Secular Intolerance

[Nick_A]

Since I quote others, this list of characters detailed by F4, you are actually making ad homs about them. It never dawns on you that their understanding far exceeds both mine and yours. But since they question the supremacy of your God and its demand to be worshipped and declared the ultimate expression in human evolution you must become intolerant of them

The quotes are fine. It's your screwed up interpretations of them that are not. As noted, you are an information masher. Thus, your accusations are too silly for words.

Lord have mercy! The next thing you will do is transcend the cast of characters and secularize Jesus. You will earn an autographed picture of the Great Beast for attitudes above and beyond the call of duty.

The power of secularism to spiritually kill is to be admired if nothing else. It has isolated prestige as the psychological weakness which can be taken advantage of and con people to believe even the most obviously ridiculous ideas and follow the Great Beast into oblivion. This is sales technique that puts Dale Carnegie to shame.

[fooloso4]

Greta:

The quotes are fine. It's your screwed up interpretations of them that are not. As noted, you are an information masher.

No matter how many times this is pointed out to him, no matter how many times it is backed up by evidence from the very quotes he misinterprets, he is incapable of seeing it. Or perhaps he is just incapable of admitting it, o incapable of seeing it because he is incapable of admitting it even to himself.

It is for this reason that I have given up trying to have a rational discussion with him and now only talk about him. But I suppose in his mind that is still a win. He gets the attention he so desperately craves. He is the little boy in the class not invited to the birthday party and now tells himself he didn't want to go to that stupid party anyway while still doing everything he can to get their attention. As one of his heroes says: "sad".

[Greta]

The quotes are fine. It's your screwed up interpretations of them that are not. As noted, you are an information masher.

No matter how many times this is pointed out to him, no matter how many times it is backed up by evidence from the very quotes he misinterprets, he is incapable of seeing it. Or perhaps he is just incapable of admitting it, or incapable of seeing it because he is incapable of admitting it even to himself.

It is for this reason that I have given up trying to have a rational discussion with him and now only talk about him. But I suppose in his mind that is still a win. He gets the attention he so desperately craves. He is the little boy in the class not invited to the birthday party and now tells himself he didn't want to go to that stupid party anyway while still doing everything he can to get their attention. As one of his heroes says: "sad".

A pretty spot on assessment. I always enjoyed his Plato quotes, and Simone's for that matter. It's all interesting enough, but ...

I'm thinking that his accusation of "spirit killer" may be key here. My guess is that logical talk tends to deflate hope for an afterlife. The survival instinct kicks in and so he clings to his beliefs like a life raft, treating any contrary ideas to his own as a threat to his perceived prospects of ultimate survival.

... to spiritually kill ...

Never mind, Nick! Just because things don't look good for consciousness after brain death, death may not necessarily subjectively be the end. There may be some interesting aspects of time that we don't perceive and certainly there is an issue with time and theoretical models of reality. Who knows? Maybe the perception of the arrow of time is only the perspective of us things affected by relativity, with cohered identity remaining at quantum or Planck scale that is not subject to entropy? That's highly speculative, but who knows?

Another interesting possible "gap" in which an afterlife can be inserted comes from a recent experiment that suggested quantum spin to be unaffected by gravity. If that results is proved to be robust, then perhaps a theory of everything may not be possible. Consider that ... it would mean that reality to some extent really is dual. Plato would have felt vindicated.

How's the old spirit feeling now, Saint Nick?

[Dubious]

Dubious wrote: There was never a sage East or West at ANY time in history who knew or knows what Universal reality really means or even if it denotes anything of value. They only know what they think it means.

If true it means no one could experience the dharma or the world of forms simply because the forms and the dharma don’t exist.

...our experiences depend on not only what exists. Mythologisation and imagination even when disciplined by philosophy are at least as active in producing experiences.

Dubious wrote: The Universe knows neither philosophy nor anything pertaining to enlightenment. Call it a stupid or malicious creation; it matters not, It just IS. That is its totally unvarnished reality and the most difficult concept for us to understand being thoroughly indifferent to our thoughts and existence. The universe is both dead and alive; dead to consciousness but alive in process. Not much enlightenment to be gained in that scenario! We fertilize ourselves using the universe as catalyst.

