A short explanatory post with some central ideas that run through the Band's projects.
Logos-based morality via truth and beauty starts with the ontological hierarchy. The fully-realized continuum from ultimate reality - the logically necessary ontological foundation or meta-prior - to our blurry, entropic, Fallen world.
If we are going to be making more positive cultural posts, we can't be rehashing this each time. It makes them too long and is redundant to regular readers.
picture - maxwellthebeech, Ulmo & Tuor
Over the last couple of years we've worked out an integrated model to visualize the relationships between ontology, epistemology, and deontology. It's the framework behind our motto of what we can know and how we can know it. Seeing how this fits together has been transformative - like a superpower that had provided us with discernment that exceeds our own not-insignificant talents. The problem is that it isn't obvious, and even with refined efficient graphics takes explaining.
It's come together over a long time. If you're interested the development, the central posts are in the aside right below to save searching through the archive. If you just want the summary so you can appreciate the positive posts, you can skip the aside and the rest of this post will explain.
Every choice has upsides and downsides. The Band has a free-flowing structure that is very good for letting all different kinds of thoughts jumble together. It's a big reason we've been as insightful as we have been. Untraditional medium allows for untraditional views. This means it rambles though.
Upside - rambling acts out the way everything is connected in ways we can't state outright.
Downside - ideas germinate over a few posts around other topics making it hard to easily link sometimes.
If you want to see where the ideas came from these are probably the most important posts. Just remember - we never have certainty beyond faith - that's why repentance and forgiveness has to be built into the system. But our success rate improves when we can align our material judgments with the reality we belong to. All large titles are live links.
Faith is knowledge when we understand that ontology and epistemology are connected
Hierarchical interaction of ontology and epistemology, Logos & structural reality of Christian metaphysics
Temporality differentiates material reality & other states
Application - ontology and epistemology work together
Application - deontology enters the hierarchy
These are the main ones. Anything else essential will be linked within the post you're reading. Don't be surprised if this continues to evolve. The nature of temporal subjectivity is that understanding grows in time. It's why beast system takes on aging are inverted - endless dopamine-fueled youth and aging as calcifying slowly in front of the t.v. are diametrically opposite the path of wisdom.
The premise worked out over the epistemology posts is that different levels of reality - ontology - are known by different mechanisms - epistemological modes. The graphic is static, but we have to think of these as inter-flowing in continuous synchrony. Until we hit ultimate reality which is outside considerations of time, space, or consciousness.
Logos is a term used in the Gospel of John and ancient philosophy for the ordering creative principle that ties ontology together. Christians know the Logos as Jesus Christ, second hypostasis of the Trinity, God the Son, and the Word made Flesh.
The initial structure was worked out in non-religious terms but fits Christian metaphysics perfectly. The closer you come to the essential basis of things, the less clear our grasp of it gets. Abstract realities are not subject to entropic decay and spatio-temporal limits of the material but don't precede Creation.
Logos is the operant principle that extends ultimate reality
into temporality through Creation.
It also takes on different forms appropriate to different levels. We call it "vertical" because the graphic is vertically oriented and this carries associations of relative importance. But it is imperative to remember that this is simply a metaphor and a limited one at that. Any attempt to visually render fundamental conditions of existential possibility must misrepresent more than it shows. This will sound annoyingly mystic but try to see the concepts that are imperfectly shown in the signs. It works, but you have to make the mental switch from fussing over arbitrary semantics.
It is clear that our discernment is inherently limited by our finite natures. Therefore, what we can know and how we can know it are mutually determined. Material reality is closest to us and known empirically. It is also the furthest from Truth. The closer we get to God the less clear our knowledge becomes until we reach ultimate reality which is only knowable by faith.
This seems radical because the de-moralized, inverted, materialist illusion bubble that is today's beast system is so convincing. And most prefer to mask mental laziness behind defensive belligerence while accepting the brain-dead horseshit doled out by mass media as credible. Not just credible, but existentially complete and sufficient.
It is a narrow gate and our audience is limited.
