Against Qualms Concerning Inconsistency

Continuing from the last post, I think that I've pinpointed a little bit more clearly what is going on when I reject claims of the self-defeating nature of certain views. Now, when one claims that someone is being inconsistent, they can refer to the language as being inconsistent, the concepts as being inconsistent, or a claim that the world is inconsistent. Further, the assumption seems to be that these three claims are more or less equivalent. But I disagree, and the inconsistencies I raise do not seem to be harmful ones.

Inconsistency in language, if by itself, doesn't seem pernicious. Inconsistent statements have some sort of meaning, as evidenced by the fact that people sometimes find them to be the most useful way of conveying a message. We can argue about their efficacy, but that they are meaningful is clear (they are meaningful to someone, at least; chances are, if you don't get them, it's your problem and not the other person's). And it would seem that concepts would work the same way, when considered independently of language.

The problem comes in when inconsistency in language or concepts would imply such an inconsistency in the world, which is nonsense. But why assume that an inconsistency in language implies that one claims a similar inconsistency in the world? There is an assumption of an isomorphism between world, language, and concepts. All three can be broken up into pieces which interrelate, whatever these pieces may be (perhaps form, matter, and esse, for example, where each of these can stand for a word, a concept, and an external reality). The interrelations in the world mirror those in language and concepts, and language and concepts can be made more or less precise enough to accurately mirror the world.

If there is such an isomorphism, then contradictions in language and concepts do seem to be problematic. But why assume the isomorphism in the first place? This is an assumption, and there seems to be no reason why it shouldn't be examined as well, especially when it is advanced as a weapon in some apologist's arsenal. Why can't we say that the world is a seamless whole, which nevertheless lends itself to being talked about and thought about in some way? Language and concepts are discursive, and reality is not (in this thought experiment), but that doesn't mean that language and concepts are worthless or meaningless. The point of them is a certain sort of interaction with reality, of which ultimately they are a part as well (and even here, I must use "part" language, which isn't accurate, but it may be a useful approximation for those with eyes to see). Contradictions in language then do not entail contradictions in reality. Assuming that contradictions in language do not entail anything whatsoever (and I see no reason to assume without argument that language works like a formal logical system), then why not allow contradictions?

Someone might say at this point, that it is only confused language which breaks the law of contradiction; phrases in such language might mean something, but the whole does not. Logic is the judge of language, whether language follows its laws or not. But why should we assume that? Logic is basically set theory, and works for those relationships capable of being modeled on sets. It is not clear to me that all philosophical relationships must be so clear and set-like; why assume that anything philosophical must therefore be able to be made clear, precise, and analytical?

And the next argument: "but the negation of the law of contradiction entails the law of contradiction; therefore it must be true", is pure sophistry. Not only does it not seem to be "true" anymore once one has negated it, but also, I am saying that language goes beyond precise boundaries. To revert to an argument that "the law of contradiction is either true or false" is already to miss the linguistic and ontological move I am making. In another way, the argument for the law of non-contradiction it is to assume the law of the excluded middle, as well as predicates for which both apply. I deny the law of the excluded middle too, or at least its applicability to any and all meaningful phrases.

Finally: "But with what you are saying, you can say anything and get away with it. This is just a ploy to avoid any criticism." No, it is a recognition that simply pointing out formal flaws has never been good philosophy. Look at the substance; to the reality itself! Logic is the handmaiden of true thinking, and not vice versa. We are engaged in far too difficult a program here to simply sort out arguments and thought based on cosmetic issues.

Is Skepticism Self-Defeating?

I was writing this as a comment on an earlier post, but I keep thinking of more stuff to say, so I think that I'll just make another post of it. The charge is this: skepticism is self-defeating. It asserts something, namely that nothing is to be asserted. I'm not a big fan of these types of "self-defeating" arguments, and I figured that I should lay out my reasoning. Of course, if anyone understands the reasoning, one will realize that all that I am about to say should not be held to, that one should look beyond the reasonings, but a first step must be taken.

