Bakker XLIV: The Goddess of Negative Theology

[Baztek]

9 minutes ago, Hello World said:

Can the gods create a white-luck virus and just kill Kellhus with it?

If the gods can make it so that everything happens to allow the wlw to achieve whatever they want (like the building falling after he leaves it), why do they even need the wlw himself? Can't they make a building fall on Kellhus' head or give him a heart attack? 

Gods can see the causal web but presumably not manipulate it all that well

 

4 hours ago, Callan S. said:

This bring us back to unexplained magic.

The means by which this is done? The right place, the right time...but still free will?

HE, if I understood his position correctly, seemed to suggest that no matter what people do in the world, the WLW then uses the physical events of it to future advantage (like the notch in the sword that latter breaks). As in trying to just use whatever they do rather than predict their intent - but it just seems a way of avoiding showing a lack of free will. I mean, why focus on the knotched sword killing the emperor if the WLW might have to take advantage of any other number of other situations because free will means another situation happens? But the WLW sees himself behind and in front, in a path, not an probabilistic explosion of himself all around.

More like he's able to calculate for free will on the fly. Or maybe Earwa is deterministic. 

[all swedes are racist]

So wait, (I'm sure this has been brought up before) but is the WLW a self moving soul?

[Callan S.]

2 hours ago, Baztek said:

Or maybe Earwa is deterministic. 

It seems to beg the question.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

So wait, (I'm sure this has been brought up before) but is the WLW a self moving soul?

I think it's the opposite. Everything that the WLW does is decided, will be decided and has already happened. And it's decided by the gods. It might be considered a god-moving soul, but it certainly isn't self moving. It's not clear if WLW even has self any more.

[Hello World]

Deterministic means that all the events that have ever happened and will happen in the future are already determined, right? 

So is the wlw the God's way of manipulating this whole chain and changing what's already been written? Like the scroll analogy that someone once made? Or is everything that he does part of the original chain it's just that the gods don't see it? 

[Sci-2]

Based on Bakker's past comments I don't think the Bakkerverse is deterministic in the non-teleological, causal chain sense.

Whether it's a block universe, however.....maybe?

[Baztek]

On 6/24/2016 at 1:23 PM, Sci-2 said:

Nice. 

I have to admit I'm having trouble conceptualizing the No-God as simultaneously being a purely material intellect - and thus invisible to the Gods - while simultaneously it affects the world's relationship to the Outside. 

I suppose it is an AI in some form, though this also makes me wonder if anyone is in the Carapace?

 

here's what I think's going on:

First is the Solitary God. One, nondual, beyond description, Hegelian pure Being which "is as death", yadda yadda etc.

 

Solitary God fractures. Subject-object/watcher-watched.

In the Bakkerverse, the Hundred are the extreme end of the Subject continuum (I know it's a dichotomy and not a continuum but bear with me), as in they are subjectivities that bend reality to their own central, overriding tendency, which is the desire that a particular God is the absolute manifestation of.

 

Earwa, Becoming (though a Becoming that's not as rigid as the real world and all), is where the subject-object relation finds an uneasy sorta-equilibrium, where subjects exist but are beholden to objective conditions. 

 

The No-God is to the Object (matter, physicality, non-being, simply that which is without agency or impetus in the One) what the Hundred are to the Subject. It is the Absolute Object. Absolute in that it bends reality to its "will" - although that "will" simply means the stratification and disenchanting of existence. Object because it is dead, inert, without perception, and yet it is perceived/felt by all subjects in Earwa even without their meaning to or even knowing what it is. 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

The No-God is to the Object (matter, physicality, non-being, simply that which is without agency or impetus in the One) what the Hundred are to the Subject. It is the Absolute Object. Absolute in that it bends reality to its "will" - although that "will" simply means the stratification and disenchanting of existence. Object because it is dead, inert, without perception, and yet it is perceived/felt by all subjects in Earwa even without their meaning to or even knowing what it is.

Good stuff. I think you hit the nail on the head, the No-God is the Absolute Object.

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

great stuff Baztek. So does the Solitary God fracture when, in the attempt to self-conceive, it must first make itself its own object?

