Being and Human Being Xinyan Zhang say2xy@gmail.com Abstract We may never understand what the phrase "human being" means if we do not try to understand ontological meaning of the concept "Being" or "being" or "beings". With two essays presented together, the author tries to understand not only this concept but also its ontological consequence to other concepts such as "universe", "life", "organism", "human" and "human mind". Keywords being, human being, universe, life, mind 2 Main text I present two essays together here. The first essay explains ontologically what and how Being, being or beings are. The second essay explains ontologically what and how universe, life, organism, human and human mind are. 3 ESSAY ONE On Being Abstract Meaning of the ontological concept "Being" or "being" or "beings", wondering like a ghost in the whole history of Western philosophy, has never been either really found or really lost. And to find or understand its meaning is still vital for humans to be human beings. The author proposes in this article that this concept may mean to us nothing more or less than the unity or unification of Parmenides' idea "One" and Heraclitus' idea "all things are in flux and nothing may remain the same". That is as to say that a being and an entity may never be identified with the same boundary. In other words, nothing or none should ever be understood as a being, vice versa. Keywords being, meaning, metaphysics, ontology, OC 4 1. The method As we all know, some time, the only way to get a better concept or theory is to find the unity or unification of certain contrary opinions or opposite ideas. Some time, so is it even when dealing with ontology and even when dealing with those great metaphysical ideas from ancient Greek philosophers. And, now and here, it is exactly what and how I am going to do. 2. Question and purpose "To be, or not to be, that is the question" if ontology is still a question. Or, as Aristotle asked in his work titled "Metaphysics", what does it mean to be? Or, as Heidegger asked in his "Introduction to Metaphysics", why are there beings at all rather than nothing? In other words, why is to be to be but not to be not? (1, 2) However, it seems to me, what asked or meant by asking such questions is not only about a philosophical idea or system, not only about a word or a phrase or the grammar of certain language, not only about all the logos found or created by logicians and mathematicians, not only about all the facts known and proved by scientists, not only about the meaning for us as human beings and for our universe as the universe, and even not only about the value for our God as God. In other words, it is not only about what we know, we understand, we feel, we say or we do. 5 It is about all of them and more, and always more. If the phrase "all of them and more" may be understood, here in the context of this article, as ontologically what the word "being" or "beings" mean, then the "all of them and more, and always more" might also be understood as what the word "Being" means. And the purpose of this article is then to find something as the answer to one of the following questions: How is to be? What is the ontological difference between Being and being? What is the ontological difference between beings and things? Why is nothing nothing? 3. The contrary ideas Below two concepts have been chosen to represent the contrary ideas from two ancient Greek philosophers.  CHANGE (concept C), which represents Heraclitus' idea that all things are in flux and nothing may remain the same. (3) Definition of the concept C: A≠A. Note: The "C" may be taken here as a symbol of an open ring. 6  ONE (concept O), which represents Parmenides' idea about Being, a one that is self-consistent, never changes and may not be divided into parts. (3) Definition of the concept O: A=A. Note: The "O" may be taken here as a symbol of a closed ring. 4. Their translation It seems to me: The O is the change back to a self and the C is the change away from a self. "Back to a self" is the same as a return change and "away from a self" is then the same as a one-way change. As one-way change, the C also means the same as any of the following concepts if the O means the same as any of their counterparts: "energy", "time", "necessity", "asymmetry", "irreversibility", "determined", "dying", "will" or "nous". As return change, the O also means the same as any of the following concepts if the C means the same as any of their counterparts: "matter", "space", "contingency", "symmetry", "reversibility", "free", "living", "intellect" or "logos". 7 Both lists could be much longer and might undergo many changes. However, what concept O means may not be divided by Aristotle into his "material cause" and "formal cause", and what concept C means may not be divided into his "efficient cause" and "final cause". And causation is also what the C means and reciprocal causation is however what the O means. For example, all what Thales' "water", Anaximander's "indeterminate boundless", Anaximenes' "air" and Pythagoras' "number" tell us are reciprocal causation. What Heraclitus says, "fire lives the death of earth, and air the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water", is also reciprocal causation. So are Parmenides' "One", Leucippus and Democritus' "atoms", Spinoza's "God" and Leibniz's "monads". And so are Plato's "forms" and Aristotle's formal logic, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" and Kant's "Copernican revolution", Hegel's "Absolute" and Nietzsche' "eternal recurrence", Russell's logical atomism, Wittgenstein's language games, Husserl's "things themselves", Heidegger's "Dasein", and whole talks of the analytic philosophy. 5. Their unification It is not only understandable but also provable that we may not experience any C if without the O, we may not identify any O if without the C, and we cannot do anything if without a unification of the O and the C. 8 In other words, we are able to know, understand and do only because of their unification; all what we know, understand and do is nothing more or less than their unity; and it is impossible for us and our world to be anything else than their unity. Here, the word "unity" or "unification" may also be understood as what the word "interdependence" or "interchange" or "correlation", even as "identity" or "sameness" or "singleness" or "oneness" or "wholeness", means. This list, also, could be much longer and might undergo many changes. 