Droopy wrote:"Level" and "plane" are meant to denote actually existing regions of phenomenal reality, very analogous to the bandwidths of the electromagnetic spectrum,
I don't see why a level is the same as a region. You don't seem to be using words very precisely. Are you talking about a spatial region?
Also, the word bandwidth is being used in an odd way here. There are no built in division lines in the electromagnetic spectrum that carve out special regions and any reference to a particular range of frequencies would be arbitrary unless one is using the word bandwidth to describe a particular instance of a signal in which case the bandwidth would roughly refer to the width of the Fourier transform of the signal--this is more like the usual sense.
Frequency range would have worked better.
except that, unlike the electromagnetic spectrum, these levels are hierarchal, or vertical, and in moving from one to another (different "kingdoms") one moves from or to higher or lower levels of phenomenal reality
In what sense are the levels vertical? As you know there is no absolute prefered sense of up in space so I assume that the verticality can't be a literal spatial "up". Is it metaphorical? As one moves from level to level, how does one know that one has move to a higher as opposed to lower level? Is it a mere convention or is there an objective, observer independent, means of determining that?
I am also still confused by your continued use of "phenomenal" reality. What distinguished phenomenal reality from reality simpliciter.
Is this something about apperances to a mind or about what exists in consciousness (redness, pain etc.). In the case of a nonveridical perception of X, is it X or is it what is present to consciousness that is the phenomenon? How about a quark which is never directly percieved? It might helpo to name something that isn't phenomenal.
(that includes electromagnetic phenomena but encompasses all aspects of that which is capable of manifestation as an existent reality or state of affairs, including matter, energy, consciousness, mind, and intelligence, in all forms or modes of expression.
Hmm, why not just say anything then. Is existent reality different from nonexistent reality? I am a little unsure about how you intend to use the word reality in this context.
I use "mode" in its sense of "condition," "expression," and "quality" (or qualities) inhering in and/or expressed through a given phenomenon.
Thus stated, your notion of mode seems so braod as to be useless and I am especially puzzled about the mode = quality thing. Is there nothing you can say that makes this seem a little less like word salad that has the cadence and general feel of philosophical prose but (unlike the sine philosophical prose I normally encounter in the literature) doesn't quite make sense to me yet?
Hence, various levels (celestial, terrestrial, telestial, and any or all sub-levels or regions within these major levels of phenomenal manifestation) of reality express different modes of existence, some of them (such as between celestial and telestial) radically divergent in both fundamental nature and mode of existence within the perimeters of each
This brings up a question. When you discuss philosophy, do you really intend to incorporate LDS notions such as celestial and so on and treat them on the same footing as empirical notions such as physical, chemical, biological, sociial and so on? This makes it quite difficult since such notions are not backed up with public evidence. There is quite a difference in intellectual content. For example, if I were to say that the biological is a level higher than (supervenes on) the chemical level which in turn rest upon the level of fundamental particles and fields, I would not just be
saying that one is higher than the other. I would be able to give a very good idea in some detail of how one level depends on the other and in exactly what sense I am using the word higher.
On the other hand, words like celestial and terrestrial are never explained in terms that have that kind of fundamental explanitory power. Instead we just get other problmatic wordls like "greater" "more perfect" or "a higher plain" etc. This seems like pseudoknowledge to me.
Can you make it more than that and say something that gives me even the remotes feeling of understanding in the way that explaining chemical reacations in terms of the atomics does or like explaining biological structures as being built out of chemical and other more basic notions and structures? I.e., where is the beef?
I mean any entities, phenomena, objects, substance, material, sense data, or otherwise any actually existing state of affairs within one's perceptual range or perceptual field, which is constricted or expanded depending upon the level of reality at which one perceives.
Well,
everything then? Or, everything I can see? That is a lot of words to just refer to all that going on out there.
Yes. The restored gospel teaches us that we really live in a "multiverse," not a "universe."
