06/3/26

Looking at Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (Part 25 of 28)

0494 In the last section of the second lecture, Santner grapples with the implications.

0495 Did Marx isolate the alchemy of mercantilism?

The political theory of mercantilism magically transforms into an impossible righteousness, capitalism.

To me, capitalism is Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.

The industrial economy becomes an icon of the religion of mercantilism.

0496 Santner uses the mercantilist fixation, gold, as an example.

Money flows upwards.  Gold flows downwards.

0497 This example easily fits Marx’s projection of the society tier onto the organization tier.

0498 The general labor value of gold produces something that money can buy.  The transactions produce surplus value.  Surplus value actualizes the potential for continuing gold production.

0499 The institutional mission that ‘gold is wealth’ virtually contextualizes the abstract material that informs price of gold.

Anyone familiar with current gold markets finds this abstract material quite tangible.  It reifies the fear that fiat currencies are being printed without collateral.

Since gold is wealth, gold is collateral.

The buyer is purchasing what the fiat currency lacks.

0500 Collateral flows downwards from an institutional mission, through the abstract material emerging from the potentials of shape and money, into the peace of mind of the gold buyer.

0501 This is not an -ism.  This is not “capital”-ism.

No, these diagrams describe the machinations of the organization tier as an icon of the society tier.

-Isms belong to the society tier.

Mercantilism belongs to the society tier.

Mercantilism solved one problem in the organization tier.

Here is the issue:  The abstract material that informs price should not also weigh a changing value of money, in addition to the potential of shape and the buyer’s accounts.

So mercantilism fixed the value of money.

Money was defined as a certain weight of pure gold.

0502 However, the mercantilist religion produced a host of other problems within the society tier.

In particular, it degraded the Protestant Ethic, where the virtue of industriousness served to glorify God.

Mercantilism glorified… something other than the One True God.

0503 Marx’s specter of communism rose to contest the political theology of mercantilism.

0504 To me, Marx projected something transcendent onto the immanence of the organization tier.

0505 The term “capitalism” labels the projection of a mercantilist political theology onto the organization tier.

0506 To the extent that the projection is manifest, the organization tier is unrighteous compared to the righteousness of Marxist ideologies.

0507 The role of the Marxist in our contemporary world is to regulate perceived manifestations of mercantilist political theology in the organization tier.

Soviet communism was an experiment.  It failed.

But, could the schema still be correct?

Welcome to big government (il)liberalism, where the political economy is freighted with a subject matter weighing all flesh.

0508 Speaking of flesh, is global mercantilism a form of prostitution?

0509 Here is how prostitution looks as an icon of mercantilism.

How unrighteous is global mercantilism?

0510 In the organization tier, paper money flows up into surplus value.

A purpose-filled abstract material flows down into what the buyer lacks.

0511 What does the buyer lack?

0512 In the society tier, the flesh is the industrious body, contiguous with an inoperative active soul.

An objectorg is supposed to fill in for the active soul.

The objectorg-inoperative active soul situates the fact that the passive soul cannot work on its own accord.

0513 This is shown in the following diagram:

0514 What does this imply?

The buyer in the organization tier lacks a quality that allows the passive soul do what it is supposed to do.

0515 That quality is righteousness.

But, it can also be unrighteousness.

Righteousness and unrighteousness are the potentials underlying good and evil.

06/3/26

Looking at Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (Part 26 of 28)

0516 Okay, the passive soul of the citizen lacks a certain quality.

Something will fill that lack.

If something conforms to mercantilism, then the citizenregular gains the quality of rationality, then the person is sane and enters the organization tier.  The resulting behaviors are capitalist.

But, capitalism is evil.

Thus, the active soul of citizenregular must be rendered inoperative.

If something conforms to institutional purposes aligned with the actuality of citizenMarat, then the person is no longer burdened with sanity.  Instead, institutional purpose defines what is sensible.

The expectation of rationality adjusts to organization objectives that render the active soul inoperative.  The resulting behaviors exhibit the discipline of citizenMarat.

Ah, if capitalism is evil, then communism must be good.

Thus, evil and good define something that provides the qualities that the passive soul lacks.

0517 Consequently, the organization tier takes on the mantle of the society tier as either the capitalism theorized by Marxist communism or a projection regulated by a coalition of Marxist infrasovereign religions.

