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Bakker XLIV: The Goddess of Negative Theology


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6 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

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

The forking paths exist objectively but the fact the world conspires in prophecy and other forms of teleology ensures that not all paths are equally possible. The prophecy may be multiply realised (the obscurity of prophetic language reflects this multiple realisability) but any paths which do not fulfill the prophecy are non-realised as they are non-meaningful, and the Bakkerverse is a world in which meaning supervenes and constrains the realisation of the possible. Some analogies to the effect of ta'veren on the Pattetn in WoT may be here entertained.

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6 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).

Ah, Peer to Peer Hypothesis.

=-=-=

@Baztek

Trying to read that quote of yours...not sure what's up but forum seems on the fritz...

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I don't know if I'm getting the 'block universe' idea right, but such a universe has to be rendered at some point - you can't make the ending before making the start and middle. Therefore it's not all happening at once - not always. Perceptually inside of it you could be in a universe that has entirely completed its rendering or one that is right at the very point in time you feel you are at right now, in its rendering. Either is a philosophically valid perception. In fact it kind of reminds me of how Mimara is written in the present tense, as if in the very rendering right at that point.

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Just finished rereading the first three books in anticipation of the new release.

 

I really have to stick with my original feelings about everything:

 

1. The symbolism: Cnaiur is iron.  Dunyain are stone.  Men (or perhaps, the souls of men) are trees.  

2. Kellhus is wrong when he confronts Moenghus, and Moe allows him to be wrong.  

3. Belief of those Inside can change the objective truth of the world in the Outside.

 

I know this is probably all old hat, but these are the things that strike me most strongly whenever I reread the first three books.

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Typing key words to find some Idealists who aren't among the dead...this guy seems to have ideas akin to the Bakkerverse (which is to say nothing about Bakker's actual philosophy, just that of the fantasy novels).

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Why is there something rather than nothing? This question, famously raised by Leibniz, remains unanswerable as long as we presuppose any of thestandard conceptions of explanation, whereby one thing is caused by another (thunder by lightning, the boiling of water by fire under the kettle, the falling of a body by gravitational force, and so on). Leibniz's question targets reality as a whole, i.e. the totality of what is, and then asks why that totality is there. But, by definition, there is nothing outside the totality (not even 'nothingness') by which it could have been caused. The only way to explain reality, therefore, is through self-explanation. The cause behind reality can only lie within reality. Self-causation is the only possible answer to Leibniz's question. Clearly, however, self-causation is impossible in time. As a temporal process, causation is marked by a temporal distance between cause and effect, such that the cause precedes the effect. Self-causation would then require that the cause precedes in time its own existence, which is absurd. We must assume, therefore, that the self-causation needed to answer Leibniz's question 'happens' outside of time. Also because time itself is something, an object of sorts, a 'thing' with various properties (such as those described by physics). Time, in other words, belongs to the 'something' we are trying to explain when we ask: Why is there something rather than nothing? Since time does not explain its own existence, it must be explained by something else, ultimately by the self-causing cause of reality. But the cause of time cannot itself be in time. Thus, again, the self-causing cause of reality must be timeless. 

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 But how is self-causation possible? How can something bring about its own existence. Here the self-evident experience of our own self-awareness provides us with the only empirical clue we have. The crucial point is that the circularity of self-awareness 'fits' the circularity of self-causation: as the self-causing cause is its own effect, so self-awareness is its own object of awareness. Since self-awareness essentially is its own object of awareness, it cannot exist without being aware of itself. Its being isits self-perception. It bootstraps itself into existence through self-perception. From an empirical standpoint, therefore, self-awareness is our best guess at what the self-causing cause of reality amounts to. I will refer to this as “Absolute Self-Awareness” (ASA), which is "absolute" in the sense of having an unconditioned existence, not dependent on or relative to anything besides itself. Rather, the rest of reality is ultimately dependent upon it. Since the self-causing cause of reality must be timeless (see remark 1), ASA must be timeless as well, an "Eternal Consciousness" in the phrase of T.H. Green. The 'present' in which ASA is present to itself (since self-awareness is a form of self-presence) must be an eternal present, an unchanging now (nunc stans). Clearly, then, we are not talking about individual human self-awareness, as present in you or me. None of us has brought him- or herself and the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others, subject to time. The experience of our own self-awareness may give us empirical access to the self-causation that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this we have to generalize beyond ourselves. We have to project self-awareness to something that transcends us, the Absolute, the unconditioned 'thing' that conditions all of reality.

