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Tiering System Revisions: Tier 0
- Thread starter Ultima_Reality
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Same here, I understand DontTalkDT's concerns, but at the same time I also see somewhat of overreactions. And I believe Ultima Reality's proposals are making sense here.
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On a somewhat minor note, this is not necessarily universal. Boethius, for instance, said that relation could not be predicated of God at all. That categories of language that spoke to things other than substance never applied to God, who was not a subject, and who could only be spoken of in terms of substance.
Peter Lombard took a somewhat difference stance, that God could be spoken of relationally, but these relations could not be accidental. So you could speak of the relation between Father and Son, but this was of substance because God was always Father and Son. God could not "become" someone's uncle, he would need to always be that person's uncle.
On this point, realist metaphysics seem indefensible in the face of divine simplicity.
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Another point I feel is important to consider here is that this conception of divine simplicity would strip free will from any Tier 0 character, due to inevitably causing modal collapse. The capacity to make decisions, free will, is contingent upon potentiality. If one is said to be "pure actuality" as a result of divine simplicity, we would need to regard such a being as an otherwise inert super-essence that is not capable of making decisions. It would also have to be said that the verse has absolute predestination. On a more minor note, this Tier 0 being would also be incapable of experiencing emotion, which would be another disqualifier if we did institute this.
I do not feel that this is a compelling role for our Tier 0, personally, alongside the other issues I have expressed.
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Okay, this may be a dumb question, but I have it after re-reading the entire OP several times trying to reconcile the concept in my head. Doesn't the division/differentiation of a being into multiple forms/individuals/personas/characterizations thusly imply...well, that they have differentiation? And thusly disqualify them from ever being Tier 0? I ask this geniunely and unironically, because I'm curious to know what the answer is.
Similarly, one of the disqualifiers was division of energy. Any suggestion of finite energies or splitting of energies in any fashion (for lack of a better set of words.) No "fragment" or "partition" of the self's power is possible. So wouldn't dividing that power for another (or if handwaved as "power bestowal," creating an Incarnation of oneself whose power has been limited for that body), thusly make the individual doing the blessing/incarnation creating impossible to ever reach Tier 0?
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@RedReaper this is a staff only thread, and as such you need permission to post here. However, your post asks valid questions so I will permit it.
The basic framework of Divine Simplicity is very old, going back to old school Greek philosophers like Plato. The idea that God is not made up of parts is -- by itself -- pretty intuitive. He wouldn't have parts in the way a car has parts. Greek philosophers had a conception of divinity that was very different from the religious folks of their day. Socrates was famously charged with impiety for not believing in Athenian gods -- which were highly anthropomorphized and got up to a lot of kooky human-like antics. This was reflected in Plato and Aristotle who had an increasingly monotheistic, monist idea of divinity in Plato's "the form of the Good/the One" and Aristotle's "prime mover" through which Aristotle reasoned that God was an immaterial substance with neither parts nor magnitude, but a substratum for existence itself. Though, this was not a personal god of worship like the Greek pantheons or Abrahamic traditions. Aristotle believed it engaged in intellectual activity, but that it couldn't have sensory perception, so the only thing the Prime Mover ever did was reflect on itself. So it was essentially an oblivious, powerless god that provided the framework for existence.
These views were very influential on the medieval philosophers who fleshed out the theology of modern religions. But, the task then lies in reconciling ideas that largely revolved around an eternally self-contemplating non-physical substance (the prime mover) or a distant esoteric conceptual form (the Good) and apply them to the very manner of thing that these Greek philosophers had rejected in the first place: The highly highly anthropomorphized deities of modern religion.
Of particular note was the Christian Trinity. How can a God which has "no parts" be made up of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost if we are meant to believe all three are God in and of himself, and that God is a perfectly undifferentiated essence? What more blatant "part" could a being have if not three distinct Divine Persons?
You may find the answer somewhat unsatisfying, but essentially the medieval philosophers like Aquinas or Lombard argued that these internal relations of God were not "real" distinctions, but were only found "in the apprehension" which is to say, human understanding. These distinctions are "externally affixed" by creatures, and His essence only differs in it's mode of intelligibility (the way that others understand it).
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TL;DR: The division/differentiation into multiple forms/individuals/personas/characterization and into different descriptions or adjectives is only in your mind, not reality. It just seems like a distinction because you cannot comprehend God in his perfectly simple infinitude.
For the record, I think that solution to the problem is empty sophistry and little else.
I can offer some insight here, but bear in mind that I am aggressively opposed to the doctrine, so that flavors my perspective heavily.
The basic framework of Divine Simplicity is very old, going back to old school Greek philosophers like Plato. The idea that God is not made up of parts is -- by itself -- pretty intuitive. He wouldn't have parts in the way a car has parts. Greek philosophers had a conception of divinity that was very different from the religious folks of their day. Socrates was famously charged with impiety for not believing in Athenian gods -- which were highly anthropomorphized and got up to a lot of kooky human-like antics. This was reflected in Plato and Aristotle who had an increasingly monotheistic, monist idea of divinity in Plato's "the form of the Good/the One" and Aristotle's "prime mover" through which Aristotle reasoned that God was an immaterial substance with neither parts nor magnitude, but a substratum for existence itself. Though, this was not a personal god of worship like the Greek pantheons or Abrahamic traditions. Aristotle believed it engaged in intellectual activity, but that it couldn't have sensory perception, so the only thing the Prime Mover ever did was reflect on itself. So it was essentially an oblivious, powerless god that provided the framework for existence.
These views were very influential on the medieval philosophers who fleshed out the theology of modern religions. But, the task then lies in reconciling ideas that largely revolved around an eternally self-contemplating non-physical substance (the prime mover) or a distant esoteric conceptual form (the Good) and apply them to the very manner of thing that these Greek philosophers had rejected in the first place: The highly highly anthropomorphized deities of modern religion.
Of particular note was the Christian Trinity. How can a God which has "no parts" be made up of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost if we are meant to believe all three are God in and of himself, and that God is a perfectly undifferentiated essence? What more blatant "part" could a being have if not three distinct Divine Persons?
