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How Does MoQ Relate to Christianity?

Matt Workman was discussing MoQ with a friend and his friend asked the above question.

 

The contents of this letter from Doug to Matt, are self-explanatory.

The contents are purely Doug's own perceptions
shown here as a way for the lay visitor to:

Relate Pirsig's MoQ to Our Notions of Quantum Reality and Aquinas' Christianity.

 

Before you read this, qualify it first by reviewing Doug's 2009 What is Gnosis?

Content of this page since 1998 until 2006 CeodE had no background of Nag Hammadi Library and recent omniscoveries of Qumran Gnostic Gospels.

Doug - 4Mar2009.


Matt's question:

"How does MoQ relate to religion, specifically Christianity? The basis of this question is specifically centered around MoQ with multiple truths and Christianity with One truth. Even if MoQ is solely a philosophy and not theological in any way how can it coexist with Christianity if one promotes multiple truths and the other does not?"


Acronyms used in the letter:

  1. DQ        Dynamic Quality
  2. MoQ      Metaphysics of Quality
  3. Mtty       Many truths to you
  4. QR         Quantum Reality
  5. quanton Quantum Object
  6. SOM      Subject-Object Metaphysics
  7. SPoVs    Static Patterns of Value
  8. SQ          Static Quality
  9. Xty         Christianity

Reader: The following letter includes minor edits to include links, make acronyms locally consistent, and remove nonessential text (the first paragraph of the original is deleted here). In 1998, we made an enormous mistake here. We did not go directly to Aquinas to answer Matt. Instead, we used some apparently questionable remarks by a third party to respond to Matt. Well, now, nearly five years later, we have taken some time to look into Aquinas more carefully. Aquinas' name and his Thomism keep recurring in our readings. So we decided to study him more, but still in a relatively shallow way. Some scholars spend their entire lives on Aquinas' works. We have spent roughly a week. Doug - 11-15Apr2003.

 Subject: Your MoQ questions.
 Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 17:08:36 -0500
 From: Doug Renselle
 Organization: The Quantonics Society & Quantonics, Inc.
 To: "M.W.Workman" <FireProof@flameproof.net>

Matt,

...

Actually, Thomas Aquinas says that truth is not relative. He is the chief philosophical architect of modern Christianity as far as I know. I think there are fundamentalist groups who insist that truth is absolute. St. Aquinas' view, in our newly reformed opinion, is not compatible with MoQ.

Aside by Doug - 11-15Apr2003:

It is now nearly five years since we wrote this response to Matt. Apparently we were wrong about Aquinas based upon hearsay.

Since then we have learned a tad more about Thomism. Thomas Aquinas' philosophy is called "Thomism."

Christianity, as it turns out, and even though it has disassembled greatly over two millennia, is a monistic theosophy. As such it would prefer that all Earth's folk be Christian. Folk of Islamic faith would prefer that all Earth's people be Muslim. For millennia, and continuing now, that classical dichotomy is wholly evident on a warring Earth. Wars based wholly on a dialectical choice: either Christian or Muslim. Both say to their fellow citizens, "You are either for us or against us. And if you are against us, it is our duty to either convert you or eliminate you. We cannot allow your Satanic, viral, fungal, bacterial, prionic thoughts to metastasize in our belief system." Sound familiar?

USA's current administration politicians, most of whom are Christians, say our current war in Iraq is about freedom.

But is Christianity about freedom? Is Islam about freedom? Is any monistic (i.e., homogeneous, absolute truth, one global truth) faith "free?" Can a monistic faith be free?

Understand that most of USA's current administration politicians are using Christian 'principles' to logically decide whether to and how to prosecute war ("Operation Iraqi Freedom") in Iraq.

What does Aquinas say about all that?

It may be worth your while to compare philosophy with theosophy in their original semantics: philo (love of) sophy (sophism), and theo (divinity of) sophy (sophism). Before Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, et al., sophism was quantum rhetorical. During-after Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, et al., sophism became a hated straw man and those philosophers oxymoronically replaced rhetoric with dialectic as philosophy and science's reasoning style of choice. At Millennium III's commencement we see a quantum reversal of those two-millennium-long anti sophist pogroms. Philosophers like Hamann, Bergson, James, and Pirsig are making a straw man of classical dialectic. Quantum science is affirming their instincts and intuitions.

Christianity uses missionaries to do its teaching, and has metastasized all over Earth with roughly a one third proportion of followers compared to Islam (~600 million Christians vis-à-vis nearly two billion Muslims). In its missionary process (crusade) Christianity has destroyed many nascent and prescient cultures via imposition of its beliefs. Ditto Islam, and they are still trying to destroy Judaism, religious cultural parent of Jesus Christ himself.

As such, Christianity appears to us, especially in its catholic-universalist flavors, despite its ongoing and notable disassembly, as a "one size fits all" (OGC, OGT) fundamentalist, repressivist, inquisitionist, crusading and metastatic religion. Metastatically religion is, to us, like all "let us tell you how and what to believe regimes and crusades," a freedom-disabling virulent social pathogen. But so are all religions which claim their religion is "the religion." So would Quantonics be if we told you our way of think-king is the only way of think-king.

