Metaphysics – Why Ken’s Wrong

Metaphysics (as Ken Wheeler understands the term) lies at the root of most of Theoria Apophasis’ other misconceptions. Find out why his metaphysical claims are so far off the mark that one could argue they’re not even wrong.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines classical metaphysics as “the ‘science’ that studied ‘being as such’ or ‘the first causes of things’ or ‘things that do not change.'” Contemporary philosopher Freya Matthews defines it like this, “ultimate questions about the nature of reality and our own place in the larger scheme of things.”

These questions concern esoteric topics like existence, universal traits, substance, time, space, causation, change, composition, reality and perception. These obscure concepts are both challenging and speculative.

Metaphysics is a very profound subject and also very hard to define, even for scholars who work in the field. Of course, none of that deters Ken Wheeler from insisting on his own, self-taught mastery of the topic.

Ken Defines Metaphysics as “First Principles in and of Counterspace

The YouTuber behind Theoria Apophasis defines metaphysics like this. “Study of first principles in and of counterspace. The realm of energy and ultimate reality. Contrary to current connotations such that the ‘metaphysics’ section of any book store is about occult nonsense, genuine metaphysics as per the Pythagoreans, Platonists and Neoplatonists is about the study and wisdom of first principles and that which lay under the blanket of phenomenon.”

Now, of course, for this definition to mean anything, there would have to be something called counterspace. Ken Wheeler has appropriated this term from early 20th century esoteric philosopher Rudolf Steiner, although he rarely gives Steiner his due.

No evidence for Steiner’s counterspace has ever been found, and modern science dismisses the idea. Although the host of Theoria Apophasis talks about counter space in virtually every video, he’s very evasive as to what, precisely his term means.

“Counterspace Is the Space Between Space Itself”

The closest Ken Wheeler seems to come to a definition is in this passage from his Uncovering the Missing Secrets of Magnetism. He writes, “Counterspace is literally the space between space itself, the very omnipresent membrane of the Ether which requires conjugate field forces to bring it into space or create electrical, or dielectric, or magnet phenomena, or even the creation of matter.”

From this we can gather that the Angry Photographer views counterspace as in some way like an outer layer or boundary of the ether. As explained in detail under Field Theory – Why Ken’s Wrong, the Michelson-Morley Experiment proved that the ether doesn’t exist in 1887. The YouTuber Planarwalk also debunks Ken Wheeler’s ideas about the ether here.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz is one of the pioneers of field theory that the Theoria Apophasis host calls “gods.” Here’s what Steinmetz had to say about the ether.

Ken’s Hero Steinmetz Called the Ether a “Mistake”

“The mistake which led to the hypothesis of the ether was that wave motions were the only waves known at the time when the wave theory of light was proposed, and so the light wave was also considered as a wave motion and the question asked ‘what moves in the light wave?’

“And this moving thing was called ether. Since that time, we have become familiar with waves which are not wave motions, but merely periodic phenomena. Thus the alternating current is a wave, but nothing moves in it. Thus we speak of waves of temperature etc, without meaning any material motion. 

“The radio waves and light waves are electromagnetic waves, that is, periodic variations of the electromagnetic field in space.”

Counter Space Doesn’t Exist, So His Definition Is Wrong

So if the ether doesn’t exist, Ken Wheeler’s notion of its membrane of counterspace is a logical fallacy. That makes his definition of metaphysics fundamentally flawed and meaningless.

By “the Pythagoreans, Platonists and Neoplatonists”, he seems to mean classical Greek philosophers such as Pythagorus, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus among others. He calls himself “a hard-core neoplatonic platonist,” without defining this redundant term.

All neoplatonists are also platonists by definition, so his only purpose in combining both terms is to sound impressive to those unacquainted with philosophy. He goes on to insist that philosophers in the Ancient World made no distinction between physics and metaphysics.

Aristotle Distinguished Physics from Metaphysics

The problem with this claim is that Aristotle, a student of Plato, left us one book called Physics and one very different book called Metaphysics. The former was about phenomena we find in nature and the latter was about various underlying principles about the first causes of things.

As, always, Kentucky Ken is discussing subject matter he doesn’t understand. He derives his claims from his cursory grasp of a school of thought called the Traditionalists, especially Ananda Coomaraswamy, although he barely mentions their contribution. He also borrows heavily from Rene Guenon, while claiming to despise him.

In a sense, pointing out the eccentricities within the Angry Photographer’s notions about metaphysics is a distinction without a difference. It hardly matters what the Theoria Apophasis creator chooses to believe about such esoteric matters.