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Language is practical. One uses it; it's not setting forward fixed propositional truth. This at least is the standpoint I want to explore here for the moment. It's hardly a critique of a statement to say that it falls apart in saying that language falls apart. Anyone who took the statement to be a set of propositions which I was strictly asserting would have gotten it wrong. Look at the moon, not the finger; or if you prefer, use the ladder then kick it away.

One can look at the meaning of such an argument in two ways. First, one can take the straightforward meaning. One will have missed the point then, since one will think it perfectly consistent, but it is helpful in leading one to a given state. The practical function of leading someone to a non-discursive state is the point, since I can't very well put that state down on paper or computer screen itself.

Alternatively, one can realize the inconsistencies, but then the meaning is in the performance. Treat it as a poem, if you prefer; there seems to be nothing wrong with putting down in performance and poetry what cannot be said in prose.

The criticism (and the related claim that from a contradiction everything follows) only operates on one level of language. But this is a fairly high level, and there is something going on underneath. Language affects us and moves us even before we have it completely rationally synthesized. Take the poem "Jabberwocky", for example. If I have to look at it in terms of referents and such, it is pure nonsense. The terms just have no meaning. But yet, one does have a vague sense of what goes on in the poem, regardless. Likewise, a contradictory statement might be nonsense when analytically interpreted, but that's not the only level on which that statement was functioning.

Why should we say that such statements have meaning? Because some people say they do. If Bob sees only that x is meaningful, but cannot see any meaning in not-x, while Alice claims to grasp the meaning of not-x, it would seem that Alice has the advantage. Bob's lack of imagination or overly-focused view of the world could just as much explain why he cannot get what not-x is getting at as not-x being meaningless. Not being able to conceive something (especially when someone else can conceive of it) doesn't amount to much in argument.

If anyone has been following this post, they will realize that what I am saying is primarily to be used, not judged right or wrong (although one can judge the post efficacious or not, and can judge whether the destination is worth arriving at). Of course it's all nonsense if one looks at it purely analytically; so find other ways of looking at it.

But let's take the worst-case scenario: the above just doesn't work (and I stress its working and not its veracity) and it all is just inconsistent without any directly redeeming value. Well, what is one to do? Pick up just another other system that's lying around to get out of the problem? But this seems to be at least as bad; leaps of faith are such because they are blind leaps, and blind leaps land you in chasms more often than not. If I can't escape from being embedded in some conceptual system, being human and thrown into the world as it is, this doesn't mean that I must therefore give my allegiance to some conceptual system. I can simultaneously recognize that no conceptual system is grounded, perhaps even that no conceptual system is completely coherent, while also recognizing that I must be implicated in one and can never simply jump out and either renounce all views or take a God's eye view. Will this pull me in two directions, and so be "inconsistent"? Sure, but it seems that a continuing movement between imperfect systems is better than giving up and artificially ironing out a problem of human living and dedicating myself to one of them.

The Point of Philosophy?

What is the point of doing philosophy? I've been reading Descartes' Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and he seems to suggest that one sits down and figures out the basics of how we go about thinking. Once this is done, and it should be more or less simple (easy and simple matters are what knowledge consists of, not difficult, obscure, and uncertain ones), one goes off and starts the real learning.

On the one hand, it does seem that there is something unfruitful about spending ones time only doing philosophy. One keeps thinking about thinking, about the truth, about the good, etc., without really engaging it in any particular fashion. Sure, the philosophizing is important, so that we don't go gallivanting off in any ol' direction. And we need to think about the core issues of the different fields to keep them on track and from becoming ossified. But sometimes, I at least tire of merely talking about talking. I want some more tangible field of study. I am doing that to an extent with History (at least history of thought), and I am thinking more and more about doing further work in Islamic Studies. Sometimes, when I am really tired of the field and the books, I'll start thinking about doing something drastic like getting a Psychology degree and doing clinical work (I have enough mental problems that I'm already engaged first-hand in the field, right?). But the point is, it seems good for one to have some more empirical field in which the real work gets done, the work that actually embeds one in the world and gives one some meaning (whether that's a career change, a different focus in one's academic path, or merely extracurricular activities). Do philosophy, then contribute to medicine, or law, or social work, or (gasp!) business. If nothing else, sitting around talking Marxism isn't going to change the world's business practices; more philosophers becoming business people has no worse a shot of working.