You may find the answer somewhat unsatisfying, but essentially the medieval philosophers like Aquinas or Lombard argued that these internal relations of God were not "real" distinctions, but were only found "in the apprehension" which is to say, human understanding. These distinctions are "externally affixed" by creatures, and His essence only differs in it's mode of intelligibility (the way that others understand it).
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TL;DR: The division/differentiation into multiple forms/individuals/personas/characterization and into different descriptions or adjectives is only in your mind, not reality. It just seems like a distinction because you cannot comprehend God in his perfectly simple infinitude.
For the record, I think that solution to the problem is empty sophistry and little else.
Ultima would need to answer this, as he is the one largely steering these decisions, but there would likely be some lens through which it could be believed that this is possible for a Tier 0 being. Essentially the idea is that the character would be wielding the power of the Tier 0.
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That's a little out of context, or, rather, misinterpreted. Notice that he says relation isn't predicable of God because "He isn't a substance, but a *super*substance." What he's getting at is that God transcends the qualities of creation and as such isn't really related to it by proportion with them, so the "relations" he refers to are stuff like "Double," "Half," and etc.
Yeah, the Monad can't really change, so it likewise can't detract from what it has willed from eternity. We could debate on whether that entails "lack of free will" in the strict sense, but ultimately it's little more than trivia.
I mean.
Yeah.
I believe I've already tackled this point in particular, so, in the interest of avoiding protracted discussion while DontTalk is away, I'll skip over this.
As long as it doesn't constitute a differentiation in the substance of the Tier 0, it's fair play. Largely, it only becomes problematic when these different "personas" start acting in ways that don't really indicate they're all that same-y after all. If one just dies and the other is fine, for instance.
There's a few ontological models where you can make sense of a plurality of things being "modes" of a single thing that nevertheless don't differ from that thing, as well (Aristotle's thesis that Action/Passion are the same comes to mind). So if the verse simply accepts such ontologies as true, you can get this sort of thing, too.
The Incarnation/Blessing deal at that point wouldn't really be "Putting your power into someone else's body," so much as "The Tier 0 is acting and causing things for them," especially in the latter point.
Granted, you did elucidate something I hadn't considered all that much: Tier 0 is something revolving entirely around the character's intrinsic nature, and not really in the things which they're capable of bringing about (Hence the space of all effects they can actuate is High 1-A+). The hypothetical manifestation/blessed character would really only have access to the latter (In being able to bring about any effect that can be caused by a Tier 0).
So, although there is no upper limit to their abilities, with regards to bigness, it's still not quite 0 indeed...
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Eh, I feel it's worth keeping in mind at the very least for those who may be making their decision. That any Tier 0 character would need to be conceived of in the Dr. Manhattan esque "can only do what he knows he will do and has done" (atemporally, of course).
Just making sure, it may become relevant at some point, should a supposed Monad demonstrate emotional reactions.
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One of my questions is if these Tier 0 beings need to be stated to be "more real" to get past the R>F tiering wall.
For example, let's say we have an omni-being that is given attributes of being omni-superior to everything in the verse, but no description ever conveys that they are "more real" or a "highest truth." These Tier 0 beings should also need R>F qualities, yes?
Omni-god in verse 1 would be 1-B for not passing R>F requirements.
Omni-god in verse 2 would be Tier 0 if it met R>F and everything else to get past Tier 1.
What qualities of an omni-god should be looked for to say if it surpasses R>F?
For example, let's say we have an omni-being that is given attributes of being omni-superior to everything in the verse, but no description ever conveys that they are "more real" or a "highest truth." These Tier 0 beings should also need R>F qualities, yes?
Omni-god in verse 1 would be 1-B for not passing R>F requirements.
Omni-god in verse 2 would be Tier 0 if it met R>F and everything else to get past Tier 1.
What qualities of an omni-god should be looked for to say if it surpasses R>F?
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Will type up an answer to this in a bit. Will probably be decently long, so, heads-up.
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I can't say I'm familiar with any actual philosophical schools of thought regarding this aspect of omnipotence. I see the reference to theology on the reference page, but what is the philosophical logic behind that answer? It gives off the assumption that the Christian Theology God sets the standard for Omnipotence. "Can an omnipotent being do X? This being did X, so yes." I feel like we could have given a better answer.
You can probably argue that it falls under the same paradox category as "Can an omni-being make a rock it can't lift? Only for it to choose to lift it afterward." They can do whatever they want, even giving up the power, I guess.
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I'll cover the broad case (Including some things you might already be aware of).
So, a little explanation: What is tier 0 here? It's the logical endpoint of the idea that started at 1-A, really. 1-A is, at the end of the day, very tightly bound to the idea of surpassing physical composition, and hence "discontinuity" between it and lower tiers is emphasized. A 3-D volume is the union of 2-D areas, a 4-D hypervolume is the union of 3-D volumes, and even if you had a set whose cardinality was an inaccessible cardinal, it'd still be made up of singletons that are individually smaller than the whole compound. 1-A bypasses that by surpassing this kind of composition entirely and being inexpressible as the union of anything in a lesser state than itself.
Tier 0 just takes this a step further by saying a character has no components or divisions at all in its substance, either physical or metaphysical/conceptual (Seen with the examples I gave in the OP). So, in summary, it already encompasses the features of 1-A in its definition, to the point 1-A itself can be seen as a "miniature" of tier 0. If a verse had an accurate description of a Monad but otherwise failed the requirements, most likely it'd just fall down to 1-A.
Tier 0 characters not really needing statements of "More real" to qualify also ties into the general definition of the tier. Even when you jump ship from 1-A and into High 1-A, from "quality" to "meta-quality," all you're really doing is jumping from one ontology to another. From a lower quality to a higher quality. Nevertheless, all those characters, no matter how high... exist. They can't ever escape the basic principle of "There is something there." Even characters who claim to be voids of nothingness and such fall under that.
A tier 0, then, is more accurately thought of not as "A being identical to its attributes" (As some coloquial descriptions of the concept that have been roaming around might suggest). It's moreso a character who is "Something"ness itself. The lower tiers inherently presuppose it (By presupposing such a thing as "quality"), but it presupposes nothing save itself. It's self-defined, and self-sufficient, and it's the underlying standard by which you can say any character exists at all. So "more real" and "less real" are basically senseless concepts to it. It's just the absolutely real, if you want to put it that way. Existence par excellence.
Another contrast you can make between it and 1-A is that, while the opposite of 1-A would be something like a lower R>F layer, the 'opposite' of tier 0 would be just nothing at all.
And I'm not talking about a character who is a void, or anything. Not 'nothingness' like in Marvel, where you get "erased from existence" but really just get sent to some void-realm where you still exist in a weird state. I mean nothing in the real sense. As in, the "nothing" that follows when a character is erased from existence and vanishes from the story for good, with not even some supposedly-nonexistent thing remaining.
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Well, Monotheistic figures are perhaps the most obvious examples of qualifications, but it's not limited to them and based off general philosophies of an omnipotent deity. There are also a lot of things taken out of context throughout the thread. I was confused when I first heard the "Cannot have parts". Obviously at the very basics it means they cannot be physical entities in any shape or form; though this does not mean they cannot create physical embodiments to act as messengers. And that they are above and beyond all forms of cosmology. "Multiple parts" also has nothing to do with having personas/roles such as Father, Son, Holy Spirt ect. Also, other things DontTalkDT sounded concerned about was the "Beyond Good and Evil" arguments. It doesn't mean characters have to be morally grey by default to reach Tier 0, it's more so the opposite. I don't want to say too much and I do not think people are going to avoid common sense just from hearing this, but even morality has a lot of aspects that are subjective. But "Beyond Good and Evil" is more so the philosophy that if there is an omnipotent deity, then they are basically the only one who has rights to decide what is good or evil.
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What about a nothingness as absolutely simple as the monad? Could a series that establishes such a thing (consistently) have it be tiered?
On a slightly different note, would some EE that could explicitly reduce a character to such a state be more effective at preventing regeneration and bypassing resistance?
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That also ties into what I explained to Firestorm above. I notice, as pointed out earlier, that a lot of the opposition to this proposal comes from pretty exaggerated notions of what "Beyond qualities/attributes" means. What DontTalk thought I am suggesting and what I'm actually proposing are two pretty different things. And if anything, his misunderstanding of what such a character would be like moreso paints a picture of what something "beyond the Monad" would have to be like, which is indeed pretty incoherent.
So, really, a tier 0 here is less "nothingness" in the strict sense and more akin to a Platonic Form that defines anything whatsoever. So, for instance, a tier 0 can, obviously, be good, insofar as they're the very thing through which goodness is defined in the first place. Goodness, in that case, would be an imitation of the reality which it embodies, pretty much.
I wouldn't say so. Either it's something that exists in total opposition to the Monad (And is thus nothing in the sense I mentioned above), or it's an equal and opposite to the Monad, or something, which obviously disqualifies it by making the Monad not self-unique.
If "nothingness" and the Monad are just the same thing, though, that's fine. Obviously a Monad already has a kind of Nonexistent Physiology anyway, so it's pretty suitable to describe it as such.
I already answered this question elsewhere, funnily enough:
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I think it's kinda distinct from that question; it's not being erased into the monad, it's being erased into nothingness as simple as the monad. Being erased into the complete absence of the monad, such that one doesn't hold any of the qualities the monad holds (which is, well, all of them).
I do get that this extended explanation may be sufficient evidence by itself, so maybe consider a part of my question "how much of what I said above needs to be established by the text, and how much of it can be inferred?"
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I would reject the characterization of it being a colloquial description, that is in fact the description given in your link for divine simplicity and the widely agreed upon academic conception. That is, a complete unity between the object and every individual attribute.
However, setting aside whether a character being "somethingness itself" is intelligible, I am inclined to think that nearly no fictional universe would ever go that far as to describe a character as being identical to its attributes, even if it describes that thing as the unified substrate of existence itself. Which means we're either going to be assuming it, or we're going to conveniently ignore information that contradicts it. Take, for instance, your examples in the OP:
Lovecraft
So, not only does nothing in this segment speak to being "beyond quality" rather than the more pedestrian and straightforward notions of perfect unity, but it actually seems to speak to multiple anti-feats. This being does admit "parts." Even if those parts are considered infinitesimal, they are indeed parts.
It could also be pointed out that the Supreme Archetype, which is Carter's Archetype, is just one of multiple Archetypes:
So, the Supreme Archetype (Yog-Sothoth) has parts, facets, fragments. It is one of several archetypes identified as "the people of the Ultimate Abyss" which is described as being subservient to Azathoth, who rules the void. This is not a Tier 0 being. It neither meets the criteria you set out in the OP, and it has disqualifiers.
Journey to the West
This is kind of a weird one, because "Dharmakaya" isn't actually incorporated into the story in a significant degree. However, the angle seems to be that the emptiness beyond everything, in general, is what would be Tier 0
But, does it actually meet the criteria? I'd say no.
At no point does it actually go so far as to describe a lack of metaphysical composition or Divine Simplicity, it just describes transduality. "No being or non-being" It's also described as "half hidden and half manifest" and is directly said to undergo change!
Further, the primal reality underwent division to create existence.
But, does it actually meet the criteria? I'd say no.
At no point does it actually go so far as to describe a lack of metaphysical composition or Divine Simplicity, it just describes transduality. "No being or non-being" It's also described as "half hidden and half manifest" and is directly said to undergo change!
This "tier 0" fundamental reality is also something people can explicitly reach themselves through meditation.
Further, the primal reality underwent division to create existence.
On some level, I have to question the utility of a conception of Tier 0 which disqualifies the primary examples given of it.
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This very much depends on who you ask. The doctrine of "Divine Simplicity" does encompass a lack of "metaphysical" parts such as adjectives (good, wise, powerful) and distinction (father, son, holy spirit). In that, the Roman Catholics deny that there is any "true" distinction between Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and that the divine essence is identical to its own adjectives and that they are identical to each other. So "God's love" is "God" which is "God's power". It's a rather extreme philosophical stance that disallows any form of distinctions. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not endorse it, recognizing "true" distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They still regard the trinity as being "of one essence" but they do not take it as far as to deny metaphysical distinction between the three Divine Persons.