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Based on Bakker's past comments I don't think the Bakkerverse is deterministic in the non-teleological, causal chain sense.

Whether it's a block universe, however.....maybe?

What is a block universe? And what comments did bakker make that indicated that things aren't deterministic?

Doesn't prophecy imply determinism?

[JGP]

21 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Doesn't prophecy imply determinism?

It does to my philosophical understanding. I avoid prophecy like the fucking plague in my own writing, for that very reason. 

 

[edit] The block universe school of thought approaches absurdity in my opinion, but I really despise the idea of an infinite multiverse-- especially in a universe like Bakker's. The premise robs his ideas of significance. Actions, in whatever form, may mean something in the past and present, but otherwise don't really mean anything in the greater scheme of things? I don't think that's what Bakker is going for. 

[Hello World]

"Object because it is dead, inert, without perception"

How do you explain him asking the questions? 

[Sci-2]

On 6/25/2016 at 7:59 PM, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

What is a block universe? And what comments did bakker make that indicated that things aren't deterministic?

Doesn't prophecy imply determinism?

Block Universe that linear time is an illusion, no actual past/present/future as it all exists at once.

He noted something about the way souls and normal causality in a mundane world interact. This was years ago, so maybe I misunderstood him.As for prophecy, note there are apparently "false" prophecies and "true" prophecies according to the Inchies. Seems like there are at least two paths you can go by, maybe with some chance to change the road your on in long run.

[What the fuck is going on with the text options...]

On 6/25/2016 at 4:13 PM, Baztek said:

here's what I think's going on:

First is the Solitary God. One, nondual, beyond description, Hegelian pure Being which "is as death", yadda yadda etc.

Solitary God fractures. Subject-object/watcher-watched.

In the Bakkerverse, the Hundred are the extreme end of the Subject continuum (I know it's a dichotomy and not a continuum but bear with me), as in they are subjectivities that bend reality to their own central, overriding tendency, which is the desire that a particular God is the absolute manifestation of.

Earwa, Becoming (though a Becoming that's not as rigid as the real world and all), is where the subject-object relation finds an uneasy sorta-equilibrium, where subjects exist but are beholden to objective conditions. 

The No-God is to the Object (matter, physicality, non-being, simply that which is without agency or impetus in the One) what the Hundred are to the Subject. It is the Absolute Object. Absolute in that it bends reality to its "will" - although that "will" simply means the stratification and disenchanting of existence. Object because it is dead, inert, without perception, and yet it is perceived/felt by all subjects in Earwa even without their meaning to or even knowing what it is. 

I'm not so sure the Bakkerverse is the less rigid one. If you go with quantum mechanics and  Meillassoux's hyperchaos, which makes all natural laws contingent, we might be the more free as we presumably don't have the World conspiring against our plans.

I like the idea of No-God as Absolute Object (admittedly the term itself outruns my knowledge of philosophy, I stumbled on to hyperchaos and the Absolute of speculative materialism like Bruce Wayne falling down the well).....but to echo Hello World why does it ask questions? Perhaps it's not so much dead as undead? By that I mean it, like the Skin Spies, is devoid of a soul but at the same is concretely aware of this lack? It is a being that cannot apprehend paradox (b/c it lacks genuine self-awareness) but can apprehend the lack? Thus "What do you see?" might be a request for the World entire to complete the internal watcher/watched circle?

Question is do Skin Spies ever have thoughts about thoughts? Because it seems one could argue from the Skin Spy PoVs they do self-reflect in some sense?

Basically intuitively I feel like you're going in the right direction but it's hard for me to see, beyond the obvious chain to lust + inability to comprehend paradox, what Skin-Spy consciousness lacks.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Block Universe is where everything is made of LEGO.

[Sci-2]

1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

Block Universe is where everything is made of LEGO.

Well Lego Movie is the greatest philosophical fantasy work in the last decade...

[Darth Richard II]

4 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Well Lego Movie is the greatest philosophical fantasy work in the last decade...

I agree.

