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 Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The Nativity, watercolor and bodycolor, after 1888

Previewing the Metaphysics Book - Chapter One Part Two

Third preview of our book about the Band's metaphysical insights. The second half of Chapter One with the other three of six preliminary axioms about what reality and our being in it are.

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above. 

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check and it will be up there.

Past time we got the second half of the metaphysics book Chapter One draft up. Part one [click for a link] looked at the first three of six starting axioms about reality that will serve as point of departure for our investigations. We aren't going to bother with a recap - these are formatted for the blog but conceived as a single, more formal book chapter. So we’ll just pick right back up with the other three axioms as if it was one long piece. Footnotes are at the end.

Quick note before jumping in. This is a draft that’s being shared with an eye on potential revisions. Chapter One is the foundation, so any problems that we’ve missed need to be identified. One thing to watch for is the flow of the argument. There are a lot of pieces to touch on, but a coherent idea about reality, representation, logic, and observation should emerge. This post, therefore, should be worthwhile on its own merits. But what is most important to us is the intellectual soundness. This has to be rock solid if the rest is to follow.

CHAPTER ONE: PRELIMINARY AXIOMS

4. Distinction and Continuity are Constinctive in Apprehensible Reality

Axiom 4 is a superficially counterintuitive observation about reality with important metaphysical implications. The title may be confusing on account of the unfamiliarity of the new coinage, but the meaning is straightforward. Things perceived or conceived as distinct are also continuous, connected or “the same” in some way. How they are considered - distinct or connected – depends on frame of reference. Take, for example, the two epistemological pathways discussed in the previous axiom. Accretive empirical observation and abstract logical reasoning are distinct enough to proceed in diametrically opposed directions and yield different outputs. Both are also human mental processes that symbiotically generate understanding of the reality they operate in [1]. Distinct or continuous by frame of reference. The coexistence of difference and connection points to a general truth. Any distinction implies a common frame of reference within which the distinction can be made.

Language is an obvious example of distinction within larger continuity. Any definition marks out semantic borders within a linguistic system. Defining a term bifurcates the total language into the defined term and everything else. Even if the boundary is fuzzy, it still fuzzily defines two mutually distinguishing sets.

Something analogous occurs in mathematics or symbolic logic. When set parameters delineate [included elements], they simultaneously create the set of [not included elements]. The pattern of conceptual abstractions - definition/

parameterization - bifurcating a common frame of reference is consistent. 

Visual representations use borders to delineate their subjects from the rest of the visible world.

Since our experience of reality is representationally filtered, the structure of [definitional distinction within language relationships] also applies to our conceptual map of objective reality. 

Not that we "create" external reality through definitional processes, though we do create our subjective apprehension of it. On a perceptual level, we distinguish our sensory foci from the rest of material reality through control of internal impressions. The observable distinctions within the physical reality we inhabit that then condition our representations of it. 

It is not surprising to observe that representational systems follow the same two-level distinction as our apprehension of specifics in reality. Put another way, [definition-distinction within a larger representational field] corresponds referentially to [the real things and concepts represented differentiated from the rest of apprehensible reality]. Representational filtering is not an obstacle to tracing ontological relationships because our representations derive from our being-in-apprehensible reality. The same structure applies to both.

Representational Systems

{ [Term defined] ¬ [All other expressions] }

as

Apprehensible Reality

{ [Thing apprehended] ¬ [All other things] }

leading to the general rule

Frame of Reference

{ [DEF] → [not DEF] }

↓

[A → ¬B]

The observation that distinction also requires a common frame of reference is an application of psychometric outlier Christopher Langan's (b. 1952) concept of syndiffeonesis to a representationally filtered reality [2].  Langan defines syndiffeonesis thusly: “the expression and/or existence of any difference relation entails a common medium and syntax”. Elsewhere it's described as "difference-in-sameness", or "saying two things are different implies that they are reductively the same” [3]. It is devilishly simple once pointed out, but sharp insights often are.

Syndiffeonesis diagram from the linked paper. The Relational Medium is what he calls a unisect - union and intersection of the two sets. For Langan does not meaningfully differentiate relations in the natural world and human representational systems, noting instead the common structure. This is different from our claim for the hierarchical filtering position of representation between us and reality.

Syndiffeonesis is fully compatible with the representational filtering of objective reality. For two terms to be defined as different, both must be definable within the same representational filter. This extends to logical definitions of pure abstract exclusivity. Go back to [A → ¬B]. This means the two are mutually exclusive. It also means both belong to the same representational system that makes this distinction articulable. 

There are reasons for belaboring this point. Syndiffeonsis has metaphysical implications that require a robust grasp of the concept to appreciate. An easy way to bring these into view is to consider how similarity and difference coexist instead of canceling out or collapsing into indeterminacy. There is an implicit hierarchy in syndiffeonic relations - an intrinsic order of (conceptual) operations - with the definition/difference and the connection/continuity occurring on different levels. The term “levels” is chosen for want of a better alternative and the expectation that the precise meaning will backfill with further analysis. In the logic sentence [A → ¬B], the mutual exclusion is defined within the parameters of the representational system, but the commonality is the higher order system itself.

Since definitions and set parameters share the same structural function within their respective systems, a system is essentially a superset containing all possible elements. The system, therefore, does not exist as an element within itself in the same manner as its constituent terms. It can be labeled – “language” is a word in a language – but as an in-system reference to the system, not a reproduction of the system qua system. No word can be [the entirety of the language], just as a picture cannot be [the entirety of all imagery] for categorical reasons.

The hierarchical configuration of distinction and continuity will be referred to metaphorically as “vertical” for convenience.  This must not be taken as suggesting some sort of literal visio-spatial superimposition. It is a figural expression of a hierarchic relation through a perceptual visio-spatial representational filter that makes the order clear. One that is applicable to written and diagrammatic form, as shown in the figure below, or the poetic use of “Highest” for God.

The previous figure in tabular form. Note the bidirectional arrow. Representation iterates in a hermenutically circular pattern where the system defines the terms and the terms construct the system. The hierarchical structure is unaffected - the reciprocal exchange is across a "vertical" order of operations.

