Donnadogsoth

A monad? You. You affect the sensory world, and from that example of yourself you can see that that which affects the sensory world is non-sensory in nature. So you can move from yourself to other humans, and from the human race to the race of non-human principles with which you interact, which are proven to exist by science. And that is substance, efficient cause. Without principle as substance, we face a void behind the sense-data, akin to solipsism. The Origin, however, is not a thing. It cannot exist as we exist. Neither can it not exist. It's altogether different, being the Absolute. As such it is alienating, recondite, and remote, but its affect on humanity is impressive, through the medium of Christ. Christ was the overlap between man and Absolute, and that life lived, snapped history in two like a dry twig into BC and AD, and salvaged human potential to reach the stars from base Rome.

Occam's razor and conservation of mass are rules of thumb, not principles in the same sense that universal gravitation or the principle of sufficient reason are principles. But even if they were, it would not matter. Where did principles come from? Also, don't confuse organisms' nervous reliance on sense-data, for ontological primacy of that data. Those animals are monads interacting with other monads (animals, principles, etc.). What that interaction looks like is what it happens to look like, and nothing more.

Hookup culture seduces youth as well as adults, getting them into the habit of loveless genital union. This pseudoculture influences the whole society, weaking the meaning, and therefore the value, of marriage in the eyes of the many. Before the sexual revolution there was a marriage culture that supported the idea of marriage, and while that wasn't perfected, it existed to increase the prestige of marriage and celebrated its fruits. Now we have a culture of death, including a suicidal birthrate in the West, as more and more young people either marry later, or don't marry at all, with fewer than ever opting to reproduce, which is seen as a "drag".

The monads all operate as if they were creative minds, albeit extremely single-minded creative minds. The orbit of Terra thinks of nothing but that orbit, as it interacts with the other relevant principles. But the principles that are not relevant, refrain from acting. So we have principles that act and other principles that act by not acting, similar to how an individual person can act or not act, as the case may be. So it's this interaction that generates the "stuff" or substance of the universe, which interacts with our "stuff" to generate a sensory input. But those senses are strictly speaking part of our minds--influenced by the interaction of the other monads or principles, but still part of our minds. The substance per se it outside of us, or as a congregate of our minds and those principles together. Universal applies to the universe, and you're right that it should apply to all things, all substances. The problem is, the Origin is not a thing or a substance, per se. It's weird. God is weird. That is the problem with lumping the Origin in with the universe, when the Origin precedes the universe and is completely unlike the universe or any of its components, which a certain qualifier which we can say, that the human mind is made in Its image. That's why the Origin matters. If humans view themselves as made in the Origin's image, then the Origin is hugely relevant, because it speaks to human potential, relation, meaning, and destiny. It magnifies man to realise he is a noble creature by this virtue. It reduces and degrades man to think that he is not, that he is the child of a pitiless void or virtual void.

We know a principle of universal gravitation exists. We can discover it, or rediscover it, and see how it affects the operation of the solar system. If we reduce that principle to a mere concept, shorn of substantiality, we beg the question of where is the real substance of the universe. You want to locate that substance in our senses, that if we see a ruler it is a straight ruler—until we put half of it into a glass of water. The senses are demonstrably not indicative of substance, they indicate the shadows of substantial interactions beyond our sensory purview. That substantial interaction is the realm of the monads which form thought-objects in the minds which discover them through the resolution of ontological paradox. To the Origin, of course it's outside principled reality, for where did principled reality come from in the first place? What maintains it after it came into being? Why does it not fall into nothingness? As to the Origin as subject of care, object of worship, I will not speak to that here, for fear of over-freighting the dialogue.

Ah, but where did the principles come from? We can ignore it, we can be silly about it and say "pink unicorns," or we can be serious and say "the Origin". That is, the Origin is that which precedes principle and therefore is outside of principled universality.

A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, is an accessible, 11-volume work, and should be as broad, long, and deep as you desire.

The most correct thing to understand about pornography is that it is an operation designed to destroy you. Its creators may be "innocent" of this understanding, but the stuff remains for the having, and with the same effect: to wipe out your Christian sense of sexual morality. Whether you're "a Christian" or not is immaterial to understanding that the old morality, the traditional, heterosexual, marriage-as-sacrament morality, is part of what the oligarchs find it in their interest to allow to decay, including here by the purveying of extremely ripe fruit. "...The jaundiced man sees the whole world through the sour yellow of his own disposition. 'He that is giddy thinks the world goes round'--if you cannot conceive of the power of purity, yours is the problem and not the virtue's. If you have spent many hours, each one duller than the last, poring over pornographic images of the sexes, you'll not be able to see [shakespeare's The Winter's Tale lovers] Perdita and Doricles as anything other than engagers in the same old act: the Wife of Bath's 'olde daunce,' and she isn't speaking of a reel or a polka. You will miss the beauty of this moment. You will miss its very soul. "I am insisting on this, because the sexual revolution has scorched us all, and has made it nearly impossible to understand the goodness of purity, in both its masculine and feminine embodiments. We can hardly believe that the virtue exists at all [or that any virtue exists, other than the virtue of being fashionable]. Nor do we see the inner harmony between that virtue and others that we do still say we believe in, such as kindness, generosity, and loyalty. "It was not supposed to be this way " 'If you're not with the one you love,' sang the rockers at the Woodstock festival, 'love the one you're with.' " 'I'm with you,' said a girl to a perfect stranger." --Anthony Esolen, Defending Marriage https://books.google.ca/books?id=JDwqCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=esolen+marriage&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=esolen%20marriage&f=false

