Is There an Ultimate Truth?

[China Cat Sunflower]

I have no quarrel with the validity we assign to simple, or everyday physical truth. The chair is just a chair, as far as I’m concerned, and temporal truth is whatever we decide to agree that it is. But all the simple truths, put together and hierarchically arranged, don’t add up to a universally comprehensive hierarchy. The more complex the hierarchy, the more it becomes self-referential, self-contained, or “tangled.”

What the heck does that mean?

Consider the “Liars Paradox”: A man says: “I am a Republican, and all Republicans are liars.” Is he telling the truth? If so, then all Republicans are liars, and that makes him a liar. Start over. Is he lying? If so, then all Republicans are not liars, and he’s still lying. If yes-then no, if no-then yes…ad infinitum. What’s happening here? The primary clause creates the context for the secondary clause. It classifies the latter. The secondary clause, if it were ordinary, that is “simple”, would leave its primary clause alone. But the relationship in the hierarchy of clauses is tangled, so the secondary clause reclassifies the primary clause. Here we have a mixture of logical types.

In a simple hierarchy, the lower level feeds the upper level, but the upper level does not react back. In a simple feedback the upper level reacts back, but you can still tell what is what. With tangled hierarchies, the two levels are so thoroughly mixed that you cannot identify the different logical levels.

Amit Goswami Ph.d, The Self Aware Universe

Tangled hierarchical systems are, like the Liars Paradox, autonomous. They are self-referential. IOW, they talk to themselves. The are also infinitely delusional. Another way to look at tangled hierarchies is that they create a mechanism of self-reference.

Now considers M.C. Escher’s famous Drawing Hands. This is a visual way of seeing the paradox of a tangled hierarchy. The right hand draws the left, the left draws the right. Each creates the other out of the two-dimensional plane of the paper. This is “self-making”. The system is self-referential. It effects the illusion that it is creating itself.

This is what our brain programming is doing. It is creating the illusion of “self”, which is a self-referential, tangled hierarchy that infinitely oscillates, or tape-loops like the Liar’s Paradox and Escher’s hands, in order to keep us from using the logic of the system to see through the system. We assume that a meta-hierarchy exists just outside the veil, and we assume that that larger hierarchy contains our hierarchy as part of its secondary clause in such a way that what is “true” in our little thought world is also true in every other world. We wish to capture what is invisible and unknowable to us, and subject it to the same illusionary constraints which form the boundaries of our hierarchical system. But this imagined escape from the system through logical extension is itself part of the system’s illusion.

So how do we get out? Every tangled hierarchy has a point of discontinuity-an escape hatch that’s usually camouflaged within the flux of logical types. How would you respond to this question: “So, are you still beating your wife?” I’d say, “screw you, it’s none of your business.” The point of discontinuity here is found by giving up the game, and refusing to submit to its logic. The point of discontinuity in Escher’s {I]Drawing Hands[/i] is conceptual, and a matter of perspective. The hands only seem to draw each other from inside the system. Jump outside the system, and you can easily conceptualize the solution: Escher drew both hands.

Here is what’s really important:

Outside the system, just a naked leap through the door of discontinuity, is the “inviolate” level. I say it’s a “naked leap” through the escape hatch because you can’t take ANY of the logic from inside with you, and that includes ANY God-concept, no matter how complex, you can dream up. If God is indeed infinite, He (conventional pronoun for convenience) must exist on the inviolate level, above and outside of all systems. He cannot himself function as a meta-hierarchy or proto-primal archetype in primary causal relation to any subset of demi-hierarchies or archetypes contained within our system, because those constructs can only exist, for us, inside our own tangled hierarchy.

But there’s one more problem: If God exists, He MUST exist within, not outside of the universe. So either God does not exist, or the universe is not a closed system. Why? Because if the universe were a closed system, God would be part of our delusional hierarchy. God would indeed be man-made. Since the universe is an open ended, ever-expanding entity (or whatever you want to call it), there can be no ultimate truth which encompasses and explains all.