Any religion or regime which tells you its belief system is the belief system is intellectually, socially, and spiritually dishonest, thus in our view evil, ESQ, even Satanic (e.g., Syrian/Iraqi secular and profane Baath party Husseinism). For example, the "Messenger of God" and the "Son of God." Any belief system is only "a belief system." If you accept that premise, then you may be willing to concur that if there are many belief systems, it then is contingent among all of them to learn to (classically, dialectically, paradoxically) both abide and respect one another's rights to our own beliefs while respecting others' rights to their beliefs (we are, individually, under no obligation to respect what others believe.). We call that epiphanous John Forbes Nash Equilibrium notion, "quantum freedom." It is also quantum~gn¤stic~freedom. To us, in our tiny and heuristic perspectives, that is what Nature is trying to teach us: how to get along with one another. We, like small children learning to play a violin, must gradually learn how to turn inter-belief/horsehair-wire conflict into (classically, dialectically, paradoxically) both heterogeneous and coherent harmony.

See Mae-wan Ho in her the Rainbow and the Worm, "As [quantum-] coherence maximizes both local freedom and global cohesion, it [describes] a relationship between [any] individual and [any] collective which has previously been deemed [classically dialectically] contradictory or impossible." See p. 153, near end of ch. 10. Our italics. Our brackets to insert a non classical noun-adjectival modifier, replace a classicism, remove two thelogoses, and insert serial adverbial modifiers.

Too, in our view, any monism, any dogmatic union, then, is innately dissonant, discordant, inharmonic.

Our view is that Aquinas' style of (dialectic-based-on-monism) reasoning exhorts religions who use that style of reasoning to conclude that their religion is the religion. Outcome? When there are many religions each of whom declares their religion is the religion...assuming a notion of heterogeneous religions is valid...all those religions' individual claims that they are the religion are invalid! (Reality provides each of them only finite and thus nonabsolute — quantum uncertain — means of knowing that. Their disagreements are indicators, quantum tells, if you will, of what we just said. Their disagreements, too, viewed in a John Forbes Nash Quantum Ensemble Equilibrium kind of perspective, become cooperative agents of improving harmony.)

How can such a result arise? That is an issue of philosophy. Until Earth's late 19th and early 20th centuries philosophy had no resolution. However, in nearly total disharmony with Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, philosophers like Hamann, Bergson, James, and Pirsig plus scientists like Bell, Bohr, Bohm, Dirac, Foulis, Heisenberg, Nash, and Schrödinger have offered a novel solution: an included-middle Bergsonian durational dancing marriage of quantum philosophy and quantum science.

Our list of religious negatives (...repressivist, inquisitionist...) is important. Why? They over simply narrate current, early Millennium III, American Liberal, EU Liberal, Chinese Liberal, and Middle East Muslim fear and hatred of Christians and Christianity. "Jihad" is what Muslims call it! And, in this case, Christians are Muslims' infidels. During March and April of 2003 we see predominantly American Christian fundamentalists prosecuting war against (admittedly Hussein's secular-evil) Muslim Iraq.

Aquinas refers infidels too. He sees anti Christians as infidels. SOM's wall appears permanently erected twixt Muslims and Christians, each calling one another "infidels" with each adhering and invoking fundamental dialectic to do so.

Christians appear to us to have a crusading nature in their blood. It is a kind of evil arrogance in itself. We have seen great evidence of Christian arrogance during Catholic Inquisitions. More recently blatantly nurtured global Catholic pedophilia. And now Catholic and Protestant war against a secular Islamic state. (we believe USA's war against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is justified, but not on bases of metastatic religious beliefs; we explain our position in our March 2003 News)

But Muslim jihad is crusading too!

One has to ask why Christians appear so un-godly... Our too-naïve answer is that we believe Christians designed God in images of man. But man is fallible, and man's dialectic reason is fallible, and man will always be fallible. A Christian God, in our view, is an anthropomorphic God. Do you think Alpha Centaurians, Betelgeusians, Capellans, and Rigeleans would agree that God is anthropomorphic? These same Christians also told us Earth is Universe's center. Prior, they said "Earth is flat."

Did Aquinas get it right? Did Aquinas get it wrong? We know for sure that Aquinas, like all of us, is fallible.

Aquinas' name keeps recurring in our work, so we decided to look into Thomism more and find out whether our Quantonics philosophy and science would find problematic essence of SOM and objective cultural relativism there.

Please refer:

Maritain -

Maritain's referenced work (Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism), in our view, is unworthy of our trust. It is philosophically anachronistic which Maritain himself warns us in his preface to its translated second edition:

"...I have no taste for relativism in matters intellectual, and I do not believe truth to be a function of time." P. 11. Only a dialectical monist could make such a statement without smiling mid Earth's 20th century and certainly early in Earth's 21st century.