The "Origin" = God; "origin" = big bang or somesuch. I notice whenever objections are raise to the Origin, they always come in the form of the trivial and absurd--Spaghetti Monster, Santa Claus, magic ladybugs, etc., whereas the Origin is the most profound thing imaginable. So those objections are really silly. What caused Santa Claus? What caused the interstellar sneeze? Etc. The only conclusion is the Origin. Principles, yes, as the substances of the universe. The Origin is beyond this similar to how Truth is beyond the scientific truthfulness with which we truck. The Infinite is beyond the Temporal, yet we take the Infinite seriously, even though we take the Infinite's existence on faith. Not a mindless or absurd faith, but a kind of faith. So the Origin, by the principle of sufficient reason.

Not started by homosexuals. The sexual revolution is larger than that. If we're going to pin blame on any group, I recommend the feminists, who have done more wittingly to divide the sexes than anyone.

The point is not how much Gay couples love each other, here, the point is the sexual revolution itself has badly corroded heterosexuality, including to the point of making heterosexuals more "homosexual" in the sense of the observed homosexual male "cruising" behaviour. Hookup culture, one-night-stands, friends with benefits, fuckbuddies, and whatever other, increasingly popular permutations that make heterosexuals seem like stereotypical homosexuals is, from the perspective of healthy, heterosexual relationships, sexual horror.

Interesting post, interesting question, CA. As a Christian, I work at keeping my beliefs as fundamental as possible, by which I mean as principled as possible. I'm a Catholic but I don't get bent out of shape about being Catholic; I defend Catholicism but largely because it is a bulwark of Western civilisation, less so because I believe every jot and tittle of Church dogma, which I don't, even as I respect the Church in general. No, what I mean is, I approach Christianity from the perspective of classical humanism, viewing the Crucifixion as the pivotal event in human history in terms of what it means for every particular human being who has ever lived. So that can constitute a principle of relationship of individual to Christ, of individual to all mankind, and of individual to universe. That's my perspective. My ideal wife would have to accept that principle, in some terms or other. I would have to accept it, and I'm not entirely sure I do, or just like to think that I do. So just as I'm coming from a Catholic start, approaching that principle, my ideal wife could be coming from an atheist start. If it's a valid principle, and if we're self-conscious, honest people, we will arrive there, regardless of dogma or anti-dogma.

Here is a substantial Google preview of a book by Anthony Esolen defending marriage from the poststructuralist dissipation. A few quotes caught my eye though the book is eminently quotable: "So the sexual revolution has already wrought a 'culture' in which men and women do not love one another as deeply and as gratefully as they ought to, and this is true despite any particular couple's devotion. I believe that any honest and careful observer must come to this conclusion. Nine hundred years ago in southern France, a tradition of love poetry began, sometimes bawdy and merry, often almost religious in tenor, to sing the praises of the poet's lady love. For all those nine hundred years, that is what men have done. Robert burns sang that his love was like a red, red rose; and the Italian folk artist Ernesto De Curtis begged his beloved to come back to Sorrento; and one William Douglas vowed that for his bonnie Annie Laurie, he'd lay him down and dee; and Stephen Foster, aching for the woman who had left him, sang that he dreamed of Jeannie with the light brown hair. "This tradition is in its death rattle. Why should we have expected otherwise? When men and women are taught, first, to use other people as objects of sexual excitement, not as if they were animals but as if they were toys or robots, do we really expect that they should all at once see the beauty and nobility of the other sex? Call it the punishment of contempt. If you treat with contempt something that in reality claims your honor and your love, the contempt you cast redounds upon your own proper head. You become someone contemptible. So now popular musicians do not sing lyrically about a woman's beauty or a man's courage. Instead they whine or grunt like animals in a sweltering pen. They have almost nothing kind to say to one another." https://books.google.ca/books?id=JDwqCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=esolen+marriage&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false "But we must unite the sexes--not just a John and Mary here and there, but men and women generally, for one another. Unless they unite, the culture cannot survive. The women split away to protect their persons and their relatively few children, and grow harried and cynical; the unattached males pass the dull hours in frivolity or destruction."

The Origin of the origin satisfies the intellect's desire for a sufficient reason for the universe to exist. Without the Origin the universe violates the principle of sufficient reason. Other unproven things have no such claim to such importance.

If the Santa, the leprechaun, the unicorn, or the FSM were postulated to have the qualities of the Origin, then their names would be a reference to that Origin. In a sense, it doesn't matter what the Origin is called. Identity of indiscernibles, and all that. As to entities that are not the Origin but may be "special cases," I agree with you.