This vertical ordering of distinct but reciprocating levels is not simply an intrinsic systemic artifact of representational operations. Representation functions to the extent that it corresponds to objective reality, or, more precisely, objective reality as accessible to us. The primary internal sensory impressions that comprise the basal level of representational filtering - our preconscious reflexive being-in-the-world - work the same way. It is true that perception and cognition are symbiotic, but it is also possible for the sake of analysis to imagine pure sense impression, unmediated by reflection of any kind. And even here, in a phenomenologist’s ideal null state, the same hierarchical syndiffeonic pattern holds.

Material reality (the superset) also cannot exist as an element within itself in the manner of its constituent elements. The elements are distinguishable within material reality while all being parts of it.

Comparing the logic of definition and the structure of perception points to the following analogy:

Abstract distinctions are distinguishable within their shared abstract reality

as

Material distinctions are distinguishable within their shared material reality

Note, for future reference, that distinguishing between abstract and material realities implies a larger meta-reality that both belong to. The groundwork has not been laid to explore the implications at this point, but it should be noted to backfill later. For now, what is significant is that the coexistence of difference and sameness in syndiffeonsis requires different orders or levels of being. Opposites can only coexist without negating each other if they can pass “over” or “under” each other, to use a visual metaphor.

The logical necessity that combines continuity and distinction in syndiffeonsis raises a problem that any attempt to account of the ultimate ontological foundations of reality must address. Conceptualizing something means conceptualizing something with sufficient clarity to be knowable. In this way, conceptualization is structurally homologous to definition, both acts of boundary drawing to distinguish the defined/conceptualized from what it is not. Otherwise, there is no distinct entity to conceptualize. Just as without definition, there is no referential stability in the sign. Put logically, defining or conceptualizing parameterizes a set in the terms of whatever representational filter is being used.

Return to the basic definitional logic at the start of this axiom. 

Since definitional/ conceptual boundaries/parameters imply a broader frame of reference, another set is necessarily is necessarily created from the remaining content. Parameterizing the definition generates an opposing set. 

[DEF] → ¬[DEF]

The unitary-on-one-level system now has internal, hierarchically subordinate subdivisions. The two are logically mutually exclusive since one is definitionally not the other. However, by syndiffeonsis, the unequal pair must share a frame of reference to be definable as different. 

{FRAME} ≡ [DEF] + [¬DEF]

This means that the existence of superordinate {FRAME} can be inferred from the coexistence of subordinate distinctions.

[DEF] + [¬DEF] → {FRAME}

The frame shown here is [representational system], but this structure aligns with our being-in-the-world that the systems represent. Objects of perception and cognition are differentiated but coexistent within a larger original [REALITY].

{REALITY} ≡ [DEF] + [¬DEF]

[DEF] + [¬DEF] → {REALITY}

The problem emerges from the inexorability of the logic. Any act of conceptualizing/defining [X] simultaneously conceptualizes/defines the larger [not X] set and turns the common medium [REALITY] into the metaset containing them both. A metaset where both commonality and difference become articulatable. But we have now conceptualized the meta-set. 

[X] + [¬X] → {REALITY}

but

{REALITY} → {¬REALITY}

∴

{REALITY} + {¬REALITY} → {{meta-REALITY}}

↓

{{meta-REALITY}} → {{¬meta-REALITY}}

∴

{{meta-REALITY}} + {{¬meta-REALITY}} → {{{meta-meta...

This continues indefinitely according to logic’s own property of infinite abstract iterability. There is no capacity for spontaneous cessation in a repeating logical function without externally changing the function. The only logical possibility of an ontological foundation or origin is “somewhere” literally and structurally beyond logical comprehension. A "reality" that cannot be conceptualized or apprehended in any way. Something therefore external and superordinate to the perceptual or conceptual possibilities that make apprehension and conceptualization possible. The intrinsic syndiffeonic logic of definition-distinction negates the very possibility of logically conceptualizing ontological foundations, ultimate origins of reality, or any other term for foundational metaphysics – by infinitely deferring the foundation. Any parametric definition of [reality] - no matter how full, all-encompassing, or unitary – instantly creates its counterpart [not reality] and therefore the inclusive metaset that contains [the initial definition of reality] and [not reality]. Redefine or reset the parameters of [reality] to include the new counterpart and metaset, and yet another counterpart and metaset containing [newly defined reality] and [not newly defined reality] is created. And so on ad infinitum. Any account of reality as the entirety of what we can conceptualize logically moves to infinite regression. A logical equivalent of the endless tower of turtles or simulation theories [4]. 

Towers of turtles or simulations may seem whimsical or rhetorical. But comparison between their forms of infinite regression and the logic of definition/distinction indicates an important ontological-epistemological - onto-epistemological – difference. 

The turtles and programmers are part of the material universe or are at least conceivable in material terms. The turtles are physical entities that would be visible to a low orbit flight. They represent the impossibility of a purely materialist perspective to reach ontological foundations. There is no counting to foundational metaphysics. No terminus to the “and what does that rest on” question without some physical edge of the universe. Which only raises the question of what is past that? The answer is either more material reality, which resumes the infinity of the turtles, or something not material. Literally metaphysical. At which point, the account is no longer materialist.

Turtles All the Way Down by Sam Hollingsworth

Simulation presents a variant structure of material regression. The programmers are more tangibly real than we are in a way analogous to the relationship between ourselves and a television image. Substantially different, but both products of matter-energy interactions in the same material reality. There is no ontological gap between [material representation] and  [material reality] commensurate to the one between the material and the abstract. The infinite regression here consists of nested material representations instead of stacked material supports, with same inability to account for a material starting point.

If we are in a simulation created by metabeings, what created the metabeings? Are they simulations in a meta-metaprogram?