He continues, in reference to his 40-year earlier brash and youthful self as "he" thus, "With all the respect and gratitude he never ceased to pay to Bergson, he permitted himself to use, albeit in the very just criticism he was making of Bergson's doctrines, in the just and necessary nay the salutatory conflict he was provoking between Bergsonian thought and that of Thomas Aquinas, language at times so imperious, so lacking in deference, that through his brashness he not only ran the risk of scandalizing certain timid minds, but what is more, prejudicing well-intentioned minds against the indispensable revision of values he was proposing." P. 12.

One really must worry about a person like Maritain who says, "...it is easier to be a philosopher than a Christian and easier to be a Christian than a Christian philosopher" (No kidding!). See pp. 13-14.

We find Maritain's genuine intent in this, "...my real purpose which was precisely to recall that there are criteria of truth independent of the inner movement of a thought in the process of formation, and to turn men's minds toward the powerfully coherent but indefinitely progressive doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas..." P. 15.

He quotes Bergson out of context to impress his readers with his own Thomist views. A good example here is his page 63, First Section title page

"GENERAL ASPECTS OF BERGSONISM

(And yet) there is only one truth.
(Creative Evolution, pg. 238.)" See in full quote below.

Allow us to offer a full quote of CE's p. 238 text with our bold of Maritain's quote, our underlines, and our embedded brackets:

"In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we hardly feel, which at most we brush lightly as it passes. Let us try, however, to instal ourselves within it, if only for a moment; even then it is an individual and fragmentary will that we grasp. To get to the principle of all life, as also of all materiality, we must go further still. Is it impossible? No, by no means; the history of philosophy is there to bear witness. There is no durable system that is not, at least in some of its parts, vivified by intuition. Dialectic is necessary to put intuition to the proof [only possible, locally, in a conventional axiomatic system], necessary also in order that intuition should break itself up into [classically analytic] concepts and so be propagated to other men; but all it does, often enough, is to develop the result of that intuition which transcends it. The truth is, the two procedures [i.e., proof and analysis]are of opposite direction: the same effort, by which ideas are connected with ideas, causes the intuition which the ideas were storing up to vanish. The [classical] philosopher is obliged to abandon intuition, once he has received from it the impetus, and to rely on himself to carry on the movement by pushing the concepts one after another. But he soon feels he has lost foothold; he must come into touch with intuition again; he must undo most of what he
has done. In short, dialectic is what ensures the agreement of our thought with itself. But by dialectic—which is only a relaxation of intuition—many different agreements are possible, while there is only one truth. Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, would not only make the philosopher agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is, in each system, what is worth more than the system and survives it."

As you can see Maritain misguides his readers. Bergson is actually criticizing dialectic and he does so to an even greater extent in his Time and Free Will, where he denies any dialectical notions of nondurational homogeneous truth as real. What Bergson actually said is, "But by dialectic...there is only one truth." Maritain misguides us with his intentional generalizing perversion "And yet there is only one truth" without Bergson's specific and critically important qualification of "by dialectic."

Maritain is a Thomist and as such believes that reality is a dialectical reality. As such he generalizes reality as dialectic. Such a belief system disqualifies Maritain as a Bergsonian commentator, in our view. Amazingly, Maritain was one of Bergson's students!

But Maritain proves to us that he simply does not understand Bergson's early probings of quantum reality. He was blind to Bergson's duration as a metaphor of real quantum uncertainty borne of a wholly animate, included-middle, everywhere associative quantum reality. How do we know? Maritain uses words like immutable, stable, exclusive, independent, rule, truth, etc.

Most of Earth's Western cultures suffer with this blindness still...

Audi - (John F. Wippel, contributor)

Wippel says of Aquinas, "He produced a powerful philosophical synthesis that combined Aristotelian and neo Platonic elements within a Christian context in an original and ingenious way."

"The greater part of [Aquinas'] writings are theological, but there are many strictly philosophical works within his corpus, such as On Being and Essence, On the Principles of Nature, On the Eternity of the World, and the commentaries on Aristotle and on the Book of Causes."

Aquinas "holds that it is impossible for those things revealed to us by God through faith to be opposed to those we can discover by using human reason. For then [either] one or the other would have to be false; and since both come to us from God, God himself would be the author of falsity, something Thomas rejects as abhorrent." Our bold of classical problematics. Our bracketed insertion.

A 13May2006 Doug Aside:

Here, three years after we quoted Audi, we read him describing Aquinas as what we now Essene~gn¤stically call folk of his ilk, "the called psychics." Those are Essene Jesus' own gn¤stic words! Jesus, from our own interpetations of 'gnostic' translators' words would call Aquinas "theologically" (based upon Jesus' own gn¤stic teaching) retarded.

By comparison Jesus referred disciples John~Mary and Didymos Judas Thomas, "the elect." Jesus' "elect" understood ancient gn¤stic teachings (what Doug now, Millennium III, refers as quantum~sophism) and people like Aquinas, "the called," could n¤t. Why? Aristotle's dialectical syllogisms disable quantum~pragma, they zero h-bar, they 'stop' reality to make it objective, immutable, material, and substantial.

