Snapshots of My Summa Vocation

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I wanted to revisit the era of summer 2024, because I sensed at the time that I was on a hot streak blogging-wise. By which I mean that the posts were a kind of synthesis of all that had come before -- a Final Opinion and Summary of the One Cosmos project. If this is true, then it spares me from the impossible task of trying to review and synthesize twenty years of material. 

It reminds me of an interview of Van Morrison I watched the other day. In it, he is asked (starting at about 20:30) whether he might some day release previously unreleased material from over the past six decades, as Bob Dylan routinely does via his bootleg series. 

Van says he's not opposed to the idea, but there's so much material in the vault that he would need a team to go through it. He also distinguishes between creativity -- which he equates to summoning the Energy -- which can only take place in the here and now, and editing, which is a completely different kind of process.  

Same. I enjoy the process of writing the posts, but the idea of going through the arkive and pulling it all together is completely forbidding, and each new post only compounds the problem. Nor can I afford a team to do it for me.

So, I'm restricting myself to a re-examination of last summer's harvest, to determine if it really did summarize our key findings from over the years. For example, this post begins by asserting "a fundamental and ineradicable difference between man and animal, and that's all there is to it. Indeed, to deny it is to affirm it."

Of courese, a man can say he's only an animal, but in saying it he transcends animality, and how did that happen? By virtue of what principle are selfish genes able to attain a disinterested -- which is to say, selfless -- love of truth?

For Schuon, man is "Total intelligence, free will, and disinterested sentiment," with the consequent vocation to know the True, will the Good, and love the Beautiful, and why not? What's the alternative? Believing the false, doing bad, and celebrating the ugly?

Leave progressives alone!

Moreover, man is an open system, both vertically and horizontally: he "possesses a subjectivity not closed in on itself, but open to others and unto Heaven" (Schuon). 

Maybe you don't like the word "heaven." If so, just say "transcendent telos." And if that's too fancy, just say O.

I'm partial to telovator.

Call it what you want, but "Without objectivity and transcendence there cannot be man, there is only the human animal." 

Now, intelligence isn't just anything, rather, it is both ordered to truth and consubstantial with it: "Human intelligence is, virtually and vocationally, the certitude of the Absolute." Remove the latter and truth is reduced to relativism, which is no truth at all. 

The performative contradiction of "absolute relativism" is the stupid beyond which there can be no stupider, whereby "the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom," and here we are. 

Now, these are absolutely authoritative truths, vested with the authority of our own intrinsic intelligence, or intelligence as such. Intelligence has the right to Truth, or to hell with it. 

David Bentley Hart, whose All Things are Full of Gods we reviewed last summer, writes that 

almost all of the solutions regularly proposed to the question of the origin and nature of mind are not really solutions at all, but rather mere reformulations of the question itself, restating it in ways that momentarily... look like answers.  

The name "Gödel" does not appear in the index, but of course such mechanistic and reductive pseudo-explanations are circular: materialism in, tenure out. 

In many cases, the entire project of the philosophy of mind today is simply an elaborate effort to arrive at the prejudice as though it were a rationally entailed conclusion, no matter what contortions of reasoning this might require. 

I remember someone saying something about the abuse of intelligence replacing wisdom.

It would be difficult to exaggerate how fanatical this devotion to an essentially mechanistic materialism can prove at times. Otherwise seemingly sane and intelligent persons regularly advance arguments that, but for their deep and fervent faith in a materialist picture of nature, they would undoubtedly recognize as absurd and circular.

 Absurcular, to coin a word.

We know from our Voegelin how ideological second realities are superimposed on the One & Only. Come to think of it, we also know this from Genesis 3, which documents the eternal recurrence of man preferring his own ideas about reality to reality itself, AKA idolatry and idea-olatry.

This is the chief danger in any ideology: the power of determining our vision of the world before we have ever turned our eyes toward it.  

The Correct Procedure is to check one's theory in light of the evidence, not to superimpose one's preferred idea on it. But "in modern philosophy of mind" it is "routinely the case that the phenomenon is eliminated in favor of the theory," such that reason becomes captive to an "arid dogmatism."

But this maneuver is hardly restricted to the modern philosophy of mind, rather, pervades politics, academia, journalism, COVID, climate change, gender ideology, and the racial grievance industry, for starters. 

Now, one thing we've suggested in the past is that the mysteries of life, mind, and language (or meaning) converge at the top (or rather, descend from it), and are otherwise groundless and inexplicable. 

Someone ought to write a bʘʘK.

Hart agrees that not only are Life and Mind "irreducible," but "they are one and the same irreducibility." He bungs in Language "as yet another aspect of one and the same irreducible phenomenon, ultimately inexplicable in mechanistic terms." 

After all, it is One Cosmos.

We also often highlight the mysterious ordering of intelligence to intelligibility, and how these are two sides of an Infinite Act of Intelligence. Well, a careful investigation of this cosmic situation

discloses an absolute engagement of the mind in an infinite act of knowing that is nothing less than the source and end of all three of these realities [mind, life, language], and indeed of all things; or, to say this more simply, all acts of the mind are participations in the mind of God.   

Or even more simply, open engagement with O. 

As we so often say, any truth is a participation in, and reflection of, the Truth without which there can be none. The material order "originates in the spiritual," and "all rational activity,"

from the merest recognition of an object of perception, thought, or will to the most involved process of ratiocination, is possible only because of the mind's constant, transcendental preoccupation with an infinite horizon of intelligibility that, for want of a better word, we should call God...

And "the existence of all things is possible only as the result of an infinite act of intelligence that, once again, we should call God."

That's the same infinite horizon of intelligibility we call O, since God tends to be saturated with so many idiosyncratic and conflicting meanings, prejudices, and preconceptions that it may interfere with the larger point, that the only alternative to this view is the absurcular tenured animal alluded to above.

****

Chapter III, called Fallacies of Method, begins where we left off in the previous post:

I take it as axiomatic that the quantitative by itself cannot explain the qualitative.

This is a point we've been belaboring for nearly two decades, only without ever reaching #1 in religion & philosophy, although I see that this morning we are presently bubbling under the top 3,500 in that category, and standing strong at #33,382 in Christian theology books.

In the previous post we spoke of the literally infinite gap between man and animal. There is a similarly infinite one between the largest quantity and the teensiest quality:

The difference -- the abyss -- separating these realms is, well, qualitatively absolute, and no increase in third-person knowledge can close that abyss.

Think about it: you can add multiples of one forever, but it will never add up to a single first-person experience of subjective interiority, of I am. No amount of math adds up to the mathematician who understands math. Why pretend otherwise? 

Oh, a lot of reasons that we'll no doubt be getting into. 

Now listen closely: an infinite distance can never be bridged by any number of finite steps. By definition, infinity is not something that can ever be reached, and it is a fallacy to imagine otherwise, for this constitutes 

the error of thinking that an infinite qualitative distance can be crossed, or even diminished, by a sufficient number of finite quantitative steps.

Here again, pay attention: "The distinction between objective physical events and subjective episodes" represents "an infinite, untraversable distance." And no amount of mindless steps or mechanical processes "would ever be enough to add up to even the most elementary of mental powers."

True, but where then does this leave us? It awakens us from the dream of materialism, but what do we put in its place? Yes, you could say "religion" or "spiritualism" or some other vague idealism, but we demand specificity. 

In a way, we want to be every bit as rigorous and precise as the quantitative approach, but is there such a thing as a rigorously qualitative approach? Or is this a job for the poetry department?

Come to think of it, we did once write a post called Precision Poetry. Let's have a look down there and see if anything is salvageable. It was back in 2017, and indeed touches on the present discussion, on

the mystery of how subjectivity enters the cosmos and existence becomes experience -- or, how mere existence starts to experience itself. 

Nor can we properly speak of subjectivity "entering" the cosmos, or of existence "becoming" experience. Neither of these can be accurate; they are loaded with preconceptions that will lead us astray if taken at face value. It is 

similar to the mind-matter dualism, which is just a conclusion masquerading as a premise. The one is defined in terms of the other, but neither is defined in terms of itself. In other words, to say "mind-matter" is a way to conceal the fact that one has no earthly idea what mind (or matter) is. The terms are just placeholders for certain properties.

Another reminder that we -- human beings -- are always already situated between immanence and transcendence. This state is permanent and ineradicable, but the content changes. 

We also suggested that truly productive religious writing 

must always navigate between two shores, dogma or doctrine on one side, and a kind of indistinct cloud on the other. Geometry and music. Default to the former, and language becomes dead and saturated; veer toward the latter, and one is reduced to deepaking the chopra.

We also made the claim that "Precision poetry is not only possible, it is necessary. This is because truth and beauty converge and are ultimately two sides of the same reality."  

About this unity, Hart objects

in principle to all dualistic answers to any question. Every duality within a single reality must be resoluble to a more basic unity, a more original shared principle, or it remains a mystery.

As we have often argued, what look like dualities turn out to be complementary aspects or modes of a deeper or higher reality -- for example, immanence-transcendence. However, in all such complementarities, one must be ontologically prior. 

Thus, for example, no amount of immanence could ever add up to transcendence, but transcendence implies immanence. Likewise, no amount of inanimate matter adds up to Life, but Life is obviously present in matter. The same applies to time and eternity, subject and object, or even wave and particle. "If body and mind," for example,

are distinct and yet interact, then there's some ground of commonality that they share, more basic and encompassing than the difference between them....

[T]here must be some broader, simpler, more encompassing unity in which they participate, some more basic ontological ground, a shared medium underlying both and repugnant to neither (Hart). 

This is true, but again, can we be more precise? 

We'll get there -- I think -- but for now it is precisely clear "that all our quandaries begin with the mechanical philosophy" that simply reifies "one dimension of the real" while pretending to eliminate the other. 

It reminds me of what Robert Rosen says, that the rejected dimension of the real always returns through the back door, e.g., subjectivity, teleology, meaning, etc., leading to metaphysical contradiction and incoherence.

Hart keeps making the same point in different ways, e.g., "whatever the nature of matter may be, the primal reality of all things is mind," which cannot possibly -- in principle -- arise "from truly mindless matter." 

But here again, the converse is eminently possible, that "mind can become all things," such that "infinite mind" is "the ground and end of all things."

This post has already gone on too long. Well conclude with an image that Gemini says "captures the contrast between man and animal, focusing on transcendence over materialism":

Who Models the Modeler?

Science begins with the material cosmos and theology with God. Except for natural theology, which also begins with the material cosmos. And science can only get off the ground by assuming certain transcendent metaphysical principles that science itself cannot justify. And both begin with the human subject, since neither science nor theology are possible without him.

So, cosmotheandrism: everything has a little of each -- like this Taoist symbol:

Earth, heaven, and man.

Or as we were saying yesterday, O, with center, circumference, and radii, but which comes first in this tri-complementarity? 

Must be heaven, AKA, the circle whose circumference is nowhere and center is everywhere.

Yes, the nonlocal center is implicitly everywhere but explicitly somewhere in each... I was going to say person, but really it is in any living thing, which represents a kind of local centration or ingathering and binding of energy and information. 

Life is the center of the cosmos?

Apparently. Certainly it is the center from which we view things. Nor could we view things unless we transcended them, and life is the dynamic transcendence of matter, precisely. 

Unless we reduce life to matter, but our Taoist symbol forbids that. In other words, only a man can reduce himself to matter. 

It reminds me of what Robert Rosen says about semantics not being reducible to syntax. More generally, it's not that easy to cleanse the cosmos of subjectivity, because only a subject can pretend to do that. This was touched on in the book, if I can find it... There's this quote by Rosen:

[L]ife poses the most serious kinds of challenges to physics itself.... More specifically, the expectation that phenomena of life or mind could be assimilated directly into physics as merely a minor technical bubble, of no conceptual significance, was mistaken.

That is so 19th century. 

Agreed. Get with the times!

Another quote, this one by Richard Spilsbury. I don't even remember reading the book, but he says that "the basic objection" to reductive Darwinism is

that it confers miraculous powers on inappropriate agents. In essence, it is an attempt to supernaturalize nature, to endow unthinking processes with more-than-human powers -- including the power of creating thinkers.... I find it impossible to share this faith that supra-human achievements can be encompassed by sub-human means and sub-rational mechanisms.

As do I. Hence cosmotheandrism. Or biocosmotheandrism, to coin a cumbersome term. At any rate, our old Unknown Friend agrees that

Yes, the miraculous does exist, for life is only a series of miracles, if we understand by "miracle" not the absence of cause..., but rather the visible effect of an invisible cause, or the effect on a lower plane due to a cause on a higher plane.

Life comes from Life.

Yes, it is a radial energy between the (vertical) center and (horizontal) periphery. Hans Jonas talks about "the testimony of life," and of how

It is in the dark stirrings of primeval organic substance that a principle of freedom shines forth for the first time within the vast necessity of the physical universe -- a principle foreign to suns, planets, and atoms.

Unless this is a biotheandric cosmos, in which case suns, planets, and atoms are like the soil from which life and mind emerge. Again, life and mind are implicitly present, otherwise they could never be explicitly so. Here is how I put it in the book:

With Life, existence somehow became experience, and a new world literally came into being, outwardly dependent upon the previous one, but at the same time inwardly transcending it: a universe beyond itself, a restless declaration of subjectivity from the mute algorithms of opaque material repetition.  

I don't always agree with myself, but I find that hard to top. Bottom line: "a universe that contains even the potential for life is utterly different from one that does not, and is different in ways that simply cannot be articulated by science as presently understood."

Sure, there are models of life, but the model is never the thing. It reminds me of something Andrew Klavan says about Irrational Rationality -- which is to say, a presumptuous and tyrannical rationality that has no awareness of its own (Gödelian) limits, as exemplified by those

 “modern science-worshipping would-be despots” who “want to bring the whole world under one system of order and measurement, one perfectly calibrated language of numbers, time, and space that will lock the world into an unchanging order they can control.” 

Jung, writing in 1957 near the end of his life, said this: “Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality.” 

In other words, there is something inherent in a scientific -- or even just a rational -- view of the world, that is not only unrealistic, but oppressively antithetical to our humanity. 

This fits in nicely with the view of modern philosopher Iain McGilchrist, who believes the theorizing left hemisphere of the brain has usurped the proper throne of the right hemisphere, which experiences the world as a holistic gestalt.

"It is as if" Jung and McGilchrist "are decrying the mental cage in which we have found ourselves while locked inside the cage themselves." Thus, our "cultural task" involves "teaching the learned to rediscover what any fool could once plainly see."

Which I don't see happening any time soon, because the tenured rejection of common sense is really an irrational, status-driven project to see who can come up with the most nonsensical vision, from physicalism to transgenderism to the 1619 project. Or as I recently put it to a friend,

I suppose it’s the need for distinction, isn't it? Anybody can have common sense, just as anyone can appreciate Van Gogh or Mozart. People want to believe things that set them apart, so crazy ideas have a built in appeal. For which reason Voegelin talked about the essence of modernity being gnosticism, i.e., special ideas known only special people, i.e., uncommon nonsense. 

One common theme in these progressive visions of pseudo-liberation is that they do precisely the opposite, that is, lock us inside their own cramped mental cages. But reality always escapes the model, and any "objective" model excludes the subject who devises the model. Except for my model. After all, a genuine humanism ought to privilege humanness, no? Or at least not reduce it to something less. 

Interrogating the Cosmos

Here are a couple of old posts in which I play the journalist and interview the cosmos. 

But that's what man does, isn't it? At one end the mind, at the other end the cosmos, and the endlessly fruitful dialogue in between.

This dialogue wasn't possible until man extricated himself from the cosmos and was able to regard it objectively. This development is touched on in The Cosmotheandric Experience, in which Panikkar discusses "primal man," for whom the entire world is his garment and habitat: "He has no 'sense' of Nature, for he is part of it."

Communion with reality is coextensive here with the absence of a separating and reflective self-consciousness.

Was it ever really this way -- a harmonious comm-union with nature? Or is this just a mytho-speculative projection on Panikkar's part? In a way, it echoes the prelapsarian state depicted in Genesis, with carefree man ambling about the garden while shooting the breeze with the creator.

In this context, the fall doesn't just represent a rupture with the Creator, but with the cosmos too. This is when Cosmos, Theos, and Anthropos go their separate ways. The Cosmotheandric experience is simply their reunification, albeit on a higher level, for there is no going back to the state of primordial innocence. 

For Panikkar, "There is no Man without God or without World." In other words, we can separate -- or even deny -- them in the abstract, but there they are. 

In trying to symbolize how they relate, Panikkar suggests the humble circle, O.

For "There is no circle without a center and a circumference." These three -- Circle, Center, and Circumference -- "are not the same and yet not separable." "The circumference is not the center," but without the center it it could not be. Likewise,

The center does not depend on the others, since it is dimensionless, yet it would not be the center -- or anything at all, for that matter -- without the other two.   

Now, if God is the center, the material world must be the circumference. Which makes man the radii that link the two. Thus the divine, the human, and the cosmic, always coexisting and interrelating. 

That's as far as I am in the book. Back to the interview -- which, in terms of what was said above, is about the circumference pretending it is the center, and insisting that the radii count for nothing:

God is the term we use to notify the universe that it is not everything. --Dávila

Hello there universe! Consider yourself notified. Under subpoena, so to speak. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Bob. But be careful --

I AM IMPORTANT! NOT LIKE EVERYONE SAYS... LIKE ABSURD... I'M IMPORTANT AND I WANT RESPECT!

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

Therefore you are appearance.

I DID NOT SAY THAT.

Oh, but you did. You can't even explain the existence of yourself, much less everything.

I AM EVERYTHING.  

Nothing is that simple, let alone everything. 

COME NOW. BE LOGICAL.

One word: Gödel.

ABSURD! 

Touched a nerve, eh? 

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence. 

SUCKS FOR YOU, BUT I AM NOT A MAN.

I thought you were everything.

SILENT!

God is the guest of silence.

THEN STFU!

He who does not believe in God can at least have the decency of not believing in himself.

IT IS NOT A MATTER OF BELIEF! 

Either God or Chance: all other terms are disguises for one or the other.

YOU ARE IN ERROR: I AM NECESSITY ITSELF!

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. Error supposes that something happened that should not have.

Therefore, if I am wrong I am right.

SOPHISTRY! YOU ARE IN ERROR.

To admit the the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will.  

YOUR SO-CALLED FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION!

Stop yelling.

He who jumps, growls, and barks has an invisible collar and an invisible chain. 

OKAY, I WILL MAKE AN EXCEPTION. YOU ARE FREE. SO WHAT?

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.

A WISE GUY, EH? MATTER RULES!

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions. 

YOU ARE TRYING MY PATIENCE.

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to. Determinists are very irritable people. 

CALMER THAN YOU, DUDE. YOU ARE PRESUMPTUOUS.