0518 Consider the following diagram:

Money ascends.  Greed (unrighteous, capitalist) or identity (righteous, communist) descends.

Thus, the doxologies of everyday (regulated) social life recapitulate, in the organization tier, the doxologies of the Christian faith on the society tier.

Why the Christian faith?

The perspective level is revealed only with Christian faith.

0519 Here is how that happens.

0520 Does this explain why Santner and Agamben regard the Christian formulation of the Trinity as the foundation of both the political theology of the dual body king and the Marxist projection of a political theology onto the organization tier?

0521 Even if you say, “No.”, the suggestion that Marxism contextualizes the organization tier carries intellectual momentum.

0522 The following shows a number of Marxist terms contextualizing the organization tier.

06/2/26

Looking at Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (Part 27 of 28)

0523 What is the inner movement of capital?

0524 My associations of Santner’s argument to the category-based nested form tell a story.

0525 Within the organization tier, capital (money) flows upwards, towards the assessors. Objectsorg flows downwards, towards the lacking passive soul, underlying the flesh.

0526 Money on the organization tier corresponds to glory on the society tier.

Purpose (or greed) on the organization tier matches livingness on the society tier.

Objectsorg in the society tier contextualize institutional missions in the organization tier.

Thus, doxological acclamations that once extolled the king’s sublime body now acclaim whatever money can buy.  Plus, the most sublime commodity (and the one with the highest price) comes with an institutional message.

This commodity-associated message, in turn, invigorates the passive soul (which, impossibly, cannot be trusted on its own).

The message gives the passive soul identity.

0527 How can the passive soul be declared impossible?

Isn’t the passive soul the organ that responds to motion?

0528 Thomas Hobbes formulated one answer in the Leviathan, published when early modern mercantilism was replacing the late medieval theology of the dual body of the king.

Hobbes claimed that the passive soul could only properly respond to physical motion.

Physical motion leads to sensible reckoning.  Immaterial motion, the very stuff that Santner isolates, produces phantasms that are not sensible.

The passive soul should respond to physical motion, but not immaterial motion.

This explains why the lacking in the passive soul replaces the inoperative active soul in the content-level actuality2aB of the organization tier.

0529 Ironically, in evolutionary history, the human passive soul evolved to sense the immaterial (or relational) aspects of a situation.  Humans are attuned to relationships.  We intuitively feel changes in relationships.

Humans focus on the hidden causes accounting for observed events.  Humans sense more than what is apparent to a disinterested observer.

0530 Thus, the so-called impossible or lacking passive soul is really a selective soul, responsive only to physical motion and not to relational changes.

0531 No wonder modern theory focuses on political organizational objectives (on the society tier) and economic commodities (on the organization tier).

In the society tier, organizational objectives go into the potential for biopower.  Biopower values, in turn, fetishize busy-ness.

In the organization tier, commodities carry an organizational object.  This objective contextualizes the abstract material that informs price.  Supplemented value virtually situates the buyer, whose passive soul is incomplete, because it only senses physical motion, not relational motion.

An institutional message descends, like a golden egg from a fabled goose, with every purchase.  A purpose-filled abstract material enters the emptiness of the secular soul, providing it with purpose and identity.

The blind acquire eyes to see.

0532 What does this imply?

The immanence of the organization tier has become transcendent.

0533 Marx projected a theology from the society tier onto the organization tier.

0534 What did the projection subsequently produce?

It produced commodities tied to objectsorg, the actualities of infrasovereign religions.

Here is the society tier of the modern and postmodern political economy:

Take a look at the descent of livingness.

It proceeds from sovereign-level biopower to a content-level objectorg.  It does so in a path that incorporates the organization tier.

0535 Why?

The organization tier serves as a screen for a projection from the society tier. 

True believers testify to the validity this projection.

In doing so, they become citizensMarat.

0536 Santner quotes a passage from Marx’s Capital.

0537 Here is how I would express this passage:

The money-commodity-money nature of the market transaction powers a valorization of money on the assessment and corporation levels of the organization tier.  The valorization of money fuels the transfer of biopower values to the incomplete (materialist) passive soul of the buyer.

0538 Money goes up.

Messages, material abstractions, the stuff of objectorg, go down.

0539 This is how the commodity fetish and surplus value fill the coal box powering the locomotion of Marxist righteousness.

