How We Mine Value from Our Encounters with Reality’s Novelties

how & why successful common sense references can matter even when successful definitions elude us

How We Mine Value from Our Encounters with Reality’s Novelties

An epistemic (not ontic) emergentist stance can foster meaning & value-realizations - “whys” - existentially, by simply paying diligent attention to "how" entities apparently interact, even though not exactly knowing (defining) either “what” they are, quidditatively, or precisely “where & when” they spatio-temporally relate, only knowing “that” they do somehow interrelate, nomologically, in various degrees of graded in/determinacy.

All of this then allows us to notionally name “who” or entitatively specify “this” has in fact acted, and in such a context which variously affects a given individual or communal well being, whether for better or worse.

We can thus realize values even when we can't otherwise define “what” entities are, essentially, or specifically determine the dynamical laws “that” condition them, nomologically.

This rubric applies, metaphysically, to both speculative science & speculative theology.

Whether the neoplatonic coincidentia oppositorum as applied to theological perichoresis or the competing interpretations of reality’s emergent (and aporetic) novelties, e.g. quantum, cosmic, life, sentience & symbolic language origins, this semantical grammar does not gift us robustly explanatory accounts, which is too often a conceit of both scientistic & fideistic cohorts, who can both betray a de facto naive realism, only differing in the objects of their respective eliminativisms, on the one hand metaphysics, on the other - empirical science.

This semantical grammar nevertheless relies on rigorous phenomenological observations to conceptually map exploratory heuristics, which can guide - not only our future inductive inquiries & abductive hypotheses, but - our present value-realizations, axiologically.

Such value-realizations can be further optimized by following a normative science (of Peirce), which prescribes an aesthetic primacy over the ethical, which is then followed by the logical. This is but a recognition that the orthopathic (beauty) & orthopraxic (goodness), as gifted by the orthocommunal (love), most often precede and then lead to the orthodoxic (truth).

That truth comes flying in on the wings of beauty & goodness to grow both our community & our individual freedom describes the orthotheotic.

A semi-Glossary of Common Sensical Metaphysical References

Who – notional, personal

What – essential, quiddity

When & Where - spatiotemporal

How – denominative qualifier

Why - telic

This – haecceity, bruteness

That - existential

Regarding Time & Space

We best nuture our aporetic sensibilities for the forseeable future.

There will be competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, cosmic origins, life origins, sentience origins & symbolic language origins, just for example, b/c it's hard to unscramble epistemic-ontic omelets!

What causes these aporia? Are we here methodologically thwarted temporarily, there permanently occulted, ontologically?

Are we now confronted by what's indeterminable ? then by what's in/determined? both? We can't a priori say.

re time as a real, created nomological reality

see C. S. Peirce and Aristotle on Time

~ Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou

In addition to Peircean thirdness, which refers to laws, habits, regularities, continuities, where time might be "primal continuity," and secondness, or brute actualities/entities, firstness refers to possibilities, but real possibilities.

Here the notion of a potential - not actual - infinite becomes indispensable for a coherent notion of time.

At some point, I think CSP will consider semiotics, subjects & signs and time to be mutually conditioning. So, Aristotelian?

For Space, notions from Brane Theory & hyperspace may provide helpful idioms, especially when coupled to a universal hylomorphism. This is especially pertinent to any coherent angelology, particularly as brought to bear on post-mortem anthropology vis a vis revocable willing, repentance, etc

Concluding Note -

In the rubric, above, I tried to relate our common sense references - who, what, when, where, how, why, this & that - to metaphysics.

My contention remains that paradigms like, for example, perichoresis in theology & emergentism in science, observationally, provide us exploratory heuristics & not robustly explanatory interpretations.

Yet, beyond their significant heuristic value in guiding further epistemic inquiries, they can provide us enormous axiological guidance, helping us to reason under practical uncertainty in ways that are eminently actionable, existentially, to gift us vital value-realizations.

So, when you read about the coincidence of opposities, different types of coinherence & perichoretic accounts of Christology, Trinitology or Cosmotheandry, or Emergentism, if they don't seem to explain those realities, you're on the right track.

If you otherwise imagine they do explain reality’s most intractable aporia, then you’re proving too much, telling untellable stories and saying way more than we can possibly know, presently.

However, if you cursorily dismiss their heuristic value, axiological significance & existential actionability, you're also on the wrong track.

Rather -

Taste & see the Goodness of the Lord!

Existentially "act as if" these creedal propositions are true and realize the fruits of the Spirit.

The same goes for our most highly speculative theoretical sciences. Evaluate their leading interpretations in terms of hypothetical consonance, abductive fecundity, logical consistency, internal coherence, external congruence and other criteria of epistemic virtue, which apply even when inductive testing, empirical verification, theoretic falsification and successful probabilistic predictions aren’t available. Here, while our inferential cycling of abductive hypothesizing & deductive clarifying is easier to interrupt w/inductive testing for our more proximate realities, for primal reality, though, mereologically, is the whole explained by its parts or not? While an accidentally ordered causal series of parts could certainly regress infinitely, who's to a priori say whether a fallacy of composition's in play or not? that the Whole does or doesn't in fact beg an explanation beyond its mere parts?

And this is how & why successful common sense references can matter even when successful definitions elude us!