The lesson from these illustrations is that material reality is unable to account for ontological foundations in material terms. Or within material limits, to put it in a parametric definitional way. This is likely why secular materialists switch over to mathematical abstraction. Formulas can model or theorize cosmic behavior that is unconstrained by the apprehensible reality of human perceptual experience. Theory in any medium is an abstract deduction from observation and not direct observation. A representation as capable of proving materially false or inapplicable as any other. Definitional regression, on the other hand, differs ontologically. It is purely logical and without material substance. Endless iterations necessitated by internal consistency. Its lesson is that logical abstraction is no more able to reach ultimate foundations than physical supports or representations. A limitation intrinsic to the logic of defining and therefore not resolvable with more logic. Just as the “what’s next?” question is ontologically intrinsic to material reality and cannot be resolved with more material. Obviously logic as a form of representation originated when it was invented, but within its syntactic rules as a mode of representation, it iterates forever.

Logic cannot subsume a systemic origin that is external to its meaning making capabilities within the internal operations of those capacities. By logic. Declaring an end to the logic of infinite regression arbitrarily violates its own iterative processes. In which case, the argument replaces logical conclusions with arbitrary subjective preference. It becomes illogical, a de facto recognition of logic’s explicatory limits. A comprehensive foundational theory has to be comprehensive. Encompassing all possible [X]s and [¬X]s alike. What does an ontological origin look like that does not get caught in the infinite regress of definitional logic or material reality? [5] More later. For now, it can be concluded that the only possibility of a terminus or point of origin is outside logic as an epistemological mode. And outside the material world of logic’s inventors since observable material reality cannot account for ontological foundations either.

Combining observation and logic only makes the problem of ontological foundations appear more intractable. Empirical data suggests the material universe is expanding spatially, and diverging movement contradicts the logic of regression by presuming a common starting time and place [6]. To be clear, the apparently expanding physical universe is not reality qua reality as defined here. It may not even be real. Treating it as such accepts the secular materialist equating of the genesis of the universe and ontological foundations, which is absurd. Reliance on mathematical abstraction is a selective admission of the supra-material that negates the defining property of materialism as an ideology. Obviously a practical metaphysics rejects that fallacy, but even on their own terms, materialism collapses into incoherence. There is a fundamental contradiction between the definitional logic of infinite regression and a spatial and temporal point of origin, regardless of scale or timeframe.

It is even more obvious graphically.

Logic and empirical observation – the epistemological vectors of thought and perception –are distinct but reciprocal knowledge pathways. Different ways to understand the universe around us. Consider the implications of their contradiction on the basic foundations of reality.

Since logic and empirical observation are simultaneously continuous and distinct, syndiffeonic hierarchality requires a “higher” frame of reference to accommodate their comparative distinguishability. A frame that must be able to fully accommodate both modes, despite the contradiction between empirical observation of origin and logic of regression. Since it must fully contain both, the frame cannot be subject to, dependent on, or limited by the contradictory parametric constraints or qualities of logic or observation. This points to the necessity of foundational metaphysics. But before continuing down that path, there are some implications arising from the coexistence of distinction within a frame of reference for axioms 2 and 3 that need to be addressed.

Together, axioms 2 and 3 [Representational Filtering] and [Reality is Real] describe meaningful sign systems that are different from but connected to the reality that they represent. Axiom 4 has shown that [continuity/difference within a common frame of reference] applies to definition/ parameterization in representational systems and distinction/conceptualization of the real things in reality that the representations represent. They combine into a single observation about the relationship between the two supersets: representational systems themselves belong to the reality known through them.

Reality is knowable through representation 

and 

Reppresentations are part of reality

The reality-representation relationship – reality is known through representation, representation belongs to reality - implies a common medium where both can be defined as different. What complicates the identification of this frame is the apparent comprehensiveness of the two terms in it. Representation is how we understand anything and everything about reality. A meta-set that includes “representation” is only knowable or definable by representation. By itself. Any subsumation of representation into the meta-set has to be representable to be known. Infinite regress as infinite reset to the same unframable term. Each framing is subsumed within the framed, endlessly, iteratively defining new frames. Conversely, reality encompasses and includes anything we can understand representationally. Any metaset that contains reality is in reality – an example of regressive definitional logic addressed earlier. What sort of frame of reference can be the common ground to articulate [reality] and [representation] as different without tautologically collapsing into one or the other?

[REPRESENTATION]  !=  [¬REALITY]  U  {meta-REALITY}

but

 {meta-REALITY} is known through representation

∴

[REPRESENTATION]  !=  [¬meta-REALITY]  U  {meta-meta-REALITY}

...

Opens into infinite regress.

Representational filtering as a process, and not only the signs within it, is subject to the same intrinsic inability of the logic of definition to reach an ultimate point of origin or ontological foundation. Obviously it can be labeled – “ontological foundation”, “foundational metaphysics”, “ultimate reality”, etc. But labeling something that cannot be known or represented offers no knowledge or understanding beyond its unknowability or unrepresentability. The logic of definition stops at ontological foundations as designated unresolvable. If reality originates and the logic of representation is consistent, a metaphysical ground beyond the limits of logic remains necessary.

The logical coexistence of continuity and distinction requires a name for reference before moving onto the next axiom. Syndiffeonsis is too tied into the specifics of Langan’s reality theory, which we are not endorsing, and is awkward aesthetically. We have used the term continuum in the past, but that underplays the distinction aspect and comes with connotations in mathematics and physics that are not relevant here. Constinction will be used to refer to the hierarchical simultaneity of distinction and continuity within a common medium that defines apprehensible reality.

The continuity aspect of a constinctive relationship does not assume symmetry between the parts. Connected or interrelated != equal or balanced. Abstract thought and material observation inform each other but thought can imagine things beyond the limits of materially existence. The world that we are apart from and part of far exceeds us in scope and size. The contents of a definition are dwarfed by the remainder of its language system. Origins and developmental patterns forming constinctive pairings can be temporally asymmetrical as well. We and the world around us are constinct, but we have to be born into the already existing world before we can see or think about it. An artist has to bring works of art into existence before they can define his public identity. Creations and outcomes are posterior to creators and producers unidirectionally and not reciprocally.