0540 Here is how the flow upwards and downwards looks in the model of the 3-tier system.

0541 Glory ascends in the society tier.  Money ascends in the organization tier.

Livingness (not living well, but barely living) flows down the society tier.  A message-laden objectorg intrinsic to each commodity flows down in the organization tier.

0542 To Santner, the doxological acclamations devoted to the king’s sublime body were transubstantiated into advertisements, promoting social discipline (in the society tier) and subliminal market discipline (in the organization tier).

0543 The House of God has been emptied.  It has been painted out.  It is only a blank space within the circulation of power and money.

0544 Similarly, the passive soul of the person has been reduced to a potential that only senses obvious and physical motion.

The motion of the spirit, especially the Holy Spirit, is immaterial.

We cannot physically detect the wind moving over the waters.

0545 Can modern entertainment fill the void?

Can public opinion surveys substitute for acclamations of glory?

Can televised news present its apparent motions in such a way that the naive individual will witness the organizational objectives projected into its spectacles?

Or, will the individual need to be directly indoctrinated?

0546 These are the practical concerns of the busy elites who guard the blankness painted above the corpse of Marat and who covet the jouissance of citizenregular.

06/1/26

Looking at Eric Santner’s Book (2016) The Weight of All Flesh (Part 28 of 28)

0547 I now move to Lecture 2.10.

In the preceding section, Santner dwells on the word “doxologies”.

0548 There are two doxologies flowing upwards in the following figure.

This pair of doxologies is glory and money.

One is societal.  The other is organizational.

0548 Santner coins the word, paradoxology, for exploring this double flow.

The subject matter of the political economy is a paradoxology.

0549 There are two movements flowing downwards in the preceding figure.

The pair of condensates are busy-ness and identity / purpose.

One is societal.  The other is organizational.

One is enforced through sovereign laws and decrees.  The other is inculcated through broadcast advertising.

0550 Santner recounts a debate about how to interpret Kafka’s writings.

Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem expressed different views of the theological tracks of Kafka’s stories.

0551 Scholem argued that Kafka’s work shines like a revelation.  But, it’s a tricky revealing.  It does not lead the reader to God, but to some originating nothingness.

0552 Benjamin countered that Kafka’s work has a message: The gate to justice is study.  But the question is: What to study?  The Torah has been brushed over by modern inquiry.  Students have lost the Holy Writ.

0553 Scholem replied: No, those who study have not lost the Scriptures.  They have lost the ability to decipher them.

0554 Does this conversation fit into the previous figure?

A suprasovereign religion was brushed over by the time that Marx projected the transcendent (a political theology) onto the immanent (the machinations of the organization tier).

0555 Santner concludes with Walter Benjamin’s tripartite image of capitalism.

In one panel, capitalism is a purely cultic religion.  It has no doctrine.  It has no dogma.  Adam Smith’s theories of the self-regulation of markets are exemplar.  What is the invisible hand?  It is dogma?  Or is a way to describe events that cannot be reduced to cause and effect?

In the next panel, capitalism is always “on”.  It never takes a holiday.  Santner associates this to the doxologies of everyday life.  Work is always waiting.  Duties are never completed.

In the final panel, capitalism creates guilt, not atonement.  In other words, it creates more debt, more burdens and more work.

Does the sovereignty of debt become sovereign debt?

Not necessarily, but it happens often enough.  After all, who pays for the political entrepreneurs?  Who pays for the busy-ness of citizensMarat?

0556 Does each of Benjamin’s panels describe a level of the organization tier as understood from the communist perspective?

How curious.

0557 Certainly, capitalism is a religion worthy of contempt.

Too bad it is a projection of Marxist ideology.

Walter Benjamin’s career as literary critic expanded the cognitive space opened by the Marxist religion. 

This is the nature of religions.

0558 Marxist ideology projects a plausible theology onto something in the organization tier that everyone encounters.

0559 Marx selected one of the best encounters.

In every purchase, I, the buyer, encounter a corporation that I do not belong to.

Is this alienating, or what?

0560 My money goes up from the product (content) through the price (situation) and becomes surplus value(perspective).

A quality of the product comes down, from the brand name (perspective) through the abstract material guaranteed by the brand name (situation) to the aspects of my identity congruent with this abstract material (content).

0561 Following this pattern, I only purchase bread from The Staff of Life Bakery.

It is my paradoxology.

