0001 What is Reality?

Reality is a journal for philosophical discourse.

It is worthy of financial support by people of good will.

Reality is the only journal, to date, closing the gap between Thomistic philosophy and Peircean semiotics.

0002 John Deely (1942-2017) finds the loops through which a thread of reality now runs.  The two loops?  A thread of reality?  John Poinsot (1589-1644), a Baroque scholastic in the tradition of Thomism, and Charles Peirce (1839-1914), an American philosopher, chemist and intellectual voyager, formulate the same definition of sign.  One marks the end of the Latin Age, the second age of understanding.  The other starts the Age of Triadic Relations, the fourth age of understanding.  The thread is the realness of sign-relations.

Reality is the only journal, to date, running more threads through these loops.

0003 In contrast, Razie Mah builds little figures, illuminating triadic relations.  He constructs a grand theodramatic narrative, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion”, where these triadic diagrams shine.  They glimmer in the darkness of the current Age of Ideas.

The same darkness shrouds Reality.

0004 With this said, I open the pages of Kirk Kanzelberger’s essay, titled, “Reality and the Meaning of Evil” published in the inaugural issue of Reality (volume 1(1) (2020) pages 146-204).

0005 I also have, in hand, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

Perhaps, these triadic structures will serve as guides.

0006 Section one of Kanzelberger’s article, “Reality and the Meaning of Evil“, opens with a conversation between a party animal and a graduate student.

The exchange begins with the idea that evil is privation.  As such, evil does not make sense.

The discourse ends with the idea that evil is real and, as such, evil makes sense.

Clearly, the conversation starts on one level and ends on another.  Plus, the conversation wrestles with a very important caveat.

If evil is a positive entity, then it must have been created by God.  But if God is good, and His creation is called “good” in Genesis, then evil must be privation, a lack of good.  God does not create evil.  We do.

0007 Does this fit into a category-based nested form?

Yes, it fits two of them.

On a content level_a, the level below morality, evil is privation and does not make sense.

On a situation level_b, the moral level, evil is real and makes sense.

0008 On the content level_a, we ask, “What is happening?_3a”  This is the platform for things and events_2a, situating the potential of ‘something’ subjective_1a.  Here, evil is privation and does not make sense because it is subjective.

On the situation level_b, we think, “What does it mean to me?_3b”  This is where phantasms_2b emerge from the potential of constructing objects, mind-dependent beings_1b.  Here is where evil is real and sensible, because it is objective.

0009 Objective?

‘Something’ objective can also be shared.  It can be intersubjective. In order to become intersubjective, the phantasm_2bmust be actualized.  Intersubjective beings are objective and subject to rational judgment by oneself and others.

0010 Here is a diagram of the previous blog.

0011 In section two, Kanzelberger follows Aquinas (who follows Aristotle) by starting with the content level_a.

Nature is subjective.  Good is the potential of a whole subject.  Evil is a privation, a compromise of the whole.  A bird’s wing is broken.  Poor thing.  Since each subject is good in itself, conflicts between perfections (wholenesses) may be seen as loss (for one subject) and success (for the other subject).

0012 A cat breaks the wing of a bird.  In doing so, the cat (a subject) acts as if the bird is an object (here, a mind-independent actuality held as a mind-dependent being).  Such is the cat’s perfection.  If the cat cannot perform this way, it cannot track reality.

The content level buzzes with a hodge-podge of subjects, some of which may objectify other subjects.  Evil, as privation, depends on each subject.  Since all subjects are different, natural biological evil has no consistency, no potential for appearing intersubjective, and therefore, makes no sense.

0013 Or, does it?

We (humans) are watching, doesn’t that count for ‘something_1b’?

0014 The human, Kanzelberger writes, “aspires to know more and more of the being of nature in its natural constitution.”  Humans are always busy trying to figure out what is happening_3a.  What does it mean to me_3b?  Our objective potential_1btries to make sense of each subjective potential_1a, resulting in our fallible phantasms_2b.

The human sees the cat strike the bird_2a, witnessing perfection in the cat and privation in the bird.

The cat subjectively_1a wants to objectively_1b wound the bird.

The human throws a guess_2b as surely as the cat throws its paw.

0015 A phantasm_2b does not gain the full potential of its objectivity_1b until it becomes intersubjective_1b.  In order to become intersubjective, it must be constellated_2b.

0016 An objective phantasm_2b can become intersubjective_1b, in two, non-exclusive ways, through judgment_2c and through discourse_2a.

In the first option, the intersubjective_1b stands at the gates of the suprasubjective_1c.  Passage leads to a judgment_2c.

In the second option, the object_2b stands at the gates of human blather_1a.

0017 Blather?

An event_2a gives rise to a phantasm_2b, in the mind of a beholder, who, without delay, decides to release that phantasm_2bfor someone else to hear_2a.  The decision_3c casts the phantasm_2b down, like a bolt of lightning, into an event_2a, born of human subjectivity_1a.

0018 The observer says, “Did you see that? That cat broke the bird’s wing.”

To which the graduate student replies, “Say what?”

“That cat is evil!”, the observer declares.

“Oh no, God made all cats in His goodness. But, still, the cat’s action may be a symbol of an evil, murderous and immoral spirit.  The symbol doesn’t apply to the cat.  The cat becomes a symbol to us.”

0019 Here is a picture of the ongoing conversation between observer and graduate student.

0020 The party animal says what pops into “her” head.  The graduate student replies that the declaration turns one actor in the event_2a into a symbol of evil_2b.

0021 The observer scratches “her” head, asking, “Did God create the symbol?”

Ah, the mind-dependent reality of a symbol_2b may enter into the slot of the phantasm_2b as a stand-in for the mind-independent reality of the cat’s action_2a.

Or so, the graduate student judges_2c.

0022 Clearly, the cat cannot be evil, since the cat acts out its perfection. The cat is what it is. But, if the cat were human, then such injurious action would be immoral, if not illegal.  Thus, the cat’s action becomes a symbol of what ought not to be.  The graduate student’s well-trained intellect brings what is into relation with what ought to be.

The phantasm_2b, first objective_1b in the observer_3b, then intersubjective_1b in both observer_3a and student_3a, supports the formation of a suprasubjective judgment_2c.  If the observer_3b follows the rules of reason, agreement_1a resonates with truth_1c.  The same agreement_1a might happen if the observer_3b is enthralled by the graduate student_3b, or visa versa. 

0023 What is a judgment_2c?

A judgment_2c is a triadic relation composed of three elements: relation, what is and what ought to be.

0024 Here is a picture of the observer’s utterance, spoken without reflection.

0025 In this, a cat stands for ‘something’ evil, even though God created the cat in goodness.  Somehow, the observer plucks a symbol of the cat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then declares that symbol to be relevant, without a second thought.  That symbol describes a person, who breaks the wings of another person.

Surely, such a person is evil.

0026 The observer’s declaration has all the ingredients that go into a judgment.

However, it comes out as blather_2a, a subjective_1a event, pretending to be intersubjective_2b, and therefore carries the weight of judgment_2c.

The party animal anticipates that the graduate student will agree with the statement.

If “he” does not, then “she” will look foolish.

No one wants that.

0027 Is there a privation here?

The observer’s impression_2b claims to be true, as opposed to false, or maybe, deceptive.  It_2b appears to be sensible.  It_2bcoheres with the structure of judgment.  Yet, it_2b really is just a way of saying that people can be like cats.  It_2b is an object_2b that does not express the fullness of its intersubjective potential because it makes sense_1b.  More or less. No judgment is really needed.  Only agreement.  Humans are cats.