6. The results As the logical results of the method, the purpose, the two contrary ideas, their translation and unification, I get following proposition, concept and equations:  Being is the unity or unification of what both concept O and C mean (Proposition One) The phrase in proposition one, "the unity or unification of what both concept O and C mean", may be abbreviated as the below concept:  Concept OC Definition of concept OC: O=C (equation 1) Note: The "OC" may be taken together as one symbol, something like the symbol "∝". And according to proposition one, we may also define the ontological concept "being" with the below equation: 9  Being = OC (equation 2) 7. The difference between Being and OC We may always find and prove that the equation 2 is true or that the ontological concept "Being" or "being" or "beings" mean the same to us as what concept OC does. However, I would believe, what we really find might only be that OC is our limitation of Being. And it might not really prove that OC is the limitation of Being as being or beings. The ontological concept "being" or "beings" emphasizes the O in OC but the "Being" emphasizes the C. The C in OC means that open or incompleteness in being or beings is ontologically fundamental, that, as Anaximander said, Being is indeterminate boundless, and that eventually we cannot tell the difference between Being and God. Therefore, we know, think, understand, say, do and create, all because of the OC but not the being as Being. And the concept "Being" or "being" means to us only what the OC means but never the being as Being does. Just as to say:  OC = human reality (equation 3) Equation 3 does not deny the possibility but only the reality of "A=A" or "A≠A" or "being=Being". 8. Corroboration of the Equation 3 As what the concept OC means about Being, 10  Gödel's incompleteness theorems mean the same about mathematics.  Quantum mechanics means the same about all microscopic objects.  Thermodynamics means the same about all macroscopic systems. And OC explains the incompleteness of the periodic table of elements and also predicts the incompleteness of the standard model of elementary particle physics. 9. Ontological meanings of the OC  Being is what beyond anything or anyone. Except the OC, nothing or none really exists.  Being is what beyond any change or motion. Except the OC, no change or motion really exists.  The O is the reference-frame relative to C and the C is the reference-frame relative to O. Therefore OC is always independent of Newton's or Einstein's time and space.  Though full of communications, there is no information or semantic information exchanged in OC. (4)  No birth or death may ever be found from any OC. Gorgias (about 400 years BC) may be the first one who draws such a line between Being and entity, or between beings and things, with his three sequential arguments of that nothing exists, that if anything exists it is incomprehensible, and that even if it is comprehensible it cannot be communicated. (3) As I understand, those arguments mean that OC and entity, anything or anyone, may never be identified with the same boundary. 11 Those arguments may also mean that the OC is the home of our knowing, thinking, talking and doing, including our language, philosophy, mathematics, logic, science and art, but not the other way round. Protagoras believed that man is the measure of all things but I would trust that OC is the measure of all beings. George Berkeley declared that to be is to be perceived but I would say that no being may ever be perceived. At least what "Being" or "being" means should not be understood as what that may be divided into "subject", "predicate" and "object", that has the ability to know itself, to think itself and to talk about itself, or that is self-evident to itself. Otherwise, what hidden behind this concept is not intellect but only a will, not philosophy but only a religion. 10. Epistemological and axiological meanings of the OC  There is no subject-object or self-other or mind-body or human-thing distinction to OC.  OC means that knowing or doing never takes place between a subject and an object, but always between will and intellect. For example, it may take place either between a thing's will and a human's intellect or between the human's will and the thing's intellect. For example, Einstein's theory of relativity is only about light's will and quantum mechanics only about light's intellect, but neither may ever be about both the will and the intellect. And it means that epistemologically the differences between will and intellect are more fundamental than those between human and thing.  If the O in OC is what that is real, right, good, beautiful, logical or computable, the C is then the limitation of the real real, the right right, the good good, the beautiful beautiful, the logical logical or the computable computable. 12  If the O is the freedom and the C is the will, then, there is no free will in being. Altogether, the concept OC might mean to believe that there is something, always there, which we, however, may never know or can never do, no matter how much more we may still know and can still do. (5) It works however, when we work together. 13 References 1. Van Inwagen, Peter and Sullivan, Meghan. "Metaphysics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/metaphysics/ 2. Sorensen, Roy, "Nothingness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/nothingness/ 3. Curd, Patricia. "Presocratic Philosophy." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/presocratics/. 