BigBango wrote: ↑May 12th, 2019, 4:32 am
Tamminen wrote: ↑May 12th, 2019, 3:19 am
The subject is the absolute. It is being itself. It is me and you and everybody, and even every single ant and mosquito is the subject as it manifests itself as an individual subject. So the word 'I' has a double denotation: (1) an empirical, individual subject, e.g. Tamminen and (2) the absolute, eternal subject. In everyday talk we usually are not aware which denotation is in question. An individual subject is defined and connected by memory and personal subjective continuity, and the absolute subject is connected by generic subjective continuity, which makes it the one and only being, something that all being is connected to. So in terms of separateness and non-separateness, an individual subject is a case of separateness and the absolute subject is what unifies all this separateness. We can say that non-separateness is the true essence of all this separateness, but I would not call our separate existence an illusion. Perhaps we use words in different ways.
I see no mysticism in this. In this sense it is a naturalistic metaphysical theory.
Tamminen, that is a very eloquent summary of Whitehead's thesis and I agree with you 100%. Given those instinctual truths can you illuminate the relation between the individual subject and the absolute eternal subject. Does the absolute eternal subject unleash a set of archetypes that determine how an individual subject will feel about its actions. Are there higher realizations of the absolute eternal being that affects the way it relates to individual subjects?
This is pure speculation, but I think this is how it goes:
I have to exist, because my nonexistence is self-contradictory. That I necessarily exist, is the meaning of the terms 'absolute subject', 'eternal subject', 'the subject' and 'eternal present' that I use as synonyms. It is absolute because it is the only real mode of being and all being is somehow connected to it. It is eternal because the end of my existence is self-contradictory. It is present because everything real and meaningful takes place here and now.
Although the being of the subject has no end, it must have had a beginning, for reasons I have presented elsewhere. It is possible that this necessity is reflected on the cosmological level as the singularity we know as the Big Bang.
That I necessarily exist and my nonexistence is self-contradictory means that the subject is
causa sui, its essence explains its existence. We do not need to ask why we are here.
So I have to exist, and I have to exist concretely, so that I get the content of my existence from somewhere. I have to be in relation to something, some concrete objects. The totality of these objects is the world or the Universe or the concrete reality we live in. The concrete existence of objects is realized as the material world, so that the objects are material, my relationship with them is material, and also I must be material to exist in this relationship. This means that the world so to speak splits in two levels of being: the material relationship of my body to other objects and my immediate relationship with the world as an experiencing subject: I must exist as mind and body. But they both express the same relationship.
Now we may ask why the world is such as it is. My necessary existence is
causa sui and needs no explaining, but how about the world with its objects? My answer is that the essence of the world is subjectivity, so that what we see as material objects are really instruments of individual subjects in their relationship with each other, and the world is really a community of subjects. But because there is originally only one absolute and eternal subject, all those individual subjects of the world must be manifestations or realizations of this one and only subject. And because of all this, what I meet in the world in the form of others is really myself. And this must not be taken metaphorically. I have a double relationship with my other manifestations: (1) a temporal relationship, through subjective time, by generic subjective continuity, and (2) a spatiotemporal relationship in the community of subjects. The correspondence between these relationships is unknown and I suppose it can never be understood, because we are fundamentally inside of what happens in the Universe as a totality, being part of it. Generic subjective continuity suggests strict determinism, and I think we are not allowed to break that.
Individual subjects can be seen as some kind of projects or monads, connected by memory or what can also be called personal subjective continuity, whereas the one and only absolute subject is an endless chain of experiences that take place here and now, connected by generic subjective continuity beyond death towards the future, and having been there before birth, since the first experience.
So what does the subject want? What is its motive and goal? Is it just being, or understanding of being? And is understanding an essential part of being? Is some kind of transparency of being the ultimate meaning of being? And finally: if there is any truth in all these speculations, why is the truth of being not obvious to everybody? Why is it concealed from us? Just asking. And then the problem of suffering of course.
I think I have not answered your question, but never mind, I will answer it some day.