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Just a note that encompassing absolutely everyone and everything also means caring about the wellbeing of everybody and everything, hence Love and God/Parashiva are always one and the same, since Love is the connection between all living beings, including bodiless spirits in a state transcendent of existence and nonexistence.
However, caring about the big or even biggest picture is not the same as ensuring that everybody live in safe rooms with walls padded by pillows, and are thus unable to follow their individual paths of struggle, learning, and spiritual growth and evolution, and evil humans who go against the needs of existence obviously also regularly cause far more suffering than what is actually necessary out of power-mad conscience- and empathy-deprived cruelty.
I think that it seems like a good idea to incorporate some of this into Ultima's system.
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I didn't really mean that a Monad needs to be morally grey, what I mean is that they can not be good. (Being morally grey would likewise be a quality for them to have, after all)
Take Gödel's proof of god for contrast that employs some strict logical definitions which would obviously not work for Monads.
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I meant, based on my understanding. You and Deagon had concerns that Ultima's proposition implies those sort of things. And I am aware of Mackie and McKloskey's theory on the problem of evil and proposed some general solutions for why evil exists in a world. Including the existence of free will being the ultimate cause of evil or some philosophies about good not being able to exist without evil simply because there would be nothing to compare good to.
But at the same time, I'm unsure how controversial it will get so I want to try to keep things short for now. But some concerns could be taken into account based on what Antvasima has said.
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The Universal of "moral greyness" is a pretty funny thought, I won't lie.
Anyway: Preferably read the posts I did up there. Hopefully this clears the water with regards to what exactly is being meant here.
As I see it, that'd be pretty much the same thing as totally erasing all aspects of a character's existence and thus killing them. In which case, I believe it would be considered a permanent, unrecoverable death, yes. To quote our Regeneration page:
The "At least one other" there seems to indicate, at least to me, that even High-Godly regeneration isn't really "Regenerated from absolutely nothing whatsoever."
The information you've given is incorrect (In the same vein as your quoting of Boethius up there), and anyone who bothers to search for this even a little will know how. I won't delve into this myself, though, and neither should you, since turning this into a discussion on Christian theology, of all things, is utterly pointless. I've already made it a point to emphasize up there that the concept founding tier 0 isn't even uniquely religious, after all.
So, yeah, stop. Because at this point this will basically turn into a copy of that Jujutsu Kaisen thread that devolved into a rather lengthy discussion about Buddhism (With one side correcting the other the entire way through).
The most proper characterization is, first and foremost, "The lack of parts and composition, whether physical or metaphysical, and thus not subject to any composited frameworks" That's roughly about it.
From this, it follows that being a non-dual ultimate reality is, indeed, a qualifier for tier 0, and the reasons why are rather obvious. I believe this should also already answer your initial objection to Journey to the West: "It's just transduality" is hardly a meaningful counter when tier 0 just is something that directly grasps at the traditional definition of nondualism (Which is the denial that there is such a thing as "This and That," as opposed to a single indistinct reality)
But, onto the objections themselves:
You will also notice that the excerpt describes Yog-Sothoth itself as "seeming to be a part [of Randolph Carter]." Now, the notion of "part" relevant to tier 0 is a proper part, which is essentially a component of an object that is not the object itself. Yog-Sothoth, however, is clearly not a proper part of Randolph Carter, so, this should already tell you that the story is using the term rather lightly.
This should be further obvious by how beings of the dimensioned world are referred to as "parts" of Yog-Sothoth, as well, despite Yog-Sothoth explicitly being outside dimensions and thus aspatial:
So, by the logic you are using, Yog-Sothoth is a spatial being, which blatantly contradicts the story itself, and also contradicts Lovecraft himself, who made it clear in one of his letters that the "oneness" which the Supreme Archetype embodies doesn't mean anything mathematically. So, yeah, "parts" and fragments certainly isn't being used to mean composition here. Rather, it's talking about:
So it's talking about "angles of consciousness." Basically just the idea that any distinctions in reality don't actually exist and are only a byproduct of the mind.
To not tread into topics that extend beyond the scope of this thread, the rundown is: We should infer things from the context of the story, not from specific words used. Nuance should be kept in mind.
1. People "attaining" enlightenment through meditation doesn't detract from tier 0. Journey to the West is a cosmology where reality is illusory and only the absolute really exists. So reaching it in that manner isn't really anything problematic.
2. "Half-hidden and half-manifest" doesn't actually impart composition on it, I hope you know.
3. None of this says that the Absolute changes. It says "In change there is the Supreme Ultimate."
4. The cosmology, as said above, is entirely based around the idea that multiplicity is illusory, hence "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form," with the attainment of Buddhahood being the realization of that reality. This should tell you that "chaos parted" shouldn't be taken in literal terms. It's a "God made the world in 7 days" thing. Entirely a poetic device.
2. "Half-hidden and half-manifest" doesn't actually impart composition on it, I hope you know.
3. None of this says that the Absolute changes. It says "In change there is the Supreme Ultimate."
4. The cosmology, as said above, is entirely based around the idea that multiplicity is illusory, hence "Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form," with the attainment of Buddhahood being the realization of that reality. This should tell you that "chaos parted" shouldn't be taken in literal terms. It's a "God made the world in 7 days" thing. Entirely a poetic device.
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So what you're suggesting is that you assume that the opposite of any one quality is not a quality?
So for instance either "being dry" is a quality and "being wet" is just the absence of dryness and not a quality or "being wet" is a quality and "being dry" is just the absence of the quality of wetness? I.e. you would say a Monad is dry?
That would seem like you make a fairly arbitrary list on what is a quality and what is just the lack of one. In fact, as the list is arbitrary in choosing which of the two is a quality and which not it would imply that for the desired general superiority certain choices are needed, which would be added assumptions that should require proof.
E.g. between "invincibility" and "defeatability" you would have to require that "defeatability" is the quality. Because if "invincibility" is the quality, then the lack thereof means the Monad can be defeated.