Actually, I believe the notion is that of
many worlds but that could just as well refer to planets. I am afraid that the use of the word multiverse here is nothing more than an opportunistic commandeering of scientific jargon. If there is anything of content in the multiverse notion, it is brought to us thanks to the response of physics to things like the landscape problem or by the conjunction of the quantum mechanical Bekenstein bound with a supposition of a spatial infinite universe. In other words, there are several notions of multiverse of varying degrees of scientific respectability and what truth there is there is brought to us by physics and not by revelation.
In fact, the use of the word multiverse or similar words to describe a notion of many "parallel" universes is an old and unoriginal idea in speculative science and religion. Such do not come with an details grounded in known physics and so are little more than the result of flights of fantasy. (The latter is the gospel version--can you show otherwise?).
The various if not myriad levels of existence (including the "degrees of glory" of the post-resurrection state of existence) are hierarchal, quite so.
[Well, I didn't say they were the same. I was setting out a small list of terms pointing to closely related, interconnected concepts. As I explained above, by "mode" I mean the manner or way in which existence and all phenomena within that state or level of existence are manifest as phenomena and the underlying laws/principles upon which they are grounded.
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In other words, the universe has structure. Well, that much is obvious.
You also imagine that the furniture of your religious universe (kingdoms and so on) is also structured not on the basis of anything empirical, and not in any enlightening detail and not in nearly as interesting and sophisticated a form as, say, the structures envisioned by Hinduism.
Compare this to how the structures and their hierarchical nature can be actually explained in a way that produces an authentic and appropriate ah ha:
Chemicals combine in various ways to produce substances with novel and beautiful properties but the rules of combination can be understood in terms of valence electrons and the shapes of their wave function (orbitals and all that).
But dare we ask why
those shapes? Yes! Those arise because of the harmonic analysis of the spherically symmetric Coulomb potentials --in purely mathematical terms that are rooted in the very symmetries of space itself in the same way that the vibrations of a drum take on characteristic shapes traceable by pure logic to the shape the drum membrane itself. But what about the properties of fundamental particals? Are they just that way because of a divine decree? No! Again, the symmetry transformation group of spacetime together with another natural feature of quantum mechanics predicts that certain particles should be subjects to the action of a so called simply connected cover of the rotation group and out pops the strange notion of spin.
Think of it, the very shapes of flowers, honeycombs, butterflies and so on is ultimately tracable to characteristic vibrational modes of ghostly wave functions and those shapes arise because of the very symmetries of space and time. Indeed the very possibility of matter forming shapes at all is largely grounded in the same basic quantum mechanical mathematics- even the shape and structure of the human body. Hierarchies of structure bubble up from below (the realm of the simple) rather than raining down from an already complex and structured high)
Why even the fact that there is such a thing as momentum or angular momentum, or even engergy is seen to be a consequence of the most basic symmetries of space and time. Think of it, you get hit with a wave that knocks you down and might even destroy your house. This destruction is due to the transfere of energy and momentum which are quantities that arise ineluctably and logically merely from the translational (temporal and spatial) symmetries of spacetime itself.
But should we stop there? Is there something more fundamental from which spacetime and its symmetries arise? Well that leads us to the cutting edge worlds of Plank level physics, noncommutative geometry, and other areas of investigation that contain insights and beautifully deep abstract structures that make any acid trip into a mere yawn by comparison--and unlike acid, and "personal revelation" have the added value of actually containing
truth.
Now this is the merest scratch on the surface of a deep world of even more astounding understanding. This is the sort of real understanding that we might hope for in revelation but never get. Instead we get prose that have the ring of profundity but a closer look only reveals there is nothing really there beyond folk wisdom and rather unremarkable imaginations--only an invitation to more fuzzy thinking clothed in an undeserved
mere sensation of enlightenment.
There is more inspiration, awe, and profound truth in the first 20 pages of almost any advanced book on mathematics, biology or physics than in the entire LDS cannon--EVEN IF THE LATTER WERE TRUE!.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo