The implications of material contingency
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The implications of material contingency
it is contingent in its being. If contingent being exists, necessary being must exist. The implications of material contingency seem to me to transcend the material, spatial and temporal.
Of course, space and time are contingent in their being. They only actually exist relative to matter. Space is position relative to matter, and time is the progressive, sequential relative positions of matter. It's only when I consider material contingency do I have reason to consider the metaphysical, the spiritual (meta-spatial) and eternal (meta-temporal).
The first implication I notice extending from material contingency is that necessary being must be, and must be immaterial, spiritual and eternal. Necessary being cannot be material, spatial or temporal because matter, space and time are contingent in their being.
The next implication I notice extending from material contingency is that necessary being must be simple actuality; necessary being can have no potentiality. Contingent being, on the other hand, can be defined as a complex of potentiality and actuality. Contingent being actually exists, and it has the potential to change or to no longer be. Necessary being has no potential to change or to not be. Therefore, necessary being is actual existence, and contingent being is actualized existence.
As a contingent being, its not so much that ideas are really ever proved to me as much as it is that all of the other ideas, that I have considered, have been, to my satisfaction, disproved. What remains is what I am left to believe. Then, that's tested, and so on, and so on. Currently, I am left to believe that matter is contingent in its being. As a contingent being, the closest thing I'll ever have to necessary knowledge is experimental repeatability. On the other hand, material contingency is empirical evidence of necessary being, and change is empirical evidence of contingency, so down the rabbit hole I go.
The contrast is also remarkable. Contingent beings are defined by their changes. We, human beings, are a complex of intellectual, emotional, volitional and corporeal processes. A processes being a prescribed sequence of changes; we are defined by our changes. In contrast, necessary being is defined by its simplicity. Far from being a process, necessary being is inviolate. It is what it is. It has no potential to come to know, come to emote, come to will, come to be or not be.
A person is a being with intellect, emotion and volition. Person transcends non-person, and no effect can transcend its cause. Therefore, is contingent person actually exists, necessary being must also, at least, be personal. Human beings are empirical evidence of necessary personal being.
and so on, and so on
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