only imperfection may be created from perfection

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 11:59am

Principle; ‘a state of perfection cannot be duplicated’ [quetz].
Principle; ‘Perfection cannot create perfection’ [quetz].
Principle; ‘only imperfection may be created from perfection’ [quetz].

Let us imagine that for our basis we have a state of perfection. I would imagine that the infinite would be ‘perfect’ as in layman’s terms, it has no rough edges. There is no entropy nor other agents of chaos, no degradation, no shape, nor form, no points or any other distinguishing features. Thus ‘an emptiness’ is a perfection, where nothing else may be. An infinite being or any other infinity we may consider, would also be perfect by its lack of distinction, that is if we can verify that there can be other versions of infinity.

Basis; if we assume for the sake of argument [in respect to the principle], that we have a, a perfection, b, it may create a given or any thing, then assuming its primary perfection, it may only create a replication of itself. As its perfection is infinite and indistinct, a replication of itself would only produce more of the same emptiness, which being featureless and stateless, would be a non-addition.

Of finite perfections [if possible].

Imagine you have a perfect cube [or a given perfect thing], it may replicate itself endlessly yet all other cubes would not be the originating cube and hence imperfect by this qualia.
Even if we were to say that those other cubes were a perfection, nothing else bar cubes may be produced without creating an imperfect cube.

Of gods creation [if so].

To the point of the principle, let us assume a perfect ‘god’ and one that can create [e.g. anything]. It may create another god and like the cube this would be perfect, yet given its perfection, the god would surely be sizeless/infinite, hence there would be no room to create another god [as its infinity is not empty it is filled with goodness].

At most we can say that god may only create other perfections in the form of himself as we have decreed that he is perfection.
If we say he may create other forms of perfections, cubes, spheres etc, they are not perfections by the same standard.
If he creates a perfect cube and then a perfect sphere, then a universe composed of a cube-sphere would not be a perfection by any of the previous standards. It would not be either kinds of perfection even if it is a perfect ‘cube-sphere’. hence a perfection would not have been created.

Can we then say that; ‘only imperfection may be created from perfection‘?

krossie · August 10, 2009, 12:16pm

This is pretty much abstract beyond my abilities but surely perfection would be like some gigantic zero entropy crystal or what ever and therefore have zero potential energy and therefore be absolutely static, rigid and eternal and therefore have no creative ability what so ever - it would remain absolutely as was …?

I guess I’m think Permendes concept of being here too …where’s the motor to create anything either perfect or imperfect?

Perfection - useless really!

kp

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 12:32pm

Good point ~ seams well within your abilities!

It depends on what we consider perfection to be, my view is that infinity must be perfect but its expression ~ the universe is imperfect. Hence the entirety would seam to be an imperfection and a dichotomy where the infinite is a perfection and remains so even after expressing itself as imperfect.

The thread is simply to qualify its own premise that perfection may only create imperfection. I simply gave a few examples of what one may call perfection. However ’what is perfection’ is certainly an interesting notion to ponder.

krossie · August 10, 2009, 12:51pm

I’m guessing filthy Platonism at work here?

Anyhow I’m certainly down with the Universe being imperfect.
Is it a reflection of some perfect thing?

Doubt it plus not worried.
Certainly there’s sufficient in it to give us a notion of perfection but not to deliver it I think.

Why not just embrace it all as a lovely big imperfect and incomplete mess.

All creation (good or bad) springs from imperfection and I have proof

yachtrock.com/

One insult (judged moderate to poor) was detected and ignored in compiling this reply

kp

Only_Humean · August 10, 2009, 1:31pm

If you have a perfect square, you can create two perfect right-angled triangles from it. If you have an imperfect cubic lattice, you can split off a perfect lattice from within it, away from the imperfections.

“Perfection” is judged to a mentally-constructed standard - you decide what would make something perfect, assign it a name, then judge things against it. Take Leibniz’ view - the universe as it is is perfection, and all changes in it are perfect.

