interact with reality beyond time - is also what makes our own potentiality impossible to predict individually, but measurable on a macro population scale.

So people are not individually reducible to measurable states of being, no. Moral judgement, as a subjective evaluation of a person’s behaviour, temporarily quantifies a measured state of being based on observed events. This is not ‘love’ in relation to a person - not a lasting love, anyway.

Love is initiating and determining actions based on the predicted causal conditions of valued potential interaction between the potentiality of the person acting and the potentiality of another. So perhaps it’s ‘fuzzier’ than you think.

There is no single time: there is a different duration for every trajectory; and time passes at different rhythms according to place and according to speed. It is not directional: the difference between past and future does not exist in the elementary equations of the world; its orientation is merely a contingent aspect that appears when we look at things and neglect the details. In this blurred view, the past of the universe was in a curiously ‘particular’ state. The notion of ‘present’ does not work: in the vast universe there is nothing that we can reasonably call ‘present’. The substratum that determines the duration of time is not an independent entity, different from the others that make up the world; it is an aspect of a dynamic field. It jumps, fluctuates, materialises only by interacting, and is not to be found beneath the minimum scale...

None of the pieces that time has lost (singularity, direction, independence, the present, continuity) puts into question the fact that the world is a network of events. On the one hand, there was time, with its many determinations; on the other, the simple fact that nothing is: that things happen instead. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

And on ‘eternalism’:

The fact that we cannot arrange the universe like a single orderly sequence of times does not mean that nothing changes. It means that changes are not arranged in a single orderly succession: the temporal structure of the world is more complex than a single linear succession of instants. This does not mean that it is non-existent or illusory.

The distinction between past, present and future is not an illusion. It is the temporal structure of the world. But the temporal structure of the world is not that of presentism. The temporal relations between events are more complex than we previously thought, but they do not cease to exist on account of this...

What confuses us when we seek to make sense of the discovery that no objective universal present exists is only the fact that our grammar is organised around an absolute distinction - ‘past/present/future’ - that is only partly apt, here in our immediate vicinity. The structure of reality is not the one that this grammar presupposes. We say that an event ‘is’, or ‘has been, or ‘will be’. We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘The Order of Time’

Interestingly, the concept of ‘eternalism’ or the ‘block universe’ interests me mainly because I believe it relates to how we structure events in our minds: not according to time, but according to value. This, I imagine, is what Einstein meant by the comment many tout as ‘proof’ of his support of eternalism (which was written in a personal letter regarding the death of a dear friend):

“Now he [Michele] has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

In that sense, the idea that everything that could ever exist is already out there awaiting our ability to see it, pertains, in my view, to our perception of potentiality in the world. Our ability to create something new depends on our ability to see or ‘perceive’ potential in our unique interactions with the world that no one has seen before - potential that was already there, awaiting our ability to ‘see’ it.

You seem to hold to Plotinus's idea of good, God, and evil. But you didn't provide proof that good is more powerful. Aquinas took it as an axiom. Did Schopenhauer explicitly say evil ruled this world? I've gotten more joy in life out of evil than good (except for a few years of "good behavior" in my early teens, which grew stale). Being good simply doesn't seem to make you feel better. John Stuart Mill said that he would rather be moral and unhappy than immoral and happy. It's an interesting question. — Gregory

The way I see it, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are subjective evaluations that we assume to be universal. So I’m not trying to argue or prove that ‘good’ is more powerful (I don’t think it is), but that you’re focusing on a limited perspective of reality.

What you seem to be recognising here is that a positive interoception - what I experience as ‘good’ for my ‘self’ - doesn’t correspond to what I believe to be ‘good’ for society, or humanity, or the world. There is a relativity to what is deemed ‘good’ or ‘evil’, and so the way we understand ‘God’ as infinitely ‘good’ is suddenly on shaky ground.

That’s okay. There doesn’t have to be a universal morality that we either comply with or rebel against. Understanding BOTH ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as limitations, and that there is more to ‘God’ and to life than the morality and/or happiness of the individual, can be liberating. Continue to question the assumptions that limit our ability to interact with the world as it is. Don’t assume that you’re compelled to choose between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but rather ask why we assume this duality exists in the first place. Aspire to what Schopenhauer describes as ‘genius’:

genius is the power of leaving one's own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight, thus of entirely renouncing one's own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world; and this not merely at moments, but for a sufficient length of time, and with sufficient consciousness, to enable one to reproduce by deliberate art what has thus been apprehended, and “to fix in lasting thoughts the wavering images that float before the mind.” It is as if, when genius appears in an individual, a far larger measure of the power of knowledge falls to his lot than is necessary for the service of an individual will; and this superfluity of knowledge, being free, now becomes subject purified from will, a clear mirror of the inner nature of the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘The World as Will and Idea’

This is not as unique as he makes out, nor as necessarily pure, but is within our capacity as humans. The ‘art’ part of it is simply a specific practical knowledge of the potential in a medium of expression. But a ‘clear vision of the world’ may be achievable without ‘artistic’ skills of any kind - it’s simply being open to relating to the world, life or even ‘God’ in a way that is both/neither ‘good’ and/nor ‘evil’ on any level, but rather transcends the dichotomy altogether. You might just find that both Schopenhauer and Mill were limiting themselves in this respect.

Aquinas argues that ‘God’ is purus actus, but this is an error of understanding that began with Aristotle: that pure potentiality is ‘nothing’ without form, necessitating an ‘uncaused cause’ as a ‘something’ in order to exist. The argument is based on an assumption that something cannot come from nothing, and that actuality is possible both in time AND eternally.
— Possibility

I think you're mistaken here. The reason is, it is impossible to conceive of 'pure being' in empirical terms, so we have to try and fit it into our conceptual framework according to our understanding of what exists, what is real, and so on. The point we miss (and it's a pretty big one) is that the religious sense of 'knowing the true being' requires or implies something like an epiphany or transformative breakthrough into a different mode of being (called in Platonic philosophy metanoia, transformation of mind.)

I think (tentatively) that time comes into existence with temporal (i.e. 'created') beings. In accordance with many of the perennial philosophical traditions (not only Aquinas) time itself is reliant on a perspective that only exists within the order of created being. Part of the transformation of the understanding that occurs through religious discipline is absorption into a mode of being that is not subject to time (which I understand as the meaning of 'eternal life' in mystical traditions East and West.)

Nihilism is a consequence of the loss of this domain of possibility. — Wayfarer

I follow you here, but it’s the stated claim that ‘God is merely the most actual of all’ which I’m disputing here. It’s a common false claim derived from the reasoning of both Aquinas and Aristotle (whether or not that’s what they originally meant). The confusion this creates is the misunderstanding that ‘God’ is ONLY what is actual, or only what is actually ‘good’.

I recognise that this religious concept of God as ‘pure being’ separates temporal (‘created’) and atemporal (‘creative’) modes, and that human capacity incorporates BOTH/AND through increased awareness, connection and collaboration. This atemporal mode of being is not exclusive to religious/mystical transformation, though. Recognising that human experience interacts with an understanding of five-dimensional reality that is not subject to time may be sufficient to ‘breakthrough’ into this different mode of ‘being’.

FWIW, I understand ‘God’ not simply as a mode of ‘being’ outside time, but as pure relation not subject to value: as love. And Nihilism, for me, was a clarification process that enabled me to rebuild an understanding of ‘God’ beyond the limitations of religious moral values.

Evil isn't pure absence. It has deformity power. How do we know it doesn't have a meta-infinite power which can deform God? Needless to say, I've been reading about Buddhist logic again — Gregory

The ‘deformity power’ of ‘evil’ is a limitation of the observable actuality or the perceived potentiality of ‘God’, but not of the possibility of relating to ‘God’. It can certainly deform how we conceptualise ‘God’, but that’s only how we can think about ‘God’, not ‘God’ itself.

Fieldism vs Materialism: an example of misplaced oppositionals

Materialism is not opposed to fieldism. Materialism's tenet is not that matter exists; it is that supernatural powers don't exist.

Fields are not supernatural.

And most precisely, matter exists as well. The formation of matter in terms of quantum mechanics is defined; I am not at all familiar with it. But fields manifest as matter under certain circumstances.