Sorry, that was Koroviev who said it. "Truth" as in sum of all principles, including the Origin. There are an infinity of principles not known which nevertheless exist and affect us, in principle, but they are consistent and can be empirically supported, also in principle, so they must not be excluded from our scope of affairs. They merely lurk, acting undetectably or apparently randomly on our sensoria, until such time as they are discovered by science or art. Your last sentence evokes Leibniz's principle of identity of indiscernibles. And this seems to apply greatly in clearing away a lot of metaphysical rubbish from our thinking, paranoid ideas about what if undetectable particles exist beyond all possible purview, etc.. But, I must exclude from this rubbish heap God, or the Origin of origin, preceding truth and existence. God is a special case, and one of the few things we can know of God is that, as per the principle of identity of indiscernibles, there is only one of Him. God is not logical, for He precedes and defines logic, but neither is He illogical or chaotic. Empirically, He precedes and defines empirical effects. So, He affects us in terms of being the Origin, in terms of embodying Truth, and in terms of defining a teleology of Soul. With this exception, which is so strange that “existence” doesn't strictly apply to It, and Its ramifications, I would agree with you about “that that which is not logically consistent and cannot be empirically supported cannot exist” in terms of mundane and virtually-universal usage of the word “exist,” and that “We can also say that even if there are things that we cannot understand[,] because they have no impact on our reality are no different from not existing because they cannot be empirically supported (and usually they aren't logically consistent either),” again with the exception that, super-Naturally, the Origin does have impact on our reality by allowing that reality to exist.

The Truth is consistent, it always remains the same, and has an observable effect on the universe, seen by the universe's continual activity. But the Truth is something we do not know in the same way we know the principle of universal gravitation. We know it in a negative sense of there always being more to know, and thus to strive for. No?

Academic narcissism disrobed in all its inglorious wretchedness by Heather MacDonald: Download your own doctoral thesis here.

And you said I said "everything is a principle" which is also an inapplicable simplification.

Paragraphs are your friend.

We agree with your first and second sentences. Your last sentence I take issue with. The totality of the truth is unknowable but has bearing on us as we strive towards it. For analogy, take the economic development of the Earth. We don't know how much we can develop it, because we can't see all ends, and don't know all principles. But we do know there is no known principle stopping us from developing it indefinitely. Similarly, we do know there is no known principle stopping us from attaining to ever-increasing levels of knowledge. So in that sense, the unknowable does have bearing on us, as if it were a principle, by showing us a path of infinite development. Materialists say principles are secondary, matter is primary. I say that principles are primary, matter is secondary. That is, the senses show the shadows cast by the interactions of the sum of principles in the universe. These two views appear to me directly inverse.

Materialists hold that the mind is an epiphenomenon, no? So there is some residual “stuff” that materialists consider non-material. Similarly, I consider the residual “stuff” of the senses to be non-principled, or principled in a secondary manner, as it were. Leibniz's monads exist in no place, they are non-local, though it may appear they act on the sensory world in local fashions, as if we demonstrate the catenary principle by using it in the construction of the cupola of the cathedral of Florence. I mean, where are you? You're non-local, though your activity can be localised, the actual “you” aren't anywhere in particular—especially if you're on the telephone, your locality appears less and less. So with the catenary or any principle that exists “nowhere” and “everywhere” though subject only to lawful manifestations. The Platonic forms I am willing to jettison for the purposes of this thread. I believe in them, but it's simpler to argue as if their existence as Plato had them, or as Aristotle had them, were one. I'll calve them off, here. I've never heard Leibniz was a determinist but even if he was it has no bearing on principle. I've never heard Leibniz considered the principles were perfect and the senses were imperfect but it doesn't matter much if it were so. I have already implied a kind of imperfection in the senses due to their secondary and misleading nature. About your Jamaican whale, it's only convention that considers dreams “inside the mind” and waking sensuousness “outside the mind”. Both dream and waking life are products of the same principled interactions, even if the specifically applicable principles differ between realms. And to know we are dealing with a real principle we have to prove it, as by experiment, which implies tests of consistency/repeatability in the empirical realm.

[shrug] Materialists say everything is material. I'm not sure about feldspar. It might not be a monad, it might just be faking it. But, that's for science to decide.

Indeed, we face the monadology of Leibniz, where you and I and many other things are monads and therefore principles under the definition I have given, a substance that causes events. The principle of squaring would indeed be the cause of the unfolding of the square, as best I can tell, just as the principle of sufficient reason is the cause of things having reasons, and the principle of universal gravitation is the cause of gravitic effects.

Principle is a substance that causes an event to exist or could cause such an event, even if it is presently quiescent. The squaring principle governs the unfolding existence and positioning of a spiral of increasingly large square roots, for example. I said creative reason is a principle, but I don't know if that includes rational consistency and empiricism. It seems it must, doesn't it? But I don't want to submit that logic is a principle as such, as logic is uncreative. Rational consistency and empirical verification appear to be necessary to creative reason, but are they separate principles or are they the rotational angle and the squared length respectively of the squaring principle?