Constinction adds to the previous discussion of postmodernism and representational filtering. Semiotic “arbitrariness” – the oft-cited “arbitrariness of the sign – was integral to denying the possibility of linguistic meaning and all the solipsistic nonsense that ensued. As with “difference”, there is some truth to support the larger lie. The appearance of our signs was chosen without intrinsic connection to the things they represent, by people at some point in time. This is obvious to the point of banality. Every language has different collections of sigils to represent similar concepts because every language has a different history. Meaning-making is by definition the association of self-evidently arbitrary signs and consistent aspects of objective reality. Distinct but connected. Choosing to define a category based on a specific set of objective characteristics does not make those characteristics unreal or meaningless. Arbitrarily chosen properties are still real properties. Stable knowledge requires sufficient referential consistency to exist. Constinction – [reality is known through representation/representation belongs to reality] – accounts for the logic. Understanding the system is speaking the language. 

Signs can be misused and misunderstood, but that is a matter of discernment. The point of a practical metaphysics is to ground judgment in reality. There is nothing preventing anyone from babbling arbitrary gibberish – postmodernists have done it for decades. But failure to deploy the originally arbitrarily-chosen signs correctly – that is, non-arbitrarily – prevents transmission of meaning. Sign systems are arbitrary in designation but informationally consistent, or else they are not functioning as signs. Furthermore, the traits associated with semiotic communication may not be intrinsic to the sign vehicle a priori, but they are not unmotivated. Representations tends to be purpose-driven, so that ignoring their conscious meaning will fail to serve a need.

For example, declaring a certain hard dense stone be called “granite” is arbitrary. It could have been called “rainy”. Or “dhuhbtjskf”. But whatever the sign, the designated stones really are hard and dense. The definition corresponds to the defined aspect of reality constinctively – distinct but continuous. A Styrofoam block foundation does not become acceptable because “sufficient compressive strength for structural support” is just arbitrary symbols.

Following axiom 1 and combining 2, 3, and 4 yields the following: any accounting of foundational metaphysics has to accommodate the representational mediation of our being-in-the-world, that reality is objective and exceeds us, and that continuity and distinction coexist throughout.

5. Material reality is causally driven

This axiom can be presented in two ways. Any observable phenomenon or change had a cause or causes that impelled it. Conversely, since material reality is always changing, it has no static default null state in that can provide a neutral, normative standard.

The idea of universal causality goes back to Aristotle (384-322 BC), although he developed a much more detailed taxonomy of causes than is relevant here. This axiom is simply concerned with the fact that things are constantly happening and all happenings are caused, either by natural forces or human action. Perceptual reality is a perpetual motion machine of generation, movement, change, erosion, etc. where no two instances are exactly the same. We can derive consistent abstract formulas that define causal relations, so apprehensible reality is ordered. But within these perceptual stability and laws of physics parameters, material reality exists in a state of constant flux. A state that we are part of, due to our own constinctive relationship with reality. Continually changing and being changed, affected and effecting - the observer is an integral part of the causal web surrounding him. There is no Cartesian neutral eye on the world.

The sheer scale of universal causality obscures the simplicity of the axiom. We are all surrounded by uncountable numbers and layers of continuous causal interactions of immediate and distant origins alike. Extending this to all the causal relations in apprehensible reality beggars the imagination. Even given the limits imposed by a perceptual stable objective reality, the massive web of butterfly effects appears to extend endlessly beyond our finite apprehensions [7]. It is the asymmetry between our human capacity and the scale of the causal universe that creates the illusion things just happen randomly and without cause.

Not knowing the cause != no cause

Staggeringly complex != not causal

The untrackable scale of causality is why we are often victimized by the unintended consequences of our causal actions.

Causality, like constinction, points to the necessity of metaphysics. This is due to its unvaryingly sequential and chronologically unidirectional nature, with cause preceding effect by definition. Labels can change as effects become causes of new effects, but the sequentiality remains one-way. It is possible to create representations of causal sequences reversing, but until real effects can be observed creating their own causes, this remains fiction [8].

Simplify the web of effects into a single chain for the sake of simplicity and the logical endlessness of the sequence is obvious:

... → cause → cause → cause → cause → ...

A causally-driven, material reality moves in one “direction” or sequence with no intrinsic start or end point. Only with an incalculable number of interwoven causal chains. A universal constinction of countless, causally-interactive instances.

Combining [causal sequentiality] and [the constinctive nature of reality] gives us ontological priority order. This is another complex term for a surprisingly simple concept. Something whose nature, essence, being, or physical existence is dependent on a creator cannot precede the creator ontologically or temporally. Put another way, if A is a subset of B, A cannot be the superset containing B. The artist is ontologically anterior to the artwork as ontic fact. Ontological priority order is an obvious property – logically and empirically – of the shared, stable, causally-driven reality we inhabit. 

It is necessary to distinguish between causal sequencing in reality and how we can represent it retroactively. Effects can appear to reach back to affect their causes when they cause post-facto reevaluation. The way experiencing skilled craftwork changes the impression of the craftsman or good deeds or crimes may retroactively alter impressions of someone’s character. But [who someone is to you] is a representation and representation is not reality. The existence and true nature of the craftsman or do-gooder is independent of others’ changing awareness or assessment. Subsequent evaluations or identities are utterly irrelevant to the inexorable material truth that first the creator exists, then he creates.

Ontological priority order is the sequential nature of universal causal constinction. Cause and effect as simultaneously connected and distinguished within a shared reality, with the distinction including relative temporal location. What makes ontological priority order useful is how concisely and effectively it clarifies what is and is not possible in the dizzying vastness of material reality. Effects have determinants, qualities, and limits that are dependent on the nature of their causal antecedents. But effects cannot reach back and determine, contain, or qualify the causal effects that are responsible for them ontologically. At most they can change how the fixed past is perceived. When knowledge of reality is representationally mediated, and representations can lie, there is value in any heuristic that can easily and definitively assess truth claims. Especially when a subject transcends direct representation or even clear conceptualization as metaphysics does.

At this point, the challenge posed by the question of origins should be apparent, as it was to Aristotle millennia ago. 

\

If perceptual reality is causally driven and causality is monodirectional, where does it start? 

