The Ethical Principles Ofparadigmatic Realism a Realistic Ontology for Environmental And

The Ethical Principles ofParadigmatic Realism A realistic ontology for environmental and animal ethics

Jack Ferguson

Introduction

In order to intelligently analyze environmental and animal ethics, an ontology is provided as a ground for determining moral or immoral actions and defining critical terms missing in most ethical arguments.

Parmenides explained that the Relative, the Many, (rivers, forests, deserts, etc.)isnot the Absolute; the Relative is outside of the Absolute, the indivisible One,thereforean illusion of the sensory driven mind or a mirage, either way, only overcome by logic. The Absolute became self-conscious in Parmenides’ acosmism as the opposing Relative emerged in Heraclitus who explained the Relative was no illusion or mirage but the Absolute in absolute relativity.It seems that reality is a paradox with no solution.

This Relative/Absoluteparadox is a mental fixation on, or reification of one side or the other, but if the paradox of two realities is comprehended in a paradigm, these mental illusions or physical mirages recede into the being of reality.Heraclitus takes Relativity or change as Absolute, unchangeable, and for Parmenides, the negation of the Relative, the illusion of change, is anabsolute negation of the Absolute. Heraclitus also hints that the Logos is a paradigm that restores balance to its polarities. These polarities or two sides of the paradigm are only possible in contrast to or separation and negation of its other. Each side has an inner and outer side, quantitative and qualitative side, infinite and finite, and so on.

The paradigm becomes self-conscious in the opposition, negation, separation, rejection, otherness, etc. of itself in spacetime. The unified self is undifferentiated comprehensive identity outside of spacetime. Its finitude negated, it remains conscious for it is the negation of all negation. Finite negations are negated in the infinity of negation, or the negation of negation. The paradigm of Reality emergedand receded in the two-sided,Absolute/Relative formation.Consciousnessof emerges inontological negations;forotherness is the essence or form of pre-reflectedself-alienation expressed in a finite stream of infinite onticnot-me’s. This succession of not-me’s is the temporal and special moving presence of being in the here and now. The finite form of the self contains an infinity of not-me’s giving rise to its identity in difference.The self is both infinite in negation and finite in its series. Zeno’s arrow traverses an infinity of points, yet the bow, arrow, archer, all eventually vanish for they are finite. That is not to say they are illusions; rather, they are finite appearances with an infinite structure that emerges in their negations. Finite appearances are structured by natural laws such as causality through force, electricity, temperature, etc. that are built upon negations; for example, temperature ranges by degree, and, in order to appear, each degree is a negation of all other degrees. The appearance of degrees is captured through instrumental measurements. The reifications of degrees occur in freezing, boiling, and so on.

Ontological negations are physical/spiritual for they emerge out the paradigm of reality, and since reality is not an idea, reality cannot be mental, so the mind is limited to reflection of it; however, a fixation on one side or the other is a distortion of mind. Mind is the process of spiritual and physical negations that Reality generates. Given that mind has no substance other than its history of reifications, its memories, how cans an internal process externalize itself and take physical form?

Paradigmatic Realism holds that these are sides of Reality, and Reality is anontological paradigm reflected in epistemological paradigms.Mental paradigms such as Newtonian/Einsteinian physics, Ptolemaic/Copernican cosmologiesare secondary human reflections of underlying Reality. Paradigmatic realism finds the Absolute is an alienated side of the paradigm of reality;first sided by theAbsolute and Relative; neither illusions nor realities, but opposing sides such as inside/outside and quantitative/qualitative; not of the mind such as opinions or ideas, but of polarized Reality itself.Inside spacetime, Reality is divided, and that separation is the paradigm ofspacetime; it is finite being isolated from itself and other beings. Outside of spacetime, infinite Being is united with its finite contents. In spacetime, someone both‘can step in the same river twice’ and ‘cannot step in the same river twice,’and both is and is not. The Absolute One is only possible in the reflected negation of the Relative Many for the Many is the other quantitative side of the Absolute. A river’s form and unchanging sameness is its start and end, sides, top and bottom, and its substance is its process in form and form in process until it evaporates. Its form cannot be separated from its content for they are sides of a medium negating from within and from without, so the river remains identical in substantial transformation and insubstantial inprocess until it no longer is. The fact of its finite being is eternal.So too, the Absolute is the form as is the Relative itsinseparable content.Cosmic consciousness is the form of the Absolute expanding through its negated limitations of exclusions into an inclusive multi-universe.Permanence is the shape of change and change is the content of permanence; inescapably, change is the shape of permanence and permanence the content of change. Change from without or change from within introduces the inside/outside paradigm.