If we live in a dead universe without objective meaning and purpose the same must be true for man that arose somehow and invented subjective purpose depending upon external conditions. We are the walking dead.

That may be true but for different and VERY REAL reasons! Though the universe may not be conscious, we are subject to whatever it brings into awareness. There is no no law which states that everything we think or believe MUST conform to a reality. We aren’t even close to being fully cognizant what those “realities” are including the ones staring right at us.

You gave a perfect example of it in your Jacob Needleman quote. Even NOW we’re susceptible to the feelings he so beautifully expresses and that with reason. But having said that, there is little in it which hasn’t already been made explicit by the likes of C.G. Jung or Joseph Campbell. To that I would add – especially Book 1, The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler.

Now what if we live in a conscious universe? Then there can be no conflict between the laws of science and the verticality of being.

No idea what “laws of science and verticality of being” together is supposed to signify. We don’t need to know if we live in a “conscious universe” in RELATION to anything WE create. There is no logic which demands it.

If the universe in its beginning was without intent or purpose then there is no MEANING which follows its existence regardless of what it may mean to its miscellaneous occupants.

Don’t believe it. Just consider how it could be verified and the difference it would make if humanity as a whole arose from the sleep of Plato’s cave and its small secular world and consciously experienced the vertical expanse of the conscious universe within Which Man has its objective meaning and purpose..

There is no “objective meaning and purpose” given to man...or anything else in the universe. Who or what was supposed to give it? If he gave it to himself, theistically or otherwise, it cannot be denoted as objective. To say so merely leverages self-importance!

Again, you are used to your perspective and secularism is intolerant of mine. This is understandable because the assertion that we live in a conscious universe where Man serves the universe minimizes the importance of the secular perspective which has the universe serving Man and the prestige associated with this belief..

I’ve never heard of a secularist who believed in anything so colossally idiotic as “the universe serving man”. Even if there were some who believed it, such ideas would be filed under the heading of insanity.

It’s also equally absurd to think that “man serves the universe”! We services do we render to it? We can’t even “serve” the planet in the way we treat it. All the loony-tune metaphysics about our importance isn’t going to save our hides.

Since there is no meaning inherent in the universe from it’s very inception, it becomes an open variable whose nuances are the improvised connotations of those with the means to give it expression. A universe without any preconceived signification becomes a limitless open entity ready to receive such “accreditations” from any of its subsequent creations. I find this a much grander conception than any preconceptions of intent and purpose.

Again, your quote of Jacob Needleman is a potent example of how WE acknowledge OUR place within the cosmic order. Analogically, this mode of thinking is simply “painting” our thoughts on a giant white canvass which has no reference to being theistic or secular. Instead it fuses all such separations into a harmony as if the universe were a cosmic dance...which in a sense it is as felt by both ancients and moderns.

[Nick_A]

Greta

I'm thinking that his accusation of "spirit killer" may be key here. My guess is that logical talk tends to deflate hope for an afterlife. The survival instinct kicks in and so he clings to his beliefs like a life raft, treating any contrary ideas to his own as a threat to his perceived prospects of ultimate survival.

No, you have never experienced logical talk related to the law of the included middle. You’ve never had the experience of putting the laws of science into the vertical perspective of being.

How's the old spirit feeling now, Saint Nick?

What you’ve written has nothing to do with the essential needs of the inner man for the inner experience of objective meaning and purpose. Your concerns are for the outer man. The more science reveals the details of universal laws, the more it will prove the necessity for a conscious source of creation. However, laws don’t supply the inner experience of objective human meaning and purpose

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation

Profession of Faith

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.

That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

"At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world."

Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men…………………………….

You are concerned with facts and as a secularist believe that dualistic facts themselves will reveal objective human meaning and purpose. The people of God intuitively know that the “good” descends from above into the being of Man. Secularism seeks to prevent this impulse insisting that all value comes from its God the Great Beast. Prevention preferably starts early for secularism through spirit killing within education leading to metaphysical repression in favor of the young becoming psychological slaves of the Beast. It is doing a good job. I have to give credit where credit is due. Even Satan himself must be envious that secularism could create such marvelous techniques at self deception that he didn’t think of first. It is ego deflating.