An eternal chain of causes is unlikely for reasons elaborated in axioms 4 and 6, suggesting causality has to begin somehow. But if every causal agent is itself caused, how is a beginning possible? This is structurally isomorphic to the materialist problem of origins discussed earlier - if everything comes from something else, how can something come first? The infinite regression problem intrinsic to the logic of definitions also recurs. Causal connections are constinctive relationships. [CAUSE] and [EFFECT] are distinguishable within the parameters of the shared reality that contains and limits them. But once defined, that shared reality is effectively a new “effect” that demands its own cause, opening the same endless chain as definitional distinctions. The question becomes: if causality opens into these fundamentally unresolvable regressions, what could the First Cause possibly be?

It is possible to draw a few conclusions about a First Cause, even if it defies comprehension. Ontological priority order requires the First Cause be antecedent to all possibilities of perception or thought. Such an “entity” cannot be conceptualized qua itself since any cognitive activity is preceded, subsumed, and consequently unable to encompass it.

Piero di Puccio, The Universe Supported by God with the Signs of the Planets, between 1389 and 1391,  Campo Santo, Piazza dei Miracoli, Pisa

Put another way, apprehensible reality consists of what we can apprehend in any capacity via logic or observation. It conforms to the full scope of human discernment. But apprehensible reality is constinctive and causally driven, with every causal agent is in turn acted causally upon by a prior causal agent. An ultimate origin or ontological foundation must therefore be somehow exempt from the necessity of causal impulsion. Not only can it not be subject to causal forces, it must be antecedent to all of them. Antecedent to even the possibility of “causality” just as it is antecedent to constinction and its infinite definitional regression. Ontologically antecedent to apprehensible reality itself. If apprehensible reality is not eternal (next axiom) and the origin is beyond observational or logical epistemological resolution...

The First cause must be completely, ontologically different than the material or abstract representations of reality offered by observation or logic. 

Ontologically prior to perception and reason, since the First Cause creates the framework within which the potential for either appears. The common medium where the two can be defined or conceptualized as different. Ontological priority order means that results cannot subsume or define that which their own genesis depends on. And the very possibility of causality, sequencing, or defining are all downstream abstract or material outcomes of the First Cause.

Constinction must apply to the First Cause differently as well. If it is the ultimate cause or creator of apprehensible reality, it must be continuous to it or connected to it in some way. A way that does not permit the allow the “what’s next?” question or iterate endlessly. The nature of this connection is indiscernible because our end of it includes the possibility of discernability. Anything that can be conceptualized – distinction, continuity, infinite, logic, metasets – including the potential for conceptualization derive from it. There can be no common frame of reference that holds [it] and [not it] as a constinctive pair if “framing” and “defining” are dependent on it. 

[X] + [¬X] → {REALITY}

but

{REALITY} → {¬REALITY}

∴

{REALITY} + {¬REALITY} → FIRST CAUSE

                                                         (incomprehensible)

↓

Nothing further. Logical processes including the possibility

of infinity are necessarily subsumed within a first cause

The First Cause proceeds the possibility of defining, causing, continuity, and therefore exceeds the ability of their products to contain it. Such an entity, if it can even be called that, precedes the possibility of comprehensibility. It is literally inaccessible qua itself to human minds and inexpressible for human representation. It must possess a characteristic that we will call a meta-infinitude within itself – an ability to subsume all ontological recessions, paradoxes, and other problems without further extension. The First Cause is constinctive with apprehensible reality in that it is distinct and continuous like any causal pairing. But it must also somehow provide the common medium within which distinction between them becomes meaningful.

FC ≡ [REALITY] + [¬REALITY]

but

FC !→ FC + [¬FC]

All the chains of infinite regressions - constinctive relations, definitional logic, material properties, etc. - are subsumed within the First Cause. Such a relationship is logically impossible. The First Cause transcends logic ontologically, as it does empirical observation. This will be developed further in the Ultimate Reality chapter. But before moving into metaphysical space, a final axiom will extend this discussion to time and sharpen the ineluctability of the reasoning.

6. Time is sequence

The final axiom extends the discussion of causality in axiom 5 but is significant enough to address independently. To be clear at the outset, this is not an attempt to define what time is qua time in any essential sense. We are aware, like Augustine, that our conceptualization of time is bound up with our experience of it in reality, and that past, present, and future are fluid relative to our situatedness. We also realize that mathematical descriptions of time can show it doing things that are impossible in our experience of it, such as moving backwards. All this axiom states is that the experience of reality – our being-in-the-world - is inexorably sequential. Causality requires consistent sequentiality. Certain things occur before or after others and once they have, the order will never change. If you welcome a friend into your home, they will not awaken some day in the future to a world where you were not home that time they called [9].

This sequential nature is what time has in common with narrative plotting – the quality that lets narrative represent reality. It is why words denoting movement like passing and flow are used so commonly for time. We detect it as a continuous series of constinctive instances, separable but connected like a stream. There is subjectivity in time consciousness, but time seeming does to run faster or slower does not affect the order of events. Stages of life and aging, the growth of plants or communities, pivotal events – all involve some things occurring before or after others in an ordered sequence that never changes.

As noted in the previous axiom, it is possible to label or define something unknowable in essence as such. Time can be described as an abstract essential quality of apprehensible reality that becomes observable through material change. Since each instant in material reality is objectively different from the previous, temporal sequencing is a sequence of changes. Time is not material change itself because it is an abstraction and therefore not directly perceptible sensorially. Material change is the observable condition that indicates the passing of time without being time. Time resembles spatial dimensions like height or length abstract qualities only observable through material manifestation. No one points at a disembodied glowing line and cries “look! There’s length!” We refer to the length of something. Just as time is “visible” through the perception and metronomic measure of sequenced change.

