- 03 Dec 2020 16:41
#15140880
Something can be part of something yet inessential/accidential in one sense while essential in another.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s08.html
What needs to be clarified is the relationship of the part to the whole, to which the identity of a person such as 'Wellsy' is more than the sum of the analytical parts unless one subscribes to a kind of Buddhist anatta or Humean bundle view of self, where things are nothing but the attributes and hence the illusion of the self/subject which refers to nothing once one abstracts away those attributes.
How this analogy translates to a concept of God is unclear left unstated, but it seems to be a point that I myself, among others, are parts of the whole which is God. Which sounds like the Hindu sense of the Brahman which is the eternal and unchanging grounding of reality which is sometimes interpreted as finding itself in individuated form of the self (Atman).
Detour: But I would take a different approach in emphasizing my identity as derived from the social whole and need not yet appeal to the metaphysical. It's just that humans have long been quite confused about the nature of ideality, where language can refer to something real but which isn't immediately empirical yet constitutes the essence of things based on their relations to one another. There is no reason to speculate beyond the appearance of things because there are only appearances mediated by their relation o other appearances. The confusion arises when one tries to investigate a thing in abstraction from its relationships and developmental origins. Hence the difficulty in discerning my consciousness as a unique individual known as Wellsy when my being isn't simply embodied by developed out of the relationships I have and had and flows in a continuous narrative that is my life.
All of this is more a brief excursion into the self than an inference upon God though. I guess it is critical as the self is often made synonymous with consciousness which is often treated as the modern term for the soul. I resort to naturalist means to explain the origins of the self not explicated in crudely materialist/objective scientific terms as it still has no place for humans in their conception. Where as someone else would perhaps consider the impossible with out God the creator in an intervening sense.
Oxymoron wrote:And your cell that makes up your skin is also not Wellsy, yet it is part of Wellsy.
Something can be part of something yet inessential/accidential in one sense while essential in another.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s08.html
One and the same event may be necessary in one relation and accidental in another. For example, a baby girl is born. Is this a case of necessity? In relation to the final result of the development of the embryo, yes. But from the standpoint of development of the given nation or of world history it is a chance event. Sex mutation is still one of nature's secrets. A single mutation is the expression of necessity of certain physico-chemical processes in the organism. But in relation to the organism and even more to the species, it is a matter of chance. In reality, therefore, any phenomenon at one and the same time but in different relations may be either necessary or accidental.
What needs to be clarified is the relationship of the part to the whole, to which the identity of a person such as 'Wellsy' is more than the sum of the analytical parts unless one subscribes to a kind of Buddhist anatta or Humean bundle view of self, where things are nothing but the attributes and hence the illusion of the self/subject which refers to nothing once one abstracts away those attributes.
How this analogy translates to a concept of God is unclear left unstated, but it seems to be a point that I myself, among others, are parts of the whole which is God. Which sounds like the Hindu sense of the Brahman which is the eternal and unchanging grounding of reality which is sometimes interpreted as finding itself in individuated form of the self (Atman).
Detour: But I would take a different approach in emphasizing my identity as derived from the social whole and need not yet appeal to the metaphysical. It's just that humans have long been quite confused about the nature of ideality, where language can refer to something real but which isn't immediately empirical yet constitutes the essence of things based on their relations to one another. There is no reason to speculate beyond the appearance of things because there are only appearances mediated by their relation o other appearances. The confusion arises when one tries to investigate a thing in abstraction from its relationships and developmental origins. Hence the difficulty in discerning my consciousness as a unique individual known as Wellsy when my being isn't simply embodied by developed out of the relationships I have and had and flows in a continuous narrative that is my life.
All of this is more a brief excursion into the self than an inference upon God though. I guess it is critical as the self is often made synonymous with consciousness which is often treated as the modern term for the soul. I resort to naturalist means to explain the origins of the self not explicated in crudely materialist/objective scientific terms as it still has no place for humans in their conception. Where as someone else would perhaps consider the impossible with out God the creator in an intervening sense.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics