German philosopher Martin Heidegger mentioned in an interview with a Buddhist monk in 1964 that after a thorough examination of Western philosophy and thinking he came to the conclusion that one question was never asked: the question of Being. How could it be that the question was first asked in 1964?
As can be seen in following the arguments by Astro Cat the concept 'Being' is taken for granted in the consideration what deserves consideration.
Astro Cat wrote: ↑June 18th, 2022, 6:00 am How could God be the foundation for anything at all without being God? In other words, doesn't it seem a necessary condition for God = God to be true before God can somehow make A = A to be true? But that is Identity: it seems as though identity is a necessary precondition for God to be God rather than the other way around!
A door to an 'other' world of meaning
Of reason it can be said that it encapsulates anything of which it can be said to posses the nature Being, since without reason, those beings would remain unknown. Therefore, since logic cannot explain its own origin (its potential for Being), there is a world of a different nature than Being that is still relevant for Being since it precedes Being (a world that lays beyond Being as seen from within a subjective perspective).
Being cannot stand on its own. The limit of logic and knowledge is indicative of a more fundamental area of relevance and it shows a door to an 'other' world of 'meaning' that demands philosophical exploration.
Philosophers and scientists have predicted that at some point in time, humans should start exploring that 'other' world. A world of meaning that is not 'repeatable'.
"Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things.
Albert Einstein foresaw these difficulties. “Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.”
https://gizmodo.com/a-new-way-of-thinki ... 1741498475
French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas - an icon of Western philosophy that is researched by dedicated scholars today - has attempted to explore that 'other world' and he did it for the purpose of moral philosophy and his vision of (in my opinion valid) Ethics as First Philosophy.
Levinas his work shows that one is to pursue a quest for a 'meaning' that precedes knowledge, i.e. a meaning that precedes useful or 'repeatable' meaning.
Note: The concepts beyond and precede refer to the same aspect. What precedes a subjective experience on a fundamental level lays beyond it from within that subjective experience. This could be confusing. The term beyond is mostly used within the scope of human interests and desires (e.g. to find purpose) while one would more likely use the term precede from an independent fundamental philosophical perspective since one would then address that aspect outside of subjective experience.
Levinas commentator Giuseppe Lissa provides the following description of Levinas’ project Otherwise than Being (his latest work):
By investigating the depths of consciousness, by comparing its passivity to the process of ageing, Levinas investigates a "reality unknowable, but perhaps interpretable by a thinking that no longer claims to be an exercise in knowledge … because this thinking is engaged in the search for a meaning that precedes all knowledge."
In the film Absent God (1:06:22) Levinas says the following:
"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness."
Non-locality
There is evidence that physical reality (i.e. 'the repeatable world') is non-local on a fundamental level.
The world is non-local all the way down
“Our result proves that non-locality is an even more fundamental property of our world than was previously known,” says Giacomini.
https://insidetheperimeter.ca/the-world ... -way-down/
Is nonlocality inherent in all identical particles in the universe?
The photon emitted by the monitor screen and the photon from the distant galaxy at the depths of the universe seem to be entangled only by their identical nature (by their 'kind'). This is a great mystery that science will soon confront.
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-nonlocali ... verse.html
Non-local Universe - Reality as a Dream
Ultimately this means that all of physical reality as we perceive it is an illusion and exists only in an illusionary dream like state. Instead of reality being viewed as Newtonian and mechanistic, under the context of non-locality it is probably best understood of as a dream for it has the same properties.
What this seems to imply is that the entire universe is a mental construct and exists purely in a psychological gestalt, for within a psychological gestalt, space, dimensions and time are all constructs.
https://www.gestaltreality.com/articles ... -universe/
Non-local is a strange concept. To repeat the quote of Albert Einstein:
“Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path [i.e. explore that 'other' world of meaning]. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.
To explore the indicated 'other' world would involve exploring a meaning within the scope of what in physics is considered to be non-local.
Conclusion
From a philosophical perspective there is an 'other' world of meaning to explore and it could be of vital importance that the human does explore that world in the right way to secure longer term survival and prosperity.
As can be seen in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, exploration of that other world might be of vital importance for morality but there may be other important interests.
Chinese philosopher Laozi (Lao Tzu) has attempted exploration in book Tao Te Ching by using poetry.
"The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name."
An expert on the book mentioned the following: "Logic has its place in human affairs, but it isn’t everything. There is a limit to what we can understand through rationality and reasoning. To transcend that limit, we need to fully engage the intuition."
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Questions:
1) What is your opinion on the idea of a world of 'meaning' that precedes or lays beyond logic and knowledge?
2) Why would it be important that humans discover a method to explore that world?