Metaphysical Potential

Readers of Metaphysical Humanism may recall that I explained consciousness cannot exist on the (relatively) macroscopic scale we exhibit and experience it in unless it’s already built into the fabric of the universe.

Although I didn't use the term in the book, what this represents is metaphysical potential: that is, a potential for action that is already built into the fabric of created reality. Anything we see arising in reality is already inherent to its nature – not acquired. Because of the way that levels of created reality function, what is inherent to it expresses itself differently on different levels, but the principle — the metaphysical principle, that informs – that is, inwardly forms—such inherent aspects of nature remains consistent and universal throughout. Thus, if human beings are intelligent, the cells they are made out of have an intelligence; and the molecules those cells are made of have an intelligence; and the atoms those molecules are made out of have an intelligence.

It’s in the nature of both science and philosophy to make mistakes; and as we observe intelligence on our own level, we make them in regard to our intelligence, consciousness, and other properties of being, presuming our modes of agency to be unique. Yet they are unique only in character, not in substance, because the substances that give rise to the character have these properties in the first place.

It's possible to approach this using the theory of two prominent mathematicians, which is referred to as the Free Will Theorem. This exercise was constructed in order to make a point about cause-and-effect. According to those who agree with the theorem, it demonstrates quite conclusively that atomic particles behave in a way that is not a function of the past. This means that our reality is by no means deterministic, even though it presents a strong appearance of determinism at macroscopic scales.

My purpose, however, is not to engage in a discourse in determinism. It is, rather, to show that phenomenon such as free will – the ability to choose, which is a signature feature of agency —exist as factual behavioral premises at the foundation of the created cosmos. This is what I call metaphysical potential. 

The law of metaphysical potential, as introduced here, states that all metaphysical activity has its roots in an objective metaphysical potential which is built into the fabric of what we call reality. Another way of saying that is that the metaphysical behaviors that humans express –thinking, feeling, love, anger, and even agency itself—are already present at the beginning of the material state. In what I call the Georgia version of this theory, “ya cain’t have it at tha top if ya hain’t got it at tha bottom.” 

The concept of free will as a fundamental universal state has an enormous amount to do not only with the way the quantum level functions, it is also essential to human behavior and its metaphysical properties. The idea that particles do not have to behave in a way that is a function of the past has everything to do with the possibility of new and unexpected things happening. And, indeed, that is what happens all the time. Everything appears, to our conscious state, to take place as a function of what happened in the past; and yet, in point of fact, in every instance of time all the things that happen are, from a metaphysical point of view, entirely new. Their resemblance to things past, as well as their dependency on them, arises from an illusory quality imparted by relationship. What imparts the appearance of causality is not an actual causality inherent in manifestation in time; it is an imparted causality constructed by our perception of it. That is to say, agency and perception assign causality—which is, by the way, exactly what experiments and quantum physics have taught us.

Agency and perception are incontrovertibly metaphysical properties. Although they manifest within a physical world, they cannot be measured with instruments – only their apparent causes and effects can. The properties themselves are functions of movement through time and space, undertaken in relationship.

In this very real and fundamental sense, metaphysics creates physics, and not the other way around. This bears great deal of thinking about, because it suggests that we have our entire understanding of the cosmos upside down.

Following on this set of observations, a further hypothesis is that from the quantum state onwards, all materials and their actions are a priori infused with the metaphysical properties the govern both the observations made about them and the creatures that make them. Life, in other words, has the capacity to concentrate pre-existing and naturally dispersed metaphysical aspects of materiality; and as it does so more and more apparent and perceptible expressions of the metaphysical foundation of the cosmos are able to arise.

In this sense, consciousness itself – which is the quintessential metaphysical property encompassing the features of agency, intention, foresight, memory, discrimination, and altruism — is a natural outgrowth of an already present metaphysical property embedded at the root of reality as we know it. 

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.