KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie)

Commentary 20

REHEATED PORRIDGE
Part 2: Cosmology
by Maurice McCarthy
9 December 2003, posted 14 December 2003

This is a continuation of 55-C79 placed here because of its content which is pertinent to Prof. Leslie's recent book (1) and his long term interest in cosmology and cosmogenesis (2). I have tried to deliver this article as a stand-alone submission. Though I do not expect it to be acceptable to either party, in itself it bridges the evident gap between Prof. Müller and Prof. Leslie's views as discussed in the commentaries to this TA.

<1>
0-D is the proposition that the origin of knowledge is an undefined content confronted by an indefinable activity. Consideration of this stand-off leads to the law of explanation, that the content can only be understandable if it is inherently structured by the act, i.e.

c + a => k iff c = f(a) .......... E

("an action 'a' upon a content 'c' yields explanation ('k' for knowledge) if, and only if, the content is a function of the act." 55-C79) and this implies that if there is a world then 'a', the act of knowledge, is the world creator. Strictly speaking all language or symbol or art form used to characterise 'c' and 'a' is erroneous - but we must use words to communicate. 'c' is best described as a meaningless and therefore qualitatively homogenised manifold when compared to the distinguished manifold which we have in everyday perception. 'a' is more difficult as we cannot rightly yet distinguish thinking and perceiving, the only two ways in which we know anything. "Act of knowledge" is too abstract, it gives nothing to hold onto, and "Active mind" now has a too-differentiated a meaning or has manifold implications but in "willingness to understand" we have a vague but singular term and this singularity is necessary because there are no reasons why it should be a one or more than one, except that by E it must exist without relation to any other because it precedes 'c'. It is the hyper-singular and hyper-manifold, the One of Parmenides combined with the Flow of Heraclitus in an unchanging movement of its own willingness, and it is that which structures one and many into definite beings. So far as it is possible to justify the branding or characterisation of that which is inherently beyond all then this is attempted next.

<2>
In the case of human knowledge the equation E becomes subjectively qualified or 'a' must reduce itself to distinctively human

c + a.h => k iff c = f(a.h) ..... H

Human consciousness is a reductive phenomenon, in an anti-materialist sense of those words. Human reality, however its independence is constituted, is therefore always in correspondence to human consciousness. The same remark would apply to any being's reality. This, then, is a justification of the term "willingness to understand", or simply "willingness" as I shall call it, as a label for the act of knowledge - because our world content analyses to an undifferentiated, meaningless manifold then the corresponding activity is willingness. This willingness is so accepting that it imposes no preconceived values before understanding.

<3>
If the content confronting human willingness is a reality then

c = reality = f(a.h) = truth and percept

This states the correspondence theory of truth. Truth is a consciously created structure or function, whereas percepts are unconsciously structured by us (according to the subjectivity of our nature) so that they, at first, present themselves to our minds as simply given. Without this division knowledge, as we experience it, could not occur. The conscious human act of knowing reality is to re-create its inherent truth thereby restoring the wholeness of reality, that which our subjectivity tore into two pieces by the act of perception. Perception does not yield reality on its own. What distinguishes different perceptual activities is what they eliminate from willingness. Human consciousness, the state of our possessing knowledge, is necessarily a dual phenomenon.

Another profound implication of H is that it is impossible to know that to which we are not genuinely related so that there may be percepts to which there is no explanation. (This is a reversal of my previous opinion.) On the other hand knowledge is illimitable because every new percept or concept adds to it.

<4>
The task of this submission to the forum is begin from 'a', from willingness, and allow it to lead us it to 'a.h' or human intelligence as we would recognise it in our everyday lives. We have a known beginning in the analytic necessity of willingness and a 'known' ending in everyday experience, a spatio-temporal world filled with perceptual content.

In the beginning willingness, the possibility of all knowledge and all content, is alone with itself in its own comprehensive substance from which to make the world. Putting forth its own ceaseless willingness many willingnesses are created. Each is distinguished and has the others for content. Unlike the original content of E, or H for humanity, these contents are auto-relational and are so because in the very core of each, in their utmost being, is the willingness to accept content. Each knows the others so immediately and so completely their knowledge is absolute, so that the only word to describe it is "love". In their absolute knowledge thinking and perceiving have not separated but instead there is conperceptuality or intuition. They just know immediately and fully. Their relation is of absolute harmony. Yet in this divine realm all relations are necessarily beings and beings are all conscious relationals simply because it is the realm of conperceptuality. Therefore harmony is the second class of existence. The relation between love and harmony objectifies their ground as the class of beings which is will. The seat of god is the product of love and harmony.

<5>
With breath-taking drama we are plunged into the Celestial Hierarchies of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (3). As if by magic a religio-philosophic speculation of a kind unpopular in the scientific community for centuries is thrust upon us. Yet either these beings exist as the preconditions of human intelligence or else humanity can never know ultimate answers (0-D as the root of *all* knowledge has failed) and we must retreat into pragmatism for ever more. Do you want the blue pill or the red pill?

