On The Real World

The Real World is one of the most confusing concepts in philosophy. The problem is that most people confuse the Real World with the world we experience in everyday life. We must go back to Plato to understand the origin of the concept of the "Real World." Plato posited two realms: the intelligible realm, and the sensible realm. The sensible realm is the world we experience in our everyday life. The intelligible realm is the would of the Forms:this is the Real World. The world of the Forms is a divinized mental realm, where perfect standards or paradigms of all that exists reside. It is called the "intelligible" because it can only be reached through the use of reason. In other words, one can only get a mental vision of the realm of the Forms.The realm of the Forms is the Real World because it is necessary; the realm of universals. There is no contingency in the realm of the Forms. The Real World is composed of universals, by definition universals are necessary. This is of course, the objective world. The sensible world is the world of everyday life. In Plato's view, it is the world of contingency, and illusion. Om other words, the sensible realm or material world is the subjective realm, because it is contingent.This is an important point to keep in mind: that the material world is always contingent. We shall have more to say later on this topic. So these are the two realms that Plato gave to Western philosophy. Much of Western philosophy has been concerned with trying to heal the rift between the objective (real) and subjective sensible) realms. This has led to the top-down paradigm so prevalent in Western philosophy. The top-down paradigm is top-down, because power or causal efficacy originates in the realm of the Forms, and then is transmitted to the sensible realm. The objective creates the subjective in simple language. The sensible realm is reflection of the intelligible realm, but it is a flawed reflection, like a fun house mirror.The sensible realm is a distorted reflection to the Real World (Forms). Plato has given us an unresolved dualism, this dualism was taken up by the Christian theology; which of course locked the problem into Western philosophy. In Christian theology the realm of the Forms becomes the mind (Nous) of God. The mind of God is the second Person of the Trinity: the Son. As I said before, much of Western philosophy is concerned with trying to heal this rift. The attempts to heal the rift started early with Plato's successor: Aristotle. One of the most poetic attempts to heal this rift was that to the Christian thinker: Thomas Aquinas. Empedocles wrote philosophy as poetry, so Thomas Aquinas wrote poetry as philosophy. Aquinas was a Christian neoplatonist. Like most neoplatonists, Aquinas was reinterpreting Aristotle through a Platonic lens. I shall ignore Aquinas's exemplarism, so as not to spoil the poetry of his core vision of the cosmos. Like everyone at his time Aquinas believed in the top-down paradigm; that thought (abstractions, universals, Forms) were more real than physical matter. Of course by "thought" Aquinas understood reasonable thought, unreasonable thought was judged to be of the body (matter). Instead of a sharp bread as in Plato, Aquinas presents us with a continuum from matter to the God.To understand the heart of Aquinas's vision we must examine hes distinction of essence and existence. The essence-existence distinction is at the heart of Aquinas's metaphysics. Essence as the name suggests is what is essential about an entity. Existence is what is accidental or contingent about an entity. It is important to understand how Aquinas has redefined the Forms. Unlike the more primitive view of the Forms where they are perfect qualities, Aquinas viewed the Forms as functions and not standards of physical qualities. In other words, there is no Form of color, size, shape, etc. Instead the function of an entity id the Form. To make this clear, we shall examine some examples. Let us start with the example of the Form of humanity. There are male, female, tall, short, humans, but these are physical qualities and not the essence of being human. They do not express the essence of being human because they are contingent of in Aristotle's words "accidental". It does not matter if a human is short, tall, male, female,etc. The essence of being human is the function. This allows Aquinas to explain the differences in particular humans. Aquinas like all pre-Darwinian thinkers believed species were fixed, but he had to explain the variation within a species. It is not the physical qualities that are fixed in a species, but the function that is fixed. We shall now move to Aquinas's cosmology, and how it illustrates the essence-existence distinction. Like Aristotle, Aquinas believed the matter above the Earth was different than the matter below the orbit of the Moon. Also like Aristotle, Aquinas believed the planets to be living beings or intelligences. Each planet has its orbit, which it never varies from; the orbit is necessary. In other words, the function of every planet is necessary. Aquinas believed like most people of his time, that planets affected conditions on Earth: an example would be Saturn controlling the coldness on Earth. The matter above the Moon and the Moon is eternal, it is not subject to change; there is no variation. So there is less contingency in the matter above the Moon. What makes the planets and entities above the Moon contingent, is that they depend on another entity for there existence. God has assigned each planet its function, and so each planet is contingent upon God. We can observe Aquinas's continuum, in the matter above and below the Moon. The matter above the Moon is more essential, less variation, than the matter below the Moon. There are no accidental qualities, all qualities are necessary for the function of the entity above the Moon. Remember existence is the contingent, the accidental to an entities function. Our last example are the angels. Keep in mind, Thomas Aquinas's honorific title is the "Angelic Doctor." So he should know something about angels. Again, we find the essence-existence distinction. Angels of course have no material parts, they are essence. Each angel has a specific function that does not overlap with other angels. In other words, in the choir of angels, no angel can take over another angels function. Everything angels do is necessary. This means angels are not contingent in function, but they are dependent on God. There function was assigned by God. Angels are contingent in that they depend on another entity for their existence: God. We have now arrived at the very top of the top-down system of Aquinas. God is the entity whose essence is existence. Remember, Aristotle said "God is thought thinking itself." In other words, God is self generating. God does not depend on any other entity for existence. God is completely essential; to be an entity is to exist. Now Aquinas closes the circle. When we get to the highest apex of his system, he connects it with the lowest. We reach God and then are brought back to existence itself. It is a poetic vision that reminds mo of the Eastern doctrine of divine respiration. When we get to the highest point, we come back to the beginning; the highest abstraction becomes concrete existence. God is the ultimate Form, that all other Forms depend on to exist. God in thinking himself allows all to exist. The above is the view of Western philosophy for many centuries. The opposite view was put forth by Immanuel Kant in his book "Critique of Pure Reason." That the objective realm of universals is created by the subjective realm of experience. Kant reversed the direction of causal efficacy from bottom to top. Instead of the objective creating the subjective, the subjective creates the objective. This is something that is often forgotten by scientists. Remember the Empedoclean One that we discussed in a previous essay (Strife and Abstraction) that it is the laws that are fixed and immutable, while matter oscillates between two poles. The trouble with the Empedoclean One is that it is the matter that generates the laws, and not the laws that generate the matter. And matter is always contingent, so there can be no immutable unchangeable laws. The Kantian view is also the view of Fichte. It was Schelling that restored the older view to German Idealism when he broke with Fichte. Schelling and Hegel both viewed the the Real World of objective world as creating the subjective world. So where does that leave us, in respect to the Real World. The Real World (realm of the Forms) is a fiction created by human logic; all we are left with is the world of experience. We created the "Real World" by how we cut up experience by logical tools, that we use to interpret experience. The only way to judge these logical tools is how much power they give us to reach our goals. To bring about a desired state of affairs. It is power to bring about desired states of affairs that determines the tools we use. All our theories are contingent. We exist in the existing cosmos, but only have experience of a very small part of the cosmos. All our universals only hold true for our position in the cosmos. We create the "Real World" by framing universals that fit experience. So is there anything we can say about the cosmos that is not provisional? Here I shall lift a term from Whithead the term being "creativity." The cosmos is creative, it keeps producing new forms. There are no immutable unchangeable Forms.. There is just creative activity. END