[Nick_A]

Greta:

The quotes are fine. It's your screwed up interpretations of them that are not. As noted, you are an information masher.

No matter how many times this is pointed out to him, no matter how many times it is backed up by evidence from the very quotes he misinterprets, he is incapable of seeing it. Or perhaps he is just incapable of admitting it, o incapable of seeing it because he is incapable of admitting it even to himself.

It is for this reason that I have given up trying to have a rational discussion with him and now only talk about him. But I suppose in his mind that is still a win. He gets the attention he so desperately craves. He is the little boy in the class not invited to the birthday party and now tells himself he didn't want to go to that stupid party anyway while still doing everything he can to get their attention. As one of his heroes says: "sad".

What a perfect example of secular snobbishness. It probably strted when F4 bought that new clock. it has been downhill ever since.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~ George Orwell from 1984

[Greta]

Greta

I'm thinking that his accusation of "spirit killer" may be key here. My guess is that logical talk tends to deflate hope for an afterlife. The survival instinct kicks in and so he clings to his beliefs like a life raft, treating any contrary ideas to his own as a threat to his perceived prospects of ultimate survival.

No, you have never experienced logical talk related to the law of the included middle. You’ve never had the experience of putting the laws of science into the vertical perspective of being.

Do you think so? You make a lot of assumptions.

It's only logical that, in most arenas, reality is more analogue than binary. If anything, I have had problems with your rigid, binary approach to things.

The more science reveals the details of universal laws, the more it will prove the necessity for a conscious source of creation.

Do you have any basis for this claim?

However, laws don’t supply the inner experience of objective human meaning and purpose

Idiotic statement. What do you expect from theoretical physicists, a fucking confessional?

You are concerned with facts and as a secularist believe that dualistic facts themselves will reveal objective human meaning and purpose.

And you imagine inane assumptions about people. Basically, I am interested in reality but not the snake oil that you peddle - distilled from grand old ideas until it's akin to a homoepathic shadow of the active ingredient, plus water (in your case, ego).

The people of God intuitively know that the “good” descends from above into the being of Man.

No, "the people of God" are looking for any excuse to make themselves feel superior to the godless swine that you spit upon. It doesn't matter which, just as long as they are King of the Castle. Typical theistic obsession with status. A schoolyard mentality.

[Belinda]

Nick_A wrote:

You are concerned with facts and as a secularist believe that dualistic facts themselves will reveal objective human meaning and purpose. The people of God intuitively know that the “good” descends from above into the being of Man. Secularism seeks to prevent this impulse insisting that all value comes from its God the Great Beast.

I am sure there are some atheists who believe that facts reveal objective meanings. Philosophers tend to be sceptical about objective meanings, opting instead for probabilities.

Some people of God believe in God as an entity and other people of God believe that God is some of what people do. Free human beings have the choice and responsibility to choose whether to try to be good or not bother. In either case there is no help from some supernatural region. It would be nice if there were but there isn't.

Whether you like it or not, Nick, you chose. You choose to believe that God is an entity , fixed in His ways, and moreover that this Author of the Universe personally aids you , little Nick_A , in all your undertakings.

[uwot]

I believe you have a scientific mind so this won’t go over your head.

Well, thanks; I think. Isn't its being scientific precisely what is wrong with my mind, from your point of view?

But if you read in this link how science is normally reliant on the Law of the Excluded Middle, you will se how Dr. Nicolescu’s introduction to the Law of the Included Middle brings a new direction not only to science but of appreciating the relativity and potential for the evolution of human being.

http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/bulletin/b15c4.php

Okie-dokie.

Quantum physics caused us to discover that abstraction is not simply an intermediary between us and Nature, a tool for describing reality, but rather, one of the constituent parts of Nature. In quantum physics, mathematical formalization is inseparable from experience. It resists in its own way by its simultaneous concern for internal consistency, and the need to integrate experimental data without destroying that self-consistency.

Yes, because it is a mathematical model. The problem many people have, is that they assume that a mathematical model accurately describes the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon. If Nicolescu knew his history, he would be aware that it was not Quantum physics that caused this discovery, it has been known since at least the time of Galileo, when it was pointed out that the geocentric model of Ptolemy, despite accurately describing the position of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to Earth, does not describe reality.