Quantum reality (roughly, a very ancient breath of spirit, Essene gnosticism) was 'heretical' to Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle among a majority of 'others: the called.' For an antidote see Heraclitus and Zeno of Elea (this quantum~Zeno is 'not' Zeno of Citium, "the Stoic").

See Thomas Gospel for Jesus' rebuke of ten disciples other than John~Mary and Didymos Thomas. See some of our quotes of Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Paul here.

End aside.

Here we see how Aquinas, like so many others, has fallen into Aristotle's Subject-Object Metaphysical (SOM) trap.

His use of "impossible" implies a notion of classical proof of what is dialectically either possible or impossible. As we and others show elsewhere in Quantonics classical proof bases itself in Popperian falsifiability which bases itself in oppositional objective negation. But negation is subjective, as Bergson, we, et al., have shown. So we infer classical proof is invalid classical reason. Ideal classical opposition is invalid classical reason. Either/or is invalid classical reason. Why? Dialectic is an invalid means of classical reason!

Wippel tells us that Aquinas believes that "In philosophy one begins with an investigation of created reality insofar as this can be understood by human reason and then seeks to arrive at some knowledge of divine reality viewed as the cause of created reality..." Our bold. Our italics.

Assuming reality is more quantum, we know from our quantum studies that reality is acausal. Even without any assumption of quantum foundations, we know by direct experience and observation that reality is plural and heterogeneous. Aquinas presumes, based upon his Aristotle research, that reality is monistic and homogeneous. Ensemble plurality, on its face, denies any general notion of or absolute ability to identify and locate single cause and single effect. See our boy and baseball analogy. What 'caused' said window to break? Boy? Bat? Ball? Cannot one use dialectic to 'prove' that God did it? How far back does classical reason's chain of causality go? As Dirac said "Causality applies only to a system which is left undisturbed." P. 4, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Aquinas, naïvely, believed in classical causality.

See our Q&A on cause-effect.

Baggott -

"In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas helped to restore Aristotelian philosophy and science, an ancient learning that had been buried and all but forgotten during the 'Dark Ages.' But Aquinas was a scholar of the Roman Catholic Church, and he took great pains to ensure that pagan and other heretical elements were carefully weeded out of Aristotle's philosophy. The Church elevated Aristotelianism to the exalted status of a religious dogma and so pronounced on all matters not only of religious faith, but also of science." See p. 203, of Baggott's The Meaning of Quantum Theory.

Again, it is our view that Aristotle simply blew it, in spades. Aristotle bought into Parmenides' and Plato's anti-sophist substantial, immutable, and state-ic objectivisms. Aquinas then bought into Aristotle. Subsequently, Newton too, bought into most of Aristotle's categorically-stoppable excluded-middle bilge. Zeno of Elea in his paradice argued against Aristotle's dopey concepts, but Aristotle and his peers wouldn't even try to understand what Zeno said.

Berlin -

Writing in his The Magus of the North AKA Johann Georg Hamann, Isaiah Berlin says, Hamann "was not an animist of any kind. He did not believe in active powers in stones or trees either as part of some omnipresent divinity or as independent centres of purposive action, as the pagans did. He believed in a personal deity, who created the world for his own often inscrutable purpose. To this degree he stands with the teleologists — Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel. Where he sharply parts company from them is in denying that the divine (or cosmic) purpose is necessarily rational..." See pages 55-56.

We quote Berlin here to allow us to show his assessment of Aristotle and Aquinas as teleologically aligned with one another. Teleology implies design and purpose. Design and purpose, for us, imply determinism which accompanies classical notions of 1-1 correspondent cause and effect. All of those attenuate and harm notions of free will and choice.

For us, quantum reality is a reality of Value and individual and group (real quantum-democratic) Valuations. In quantum science, as Pirsig has shown us, Value is essentially ensemble/plural/heterogeneous probability(ies). We view reality as Valuative, quantum probabilistic, and thus implicitly offering freedom (within constraining more-bound cultural ensembles) with absolute individual free will to choose our personal notion of better within any cultural system.

Blackburn -

Blackburn's description of Aquinas is almost wholly apologetic-theological. We see his commentary as inapplicable here, excepting his affirmative comparisons and nexuses of Aquinas with Aristotle.

For us, nearly all theological descriptions are subjective, nondialectical, and thus very quantum. Blackburn's description of Aquinas is unique among others we have chosen here, in that respect. Further, in that respect, when one uses dialectic one drives out subjectivism and dogmatizes objectivism which in our view drives out God.

For us, God and Nature are quantumly included-middle both subjective (superior) and objective (inferior), vis-à-vis dialectically excluded-middle either subjective or objective. To say this in a manner as Pirsig might say it, "A purely objective reality is a reality which has lost its Quality." Pirsig's objective reality he calls "Static Quality." He calls subjective reality "Dynamic Quality." He further states that SQ without DQ is "Exclusive Static Quality" which we may also read as "Objective Static Quality." To Pirsig, ESQ is reality's only "evil." Natural reality mandates emergent change. That which refuses Nature's mandate is "ESQ." That which refuses to change becomes extinct. As an example, " status quo is the way to go" is a colloquialism on its way to becoming extinct. Regimes which become ESQ become extinct.