The sides of Reality are not double-aspects or Spinoza’s limited perspectives, but shifting sides or polarities of reality becoming self-aware in its otherness. Human reflectors mirror this and confuse these shifts with their own processes.For example, Hegel held that Being is an idea, and it self-animates through the dialectic of its own Nothingness. Hegel thought Being was the same as Nothing because it was empty of specification and determinations, and their union brought forth Change. Hegel confuses the human mammal’s mental map of Being with the diversity and richness of Being itself. This map of Being is just a copy. The more complexity is not due to the mind but to Being itself that the finite mind records through instruments such as eyes or microscopes.

Again, Reality is independent of any human, cosmic, or divine mind. What Hegel is describing is the World and its virtual entities such as the State that are products of the human mind, the mind as primarily described by Kant’s transcendental idealism. The World is not real because it, the World, is only possible to enter spacetime with a human mind behind it. The World is virtual.The World is perceptualfor it is under empirical realism. It is cognitivebecause it is animated byconcrete, materialized ideas or entities such as science, economies, laws, programs, reactors, turbines, etc. that reproduce and mimic natural laws. The World is an extended intention with ethical consequences; intentions have ethical origins and they are engineered so as to mesh with Reality. Thus, the World is inescapably ethical or unethical.

The World is a distortion within Reality. Reality is connected by natural forces and rhythms. The human mind reflects these natural forces and instrumentally replicates them. Natural forms of energy are artificially replicated billions of times daily with unknown consequences and a disregard for other beings. Billions of animals are tortured and killed for “scientific” experiments, and evolution has been remodeled around human interference.Human caused extinctions of thousands if not millions of species, devastated weather, ocean, river, forests, etc. systems are undergoing human alterations with minimal concern. Waiting for the Earth to clean up the human mess is unethical.

The World templates Reality and interferes with it, but Reality cannot cancel it. Reality has sides or polarities that take shape, not through the mind with its programs of understanding, reason and logic, but through an ontological process termed negation. Negation is seen in fractal formations and contrasts. Negation is the emergence of consciousness. Sides are double internal and external negations, and negations are the points of consciousness.Negations can be both pleasurable or painful, or not registered in sensation for that is only one medium of negation. Where there is no negation, there is no consciousness.

Obviously, Parmenides’ realization that the Absolute is Oneor not-Many reflects a two-sided paradigm, the one and not-one reflected off the One, for the one is established in the not-one, the two or the many sides of self-emergence. This duality is not that of Cartesian substances, but simple sides of the paradigm of reality reflected by the mind.

Heraclitus’ process and Parmenides’ unchanging One are sides of one underlying reality that is self-conscious in its negations of otherness, the Many as is the Many the negation of the One. They emerge in the contrasts of the other. Process and Substance, ontological negations, are inseparable;in this way, the eternal, unchanging laws of non-contradiction, identity, substance, etc. are at the center of process, change and contradiction. Identity-in-difference is an ontological paradigm, and reason and logic reflect the negations in one side off its other. The reification of this side reflected is termed “mind.” The reification is ontological, not psychological. It is a negation of substance in time or process taken outside of time and suspended. This suspended side cannot endure and collapses back into process. Process is the negation of substance in time, and once reflected, collapses back into substance as the here and now. The here and now collapse into the past and future there only to reemerge as the here and now. Again, these are not epistemological shifts, but shifts in being. The phenomenal field is the noumenal field or the for itself is the in itself unrecognized, but experienced in the shift. Just as a winner is reflected in the loser; the shiftfrom one to its other is not the content of experience, but experience itself.

Reality

Kant held that Existence is a pure idea and a category of thought. Instead, Absolute Being is a side of the paradigm of Being/not Being. Being, not Mind, is the core of Reality. The shift into not-Being and the negation of Being is the dispersion of Being into and infinity of finite beings offset by the medium of spacetime.The medium of spacetime is negation of the infinite and affirmation or shift into finitude in the finite/infinite paradigm. This negationis the consciousness of the past, yet the Absolute cannot be in the past for the Absolute is a negation of separation by time and space, but has yet to recognize its alienation, negation and shift, and the here and now struggle to shift back into one spirit through the laws of nature and matter. The Absolute perfection and infinity of Being is now the Hegelian “bad” infinity of beings, not concrete ideas,struggling towards infinite reunification. The Absolute is now negated and one-sided, self-repressed in the affirmation of the Relative, and its bad infinite side shifts back into the Absolute seem depressingly impossible and violent according to the laws of nature.

