Well, the new book on emergence turned out to be a bust, so we'll have to turn the page to a new subject. I have two possibilities in mind, but let's go with the so-called (by Bob) "temporal hyperdimensionality" of God.
If I'm not mistaken, there should be significant overlap between this and emergence anyway, since they are so thoroughly entangled that neither can be explained or even mentioned without the other: as the Sphinx might say, emergence can only happen in time, and time is the place where things emerge -- or where creativity, novelty, and upside surprise happen.
Boo!
In sneaking up on a subject such as this, we are always guided by the dictum that
The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.
Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions [which] allow us to make fun of the rest.
The other ones being little things such as the principle of non-contradiction, the trans-existence of the Absolute (and all this implies), and the intelligibility of the cosmos to man's intelligence (and thus the reality of the world, at least as far as it goes).
Some things are so truly stupid that only the tenured could believe them. Which reminds me of the other subject I wanted to discuss, the limitations of the human intellect -- not the limitations per se, but the manner in which we are able to intuit the limitations of the other guy's intellect.
I was trying to explain this mysterious ability to my son just yesterday. I never consciously thought about it until stumbling upon the following aphorism:
Of someone else's intelligence we soon sense only the limits.
Or, conversely, the limitlessness. Only when the latter is present can the Raccoon be sure he is in the presence of his own kind, and is speaking ʘto ʘ.
I don't know about you, but I am almost always able to immediately sense the limits of the intelligence in question. Once I do, then there's little point in further discussion, or at least serious discussion, for it is very much analogous to a sphere discussing the nature of geometry with a circle. True, we can agree on some little things, but the circle is going to be limited by what amounts to a dimensional Dunning-Kruger.
Which, now that I think about it, could be the subject of a whole post. I will resist the temptation, but let me illustrate with a concrete example from just yesterday, the disappointing book on emergence by a tenured mediocrity named Vincent Vesterby.
When I opened it and began reading, I knew from the first paragraph that this was not Raccoon material -- neither the book nor the man -- and the suspicion was only confirmed the more I read. The following will suffice: "The brain, with its associated mind, is a biologically evolved entity," and "Truth is a product of the evolutionary process."
In other words, I think we're done here. But since our subject is going to be the nature of time, I'll cite one more passage: time
occurs as continuous, uniform, unidirectional, sequential change, which cannot-not occur, and was thus without beginning and will never end. There has occurred an unlimited quantity, an eternity, of time.
Excuse me? The only time science knows of is the time that began with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. We can speculate as to what was "before" and what might be "after," but it is not anything like our experience of time. To the extent that it is temporal at all, it must be a hyperdimensional time.
A reminder that
Those who reject all metaphysics secretly harbor the coarsest.
Here are a few more relevant aphorisms on the subject of intellectual limits:
The great intelligence is not an intelligence greater than the ordinary, but an intelligence of another nature.
More dimensions, you might say. Or at least some additional height and depth. Of which there are counterfeit versions, which is why
Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep.
Which goes to why leftists are taken in by so much absurd nonsense, because it essentially functions as a substitute for religious depth -- or for the depth dimension disclosed by religion. For on the one hand,
To think like our contemporaries is the recipe for prosperity and stupidity.
But ultimately,
Thought can avoid the idea of God as long as it limits itself to meditating on minor problems.
Now, we've all heard about the "multiverse," which is a theory invented by lower dimensional physicists who don't like the unavoidable theistic implications of the Big Bang. While the theory is possible in the abstract, it is concretely impossible.
However, there is a kind of real multiverse, which involves the future, in that, out of all the possible universes that potentially exist, only one will undergo the formality of actually existing. In short, it will emerge, but how, and from what?
To be continued, since we got sidetracked with the rant about intellectual limits.
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