Matter is a function of fields; that is a given, and as such, matter may not be the fundamental component of materialistic relationships in the universe, but its name can be applied to include all those relationships alongside those that involve actual matter, that are not supernatural. — god must be atheist

As mentioned, I’m not a materialist as such, but I think I understand where you’re coming from here. The rejection of the supernatural by materialists is simply a challenge to explain what we experience as a structural relation to what is measurable/observable. Fields manage this, but my point is that the logical field relations calculated by physics is far from the full picture of potentiality, let alone our relation to the universe.

‘Defined’ is not how I would describe the formation of matter as described by quantum mechanics. It’s more of a calculated probability, as are these fields. The ‘observability’ of the magnetic field in the relation between iron filings and a magnet, for instance, is a reduction of the field information itself, just as the wave pattern on the screen is a reduction of the potentiality information of a photon. So when you say ‘fields manifest as matter under certain circumstances’, you’re not quite correct.

There is a conceptual difference between ‘matter’ and ‘materialistic relationships’ in the same way as there is a difference between ‘physical’ and ‘metaphysical’, but both sets of distinction have no empirical basis. To refer to what is generally understood to be metaphysical as ‘physical’ however, is to confuse the issue - and likewise referring to materialistic relationships as ‘matter’ - although I understand your reluctance to perpetuate the distinction, which places limitations on understanding reality from a ‘materialist’ perspective.

In my thesis, Information is the basis of Logic and Math : a relationship between two values. The key word there is "value". Relationships and Ratios are nothing until evaluated (interpreted) by a mind. But Information is also the basis of Physics : Thermodynamics. So, Information is a continuum that bridges the imaginary gap between Physics and Metaphysics, between mathematical and human values. — Gnomon

I agree that information is a manifest distinction at every level of interaction: the ‘difference that makes a difference’. What I’m most interested in is the bridge itself: what is the conceptual structure of that ‘continuum’ - because it isn’t linear (a common assumption of the term). In my understanding, it’s dimensional: from the one-dimensional relationship between potentialities, through to a five-dimensional relationship of ‘mind’, and beyond to a six-dimensional relationship between all possible correlations. If you bear with me, I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from (and I apologise for the length).

At the origin of the universe, we can employ Rovelli’s explanation of quantum mechanics by way of information theory:

A physical system manifests itself only by interacting with another. The description of a physical system, then, is always given in relation to another physical system, the one with which it interacts. Any description of a system is therefore always a description of the information which a system has about another system, that is to say the correlation between the two systems. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’

The origin of the universe can be described as the result of interaction between potential information, which - as you rightly point out - necessitates the prior existence of ‘mind’, but only as a structural relation. My argument is that the existence of this original ‘mind’ is contingent on something more essential, and is not universal. More importantly, this original ‘mind’ has no inherent knowledge of the universe whatsoever. It can be aware only of a vague sense of more, manifest as a capacity - in this correlation between whatever it is and whatever it is interacting with - to develop and achieve.

The initial entanglement of all particles in superposition forms a five-dimensional structure of potentiality ‘prior’ to the Big Bang. This structure of ‘mind’, it seems, is a reduction of the possible universe: a primary ‘decoherence’ that sets limitations on what this universe could possibly become in relation to value. The potentiality of the universe as a correlation of values is finite: limited by the potential energy/information available.

The next level of decoherence sets limitations on the temporal potentiality of the universe. The unfolding universe as a correlation of events must be finite: the probability of its beginning and its end would be calculable, given enough information. The unfolding of the material universe is limited by the actual energy/information available in the actual duration available.

Due to further decoherence, the relative shape, distance and direction of all objects in the universe must be measurable, and is limited by the energy/information available to the interaction between particles, as well as the durability.

This relates to Rovelli’s postulates about quantum mechanics in relation to information theory:

1.

The relevant information in any physical system is finite.
2. You can always obtain new information on a physical system. — Carlo Rovelli, ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’

So efficiency of information-processing is the key that drives the evolution of the universe towards knowledge of itself.

Each particle of the universe is entangled in a correlation of potentiality, and manifests as a difference between its own capacity and that of interacting particles, with which it is not entangled - it has no awareness of the full potentiality of either particle, only actualising a potential difference as one-dimensional information: an actual, measurable atom.