However we think about time, our being-in-the-world is sequential. One instant follows the other and never reverses. We exist in time and all our actions are subject to it. We are born into it, and our development follows. Even the way we think is sequenced, with one word or impression after the other [10]. Representation and communication are inherently sequential, with words, letters, numbers, pictures taken up and aggregated in linear sequence. Conversation is a time-sequenced set of time-sequenced representations. Break the sequence and the representations makes no sense. And there is no moving backwards. Memories seem to reach back in time, but only imaginatively, as retroactive impressions do. There is no physically or materially reversal of temporal sequence. Just new backward-looking points in the one-way sequential aggregation. We are comfortable standing on unanimous pattern recognition and say time sequencing in the material world is unidirectional. Its why it is sometimes called the arrow of time and refers to the temporal nature of apprehensible reality.

Temporal sequence reversal or time travel has been a subject of fascination for physicists and authors alike. Time Travel and Modern Physics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) The problem for the former is that equations are abstract representations, and until temporal reversal is observable in material reality, will remain there. This matters for materialists because one-way time sequencing presents as existential a problem for the secular world view as monodirectional causality. The question is obvious enough to be a childhood commonplace. How does a one-way arrow of time start?

The problem is related to ontological priority order because it requires a property of a superset to account for the generis of that superset. If time is an essential quality of material reality and human apprehension, and temporality is sequenced, then “sequence” as [conceptualization of before/after relationships] is a property of this time-bound reality. Before, after, first are all implicitly sequential temporal concepts which require a temporal reality to exist. How then can they explain how that material reality originated? Put another way, how can there be a starting point when starting requires sequence and the origin in question is the origin of sequence? The apparent paradox is familiar. The origin of sequentiality is in a sequence since it brings about subsequent outcomes. But since the very possibility of sequentiality follows, it cannot extend the temporal arrow “backwards”. As with causality, sequentiality requires itself to explain its genesis. This is probably why more esoteric secularists spin up recursive models, where the outcome generates itself. Representation is capable of material falsehood.

In observable material reality, time is a one-way sequence. One of two things must therefore apply to it regardless of how it works mechanistically or what it is existentially. Either time – the arrow – has a starting point before which there was no sequence of changes, or it unfolds sequentially in perpetuity. Directional time without beginning means that the metaphorical arrow is truly infinite. Literally a sequence with no origin and presumably no end. Things just perpetually occurring as the eternal order of reality. An optimal scenario for materialists but for the irony that material conditions make it improbable.

Many are unaware of the extent to which mainstream institutional science has deviated from its historical ethos. The empirical inquiry that emerged from the medieval Church and coalesced into the systematic empiricism of the Scientific Method became very different post-Enlightenment. The overt hostility to traditional Western Christian beliefs that accompanied rationalism and secularism welcomed even flimsy “disproofs” Biblical accounts. An eternal arrow of time terminates any possibility of Creation, and with it, the origins of man’s relationship with God. Unfortunately for the materialists, there is no current model or understanding of the material universe that suggests true infinities exist – or can exist – within it. This is not disproof of an endless arrow, but it would mean that time, alone among all phenomena in the perceptual universe, exhibits an actual infinite character. Improbable though not impossible.

The real problem for infinite time is more directly empirical - the aforementioned theory that the observable universe is expanding. While "scientific consensus” should be viewed with well-earned skepticism in this house of lies, the claim seems robust within the parameters of mainstream scientific discourse [11]. As robust as the consistent replicable red shift in observed light. Expansion plus the sequential nature of time implies a point of origin. And a universe expanding from a mysterious Big Bang is a terminal blow to the endless arrow.

Infinite time is too lethal for Christian notions of creation to let slide so easily, and it soon returned with a recursive twist. The oscillating universe replaced the empirically impossible uncaused eternal universe with an eternal cycle of finite universes [12]. One where each universe expands from a singularity in a Big Bang until the gravitational pull of its mass overcomes the inertia and it contracts back into another singularity. Which becomes the next Big Bang. A cycle that accounts for the observed expansion with its implied origin while preserving a preconceived, unobserved, infinite, Creator-less existence.

Set aside the logical problem of an uncaused chain of universes as a single exemption to the limits of material causality within material reality for no apparent reason. Materialist fallacy shamelessly demands material explanations for phenomena that transcend material parameters. Logical critique is unnecessary in the face of more recent analysis suggesting the assumed mass of the universe is too small to reverse the rate of movement into contraction. The expansion may even be accelerating, and distant stars have been detected that appear to mature for the assumed timelines. The endless accordion looks as untenable as the endless arrow.

The search for cosmic origins reveals the discrepancy between popular conceptions of the nature of scientific fact and the actual processes of modern institutional science. The word “science” is simply a derivation from the Latin scientia (to know) that came to refer to a method of knowledge production based on the systematic interaction of logic and controlled empiricism. Today, the vast web of institutions and financial resources that comprise modern science poses as the arbiter of truth about the natural world. The discrepancy is in the widespread misconception that the institutional network is uniformly committed to the scientific method that its own authority derives from. Science is as potent as it is because it combines logic and observation in a consistent and verifiable way. Structured, controlled experimentation provides the venue for abstract hypotheses and empirical data to progressively refine our understanding. The truth value lies in rigorous assessment, logically and empirically, before acceptance, with failed hypotheses rejected. 

The Scientific Method is causal and constinctive, with theories derived inductively from observation and deductively from previously verified theories in an ongoing self-correcting process. It is obviously fundamentally important that each step be cogently reasoned and – most importantly for natural studies – reproducibly empirically verifiable.

What the Scientific Method does not say is to assume an unverified presupposition and then construct wildly changing narratives to explain how scattered, and sometimes contradictory data points affirm the assumption.

While much science - engineering in particular - works in the traditional manner, this has not been the case in disciplines postulating fundamental origins. The advance of modern technology is an example of the former, a churn of new possibilities developing from earlier successes. On the other hand, there is no observable evidence of an oscillating universe other than a) the universe seems to be expanding outward and b) it refutes Christian creation. Only one is even instrumentally defensible. The other is an unverifiable preconception based on ideological desire. The oscillating universe was theorized – proposed as a truthful model for mainstream consumption – on the basis of no evidence other than bias. Epistemologically, this replaces the systematic empiricism of the Scientific Method with making up unconfirmed scenarios that reaffirm dogmatic assumptions while not overtly contradicting what is observable. Since the scenarios are not subject to systematic confirmation, they can change suddenly. Consider the recent proposal to almost double the assumed age of the universe in light of new instrumental data. Or whether the universal spatial homogeneity needed to conjecture expansion speed even exists in what may be a fractal universal structure.