Ken – “Morality Is for Conventional Worldly Beings”

In Ken Wheeler’s Ontology Primer, he writes, “There is no conduct that leads to liberation, but there is that which is conducive towards liberation, but this is not action, nor conduct. Morality is a tool and guide for conventional worldly beings to check their evil desires and dark wills.

We’re all, including Ken Wheeler, free to believe whatever we choose about concepts that are beyond our capacity to observe or explain. Even so, there are concerns about his agenda for defining metaphysics in his own way and, as the Angry Photographer is fond of saying, “Nobody’s entitled to their own facts.”

Ken Wheeler writes, “Wisdom alone is to be enjoined by those seeking transcendence, which brings proximity to the One, the Soul whose attribute is the Good. Beyond good and evil, proximity to the One via wisdom has no connection to the worldly realm where mere morality and ethics are praised by the many.”

“Wisdom Has No Connection to Mere Morality and Ethics”

Without giving him any credit, the Angry Photographer is cherry-picking the phrase Beyond Good and Evil from the philosopher Nietzsche, whom he also claims to despise. More importantly, he seems to be exempting those who achieve “proximity to the One via wisdom” from any sort of moral code of conduct.

Kentucky Ken also espouses a school of thought called apophaticism. Yes, that’s where he came up with the obscure Theoria Apophasis name for his YouTube channel.

Apophaticism focuses on the negative by defining God in terms of all the things He is not. A common criticism of apophaticism is that it can make principles and values seem ambiguous.

Can Make Principles and Values Seem Ambiguous

After all, since the Absolute is utterly beyond human understanding, why would our everyday, material actions matter in the grand scheme of things? Assuming that “wisdom has no connection to the worldly realm where mere morality and ethics are praised by the many,” are our human notions of right and wrong insignificant?

Since the Angry Photographer seems to think he’s in “proximity to the One,” presumably he’s unbound by “mere morality and ethics.” As we can see throughout this website, he has taken a number of unethical actions, like stealing credit for the work of legitimate photographers, refusing to comply with public health guidelines, deliberately mistranslating ancient texts, and lying to his audience.

It’s disturbing to think that anyone might believe they’ve transcended right and wrong. Does Ken Wheeler suffer from the delusion that he’s advanced “Beyond Good and Evil” and levelled up to an amoral state where the normal rules of “conventional worldly beings” no longer apply to him?

Refers to His Life Stance as “Amoral Monism”

Does that explain his questionable behaviour toward others? He has said that “the one thing I care about is wisdom.” Does this imply that he doesn’t care about “mere morality”? Since he refers to his life stance as “amoral monism,” this seems like a real possibility.

Is this what he means by “wisdom is its own reward”? If so, he contradicts his heroes Plato and Plotinus, who both taught that wisdom was merely a guide to virtuous action in everyday life.

Plato wrote that “knowledge without virtue ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.” Although Ken Wheeler’s videos indicate a degree of low cunning, they display neither knowledge nor wisdom.

Ken’s Hero Plotinus Saw Wisdom as Means Toward Virtue

The Angry Photographer’s role model, Plotinus, taught that “the purification of the soul must produce all the virtues; if any are lacking, then not one of them is perfect.” Although he taught that we should seek wisdom to purify the soul, Plotinus saw wisdom as a means toward the higher goal of virtue, and taught that ethics and contemplation were intimately connected.

Virtue includes what Plotinus called the political virtues – appropriate behaviours toward others in our community. These correspond to what Ken Wheeler calls “mere morality and ethics.”

In fact, Plotinus fundamentally disagrees with Ken Wheeler’s notion of amoral monism. He writes, “No one can ever escape the suffering entailed by ill deeds done: the divine law is ineluctable, carrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of its doom. ”

Preoccupied With What Happens When We Die

The Angry Photographer also has another agenda behind his approach to metaphysics. He appears to be preoccupied with the concept of the human soul and what happens to it when we die.

In Plato’s dialogue, the Phaedra, Socrates explains that, for philosophers, “the whole of their study is nothing else than how to die and be dead.” There’s a reason that Ken Wheeler is a self-described platonist.

We also discuss this under Buddhist Souls – Why Ken’s Wrong. Here we’ll consider it from a broader perspective. It seems to be very important to Ken Wheeler to prove that our unique personalities survive bodily death and continue to exist eternally, or outside of time.