Arvan, who made the Peer to Peer Hypothesis I mentioned up-thread, once talked about higher and lower frames. The higher frame creates the lower which behaves akin to a simulation. But what the higher frame itself genuinely consists of remains a mystery (why he calls himself a dualist) - here we could say the higher frame is the dream of God, the lower frame the simulation with the branching paths already out there (in the way all paths in a video game are "out there") but w/ mortal collective consciousness only going down one path.

 

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Great stuff sci. Ties into Chris Langan's idea of reality as a self-configuring system that exists in a background medium of infinite potential, pretty much equivalent to the Tao. According to him, reality is self-contained and exists because it is the case for itself. 

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Some really cool stuff about esoteric ideas of the afterlife that is nearly identical to Bakkerverse metaphysics. I used to think Bakker was just using his metaphysics as a vehicle for his philosophical ideas and not apparently, if it is to be believed, describing a real state of affairs that's well-attested in other esoteric literature from many different cultures (I'm just gonna italicize since quoting is wonky now. I'm also bolding for emphasis and my own remarks):

 

What continuously emerges in various forms in ancient traditions is the teaching 
that in man, in addition to the physical body, there are essentially three entities or 
principles, each endowed with its own character and destiny. The first principle cor- 
responds to the conscious "I" typical of the waking state, which arose with the body 
and was formed in parallel with its biological development (reminiscent of the Buddhist understanding of the human organism as a psycho-physical bundle of aggregates with no inherent or absolute identity/reality); this is the ordinary per- 
sonality. The second principle was called "demon'' "manes'', "Lar, and even "double." 
The third and last principle corresponds to what proceeds from the first entity after 
death; for most people, it is the "shadow.'' 

 

As long as a person belongs to "nature," the ultimate foundation of a human 
being is the daemon or "demon," (ΔΑΙΜΩΝ ln Greek); in this context the term does 
not have the evil connotation Christianity bestowed upon it. When man is considered 
from a naturalistic point of view, the demon, could be defined as the deep force that 
originally produced consciousness in the finite form that is the body in which it lives 
during its residence in the visible world. This force eventually remains "behind" the 
individual, in the preconscious and in the subconscious dimensions, as the founda- 
tion of organic processes and subtle relations with the environment, other beings, 
and with past and future destiny; these relations usually elude any direct perception. 
In this regard, in many traditions the demon corresponds to the so-called double, 
which is perhaps a reference to the soul of the soul or the body itself; this "double" 
has also often been closely associated with the primordial ancestor or with the totem 
conceived as the soul and the unitary life that generated a stock, a family, a gens, or 
a tribe, and therefore it. has a broader sense than the one given to it by some schools 
of contemporary ethnology. The single individuals of a group appear as various in- 
carnations or emanations of this demon or totem, which is the ''spirit '', pulsating in 
their blood; they live in it and it lives in them, though transcending them, just as the 
matrix transcends the particular forms it produces out of its own substance.
 
According to esoteric teachings, at the death of the body an ordinary person 
usually loses his or her personality, which was an illusory thing even while that 
person was alive. The person is then reduced to a shadow that is itself destined to be 
dissolved after a more or Less lengthy period culminating in what was called "the 
second death." The essential vital principles of the deceased return to the totem, 
which is a primordial, perennial, and inexhaustible matter; life will again proceed 
from this matter and assume other individual forms, all of which are subject to the 
same destiny. 
 