On the other hand, the picture is more complicated than Descartes thought. First, the more we've been thinking about basic issues of knowledge and cognition, the murkier they appear. It no longer is plausible that we can simply sit down and work out the issues at one point and be reasonably right. So we need to continue to rethink the issues, and this seems to require at least some people who are really sitting down and devoting themselves to the task full time. There don't seem to be any clearly intuited simples for us anymore, and the Cartesian method requires these simple and perspicacious, independent absolutes which one takes apart and puts together like legos, such that one can track one's process of knowing.

Second, there is far greater specialization going on now than in Descartes' time. Even within a field as neatly defined as mathematics, there just aren't any mathematicians who can claim expertise in every subfield of math. A fortiori, there isn't too much place for someone wishing to learn deeply across discipline. Descartes thought that one can learn about all different fields by oneself. Due to this, he argues that theoretical sciences are fundamentally unlike practical arts: in art, one must focus on a specialty to be any good, but in science, one thinks better and more clearly the more one learns across sciences, since the subject matters come together. All of them rely on the same basic processes of thinking. And he seems right; being able to think across disciplines does seem to be helpful for understanding the individual ones. But there's too much to learn in any given discipline now to be competent in any given one while chasing others. And one can throw off the previous scholastic shackles only if one (a) is independently wealthy and not needing to find an employer or tenure, and (b) is willing to give up all of the richness of the past as well as its errors.

So, to pursue a career purely in philosophy feels sterile and confining, cutting one off from much purpose and meaning in life. But one can't solve the issues in philosophy once and for all to go work in the other disciplines, and the issues are hardly trivial. There are important ethical and political reasons for why we keep going back to them, to rethink them. There are also concerns intrinsic to the other disciplines: physics needs to have a good account of how to get good physics in order to actually get good physics consistently. So how does one balance these concerns, given that one has to get a job somewhere to give one the time to work on the issues?

Suarez, Damascius, and Ineffability

Time for philosopher mash-up. I've been thinking about the problem of ineffability: how does it make sense to say that you can't say something about something? After all, you seem to have just said something about it: that you can't say anything. I will first look at 16th-17th century scholastic Suarez, who is dealing with (what seems to me to be) a similar problem with potential essences which are "omnino nihil", nothing whatsoever. Next, I will look at Damascius, the 5th-6th century Neoplatonist, who makes use of Skeptical thought to show how statements concerning the One's ineffability and transcendence are statements about language, not about the One.

For Suarez, we can talk about the essences, the being, of things around us. There are trees and cats and humans. Each individual being has an essence, and is actual: this tree is right here and now existing, and this existence is merely the actuality of its essence. It is not as though there is some being to the tree which then needs to be brought into existence; any being to the tree whatsoever is its existence. Existence is merely actuality, and not an addition to an essence.

We can also talk about a potential essence of trees, not yet made actual. But a problem arises: if there is any reality to the essence at all, it is actual. But if it is actual, it is not merely potential; potentiality by definition means that something is not actual. So a potential essence is nothing in any way. But how then do we talk about it?

Suarez says that we talk about it because of "extrinsic denomination", that is, we reference it purely through other things. A couple examples are in order. When I predicate a universal of things, I am using this same process of extrinsic denomination. I can talk about this human and that human, and I mean the same thing in both cases, and so "human" must have some generality about it. But general things don't really exist; only individual things do. There is Alice and Bob, but I don't encounter "humanness" except as the individuals. Instead, I meet Alice, and she causes a concept in my head. I can work with this concept and pick out some formal feature which have some unity to them. I'll call this her humanity. Next, I meet Bob, and do the same thing. Lo and behold, when I compare these formal features, I realize that the two individuals have caused the same concept in my mind, and so I can predicate it of both of them. So I call them both "human", where "human" is some universal concept. Technically speaking, though, "human" is a universal in my mind while they are individuals in reality, so I only call them this universal because of the similar effect the individual humans caused in me. So I call them "human" by extrinsic denomination: not something which they are simply in themselves in reality, but by something else which has some foundation in them.