Who says sizelessness/infinity is a component of perfection? This is treading though St Anselm territory here…

Yes… well, you can. But it is a statement about how you define and use perfection and imperfection, not about ontology.

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 2:01pm

Its not a reflection no, that’s the whole point.

How would you classify ‘perfection’, or would you go with the idea that there is only imperfection? If so then how does your reality model map all-imperfection? E.g. would infinity be imperfect.

If I insulted you in any way please accept my apologies, though I am lost at how.

What the hell is that website about lols

Good point. What I meant was; imagine an empty space and in it we create a cube, to add anything to it even if other perfect objects, would mean that the space with a cube in it is not the perfect space with a cube in it.

The Leibniz’ view is interesting, the universe is a perfect universe, and I suppose entropy is perfect entropy, a broken car is perfect scrap and a corpse a perfect corpse. So everything is perfect or imperfect according to perspective.

It is, oh! Lols. Infinity would not be fractured in any way, so I thought it a good place to begin with.

Until we can create an ontology for perfection?

Only_Humean · August 10, 2009, 3:11pm

That’s true… Hmm, but if you take an imperfect “space with two perfect cubes in it”, imperfect insofar as it only has one perfect cube, and you add a perfect cube to it, you have a perfect “space with two perfect cubes in it”. And perfection arises from imperfection

Yes, we live in the best of all possible worlds because if it were otherwise it wouldn’t be the best, and God wouldn’t have created it. Or something.

krossie · August 10, 2009, 3:46pm

No bother I think I picked you up wrong so apologies back and hopefully we’re square!

Web site was purely a piece of silliness.

Let me see now….

Like I say the world is imperfect – I think even such things as very sensitive dependence on initial conditions make perfection pretty much impossible. If it were possible (in the sense of zero entropy or Parmenide’s universe of absolute being) then no progress or change would be possible.

It seems that we can from the normal imperfection we see around us abstract or conceive of something called perfection – if only as a limit or a possibility – but I’d be with only_ Humean it would be a concept.

No mathematically perfect shape can exist in the real world but they can be generated in the mental world of mathematics and shapes in the real world can get vanishingly close to the “perfect” shape.

Perfection is some thing in our heads – real world is open, imperfect, changeable – which is good I think…

It’s a mathematical concept and even at that there are various shapes and sizes of infinity.
We don’t live in an infinte universe but maybe in one that’s finite but unbounded (Einstein I think)

Interesting but you seems to be some how getting something for nothing simply by changing view point?! (parallaxing even)

carrying on meta physicing!

kp

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 3:47pm

Ha, nice one! Imperfect as in lacking something in order to be perfect? that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Perhaps we could keep adding that something must be attached in order to reach perfection ad infinitum. Ultimately we would have to jump the paradox and reach infinity again.

Well, we could leave god out of this one, and just say that something else would be the universe if something else could become such a thing. Yet we would have to imagine something with laws and everything that work together to create something better. Surely we would end up with similar fundamental laws and end up with the universe, perhaps even that, nothing else would work?

Of course another universe would be a perfect ‘other universe’ [as in something else that probably should not be called the universe] but not a perfect universe.

matthatter · August 10, 2009, 4:10pm

quetzalcoatl,

You seem like a pretty chill, pacifistic kinda guy, so I hope you won’t take my comments as insults.

You certainly have wings, but sometimes when you make a habit of going too high, you lose site of the (things on the) ground (for which flight is meant to manipulate).

In order to truly be the feathered serpent (rather than the feather which inevitably has to come to the earth from time to time), you must–before thinking about reality–give your respects (think in respect of) Ganesha. (If you want me to calrify, let me know).

In other (less poetic) words: Abstractions can be counterproductive if they aren’t (from the get go) based on concrete things.

Respect.