Likewise, you end up in the arkward situation where "lack of existence" must be a quality, so that you can claim your character exists, but that means nothingness has qualities while existence is the lack of nothingness.
So a Monad has properties. In fact it is not beyond universals in general since you retreat to a realist view - qualities are just concepts. Hence you are really just talking about a character that is beyond all concepts except one... which is weird, since that's a property of most abstracts.
That appears to conflict with various explanations in the OP (e.g. the transduality bit). Among others I don't see how it participates in power in any sense.
Remind me why such an entity would generally be more powerful than anything else by logical reasoning?
Also, to get to the observability thing: Being extrinsic does not solve that. The entity would still need to be either observable or not. If it is, it has a quality. If not, then extrinsic experience of it should be logically impossible.
Edit: Also, that is a justification regarding a particular idea of a Monad. Would that mean that all those who violate that, by for example being beyond properties instead of just qualities, would not qualify?
Edit2: Also, given this definition, I see no logical contradiction in its defeat, presuming the character in question has "quality manipulation".
Edit3: Also, if we have something that is separated from a Monad by just one irrelevant quality, say a "dry Monad", why is that weaker than a non-dry Monad?
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If you believe the topic should be dropped, you are free to not respond to it. I will not permit, however, this juvenile hit-and-run of my credibility insinuating that I misinformed a staff member on something without being allowed to demonstrate that what I said was -- in fact -- completely correct.
As much as I would love to not have a theology discussion, it is necessitated by the fact that you're attempting to introduce an extremely specific Catholic conception of Divine Simplicity into our tiering system by demanding even absolute metaphysical simplicity, even if that doctrine is found elsewhere or wasn't a Thomist original. This is something the Eastern Orthodox Church rejects and something that is a point of contention for them.
It is called the Essence-energies distinction, entailing the belief that there is a distinction between the essence and energies of God. Some key quotes:
So, let us be clear here. The idea of God as "pure actuality" is regarded as a mistake within Western Christian thought. The real distinction between God and his energies in Eastern Christian thought is regarded as polytheism and an "unacceptable division in the Trinity." The proposal would render the Roman Catholic version of God as being infinitely more powerful than the Orthodox Christian version due to their rejection of a doctrine which is largely nonsensical psychobabble, even though these two are worshipping the exact same God and have overlap in 99% of the aspects of even Divine Simplicity. If we are comfortable taking such a stance, as a democratic collective, then it is beyond me to stand in the way.
However, it would be far better to simply drop the nonsensical "metaphysical distinction" disqualifier.
Yog Sothoth
First, you've linked a page about "material composition" which is obviously irrelevant here. Second, you have it backwards. Carter is an infinitesimal fragment of the Supreme Archetype (aka Yog Sothoth). It is said that all great thinkers are. I am not envisioning these fragments as physical in nature. This is meant to illustrate the metaphysical distinction (not to mention the absence of any evidence suggesting there's a lack of metaphysical distinction in the first place.
No. I am referring to metaphysical composition, not spatiality or physical parts.
Also, why have you dodged the most critical of my objections? Yog Sothoth is blatantly spelled out to be a member of a race of beings known as archetypes in the Ultimate Void, he is clearly not a Monad.
Journey to the West
And yet in this story, this isn't just spiritual enlightenment. This is something that actually confers great power to people who accomplish it.
How much more difficult it is, therefore, to understand the way of Buddhism,
which exalts the void, uses the dark, and exploits the silent in order
to succor the myriad grades of living things and exercise control over the
entire world. Its spiritual authority is the highest, and its divine potency has
no equal. Its magnitude impregnates the entire cosmos; there is no space so
tiny that it does not permeate it.
Metaphysically it absolutely does.
I don't know why we are so eager to assume "chaos was divided" is a poetic device, it's provided as the explanation for which the world came to be, a couple of times.
Nata said, "When Chaos first divided, that which was pure and light became
Heaven, and that which was heavy and turbid became Earth. Heaven,
then, is a round mass of clear ether that nonetheless supports the Jasper
Palace and the Heavenly ramparts
[He asked] "Where did yours come from?"
Not realizing that it was a trick, the demon thought that it was an honest
query and he proceeded to give a complete account of its origin, saying,
"This gourd of mine came into existence during the time when chaos divided
and Heaven and Earth were created. There was then a Supreme Primordial
Old Patriarch, who through death changed himself into Nuwa and took on her name.
If we are to take this radical stance of absolute metaphyiscal simplicity and call it Tier 0, then we shouldn't dismiss anti-feats to that effect so freely.
Though, aside from this, what evidence is there in the first place to satisfy the metaphysical lack of composition? The "One Great Void" is called "vast and motionless." These are attributes. Are we assuming the Thomist approach that the One Great Void is its own vastness and motionlessness? If so, why?
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So, the 1-A wall is overcoming all levels of physical dimensionality. This wall can also be overcome by meeting R>F requirements. Either is fine. You don't need both.
Let's say I'm a writer who is designing an omni-god, taking a few bits from your examples. I say that my god is the following:
- An eternal, formless, and infinite consciousness
- He is beyond duality
- He is the ultimate cause of everything.
- He is one with the universe.
- He is a unity.
I would need some statement akin to transcending physical dimensionality in a manner similar to R>F.
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It wouldn't be Catholic specific. What I am getting that is that the version of "divine simplicity" described in the OP is a very specific (and extreme) one, and it is most famously enshrined in Catholic dogma, but not Eastern churches which recognize a real distinction between God's divine essence and energies. The problem is the "metaphysical simplicity" point, that disallows assigning even metaphysical properties, which is uncommon.
For instance:
This is more common. Buddhahood has supernatural qualities, it's transcendent, it's immanent, it's limitless. Divine Simplicity would require that these qualities be in some way either rejected, or stated to be identical to eachother and Buddha itself, because it bars metaphysical division of any kind.
The problem is, the notion of not having properties is unintelligible, it does not communicate meaning. If we were to say "The Buddha's transcendence is identical to his immanence which is identical to his limitlessness, all of which are identical to the Buddha himself" this wouldn't actually change anything about the Buddha's nature, we wouldn't understand the Buddha differently (we would still need to think of Buddha as having those properties to render any cognitive meaning at all).