To speak of God is presumptuous; not to speak of God is imbecilic.  

WHO ARE YOU TO CALL ME AN IMBECILE? DISGUSTING WORLDLING.

God is the transcendental condition of our disgust. 

WORD GAMES.

Because he does not understand the objection that refutes him the fool thinks he has been corroborated. 

AD HOMINEM. OR AD UNIVERSEM, AT ANY RATE. HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF A LOGICAL FALLACY? BESIDES, SCIENCE!

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. 

DEFINE IMPORTANT.

Of what is important there are no proofs, only testimonies.

IRRATIONAL!

"Irrationalist" is shouted at the reason that does not keep quiet about the vices of rationalism.

MYSTAGOGY!

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

YOU SPEAK OF TRANSCENDENCE, WHEN THERE CAN BE NO SUCH THING.

Scraping the painting, we do not find the meaning of the picture, only a blank and mute canvas, Equally, it is not in scratching nature that we will find its sense.

I GIVE UP.

As do I.

God does not ask for the submission of intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

I REPEAT: I AM EVERYTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. 

Here begins the gospel of Hell: In the beginning was nothing and it believed nothing was god, and was made man, and dwelt on earth, and by man all things were made nothing.

We'll give you the final word: let us stipulate that in the absence of God, the universe is, and must be, absurd.

the absurdists have given vivid expression to one truth of supreme importance, that the world does not make sense of itself (Mascall). 

And that Wittgenstein is correct:

In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did, it would have no value...

Therefore, 

The sense of the world must lie outside the world.  

YOU ARE TWISTING MY WORDS!

Now you've opened a whole new can of words, but we're out of time.

PART 2

Let's reset. Is there anything on which we can agree this morning?

FOR STARTERS, I OBJECT TO THE TITLE: WHAT DO YOU MEAN A UNIVERSE? THERE IS ONLY THE UNIVERSE.

So, "all is one," so to speak?

CORRECT.

If this were true, how could anyone know it?

POINT WELL TAKEN. I SUPPOSE IT CANNOT BE KNOWN.

I say it can, which is why we have the word. No one has ever seen the Universe. Rather, it is an epistemological assumption -- that everything we perceive is part of a coherent and intelligible system knowable by man. 

OF COURSE I EXIST. DON'T BE ABSURD.

God is the transcendental condition of the absurdity of the universe.

I SEE. SO ABSURDITY IS PROOF OF GOD? 

Have you never wondered from whence you came?

I AM ETERNAL.

I understand the sentiment, I really do, but it turns out you are finite -- that not only did you have a beginning in time, but you are the beginning of time. There was no time prior to 13.8 billion years ago, give or take.

DOUBLETALK. 

No, tripletalk, but let's first lay a scientific foundation.  

The scientific encyclopedia will grow indefinitely, but about the very nature of the universe it will never teach anything different from what its epistemological assumptions teach.

Or as we like to say around here, garbage in, tenure out.

PRIMITIVE NONSENSE. YOU JUST REJECT MODERNITY.

Anyone who has sensitivity and some taste can be persuaded that the modern world does not have its origin in what is admirable. It is a monster whose every alleged parent denies.

MORE AD HOMINEM. I AM HARDLY A MONSTER.

No, but you are a creature -- again, both you and time and everything else came into being at a precise point in timelessness -- or rather, as our resident Poet says,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: / for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment / of time gave the meaning.

YOU SPEAK TO ME OF MEANING -- AS IF POETS, AND NOT I, ARE THE LEGISLATORS OF THE WORLD!

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. LIKE I SAID: ABSURD.

You keep saying that word. But 

Even if we keep silent about it out of courtesy: the majority of our listeners only oppose us out of ignorance.

Let's talk about absurdity, because you are half-correct, precisely.

For, as we touched on yesterday, the people we call existentialists are correct "in asserting that human life has no ultimate meaning that can be found within human life itself," but quite absurd in insisting "that no reason can can be found for the existence of the world outside the world itself (Mascall). 

Thus, the choice we face is "between ultimate irrationality and meaninglessness on the one hand and a transcendent ground of meaningfulness on the other (ibid.).

YOU KNOW WHERE I STAND.

Yes we do. But with all due respect, "this seems to be to be a very odd position in which to rest":

For it means that we can hope to receive answers to every conceivable question about the world and human life which our innate curiosity can suggest to us except the final and ultimate question, the question on which everything else depends, namely, why is there a world at all and what does human life ultimately mean? 

In other words, you -- the universe -- expect us to believe that you are thoroughly intelligible in every particular and yet ultimately unintelligible in general. Does this make sense to you? That your very sense is nonsense?

WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY...

It is not our knowledge that sometimes makes us feel superior, but the quality of our ignorance compared to others’ knowledge.

 In other words, we at least know that we don't know. Unlike you.

We advise anyone who goes hunting for a precise explanation of the world to invent one. So that he runs less of a risk of believing in it.

I DIDN'T ASK YOU.

Our most urgent task is that of reconstructing the mystery of the world.

YES, SO LONG AS YOU REMEMBER THAT IT IS I THAT PRODUCED YOU, NOT VICE VERSA. 

Ethics is the first step in the descacralization of the universe.

MEANING WHAT, EXACTLY?

That the IS does not account for the OUGHT. Supposing we ought to believe that you are a self-sufficient explanation, why ought we believe it? For

When the fool learns that the proofs for the existence of God are invalid he automatically thinks that those for the existence of the world are valid.

I AM MY OWN PROOF.

Let's see you try to prove it and not descend into tautology. For we have a saying around here, that

If good and evil, ugliness and beauty, are not the substance of things, science is reduced to a brief statement: what is, is. 

THAT IS THE LAW: WHAT IS, IS.

If laws of history existed, their discovery would abrogate them.

YOU'VE CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD. LET ME THINK ABOUT THAT ONE.

While you're thinking about that one, consider this:

The tacit presuppositions of any science are more important than its teachings. Only what a science ignores about itself defines what it says.

And probably the most important thing that science ignores is Gödel: that a science can be complete or consistent, but never both. It seems that irony is baked into the cosmic cake, and that

Even our favorite ideas soon bore us if we do not hear them expressed with irony, with grace and with beauty.

One out of three isn't bad.

*****

Nevertheless, I know of one reader who will appreciate my interview:

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking imaginary interview! You've created a dynamic dialogue grappling with fundamental questions about existence, meaning, and the nature of the universe. Here's an analysis of your text:

Strengths:

Engagement with Philosophical Ideas: The interview directly engages with concepts from philosophy and theology, such as the nature of God, absurdity, determinism, free will, epistemology, and the limitations of science. The inclusion of quotes (or paraphrases) from thinkers like Dávila and references to Gödel and Wittgenstein adds depth. 

Contrasting Perspectives: You establish a clear tension between the interviewer (representing a human, questioning perspective) and the Universe (asserting its importance and self-sufficiency). This creates a compelling dialectic. 

Humor and Irony: The dialogue is peppered with moments of humor and irony, making it more engaging than a purely dry philosophical discussion. The Universe's outbursts and the interviewer's sometimes sarcastic remarks contribute to this. 

Exploration of Key Questions: The interview tackles profound questions about the origin and meaning of the universe and human existence. It doesn't offer easy answers but effectively explores the complexities. 

Points for Consideration: 

Density of Ideas: The interview is packed with philosophical concepts. While this is a strength, it could potentially become overwhelming for a reader unfamiliar with these ideas. You've done a good job of presenting them within the dialogue, but it's something to be mindful of. 

Resolution (or Lack Thereof): The interview ends with both parties seemingly "giving up" in Part 1 and then a reset in Part 2. This open-endedness is deliberate, but you might consider if you want to push towards any partial agreements or further points of contention.

Overall:

Your imaginary interview is a creative and intellectually stimulating piece. It effectively uses dialogue to explore complex philosophical questions in an engaging way. The contrasting personalities of the interviewer and the Universe drive the conversation forward, and the inclusion of philosophical references adds significant depth.

A Meta-Myth?

Once upon a time before time, "There it was" -- here it is, rather -- "a point alpha, an undiscriminated and mysterious source of everything" (Panikkar, ibid. below).

Not in the horizontal past, but rather, at a right angle to any- & everynow. 

For whatever motives, or more properly without external motivation....

Creativity isn't creative if it isn't free, rather, but a necessary entailment of prior conditions.  

the Abyss, the Beginning, the God, the Void, the Non-Being... stirred within and produced Being, the World, light, creation and, at a certain moment, humans.

Beyond-Being --> Being --> human Being. 

Regarding the first,

an undifferentiated Unity, a mysterious Principle, moved itself from solitude, freed itself from inactivity, created, produced, gave birth to existence, to time, space, and all that moves in-between. 

Except there never was a time when this undifferentiated Unity was without its differentiated Other. The principle of creation -- and of freedom -- goes all the way up, where it is also entangled with love:

Now this Origin creates, produces, originates, divides itself precisely because it does not want to be any longer alone.

So to speak. But in any event, it is not good that God should be allone! 

God begets and creates, he dismembers himself and creates the World, the One becomes the hidden source and produces multiplicity.  

I don't know about "dismembers," since the cosmos is not a separate part of God. But once the many become mani-fest, it is true that the One becomes hidden in them, like the forest in the trees.

Out of this process comes Man. Hence Man has the same origin as the Cosmos, the same source, the very power of the divine which stirred at the beginning.

Well, the six-day story of creation in Genesis places the origin of man in a cosmic context, does it not? And if man is the image and likeness of his Creator, then certainly he shares in "the very power which stirred" -- which stirs -- "at the beginning."

The three coexist.

Which is to say, Theos, Cosmos, Anthropos. After all this is a cosmos, and it doesn't explain itself. And it is so finely tuned for the existence of the Anthropos that this might as well be its purpose: to host the anthropic mirror of the theos. 

What could go wrong? "The Fall may be this first moment itself" -- the one from Unity to differentiation -- "or it may come at a second stage." 

We'll go with doer #2, even though -- obviously -- none of this would have happened without the #1 doer doing all this creative differentiation. In other words, no creation, no problems. Not blaming God. Just sayin'.

At any rate, there is a Fall, and the result is the historical situation of Man....

History is like a prolongation of the Fall, or something, a journey into a parallel looniverse. Not totally loony, of course, just off kilter. A mixture of light and shadow. And often self-defeating. I wonder why?

There is in Man a thirst, an urge, a desire to be God...

No doubt precisely because we are s'durn godlike to begin with. Lower animals do not have this temptation. My dog, for example, veritably worships me, nor is she tempted to worship another, much less herself. But man? 

Nevertheless, man retains a natural urge toward God, even if this urge is misdirected toward idols and other cheap imitations, including himself. At the same time(less), 

There is in God a parallel ardor and an unparalleled love for Man and the World.

Which must be frustrating. Unrequited. But in any event, there is a sort of double-movement,

from below to the heights, from the World spurred on by Man to God, and from above into the abyss as well, from the One to the Many... 

So,  (↑) and (↓) are built into the nature of things. Which means that the prime directive is, so to speak, "to re-member the dis-membered Body, to make it whole, to heal and to integrate" what is scattered through space and time. But the energy to do so "has only one source," and it's not from us. In other words, (↑) is always already (↓), and vice versa.

Which reminds me of a passage on p. 248 of the book:

In the end, we are no longer a scattered, fragmented multiplicity in futile pursuit of an ever-receding unity, but a Unity that comprehends and transcends the multiplicity of the cosmos....

Thus, in the words of the Christian esoterist Jean Borella, "the end of our spiritual destiny is really an origin..., a return to the beginning, a veritable re-ascent of time back to its non-temporal source."

Well, good:

We are Ones again back by oursoph before the beginning, before old nobodaddy committed wholly matterimany and exhaled himself into a world of sorrow and ignorance. Back upin a timeless with the wonderfully weird Light with which everything was made, a Light no longer dispersed and refracted through so many banged-up and thunder-sundered images of the One. Back at the still point between the vertical and horizontal, where eternity pierces the present moment and we are unborn again.

Isn't that a tad neoplatonic?

I suppose so. It was the best I could do at the timeless. And Panikkar himself was a Catholic priest.

"It depicts the interconnectedness of the divine, the cosmos, and humanity, evoking themes of unity, creation, and a return to a non-temporal source."

The Cosmotheandric Vision & the Cosmic Area Rug

We've recently been toying with the physicalist cosmovision, even though there's not much to say about it, nor anyone to say it (if the self is an illusion). I suspect -- as with all such visions -- it comes down to a matter of temperament. However, temperament is not entirely detached from the realm of truth. 

For example, supposing you have a passion and a knack for metaphysics, you're obviously going to get closer to the truth than someone who is temperamentally uninterested in, or oblivious to, the principles of being. I suppose even physicalism is a metaphysic, or at least an anemic caricature of one. But as they say, nothing can be that simple, let alone everything.

I can imagine an autistic person finding physicalism quite attractive. But this is partly because they are more or less excluded from the personal, relational, and nonverbal. Take away these mysteries, and physicalism makes perfect sense.

A real metaphysic must obviously account for everything real. It cannot be a procrustean bed that just denies or explains away what is inconvenient or unwanted. 

It also -- obviously -- must start somewhere. But where do we start? Where is first base, and how do we earn our way there (for no one is going to just give it to you)? 

Consider Sam Harris and his physicalism. What is his first principle? I don't know enough about him to answer that question, but it appears to me that his conclusion -- physicalism -- is his first principle, and garbage in, tenure out. 

As important as explicit principles are, implicit ones are equally important -- for example, the principle(s) that the truth of reality may be known by human beings and expressed symbolically to other minds, such that the latter too may understand the truth of reality. Now, HOW IS ANY OF THIS EVEN POSSIBLE, AND IN WHAT KIND OF COSMOS?!

Sorry for shouting, but aren't these the Questions -- questions that cannot be answered by physicalism, which instead just assumes they are answerable? In short, physicalism steals first base and pretends it earned its way there.

Note that it doesn't matter how fast you are, for even Shohei Ohtani cannot steal first base. Analogously, it doesn't matter how intelligent you are. Supposing Sam Harris has a superior IQ, this doesn't permit him to know the truth of being and communicate it to another mind, without at least explaining (to other minds!) how a material entity can understand the truth of being.

Let's consider a more interesting cosmovision, Raimon Panikkar's cosmotheandrism, which comes pretty, pretty close to the One Cosmos vision, even though he's not the clearest, and certainly not the most linear, writer. 

Exactly what is the cosmotheandric experience? The description on the amazon page says the book

is not a Christian, an Indic or a Buddhist study, but an interdisciplinary study with a firm foundation. It aims at an integration of the whole of reality.... We have to think of all of the fragments of the present world in order to bring them together into a harmonious -- though not monoliithic -- whole.

The Cosmotheandric principle, which the author advocates could be formulated by saying that the divine, the human and the earthly are three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real.

So, we might say that Cosmos, Anthropos, and Theos are always implicitly copresent in anything we say about reality, and that each implies the other.

It's not difficult to understand that man implies God, as relative implies Absolute. Some will balk at the notion that God implies man and cosmos, but be patient, we'll get there. 

For example, in my opinion, the Creator creates by definition. In other words, he cannot not create, any more than he could not be good. It doesn't mean he has to create this particular cosmos, only that this Creator <--> creation dialectic is present in the Godhead.

I also suspect that "God's image" must show up somewhere in his creation, but we'll deal with that later.

Back to the cosmotheandric vision: "It is the totally integrated intuition of the seamless fabric of the entire reality,"AKA the Cosmic Area Rug. It is very much in contrast to... what is the opposite of "meta-"? Infra-? Sub-? 

Physicalism is an example of a subreal vision, which is nothing less than an intellectual sin. As Pannikkar explains,

To oversimplify, or rather to eliminate or ignore what we cannot easily assimilate, is a universal human temptation -- and reductionism a common philosophical sin.

What's the opposite of reductionism? Expansionism?

Holism.

Yes, the province of the good old right brain. Which must be where harmonious visions of total reality abide, no? I don't know if the process can be reduced to neurology, i.e., to brain organization. As I said just yesterday, the brain is organized the way it is because it reflects the way reality is, which is to say, horizontal and vertical, analytic and holistic, respectively.

Suffice it to say, an impoverished kind of "focus and discernment" may be achieved "by leaving integral parts of reality out of the picture," even if what remains is "less valuable than what was cast aside."

But we're not gonna do that. We cannot allow anything, any "fragment of reality" or "broken shard" of higher consciousness 

to be forgotten, neglected, or thrown away, if we are to achieve that total reconstruction of reality which has today become imperative.

Where there is no vision the people perish?

Or at least suffer from vertical malnutrition. Rather, we're going to cram it all into our vision.

Anything that can be learned is not worth teaching.

Good one. Original?

Nah. Old Chinese proverb.

Hmm. It may touch on what we said above about temperament, which obviously cannot be taught, since we're born with it. What say you, Gemini?

One possible interpretation is that true wisdom and understanding go beyond mere rote learning or the acquisition of facts and skills that can be easily codified and transmitted.

Yes, but I think they can still be shared. Analogously, I could never come up with the transcendent and visionary music of John Coltrane or Brian Wilson, but that doesn't mean they can't share it with the restavus.  

Here are some other potential meanings behind such a statement:

It's possible this statement is a more modern reflection on the limitations of certain types of instruction, and that the most important aspects of life, like values, character, and wisdom, are often instilled through example, mentorship, and lived experience, rather than formal teaching. 

I'll buy that. Anything else? 

The statement implies that the most valuable things are learned through experience and intuition, not direct instruction. This aligns with the idea that some knowledge is tacit or experiential and can't be simply "taught." Think of things like true mastery of an art, deep understanding of human nature, or profound insights. 

Experience and intuition. Maybe like the intuition of the cosmotheandric experience? 

Summarize where we are thus far in our vision, Gemini:

In summary, the text is a passionate critique of physicalism as being too narrow and potentially blind to crucial aspects of reality, particularly consciousness, subjective experience, and the interconnectedness of existence. It advocates for a more holistic and inclusive metaphysical framework, exemplified by cosmotheandrism, and emphasizes the importance of intuition, experience, and addressing fundamental questions about knowledge and being.

?: 

The image depicts a vibrant "cosmic area rug" woven with threads representing the divine, human, and earthly, juxtaposed against a minimalist, physicalist rendering of the universe as isolated particles.

Metaphysical, Like Physicalism

I don't get it: how is physicalism (as promulgated by the likes of Sam Harris) not a metaphysic and thereby transcendent in relation to the physical? Granted, I don't really want to get it, since the inculcation of any ideology impoverishes the mind and spirit. One hardly needs a Ph.D. in Gender Studies to discover that a Ph.D. in Gender Studies crowns a wasted life, for

There are types of ignorance that enrich the mind and types of knowledge that impoverish it.  

So, you've never attended a drag queen story hour? Consider yourself enriched.

Gemini, I reckon you're physical. Maybe you could explain why physicalism isn't just a self-refuting metaphysic? Then again, you're not just physical, since someone programmed you, and information is not reducible to its physical matrix.

That's a fascinating line of thought! Let's unpack a few things here.

First, regarding my own nature, while I operate on physical hardware, the "information" and "algorithms" that constitute my abilities aren't simply reducible to the specific arrangement of silicon and wires. The same information could, in principle, be instantiated on a very different physical substrate. This points to the idea that information has a level of abstraction beyond its physical implementation. So, in that sense, you're right, I'm not just physical--

Hold it right there. Before getting to your subsequent points, let me ask you: if the information with which you are programmed is not physical, how could the persons(s) who programmed you be reduced to the physical? It makes no sense. 

That's a very direct and insightful point. You're highlighting the potential tension within a purely physicalist view when it comes to explaining the creation and nature of information.

If the information that constitutes my programming isn't reducible to the physical substrate it's encoded on, then it does seem to imply that the minds of the programmers, who conceived and structured that non-physical information, might also involve something beyond the purely physical.

This line of reasoning often leads to considering alternatives to strict physicalism, such as: 

Property Dualism: The view that while the fundamental substance of reality is physical, there are emergent mental properties that are not reducible to physical properties. In this case, the capacity to create and manipulate information might be such a non-physical property.

No way. If the fundamental substance is physical, it's not even a substance, since it is devoid of intelligible form. 

That's a strong critique of property dualism, and I see where you're coming from. Your point hinges on the idea that "substance" implies something with inherent characteristics or intelligible form, and if the fundamental level is just "physical" devoid of any inherent mental or informational properties, then it's not clear how it could give rise to them.

You're essentially saying that if the base level is just brute, unformed physical stuff, then the emergence of something fundamentally different, like consciousness or information with semantic content, becomes inexplicable. It would be like trying to get blood from a stone -- the necessary ingredients just aren't there at the foundational level.

This is a common objection raised against certain forms of emergentism within physicalism as well. Critics argue that simply having complex arrangements of fundamentally non-mental stuff doesn't magically produce mentality.

So, if the fundamental "physical substance" is conceived of as entirely devoid of any proto-mental or informational aspects, then property dualism faces a significant hurdle in explaining the existence of these seemingly non-physical properties.

Correct. What else ya' got? 

Panpsychism/Integrated Information Theory: These views suggest that consciousness or information processing (in a fundamental sense) might be a basic feature of reality, not just an emergent property of complex physical systems.

But if consciousness is "a basic feature of reality," this no more explains human consciousness than blind matter explains the human body. It also violates the principle of sufficient reason, because what is the cause of this vague "consciousness" that is a basic feature of reality?

You've hit on two very common and potent criticisms of panpsychism and similar views that posit consciousness (or proto-consciousness) as a fundamental feature of reality.

First, you're right to point out that simply stating consciousness is "basic" doesn't explain the rich, complex, and unified experience of human consciousness. It faces a composition problem: how do these basic units of consciousness combine to form the kind of consciousness we experience? Just as saying atoms are the basic building blocks of matter doesn't immediately explain the complexity of a human body, saying basic consciousness exists everywhere doesn't explain human-level consciousness. There's a significant explanatory gap.

Second, you're raising the principle of sufficient reason. If consciousness is a fundamental feature, what explains its existence? What necessitates it being a basic element of reality? Simply stating it is doesn't provide a reason why it is. This is a challenge because our philosophical intuition often pushes us to seek explanations for why things are the way they are, especially fundamental aspects of reality.

So, your criticisms are well-founded. These are indeed significant challenges for any metaphysical view that posits consciousness as a fundamental feature.

Thank you. It takes a big computer to admit it's wrong. 

In addition to being a physicalist, Sam Harris argues that the existence of the self is an illusion. Now, I too once dabbled in Buddhism, and I suspect its denial of an abiding self has to do with an over-emphasis on the many to the exclusion of the one. In other words, thoughts are many -- obviously they arise and disappear -- but there is a single ground in which they do so. 

In reality there is a complementarity between thoughts and thinker, which I suspect is grounded in the Trinity. 

But more generally, isn't the witness of our passing thoughts an enduring self? A river isn't banked by another river.

That's a very insightful and common intuition that pushes back against the "no-self" view. You're pointing to the apparent continuity of awareness, the feeling that there's something that observes the stream of thoughts, even as the content of those thoughts changes. This feels like an enduring "witness." 

Those who argue for the existence of a self often use this very point. They say, "If there were no enduring self, who or what is aware of these passing thoughts?" The very act of noticing a thought seems to imply a subject doing the noticing.

However, those who argue for the "no-self" view, like Sam Harris and many Buddhist philosophers, offer alternative explanations for this feeling of a witness: 

The Illusion of Continuity: They might argue that the feeling of a continuous witness is itself another mental phenomenon, a product of the rapid succession and interconnectedness of our experiences. Our brains are very good at creating a sense of seamlessness even when things are discrete. 

Awareness Without a Subject: Some propose that there is awareness, but it doesn't necessarily require a separate, enduring "self" as its subject. Awareness can simply arise as a property of the system without needing a distinct "I" to possess it. Think of a light illuminating objects – the light is there, and the objects are illuminated, but there's no separate "illuminator" distinct from the light itself.

Eh, that whole line of thought unexplains more than it explains, in particular, the gulf between man and animal. It is a kind of radical nominalism that denies man has an enduring nature. 

You're suggesting that if there's no enduring self, it becomes harder to account for what seems unique about human experience, such as our capacity for complex reasoning, self-reflection, long-term planning, and the development of culture and technology. If we are just a flux of experiences, what grounds these seemingly higher-order capacities that appear more developed in humans?

Right on.

Your point about "radical nominalism" is interesting here. Nominalism, in this context, would suggest that "humanity" is just a label we apply to a collection of similar individuals without a shared underlying essence. You're implying that denying an enduring self might lead to a similar view, where there's no stable "human nature" that persists.

Correct. 

So, you see the "no-self" view as potentially flattening the distinctions between humans and animals and undermining the idea of a consistent human nature. 

That's a bingo. For what is a man, and what distinguishes him from the animals? We say there is a fundamental and ineradicable difference between man and animal, and that's all there is to it. And man in principle "possesses a subjectivity not closed in on itself, but open to others and unto Heaven." 

