'The Non-Personal Universe of Being' (eBook)

An Intellectual and Moral Platform for the 'Spiritual but Not Religious' Person

Glauco Frizzera (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
70 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-8848-4 (ISBN)

Infos

In what appears today a divided and unmoored world, in which religion is relied upon less and less to give guidance, 'a substantial - and rising - share of the [USA] public (27% in 2017, up from 19% in 2012) call themselves spiritual but not religious' (Pew Research Center, 2017). What can these people do in such situation? Where can they turn to? In this small book a like-minded fellow traveler shares his reflections on how to confront these troubling times without a personal God and attempts to provide not only a coherent intellectual framework, but also consequent, general ethical guidelines, both based on the novel idea of the non-personal Universe of Being. This booklet is a reworking for a larger audience of separate articles dealing with various aspects of it. Four of them have been published in peer reviewed journals of philosophy and spirituality and one is new. Except for one chapter, the work is 'philosophical' only in the very general sense of philosophy as 'love of wisdom'. It is better seen as an extended personal meditation, supported by philosophical ideas acquired during years of reading from many diverse sources. Paramount, however, is the influence of the great American psychologist, William James, with his The varieties of religious experience, and of one of the foremost neo-Thomistic philosophers of the last century, Jacques Maritain.

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In what appears today a divided and unmoored world, in which religion is relied upon less and less to give guidance, "e;a substantial - and rising - share of the [USA] public (27% in 2017, up from 19% in 2012) call themselves spiritual but not religious"e; (Pew Research Center, 2017). What can these people do in such situation? Where can they turn to? In this small book a like-minded fellow traveler shares his reflections on how to confront these troubling times without a personal God and attempts to provide not only a coherent intellectual framework, but also consequent, general ethical guidelines, both based on the novel idea of the non-personal Universe of Being. This booklet is a reworking for a larger audience of separate articles dealing with various aspects of it. Four of them have been published in peer reviewed journals of philosophy and spirituality and one is new. Except for one chapter, the work is "e;philosophical"e; only in the very general sense of philosophy as "e;love of wisdom"e;. It is better seen as an extended personal meditation, supported by philosophical ideas acquired during years of reading from many diverse sources. Paramount, however, is the influence of the great American psychologist, William James, with his The varieties of religious experience, and of one of the foremost neo-Thomistic philosophers of the last century, Jacques Maritain. Glauco Frizzera, M.D. is a retired academic pathologist (formerly at the University of Minnesota, New York University, the Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as the AFIP). In retirement, he has been looking for answers to essential questions about the human condition, first from a Catholic perspective, then from that of a 'spiritual but not religious' person. He believes he has found a reasonable, coherent and useful response to many of them in the central idea expounded here.

Textauszug

II.
Second Pillar:
Substances

[originally published as An Ontology for ‘The Universe of Being’in Metaphysica 22, 157-172, 2021 – some changes were made in section 5]

1. Introduction

2. Existentials

3. Substances: their existence and essence

3.1 The existence of substances

3.2 The general essence of substances

3.3 The individual essence of substances

4. Being

5. The non-personal Universe of Being

6. Further comparisons

Endnotes

1. Introduction

Turning now to the second pillar on which the notion if the non-personal Universe of Being is based, I will need to articulate an explicit ontological framework to support the concept of substance. This is the limited scope of this chapter, without any presumption of offering a complete or universal theory or to pit this thesis against any other.

In my case, such an attempt brings to mind Mark Twain’s An innocent abroad: here, innocent is a committed apprentice entering a world rich in different cultures and languages, and trying to find one’s way in it with the means at one’s disposal: one’s own readings and reflections, and consequent worldview, applied reason and common sense.1 Such person’s journey into ontology would confront so many different viewpoints and such problems of terminology, that one might decide it is wise to pick what suggestions seem best, wherever one finds them, and to define one’s own meaning for the terms to be used, hoping that no local might be offended as a result.

What is essential in any such effort (presenting a metaphysical thesis) – Heil suggests - is that one aim at “providing a depiction of a comprehensive conception of reality, …. a unified picture that ventures to make sense of our everyday give and take with the universe” (2018 – emphasis added). To this I would add that this unified picture needs be psychologically satisfying and give meaning and direction to such a give and take. In William James’ words: “Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria” for an intellectual judgment (1990, 25).

2. Existentials

At the very beginning of my enquiry about what surrounds me is the recognition of existence, in its simplest, plain, direct meaning. Whether it is a rock, a tree, a person, color green, a concept, or a unicorn, everything I can think of and talk about has existence, it exists in my mind (and some of it also in the real world - see below 3.1). It has been variously referred to as being, thing, res, entity or existential; I will use this last term hereafter as the one that most unequivocally tells its meaning.