The idea of needing to be a unified undivided essence is fine. The idea of needing to absolutely lack metaphysical attributes is not. It's meaningless babble that is only found in a handful of conceptions of God, ones that are otherwise completely identical to those that would not meet this criteria.
Some conceptions of Parabrahman are attribute-less, such as in Advaita Vedanta. However in others, such as Dvaita Vedanta and Vishishadvaita, Parabrahman does have attributes. That's the sort of controversy that I have trouble with. We'd essentially be picking sides with one specific notion of understanding Parabrahman and saying the others are "weaker" due to lacking an entirely superficial viewpoint of "lacking qualities."
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The concept of Tier 0 here is not specifically drawn from Roman Catholicism, no. An "absolute reality without any distinctions in its substance" is something found in philosophy from all over the world, and which by no means started with the Catholic Church. As a matter of fact, I'd much rather say it started all the way back in Ancient Greece, with Parmenides, and then was expressed later still with Plotinus' One, and it's also found in a lot of secular philosophy (See Bohm's Implicate Order, Schopenhauer's Will as Thing-Itself, Hegel's Absolute, and etc)
So, no. Your insistence that this is principally a Catholic Christian conception shows that you're ultimately rather misinformed on the topic. Tier 0 is ultimately pretty neutral in its concept, all around. It would not reject, for example, a supreme being based on Dipolar Theism, where there is a transcendental, self-unified essence, and then the phenomenal world (Or some distinct emanation) coming from it, and those are just grouped under the umbrella "God" even if there is actual subordination between the two "phases."
Nor would it reject a conception where, for instance, there is an unmanifest, self-unified absolute, and then lesser beings serving as manifestations of it, that are supposed to be, themselves, be its "traits." Under your lenses this would entail differentiation, based on the talks we've had, but for our purposes, it would not, as long as the "essence" is something distinct and unified.
Nor would it reject, for example, an Hinduism-based cosmos, where differentiation between things is purely virtual, and only the Absolute really exists (God, from Seekers into the Mystery, is exactly that). Nor would it reject Buddhist-inspired cosmologies. In fact, I listed Journey to the West (A Buddhism-inspired novel) as an example of a verse that would qualify as Tier 0. To quote an excerpt from JTTW itself:
And also one that you yourself posted:
That is absolutely fine for Tier 0, too. Strangely enough, though, earlier on you said it "Doesn't go as far as describing a lack of metaphysical composition. It just describes transduality." The missing fact here being that those two things are synonymous with each other.
So, really. The Tiering System is just based on extensions of complexity. First complexities with regards to physics (Spatiotemporal dimensions increasing, for instance), and then added complexities with regards to ontology (R>F layers). Tier 0 is just something that, by nature, is unreachable to those complexities. Lower R>F layers trend towards "nothing whatsoever," and higher R>F layers then trend towards "Being Itself." It's as simple a dynamic as that, really.
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I won't lie, I was lazing out on this thread because of the whole "Let's pick apart the characters who are purported to qualify for Tier 0" aspect that got introduced yesterday. But since things are getting rather hectic, I figure I should step in and clear the waters before moving forwards with that.
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Indeed, and yet many such conceptions of that sort of absolute reality are perfectly fine with the attribution of metaphysical properties. Such as the Saguna brahman. My point is that you are discriminating against conceptions of absolute reality based on a factor that is inherently meaningless. The extreme viewpoint of "lacking properties" is not something we should be requiring and does put us in the position of prioritizing specific conceptions of modern religions over others.
It would only accept those which prioritize a nirguna brahman conception of Parabrahman -- quality-less absolute -- and would reject ones which enshrine saguna brahman, an absolute with properties.
So, to be clear, you are fine with the Tier 0 essence having the properties of "transcendental" and "self-unified?" That is the core of my distinction, and where I feel we should not be mandating a metaphysical lack of distinction between properties. That lacks cognitive meaning and isn't even described in multiple examples you gave.
Transduality does not require us to take the stance that a thing is "identrical to its attributes" or that its attributes are identical to each other.
If we replace "Being Itself" with "absolute reality" or "substrate of existence" I am fine with that.
Though, let me be clear, these are my objections in terms of our characterization of a Monad and requirements for such. I am still opposed to the underlying proposal that Monads should get to leap frog to Tier 0 for the other reasons.
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@Deagonx
To articulate what we've come to, off the site:
Alright, so, to make it absolutely crystal clear: By "quality" or "property," here, I don't mean "An adjective." Obviously, adjectives broadly apply to a tier 0, and I agree that something "Having only one adjective" or "Having no adjectives" is completely incoherent. These particular objections of yours largely seem to stem from a different understanding of terms than me, which is obviously fine and should indeed have been clarified earlier. To an extent I already clarified in my replies to DT up there, but that probably could've been emphasized further.
Generally speaking, I'd say tier 0 is really just "Undifferentiated super-substance that exceeds qualitative distinction." Under your lenses, it does have multiple attributes, insofar as multiple adjectives with different meanings can all be applied to it. These are not distinct qualities in any real way, though, and moreso just a mind-dependent pluralization. (Or, in the general case, it would be, anyway. As I've said above, I have no issue with a state of affairs where a tier 0's "attributes" are something manifested distinctly from their essence. I know a few verses like that, even)
Everything I've said about it (That it's beyond all degrees of power, and so on and so forth), though, still holds true. I think it's a shame that there's been so much tension over a mutual misunderstanding of semantic details, but it is what it is, I suppose.
I believe your other contention was that we shouldn't use the term "Being-Itself" and go for other equivalent terms. I, myself, don't particularly care about the term we use, and in fact I'd much rather be as secular as possible about this, so I'm fine with using whatever terminology is deemed best suited for it. I only used terms like "Being Itself" and "Somethingness Itself" because they got across the concept of the tier and its primacy over the others, and that's about it.