Similarly with potential essences, we talk about them by extrinsic denomination by not actually talking about them, but talking about God's power to produce them. In effect (and I may be going beyond Suarez here, but this is how I make sense of what he is saying), I pick something, I have something in mind in my discourse, and I ask, "Is this potential?" But I'm not really talking about the essence of the thing itself: what I am asking about is God's power and what it can do. I think that the case can be generalized to other fields as well; Suarez thought that species are eternal, so God's power is the only thing responsible for them, but we think of species in an historical light. So it doesn't seem to me to be contrary to Suarez' project to say that we speak of, say, the essence of dinosaurs not insofar as they have being (there are no actual dinosaurs), but by extrinsic denomination from what is actual (fossils, shared biological laws with critters today, etc.). Without these sources of actuality, there would be nothing to say about dinosaurs. So talking about potential (or non-existent) essences is really a shorthand way of talking about actual essences.

What I want to take from that is this: there can be a grammatical referent without an ontological one. I talk of potential essences, but the potential essence is nothing at all. But it still may make the most sense the frame the discussion in terms of potential essences, as the lack of ontological significance does not mean that I must rephrase all of my sentences accordingly. There is a proper mechanism by which I can attribute "potential essence" to things which actually are, so my assertion of truths about a potential essence don't entail its existence in any way.

Next, Damascius. I know less about him (though I probably need to go back and brush up on the details of Suarez' account too), but there is one idea of his which I found quite interesting. In the Neoplatonic tradition, there are various realms of reality (or perhaps ways of looking at the world; I can never quite tell). There is material reality, which is too multiple to be intelligible. There is ensouled reality, which is outside of space and which provides some unity and movement, as well as discursive thought. There is noetic reality, which is also outside of time and which is quite unified, with everything reflected in everything else. But even that has some division, something which had to come together, and so there must be something else grounding it, something which has absolutely no division to be grounded, and thus is beyond thought.

This is the One, so called not because "One" applies to it so much as it is the cause of unity for everything else. But this creates a problem: if the One is so removed from division, how is it the cause of everything else? It would seem to get mixed up in multiplicity if it were tarnished by the rest of the world. This was one of the most significant problems in Neoplatonism. Damascius takes an extreme view and distances the One from everything else, such that the One isn't even really the cause of everything else.

I'll leave aside the issues of what exactly the One "is" for Damascius. What is important is that, without any causal relation to the world, we seem to have no way of talking about the One. So all we can say is that we can't talk about the One. But even that is too much. So Damascius interprets this as a claim about language itself. Statements about the One's ineffability are statements about the paucity of language. Language wants to reach beyond itself, but cannot. This is a "peritrope" of language, in Skeptical terminology and Damascius' account: language turns around and refutes itself, and this internal problem within language is what we are referring to.

Putting this all together: By Suarez, we can talk about things without necessarily commenting on their ontological status through extrinsic denomination. By Damascius, statements about the ineffability of the One are statements about the peritrope of language. So perhaps we can say that, in the statement such as "the One/God/Reality/Absolute is ineffable" is an extrinsic denomination taken from the problematic character of language itself.

Skepticism and the Will

I propose that there are two orders of our being which run contrary to each other. The first is the order of knowledge, in which the negative statement has priority and the affirmative must be argued for. Thus, skepticism doesn't need an argument; all other views do. However, this is actually freeing, since in the second order of being, that of willing, the affirmative has priority and prohibitions must be argued for. Relative traditions give determination to the will instead of absolute reason.