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 4:44pm

true, yet is reality not paradoxical? I feel that is exactly what happens, you have infinity and its expression, which is seemingly impossible. However infinity is ‘all’ as well as an emptiness, in order to be itself it must be expressed, and that is a logically irresolvable conclusion.

Unless perfection is ‘organic’ - so to say. E.g. transience is perfect transience, the universe a perfect universe etc. though I am inclined to believe you are right, and that perfection and imperfection are implied but not absolute in either case. …this is the ‘organic’ nature I speak of [for want of a better term].

No the mathematical concept of infinity is just that [the mathematical concept ], we cannot build a reality map without a real infinity. Even in a finite but unbound universe we still have to concede infinity or have reality in a bubble.

Indeed, we could equally change to imperfection as all descriptive.

May I ask what ‘parallaxing’ is?

Ha, I try to be ralaxed and no insult here, I do think we have to keep going beyond the beyond, though I then try to make that fit what’s near.

Yes clarify please.

I see. My concrete is emptiness/infinity, the difficulty is getting from there to here. This I do by thinking of things e.g. atoms, as relationships made physical by the concrete and weight of infinity.

Nah · August 10, 2009, 6:00pm

Depending on your take of the “perfection”, I don’t think it can create anything, neither perfection nor imperfection.

If “perfection” can create something, it means there is a time or state changes, before and after the creation. And this would put the perfection within the constraint of the time (or state potentials), which is a limitation.
So, perfection creating something contradicts the idea of perfection being without limit.

I mean, If the “perfection” of yours can create something, it means it can be divided, in a way. As it’s not the “whole” when it’s divided, it’s not “perfect”, anymore.

So, "perfection cannot create anything. As it does not have object to act upon (s/he is absolutely alone … poor perfection … ), it has no ability to act, either.

In short, “perfection” can be understood easier in terms of absence and lack, in my opinion. It lacks all possibility. The total absence of any ability/possibility/potential.

I prefer to call it absolute. But the idea is the same.

If a god can create something, it’s not perfect nor unlimited.

I don’t think so.

Divisibility doesn’t exist in “perfection”, although it always depends on your view on “perfection”.
Emptiness as the “perfection” is simply the total lack of anything, any property. It’s the total negation. For someone who fears negativity, it’s the devil, evil, the primordial source of the fear.

But it’s deadly calm and comfortable (there is no feeling, strictly speaking. not even the awareness), depending on the POV and affinity one may have.
And all feeling/sensation is the product of resistance/friction, which is the essence of suffering. (Pleasure is also suffering, in this POV.)

Amorphos · August 10, 2009, 8:10pm

I don’t see why, …time can begin upon the creation ~ unless we presume that there are calculations going on.

Good point. Perhaps we can visualise it as an idea which then manifests, the idea has no physical properties and hence may not be considered an even in strictest terms.

God then may be in infinite idea? [as well as being] …in this context.

So a lack of, would be bliss?

krossie · August 11, 2009, 11:19am

I’m in the realm of meta physics I don’t like it – its queasy – can we even agree the terms of the debate – science/maths/ontology – what perfection or imperfection are we on about
– I know my posts can be confusing but the ground here is confusing – which grounds are we on?

Still I like a bit of abstract I guess…

Does infinity exist in this universe we find ourselves in?

Vast things exist – very old things exist – mathematical relations exist and sometimes map onto the universe.
Maths contains infinities of various shapes and sizes which are useful in solving mathematical puzzles – do actual infinities exist in this material universe?
Some of its mathematical structure may imply infinities but I don’t know it contains them – if they could be contained then obviously the universe is also infinite.

But it seems the universe of physics is a huge expanding but finite entity
(physic’s heads - help me some one I’m flailing here!)

So the all of this actual material universe is huge but finite.

Infinites can be conceived – or more to the point generated in maths (and metaphysics) – but they are simply concepts and tough to conceptualise concepts at that!!