To articulate what we've come to, off the site:
Alright, so, to make it absolutely crystal clear: By "quality" or "property," here, I don't mean "An adjective." Obviously, adjectives broadly apply to a tier 0, and I agree that something "Having only one adjective" or "Having no adjectives" is completely incoherent. These particular objections of yours largely seem to stem from a different understanding of terms than me, which is obviously fine and should indeed have been clarified earlier. To an extent I already clarified in my replies to DT up there, but that probably could've been emphasized further.
Generally speaking, I'd say tier 0 is really just "Undifferentiated super-substance that exceeds qualitative distinction." Under your lenses, it does have multiple attributes, insofar as multiple adjectives with different meanings can all be applied to it. These are not distinct qualities in any real way, though, and moreso just a mind-dependent pluralization. (Or, in the general case, it would be, anyway. As I've said above, I have no issue with a state of affairs where a tier 0's "attributes" are something manifested distinctly from their essence. I know a few verses like that, even)
Everything I've said about it (That it's beyond all degrees of power, and so on and so forth), though, still holds true. I think it's a shame that there's been so much tension over a mutual misunderstanding of semantic details, but it is what it is, I suppose.
I believe your other contention was that we shouldn't use the term "Being-Itself" and go for other equivalent terms. I, myself, don't particularly care about the term we use, and in fact I'd much rather be as secular as possible about this, so I'm fine with using whatever terminology is deemed best suited for it. I only used terms like "Being Itself" and "Somethingness Itself" because they got across the concept of the tier and its primacy over the others, and that's about it.
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I am glad that we were able to come to an understanding, but I'll say that to the average person the words "adjective" "quality" "attribute" and "property" are generally understood to be identical in absence of a framework that defines them in distinct ways. That is why "God is his own goodness" renders no meaning and why that doctrine has been the subject of so much controversy.
So if the "metaphysical simplicity" that is required of the Monad is that it isn't a composite of realist abstract objects, like some kind of Megazord of realist Platonic Forms, then I don't think that's something anyone has an issue with, insofar as defining a monad is concerned.
Yeah, I'd prefer we do not use "being itself" as that is pretty Christian centric, and similarly it does not communicate information. We could use "existence itself" or define it as the substrate of existence or something similar.
But, I will note, while I am glad that we have made these changes on the description of the Monad, I am still not on board personally with the idea that a Monad would slingshot to Tier 0 for the other reasons I have explained.
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Bringing up a concern Phoenks mentioned to me off-site;
It seems like, since you're allowing characters from 3-A cosmologies to make the jump to 0 through being a monad, that you're willing to extend their attributes well beyond their original cosmology.
Does that philosophy also apply to other things that we currently accept, such as omniscience and omnipresence?
If a character knows everything, and constantly uses that to pull out intricate plots that leave them ahead, then despite their setting being 2-A, would they be able to know of and invoke a Low 1-A's weakness, requiring only a single word to be spoken, to defeat them?
Would an omnipresent being within a 3-A setting also be omnipresent across a High 1-A setting?
It seems like, since you're allowing characters from 3-A cosmologies to make the jump to 0 through being a monad, that you're willing to extend their attributes well beyond their original cosmology.
Does that philosophy also apply to other things that we currently accept, such as omniscience and omnipresence?
If a character knows everything, and constantly uses that to pull out intricate plots that leave them ahead, then despite their setting being 2-A, would they be able to know of and invoke a Low 1-A's weakness, requiring only a single word to be spoken, to defeat them?
Would an omnipresent being within a 3-A setting also be omnipresent across a High 1-A setting?
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Another thing.
On what basis are we saying that monads and other forms of divine simplicity should be extrapolated to be beyond qualities and meta-qualities that aren't shown or even mentioned in a verse?
Metaphysical qualities like RFT are concepts that many verses don't acknowledge or mention. Let alone other verse-specific meta-qualities and hierarchies that may be operating on logics completely unbeknownst to another verse.
Not every verse goes by the same philosophies and ideas, so to allow verses that use a specific form of absolutism to jump beyond everything else seems a bit unjustified, especially when you consider that VSBW has always stood by the principle of scaling what is precisely shown, rather than scaling highly optimistic implications, especially to this extent.
On what basis are we saying that monads and other forms of divine simplicity should be extrapolated to be beyond qualities and meta-qualities that aren't shown or even mentioned in a verse?
Metaphysical qualities like RFT are concepts that many verses don't acknowledge or mention. Let alone other verse-specific meta-qualities and hierarchies that may be operating on logics completely unbeknownst to another verse.
Not every verse goes by the same philosophies and ideas, so to allow verses that use a specific form of absolutism to jump beyond everything else seems a bit unjustified, especially when you consider that VSBW has always stood by the principle of scaling what is precisely shown, rather than scaling highly optimistic implications, especially to this extent.
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Descriptions that transcend physical composition in the same way R>F does. I see. Context would help determine if this is the case or not.
From what the others have mentioned, would this also apply to transcending a physical 3-A setting?
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I also have to wonder how exactly the evidence standards would play out.
If there's 10 statements of the monad being unchangeable, and one feat of a character changing it, is that one feat considered an outlier, or taken to disprove it? Is there a certain number where this ratio flips, is any amount of contradictions sufficient to disqualify a verse, or is there being even one more establishing statement than a disqualifying one enough to solidify such a rating?
If there's 10 statements of the monad being unchangeable, and one feat of a character changing it, is that one feat considered an outlier, or taken to disprove it? Is there a certain number where this ratio flips, is any amount of contradictions sufficient to disqualify a verse, or is there being even one more establishing statement than a disqualifying one enough to solidify such a rating?
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Admittedly, I'm not the most sure on all the specifics regarding this proposal (hence, I also hesitate to cast a vote), but I'd honestly believe it'd be best if even a singular instance of a monad being changed is enough to disqualify the thing entirely. This, to me, falls in line with the idea of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence.
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I literally thought I had lost that response and was in the process of retyping the whole thing. Glad you picked it back up.
Anyway: It would, yes. Tier 0 is cosmology-independent here, so in principle, you could have a verse where the only cosmological structure is the Monad, and it'd still be Tier 0 as long as it fulills all the requirements.