This view is crux of Hamann's hatred of The (16th-17th century) French 'Enlightenment' as "purely objective." Modern thinkers, like Pirsig, Dirac, Heisenberg, Feynman, and Dyson recognize dangers of purely objective aspects of "enlightened" 'science' and 'mathematics.' We agree with them and anticipate enormous cultural changes during Millennium III from a classical dichon(SQ, DQ) reality to a quantum quanton(DQ,SQ) reality. Interestingly, quantum science has already uncovered and imposed such an evolution, but few people (including some quantum science titans who accomplished said feat) are aware of it. It is fascinating to juxtapose Hamann's hatred of objective/dialectical notions of reality with Parmenides', Plato's, and Aristotle's hatred of sophists' subjective/rhetorical/quantum notions of reality. It represents SOM's schism which was cut with dialectic's knife, a schism — an open gaping wound — which remains to be sutured.

Theologically Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) resonates slightly with what Blackburn says about Aquinas in The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.

Cushing & McMullin - (Their Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory is profound, excellent! It is a set of symposia papers from a conference at Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, USA October 1-3, 1987. 15 papers appear here by notables: Cushing, Shimony, Mermin (his "quantum mysteries" presume that only "humans measure" as Protagoras stated), Jarrett (MoQesque), Wessels (very classical, dialectical, objective), Fraassen (classical), Butterfield, Redhead, Stapp, Fine, Hughes, Teller, Howard (our favorite paper in this text), Folse (historical), and McMullin (historical plus Aquinas).)

"Eudoxus of Cnidus, 408?-355? B.C., Greek astronomer, mathematician, and physician. He was the first Greek astronomer to explain the movements of the planets scientifically, holding that a number of concentric spheres supported the planets in their paths. It is claimed that he calculated the length of the solar year, indicating a calendar reform similar to that made later by Julius Caesar, and that he was the discoverer of parts of geometry included in Euclid's work."

The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Copyright © 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

McMullin tells us that Eudoxan planetary schemes depend upon, "the regulative principles of Aristotle's physics, specifically by the principle that everything that is in motion must be moved by something other than itself, and by the principle of contact action...The principle of contact action was frequently discussed in medieval commentaries on Aristotle's Physics. Aquinas, for example, mentions apparent violations of the principle, such as the heating of the earth by the sun, and insists that in all such cases there must be a medium of transmission of the action, even though the form the action takes in the medium may be very different from its effect on the object where the action terminates. Even God is bound: 'No action of an agent, however powerful it may be, acts at a distance, except through a medium. But it belongs to the supreme power of God that He acts immediately in all things. Hence nothing is distant from Him.' [See Aquinas' Summa Theologica, I, q. 8, a.1] Since action at a distance is, in principle, impossible, there cannot be any exemption, not even for omnipotence."

Only in a classical dialectical model of reality, i.e., an Aristotelian, Aquinean, Newtonian, Einsteinian reality, is a 'rule' like "...action at a distance is impossible..." possible. Please recall that Pirsig concluded, after studying quantum theory, that Value is probability. He also intuited beautifully that his DQ is in SQ and his SQ is in DQ. Quantum probability is a mathematical way of modeling Pirsig's intuition of a quantum included-middle. In quantum reality, and thus we infer in Natural reality, there are no ideal, excluded-middle dialectical objects! Why? Quantum reality's constituents all have probability distributions. Those distributions are ubiquitously macroscopic and EIMA ensemble-compenetrating (we show them as dotted lines below; these distributions offer modalities and their classical electron distribution modalities are called Bohr's orbits). This is impossible to understand from a dialectical perspective because 'things' like electrons must be classically, dialectically objective: closed, dimensionally, and numerical-magnitudinally finite without any notions of unlimited spatial, temporal, mass/energy, gravitational, etc., distributions.

To make matters ever worse for SOMwitted dialecticians, quantum modalities are apparently local while quantum probability distributions are quantum nonlocal. Quantum nonlocality implies superluminal correlation which has been demonstrated beautifully by Zeilinger-Gisin, et al. Worse, nonlocal superluminal correlation (~action at a distance) invalidates Einsteinian relativity which axiomatically rules out quantum nonlocality, superluminal (i.e., zero latency) quantum correlation, and action at a distance.

Dialecticians deny quantum probabilistic macroscopic distribution which they call "sophist and subjective," and throw out most of reality which we must assume exists in order to understand quantum reality! They are, in our opinion, full of HyperBoole and Sillygisms. Quantum sophists have been dialecticians' straw men for over two millennia. Now that relationship is commuting. Dialecticians now and for any foreseeable futures shall be quantum sophists' straw men.