“Such thing exists” – Lowe writes – “really is a ‘first-order’ predicate, on a par, as far as logical syntax is concerned, with ‘- run(s)’ and ‘- eat(s)’” (2013b, 4) and, more specifically, it is a “formal” predication, “in which an entity is said to belong to a certain ontological category” (2013b, 1). So, when I say ‘such thing exists’, I am saying that ‘it exists as…’, it has a formal existence as ….., it belongs to such one of several modes of being or ontological categories. The variety of category systems proposed by different philosophers, from Aristotle on, needs not to be discussed here. I rely here on that of Lowe, which I find the most straightforward and workable. It includes: “1) substantial universals, (2) non-substantial universals, (3) substantial particulars, and (4) non-substantial particulars – or, less long-windedly and more memorably, kinds, attributes, objects, and modes” (2013b, 32). These categories, he hastens to say, “do not belong to the existential content of reality and are not ‘entities’ of any kind” (2013b, 2). They are mental, abstract constructs that help us identify parts of the reality that we encounter. They are the first answer to the question: what is this? what is its nature or essence?

For this other concept I will rely on the widely quoted and used definition by Locke:

Essence may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is. And thus the real internal, but generally (in substances) unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called their essence. This is the proper original signification of the word, as is evident from the formation of it: essentia … (Locke, Book III, Chapter III, 15)

And along with Lowe one might look at all existentials as having both a general and an individual essence: “X’s general essence is what it is to be a K, while X’s individual essence is what it is to be the individual of kind K that X is” (2016). In other words, general essence is what a thing shares with other things of the same kind, and individual essence is what distinguishes one of them from another.

3. Substances: Their Existence and Essence

Among all existentials, my focus will be on substances alone, “those things we normally classify as objects, or kinds of objects” (Robinson 2014), as they are basic to the notion of the Universe of Being. And they are privileged by, along with many others, the Aquinas, who “thinks there is a clear divide between those beings that are substances and all the other ways of being, which are nothing more than ways in which substances are” (Shields and Pasnau 2016, 64).

3.1 The existence of substances

I would first point out the prerogative that makes them so unique. Substance in general and kinds of substances have only a formal existence, as all other categories of being; they do not exist in reality. But individual or particular substances (that specific tree or rock) have a ‘material’ existence, i.e., in Lowe’s formulation, have “’material’ properties and relations” (2013b, 2) in the real world.

The disregard or neglect of this essential distinction - formal versus material - might in part explain why the concept of existence, although a basic one in ontology, still remains unclear. In his review of the topic, Nelson concluded that “None of the theories surveyed is wholly satisfying and without cost”, and that “Existence remains, then, a serious problem in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and logic” (2019). The main issue about it, according to him, rests in the question, ‘Is existence a property of individuals?’

A majority of philosophers today would give a negative answer, and among them some would justify it by relying on linguistics as an ‘analogue’ way (Williams 2009, 252) to tackle ontological issues. But others are still eloquent defenders of a positive answer (McGinn 2000; Branquinho 2012; Wreen 2017). And it strikes me that the large amount of ink spilled on the question whether existence is a property or not is a testimony to the evident facts that (i) it does intuitively appear as a property and (ii) this solution has never been quashed definitely (Nelson 2019). I take as a further piece of evidence at hand that, after reviewing the two main answers – negative (“both Frege and Russell” and other analytic philosophers) and positive (Meinongianism).2 Nelson feels the need to propose his own “naïve view that existence is a universal property of individuals” (2019 - emphasis added).

How to approach this issue here? On the one hand, “Properties are the kinds of things the instances of which depend for their existence on the particular substance … by which they are instantiated” (Robinson 2014): in Lowe’s words, they “cannot exist ‘unattached’ from any specific object”(2013b, 38). On the other hand, an individual substance cannot exist without its properties: one can say that they maintain it in existence or that its existence consists of its properties. On these premises, I feel it does make sense to view (material) existence as a ‘property of individuals’: it is the solution that most appeals to common sense, that is “the least revisionary” (hence, preferable – Miller 2020) and one that does not need recourse to linguistic ‘analogues’. In McGinn’s words: “There is no good objection to this view, and the alternative to it is full of difficulties” (2000, 50).

To this I would need to add one final observation. Existence as ‘a property’ of individuals should not be understood as one single...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.3.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-8848-X / 166788848X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-8848-4 / 9781667888484