Reality is not only a social construction, the consensus of a collectivity, or an intersubjective agreement.

Right; this is where post-modernism pops up. Usually this causes much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the holy. Do you understand this claim? And do you agree? Because if not, there is no point going any further.

There are even strong mathematical indications that the continuous passage from the quantum world to the macrophysical world would never be possible.

Well, there are much stronger observable indications that it happens.

The emergence of at least two different levels of Reality in the study of natural systems is a major event in the history of knowledge.

This was news two and a half thousand years ago when Parmenides pointed it out.

In our century, in their questioning of the foundations of science, Edmund Husserl [3] and other scholars have discovered the existence of different levels of perception of Reality by the subject-observer. But these thinkers, pioneers in the exploration of a multi-dimensional and multi-referential reality, have been marginalized by academic philosophers and misunderstood by the majority of physicists, enclosed in their respective specializations.

This is bog standard conspiracy theory.

If one remains at a single level of Reality, all manifestation appears as a struggle between two contradictory elements (example : wave A and corpuscle non-A). The third dynamic, that of the T-state, is exercised at another level of Reality, where that which appears to be disunited (wave or corpuscle) is in fact united (quanton), and that which appears contradictory is perceived as non-contradictory.

This has nothing to do with levels of reality. It is simply an admission that naive beliefs about fundamental particles as ‘corpuscles’ are wrong. If you want to get your head around contemporary theories about matter, a good place to start would be my blog: http://willijbouwman.blogspot.co.uk

By means of generalizing the example provided by particle physics, it becomes conceivable that certain levels of Reality correspond to a space-time different than that characterizing our own level.

There is no reason to extrapolate from a single, and very personal, interpretation of QM to a general principle. Without any justification for this step, Nicolescu can make up any old stuff he likes.

The article goes on to provide the logic for the included middle. Once a person moves from the perspective of secularism or one level of reality into universalism or several levels of reality it opens new avenues into appreciating both human and universal meaning and purpose. Obviously the Great Beast is not ready for this so the best that can be done is to introduce it to those who are more open minded and can open to the reality of the triune universe.

Like many people with a "scientific mind", I am prepared to accept that whatever the universe is, that is what it is. If you can provide some compelling evidence, or a sound argument for a triune universe, I will accept that. But simply repeating that my failure to do so is due to "secular intolerance", isn't going to work.

Dualistic reason isn’t bad. It just limits a person to the yes and no of one level of reality. Those with the philosophical/religious need to become one with objective human meaning and purpose both with their emotional and intellectual intelligence will have to open to the hidden third which the Law of the Included Middle is based upon.

This dualistic reason is not something that afflicts many physicists. They are, for the most part, acutely aware that particles are not either corpuscles or waves.

But since we are just creatures of reaction mulling about in Plato’s cave, ideas such as what we ARE and conscious evolution are not a concern and can only exist for us as fantasy.

Plato's cave needs to be understood as 'the veil of appearance.' It is perfectly well understood by most physicists that they are describing the phenomenal world, rather than the metaphysical world of 'reality'. Plato knew this and said so explicitly in the Timaeus:
“If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are only mortal men..."
Which is absolutely on the money, but then he goes and screws it up by adding:
"...and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further.”
No Plato. No Nicolescu. No Nick_A. The moment you stop enquiring further, is the moment you close your mind and become intolerant of other opinions. It is not secularists who are intolerant, it is people who cannot admit they don't know.

Only a few will make the efforts necessary to “know thyself” so as to verify the human condition and how to partake in conscious evolution.

Again no, Nick_A. Only a few will accept your interpretation as reality.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The government is not taking YOUR money. They are taking back THEIR money. They issue it they control it. They let you have some of it, but when it comes down to it they expect you to 'render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"

Excellent point, and one that all the greedy tossers who constantly whinge about 'socialism' and THEIR hard-earned money being 'stolen' from them (they never mind it being spent on things like the military and nuclear weapons) don't seem to be capable of grasping. (Darned post just won't 'quote' properly).

That's better.

[Nick_A]

Dubious

If the universe in its beginning was without intent or purpose then there is no MEANING which follows its existence regardless of what it may mean to its miscellaneous occupants.

