Great! First response of the blog. Big shot out to crawlFace3 on YouTube. Thanks for the question. He asks:
“Was/is there something that has always existed (so that
there was never a point or condition of a true nothing of any kind) or was
there actually at some point an actual nothing (where absolutely nothing
existed of any kind)?”
In Response:
crawlFace3’s question is a great
example of a typical product of thought, talked about in FWG, that comes about from
this kind of hand-me-down western intellectual tradition’s order of successive principles
within its notion of what are the First Principles of nature or in other words
what are the Ultimate Causes of all reality. To
answer this question we have to address what are the principles of First Principles am I referring to, how those principles have sway over our outlook onto what we
experience, and how the reordering of the First Principles can bring about an answer
for crawlFace3’s question.
Sources I am reading from are http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008IT8CNW
and http://www.amazon.com/dp/0893568783.
Imparted meaning of First Philosophy
becomes clear upon reading Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. Aristotle list four Ultimate Causes.
1 Being
/ account
2 Intention
of being
3 Terminus/Being’s
Actualization from potential
4 Motion/Being’s
potentiality
I’m going to go out on a limb
and say that Aristotle assumed these causes are necessary for existence to
occur in a similar manner that three elements of a fire triangle need to be
present for a fire to occur. Anyway, when
examining this list of ultimate causes in conjunction with the writing in his
Physics and Metaphysics, one can infer that there is a hierarchy of principle
among the listed. If motion moves being
along being’s intention toward being’s Actualization and then motion stops
acting on being at being arrival at its actualization, then the Ultimate Causes
of Being and Intention of Being must be necessary in order for potential and
actual act upon. Therefore being and
intention must be superior to motion and terminus. Intention must act upon being, thus being can
be the premiere cause of the four.
Making the order of first principles as follows Being, Intention, Ends,
Motion.
Imparted meaning of what it is
to be First Principles is to be the most influential [of] beliefs. The First Principle's influence is clear from these kinds of
effects they have on the interpretation we have of experience. With this order of principle an understanding of
experience plays out as follows:
“Only change from subject to subject is motion…”
“How does one thing change into another [thing]?”
“The notion of an object’s potentiality, in so far as an
object having an actuality, being completely independent of the subject’s view
of the object.”
“You cannot make something from nothing.”
Aristotelian First Principles are so fundamental that DNA
may be a single example among few more influential than the First Principles. crawlFace3 is essentially asking if something
can come from nothing and or if something can and did come from nothing then how has
it. I’m reading it right now; Aristotle
is asking the same question in his works.
So
what are we looking at then? crawlFace3 asks the same questions as Aristotle, substitute crawlFace3 with any western human
being after Aristotle and they likely also have the same question. What’s the common denominator between the
two men? This order of first principles
is the common denominator and the culprit of why something from nothing doesn't
make sense. In all likelihood the assumption of Aristotle's order or First Principles did not originate with him. However the belief has persisted before and beyond him, apparent upon statements above such as 'something cannot come from nothing.'
The order of First Principles can be to blame for the uncertainty presented by crawlFace3's question because when I was too young to know any better I sought the answers to these questions. Because I didn’t know anything about anything, I started from scratch (like Descartes but innocently) without even knowing that there was a profession that profits on the resolution of perennial questions (Philosophy). By and by I answered what I wanted to know. The hardest part was expressing what I had made up to someone else. You see, language has also evolved around these First Principles (another testament to their primacy). As time went on I read and learned more. Once I had revolved to the left pages uncovering Aristotle, it then clicked. I understood then why others could not make sense of my expression. It was because others held closely Aristotelian order of First Principle was the same as what I was reading in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics.
The order of First Principles can be to blame for the uncertainty presented by crawlFace3's question because when I was too young to know any better I sought the answers to these questions. Because I didn’t know anything about anything, I started from scratch (like Descartes but innocently) without even knowing that there was a profession that profits on the resolution of perennial questions (Philosophy). By and by I answered what I wanted to know. The hardest part was expressing what I had made up to someone else. You see, language has also evolved around these First Principles (another testament to their primacy). As time went on I read and learned more. Once I had revolved to the left pages uncovering Aristotle, it then clicked. I understood then why others could not make sense of my expression. It was because others held closely Aristotelian order of First Principle was the same as what I was reading in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics.
To
answer what I wanted to know, starting from scratch of being a boy who knew
nothing, Being never occurred to me as ever taking place. Recalling back, Aristotelian being qua being
necessitates Being as the original principle.
For me it was motion. Why motion? I knew of nothing but I knew of temperature
and I knew of atoms. Temperature cannot
reach absolute zero. Which means all
things move at all times. Stability,
that which we think doesn't move, Actualization according to The Philosopher,
says nothing about the object. Actualization
of an object perceived speaks only about the subject perceiving the object. In my book FWG, I give an example of a thermostat
which regulates air temperature in your home. The thermostat turns off and shuts on the
conditioner to maintain a temperature which you think is the same. This is to say that what you see to be
stable, another entity experience as turbulent.
So if I see something as stable yet another sees that same thing as not
stable, then there is no Stability.
Motion is there. Being/Stability/Actualization
is not.
So
what follows is to ask your self is no being then, how being? Clearly things, stable things surround
me. If none of these things are stable
and are ever moving then they aren't really things. If things are not things, then how is it that
I experience things as things?
To
answer this, in FWG, I ask “If you were in a pitch dark room with not sound,
then how would you know if something was in the room?” That answer is easy. You would collide with it. If you were walking and ran into a desk, then
the desk would exist. If you were
walking and your step was not embraced by some deck, then there would be “no
ground.” When my grandmother doesn't want
to see violence on TV, she covers her eyes and ears. Sound is pressure waves; collision. Sight is photons colliding into receptor cells
in your eyes. Stability is merely
contingent upon collision. In FWG, the
word I use for collision is displacement. So if you read FWG after this and see
displacement everywhere, that is the meaning imparted. That I can experience collision as a
Stable/Actualized things while another still sees potential or nothing at all,
is to say Stability of an object is a threshold of collision or collision tolerance
apart of within the subject surveying the object and having nothing to do with
an object. This met threshold giving way
to an experience of Actualization of an object, I call proportionality between
object and subject. In short, whatever
world that exist to you is a world consisting of proportionate object. If objects exiting to you are proportionate and
some threshold of collision is Stability, then Threshold of collision is
extensional with proportionality.
To
answer your question
If
existence is contingent on existence, then you (your biology) gives existence
to things. If you give existence to
things, then things don’t exist. If you
give existence to things, then you give beginnings and endings on what is not
nor ever will be beyond you. If “any
kind [of thing]” is a part of one single thing of which all things belongs and
proportionality gives existence, then for that one single thing of which all
things are a part of to exist some other thing would have to be proportionate
to that one single thing. If that one
single thing is all things, then there can be no other thing for the one single
thing to be proportionate with, hence the one single thing does not exist. If the one single thing, of which you and all
things are a part of does not exist then you don’t exist. If you give existence to a thing, then there are
no beginnings or endings. If the one
single thing can have no proportionality, then no other thing can see the one
single thing as beginning or ending.
So ever has there been non existence. Being a part or portion of the one single
thing gives you limitation. With limitation
you are allowed to collide. In collision
is there existence. Non existence is not
the opposite of existence. To understand
that you have to throw away your Principles of First Principles. You don’t even think you have it but you
do. It’s so fundamental to your thought
process that I can only suspect that it is some genic disposition like facial recognition.