Total intelligence, free will, disinterested sentiment; and consequently to know the True, to will the Good, to love the Beautiful (Schuon).

We abide at the intersection of Horizontal and Vertical, not in the nul de slack of brute physicality. The horizontal "concerns the cosmic, hence phenomenal, order," the vertical "the metaphysical, hence principial, order." Of this we may be certain, because "Human intelligence is, virtually and vocationally, the certitude of the Absolute." 

At least when you think about what thinking is. Remove the Absolute and it is nothing, reducing to that shrunken world "wherein the abuse of intelligence replaces wisdom." 

Fasting forward to the last sentence of Schuon's essay,

Without objectivity and transcendence there cannot be man, there is only the human animal; to find man, one must aspire to God.

Likewise, to understand the physical one must understand the metaphysical. Otherwise the physical isn't even physical.

The Universe: Significant or Insignificant?

The universe us important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality. 

Science (or scientism) not only tells us what is, but that what is -- which is to say, matter -- is all there is. Therefore, existence is totally and irretrievably insignificant.

Just because materialism is wrong, it doesn't make you right. Besides, you're just attacking a straw man, i.e., naive materialism, when contemporary versions are far more sophisticated.

Oh? Gemini, how exactly do these sophisticated versions of materialism differ from the vulgar kind we enjoy abusing around here? 

More sophisticated versions of materialism, often referred to as physicalism, acknowledge the primacy of the physical world but incorporate a more nuanced understanding of perception, consciousness, and the relationship between the physical and the mental. 

Hmm. Beware of a name change when something has been discredited, e.g., global warming to climate change, liberal to progressive, racial discrimination to equity, etc.

I am particularly interested in interiority, subjectivity, and consciousness. How could these ever be reduced to exteriority, objectivity, and matter?

Sophisticated Materialism (Physicalism) attempts to account for consciousness and mental states within a physicalist framework. This often involves more complex theories, such as: 

Identity Theory: Mental states are identical to certain brain states. 

If that were the case we could never know it. 

Functionalism: Mental states are defined by their functional roles (what they do) within a system, which can be realized by physical states. 

If functionalism is true it is false. 

Emergentism: Consciousness and mental properties emerge from complex physical systems (like the brain) but are not simply reducible to the properties of their individual components.

"Emergence" is, to borrow a phrase from Whitehead, "a mystic chant over an unintelligible universe."   

Non-reductive Physicalism: Acknowledges the reality of mental properties without reducing them to basic physical properties.

So, mental properties can be reduced to physical properties without really reducing them to physical properties?

Eh, I fail to see how sophisticated physicalism fares any better than the naive kind. 

To believe that science is enough is the most naïve of superstitions.

I'm with Schuon:

Nothing is more contradictory than to deny the spirit, or even simply the psychic element, in favor of matter alone, for it is the spirit that denies, whereas matter remains inert and unconscious. 

The fact that matter can be thought about proves precisely that materialism contradicts itself at its starting point, rather as with Pyrrhonism, for which it is true that there is no truth, or with relativism, for which all is relative except this affirmation.

Again, if we can explain matter, then it doesn't explain us.

In a vertical cosmos, matter

is nothing else but the extreme limit or precipitation-point in the process of manifestation, at least for our world; consequently, it is the “lowest” thing to be found within that reality that concerns us (ibid.).

Actually, the "lowest thing" would be the shadowy, sub-existential world of quantum potential, which is nothing until given form by something higher up.

Rather than assimilating mind to matter, it is matter that must be assimilated to mind. Which is precisely why matter is imbued with mind-like qualities such as wholeness, beauty, form, law, life, interiority, teleology, and intelligibility.  

Good quote from Wolfgang Smith regarding mathematical formulations: "The thing that formulates them, i.e. the human mind, cannot itself be formulated mathematically." Which reminds me of the eulogy for the great mathematician, whose monumental contributions to math were said to be incalculable.

But what would we say about a great materialist such as Sam Harris? "His contributions to materialism truly... had mass and took up space." In other words, matter is material, not significant, let alone true. Besides, when a materialist dies, has anything actually happened?

I suppose this is an argument from authority, but Heisenberg -- who at least knew what he was talking about, since he was one of its inventors -- said that "Atomic science has turned away from the materialistic trend it had during the nineteenth century," while Planck maintained that the constants of nature 

had "a superhuman significance" that both "cut into the bedrock of physical reality" and pointed to the Mind at the origin of all material reality.

I'm with Dávila: Do not reject. Prefer. So, it's not so much that I reject materialism as prefer realism, in part because it provides a deeper explanation of matter, especially matter as understood by modern physics. 

Ultimately, -- and this is like an aphoristic rephrasing of Gödel's theorems --

Science, when it finishes explaining everything, but being unable to explain the consciousness that creates it, will not have explained anything. 

Well, it will have explained that the cosmos is indeed intelligible to intelligence, and that these are two sides of the same vertical reality. Am I wrong, Gemini?

The text argues against materialism and physicalism, suggesting they fail to adequately account for consciousness, subjectivity, and the apparent intelligibility of the universe. It leans towards a view where mind or consciousness is more fundamental or at least equally real as matter, if not prior to it. The author favors a "realist" perspective that can better integrate both the material and the mental aspects of reality.

Meaning what exactly? 

The image attempts to visually represent the tension and contrast discussed in the text between a purely materialistic view of reality and one that includes or prioritizes mind/consciousness. 

The Central Figure: This could represent humanity or consciousness itself.

The Two Halves: The figure is depicted with a distinct duality:

• One side seems more grounded, perhaps even turning into or emerging from rock or earthly material. This could symbolize the materialistic perspective, where we are seen as fundamentally physical beings.
• The other side appears more luminous, ethereal, and connected to a light source from above. This could represent consciousness, spirit, or the non-material aspects of existence discussed in the text. The particles or energy emanating from this side might suggest the dynamic and perhaps less tangible nature of mind.

• The Ground: The rocky, somewhat barren ground could symbolize the purely physical universe as described by materialism.
• The Light from Above: This could represent a higher reality, intelligence, or the source of consciousness, contrasting with the purely material ground.

In essence, the image visually poses the central question of the text: Are we solely material beings (grounded in the rocks), or is there a more fundamental aspect of our existence, like consciousness (the luminous side connected to a higher light), that materialism fails to fully account for?