[Baztek]

2 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

I'm not so sure the Bakkerverse is the less rigid one. If you go with quantum mechanics and  Meillassoux's hyperchaos, which makes all natural laws contingent, we might be the more free as we presumably don't have the World conspiring against our plans.

I like the idea of No-God as Absolute Object (admittedly the term itself outruns my knowledge of philosophy, I stumbled on to hyperchaos and the Absolute of speculative materialism like Bruce Wayne falling down the well).....but to echo Hello World why does it ask questions? Perhaps it's not so much dead as undead? By that I mean it, like the Skin Spies, is devoid of a soul but at the same is concretely aware of this lack? It is a being that cannot apprehend paradox (b/c it lacks genuine self-awareness) but can apprehend the lack? Thus "What do you see?" might be a request for the World entire to complete the internal watcher/watched circle?

Question is do Skin Spies ever have thoughts about thoughts? Because it seems one could argue from the Skin Spy PoVs they do self-reflect in some sense?

Basically intuitively I feel like you're going in the right direction but it's hard for me to see, beyond the obvious chain to lust + inability to comprehend paradox, what Skin-Spy consciousness lacks.

 

That's a cool article definitely gonna read it.

 

About the No-God, pretty much what you said. I think giving the No-God power over what is supposed to be, by principle, immune to the persuasion of the subjectivities like the gods is the reason why it asks question. It's like frankenstein's metaphysical monster, it's just not supposed to exist.

There's an interesting idea of mundane human consciousnss as just meta-awareness of different processes, and so the object of ascesis and meditation an all that, is to produce and sustain a constant consciousness of one's consciousness. If the PoVs actually mean Skin-Spies are introspecting even if its about getting a nut off then they're officially at human level

[Baztek]

A reallyyyy sick quote from Carlo Michaelstaedr about the nature of desire and death. I'm even getting EAMD vibes from the last lin:

I know I want and do not have what I want. A weight hangs suspended from a hook; being suspended, it suffers because it cannot fall: it cannot get off the hook, for insofar as it is weight it suspends, and as long as it suspends it depends. We want to satisfy it: we free it from its dependence, letting it go so that it might satisfy its hunger for what lies below, and it falls independently for as long as it is content to fall. But at none of the points attained is it content to stop; it still wants to fall, for the next point below continually overtakes in lowness that which the weight has just attained. Nor will any future point be such as to render it content, being necessary to the weight`s life insofar, as it awaits below; but every time a point is made present, it will be emptied of all attraction, no longer being below; thus does it want at every point the points below it, and those attract it more and more. It is always drawn by an equal hunger for what is lower, and the will to fall remains infinite with it always.

If at some point its will were finished and it could possess in one point the infinite descent of the infinite future, at that point it would no longer be what it is – a weight.
 

s life is this want of life. If it no longer wanted but were finished, perfect, if it possessed its own self, it would have ended its existence. At that point, as its own impediment to possessing life, the weight would not depend on what is external as much as on its own self, in that it is not given the means to be satisfied. The weight can never be persuaded.

Nor is any life ever satisfied to live in any present, for insofar as it is life it continues, and it continues into the future to the degree that it lacks life. If it were to possess itself completely here and now and be in want of nothing-if it awaited nothing in the future-it would not continue: it would cease to be life.

So many things attract us in the future, but in vain do we want to possess them in the present.

 

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

Personally am a believer in a garden of forking paths block multiverse in which all possibilities are but in which we are experientially limited to a single timeline (with at each branch another experiencing I non-voluntarily taking the other course). Bakkerverse is complicated vastly by teleology, which ensures favoured paths, but I also get the impression that there is branching and not just a single determined path (something of this as seen in the Probability Trance).

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Gasp of Many Reeds said:

Personally am a believer in a garden of forking paths block multiverse in which all possibilities are but in which we are experientially limited to a single timeline (with at each branch another experiencing I non-voluntarily taking the other course). Bakkerverse is complicated vastly by teleology, which ensures favoured paths, but I also get the impression that there is branching and not just a single determined path (something of this as seen in the Probability Trance).

And again, how can a prophecy mean that there are forking paths?