What do dialecticians throw away? Here is a limited, 2D attempt to depict quantum reality:

Figure 1 - A Weak Depiction of Quantum Reality
Also see our very similar Quantum Extensions to Bergson's I-Cubed.
(We think, from our shallow investigations, that Aristotle invented a notion of 'accidental' reality.
Aquinas refers this notion often and uses it often.)

Our graphic shows quantum reality's two main comjugates: Nonactuality coinsident Actuality, AKA Pirsigean DQ coinsident SQ respectively. Our point here is that dialecticians like Aquinas, et al., believe that reality is what we show in bright yellow, and they logically discard everything else as non existent. As you may choose to see, their reality is naïvely limited. It shows in a very simple way how they perceive all quantum phenomena as, "paradox, irony, dilemma, illogical, nonsense, absurd, unreasonable, deconstructionist, heresy, insane, etc." Their yellow church of reason is what Pirsig calls the "mythos." To a dialectician, anyone who is stupid enough to leave the classical mythos is insane. They punish those who do using Enlightened Disciplinary Matrices (judgment) and Inquisitions (punishment).

Thomas Aquinas -

Last, but not least, let's sample Aquinas himself on his views of truth and falsity (from his Summa Theologica, Volume I, The Great Books), essence of judgment in classical logic. We find common flaws in most of Aquinas' articles of truth and falsity:

Aquinas' Eight
Articles of Truth

Aquinas' Procedural
Response by Article

Quantonics' Specific
Quantum Response by Article

Article 1

Whether Truth is Only in the Intellect? "It seems that truth is not only in the intellect, but rather in things." Aquinas' notions of static excluded-middle Aristotelian truth are misguided and flawed. For us, it seems that included-middle change is in all of Nature's patterns of Value, including Intellectual, Social, Biological, and Inorganic.

Article 2

Whether Truth Resides Only in the Intellect Composing and Dividing? "It seems that truth does not reside only in the intellect composing and dividing." It seems to us that change is in all and all is in change.

Article 3

Whether the True and Being Are Convertible Terms? "It seems that the true and being are not convertible terms." It seems to us that all patterns of Value (including true and being) are in change and change is in all patterns of Value (including true and being).

Article 4

Whether Good Is Logically Prior to the True?

"It seems that good is logically prior to the true...

"But the true is in some things in which good is not, as for instance, in mathematics. Therefore the true is prior to the good...

"...the true, speaking absolutely, is prior to good, as appears from two reasons. First, because the true is more closely related to being, which is prior, than is good. For the true regards being itself absolutely and immediately, while the nature of good follows being in so far as being is in some way perfect; for thus it is desirable. Secondly, it is evident from the fact that knowledge naturally precedes appetite. Hence, since the true regards knowledge, but the good regards the appetite, the true must be prior in idea to the good."

[Those last two paragraphs, in our view, are just plain Aristotelian HyperBoole! They are based upon a classical, inanimate, everywhere excluded-middle dissociative reality which does not exist! Doug - 15Apr2003.]

We agree that good is above any classically static, independent, immutable notions of truth. We would disagree, however, that good is absolute in any static, independent, immutable sense. Good, for us, is absolute change which is always changing and changing all. Eventual Better is Good's ceaseless outcome.

But Aquinas goes on to reverse his "It seems..." He concludes true is prior good.

He accomplishes that by observing that good is not in mathematics. We agree, but for omniffering reasons than Aquinas. Mathematics, "the true," is ESQ! It lacks, as Aquinas observes, Dynamic Quality. And for that reason, Aquinas promotes mathematics above good. If DQ is good and God is good then Aquinas, following Aristotle's lead, has just placed SQ above God!!!

In Quantonics, following Pirsig's lead, we cure this schism using animate, everywhere included-middle associative quantons which quantum really merge both good and true as being which shares commingling with a good God.

Pirsig shows us that DQ is reality's first Good. SQ (being) is reality's second good. SQ is reality's second good because it can portray several analogues, including: intentional agency to DQ, ignorance of DQ, intentional rejection of DQ, etc.

Intentionally rejecting DQ/God/Good as mathematical truth (ESQ) does, Pirsig calls his Metaphysics of Quality's only "evil." We agree. We can show it as a classical:

dichon(ideal_SQ, ideal_SQ).

In Quantonics we show it as a quantum:

quanton(DQ,SQ).

This is one of reality's most important corner stones. Aquinas screwed it up!

Article 5

Whether God Is Truth? "It seems that God is not truth."

It seems that a human-designed anthropocentric, anthropomorphic God is a naïve and misguided description of Creation's agency which we call "Nature."

Aquinas tells us that ESQ truth is of the intellect, not of God.

This is Aristotle's grand doctrine of Either One or the Other, EOOO, based upon his excluded-middle syllogism. It insists that God and humankind are radically mechanically separate. This is, for us, just more HyperBoole.

Reality's quantum included-middle shows us that God is in humankind and humankind are in God. Were that not so, could any humans be partially good, partially moral?

Aquinas' further comments here show that he adheres notions of classical causality. Quantum reality denies any classical notions of causality.