I’m not sure I totally get you – your view of shifting perspectives on it is interesting but it does seem to enable infinite flexibility of viewpoint – eg any imperfection can be perfect imperfection – mind you surely perfect imperfection would surely lead one to a Herclitian universe of nothing but morion and change. I think that would be as impossible as the perfectly inflexible non moving one.

So the nature of the universe seems to be imperfect imperfection – no? *(see below!)

But is that not precisely what the physicist’s tell us we are trapped in a massive expanding bubble - finite but “unbounded”…

(yea immediate response what’s it expanding into etc? – I don’t know!!)

I think absolutely perfect imperfection (see below)* is also an impossibility –

Parallaxing (which isn’t a verb so I’m being naughty and changing it into a very in-elegent one…(and spelt it wrong!)) is changing angles on some thing – basically as you’ve done there with the notion of perfect imperfection, perfect transience – physically its like that old trick of shutting one eye and then another to get slightly different views…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

lrb.co.uk/v28/n17/jame02_.html
(another diversion this but an intersting one?)

Hey I’m getting into this – again appologies Q for earlier mis-understanding – I’m a very delicate ego betimes!

Hi Nah – yea I think very good summary of why nothing can come out of perfection – its got to be some form of imperfection
– I also think (and this is strictly metaphysically but also true for chemistry and physics I reckon) however that nothing would come out of absolute imperfection either (below is a sort of explanation of that!)

******* (Just to make things more confusing a recent college essay by my good self where I attempt to kill off the notion of a Herclitian Universe despite my attraction to it!!

One temptation is to grasp at a way out through a Universe of absolute becoming and change. Surely this better describes the world we see around us? This idea was put forward by Heraclitus before Parmenides. He informs us that:
This world-order [kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures. (Graham 2007)

Heraclitus’s philosophy is often summarised as “Panta rhei.” - All things change. However as we shall see it seems it is not so easy to eliminate “the one” in any proposed universe of “the many”.

A. R. De Lacy (1989) in his book on Bergson (of whom more shortly) considers Heraclitus’s flame on page 103. The current scientific description of fire (at the “classical level" of everyday events) is of molecular aggregates being broken down into smaller atoms. This is not change per sae but a change in the form or state of actual things. Quantum physics though (the physics of the very smallest things at the highest levels of energy) seems to eerily echo many of Heraclitus’s views . Michael Ronan Robinson (2002) tells us that: “according to particle physics a vacuum seethes with virtual particles that come into existence for an instant and are then annihilated.” However though these particles seem amazingly to somehow appear and disappear out of a void (of non-being?) they are all still individual things whether traces of energy, concentrations of probability or what ever.

The French Philosopher Bergson also proposed a Universe of pure change. Norris Clarke quotes from his La pensés et le mouvant (Clarke 2007 p.112)

Changes are real. But beneath the changes there are no real things which change. Change does not require a support. There is really no such thing as an inert and invariable subject which is moving

One example he cites is a melody (ibid - Blackboard notes.)
Listen to a melody; permit yourself to be cradled in its embrace: do you not have a sharp perception of a movement which is not attached to anything mobile, of change without anything that changes? That change is enough; it is the thing itself.

However a melody as the vibration of air molecules picked up by the ear is surely based on things. Even considered pre-scientifically any succession of sounds or even a single variable sound is still picked up by the ear as that sound; i.e. a something that changes. (Lacy p.96) It cannot be represented as pure change per sae.
Recently the French philosopher Alan Badiou has come up with a set theoretical view of being that presents itself as purely a multiple of multiples (2005 p.29):

The multiple form which from ontology makes up its situation is composed solely of multiplicities. There is no one. In other words every multiple is a multiple of multiples.

The count-of-one is no more than a system of conditions through which the multiple can be recognised as multiple.

He specifically works to exclude “the one” – even in the simple sense of the multiples being composed of units – these sets have “no predicate” only multiplicity (ibid). Of course this like Bergson’s melody raises the immediate question - multiplicities of what exactly? To which his reply would seem to be “more multiplicities. In fact it actually appears that Badiou has side-stepped the issue and is representing how being presents itself to us. He describes the structure of the presentation of being or unveiling of being in the Heideggerian sense – not of actual being itself. His system, though beautifully constructed, has nothing to say about actually existents only about their emergence into being; the “operation of a thing” as Aquinas would put it (Clarke 1994 p.106)

[b]In summary, despite the beauty inherent in the idea of a universe of pure multiplicity, all attempts to capture it fail to preclude actual things which always seem to re-appear as ones. Pure change and becoming unattached to any actual underlying thing cannot be and offers us no way out of Parmenide’s dilemma. Indeed Badiou himself puts it well in quoting Leibniz (ibid p.23) “What is not a being is not a being”

[/b]

Amorphos · August 11, 2009, 4:17pm

Redrawing the reality map I.e. extreme metaphysics …that probably isn’t physics at all lols.

It does, but it is not an existing thing as such, like energy or whatever. Its more that the universe is in it than vice versa.
the universe exists in this infinity we find ourselves in

Not mathematical ones no, not any more than any other kind of math exists in this world.

The universe is [‘finite’] as in limited, reality though must be unlimited or there is always something beyond its limits ~ that’s about as far as I know. Just visualise every star in the universe as within a bubble, I know it isn’t like that due to the curvature of space, yet it is limited to which we can use the analogy of the bubble. So now we must image what is outside of that? Whatever we place outside of it there must be something outside of that too, we can keep going until finally we have to concede that the base of our reality map is unlimited and hence infinite.

“infinite flexibility of viewpoint”; don’t we need that to understand [or begin too] how infinity [perfection] can be expressed as existence?

The universe or any possible expression of infinity [multiverse etc], must be imperfect as they are not infinity.

It’s the job of philosophers to continually open up their horizons . Science cannot define the entire reality map, only philosophy can.

Ah I see thanx! Should be my middle name then lols. didn’t they make a film of the book [the parallax view]?

Your quote seams to agree with the ‘organic’ view I was attempting to put forwards. Interesting stuff!

Thanks krossie

krossie · August 12, 2009, 10:20am

Extreme meta-physics – I like it!

Hola Ninja – OK I’ve shifted up that direction too!

That I can buy (well if I could afford big ideas) – OK there’s an infinite field (for want of a better term!) within which we do the business of material universe generation or something

Just to clarify – you see infinity as perfect by its very definition?

Or are some infinities better than others?

I’m not trying to be smart in maths there are various sized and types of “infinity”

In philosophy we have both “virtuous” and “vicious” infinite egress

It’s a 1970s film which I still haven’t seen supposedly brilliant – the book is much more recent by Zizek and fairly interesting (as is the review I put the link to) – not much to do with what we’re on about except for the actual word!

It does?
– I dunno – in the essay I guess gave short shrift to what we might call infinite perfection (Parmenide’s universe of zero motion) and infinite imperfection (Heraclitus’s everything changes) – I go on to end up with a fairly bog standard Aristotelian universe.

I was pretty pleased with how I killed off the Universe of absolute movement and change because it was an idea I was well attracted too and I had to actually knuckle down and face the problems with it.
It was my forced venture into meta physics and only cause I was forced.

Where are we at then Sir Quetzalcoatl???

An infinite (possibly perfect - I don’t know if I’ll concede you that it has to be perfect but I think I see where you’re coming from) field that contains everything possible including any potential universe?
An actual imperfectly imperfect universe?

kp

Amorphos · August 12, 2009, 5:35pm

Yes, that’s what I would go for too. ‘field’ may not be exactly true but as a simile of energy fields it will suffice. We have yet to say what that field is, it has an energy value of 0, and is Omni-local [everywhere is its centre]. I am inclined to think that all base natures are reflections of it, so if there is such a thing as ‘mind’ then that is in there too.