My devotion increases the glory of the bakery.  The bakery provides me with a mission, “Eat the bread of life.”

My money keeps the bakery in business.  The brand name makes my mouth water.

0562 When Adam Smith attempted to describe this process, he saw an invisible hand, guaranteeing high quality products for low price.  There was no dogma.  There were no doctrines.  There was only rational self-interest.

0563 When Karl Marx passed judgment on this process, he reified the theological dogmas of mercantilism.  Everywhere that Marx looked in the organization tier, he found religious expression.

If he were to start his own religion, then what better way than to project the theology of mercantilism onto the operations of the organization tier and then declare it evil?

Indeed, the organization tier becomes evil when viewed as an unholy ascent of money and a devilish descent of brand names.

0564 Thus, the paradoxology of Marxism becomes clear.

A doxology of communist power rises through the society tier in response to a projected evil doxology, called “capitalism”, arising in the organization tier.

0565 The organizational objectives of Marxism become inevitable once its projections are assumed and never questioned.

0566 To me, this conclusion makes the works of Eric Santner and Giorgio Agamben fascinating to behold.  Here is the subject matter of political economy.

05/30/26

Semiotics and History: Baroque Scholasticism

SaH0001 Are there independent courses of study completely contained within Razie Mah’s blog?

Yes, besides the main courses that are announced at Razie Mah’s website, other online courses may be found.

Semiotics and History offers various courses.  The courses are like threads.  Each strand integrates with other strands, so the conceptual apparatus starts to work like a rope, giving the student a tool to climb through history.  

Here is the reading list for this strand.

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel” (points 0001-0265, appearing in May, 2026)

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Essay (2017) “Izquierdo on Universals” points (0266-0365 appearing in June 2026)

The dates pass backwards because WordPress places latest post first, for each month.

So, click on the month, then scroll downwards

0002 Other notes.  

Words and phrases that belong together may be placed in italics for easier reading.

Prerequisites include A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction,by Razie Mah.  These are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

A list of other strands may be found on the Semiotics as History Post at Razie Mah’s website, dated April 1, 2026.

05/29/26

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel”(Part 1 of 19)

0003 The following 2016 essay comments on a recent book on baroque scholasticism by Daniel Novotny, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Bohemia in the Czech Republic.  The title of the work is Ens rationis from Suarez to Caramuel: A Study in the Scholasticism of the Baroque Era (Fordham University, 2013).  

These comments and Novotny’s book may be used as an independent home school or college course of study.  Student instructions are colored in burgundy.

Please have this book at hand for the full story.

0003 This commentary is not a close reading.  Rather, it is a curious association of postmodern and semiotic diagramsto Novotny’s writing.  These models come from Razie Mah’s foundational works, including How to Define the Word “Religion” as well as An Archaeology of the Fall.

I regard Novotny’s work as both insightful and prophetic.  By “insightful”, I mean seeing through the highly nuanced Latin text in order to grasp the core.  He plainly condenses each nuanced argument into one or two sentences.  By ‘prophetic’, I mean that he quests for truth.  In chapter 9, paragraph 3, Novotny admits that his initial aim was to show that, even today, Baroque scholastic culture could produce philosophical illumination.

As the following comments will show, he is on target, but not in the way he expected.

0004 Why consider baroque scholasticism?

John Deely (1942-2017 AD) writes the first postmodern survey of the history of philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to the 21st.  His book is entitled, Four Ages of Understanding (2001, University of Toronto Press).

0005 Deely locates Baroque scholasticism (1600 to 1680 AD) at the start of the Age of Ideas and the end of the Latin Age.  He focuses on this time – right around the promulgation of the Peace of Westphalia (1648 AD) – as paradigmatic.  Two figures stand out.

0006 In France, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) wrestles with the philosophical implications of the new mechanical philosophy.  Note, the word “philosophy” appears twice.  On one had, philosophy trends to modernism and postmodernism.  On the other hand, philosophy spawns science.

0007 In Spain, John Poinsot  (1589-1644) arrives at the definition of a sign.  A sign is a triadic relation.  The relation was classified as ‘a being of reason’ (ens rationis) by Suarez, the first philosopher covered by Novotny.  Almost 300 years after Francisco Suarez ,(1548-1617) the sign as a triadic relation is independently discovered by Charles Sanders Peirce.  Peirce marks a new turning.  He is the first philosopher of the upcoming Age of Semiotics.

