monistic cosmology

[sophiaserpentia]

Is it possible that the Prime Mover is also the Prime Moved Object?

In a comment this morning to yesterday's post on "intelligent falling" i voiced objection to the idea of God as "all cause and no effect," that is, a causal agent who is not in turn the recipient of any effect.

The concept of "causation," dichotomizing cause from effect, sets us up to demand there be a first cause.

However, suppose that instead of a dichotomy of cause and effect, there's just effect, stemming from potential plus present condition? In other words, instead of a universe made of billiard balls rolling around and smacking into one another, what we have is a universe where the events which occur in each location build on what existed previously, creating a chain of events each one building on what happened just before.

In this view essentially the entire universe is the "cause" of any single event. Interpreters have used the metaphor of sequential lights on a Broadway sign giving the appearance of a single object in motion. One light does not "cause" the next, but rather, they are all together an explication of a deeper, hidden order. This view is not nearly as farfetched as it sounds, given the nature of quantum entanglement, and the fact that gravity interconnects every object with every other. This brings us to the view of the universe as a "holomovement," an implicate wholeness, as described by David Bohm.

"Causation" seems a more intuitive way to see the world because we, as the descendents of predators, perceive things using cognitive shortcuts that evolved over generations. Our brain takes the perception of something and makes from it a "hard" distinction between "this" and "not-this." We draw a box around something and then darken the lines of that box, as if to pretend that it has a special essence that distinguishes it from not-it.

Our use of language reinforces the darkened lines of subject vs. object, as does our interaction with one another in society.

Consider the alternative of "levation", which means to "raise up" in our awareness a thing or pattern while at the same time refusing to darken the lines of the box around it.

With holomovement replacing causation, we have no longer a need for a Prime Mover, but we might need a Prime Observer or Prime Explicator.

Comments

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

"what we have is a universe where the events which occur in each location build on what existed previously, creating a chain of events each one building on what happened just before."

I think that even this distinction between one event and some other event, one location and some other location, and one moment and some other moment distances us from an understanding of the holomovement.

"With holomovement replacing causation, we have no longer a need for a Prime Mover..."

As we investigate causation more closely, two things happen: the cause and the effect grow ever more close together, and our descriptions of causation become ever more to resemble statements of identity. Extending this process to its limit we can imagine a 'suturing' of causation; a joining of the cause and the effect; the subject and the object.

Concerning the myth of the Prime Mover, we have to keep in mind that it doesn't describe merely a chain (A causes B causes C causes D...) but rather the generation of a multiplicity of motions from a single one (A causes B1 and B2 which cause C1, C2, C3, and C4 which causes D1, D2...).

With these two notions in mind, we can apply the method of suturing to the myth of the Prime Mover and a new image appears. From the appearance of multiplicity, a singularity appears; where once we saw a number of motions, each causing the next, now we see only a single motion.

But this reduction from multiplicity to singularity is just what the myth of the Prime Mover posits -- so I do not think it is so terribly wrong, only that it suffers from the typical failing of language, and cognition generally, of distinguishing; describing many where there is one.

Seen in this light, what does 'the Prime Mover' mean? It must mean the origin of all motion in the unity of motion itself; the one motion.

So is the Prime Mover also the Prime Moved Object? Yes -- in that, by thinking this way, we can suture the subject and the object to find a unity; but No -- in that, having accomplished that, we find that there is no longer an object and a subject but only one thing. Should we call this one thing the Prime Mover? Why not -- for it is the force and logic by which motion is done. Or perhaps we should take something from having done all this work, and call it not the Prime Mover, but the Prime Motion.

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

Ultimately, all divisions are subjective.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

0=2

[pooperman.livejournal.com]

I prefer the opposite definition of God: instead of the first cause, God is the last effect.

The image of the billiard-ball universe is sometimes intriguing. That is, complexity comes in early-on and quickly makes a billiard-ball universe epistemologically irreducible. We know we are incapable of ever knowing enough information to reduce all effects to a finite set of causes, yet we have seemingly no trouble believing that, metaphysically/ontologically-speaking, cause and effect is theoretically reducible to the individual billiard-ball movements.

It seems we tend to value/prefer the theoretical ontological reducibility of the billiard-ball universe because we can understand such a universe, but our knowledge (as opposed to our beliefs) of an epistemologically irreducible universe seems to be ignored as a tenable metaphysical stance.

A holographic stance seems very promising, though. The idea that all of the information of the universe may be contained in a very small portion of it seems to promise an almost too-good-to-be-true situation for our limited intellectual capabilities. Is it possible for a human being to understand absolutely everything given the fairly modest capacity of our brain (at least relative to "everything")? Is it possible that information is stored in such a compact and efficient mechanism?

___________________________________
(Unrelated to your post:)

I ran across this article today and it reminded me of your "noonic field" theory of mind:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html

I thought you might enjoy it if you hadn't seen it before.

[akaiyume.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can even set outside or separate a Prime Observer. The observation itself would become part and integrated into the being of the whole.