(April 18, 2012 at 9:20 pm)genkaus Wrote: ...you should realize that this consideration of oneness does not imply anything about how it ought to be or how it should be or how it wants to be.My use of 'wants' and 'striving' here is anthropromorphic out of convenience; although, I do in fact believe reality does express a kind of will. I cannot fully substanciate that belief at this time.
(April 18, 2012 at 9:20 pm)genkaus Wrote: ...my problem comes from the use of the word "wholeness" in two different senses...we are considering it as a whole..we group it together and tag it with an identity. When checking for consistency, we are actually separating it into different parts, tagging each with its own identity and evaluating the relations between separate entities...
Not sure if that exactly describes what I'm trying to do. It goes back to my assertions elsewhere about substance and form. For things that are truly real, we can recognize the form of a thing and we can recognize its substance. From that recognition we can make a mental contruct of the thing's form or substance. In reality; however, neither substance or form happen apart from each other. They are merely recognizable aspects of a complete thing. Form cannot be a part, nor can substance be a part. I'm saying this. The whole of reality is one thing. That one thing includes all of substance, as it really is, in a form that contains within it all possible true relationships. As you say, we compare recognizable aspects of parts to the recognizable aspects of other parts. I add the idea that a recognizable aspect of a part can be compared to a recognizable aspect of a whole. The perfect example of this idea is a fractal.
(April 18, 2012 at 9:20 pm)genkaus Wrote: ...Are you avoiding the question?...how does this lead to happiness?Yes, I was avoiding the question. I wasn't clear that you gave me the go ahead. Thinking it through a bit more, I'm starting to see problems with thinking of integrity as the means to the end of happiness. I also need to avoid the mistake of connection happiness and integrity by definition. I think I had the idea backwards. Instead of increasing the happiness of the self, what I'm thinking is increasing the self that experieces happiness. As the self becomes more complete (integrated) the capacity for a fuller happiness increases. The moral standard which I propose is known by comparing features of a individual moral agent, as a part of reality, and recognizable features intrinsict to the whole. In this case I look to the whole of reality, the All, as the perfect example of what it means to be integrated. But does that make one more 'moral'? I must think more about that.
(April 18, 2012 at 9:20 pm)genkaus Wrote: ...Don't be like that...There are all sorts of positions out there.The way I worded it does sound pissy, maybe because I was tired and too lazy to be more clear. I made a four-square matrix to show the options.
Not sure how to interpret this, but I think its a start.