Indeed, because it has no rough edges. Strangely nothing escapes the philosophers paradox, so it is perfect but its expression is not, even though somehow the whole is infinite. Personally I think the math only comes into it in terms of the expression, even then, in real terms we don’t see fractals in the universe or any other perfect mathematical infinities. We see more the result of the whole equation, so take infinities, add random chance, quantum mirroring and finite macroscopic objectivity, etc, etc, put it all in a bucket and stir! The net result = ‘uni’’verse’.

I took it all together as one, so we have the everchanging and the unchanging [infinity and its expression], all on a single reality map. I think the apparent contradiction arise because we look at one aspect then another, in each case we perfect our theories so tightly that one theory cannot live in the same house as the other.
We have to [if I may] consider each theory as existing on our reality map as if in there own circles the [ one circle is the everchanging and another is the unchanging], then that reality and existence are resultant of them all.
So we look at the specifics and arrive in a given circle and that specific is correct in itself and in reality, except that reality heads off in the other direction, beginning with the circles then taking it all into consideration and netting the synthesis.

Do you see now how the ‘organic’ view agreed with you theory!

Where we are now is, building the first blueprints of a new reality map. For me at least this is all ‘live’ and in the realm of contemporary thought. In other words most of the ideas are old to each of us, but together they build anew.

krossie · August 13, 2009, 1:43pm

I dunno I’m still not 100% un-lost but at least I think I now under stand where you were coming from in the original post which seems to be:

that if everything that can be is held in some sort of infinite field of possibility (which is perfect until actually expressed or put into action - if I’ve got you) then can only imperfectly imperfect actual real material universes can arise out of that? (or be generated from within it)

Is that putting your original question fairly?

After all that work and if your premise is accepted I have to say that all i can offer as an answer is

i dunno!

I’m am beginning to see though that it was a pretty good question and my initial arguments only really applied to the actual material universe - so yea its out there as a decent question!

Any one else want to have a go!?

Thanks Q i enjoyed getting to this point at least!

kp

Nah · August 13, 2009, 2:34pm

Does your “perfection” can change, form “perfection A” to “perfection B”?

“God” isn’t “perfection” since it’s supposed to have created things.
It slow speaks and do silly things. So, it’s a lot less then “perfection”.

Sorry. “lack of” is the lack of anything, including “bliss”.
Nothing positive (nor negative) associated/connected.

Amorphos · August 13, 2009, 7:36pm

Spot on! With a tad of moderation.

Thanks!

I think we need to head off towards the notion of all-perfect to explain this. Can we say that infinity is all-perfect, or indeed both it and its expression; the universe* are collectively an organic perfection - in a manner of speaking [see above].

As for general perfections, can we have perfect objects e.g. sphere, cube? They are perfect examples of themselves, but then the universe* is a perfect example of itself, in fact everything would be perfect examples of themselves.

Is a perfect thing a perfection? What is it about a cube that makes it perfect? we could say it is completely inept at anything other than being a cube, and hence imperfect in terms of lacking etc. this brings me back to the idea that we only have all-perfection or none at all. …but by that I am specifically citing the lack of ineptitude as being the prime factor in ‘perfect’.

Could we say that, if all things are perfect examples of themselves, and yet each and every thing is an imperfection in and of itself. The collection of all perfections would be all-perfection?

I use the term only to help try and grasp the complexities of an infinite intellect. Yet we can have a state of perfection that creates imperfection or as above the whole when taken together may be a kind of perfection. It all depends on how we define ‘perfection’.

Ha, this is the argument I give to Buddhists and hindu’s ~ great minds think alike. In emotional terms a lack of all emotion would be blissfull ~ but yes, we would have to consider bliss as a no emotion. Imagine the senses as like a hand, with each sense as a finger, close the hand up and we have no distinct senses and emotions thereof. Yet we would still be aware and conscious, thus the bliss would simply be the latter states alone, without interference from the senses.