There is no “objective meaning and purpose” given to man...or anything else in the universe. Who or what was supposed to give it? If he gave it to himself, theistically or otherwise, it cannot be denoted as objective. To say so merely leverages self-importance!

If the universe just appears by accident and disappears by entropy and this process can be measured in linear time I would agree that it is hard to find objective meaning and purpose for the universe much less for Man as as part of this accidental process. However what if we call the big bang is just part of the cycle of one breath of Brahma? From Wiki

According to Hindu cosmology, there is no absolute start to time, as it is considered infinite and cyclic.[1] Similarly, the space and universe has neither start nor end, rather it is cyclical. The current universe is just the start of a present cycle preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes.[2]

There is no beginning or end to a circle. Suppose what we call the big bang is just part of one breath of Brahma we become aware of as it passes from the intelligible realm into the visible? Then it can include objective meaning and purpose.

I AM. This term often refers to the god concept. For some reason “I” as pure potential needs AM or the devolving manifestations of fragments of I which form the universe. It seems far more reasonable to me to begin with the premise of the Breath of Brahma creating cyclical universal existence rather than some accidental creation based on the accidental creation of universal laws creating life within it. I cannot see any reason for objective meaning and purpose for the universe or Man from an accidental creation. However where “AM is seen as a necessity, then mechanical life supports it in its way and conscious life supports it in another. Imagination replacing consciousness prevents this support.

I’ve never heard of a secularist who believed in anything so colossally idiotic as “the universe serving man”. Even if there were some who believed it, such ideas would be filed under the heading of insanity.

It’s also equally absurd to think that “man serves the universe”! We services do we render to it? We can’t even “serve” the planet in the way we treat it. All the loony-tune metaphysics about our importance isn’t going to save our hides.

The universe for man on earth is our planet. Should animal man primarily serve it or should it serve us? Take away all the BS and all man on earth does is transform substances through its bodily processes the same as the rest of organic life on earth. It is what we do. We can’t hurt the planet but we can hurt ourselves. Man lives by nutrients. We use a variety of nutrients for the needs of both our lower and higher parts. What if the quality of nutrients that serve the needs of our higher parts exist primarily in the more exotic realms of the earth like the coral reefs and the jungles. We are destroying the coral reefs and tropical rain forests. Nature needs these nutrients for its purposes so where does she take them from? You guessed it: humanity. IMO this is why even though we should be consciously evolving, Man as a whole is becoming more animal. Nature doesn’t need evolving man. It just gets in her way. The Man animal is all that is needed which serves the planet through its bodily processes as does the rest of organic life on earth.

The planet can support Man’s conscious evolution but not if we destroy the nutrients necessary for it supplied by nature. Then nature will be compelled to take them from us for her needs.

[Greta]

Nature doesn’t need evolving man. It just gets in her way. The Man animal is all that is needed which serves the planet through its bodily processes as does the rest of organic life on earth.

The planet can support Man’s conscious evolution but not if we destroy the nutrients necessary for it supplied by nature. Then nature will be compelled to take them from us for her needs.

Humans are part of nature. What humans are doing is what nature is doing. Nature tends to be underestimated. The Earth has produced humanity with perhaps more interesting things yet to come. Humans are just the most articulate expression of the Earth so far. Sixty million years ago it was the dinosaurs. Three hundred million years ago it was trilobites. Two billion years ago it was prokaryotes. Before that it was simply rock.

Since when have you - a man who derides leftists as "snowflakes" - been interested in ecosystems and sustainability? Are you finally joining the good guys? Whatever, I'm not convinced humans will have a shared fate this century any more than in the past. As things stand, if methane doesn't create too many wildfires, the far north will become ever more green and productive as the tropics become ever more vulnerable to extreme weather events. Billionaires will not face the same challenges as the poor. There could even be a hard split in humanity in the future, maybe even speciation.

[Nick_A]

Uwot

Well, thanks; I think. Isn't its being scientific precisely what is wrong with my mind, from your point of view?

I have the highest regard for science. We would disagree as to its importance in relation to human “being.” I agree with Simone Weil that science will serve as a purification for religion by exposing its fallacies while proving the necessity for a source. These revelations will enable machines to serve man rather than Man serving machines as happens now.

