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Reality as Evolving Spirit

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Conceptually speaking, appearance is reality. Distinction is imposed by concept. This argues for monism...... or Nonism.

---------- Post added 03-04-2010 at 12:12 AM ----------

One could say that only human reality is spirit-(which-evolves?), but this distinction would be the product of spirit, and therefore subsumed by its concept, which is a self-conscious self-presentation....

We-ality prime.

---------- Post added 03-04-2010 at 12:49 AM ----------

unity-imposition that frames itself w/ pronouns....

@Reconstructo,

Well the classic is
spirit become matter seeking to become spirit again.
Or something like Chadin De Teilhard's omega point.
or
Nature as an emmanation of the divine, or a manifestation of spirit.
Mystics, romantic idealism, deep religion all see the universe as infused with sprit, the sense of a spiritual reality in and on which any material world is founded.
Perhaps this is what is meant by such cryptic phrases
as
"The kingdom lies before you, but you do not see" or "within you without you" and the "divine dwells within" an attempt to describe the ineffable, the transcendent, what is beyond thought, conception and experience.

The current philosophy is of course that "man is the measure of all things" and that science determines what exists and what is real but this is a recent and I hope transitory phenomena, a reaction to the excesses of supersitition and organized institutional religion.

@prothero,

prothero;135789 wrote:

Well the classic is
spirit become matter seeking to become spirit again.
Or something like Chadin De Teilhard's omega point.
or
Nature as an emmanation of the divine, or a manifestation of spirit.
Mystics, romantic idealism, deep religion all see the universe as infused with sprit, the sense of a spiritual reality in and on which any material world is founded.
Perhaps this is what is meant by such cryptic phrases
as
"The kingdom lies before you, but you do not see" or "within you without you" and the "divine dwells within" an attempt to describe the ineffable, the transcendent, what is beyond thought, conception and experience.

The current philosophy is of course that "man is the measure of all things" and that science determines what exists and what is real but this is a recent and I hope transitory phenomena, a reaction to the excesses of supersitition.

i agree with what you say. i would add that certain systems go completely monistic. that's what i'm playing with at the moment. spirit is always rational sensation, from which it constructs distinctions, including the classic duality. geist is the fusion of spirit and matter. the fusion of all distinctions. spirit is the duality that discovers it is unity incarnate?

it all goes back to the master concept. the concept-systems(our) framing of itself/ourselves? geist would be logos, but logos would have to assimilate being qualia. but isn't this our constant human experience? it's just that all self-conceptions could be negated as distinctions....

it would be a sort of negative theo-anthropology...a bottlomless spit of distinctions and negations drenched in qualia.

@Reconstructo,

The idea is that neither mind nor matter nor any other concept is a feasible description as the "ultimate reality" as all are just contingent concepts, polished metaphors. "Geist" is an attempt to subsume all these, but "geist" is also a metaphor. Therefore the notion of a negative ontology....an ontology that is inferred as indefinable except in its transcendental essence...which for man (a concept) is his conceptualization of experience. Experience is sense-data, emotion, the development of a concept system...

From a reality-is-spirit or reality-is-undefined point of view, concepts like matter and mind become contingent. All concepts become contingent, except the concept that concepts are contingent upon some proto-concept. Which is basically Kant's analytic reduced and improved to its simplest elements...

@Reconstructo,

"Spirit" is a negative concept, in this case. Spirit includes sensual experience and concept as well as a conception that all concepts are contingent, and imposed by something only inferred.

The hole is nothing without the torus, and the torus is not a torus without the hole. Reality as spirit is reality as torus...one that turns in on itself.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;135766 wrote:

Conceptually speaking, appearance is reality. Distinction is imposed by concept. This argues for monism...... or Nonism.

---------- Post added 03-04-2010 at 12:12 AM ----------

One could say that only human reality is spirit-(which-evolves?), but this distinction would be the product of spirit, and therefore subsumed by its concept, which is a self-conscious self-presentation....

We-ality prime.

---------- Post added 03-04-2010 at 12:49 AM ----------

unity-imposition that frames itself w/ pronouns....

reality does not evolve

just our understanding of reality does

@north,

north;136796 wrote:

reality does not evolve

I have to respectfully disagree, reality is change or process, reality evolves and changes. In fact creativity seems like ultimate principle.

north;136796 wrote:

just our understanding of reality does

Well, that changes too, yes.

@prothero,

prothero;136797 wrote:

I have to respectfully disagree, reality is change or process, reality evolves and changes. In fact creativity seems like ultimate principle.

I love hearing you say that.... I completely agree. Reality is not 1, but -1, and that negativity drives our ("its") endless creativity. (To substract is the same as to add, however confusing this may sound...)

---------- Post added 03-06-2010 at 04:32 PM ----------

north;136796 wrote:

reality does not evolve

just our understanding of reality does

We are reality, and our understanding is the form of reality. To seperate us from reality is just pragmatic confusion. It cannot be logically justified. The us-reality dichotomy is crap. We invented it. It's a superstition.

@Reconstructo,

Reality is a projection upon spirit. spirit does not need to evolve because is is perfect.

@awareness,

awareness;137347 wrote:

Reality is a projection upon spirit. spirit does not need to evolve because is is perfect.

In this context, the concept of spirit would include all other concepts, as spirit is itself a self-negating concept. Distinctions such as mind/mater, self/other, and time/causality are secondary to reality conceived as spirit.....

And this is also the fusion of subject and substance.

@north,

north;136796 wrote:

reality does not evolve

just our understanding of reality does

Ah, but what really is the difference? And wouldn't this difference just be part of our understanding of reality?

@Reconstructo,

The idea is that reality is simultaneously subject and substance. It ties into the non-dual of William James, who was probably reading Hegel, as Dewey was. And Nietzsche and Spengler echoed Hegel, in their own charmingly arrogant ways. And Hegel was a twist on Spinoza, Heraclitus, Parmenides. Backwards we go. If we go forwards, the equation gets more complex, but the answer becomes more accurate?

@Reconstructo,

I know that "spirit" isn't a hip word these days, and I understand. "Metaphysics" is already a risky section to post in. But "reality as a spirit" is just a twist on monism, an attempt to transcend dualities.

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