4. Zhang, Xinyan. "The source and the nature of life and consciousness", 2019, https://philpapers.org/rec/ZHATSA-4 5. Zhang, Xinyan. Be Human in the Paradise, In Amazon ASIN: B00IHE5QS2A, 2014, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IHE5QS2 14 ESSAY TWO On Human Being Abstract The author tries to show the differences between scientific view and ontological view on universe, life, organism, human and human mind. 15 1. Being If, as written in my essay On Being,  Being = OC, then OC should be an ontological explanation of all what we have already known, such as those called as "universe", "life", "organism", "human", "mind" and "consciousness". 2. OC OC is the unity or unification of what the concept O and C mean. The concept O means the change back to a self and the concept C the change away from a self. "Back to a self" means the same as a return change and "away from a self" the same as a one-way change. As one-way change, the C also means the same as any of the following concepts if the O means the same as any of their counterparts: "energy", "time", "necessity", "asymmetry", "irreversibility", "determined", "dying", "will" or "nous". As return change, the O also means the same as any of the following concepts if the C means the same as any of their counterparts: "matter", "space", "contingency", "symmetry", "reversibility", "free", "living", "intellect" or "logos". 16 For example, since all waves are unity of return change and one-way change, therefore all waves are unity of matter and energy. Since light and sound are waves, therefore, both of them may carry gravitational mass. Both of the lists could be much longer and might undergo changes. And causation is also what the C means and reciprocal causation is what the O means. Reciprocal causation is the truth in languages, philosophies, logics, mathematics, physics and religions, but is not the whole truth of being or Being. 3. Four possibilities Logically, there are four possibilities for any return change to change:  To be either of two absolute states, or  To be the process towards one of the absolute states. For example, if the return change of a being may be considered or described with words such as "matter" and "energy", then, one of the absolute state may be called as absolute energy and another as absolute matter, and one of the process is with a direction form absolute energy to absolute matter and another from absolute matter to absolute energy. And all the matter and energy found during both of the processes may be called as relative energy and relative matter. Here the "absolute" is absolute and the "relative" is relative only when as one of the four possibilities of a return change. 17 All the four possibilities may be understood together as a Carnot cycle described by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in the year of 1824. However, as any return change, Carnot cycle is still not the whole truth of being or Being. 4. Universe Universe, any universe, is a being or a part of Being. As a being, there are four possibilities for a universe to be:  To be either of two absolute states, called as U. Summer or U. Winter.  To be the process towards one of the absolute states, called as U. Spring or U. Autumn. Since all the four possibilities are parts of the return change of a being, all the universes may be understood as four seasons of a year cycle. If the year cycle may be considered or described with words such as "matter" and "energy", then, the U. Summer is an infinitely small point of absolute energy, the U. Winter is an infinitely big point of absolute matter, the U. Spring is the process from absolute matter to absolute energy, and the U. Autumn is the process from absolute energy to absolute matter. According to the second law of thermodynamics, our universe is an irreversible course during which there is less and less energy but more and more matter. This irreversibility or its one-way change may be called as the general direction of our universe. Since this general direction is the only basis of all the causality in our universe, therefore:  It determines that there was absolute energy at the beginning of our universe and there 18 will be absolute matter at its end. And all what that may be found between the beginning and the end are relative energy and relative matter.  It also determines that we are in a universe of holism, in which the parts are always created and selected by a whole and its change, not by "God" or "nature". This general direction also indicates that we, human beings, exist in a U. Autumn. 5. Life Life is being, the being of changes, and nothing more than those changes. Theoretically an absolute life is an eternal return change between absolute energy and absolute matter, but, since there are only relative matter and relative energy in a U. Autumn, all lives found in our universe have to be the unification of both return change and one-way change. A life may be called as an autumn life if its one-way change follows the general direction of our universe, or as a spring life if opposite to it. Autumn life consumes relative energy and produces relative matter. Spring life consumes relative matter and produces relative energy. Approximately, humans, animals and plants are all autumn life, and the lives that produce energy in the sun are all spring life. The reason why autumn lives but not spring lives dominate our universe may be found only from the general direction of our universe. 6. Death 19 A spring life consumes only certain relative matter from its matter environment and an autumn life consumes only certain relative energy from its energy environment. The spring life will die when all the relative matter in its environment is used up, which may be called as hot death. And the autumn life will die when all the relative energy in its environment is used up, which may be called as cold death. And the relative matter left behind by an autumn life after its cold death may be called as frozon. All those protons and neutrons found in different atomic nuclei and all kinds of chromosomes found in different cells are different examples of such frozon. 