Why does skepticism hold sway in matters of reason? It is because if there is no connection between pieces of discourse, there is no connection. If we think that there is a connection and there is not, we are mistaken; we are not half right, or even necessarily on the right track. If I have a proof for a mathematical theorem, and the proof has a single detail wrong, I have proven absolutely nothing; I haven't given a proof that the theorem is 99% likely. If a single case falsifies a scientific theory, the theory is wrong.

Now, I might be able to pick up the pieces of the old proof or the old theoryand get something out of them, but this points to something else that they were telling us all along. The broken scientific theory still told us about the data we were experiencing, even if not about the world in general. Or perhaps we wish to talk about the historically formed concept given by science which has structured our world, and this was actually part of our reality apart from any inferences. But in these cases, I have presented the immediate, non-inferred connection between what I was doing in science and what I was experiencing in the world, and so I have given a proper connection for a qualified affirmative proposition.

Common sense seems to me to be the worst possible means of ascertaining the truth about the world. The reason is this: common sense is simply the habit of a group of people. Habits don't tell us that they represent reality accurately, merely that they are some way of working within reality. The habit of common sense tells us on a pragmatic level that what the community does works, and so the structure of reality must be such that what the community does works. However, where is the connection between the habitual belief that individual and separable things in the external world exist, which is a pragmatic tool for navigating the world, and the metaphysical fact that such individual and separable things exist externally? How does the first, the way we get understanding, connect at all to the common sense belief to provide any grounds? How does common sense provide any ground whatsoever for the belief that we are not in the Matrix or deluded by an evil genius? Of course if we were deluded, we would not instantly recognize that we were deluded, so what does our lack of recognition actually tell us about the world?

Without some sort of connection, without showing some way in which we legitimately get information for any specific idea, and without introducing some "just so" story to beg the question, what is left? Without some connection, there is no reason inclining us one way or the other. Without reason, all views are epistemologically equivalent; common sense belief in metaphysically individual entities, without some proper grounding beyond "we just intuit them", is equivalent to talk of aliens on the Hale-Bopp comet coming to take us away.

So if some connection must be established to give any sort of rational justification to an idea, and any flaws in this connection make it a different sort of connection, the skeptic is automatically justified in pursuing her project. The connection needs to be made, and the skeptic merely points out that it has not been made and so may very well be worthless. It may very well not be, also; we have no way of telling yet.

But what is the positive side of this? The positive side is that the Good is self-diffusive, that goodness is the one thing that needs no reason. There doesn't need to be a reason to follow our desires or what we find good (desirable, aesthetic, holy) in our culture, but rather the reason must be supplied as to what not to do. Reason can prohibit, but the prohibition must be established.

For example, it is not the homosexuals that should have to argue for their unions, as this needs no argument or rational support, but rather those opposed. And if we are confronted by the Matrix scenario, the correct response is not the deny the premise (how would we even possibly do that?) but rather to say, "So what? My acting is just as real in a simulation as in a so-called 'real world'". And while I may have no theoretical justification for believing in the existence of individual middle-sized objects such as chairs and trees, there is nothing stopping me from living as if there were.

But this leads to the problem that our willing would seem undetermined. This would seem to be the argument of some against skepticism: the skeptic can't live daily life, because she needs to determine her actions in some way and can never really give reasons for doing so. Therefore, no one really is a skeptic on an existential level. But the skeptic doesn't need to give rational arguments for everything she does; her actions can be non-rational as long as there is some other method of determining them.

This would seem to be where culture and tradition comes in. Let me compare the situation to that of languages, which are one of the forms of culture: I can speak in English, formulate my thoughts and poetry in it, look to the great masters of the language such as Shakespeare and Chaucer, and enjoy the heritage and what I can do with it. English determines my speech in a way that lets me actually talk. But there is nothing rationally determinate about English (indeed, there isn't much rational about the language at all!). And there is nothing saying that English is overall a superior language to, say, Arabic. I have something given to me to determine my will in matters of communication, even though I have no arguments for how to speak in general.

I can criticize my culture, just as I can point out some particularly annoying inconsistencies in typical English which spoil its communicative abilities. The point is not that nothing is prohibited; it is that there must be a sound argument for the prohibition before anything is legitimately prohibited.