Article 6

Whether There Is Only One Truth, According to Which All Things Are True?

"It seems that there is only one truth according to which all things are true."

[We are delighted, here, to find that Aquinas' detailed discussion of one truth gently broaches some quantum notions. Here is an example: "If therefore we speak of truth as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects, and even in one intellect according to the number of things known." Aristotle then quotes Psalms, "As from one man's face many likenesses are reflected in a mirror, so many truths are reflected from the one divine truth." This, indeed, is very quantum, however, in our view, it requires one to admit that reality is quantumly both/and (BAWAM) vis-à-vis classically either/or (EOOO). Aquinas then goes on to revert to his Aristotelian either/or position. But then he says, "The saying of Anselm is correct in so far as things are said to be true by their relation to the divine intellect."]

We deny, outright, any medieval and classical notions of monistic universal truth and context. For us, it seems that Nature's reality is ensemble-heterogeneous, included-middle, absolute change.

Again, compare

dichon(one_truth, many_truths)

and

quanton(one_truth,many_truths).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aquinas' use of things is Aristotelian where things are classical, stable, independent objects.

We have to assume then that he would declare our quantons as "untrue."

Article 7

Whether Created Truth Is Eternal?

"It seems that created truth is eternal...

"On the contrary, God alone is eternal..."

It seems to us that, due reality's absolute change, change is eternal.

If God is DQ/Good/absolute change (i.e., n¤t absolute truth; all SQ truths, where all truth is SQ, in quantum reality are quantum uncertain agents of their own change), then we agree here with Aquinas with a further qualification that we insist SQ is in DQ and DQ is in SQ which implies for us that truth is in God and God is in truth, and further that truth which has rejected God/DQ is ESQ and is Pirsigean "evil."

Article 8

Whether Truth Is Immutable?

"It seems that truth is immutable."

Quoting Psalms again, Aquinas says, "Truth, properly speaking, is only in the intellect...Hence the mutability of truth must be regarded [as intellectual]." [where intellect can change but things may not change!]

It seems to us that, due reality's absolute change, that truth is an agent of its own absolute change.

Aquinas 'things' are classical Aristotelian objects, which by Aristotle's edict may not change.

From our and Pirsig's view, then, Aquinas' 'things' are ESQ!

Aquinas' Four
Articles of Falsity

Aquinas' Procedural
Response by Article

Quantonics' Specific
Quantum Response by Article

Article 1

Whether Falsity Exists in Things?

Aquinas says "...falsity is in the intellect." He tells us falsity is an ideal opposite of truth. He claims a notion of absolute falsity is possible and valid.

This is pure Aristotelian classicism.

For us, negation is subjective. Medieval and classical notions of objective falsity are notably invalid.

Article 2

Whether There Is Falsity in the Senses? Aristotle tells us that truth is in the senses only "...in so far as they apprehend sensible things truly." And, "Sense, then, has no false knowledge about its proper objects, except accidentally and rarely, and then because an unsound organ does not receive the sensible form rightly."

Ditto previous comment.

Aquinas uses classical thing-king to achieve a decent answer.

Our version would say that assessment of falsity is impossible given negation is subjective in quantum reality.

Article 3

Whether Falsity Is in the Intellect?

"It seems that falsity is not in the intellect."

Aquinas best examples here are in regard to intellect's inappropriate division (analysis) and composition (synthesis), for example a chimera (specific example: a platypus), or as he says it, "...composing a definition of [presumably divided] parts which cannot be joined together..." Clearly medievalists found chimera false (see G. E. Hughes and Buridan), and as late as our 19th century 'scientists' claimed platypuses false.

Ditto previous two sets of comments.

Article 4

Whether True and False Are Contraries?

"It seems that true and false are not contraries."

Aquinas says, "True and false are opposed as contraries, and not, as some have said, as affirmation and negation..."

Using Aristotle's language Aquinas tells us to compare privation and contradiction. Privation asserts nothing but 'determines' negation in a subject. Contradiction asserts something and determines its subject. "Hence it is clear that true and false are contradictories." Our bold.

For us, given our assumption of negation as subjective, medieval and classical notions of contraries as dialectical opposites are invalid.

We deny both opposition and contradiction as logically valid in that we deny any validity of Aristotle's syllogisms in quantum reality.

In order to both oppose and contradict, Aquinas and Aristotle's 'things' must be objectively excluded-middle, lisr. Any classical truth's contradiction is not_true.

We agree with Bergson, "We shall never affirm a thing is not."

Quantum reality agrees with our comments offered here in this column's comments on Aquinas' notions of verity and falsity.

In our view Aquinas simply did not "get it." Nor did Aristotle, his mentor.

End aside by Doug - 15Apr2003.

From a Christian perspective MoQ is right on if you agree with St. Aquinas. That statement, in retrospect is predominately wrong at this juncture (11-15Apr2003). We apologize to readers who have read this and accepted it. In our more recent perspectives and hermeneutics of MoQ and Aquinas' technical logic of Christianity, they only agree in very limited, and already noted, ways. Doug - 11-15Apr2003.