7. Generations of life It is also deducible, according to the general direction, that there might be three different generations of autumn life and spring life during the different periods of our universe's development: The generation emerged at our universe's beginning may be called as life of high energy, the generation to emerge at its ending may be called as life of high matter, and the generation between them both may be called as life of high organization. All, though not only, plants, animals and humans are lives of high organization. The energy environment for life of high energy is something like the absolute energy. The matter environment for life of high matter is something like the absolute matter. For lives of high organization to be active, only a few electron volts are needed to create its energy environment, but, if for the lives of high energy existed approximately at the 10-12 second after the beginning of our universe, such an environment may cost one hundred thousand million electron volts. We may therefore understand that most of the non-living 20 matters around us are only frozons from lives of high energy very deeply frozen by our environment. All frozons from previous generation of lives may be the genes of some later generation of lives. 8. Organization Life of high energy depends on relative energy for its activities, life of high matter depends on relative matter for its activities, and all lives of high organization depend on organization of both relative energy and relative matter for their occurrence, activities and development. All the "biological living beings", such as bacteria, plants, animals, human individuals or even biological environments, compose, are and are composed of some basic organizations that are fundamentally identical to each other. This basic organization may be called as highly organized system or HOS. There are four parts that may be identified from every HOS, called as input part, output part, react part and feedback part. Anything that is not part of a HOS may be called as its system environment. The interface between system environment and input part is called as receptor and between output part and system environment is called as effecter. Relative matter and relative energy may enter the input part only through a receptor and leave the output part only through an effecter. Input part and output part are parts of the one-way change of a life. Feedback part is a part of its return change. And also, input part, output part and system environment may together be parts of the return change. 21 There are basically four changes that may ever occur in a HOS, called as life change, form change, location change and route change. The location changes and route changes may be found in any part of a HOS. The form changes are mainly found in input and output parts. And the life changes are found only in react part. Brain's functions cannot be explained only with the activities of the nerve impulses and neurotransmitters, because impulse moving through a nerve or neurotransmitter through a synapse is only the location change, and the nerve impulse converted into neurotransmitter or vice versa is only the form change. 9. System relation Relative matter or relative energy that enters the input part of a HOS may be called as sensation, that leaves the output part may be called as behavior, and that remains within HOS, being neither input nor output, may be called as memory. And there are two kinds of memory in every HOS, called as hereditary memory and acquired memory. The HOS, with biological macromolecules such as sugar, fat, protein and nucleic acid as its components and environment, may be called as biological HOS. The hereditary memory in a biological HOS is its structures determined by gene and the acquired memory is its structures determined by the interaction between the HOS and its system environment. Memories are always contrary in nature to both sensation and behavior. A HOS may have either EME system relation when both sensation and behavior are relative energy but memory is relative matter, or MEM system relation when vice versa. A HOS with MEM system relation contains spring life in its react part and with EME system relation contains 22 autumn life. Our immune system is a typical HOS with MEM relation while our visual system is then a typical HOS with EME relation. HOS, which is a combination of subsystems with both system relations, may be called as a complex HOS. Human mind is such a complex HOS. 10. Communication Every HOS may exchange relative matter or relative energy with others, which may be called as communication. But, there is no information ever exchanged during such communication. The meanings of the communication among HOS are determined individually by life changes within each HOS. 11. Behaviors Communication may also be understood as behavior of or interaction among HOS. An adult human body consists of approximately 1014 cells that both compose and are composed of many biological HOS. Most of those HOS generate cellular or sub-cellular individual behaviors. Some generate collective behaviors of a group of cells, an organ or a function system. Only a few HOS generate the behaviors of the whole human body, which may further be divided into hereditary body behaviors based on hereditary memory and acquired body behaviors based on acquired memory. 23 Human mind is a complex HOS that generates both hereditary and acquired body behaviors. Every animal that shows both hereditary and acquired body behaviors has a complex HOS essentially identical to human mind. In the body of a person who is in so called vegetative state, HOS may still generate individual, collective and even hereditary body behaviors, and the only what absent is those acquired body behaviors. 