Whew! That really got out of hand. Still, I put a lot of effort into this, so I guess I’ll post it.

Chris

[sjr]

That was an interesting read, but I think Ive found the Ultimate Truth... Me,We,You, Us, and Them will all DIE. Funny thing given this ultimate truth NO ONE can avoid, the number one thing that human beings fear is social identity or position.

I love your name, makes me think of Jerry...I miss him

[Thomas]

Hi Chris -

I think you're on the nail here.

A short answer - because we cannot know the beginning and end of all things, our knowledge can never be 'ultimate' or 'absolute' - but that is us, that is not God, who is the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega.

If God exists, He MUST exist within, not outside of the universe. So either God does not exist, or the universe is not a closed system. Why? Because if the universe were a closed system, God would be part of our delusional hierarchy. God would indeed be man-made. Since the universe is an open ended, ever-expanding entity (or whatever you want to call it), there can be no ultimate truth which encompasses and explains all.

And, of course, if the universe was closed, then transcendance would not be thinkable.

Nothing can fully explain itself - so it's not so much that God exists 'in' the universe, as the universe exists 'in' God.

I'm currently reading Eriugena, on the fourfold division of nature:
That which is not created and creates,
That which is created and creates,
That which is created and does not create,
That which is not created and does not create...

The 'division' is inherent in the human, and his baseline, between 'being' and 'non-being' (or Platonic 'above-being') is that which the mind can comprehend - the mind can only comprehend being, and anything it comprehends 'is' and as such has being, whilst that which transcends his capacity to comprehend, is 'non-being' - not in a negative sense, but simply because we cannot comprehend it.

In Christianity this is apophatic and kataphatic theology.

Thomas

[Lightkeeper]

How much exists that we can't comprehend? If we can't comprehend something does it matter that it does or doesn't exist? If we can't comprehend something that exists, is it the truth?

[Thomas]

Well, that which we call God exists according to this determination.

The Orthodox hold that we know God by His energies, as the First Cause, but not in His essence, which is the 'esse' or is-ness of God, and is beyond us.


Thomas

[lunamoth]

In Him we live and move and have our being...

peace,
lunamoth

[China Cat Sunflower]

I'm going to get back to this I swear.

Thomas, thanks for that great information!

In Christianity this is apophatic and kataphatic theology.

I'm going to have to look those two words up!

SJR: Yeah, I miss Jerry Garcia too, man.

Since the end is never told we paid the teller of in gold in hopes he will come back,
but he cannot be bought or sold...

Chris

[Amit]

It's strange, some people seem to believe that God, the universe and it's workings are so complex that we will never be able to understand them. My veiw is on the opposite end of the scale and that is that it is all so simple and beautiful and we inherently know the truth deep in our subconscious. We chose to forget so that we could rediscover that simplicity and beauty.

One thing I will say is that the "Truth" will never be explained through words. It believe that it can only be seen, or experienced.

[sjr]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

I'm going to get back to this I swear.

Thomas, thanks for that great information!
I'm going to have to look those two words up!

SJR: Yeah, I miss Jerry Garcia too, man.

Since the end is never told we paid the teller of in gold in hopes he will come back,
but he cannot be bought or sold...

Chris

Chris,

Ive read some on Chaos Magick http://www.rawilson.com/main.shtml and http://www.philhine.org.uk/resources...html#tantrabut hearing Jerry interviewed...on the GD's Fusion Jazz interpretation, blows the later away. Still waiting at Terrapin Station

[Thomas]

[i]One thing I will say is that the "Truth" will never be explained through words. It believe that it can only be seen, or experienced.[/]

Hi Amit - welcome to CR.

Never explained, but 'conveyed' is a possibility ...

The right word, at the right time, can alter someone's destiny.

Thomas

[Quahom1]

To thine own self be true...and never go wrong.

for those who understand, no explanation is necessary.
for those who don't, no explanation is possible.