Now, the problem is that traditions don't see themselves as quite so relative as languages. They make demands and see themselves as being ultimate. And taking any tradition to determine one's acting will most likely involve illegitimate prohibitions as well. But these prohibitions can be seen to have some purpose, just as the artist must determine her work in some fashion to get anything of beauty, even if other determinations (and even opposite ones) were equally possible. Concerning the ultimacy which traditions claim, though, I really don't have much sympathy. If it can't be demonstrated, then there is no reason to believe it, other some some fideism on par with chasing after leprechauns.

Cosmological Argument from Completeness

According to one of the forms of the cosmological argument (given by Aquinas and Avicenna), God exists because there must be some necessary existent. Everything we encounter is contingent, merely possible when considered in and of itself and only necessitated through another. But if it is necessitated through another, then there must be something necessary in itself which grounds everything else. It seems to me that this argument fails: first, because it does not have any force when considered in a concrete case, and second, because the nature of any given existent in question is unclear. I think that a different version of argument can be made out of the latter point, however.

So Jill is a human being, and as such is contingent. She did not have to exist; something else made her exist. This something else in the present case would be her parents. Now, the argument could be taken in two different directions. One would argue that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes in time. So her parents had parents, and her grandparents had parents, and so on, but this had to begin at some point. It is not exactly clear, though, why there absolutely cannot be an infinite regress here, and even many of the defenders of the cosmological argument have had no problem with such an infinite regress in time: Aquinas and Scotus thought such a regress possible though not actually true, and Avicenna thought it actually true. If nothing else, one is faced with the problem of a first moment: any given moment of time has the structure that it has something preceding it, and something following it. But a first moment would have nothing before it. It seems that such a concept of a first moment then would be at least as difficult to understand as an infinite regress of times.

What infinite regress does the argument disallow, then? An infinite regress of necessitation, for Avicenna, and similarly (perhaps identically), an infinite regress of actualization for Aquinas. That is to say, there are multiple causes working at the same time and not merely stretched out with the cause one moment and the effect in the next. This sort of causation would be logical or metaphysical. But what is this in our concrete example? Why say that there is anything to Jill's existence beyond what her parents gave to her? Once we have explained the physical act of generation, we have everything we need. Or perhaps we could allow in other causes at the same level, but nothing on a fundamentally different level. Any talk of possibility and contingency beyond this is over-abstraction which does not explain actual, concrete existents and so does not command any assent as to a first, necessary Existent whose being is simply is existence.

Second, the argument seems to assume that Jill is an existent. But this would seem to assume that she is an individual, such that we can put her together with other individuals and count each up. Jill and Susan together in a room would then make two individuals. But for this to be the case, there must be a clear-cut logical (not merely practical!) distinction for each individual. There must be an exact criterion of life and death, and of spatio-temporal location. But it would seem that one could pull a sorites paradox for any suggested definition. I can't see any reason for saying that their individualities are anything beyond practical constructions on our part for dealing with a confusing world. Since we start off in life making practical distinctions and only afterward make these practical distinctions precise, the onus is on my opponent to argue for why there are metaphysically as opposed to practically distinct individuals: how do we cross the gap from what is merely practical? But without metaphysical individuals, what is there around to be a merely possible existent? If anything, since the existent (and therefore its possibility) is grounded in our construction of it, the "cosmological" argument would prove the necessity of our stipulation (or better: what for practical purposes could be considered our stipulation, since we ourselves are are stipulating are constructions, as is any talk of constructions. Just as talk of mid-sized objects makes sense whether or not we think they exist metaphysically, it would seem that all this is practically meaningful even without a firm metaphysical foundation).

But there seems to be something we can take from the latter point. There is some reason why we construct "Jill" and "Susan", as well as "this tree" and "that stone". These may not be individuals we can consider on their own, such that they are real albeit contingent existents, but there must be some particularity which allows us to construct these forms.