According to an interesting symbolism, those who follow the lunar path become the food of the totems and are "sacrificed" again by 
them in the semen of new mortal births. According to another significant symbol 
found in the Greek tradition, those who have not been initiated, that is to say, the 
majority of people, are condemned in Hades to do the Danaides' work; carrying 
water in amphorae filled with holes and pouring it into bottomless barrels, thus never 
being able to fill them up; this illustrates the insignificance of their ephemeral lives, 
which keep recurring over and over again, pointlessiy. Another comparable Greek 
symbol is Ocnus, who plaited a rope on the Plains of Lethe. This rope was continu- 
ally eaten by an ass. Ocnus symbolizes man's activity, while the ass traditionally 
embodies the "demonic" power; in Egypt the ass was associated with the snake of 
darkness and with Am-mit, the "devourer of the dead." 
 
To establish ambiguous promiscuities that make individuals more vulnerable to the powers on which they depend as natural beings, thus allowing the center of their being to fall deeper and deeper into the collective and into the prepersonal dimensions and to "placate" or to propitiate certain infernal influences, granting them their wish to become incarnated 
in the souls and in the world of men — this is the essence of an inferior cult that is only 
an extension of the way of being of those who have no cult and no rite at all.

 

Physical beings, in general, are emanations of certain subpersonal principles which have the nature of being drives, tendencies, or to use the Bakker term, Hungers, towards/for some aspect of existence. After a being dies, its waking consciousness is dissolved (since all it ever was a mirage produced by the interplay of the aggregates that constituted it, now disintegrated) and the distinctive currents of force that created it are are re-absorbed by the originary principle.

 

Not saying Damnation as how Bakker describes it is a bona fide real thing, but that death is definitely not the happy-go-lucky kittens & sunshine paradise one is led to believe by NDE accounts (the caveat is is that there is a way to break this cycle).

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Physical beings, in general, are emanations of certain subpersonal principles which have the nature of being drives, tendencies, or to use the Bakker term, Hungers, towards/for some aspect of existence. After a being dies, its waking consciousness is dissolved (since all it ever was a mirage produced by the interplay of the aggregates that constituted it, now disintegrated) and the distinctive currents of force that created it are are re-absorbed by the originary principle.

We have a lot of concrete evidence that this is not remotely true in the books.

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29 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

 

We have a lot of concrete evidence that this is not remotely true in the books.

Like? Those with warlike souls go to Gilgaol, the downtrodden go to Yatwer, the lustful go to I forgot her name, the assassins to Ajokli. The details differ, such as the personality apparently remaining intact, but the idea is the same.

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1 hour ago, Baztek said:

Like? Those with warlike souls go to Gilgaol, the downtrodden go to Yatwer, the lustful go to I forgot her name, the assassins to Ajokli. The details differ, such as the personality apparently remaining intact, but the idea is the same.

We don't actually have evidence that this is true. We have heard that those who worship certain gods are more likely to be picked as honorary buttfloss, but we don't know that they all go there. We also know that the Nonmen avoided this fate by being quiet - despite them in life having some warlike capacity, or some giving capacity, or whatever.

As to evidence to the contrary, we know that souls remain basically intact when they get to the Outside. We know this from Akka's story about what happened to Shae, we know this from seeing what comes back from the Outside, we know this from talking with Psatma. The idea that souls are somehow taken apart into their aggregates is just not correct at all. 

Souls aren't collections. While pieces of a soul can be sheared per Akka, the parts that are more likely to be sheared are the parts that are least hunger-like. 

Here's an example:

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“But souls are exceedingly complicated,” he continued. “Far more so than the crude sorceries used to trap them. The intricacies of identity are always sheared away. Memory. Faculty. Character. These are cast into the pit... Only the most base urges survive in proxies.”

Which was what made them such useful slaves.

“So to have your soul caught...” She trailed, frowning.

“Is to be twice-damned...” he said, trailing at the behest of a queer reluctance. Few understood the monstrosity of sorcery better than he. “To have your hungers enslaved in the World, while your thoughts are tormented in the Outside.”

