impersonal transcendence
I should think meaning must be agreed to, even if that meaning depends ultimately on a discussion of what is not, in order to at least form a coherent, if not mutually acceptable proposition.
In other words, can one really prove or disprove a position regarding the nature of what actually constitutes meaningfullness?
It seems to me that the quality of having meaning is a requirement of a proposition. If this is so, anything that does not have meaning also is not, in fact, a position, or at least is one rendered incapable of positive, objective statement.
Sometimes we engage in laughably futile attempts to talk about ‘things’ that are incapable of being conceptualized. They are futile simply because these ‘things’ do not exist as ‘things’ at all, laughable, because we really should know better.
To illustrate further:
If you speak to me in a language foreign to me, I simply do not understand. But I correctly guess your utterances have meaning.
Even the random babble of a child inarguably has meaning.
A chair has meaning, as does the word, ‘chair’ we use to label the ‘thing’ we call a chair. A rose by any other name, and so on.
It is the verbal or non-verbal neural process of labelling, abstracting, symbolizing, which ascribes meaning to things, which otherwise have none.
At the most basic level, all which appears to exist in the universe of our experience has at least the base characteristic of meaning, defined as whatever it is which characterizes, or sets that ‘thing’ apart — as far as our cause/effect, subject/object conceptualizing brain is concerned.
This is what is meant by ‘limits’ bestowing meaning. Without limits, a thing has no objective, conceptual meaning, because it cannot be defined as a thing.
There is, naturally, that which exists without limit. We call ‘it’ the universe, or transcendence, as if we were somehow separate from ‘it’, and can therefore be experienced subjectively as object. No matter how we try, we cannot positively define transcendence, quite simply because it is limitless.
All experience is objective. That is, mind is composed of experience-ing. Transcendence, which is limitless, and all inclusive, must remain incapable of being ‘experienced’ objectively, because thought is contained within ‘it’.
Transcendence unquestionably exists, and may even be alluded to as, for example, ‘all that is’, or ‘universe’, but its inclusive, limitless nature precludes a coherent definition.
This is one of the reasons why it is quite meaningless to personalize transcendence.
Lesser gods there may be, but there cannot be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent ’supreme being’