12. Mind Human mind is a being of changes, a life of high organization, a complex HOS, and especially a system that generates the body behaviors of a human being, which hides itself widely in brains, spinal cord, nerves, vegetative nerves and ganglia, sense organs, motor organs, even inner organs. As a complex HOS, mind is composed of both MEM system relations among inner organs and EME system relations between sense organs and motor organs, especially between sense organs, such eyes and ears, and motor organs, such as those voluntary muscles of vocal organs and of hands and fingers. Shown as by Figure 1, a human mind may generally be divided into seven parts: a sense brain (SB), an emotion brain (EB), a behavior brain (BB), three intermediate brains (IB) and a feedback brain (FB). SB has more direct connections with the sense organs that compose the surface of a human body. BB has more direct connections with voluntary muscles. EB has more direct connections with inner organs. IB has more direct connections with SB, EB and BB. And FB has more direct connection with all mind's hereditary parts. 24 Figure 1 Mind's overall view The areas between the peripheral circle and the central circle are mind's hereditary memories, and within the central circle are mind's acquired memories. The three cones are SB, EB and BB, and between them are IBs and FBs. And the solid blue stripe is where consciousness is produced. There are both relative energy and relative matter, and both spring life and autumn life, but nothing found in our mind may be called as a "self" or "soul". 13. Consciousness Consciousness is not a being nor a life nor a HOS that generates behaviors. 25 Our consciousness is only the relative energy produced by the spring life in certain EME system relation in our minds. Different from sensation and behavior, consciousness may neither be input into mind nor be output out of mind. Both sensation and behavior may initiate or influence the producing of consciousness but may never become the consciousness itself. Whenever consciousness appears, the mind is not gaining or feeling it but only producing it. Consciousness by itself does not sense or recognize, does not feel or think, does not remember or recall, and does not initiate a boy action, which may all be proved by different introspection experiments. For example, during XXII World Congress of Philosophy (Seoul, 2008), I asked my audiences to join me in two introspection experiments. In the first one, I asked a question, such as "Who is your first lover?" Audiences found their answers first and then were asked to report what they had done in consciousness to get the answer. In the second one, I asked audiences to do an action, such as "Put your right hand up". Then they were asked to report what they had done in consciousness to initiate the action. The result of both experiments was the same: The audiences could not find anything to report. In the first experiment audiences cannot report what they did in consciousness to recall the name or the image that appeared in their mind, and, in the second experiment audiences cannot report what they did in consciousness to initiate the action. These two experiments also mean that what that appears inside mind as consciousness and what that appears outside mind as voluntary movement may essentially be the same. The voluntary movement is now known as the result of neuron's bioelectric activities. Therefore, consciousness may be the same in nature. 26 And it is a fact found by Wilder Penfield (1950s) that consciousness as well as voluntary movement may be evoked by direct electrical stimulation to the human cortex. 14. Thinking Essence of the relations among these mental brains is the same as the communication among HOS, during which no information but only either relative matter or relative energy is exchanged. And the meanings of the communication among them are determined individually by life changes within each brain. Thinking is the kind of internal communication, during which the consciousness output from sense brain interacts with memories in both emotion brain and behavior brain, the interactions cause life changes, and life changes create new memories or new consciousness. Those activities along EME system relations among different mental brains may be called as the central process of thinking (CPT). Before and after the CPT, there are two possible processes of feedback, either though the output of feedback brain or through the output of behavior brain. Since thinking is all the route changes, the location changes, the form changes and the life change together, therefore, we may only communicate but not think linguistically. 15. Will and intellect All our mental activities may also be divided into will and intellect. The will may be understood as the interaction between consciousness and hereditary memories, and the intellect then the interaction between consciousness and acquired memories. 27 And the distinction between will and intellect are ontologically more fundamental than subject-object or self-other or mind-body or human-thing distinction. For example, all our knowing or doing may take place either between a thing's will and a human's intellect or between the human's will and the thing's intellect. And, for example, Einstein's theory of relativity is based on light's will but quantum mechanics is based on light's intellect. Summary: If "to understand our ability to understand" is the question for us to answer, it should be a task more for philosophical understanding rather than scientific knowing. Being may be understood philosophically as the oneness or the unification of return change and one-way change, based on which it is possible for us to derive logically a unified explanation of our universe, different lives, organisms, human minds and consciousness in turn. And such an explanation may even be proved scientifically. The return change of being determines that we may reach such a comprehensive explanation. However, return change is not the whole truth of being. The one-way change also determines and it determines that no explanation could ever be perfect. The one-way change means that our explanations or our logos is always open somewhere. In other words, the open to our logos is ontologically fundamental, no matter if it is language or logic or mathematics or science. 28 And it means that there is something, always there, which we, however, may never know or can never do, no matter how much more we may still know and can still do. Perhaps, for us, to be a part of being or Being is the most perfect explanation as well as the upmost mission.