Finite being is the negation of Infinite Being which is alienated and repressed self-unity. Egoism arises with therelative disunity of Being into beings as altruism arises from the relative disunity of beings into the absolute unity of Being. The separated, unique ego is born in the negated unity of many common egos; the physical separationboth blocking and allowing the unifying shift of beings into Being. Finite being in spacetime is conscious life and not-being in spacetime is conscious death. Death is a negation of life, as life is the negation of death, and negationisconsciousness. The finite establishes its side in any ontological negation of its infinite side. A simple pain reflects one’s finitude against infinitude. Oneside’s imperfection reflects and confirms the other side’s perfection and shift into perfection.

Descartes’ deduction of God through the idea of perfection against the ontological fact of Descartes’ imperfection does not work as an a priori idea. Instead, perfectionis a side of a paradigm of being; as the ontologically imperfect is instantly established against the reality of the perfect as is the perfect is established against the imperfect, captured in the reflection of the being/Being paradigm. In short, God’s infinite, perfect beingis ontologically established in the reality of finite being. Not the idea, but the fact of imperfection and finitude is the fact of perfection and infinitude. Where the fact of the one is, is the fact of its other. The sides of the paradigm of reality are inseparable; for although different sides, they are the same in the paradigm of being/Being. God’s Being is experienced in a simple cut reflecting one’s finitude against His infinitude.

The Phenomenology of Negation

The phenomenology of negation is opposed to the neumonology of negation. Negation is not a destructive process. Any visual scene is one of contrasts, and contrasts are negations as in colors, hues, shapes, etc. Finite negations offset other negations, but do not overcome them. These negations are the limits ontic unities, and finite unities form identities and shapes. Identities are inorganic and organic forms or shapes that are intelligible other-conscious beings. Consciousness is therefore pervasive in the natural universe. Minimal consciousness is a simple negation of one or all unities: ‘this unity is not that unity’ ad infinitum. Self-consciousness occurs when and where the origin of negation negates that negation forming a conscious identity. This negation of the original negation is self-reflection in its unity.This is the phenomenal field. The field is an infinity of negations, and this infinity is a negation of finite beings. The Absolute is formed in the comprehensive negation of the infinity of finite negations.In negating its other, the Relative, the Absolute becomes a self-conscious, infiniteBeing outside of spacetime which is the structure of its content. The content shifts into form as the form shifts into content.

Being/not being

The Being/notbeingrealizes itself in the paradigm of matter and spirit.Finite being is the paradigm of being/not being, and the finite factof being/not being is infinitely realized in itself. That eternal fact resides within the eternal unity of Absolute Being, for it only disappears in the disunity of Relativity swallowed by an infinite series, yet it is eternally registered in its negation. The negation of spacetime is accomplished through instruments by which spirituality enters in the intentional shape of the world.

Having lost their original unity, beings shift back into Being through the negation of otherness until the ego is born fully reflected in its presence, its appearance, which is its unique ownership of the present, and stands opposed to all when realized, yet shared. The shared presence is indistinguishable for the ego’s identity is in its differences and negations.Some negations are structural giving an appearance while most are idiosyncratic. Unfortunately, the complete shift into the absolute unity of Being is impossible due to the paradigm of spacetime; so, the shift is eternally ongoing through death and loss, birth and gain.It is a vortex of side by side unity and disunity. The ego is both repelled and attracted to its species. Its species is both attracted and repelled to other species. The material side of being, the physical universe, unites or divides under natural laws as the immaterial side, the world, unites or divides under spiritual laws. The physical law of gravity and the spiritual law of justice are made perceptible through matter. Bodies areunited by gravity forming planets only to be torn apart by the same forces, and societies are united and torn apart by justice and its negation.

Consciousness reached infinite ontological negations in the human mammal. Its World is physically shaped through the controlled and contained natural laws; itis spiritually shaped throughspiritual laws. Natural laws govern the body and spiritual laws govern the intention.These laws are the structures of their respective sides of being. Morality is a necessary human condition of freely chosen spiritual forms of good or evil and physical forms of natural laws. For example, hospitals choose natural laws to follow such as immunity and spiritual laws such as necessary benefit while torture chambers choose physical laws such as force, pressure, temperature, etc. and spiritual laws such as unnecessary harm.

Egoism

Egoism is a reification of the one/many paradigm. Each reification is a suspended negation and not a true identity or essence. Who-someone-is is not what someone is. Who is only built in a community that holds contrasting who’s. Doctors, lawyers, artists, etc. or the who-is-who list is only possible in the world, but human beings are their shared essence only possible through nature. Capitalism is the economics of egoism. Egoism is a disregard of the consequences of the egoist’s act to others. It is self-affirmation through chosen negations of others and things affirming the me. The affirmation of egoism is Marx’s alienation of property. The metaphysics of “me” and “mine” emerges. That negation ranges from absolute as in murder to relative as in rudeness. Egoism is a reified shift of the many into one, and the one is the suspended negation of the many.