The problems for our cultural understanding should be clear. What we see most closely is the least ontologically reliable. It's why we can't draw the same sort of conclusions about material logos that we can for the higher states. It's too murky and far from Truth. But we can look at specific manifestations and see how those more stable higher states play out in the material and cultural worlds. Figure out how to find logos in a valley of shadow and avoid alluring traps.
Another transformative insight fits in here. When you look past filters of different languages and semiotics what we call the Fall in theological terms and entropy in physics describe the same ontological condition. We are in a time-bound place that invariably dies.
Thomas Cole, detail from Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Ever measure a meniscus or contemplate the edge of the universe? If you are curious why the material world is so indeterminate in absolute terms click for a link to the first and the second post looking through the necessary limits of discernment that come with a Fallen and finite nature. They aren't a light read.
Bouncing back to the graphic, we can see that the entropic, temporal, finite material level of reality is the least systematic. Add in the subjective filters of personal experience and it gets worse.
There are endless ways to express higher truths, all imperfect in one manner or another. And if true, all following the same essential relationship.
The positive posts are probably the best way to approach logos in the material world. Working inductively from examples to look for broader patterns. What Tolkien called Applicability - a looser way of tracking truths in works of art than the more rigid allegory or symbol.
Because the true strength of the ontological hierarchy is that it isn't a "theory" or really even a "model". It's an imperfect description of reality. It can be refined in details, but is fundamentally True in it's conceptual structure. It isn't "what the Band thinks". The graphic is our visualization to make it clearer for readers. But the sliding relationship between ontology and epistemology is objectively how reality is structured. Think of it as a sketch diagram of how we exist in and know the world we inhabit.
Truth is consistent - the forms of expression change but the underlying meanings don't - the ontological hierarchy has proven universally applicable. This would be proof of concept if the reasoning wasn't self-evident.
Consider morality. It is the rational application of objective metaphysical truths to subjective material contexts. Faith + logic + observation working in perfect synergy. Faith provides the moral foundation, observation the specifics in need of moralizing, and logic the moral reasoning to make the connection.
See what happens when we transpose moral relations onto the hierarchy. The components of coherent morality map perfectly onto the ontological-epistrmological sliding relational frame.
Because it's all based on extending the timeless into temporal and the complications that come from that. What changes are the specific material expressions.
What we are referring to is deontology. Actual morality as the meeting of the eternal foundations of ultimate reality and the fleeting subjective impressions of the material. Abstract reasoning to apply principles known by faith to situations know empirically. This was sufficiently connected to call for an updated graphic with deontology layered in with the ontology and epistemology.
Here's the most recent iteration. The rectangle on the left is the color key to the level-specific manifestations on the right - chromatic blending in the background visualizes ontology and epistemology shaping deontology. It's why we chose complementary colors. Visual thinking may be concise, but there are layers to the semiotics.
We are acutely aware of our limits and have learned the sins of pride and hubris the hard way. This is pretty elegant though. And more importantly, it's practical. Not a key to behavior - we aren't life coaches. But a way to clarify your own relations to truth and reality and make sound judgments of your own.
Consistent relations stay consistent and we are referring to the most consistent of things - reality and our place in it. It's just true. So any scenario where we are dealing with multiple levels of reality coming together will follow the same pattern. Once you grasp it, it's a human constant. It's everywhere.
Like the arts of the West from our regular Band posts. The idea that art is like the Greek phronesis filtered through the cultural history of the West. An abstract mediation between higher truths rooted in ultimate reality and the ephemeral, changing world of experience relationship is the same pattern.
It was introduced in this post and worked out over a few earlier roots of the West posts and probably best summed up in one called The Terms of Creation.
The reason for working this out becomes obvious when you put them together. This is why we talk about the arts of the West in a historical-philosophical way. It's also why we want to expand the search for logos to other areas. People need culture and the righteous will be more and more responsible for making their own going forward. Since the abandonment of truth and the related morality got us here, getting back to them seems prudent.
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