0008 Both John Deely and Daniel Novotny seek to understand the critical juncture where the Latin Age gave way to our current Age of Ideas. 

The origin of the Age of Ideas is wrapped in modern mythology.  Descartes is lionized.  Poinsot is ignored.  The Age of Ideas reigns in the shining castles of modern universities.  To me, state-supported multiversities look like palaces. Mechanical philosophy is taught to some.  Analytic philosophy is taught to others.  Propaganda and technique covers the rest.

Outside the palaces of big government (il)liberalism lays a moat of resentment, filled with materialistic philosophies, political theologies and television.  Even further away, the forgotten remnants of the Latin Age slowly convert an apparently dead civilization into a living soil.  For centuries, moderns were warned about going into the dark forest of scholasticism.

Yet, that is where John Deely and Daniel Novotny wander.

0009 A crucial difference arises between Deely and Novotny.  Deely has Peirce’s definition of the sign to guide him.  He has a lantern.  Novotny does not have the advantage of a postmodern source of light.  Novotny only has his own intuition.

John Kronen, of the University of St. Thomas, captures Novotny’s lack of an illuminated path in his review, writing, “If one agrees with Aristotle that opposites are treated in the same science (e.g. medicine treats both health and sickness) … then one should agree that metaphysics (the study of being) ought to study nonbeing”.

Indeed, Novotny bravely says, “OK, I will look into this nonbeing stuff.  I will go into the dark forest of scholasticism and see what happens.”

0010 From these labors, he comes up with the insights and the prophecy that I place before you.

Here, the student should read chapters 1 and 2 of Novotny’s work.

0011 What about this nonbeing stuff?

During the Latin Age, the term “beings of reason” appears in various scholastic discussions.  In 1597 AD, the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez writes the first comprehensive treatment on the topic (Chapter 9:Paragraph 1).  This marks the start of Baroque scholasticism (Chapter 1: Sections A-D).

At this point, the student should read Novotny’s treatment of Suarez’s Disputation 54 (chapters 3, 4 and 5).

0012 Why are ‘beings of reason’ needed?

Suarez proposes three reasons (Chapter 3: Section C: Point 3).  These are distilled by Novotny into claim SN8:

Beings of reason are needed (1) to know nonbeing, (2) to know things comparatively and (3) to explain why humans can think of self-contradictory beings.

Over the previous centuries of inquiry in Aristotle’s tradition, schoolmen routinely use the term “beings of reason” on three occasions.  These occasions suggest reasons for inquiring into the nature of the term.  They are (1) negations, (2) privations and (3) relations.  Self-contradictions (4) are also implicated.

So, at the beginning, Suarez asks: What is the ontological status of the term ‘beings of reason’?

0013 Now, let me turn to my own methods.

What do I have that makes my comments more than a curiosity?

Just as Deely holds the lantern of Peirce’s semiotics, I hold the flashlight of the category-based nested form.  You can be the judge of the power of this source of illumination.

Please note the prerequisites at point 0003.

Here is the category-based nested form in a nutshell:

0014 The nested form is depicted as follows:

normal context3( actuality2( possibility or potential of something1))

The numerical subscripts denote Peirce’s categories.  The parentheses denote precission.

This depiction breaks down into four statements:

Actuality2 emerges from the possibility of something1.

Actuality2 situates the potential of something1.

A normal context3 contextualizes actuality2(something1).A normal context3 brings actuality2 into relation with the possibilities inherent in something1.

05/28/26

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel”(Part 2 of 19)

0015 Now, let me re-examine Suarez’ three reasons for investigating ‘beings of reason’.

0016 (1) ‘Beings of reason’ are needed to know nonbeing.

If nonbeing is ‘not existent’, then why call it a “being”?  Being goes with existence.  How can being assist in knowing nonbeing?

0012 (2) The answer to that is by comparison.  A nonexistent can be known by comparison to being.  What does not existcan be compared to what actually exists.  

Today, this would be called “a thought experiment”.  The thought experiment builds on a comparison.  Beingin_reason is to thought (comparatively) as beingitself is to existence.  

The question is: How is this comparison accomplished?

The answer is: A nonbeing can be regarded in the manner of being.

0017 (3) The ‘being of reason’ explains why humans can think of self-contradictions.