Resorts to an Analogy Based on Radio Broadcasts

To make his case, the Theoria Apophasis creator needs to be able to demonstrate that the human soul is independent of the physical human body. To this end, he constantly resorts to an analogy based on radio broadcasts.

The Angry Photographer explains that our bodies are like a radio receiver and our souls are like the radio signal. A broadcast requires both signal and receiver and if and when the receiver breaks down, the signal carries on.

The difficulty with this analogy is that my neighbour also has a radio receiver. He also experiences exactly the same broadcast that I do. So this signal is not unique to me or to my receiver. The signal is much more like some sort of world soul, ground of being or the Tao.

Ken’s Hero Plotinus Also Contradicts Radio Analogy

Kentucky Ken’s hero, Plotinus, also addresses this world soul versus individual soul notion at some length. He writes, “It must, no doubt, seem strange that my soul and that of any and everybody else should be one thing only.

“It might mean my feelings being felt by someone else, my goodness another’s too, my desire, his desire, all our experience shared with each other and with the (one-souled) universe, so that the very universe itself would feel whatever I felt.” Plotinus resolves this by concluding that, “Each soul is permanently a unity [a self] and yet all are, in their total, one being.”

So, Ken Wheeler’s radio analogy contradicts his primary philosophical role model. He inadvertently denies each individual’s unique experience of being “permanently a unity,” while passionately insisting on having an immortal, distinct self resembling a radio signal.

Analogy Fails Because Broadcast Not Unique to Receiver

More recently, the Angry Photographer has tried to address this failing by pointing out that every radio receiver has its own characteristics based on its unique circuitry. Of course, if this distinct character derives from the circuitry, it ceases to exist when the receiver stops working.

The Theoria Apophasis host also resorts to reasoning by analogy by comparing our souls to soap bubbles. When we wash the dishes or blow bubbles, the soap generates countless individual, colourful spheres.

When light shines on the bubbles, each of them reflects the light in its own way. We see myriad shapes, reflections and colours.

Soap Bubble Analogy Fails – Bubbles Eventually Burst

In this analogy, the distinctive reflections represent our unique, immortal souls. The trouble with this analogy is that all bubbles eventually burst, at which point their surface reflections (our unique consciousness) vanish forever.

Kentucky Ken’s role model Plato warned against the logical fallacy of reasoning by analogy known as exempla sunt odiosa (examples are odious) by saying, “Arguments that make their point by means of similarities are impostors, and, unless you are on your guard against them, will quite readily deceive you.”

Ken Wheeler’s radio and bubble analogies are just such impostors. If metaphysics works according to these models, there can be no individual immortal soul, only a universal collective spirit with no unique, enduring personal identities within it.

“A Person Afraid of Death Has Not Lived Properly”

It’s interesting to observe the lengths to which the Angry Photographer will go trying to exempt himself from any moral code and rationalize his denial of death. Leo Tolstoy wrote that “a person who is afraid of death is one who has not lived his life properly and has broken the law of life.”

The Theoria Apophasis creator would retort that if his concepts seem like whakadoodle, pseudo-philosophical claptrap to us, that merely proves that we’re limited by our “worldly minds.” He sets impossible standards of proof for his critics while expecting readers to simply take his word for it that he has found the solution to all the puzzles of metaphysics.

Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Ken Wheeler’s explanations are never simple, so we can draw our own conclusions from that. His metaphysical musings seem to be an application of the tactic, “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit.”

“Fools Describe, the Wise Explain” – Ken Never Explains

Or, in Ken Wheeler’s own words, “Fools describe, the wise explain.” His notion of metaphysics alludes to and vaguely describes numerous intriguing but irrelevant concepts, usually inaccurately.

He fails to explain the significance of any of them to the field of metaphysics and he leaves his more naive viewers bewildered but impressed. As usual, the Angry Photographer should take his own advice.

Naive Viewers Bewildered but Impressed

It takes a lot of hubris to take on the entire scholastic discipline of metaphysics and claim you have all the answers. The ramblings described above are a classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect, where people who know little or nothing about a subject vastly overestimate their understanding of it.

Metaphysics is one more topic on which Ken Wheeler is absolutely incorrect. In this case, he falls so far short of the mark, that one could argue that he’s not even wrong. His fondness for the Latin motto lux et veritas couldn’t be more ironic.

Ken’s Evidence

Definitions of Nature and Its Phenomena with a Primer on Cosmology and Ontology
Metaphysics
Buddhist Souls – Why Ken’s Wrong
Magnetism – Why Ken’s Wrong
Field Theory – Why Ken’s Wrong