A pattern where data points repeatedly nullify hypotheses based on unverified materialist presumptions but the presumptions are never questioned is definitionally not scientific. A simple truth that all the integrated media and institutional illusionism has no bearing on. To reiterate, this is not a blanket condemnation of science as a vocation. This book was written on a computer. The question is why the actual source of science’s truth value – the systematic and verifiable empiricism of the Scientific Method – was stretched to authorize ontological claims that do not meet its criteria. Individual motivations vary but the overall direction is clear. The establishment clings to materialism since the whole edifice of modern secularism depends on a Creator-less reality. Without infinite temporality, some sort of creation is necessary, and creating implies something external to the apprehensible creation.

While this is not in itself proof of any individual doxa, it was a mortal blow to the optimistic Enlightenment fantasy of a mechanistic universe. Yet even as it fails, the dogmatic materialism is unquestioned, an epistemic form to the failed theories’ content. The wonder of Newton’s (1643-1727) cosmic perpetual motion machine is that it seemed to translate material reality into a consistent, abstract mathematical representation. One whose tremendous predictive value obscured the descriptive nature of the accomplishment. Predictive pattern recognition at the highest level taken as indicator of ontological foundations, Newton’s Christianity notwithstanding. Reasoning our way to ultimate reality appeals sufficiently to human vanity to become unproclaimed faith, even as successive models continue to come up short or collapse into ambiguity.

The internal flaw in materialist thinking is easy to express in terms of the earlier axioms in this chapter. Ontological foundations from a secular materialist perspective refers to the origins of material reality. Materialism does not allow for definitional parameters that exceed material limits. It can only expand what is considered the scope of the material. The flaw lies in expecting equations to be determinative (ontologically anterior) and not imperfect descriptions of material conditions. Semiotics do not have to be truthful, and even if the equations are perfectly internally consistent, abstract representations are not limited by material conditions.

Somehow, [modeling material reality with logical abstraction] was inverted into [purely abstract representations define the nature of material reality]. Chapter VV will examine the ontological collapse into materialist Flatland and secular transcendence. For now it is sufficient to observe that we are still plagued by failure to distinguish between abstract absolutes and material realities. Models are continually refined, tweaked, and complicated to fit increasingly uncooperative data. Nonsense substances such as “dark matter” and “dark energy” are invented, with the sole properties of [nondetectability] and [preserving the pretense of an oscillating universe].

Dark matter had the potential to save the oscillating universe and resurrect the Enlightenment dream of a naturally-occurring perpetual motion machine. All that was needed to pull things back together was to assume that the vast majority of the universe was made up of an unclassifiable substance that exerts gravitational pull but offers no trace of its existence [12]. Dark energy is a similar postulate with no detectable properties other being needed to save the model.

All to prop up empirical failure. It is essentially the same process used in early antiquity and the Middle Ages, where proliferating epicycles defended an increasingly unworkable Ptolemaic solar system.

Whatever this numerology can be called, it is definitionally not science. The Scientific Method requires the rigorous empirical testing of hypotheses, not presuming a conclusion and making up more outlandish unverifiable conditions as each previous set fails empirically. That approach is, as noted, pre-scientific, like the astrological speculation of the ancients. Whenever a model requires the constant fabrication of imaginary undetectable addenda with the sole purpose of preserving the model, it is time to consider a new model.

With perpetual universal oscillation a lost cause, the obvious need for metaphysical foundations is back on center stage [13]. Returning to the First Cause from a spatio-temporal perspective instead of the logics of causality or definition as in the previous two axioms does not change the basic reasoning of earlier axioms. A First Cause that initiates temporal sequencing has to be ontologically other than the temporally sequences reality it generates. Just as the First Cause of a causally driven universe is ontologically other than sequenced causality. By ontological priority order, the parametric constraints of time sequencing are inapplicable to that which creates the possibility of time sequencing. If the First Cause was conceivable in material terms, it would also be subject to material conditions. It would be time-sequenced and causally driven, leaving it subject to the same question of origins as the material reality it causes. What came before it sequentially? What is driving its development and expansion? What is it expanding into? How can creation ex nihilo happen once, but things no longer spontaneously spring, uncaused, into existence? Why is it so perceptually stable?

These are questions that cannot be answered within apprehensible reality because a temporally sequenced, causally driven objective reality has no capacity to even conceptualize a non-sequenced, uncaused source. A First Cause has to be ontologically other than any reality that we can apprehend. Literally supernatural or metaphysical, as in outside the parameters of the observation or cognition that it creates. Connected in a constinct way, but with an meta-infinitude that subsumes [temporal sequencing] in total, as it does all potentials for infinite regression [14]. The best we can do is metaphor.

In summary, the most that we can say about a First Cause at this point is that logical and perceptual coherence requires it to be there. And that there must be some sort of constinctive connection to apprehensible reality due to its causal primacy. Creation becomes the beginning of time and the first definable causal action. When whatever that which is ontologically anterior to causality and time sequencing initiates causality and time sequencing. The instant when conceiving anything – including abstract relations like conceivability – became possible. What preceded that is necessarily unknowable and inexpressible qua itself. It exceeds the representational capacities of logic or observation because it precedes the possibility of “preceding”. It is ontologically anterior to the time sequencing necessary for a temporal relationship like “precedes”. Anterior to the material and abstract realities that are represented by observation and logic. Even the constinctive connection between this First Cause and apprehensible reality transcends logical or empirical discernment. Discernment begins with apprehension – logic and observation – and apprehensible reality is the end of the connection, to use a spatial metaphor. Both First Cause and its link to apprehensible reality have to be there, but there is no way to discern them directly.