“I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

"To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing." Simone Weil

Like many people with a "scientific mind", I am prepared to accept that whatever the universe is, that is what it is. If you can provide some compelling evidence, or a sound argument for a triune universe, I will accept that. But simply repeating that my failure to do so is due to "secular intolerance", isn't going to work.

Try reading the second part of the Nicolescu article. Are you open to the law of the included middle as explained or do you deny it. If you are open to it a reasonable explanation of levels of reality creating our universe is natural.

2. The logic of the included middle

Knowledge of the coexistence of the quantum world and the macrophysical world and the development of quantum physics has led, on the level of theory and scientific experiment, to the upheaval of what were formerly considered to be pairs of mutually exclusive contradictories (A and non-A) : wave and corpuscle, continuity anddiscontinuity, separability and nonseparability, local causality and global causality, symmetry and breaking of symmetry, reversibility and irreversibility of time, etc.
The intellectual scandal provoked by quantum mechanics consists in the fact that the pairs of contradictories that it generates are actually mutually contradictory when they are analyzed through the interpretative filter of classical logic. This logic is founded on three axioms :
1. The axiom of identity : A is A.
2. The axiom of non-contradiction : A is not non-A.
3. The axiom of the excluded middle : There exists no third term T which is at the same time A and non-A.
Under the assumption of the existence of a single level of Reality, the second and third axioms are obviously equivalent.
If one accepts the classical logic one immediately arrives at the conclusion that the pairs of contradictories advanced by quantum physics are mutually exclusive, because one cannot affirm the validity of a thing and its opposite at the same time : A and non-A.
Since the definitive formulation of quantum mechanics around 1930 the founders of the new science have been acutely aware of the problem of formulating a new, "quantum logic." Subsequent to the work of Birkhoff and van Neumann a veritable flourishing of quantum logics was not long in coming [5]. The aim of these new logics was to resolve the paradoxes which quantum mechanics had created and to attempt, to the extent possible, to arrive at a predictive power stronger than that afforded by classical logic.
Most quantum logics have modified the second axiom of classical logic — the axiom of non-contradiction — by introducing non-contradiction with several truth values in place of the binary pair (A, non-A). These multivalent logics, whose status with respect to their predictive power remains controversial, have not taken into account one other possibility : the modification of the third axiom — the axiom of the excluded middle.
History will credit Stéphane Lupasco with having shown that the logic of the included middle is a true logic, formalizable and formalized, multivalent (with three values : A, non-A, and T) and non-contradictory [6]. His philosophy, which takes quantum physics as its point of departure, has been marginalized by physicists and philosophers. Curiously, on the other hand, it has had a powerful albeit underground influence among psychologists, sociologists, artists, and historians of religions. Perhaps the absence of the notion of "levels of Reality" in his philosophy obscured its substance : many persons wrongly believed that Lupasco's logic violated the principle of non-contradiction.
Our understanding of the axiom of the included middle — there exists a third term T which is at the same time A and non-A — is completely clarified once the notion of "levels of Reality" is introduced.
In order to obtain a clear image of the meaning of the included middle, we can represent the three terms of the new logic — A, non-A, and T — and the dynamics associated with them by a triangle in which one of the vertices is situated at one level of Reality and the two other vertices at another level of Reality. If one remains at a single level of Reality, all manifestation appears as a struggle between two contradictory elements (example : wave A and corpuscle non-A). The third dynamic, that of the T-state, is exercised at another level of Reality, where that which appears to be disunited (wave or corpuscle) is in fact united (quanton), and that which appears contradictory is perceived as non-contradictory.
It is the projection of T on one and the same level of Reality which produces the appearance of mutually exclusive, antagonistic pairs (A and non-A). A single level of Reality can only create antagonistic oppositions. It is inherently self-destructive if it is completely separated from all the other levels of Reality. A third term, let us call it T0, which is situated on the same level of Reality as that of the opposites A and non-A, can not accomplish their reconciliation.
The T-term is the key in understanding indeterminacy : being situated on a different level of Reality than A and non-A, it necessarily induces an influence of its own level of Reality upon its neighbouring and different level of Reality : the laws of a given level are not self-sufficient to describe the phenomena occuring at the respective level.
The entire difference between a triad of the included middle and an Hegelian triad is clarified by consideration of the role of time. In a triad of the included middle the three terms coexist at the same moment in time. On the contrary, each of the three terms of the Hegelian triad succeeds the former in time. This is why the Hegelian triad is incapable of accomplishing the reconciliation of opposites, whereas the triad of the included middle is capable of it. In the logic of the included middle the opposites are rather contradictories : the tension between contradictories builds a unity which includes and goes beyond the sum of the two terms. The Hegelian triad would never explain the nature of indeterminacy.
One also sees the great dangers of misunderstanding engendered by the common enough confusion made between the axiom of the excluded middle and the axiom of non-contradiction . The logic of the included middle is non-contradictory in the sense that the axiom of non-contradiction is thoroughly respected, a condition which enlarges the notions of "true" and "false" in such a way that the rules of logical implication no longer concerning two terms (A and non-A) but three terms (A, non-A and T), co-existing at the same moment in time. This is a formal logic, just as any other formal logic : its rules are derived by means of a relatively simple mathematical formalism.
One can see why the logic of the included middle is not simply a metaphor, like some kind of arbitrary ornament for classical logic, which would permit adventurous incursions into the domain of complexity. The logic of the included middle is the privileged logic of complexity, privileged in the sense that it allows us to cross the different areas of knowledge in a coherent way, by enabling a new kind of simplicity.
The logic of the included middle does not abolish the logic of the excluded middle : it only constrains its sphere of validity. The logic of the excluded middle is certainly valid for relatively simple situations. On the contrary, the logic of the excluded middle is harmful in complex, transdisciplinary cases. For me, the problem of indeterminacy is precisely belonging to this class of cases.