Here's why:

  1. In MoQ, Quality = Reality = DQ + SQ.
  2. Dynamic Quality is absolute. (See 'The Birth of SOM' on this site.) (Aquinas appears to deny DQ. Doug - 11-15Apr2003)
  3. Static Quality is relative. (Ditto.) (Aquinas appears to deny any notions of relativity. Doug - 11-15Apr2003)

Pirsig calls DQ the first good. He calls SQ the second good. SQ is the second good because it is not change itself, but it is an agent of change. Some parts of SQ, 'go with the flow of DQ's imposed change.' Those parts are agents of change. Some parts refuse to change, resist the will of DQ, and those parts are ~evil. The parts which resist change become extinct. (E.g., MicroSoft stuck in the Cathedral, unwilling to go with the Bazaar.)

The Christian metaphor, given acceptance of many truths ("Mtty"), fits.

  1. God is absolute. God is change. God is DQ. (Aquinas appears to deny DQ. Doug - 11-15Apr2003)
  2. Creation = SQ's Static Patterns of Value.
  3. God creates SQ's SPoVs. God changes SQ's SPoVs. God discreates
    SQ's SPoVs. The purpose is 'good' and 'good' becoming 'better.'

The Quantum metaphor is nearly identical. God = Quality = Quantum Reality.
Quantum Reality (Stein's model) is: nonspace (DQ) and space (SQ).

(See: The Concept of Object as the Foundation of Physics)

Note: SOM assumes there is no nonspace, and has no way to classify or define change. Thus [, from the SOMite's perspective,] God is a miraculous mystical mystery requiring reference to the unfathomable or some anthropocentric invented equivalent.

The great epiphany which we need to leave the classical realm and reach lay interpretation of the quantum realm (and MoQ) is identical in all three interpretations:

  1. MoQ: DQ is in SQ and SQ is in DQ. They are co-within each other. (Aquinas denies God is in all things. See his Summa Theologica, I, q.8, a. 1. He says, "...God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works." It seems to us that both God is in all things and all things are in God, and our efforts in quantum philosophy support this view. Aquinas' own dialectic, borrowed from Aristotle, inures an assumption of divine separation from creation. We deny it! Creation without a compenetrating quantum flux (~divinity) is exclusive Static Quality and ESQ always dies and becomes extinct. Doug - 11-15Apr2003)
  2. Xty: God is in creation and creation is in God. Ditto. (We now think Aquinas appears see God and creation as dialectically separate. Doug - 11-15Apr2003)
  3. QR: Quantum reality is quantons co-residing and co-within
    actualized Reality and nonactualized Reality.

This requires that you begin to see all of actual Reality not as classical, separable, individuistic objects, but as interpenetrating co-within-one-another quantum objects (quantons).

That's pretty much it. I can go on forever with details, but you don't need that here.

Call any time,

Dugger.

Doug Renselle
In Quantonics
Suite 18 #368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-846-8448
http://www.quantonics.com/


"The cause of our current social crises,..., is a genetic defect within
the nature of reason itself."

By Robert M. Pirsig, in 'Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,'
p. 102 (paperback), Bantam, 28th edition, May 1982.

 

"Fundamental scientists are trying to take 'Godness' out of reality, while fundamental religionists are trying to take science out of reality. What is most provocative about their approaches is both are using SOM's naïve and antique exclude-middle logic to accomplish their tasks. Perhaps more provocative: 'Godness' is predominantly in reality's included-middle! To deny reality's included-middle is to deny 'Godness.'"

Doug - 30Aug2001.


To contact Quantonics write to or call:

Doug Renselle
Quantonics, Inc.
Suite 18 #368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-THOUGHT

©Quantonics, Inc., 1998-2028 Rev. 29Jan2015  PDR — Created: 14Nov1998 PDR
(30Aug2001 rev - Add final box quote above.)
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(11-15Apr2003 rev - Update our views and understandings of Aquinas as they relate Christianity and quantum science.)
(18Apr2003 rev - Add "What Dialecticians Throw Away" anchor to Fig. 1 graphic.)
(21Apr2003 rev - Typos.)
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(27Feb2004 rev - Reset legacy red text. Add a link to our QELR of 'synthesis.' Add 'dialectic' links in early paragraphs of this page.)
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(2Feb2005 rev - Change 'phil' to 'philo.' Add link in our page bottom text box.)
(15Dec2005 rev - Replace 'that that' with 'that' under Aquinas' article 7.)
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(5Dec2006 rev - Add some red text on respect and gn¤stic freedom.)
(26-27Aug2007 rev - Add Maritain anchor. Change 'Paul' to 'disciples John~Mary.' Add Thomas Gospel link.)
(7May2008 rev - Reformat Thomas Aquinas critique table.)
(4Mar2009 rev - Update page top information.)
(8Nov2012 rev - Update Cathedral and Bazaar link. Adjust colors. Make page current. Reset legacy markups.)
(29Jan2015 rev - Update Thomas Gospel link.)

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