So you can shear souls apart - but it's not something that just happens when you go to the Outside, and at least Akka believes that your thoughts are still in the Outside. There is a presence there, a thing to suffer, a viewpoint. It's not just personality. 

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Ah I'm having trouble quoting people.

Anyway I think the stuff Baztek posted, especially about subpersonalities and aggregates making up a person, isn't necessarily false. The 'Sons' do seem to be cutting up souls to get particular flavors. 

Additionally looking at the Erratic, and the ideas of the Dunyain...it's not clear to me a soul is definitively a central "I"...especially if all mortals are just viewpoints of the God of Gods?

The Hundred seem to be fragments of the God of Gods - we assume mortals are different (even I've suggested this) but it doesn't necessarily mean that is true...

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36 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Ah I'm having trouble quoting people.

Anyway I think the stuff Baztek posted, especially about subpersonalities and aggregates making up a person, isn't necessarily false. The 'Sons' do seem to be cutting up souls to get particular flavors. 

Additionally looking at the Erratic, and the ideas of the Dunyain...it's not clear to me a soul is definitively a central "I"...especially if all mortals are just viewpoints of the God of Gods?

The Hundred seem to be fragments of the God of Gods - we assume mortals are different (even I've suggested this) but it doesn't necessarily mean that is true...

All of that is true, but the data we have so far indicates that souls are at least fairly complete by themselves and aren't pieced together. They can be taken apart, but that actually rips the soul apart like an atom being split - it doesn't break it into the components used. A soul's natural state is to be together, in other words.

Now, if souls are fragments of some Ur-soul aggregate that is the God - or perhaps they are all in the same place and are reflections of the same soul in different points in spacetime - that's fine. But it's not really what Baztek was saying, or at least not what I took from it.

At least it's likely that the story will be based heavily on philosophical ideas and depth. Speculation on it is unlikely to be fruitless.

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56 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

All of that is true, but the data we have so far indicates that souls are at least fairly complete by themselves and aren't pieced together. They can be taken apart, but that actually rips the soul apart like an atom being split - it doesn't break it into the components used. A soul's natural state is to be together, in other words.

Now, if souls are fragments of some Ur-soul aggregate that is the God - or perhaps they are all in the same place and are reflections of the same soul in different points in spacetime - that's fine. But it's not really what Baztek was saying, or at least not what I took from it.

At least it's likely that the story will be based heavily on philosophical ideas and depth. Speculation on it is unlikely to be fruitless.

You're misunderstanding. "Souls" aren't aggregates, their bodies and the consciousness that co-arises with that body is an aggregate. In esoterica, you have to "make" your soul in the afterlife, or your waking personality disintegrates and the deep force that created you goes on to be "sacrificed" to create another being. You become the food of the force that constituted you. 

 

Now I'm not trying to force a whole other complicated metaphysical schema into the Bakkerverse, the point is men having their origin a "darkness that comes before" (much the same way their thoughts do, as flits and surgings of a certain, determinate quality) and men being derived from an inexhaustible reservoir of being of different determinations is pretty much the same thing. God fractures into the Hundred, Hundred are somehow involved in Earwa, Men are little bits and pieces of greater Hungers, which they inadvertently actualize in the objective world are subsequently consumed upon death (though not at once, but for eternity in the Bakkerworld anwyays)

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 Men are little bits and pieces of greater Hungers, which they inadvertently actualize in the objective world are subsequently consumed upon death (though not at once, but for eternity in the Bakkerworld anwyays)

And this is the part I disagree with most.

Men aren't pieces of greater hungers. They aren't more or less likely to be part of any given aspect at birth, or even throughout their life. The WLW that gets picked isn't anything special to Yatwer when he starts out.

Here's the part I disagree with second-most:

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You're misunderstanding. "Souls" aren't aggregates, their bodies and the consciousness that co-arises with that body is an aggregate.

Consciousness in the Bakkerverse is soul. Without it, humans don't work. And with it, bodies are representations of those souls. Hence the intentionality of some of the...uh...more interesting aspects of genetics in Earwa. 

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