On the other hand this orthogonal development, since it descends to perceptible spatio-temporal experience or reality, should (and does, eventually) end up by leading to observable and measurable predictions. Some may be observable this century. If this did not happen then it fails to meet the standards we are accustomed to in our finest knowledge and therefore it should be rightly dismissed as fantastic and idle.

<6>
To call willingness the creator is one sense an error. Time has not yet come into being. It is better to use Plotinus's word "emanator". Nor does the emanator know anything. It is almost an insult to think that the emanator needs to know anything. If their were something foreign or mysterious in any way to the emanator it would be, in a sense, its equal. Hyper-ignorant and beyond knowledge willingness emanates beings whose very existence is absolute knowledge of each other in their most essential ground, which is willingness itself. There is one condition which would allow the emanator to become a knower - namely if it descended itself, became its own one-begotten and in this manner joined each of the ranks of being in turn in order to know their condition through their own experiences.

Notice here that, by H, since there is no human consciousness, not even anything resembling it, then it is utterly impossible for us to know whether or not these beings have had a temporal development such as we have. If they did have one then it has no relation whatever to our own experience and it is in theory, in principle, only possible for us to know that which conforms to H.

<7>
The divine classes are the great constants of the universe. The fates, the lords of karma who ensure reharmonisation of discordance. The beings below them are "contained" by their nature so that these lower but sublime beings are a condition upon the existence of the divine something like the lower orders of nature are conditions upon our own being. Living in a material world demands that we accomodate ourselves to it, so too the divine ranks accomodate what is not quite of their own nature as the graded intensity of the chain of being descends toward the human.

Just as there was no necessity for the first emanations to occur so too there is no necessity for the divine hierarchies to emanate further. They can emanate because their essence is that of the original willingness. It is by the same grace that they do so. The expression or emanation of absolute knowledge is wisdom. The beings of wisdom form the next class of being. The great difference at these sublime levels is that harmony is lost.

Harmony cracks into reciprocation so that relation begins to separate from being. This constitutes the origin of truth in the sense we are familiar with. Truth actually is the relation between the beings of wisdom, hence their name. Equally the origins of perception, as distinct from conception are here. In this sublime separation of matter and form it is possible for design and intelligence to begin to appear too. Intelligence, "choosing between", of beings or realisation of their relations is akin to design, the projection of relation into a matter. The image of the emanator as a whole (headed by willingness, with a heart of love and a life of harmony in a body or seat of divine will) is beyond any need of design but has the grace to allow all things to live in its warmth. For their function of dominating design the beings of wisdom are called the celestial house-masters.

<8>
Wisdom has been placed into the cosmos, into the order of what is, and the reciprocation between its beings subtends all alteration and change as such. The beings of movement form the next rank of existence. With movement time is in its first conception. As these beings strive to greater truth and harmony they form a condition upon the divine classes who cannot bear disharmony in what *is* only through they themselves. Law and necessity equally make their appearance. The beings of movement constitute the good, the striving for truth, and also here are the roots evil as disharmony deepens. Evil is not evil to the divine but only to us. Evil is disharmony from a lower, more subjective point of view - one which does not see that the emanator gave rise to both what is called good and what is called evil. This lower view has no grip on divine harmony.

As disharmony increases the relations between beings become more and more tenuous until they become related only by their separation, which means by space itself. Wisdom combined with time gives rise to space in the same movement as it grants full independence to beings. This is reality or thinghood and its independence is the power of form. The irreducibility of all perceptual form and the measurability forms comes back to these beings prior to any emanation of matter. The beings of form are the realisation of the beautiful and the ugly.

<9>
Having reached spatio-temporal reality filled with perception and independent, objective being we can easily see human-like being in the "space", or better the counterspace, between here and now. The cosmos does not call for explanation but, rather, the willingness to explain calls forth the cosmos. Thus objective reality proceeds from the subjective and not vice versa. We just got things the wrong way around.

We have not reached humanity as such but only the first beginnings of humanity and there is still a huge gap to descend to matter and coordinate to temporal development. At this point I elect to break off because it is a suitable occasion to produce a systematic presentation of the forms of perception.

REFERENCES

(1) Infinite Minds by John Leslie, OUP 2001. For an introductory preamble see

www.oup.co.uk/academic/humanities/philosophy/viewpoint/leslie/

(2) Leslie, John, "Cosmology and Theology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 1998 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Summer 2003 Edition has a dynamic content so this is the permanent archive:

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall1998/entries/cosmology-theology/

(3) There is an English translation of the Celestial Hierarchies in the archive of Arthur Versluis's electronic journal "Esoterica" at:

www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/CelestialHierarchy.html

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Maurice McCarthy