It doesn’t really make sense to talk about space or time at this level of evolution, because everything that exists in the universe is at best only ‘aware’ of the universe as a vague more. Each atom remains in superposition in relation to everything else in the universe.

Atoms are a developed system of efficient, one-dimensional relations between entangled and unentangled particles, with a capacity to interact with other particles, manifesting whatever difference an interaction can make to a particle relation. This can eventually form and develop molecules as two-dimensional systems, which are then capable of integrating the difference an interaction makes to a chemical relation, to eventually form and develop different chemical reactions as three-dimensional systems, with the capacity to integrate the many differences an interaction makes to a chemical reaction, presenting opportunity to form and develop (as a rarity) cellular life as a four-dimensional system of interrelated chemical reactions.

Four-dimensional living systems have the capacity to manifest the myriad five-dimensional differences an interaction makes to a living system, including movement towards or away from and tracking/identifying three-dimensional objects in space. The manifestation of these value differences form an experiencing subject - aware of the relative temporal aspects of reality, yet only vaguely aware of value as information, actualising the distinction between experiences as integrated five-dimensional information, or value-related response to stimuli.

These experiencing, five-dimensional systems have the capacity to manifest the six-dimensional differences an interaction makes to an experiencing subject. As humans, we are aware of the relative value aspects of reality, yet only vaguely aware of meaning as distinct information beyond significance, even as we respond to it at some ‘higher level’. That we can imagine ‘squaring a circle’, for instance, points to our capacity to relate information beyond logical value structures. For the most part, though, we just don’t believe it matters. Most of us think human experience or ‘mind’ IS the universe, which is in keeping with the pattern of capacity at previous levels of awareness.

Aquinas believed that good and being are the same thing. Good and beautiful are the same too, for him. God merely is the most actual of all. He is infinite, says Aquinas. Evil is the absence of good, and God can't be privated of any good. Even something ugly merely lacks some form and proportion. God IS form and proportion (and justice and love). However, there are many times of infinities, as modern people have learned. Aquinas thought there was only one. A consequence of this may be that evil-nothingness (if nothingness is truly evil, as we will assume) may be MORE infinite than God. It could be even more powerful. If evil overpowers good, than evil is the form of good, making it ugly as the process evolves. So our lives, PERHAPS, may be guided by the necessity, or the randomness, of the evil, the ugly, the privation. — Gregory

The confusion is that, for Aquinas, ‘God’ exists in actuality outside time, which is impossible. ‘God’ IS eternally, which is not the same as a dog or a rock IS. What this refers to is potentiality. ‘God’ IS infinite in potentiality, but NOT actuality - Aquinas argues that ‘God’ is purus actus, but this is an error of understanding that began with Aristotle: that pure potentiality is ‘nothing’ without form, necessitating an ‘uncaused cause’ as a ‘something’ in order to exist. The argument is based on an assumption that something cannot come from nothing, and that actuality is possible both in time AND eternally.

‘God’ is infinitely ‘good’ only in potentiality, and ‘being’ in the world is the progress of actualising that potential in time. ‘Evil’ is a demonstrated lack of awareness of that potential - the limitations in the world on perceiving this potential for ‘good’, which is necessary for actualising it. We manifest ‘God’ in the world by striving to increase awareness, connection and collaboration with the potential for ‘good’ in what is actual.

Nothingness is not evil - what the concept refers to is the ignorance, isolation and exclusion of this potential for ‘good’. The evil, the ugly, the privation isn’t eternally necessary, but it is necessarily the actual limitation of ‘good’ in the world. In our lives, we must always start here, and then increase awareness of the potential for ‘good’ as we interact with the world.

But even the perceivable potentiality of ‘God’ is limited, because potential energy/information in the universe is finite. The infinite nature of ‘God’ is not in time or even in potentiality, but in meaning: love or pure relation. The universe matters to the universe, regardless of any perceived potential for ‘good’ or ‘evil’. This is a more accurate understanding of ‘God’.