These axioms and their implications have come to a point where some metaphysical dimension of reality is obvious. A broad, basic consideration of what we can know and how we can know it leaves no alternative. We inhabit a causally-driven, temporally sequenced universe or material reality with abstract principles and parameters that appears to proceed from a singular point of origin. An origin that must be ontologically antecedent to but asymmetrically constinctive with spatio-temporal limits. A logically coherent ontological framework that includes the reality of our experience without losing the distinctions that define our experience of it.

With this, we have reached the common point of departure for more metaphysical speculation mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Levels of reality await.

George Grie, Ghost Ship Series: Full Moon Rising, 2007

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[1] The interplay of continuity and difference is not a reference to quantum or continuum models in physics. Those are sets of abstract representations of material reality with varying experimental correlation. Turning to those as ontological foundation stones would mistake the representation of reality for the reality it represents. This axiom refers to a more fundamental condition of our being in the world and what we can know about the reality we inhabit.

[2] The CTMU: A New Kind of Reality Theory, p. 16-. Langan is a fascinating figure with an complex and unconventional reality theory he calls the CTMU (Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe). We disagree with some of his larger conclusions, but have found his insights valuable in the development of our own thought.

[3] Syndiffeonesis - CTMU Wiki (ctmucommunity.org). Syndiffeonic relations are central to Langan’s reality theory, where language is expanded into a comprehensive process that includes reality itself. Language is an example of a “dual-aspect monad”, a single, entity with two interactive components that are individually distinguishable but mutually supportive. In linguistic terms, the components correspond to vocabulary and syntax, with syntactic rules expressed in words and word meaning governed by syntactical relations. It is structurally something of a hermeneutic circle, revolving within language as the encompassing monadic shell. This intra-monadic symbiosis is universally applicable. He describes human mental functioning or consciousness as “infocognition” where cognition gives meaning to observational information and information provides material for thought. Reality itself is such a dual-aspect monad with material reality and laws of nature/physics in the content/information and syntax/cognition positions.

[4] The tower of turtles refers to the mythic account of the world as resting on the back of a cosmic turtle, which leads to the question of what the turtle rests on. Another turtle, and so on without an end point, demonstrating the inability of material elements reaching ontological foundations.

[5] This question of infinite regression is intrinsic to the logic of defining and therefore not something to be resolved logically. Langan addresses the problem implicitly when he claims reality is atemporally self-generating, but this arbitrarily truncates the logic of regression without logical reason. Other than need for his theory to define reality as a language that self-creates. The only way to avoid contradicting the logical operations that the theory itself is built on is recognition that logic as a representational mode is insufficient to account for the ontological foundations of reality.

[6] It is more complicated than this. The very concept of measurable expansion of uniform space-time may not be applicable. 1501.01919] Paradoxes of cosmological physics in the beginning of the 21-st century (arxiv.org) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.01919]. Irresolvable impasses are artifacts of empirical and logical processes at their explanatory limits.

[7] Whether a butterfly has sufficient force to induce a tornado elsewhere is irrelevant to the metaphor. 

[8] Highly instrumentally mediated experiments where particles behave in non-temporally constrained ways while the clock ticks forward demonstrates the inadequacy of our representational systems, not material causal reversal. Representation is capable of many things that do not materially exist. Consider fantasy as a genre for a less mathematical example. Even time travel stories acknowledge that causality is sequenced temporally. The old trope that changing the past alters the future is based on the downstream effects of changing causal antecedents. The whole genre is incoherent and best avoided. But it does point out the difference in material constraints on representation and reality, which is where lies and deception occur.

[9] Memory does not modify this. Memory is an internal representation of what happened and not the event itself or the original internal representations of the event. The potential for error is implicit in the process. We are aware of Mandela effect phenomena where clear memories of the past appear inexplicably different from the reality. We categorically reject the notion that the past changed for the obvious reason that the effects are 1) always trivial and 2) not universally known. At no point did we ever think Mandela died in prison; we always knew he was a jailed revolutionary up until his release. Mass formations are real and not well understood. Until something major and undeniable changes – like the Empire State Building as a condo tower or manmade lake or JFK finishing out his term – it is a perceptual curiosity. The transformative consequences of altering the past eliminates the possibility of future technology and the lack of significant incidents rules out supernatural agency. Nor is it starting small for practice – genius is not required to explain why the development process of the ability to reach back and alter the past in the future is irrelevant to how, when, or in what order back-reaching interventions appear in the past.

[10] Defining temporality in terms of sequence is also compatible with time dilation. The effect of high velocity on the relative passage of time has been observed experimentally and is an effective demonstration of the epistemological limits of direct perception. It is also utterly irrelevant to the fact that time continues to pass sequentially. Whether the journey to Alpha Centuri takes 400 years or four minutes, arrival still occurs happens after departure. This is different from materially impossible temporal reversal.

[11] Latest myths on age of universe. Redating still implies origin. Estimates of the age of the universe are based on projecting this movement backwards to a hypothetical origin point and determining how long it would take to reach current estimated size at this speed.

[12] Study finds 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' may not exist – here's what to make of it (theconversation.com) https://theconversation.com/study-finds-dark-matter-and-dark-energy-may-not-exist-heres-what-to-make-of-it-88181

The inability to arrive at a consistent projection is another indicator that this does not rest on anything robust. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-energy-confirmed/
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/darkmatter.html
https://www.newsonia.com/reader/report/dark-matter-and-dark-energy-do-they-really-exist/
https://physicsforme.com/category/dark-matter/
https://earthsky.org/space/does-dark-matter-exist-in-our-own-solar-neighborhood
https://brownspaceman.com/what-is-dark-matter-and-how-much-is-in-the-milky-way/

[13] An endlessly expanding universe leading to heat death on an incomprehensible timeline definitely slakes materialist pathology by stripping reality of meaning. But it does nothing to solve the problem of origins.

[14] We are aware of such non-explanations for the creation of the universe like emerging from quantum fluctuations. These accounts really just kick the can down the road. If quantum fluctuations are time-sequenced within a common reality, then where did they come from? It is infinite regress or the tower of turtles. This choice actually is a binary – either accept that the universe radically violates its ontological nature this one time because the theories need it to, or creation is metaphysical causation. And since the former is definitionally impossible...