"Particularity" is not the same as "individuality" in the way I am using it (perhaps my usage is arbitrary; all I am concerned with is that some distinction is made). If Jill is an individual and Susan is also an individual, than there are two defined and delimited individuals. If Jill and Susan each have particularity, though, then we cannot say how many individuals there are, or even if the question makes sense. Particularity undergirds any other statement of quantity, quality, construction, or the like. There is not a "this something" involved; there is merely the "this".

"Jill" and "Susan" then refer to particulars, but the construction makes them out to be individuals: something defined, delimited, and countable. We need this delimitation to think about them, we need some completeness. And here is the problem: nothing exists merely as incomplete. Such a thing would be only partially actual, but every actuality is actually actual. We may speak of, say, an incomplete paper. But what is already down is completely actual; it is the mismatch between our expectations and what is there that introduces the incompleteness, not anything in the bits and bytes or ink and paper themselves. (I think this point needs to be qualified, but I'll perhaps do that in a later post after we get some of the basics down here.)

But while our construction has this foisted completeness or incompleteness, the actuality itself is on the one hand incomplete, and on the other hand complete. Insofar as I mark off simply this little section of reality, it is incomplete. Physically, this computer screen is affected by gravitational forces from the farthest quasars and cannot be completely delimited as an individual without reference to them. They are not something external, but part of the very makeup of this screen itself, however minutely. I currently am constituted by the actual contents of my perception and consciousness: sight is nothing without a seen and intellect is nothing without an intellected, so any reference to me as a separate individual which sees without what it sees, points to something incomplete. This incompleteness, though, is an incompleteness precisely because it is impossible. The incomplete being is lacking something which it logically needs: not as something to bring it into existence or that previously brought it into existence (as with the version of the cosmological argument which I reject), but as what constitutes it here and now. It is the internal constitution of the being which needs explanation, not external factors or its existence in general.

So the fact that we can point to particularities means that we can pick out these incomplete beings. But the notion of an incomplete being is incoherent without its completion. So there must be complete being, some unity of being. I am inclined to say that this includes at least everything involved in any given causal system, but that would be another argument. There may even be levels of different completions, or perhaps different degrees of incompleteness and unity, which are again separate issues.

The incomplete beings would be particular expressions of complete being, since all of them are nexuses of complete being in a way; my computer screen (or at least its completion which is demanded by the incomplete being which I am regarding) is being regarded in one way, and distant quasars are this being regarded in another way, perhaps under a complex coordinate change. Perhaps one could take an analogy: the axioms and rules of inference of a mathematical system already have determined the entire rest of the system, such that they logically entail as their completion all of the system's theorems, while each theorem is the complete system regarded in a different way, or at least complete portions of the system regarded differently (though I question whether most of reality can be made precisely definite at all without violence). But the computer simply regarded in itself is not the complete being. The computer in itself is in fact merely an illusion, since we would take what is really incomplete (and so therefore unthinkable as such) and regard it as complete, just as the axioms regarded in themselves without any entailments have not been understood but have merely formed some basic intelligible impression (although again, the computer may be more purely illusion since it would seem to lack the definiteness of the axioms).

The presence of incomplete beings then logically entails complete being, and the incomplete beings are expressions of the complete being, illusory when considered simply in themselves and theophanies when considered in their completion. What this cosmological argument arrives at is perhaps different from "that which we call God", but it avoids hierarchical notions of causation which do not appear to have any concrete correlate.

This is my attempt to formulate an argument from the unity of being, as found in the Neoplatonists, the school of Wahdat al-Wujud in Islam, in Vedanta (expecially Advaita Vedanta), or in some schools of Buddhism; the analogy from mathematical systems in fact comes from Plotinus. It is not, then, an argument "for God" in the sense of some Creator completely distinct from creation.

Is the complete being itself delimited? The false completion of incomplete beings does involve delimitation, because there are other beings separated out from them. A complete being which does not have anything else, complete or incomplete, over and against it would not seem to have this delimitation. So it is not the degree of delimitation itself which makes something complete, but rather delimitation may already be a sign that something is incomplete since what is truly complete does not need to be marked off.