By "logical" I meant "rational" : defined by ratios and proportions. That is not intended to exclude emotions and human values, since in Enformationism, everything in the world boils down to Information : ratios and proportions; some of which are meaningful to humans.

In common usage of "logical" and "rational", the terms are deliberately intended to contrast with "emotional" and "valuable" --- as in Vulcan Logic. But in the BothAnd philosophy, it's all a matter of degree, a continuum. Everything and every idea in the world has a logical structure. But humans assign personal values to them on a good vs evil scale. Those values are relative (rational) to the evaluator. What's logical and valuable to a man, may not matter to an ant. — Gnomon

I agree that every concept can be evaluated according a logical structure - but not all information. The process of ‘boiling down’ information to ratios and proportions is limiting or reducing that information to what fits into a particular value structure before you’re even aware of what information is available. The way I see it, the common experience that what’s valuable to me may not be logical to me refutes the idea that we’re talking about a simple continuum here.

Not sure if you’ve read Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’ - in it he deconstructs the concept of ‘time’ as a single variable, and reveals it as a four-dimensional structural relation of variables relative to three-dimensional information, as determined from an ‘objective’ position outside time. This relates to how I see potential and value - except the position Rovelli refers to is perceived as a subjective position within a value system that is itself a five-dimensional structural relation of variables relative to four-dimensional information. It necessarily positions ‘objectivity’ outside of all value structures, logical or otherwise (which may be another discussion).

Information : Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".. — Gnomon

Exploring the human experience in relation to information theory can get confusing, because computer-based information is only every binary, whereas the human experience of information takes into account the integration of four, five and even six dimensional ratios in a complex interacting system of interacting systems of interacting systems. So while a single difference in value makes a difference of ‘meaning’ in a computer system, this difference in a human system is WAY more complex, making a difference of ‘meaning’ at each level of interaction. A rational ‘difference’ therefore assumes all other variables to be equal in a ratio equation that in reality looks a bit like this: (((((A1, B1, C1, X1, Y1) : ((((A2, B2, C2, X2, Y2) : (((A3, B3, C3, X3, Y3) : ((A4, B4, C4, X4, Y4) : (A5, B5, C5, X5, Y5))))), where each variable is more complex than 0/1, and each internal system integrates its own ‘meaning’.

(PS. The numbers in the ratio equation should be subscript, if that helps. Plus, mathematics is not my forte - this is just my basic understanding of ratios at this level)

That's why I distinguish between Real (Actual) and Ideal (Potential), between Physical (matter) and Metaphysical (mental). The "Mind Field" is EnFormAction, which is the potential to cause change, which is similar to the physical notion of Energy, which is not a material thing, but the potential to cause change. Just as immaterial Energy can transform into Matter (E=MC\2), metaphysical EnFormAction can create all of the physical things in the world. — Gnomon

I think we’re basically on the same page here, just a confusion with terms. I can recognise (now) that material is also physical, but physical is not necessarily material. But when I use the term ‘real’, I don’t necessarily mean ‘actual’, and my use of ‘potential’ doesn’t mean ‘ideal’ (a subjective reduction or collapse of value relations). Potential, as I see it, is a subjective experience of value relations that ‘transcends’ reduction to an ‘ideal’. This is where it can be confusing, because I’m not coming from a rationalist perspective - I always see potential and value as a relational structure of ‘probability waves’, not a particle relation. It seems to me that most people perceive that they could not have chosen to act other than how they acted, but that’s not how I see it. The capacity to act other than how I choose to act (all potential information) is never collapsed in my experience. So I’ve found that I’m not always understood when I talk about the reduction of potential information to actuality.

The way I see it, these relationships of potentiality - the combined ‘field’ of mind - all refer to five-dimensional information: potential and value.
— Possibility
Three spatial dimensions plus potential and value? — Gnomon

Three spatial dimensions, plus time (4D), plus value (5D). Potential is another way of describing value/significance - one that has more relevance from a physics/materialist perspective. Value is a broader term that is inclusive of qualitative relations, and significance is inclusive of language and emotion. I used to refer to all of it as potentiality, but the classical concept of ‘potential’ as inherent in the actual object makes it difficult for some people to grasp the metaphysical nature of potentiality.