The document discusses various philosophical and theological concepts including: - Intra-objectivity refers to experiencing absolute unitary being or God's immanent presence as oneness. - Inter-objectivity refers to the indeterminacy of God's wholly transcendent nature or a dualist view of separate beings. - Being present with another person in need involves an intra-objective experience of oneness between selves rather than an inter-subjective ego-ego relationship. - Sitting with another in need involves an intra-objective primacy between selves with inter-subjectivity receding, similar to a married couple sleeping together.

1. On that our self - God's self
yes, that is what I refer to as objective
with the intraobjective identity as an experience of absolute
unitary being, perhaps we could say - or God's immanent
presence, the One
with the interobjective indeterminacy regarding that aspect of
God that is wholly transcendent and calling for a robustly
apophatic predication, the Indeterminate
and the ego - ego being, of course, an intersubjective
intimacy - not to deny a depth dimension, whether with other
humans (imago Dei) or God that is unfathomable, the Many
I guess the terms "unitary being" for our experience of
reality's Oneness and "unitive relationship" for our
experience of the Many is in play.
And intrasubjective integrity, that self-ego relationship,
which preoccupies most people, early on the journey
pax,
jb
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One of the examples I gave was a Self-Self connection that
happens when just sitting and being present to someone who's
ill, elderly, etc. That would seem to be an example of interobjectivity, no? It's self as "is" present to another who
"is." Not much Ego-Ego going on.<<<<<
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That would be inter-objectivity from a western, dualistic
perspective.
From an eastern nondualist perspective, there is only oneness,
hence the intra-objective.
Intra-objective represents a monist ontology. Inter-objective
represents a dualist or even pluralist ontology.
In some sense, then, all are One as created and uncreated
energies interact. We cultivate an awareness of this absolute
unitary being, the Tao, the Divine Matrix, advaita,
boundarylessness.
In another sense, though, we experience the Many as persons
interact and cultivate the unitive, the robustly relational,
the other.
Integrally, a human be-ing, enjoys a "not two - not one"
existence that is, in some sense, both bounded and unbounded,
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2. hence quasi-autonomous. All of created reality participates in
the dance between created and uncreated energies, but as
biosemiotic realities emerge we witness ever-increasing
degrees of autonomy, which reach a pinnacle in the human
semiotic reality and is experienced as freedom, most
authentically, as freedom to love.
Humans are a sui generis type of bounded existent because they
experience a type of autonomy that is radically discontinuous
from that experienced by other types of creatures. But they
otherwise also experience a pervasive continuity with all of
creation and a remarkable degree of interactivity with
uncreated energy, which I think we experience as primal
reality's initial, boundary and limit conditions and telic
dimensionality, what we might call "rules" that we can model
but not explain.
Sitting and being present to another would involve an ego-self
present to another ego-self with the intra-objective moment
enjoying a primacy while inter-subjectivity recedes, not
unlike two spouses sleeping in the same bed. That moment may
have been preceded by an intrasubjective moment of conscience
examen followed by an intersubjective (via God) prayer before
nodding off and intersubjective exchange of affection, a kiss
goodnight.
When I say inter-objective I am thinking of God's
indeterminate essential nature and an absolute ontological
discontinuity, which epistemically would, in principle, be
permanently occulted and radically unknowable.
Within intra-objective reality, there are bounded existents
that present with varying degrees of quasi-autonomy within the
Divine Matrix and which form organic relationships to comprise
yet other bounded existents in an ontological hierarchy but
these boundaries are dynamic and fluid and constrained
temporally, not lending themselves to strict identity but only
to what Hartshorne calls a nonstrict identity. A bounded
existent has an asymmeteric temporal relationship to the rest
of intraobjective reality such that it always enjoys a
discrete history but not necessarily a definitive future, its
continuity of existence recognizable in the past but any socalled future not an intrinsic character of its existence.
Think of the sorite (sand) paradox, which arises from a
conceptual confusion between a logical cause (naming a heap)
and an efficient cause (adding grains of sand). There is no
discrete point in time when the addition of one more grain of
sand will produce the heap. An essentialism describes a heap
as a clearly discrete reality. A nominalism denies the reality
of a heap. A pragmatic semiotic approach confronts (evades as
nonsensical) the confusion between logical and efficient
causes, between essentialism and nominalism, and asks whether
or not a value can be cashed out of the concept, like
directing one to make a sandcastle out of sand from that heap
and not from the otherwise loose surrounding sand, which
hasn't been run through a sifter yet in order to get rid of
debris. Nonstrict identity recognizes this semiotic realism
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3. and doesn't see any given heap of sand as a future sandcastle
but would recognize that any given sandcastle "used to be"
this heap and not some other.
The same is true for our concepts, intraobjective and
intersubjective, self and ego; we ask what value we are
cashing out when employing the distinction. When we interact
in those moments where intraobjectivity or self enjoys
primacy, we are realizing the truth, beauty and goodness of
absolute unitary being, the vast, ineffable interconnectedness
of all reality. It doesn't readily lend itself to
conceptualization, however, when we retrospectively process it
via discursive analysis. When we interact in those moments
when intersubjectivity or ego enjoys primacy, we are realizing
the value of unitive relationality. All of these valuerealizations have both intrinsic and extrinsic aspects. Our
problem-solving mindset is not involved in those contemplative
intersubjective moments, wherein we rest in another's
presence, devotionally and unitively, each aware of the other.
Neither is it involved in an intraobjective experience of
unitary being, self to self.
What might the experience of interobjective reality entail?
Maybe that is what Otto called the mysterium tremendum et
fascinans? a wholly other reality to which we might
successfully refer but not describe in its utter
indeterminacy, a radical ontological discontinuity that is
dread yet alluring?
The experience of intrasubjective integrity is one of selfreflective awareness of one's ongoing journey to authenticity
as we progress in the now, awareness and truth in
intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious
dimensions of experience.
Perhaps we could say that the self is a person's locus of
interconnection within unitary reality (the One), an
interconnectivity that can be experienced both aware
(discursively and nondiscursively) and unawares, while the
ego is a person's locus of interrelatedness with unitive
realities (the Many), an interrelatedness that can be
experienced both discursively and nondiscursively.
At least, that's how I've been conceiving the concepts. It may
be that they just don't map perfectly, one over the other.
pax,
jb
I thought of a graphic illustration/metaphor to explain my
distinctions.
Think of a huge fishing net.
Each hole in the net is surrounded by four intersections of
rope.
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4. Imagine, at each such intersection of rope on the entire
fishing net, that another piece of rope was attached,
tentacle-like.
Imagine each tentacle as capable of growing longer, so not all
tentacles on the net are the same length.
Each tentacle, then, would represent a person.
The proximal end of the tentacle that attaches to the fishing
net would comprise the self.
The distal end of the tentacle would comprise the ego.
The length of each tentacle would indicate a growth in
authenticty and one characteristic of same would be increased
freedom, intra-subjectively.
The fishing net would represent the One, a Divine Matrix of
interconnectivity, the dance between created and uncreated
energies and is experienced by the self as unitary, intraobjectively.
The distal ends of the tentacles, the holes in the net, the
net, itself, and so one, would represent the Many.
The distal ends can also inter-relate with the One and the
Many, and will experience what we call the unitive, intersubjectively. An ego might treat another person as an object,
but that is either an epistemic mistake or a moral failing.
Where the self is concerned, we can distinguish between it's
ontological status, which, on one hand, would be as a polar
reality in being the proximal end of each tentacle, on the
other, as a nodal intersection on the fishing net, and its
epistemic-axiological experience, which is primarily an intraobjectivity, an interconnection of unitary being.
One could imagine allowing the net to fold back in such a way
that two selves would come in contact and I understand how
etymologically we might call that, then, an inter-objective
reality, ontologically, but my labels are not ontological but,
rather, phenomenological and speak of experience,
epistemically and axiologically (value-wise), such that any
experience of self with any aspect of the fishing net will be
that of undifferentiated unitary being.
The interobjectivity that I refer to would include, for
example, God's indeterminate self-subsisting esse or essential
nature, or another uni-verse, that is wholly autonomous and
distinct from our own, epistemically unavailable, permanently
occulted, in principle.
I suppose we must also talk of how the ego interacts with
other creatures, who are not otherwise subjects, the world, so
to speak, in a subjective-objective mode. It would seem that
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5. the most optimal subject-object interaction would derive from
such a tentacle as has robustly experienced both unitary being
and unitive relationship, both enlightenment and unitive
glimpses.
later,
jb
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