The problem: We deal with many worlds.
- World 1: The construct universe in our minds.
- World 2: The world we see (sense). (Appearances)
- World 3: The reality of the world we see (sense). (Reality)
- World 4: The unseen world which is back of the seen world.
- World 5: The world(s) other persons believe in.
- World 6: The world(s) of the past.
- World 7: The world(s) of the future.
- World 8: The true world as seen by God and the prophets.
The challenge: To reduce the number of worlds by making some of them identical.
- Worldly solution: On the authority of some small group of people (ignoring other persons) make worlds 1, 3, 4, 5 (past) 6, and 7 the same, tolerating 2 and ignoring 8.
- Gospel solution: Bring 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7 into unity with 8, by discounting world 5 and using world 2 as a test.
Historic devices to unify and simplify these worlds:
- Apostate religion (take the word of the priest).
- Scholarship (dig it out of the records, then imagine it).
- Philosophy (invent it out of whole cloth)
- Science (invent it under strict rules)
- True religion (come to know God, then ask and have Him reveal the truth to you).
- Art has wavered between trying to capture one of these worlds to make it real, and inventing another world to escape the problems and the challenges (temporarily, at least).
- Metaphysics: Philosophic inquiry into the possible general features of the unseen world.
Basic questions:
1. Is the universe made of matter or ideas?
- Materialism: Belief that the real universe is matter in motion.
- Idealism: Belief that the real world is ideas (matter non-existent or secondary).
2. Is the universe made of one, two, or more basic substances?
- Monism: Belief that the universe is made of one kind of substance. (mind or matter, for example.)
- Dualism: Belief that the universe is made of two kinds of things (e.g., mind and matter; or, spirit and matter.)
- Pluralism: Belief that the universe is made of three or more basic kinds of things.
3. Is the universe made of classes or of individuals?
- Nominalism: Belief that reality in the universe is all individual, that all classes are just more or less convenient fictions of man’s mind.
- Realism: Belief that the reality of the universe is in universals (classes), that all individuals have any reality only in relation to those universals.
4. Is the universe regular, orderly, or is everything a matter of chance?
- Determinism: Belief that the universe is orderly, subject to law.
- Causation: Things believed to be regular, law-like, which impart regularity and order to the universe.
- Tychism: Belief that all things are uncaused, fortuitous, that apparent order and regularity is either accident or appearance.
5. Is the universe natural or does it also have a supernatural component?
- Naturalism: Belief that the universe is all the same and that this “same” includes no spirits, demons, gods, but (usually) only matter in motion.
- Supernaturalism: Belief that the universe has in it, besides the natural realm, another realm which is not part of nor subject to the natural realm.
6. What are space and time?
- Space: The possibility of existence.
- Personal space: the place where I am changing values from my body outward.
- Mathematical space:
Euclidean: One Cartesian coordinate for the whole universe.
Non-Euclidean: Space of positive or negative curvature. - Time: The possibility of change.
- Psychological time: Finite present, directional.
- Mathematical time: Infinitesimal present, bi-directional.
7. Is the universe Being or Becoming or both?
- Being: The essence of something which characterizes something at a given time. E.g. a seed.
- Becoming: The change process which characterizes some cycle of nature. E.g. life cycle of a seed.
8. Is the reality of the universe its permanence or its change?
- Permanence: The eternal verities.
- Change: The only thing constant is change.
What is the nature of man?
1. Is man a free agent or is freedom only an illusion?
- Freedom: Relative to some goal or attainment, man is free to attain it if he so chooses, but need not do so.
- Illusion of freedom: Man’s actions are pre-determined by the initial conditions and by the laws of the universe. Freedom is the illusion of making a choice. The reality is that the choice is already made.
2. Which is more important or prior, man’s essence or his existence?
- Essence: Man is a type. Individuality is all accidental. It is the type which should be fostered, not the accidents.
- Existence: Each man’s existence precedes his essence: what he is as a unique person is more important than whatever he has in common with other persons. Therefore, each person should find (create) his own best way of life.
3. Is man’s knowledge all a posterini or is some of it a priori? (which enables him to solve metaphysical problems).
- A posterini view: All of man’s knowledge arises out of and after the beginning of his empirical experience. Therefore man cannot solve metaphysical questions.
- A priori view: Man knows some things prior to experience. These are the metaphysical categories he needs to understand his experience of the world.
4. Is man’s knowledge objective or solipsistic?
- Objective: Man’s ways of knowing can and do give him true knowledge of the real world.
- Solipsism: Each individual “knows” only his own thoughts. Everything else, the universe, including all other people, are only figments of each individual’s imagination.
5. What is man’s reality? Is he natural or divine? Is he a body only, or is he body plus mind, or body plus spirit? Did man’s body evolve from some lower form of life or was it transplanted or was it created?
- Natural: Man is an animal among animals, like them in every respect, but more intelligent.
- Divine: Man is a child of God, of the race of the gods, and each person may become a god.
- Body only: Man is only a complicated machine.
- Mind only: Man is only the ideas he is conscious of having.
- Mind and body: Man is a body plus a mind which is made of different “stuff.”
- Spirit and body: Man has a spirit body which is the pattern after which his physical body was formed.
- Evolved: Mankind was created by chance in an entirely natural way.
- Transplanted: Mankind was brought to this earth from some other planet.
- Created: Mankind was created on this earth by a superior intelligent power.
6. What is the nature of God? Is God natural or divine? Corporal or spiritual? Personal or impersonal?
- Natural: God is the law and order in the universe.
- Divine: God is supernatural, the power which governs the natural universe.
- Corporeal: God is a physical, tangible being limited to one place in time and space for a given moment.
- Spiritual: God is a spiritual essence which is in, around, and through all material things.
- Personal: God is a real person, a father, with emotions, likes, dislikes, etc.
- Impersonal: God is a being that takes no notice of humans as persons, but deals with them categorically.
7. Arguments for the existence of God:
- Authoritarian: The prophets say he exists.
- Rational:
- Ontological: He is the greatest idea, He must exist.
- Cosmological: Only God could cause the universe.
- Teleological: Only God could cause the order in the universe.
- Moral: God must exist to punish the wicked and reward the righteous.
- Empirical: I see Him.
- Statistical: Percentage of people claiming to have seen him is statistically significant.
- Critical: God is a useful idea in any case.
- Skeptical:
- Mystic: God is pure feeling.
- Revelatory: One comes to know God first by knowing and obeying the Holy Ghost, then by seeing, knowing and obeying Jesus Christ.
8. Arguments against the existence of God.
- Authoritarian: The more educated people deny His existence.
- Rational:
- Parsimony: Nature can be accounted for without God.
- Naturalism: All that exists is natural.
- Monism: Only the universe exists. To call it God is foolish.
- Empirical: I don’t see Him.
- Statistical: So few claim to have seen him, so that the claim is negligible.
- Critical: God is not a useful idea.
- Skeptical: All accounts are mythological.
- Mystic:
- Revelatory: A demonic messenger says there is no God.