Reason goes with thought.  Thought is ‘the world of reason’.  Being is ‘what exists’.  Existence is ‘the world of actuality’.  So let me substitute these terms into the above equation and come up with an alternate way to express it.

‘This nonbeing (called “being of reason”) belongs to the world of reason’ (comparatively) as ‘being (what exists) belongs to the world of actuality’.

0018 To me, this sounds like an example of how humans think in self-contradictions.  What I call “being” does not exist.  It is a nonbeing.  Yet, I can think of it as if it is actual, even though it does not exist.

What does this suggest?

One can explain why humans can think of self-contradictions by explaining the causes, natures and division of ‘beings of reason’.

0019 In discussing these three reasons for studying ‘beings of reason’, I present Suarez’s definition of a beingin_reason.  A ‘being of reason’ is a nonbeing thought in the manner of being.  It is a thought experiment.  It is held, in thought, as a contradiction.  This is the case for all thought experiments.

05/27/26

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel” (Part 3 of 19)

0020 How do thought experiments work?

Typically, when reason is applied to the world of actuality, then the inquirer strives to eliminate contradictions.  This is the modern way.  This is the way of actuality.  As soon as one poses, in reason, a scenario that does not exist (or a nonbeing) and could be regarded in the manner of actuality (or existence, being), then the logic changes from eliminating contradictions to excluding whatever makes the scenario less real.

0021 In this way, a thought experiment can find a truth within fiction.

0022 Suarez sets up what moderns call “a thought experiment”.

Allow me to go through the specifics of this thought experiment.

To start, Suarez attaches a novel normal context to the word “being”.  He defines ‘a being of reason’ or beingin_reason.  This beingin_reason is a nonbeing.  It cannot exist.  It is not a beingitself.

But, what does the word “existence” indicate?

It indicates actuality, the realm of actuality that corresponds to Peirce’s secondness.

0023 Suarez uses language to project a nonbeing into the realm of actuality.  This beingin_reason is inherently a contradiction.  So, reason cannot be used to eliminate contradictions.  Reason must be used to explore the scenario.

0024 What is the prime motivation for doing this?

Suarez’s thought experiment allows inquiry into nonbeing.  But, this is not an ordinary nonbeing, it is a nonbeing regarded in the manner of being.  It does not simply not exist.  It is thought of as if it does exist (as a beingitself), even though it does not.

0025 I can put this into a category-based nested form in the following manner.  Reason3 is the normal context.  Beingin_reason2 is the actuality.  Knowing this particular character of nonbeing1 is the inherent possibility.

0026 How relevant is this nonbeing stuff?

Needless to say, I personally think that there are more reasons for asking about beingsin_reason than nonbeing, comparison, and holding contradictions in thought.

One motivation concerns — what I call — implicit and explicit abstraction.  The idea comes from An Archaeology of the Fall. 

In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our genus and our species practiced hand talk.  Hand talk favors implicit (or intuitive) abstraction.

In contrast, in our current Lebenswelt, speech-alone talk permits explicit (or symbolic) abstraction.

0027 In order to get a picture of the difference between hand talk and our current way of talking, speech-alone talk, consider the following associations:

0028 I ask, “Which row goes with hand talk?  Which row goes with speech-alone talk?”

Let me give you a hint.

In hand talk (and in its more developed hybrid, hand-speech talk), words consist of what could be imaged or pointed to.  Manual-brachial word gestures are ideal for picturing and indicating things and states of things.

In speech-alone talk, word-sounds do not image or point to anything.  Spoken words are placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences.  A word-sound is a placeholder linked, by convention, to a place-holding word-mental act.  One symbol links to another.  One symbolic order evokes the other.

05/26/26

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel”(Part 4 of 19)

0029 From this association alone, I would expect that each way of talking would represent the world in its own unique way.  The way of hand talk represents the world through implicit abstraction.  The way of speech-alone talk represents the world through explicit abstraction.

0030 In the following steps, I use Suarez’s definition of ‘beings of reason’ to construct a model for implicit abstraction.

0031 Step 1: Start with an encounter

Beingitself2 belongs to the realm of actuality.  Actuality belongs to Peirce’s category of secondness.  The category of secondness always contains two elements.  The paradigmatic example of secondness is cause and effect.  Both elements belong to actuality.  The two elements are contiguous.  One element accounts for the other.

When I encounter a beingitself, I encounter an effect, not a cause.  Animals, for example, respond to effects, rather than causes.  The effect is beingitself (what exists).  The animal wonders:  What do I do in response to this effect?  Do I approach, flee, or safely ignore it?

0032 Animals do not comprehend that what exists is one element in the dyad of actuality.

0033 So, I start with beingitself (what is encountered).  The figure is mostly empty.  One slot has an entry.  The slot belongs to actuality.

0034 Step 2: Project what accounts for what is encountered.

Humans, in contrast to animals, somehow understand that there is a cause. The human may wonder: How do I situate this effect in order to see what causes it?

Here, I use the word “cause” in the widest sense.  Cause accounts for the encountered being.  I encounter beingitself2.  Beingencountered2 is accounted for by another being2. 

0035 So how does a beingthat-accounts2 enter into the picture?

It enters as the other element in the dyad of actuality.  Now, I have two elements in a single entry.  This entry corresponds to actuality.

0036 When a dog comes across something quizzical, it may look at its owner.

What is the dog up to?

The dog looks for a clue.  The human has something that the dog does not.  The encountered being2 is mind-independent.  The accounting being2 is mind-dependent.  The accounting being2 is a nonbeing.  No one can demonstrate its existence.  It cannot be imaged or pointed to.

Yet, the human implicitly presumes its presence.  The human thinks of this nonbeing in the manner of being.  The dog watches for the human’s reaction to this nonbeing.  The human’s reaction sets the context for how the dog will respond.

0037 Step 3: A content-level nested form comes into view

Adding the second element to the dyad of actuality entails the construction of a category-based nested form.  The nested form is an abstraction because it draws itself out from the encountered being2.  This occurs in the human intellect.

The nested form looks like this:

0038 The normal context of what is happening?3 brings the dyadic actuality of {being in reason [accounts for] an encountered being}2 in regards to the potential of ‘something happening’1.

05/25/26

Looking at Daniel Novotny’s Book (2013) “Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel”(Part 5 of 19)

0039 I now return to Novotny’s text (Chapter 3; Section A).  Metaphysics is the study of being.  It entails the study of nonbeing.  The ‘being of reason’ is a type of nonbeing.  It is a nonbeing regarded in the manner of being.

So why is metaphysics interested in studying ‘beings of reason’?

Suarez lists four suggestions:

SM1: ‘Beings of reason’ are studied in order to facilitate the understanding of real beings.

SM2: This study is useful in various ways.

SM3: This study investigates their nature, causes, division and attributes.

SM4: Real beings are ontologically and epistemologically prior to ‘beings of reason’.

0040 These motivations point to various features of the nested form in the previous figure.

0041 At the same time, the suggestions illuminate the nested form.

Am I correct in asserting the following?

The only real being that appears in this picture is the encountered being2a.

0042 Obviously not, the human intellect is also a real being.

So, what do I mean by the word “real”?

If by “real”, I mean to be regarded in the manner of being, then I may consider a beingin_reason to be real, even though it is a nonbeing.  So, a beingin_reason is a real nonbeing.  It is a nonbeing thought of in the manner of being.  In the same way, being regarded in the manner of being is real being.

0043 To me, this suggests that the world “real” requires a mind.  An intellect decides whether something is real (to be thought in the manner of being) or unreal (to not be thought in the manner of being).  Indeed, an intellect situates the entire content-level nested form.

0044 So, the human intellect2b is a real being that situates the beingin_reason2a.

So, let me reconsider Suarez’s four motivations with the other real being in mind.  Let me substitute the word “intellect” for “real beings” and rework the phrasing.

SM1: ‘Beings of reason’ are studied in order to facilitate understanding of the intellect (and encountered beings).

SM2: The study of beingsin reason is useful in various ways.

SM3: This study investigates their nature, causes, divisions and attributes.

SM4: The intellect and the encountered being are epistemologically and ontologically prior to ‘beings of reason’.

0045 This rewrite of Suarez’s suggestions enlarges my perspective.

There are two real beings in play: the encountered being2a and the intellect that situates the beingin_reason2a.  The study of beingsin_reason is useful to understand both the real beings that we encounter2a and the human intellect2a.  That understanding, which includes the nature, causes, divisions and attributes of beingsin_reason, puts both the situation-level intellect2b and the content-level actualities2a into perspective.

What does that imply?

There must be one more actuality.  It is located on the perspective level.