Great question. Overall I think it's a combination of factors too numerous to render into an exhaustive list, but if I were to try my hand at it, I'd say:
- Statements have to be from reliable sources, at the very least
- Showings > Statements
- Contexts where the philosophical nature of the Monad is knowledgeably discussed > Contexts where the specifics of the entity are largely ignored (E.g. Philosophical discussions between two reliable characters regarding the cosmology vs In-universe myths and parables)
- Straightforwardness of the actions committed against the Monad or would-be Monad
So, for instance: Even if there were 10 statements of the Monad being immutable, they'd be worthless if a character went and caused it to undergo a change anyway. And the issue would be exacerbated even further if this act was a plot-point of the narrative in question. Furthermore, the directness of the potential anti-feats is to be taken in consideration, too: A supposed Monad going out of existence like a lightbulb is a much more damning showcase than a line saying "God felt [emotion]," for instance.
The third point is also of particular importance for verses that sometimes use religious/mythological language to describe certain things. For example, if a verse has a bunch of descriptions saying the Abrahamic God is an abstract super-essence that created time and space themselves, from important scenes and/or reliable sources in-story, and also has 4 citations of Genesis that anthropomorphize him into a dude who made the universe in 7 days, I'd rather take the former as the truth. Showings > Statements might very well play a role here, too.
I'll say I find it pretty funny that this is essentially the Euthyphro dilemma adapted for battleboarding. These little crossovers into philosophical debate always have me crack a smile.
Anyhow: I would say a Tier 0 is "above all axioms and presuppositions" in a qualified sense. More specifically: The Tier 0's self-sufficiency means that its existence doesn't presuppose or hinge upon anything apart from itself, which means that these "certain axioms" would themselves be the Tier 0, insofar as it is the source and sufficient reason for its own existence. So saying "The Tier 0 only exists under these set of axioms" is basically saying "The Tier 0 exists if the Tier 0 exists."
And this also gets into what we've discussed a couple days ago, which is the difference between de dicto and de re. Statements of possibility about a Tier 0 would exclusively be done de dicto, meaning that they are of the form "It could be that the Tier 0 exists," rather than "The Tier 0 could exist." The difference being that the former only speaks about the knowledge of the person making the statement, whereas the latter speaks to something in reality.
That gets into the subject of mechanisms: A character who is omnipresent in a 3-A setting could very well be omnipresent in a 1-A setting, too, depending on how said omnipresence works. And into this, enters the fact that the Omnipresence and Omniscience of a Tier 0 are really nothing whatsoever like the Omnipresence and Omniscience of a character from any other tier.
A Tier 0's Omnipresence, for instance, would be a direct consequent of its transcendence and of its nature as the ground of being (The same attribute as them, you could say), so it isn't really "I am everywhere" (Because, strictly speaking, a Tier 0 isn't anywhere. It isn't in space, or even a meta-analog of space. It's in itself), so much as "I am the foundation for anything whatsoever, and you can't really escape from that, as long as you are a 'thing.'"
Likewise, a Tier 0's Omniscience would essentially spring from the fact that it knows and embodies the basal principles of logic, and therefore has perfect knowledge of whatever follows from them. Their "intelligence" likewise isn't really like that of other characters, either. Their intellection isn't computational or "algorithmic" in nature, and is simple, as their very nature is.
I believe I've outlined my arguments for this in the OP, already, but ontop of that: I'd say a good Illustration of this would be something that draws from what I mentioned up there: What is the opposite of a Tier 0, here? Nothing, in the truest sense possible. Not really "nothingness" in the sense of some void-realm outside of the universe, but truly, actually nothing. The nothing that follows when a character is erased from existence and dies for good in a verse. The "nothing" that we, in fact, say that characters with Nonexistent Physiology aren't, since they're defined as characters by the qualities in which they are not nonexistent.
In that sense, even a lower R>F layer isn't really nothingness in this absolute sense (The assertion that it is, is something I dropped from my argumentation in the early, early stages of the previous thread). No matter how far into lower R>F layers you go, you'd still be "something." And as such those layers are not absolute nothingness, but "relative" nothingness instead. If you were truly absolute nothingness, you wouldn't even be a character. You would have no tier at all (And be, indeed, the limit point of lowering tiers)
This is not something that varies between verses. Can you have less than nothing? Obviously not. At best you can have something that's analogous to that, a lower ontology which, nevertheless, still exists. And indeed even if you kept adding "mesa"-qualities (The opposite of meta-qualities) to a cosmology, you wouldn't ever reach the point where you're the absolute lack of anything whatsoever. That point (Or non-point, I guess) would still be beneath whatever it is you can think of.
Tier 0 is really just the symmetrical conclusion of this. It is essentially an entity who is "Absolute Existence," which you, necessarily, can't really be beyond, because no matter how high of a being you are, you'll never really be escaping the basic principle of "There is something there." If we accepted that a character did do that, just for the sake of argument, that'd be a contradiction, because they would not be a character to begin with. They would, in fact, be the tierless "absolute nothingness" beneath everything that I just spoke of.
To a large degree, this ties into the aspect of simplicity, too. Since everything in 1-A and High 1-A is just qualifications and extrapolations of the same overarching thing (Existence. Being. "Somethingness") that none of them really escape from in any way. Tier 0 is just Existence unqualified, to which, by definition, nothing can be added, and which admits of no degree, just as absolute nothingness admits of no degrees due do its (I guess you could say) "negative" simplicity.
And thus comes the fact of the cosmology-independence of Tier 0: It doesn't depend on a large cosmology to be where it is, because everything is logically subordinate to it, and by nature presupposes it, just like "absolute nothingness" is logically subordinate to everything else (Because you're presupposing something of which there is a lack). So it's as I said above: Self-defined. Self-sufficient. Not contingent on lower tiers whatsoever.
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Yeah that's fair.
I don't think this really solves the contradiction. Rather, it solidifies your position more in the "A Tier 0 being is a certain set of axioms" camp, which still leaves the issue of placing a cosmology where "everything consistent with any set of axioms exists" below Tier 0, most likely at Low 1-A, but potentially at High 1-A+, despite such a thing encompassing Tier 0.
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