Nicolescu wrote:Reality is not only a social construction, the consensus of a collectivity, or an intersubjective agreement.
Right; this is where post-modernism pops up. Usually this causes much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the holy. Do you understand this claim? And do you agree? Because if not, there is no point going any further.

I agree. If an asteroid crashes into the earth destroying it and all life upon it, the universe will continue on with its same objective meaning and purpose. Would you agree with Dr. Nicolescu where he wrote:

One can see why the logic of the included middle is not simply a metaphor, like some kind of arbitrary ornament for classical logic, which would permit adventurous incursions into the domain of complexity. The logic of the included middle is the privileged logic of complexity, privileged in the sense that it allows us to cross the different areas of knowledge in a coherent way, by enabling a new kind of simplicity.
The logic of the included middle does not abolish the logic of the excluded middle : it only constrains its sphere of validity. The logic of the excluded middle is certainly valid for relatively simple situations. On the contrary, the logic of the excluded middle is harmful in complex, transdisciplinary cases. For me, the problem of indeterminacy is precisely belonging to this class

If you do, you can see that we are at the threshold of enlightened understanding secularism will fight against to preserve the prestige of its single level of reality based on the Law of the Excluded Middle.

[Nick_A]

Nick_A wrote:

You are concerned with facts and as a secularist believe that dualistic facts themselves will reveal objective human meaning and purpose. The people of God intuitively know that the “good” descends from above into the being of Man. Secularism seeks to prevent this impulse insisting that all value comes from its God the Great Beast.

I am sure there are some atheists who believe that facts reveal objective meanings. Philosophers tend to be sceptical about objective meanings, opting instead for probabilities.

Some people of God believe in God as an entity and other people of God believe that God is some of what people do. Free human beings have the choice and responsibility to choose whether to try to be good or not bother. In either case there is no help from some supernatural region. It would be nice if there were but there isn't.

Whether you like it or not, Nick, you chose. You choose to believe that God is an entity , fixed in His ways, and moreover that this Author of the Universe personally aids you , little Nick_A , in all your undertakings.

God's people are not secularists who put a face on an imaginary conception of God. God's people have experienced the third direction of thought which includes qualitative feeling. As much as I've explained my belief in god as Plotinus' ONE or Plato's good, you keep associating me with an entity. An entity is a creature in creation and continually becoming. God IS and God's people are aware of the inner direction leading to the source. They are in the world but not of it.

[Harbal]

God's people are aware of the inner direction leading to the source. They are in the world but not of it.

Well stop annoying the people who are of it.