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INTELLECTUAL THEMES BK. 1

METAPHYSICS

The metaphysical extension of irrationalism may not be natural, but
certainly implies a degree of difficulty in reaching for genuine
metaphysical data.

One approach is simply to accept the 'blanknesses' of reality, a 'radical
acceptance' as some have called it, as a way of knowing, perhaps with a
Sartrean kind of terror, that 'what is there is there'.

Radical affirmation can even lead to irrational affirmations about the
terrors lying (supposedly) behind the everyday facts.

But, of course, these 'facts' which we observe DO have some reality in
our minds at least, because it is the thoughts we have which have
significance for us.

There is a kind of sneaky corollary which is not so violent as the
previous, which is that if we are able to rationalize all of our fears and
suppositions about reality, then we would KNOW, we WOULD have some
kind of truth-knowledge about real reality.

Perhaps this kind of truth would be over-contextual. But that is not to say
that we cannot do our best to understand existence as it is portrayed for
us.

To me, this is not a Sartrean gloom, but instead something viable that
may bear fruit.

If knowledge is objective as I have argued---if exceptions bear out
between the abstract and the real, relative to our position in reality, then
we may use our knowledge, or conversely our sense of reality to
determine our sense of reality or conversely our knowledge.

Thus, there are four potential categories to metaphysics:

1. Knowledge of Being (Obvious Knowledge)
2. Knowledge of Abstractions (Subtle Knowledge)
3. Sense of Being (Obvious Systems), and
4. Sense of Abstractions (Subtle Systems)


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