The Unbearable Separateness of Being and Truth

It takes most people a while to come to terms with how inescapably separate the three meta-categories undeniably are.

You cannot turn logic into emotion; you can only react to the logical with an emotion. If I said, "I am going to kill this puppy," your reaction to that statement is a separate thing from its truth-value.

You cannot turn logic into a physical thing; the electrons that represent this paragraph are separate from the paragraph itself. This paragraph could be embodied (manifested) by being printed out, written in ink, transmitted as TCP/IP packets, a video made of me typing this, or "spoken" in Morse Code, Braille, Pig Latin, or American Sign Language. Even changing the language to Klingon or Quenya or Sanskrit does not change the content of this paragraph, as long as the translator selects equivalent linguistic constructs.

However, this problem of separateness is not a problem for long.

It takes an intersection node, such as the human mind, to react (E), embody (P), or describe (L). Scientific tools are intersection nodes of the logical and the physical. Animals are intersection nodes of the physical and emotional.

Science: L x P
Animal: P x E
Philosophy: E x L

Choice: P x L x E

In Western Civilization, we only punish humans for moral wrongdoing, because as far as we're concerned, only humans can choose. A killer robot or a computer virus would be traced back to its creator or programmer, and they would be liable for its actions. The same is true of a dog driven to rage by starvation and beatings.

Triessentialism is even built into our system of justice. The historic indications of guilt are Means, Motive, and Opportunity, which are logical, emotional, and physical, respectively. Only a triple intersection node (a "person") can commit a crime.

Interestingly,

Triessentialism is a systematic philosophy; it works from the basic to the complex. It is an idealistic philosophy; it assumes that everything falls into one of the seven metacategories, and is manifested as one of the three basic metacategories.

(The three basic meta-categories are Physical things, Logical things, and Emotional things, for those new to this blog.)

Triessentialism is a Christian philosophy; in concept it is 100% compatible with orthodox Protestant Christian doctrine (inerrant Bible, standard historic creeds claimed by most churches). It is also applicable to theology; it started as a basic theory of the Trinity, that the Father was somehow related to the Physical, the Son to the Logical, and the Spirit to the Emotional. It has since grown more complex, but never invalidating this early hypothesis.

Triessentialism, basically, states that the physical, logical, and emotional are different types of things, each with their own rules and contexts.

For example, a rock is a physical thing, the number "17.125" is a logical thing, and the feeling you get when you look at a stunning sunset is an emotional thing.

The physical operates by rules of motion, forces, space, time, energy, matter, pushing and pulling, bouncing and rolling, shape and chemistry. I sum it all up with the concept "What."

The logical operates by rules of rationality, true and false, reasoning, cold logic, if-then-else, comprehensibility, information, data, letters and numbers. I sum it all up with the concept "How."

The emotional operates by rules of feelings, happy, wistful, angry, why-because, us and them, identities, relationships, desires, needs, wants. I sum it all up with the concept "Why."

Things, Methods, and Reasons.
Body, Mind, and Heart.
Ability, Thought, and Motive.

More on the theology aspect in the next post.