The Miraculous Encounter of Thought and Being

A commenter on the previous post lamented our preoccupation with intelligence and intelligibility, dismissing the former as "a tool, a buzzing blinking contraption. Like a calculator."

Naturally, it's difficult for human beings to imagine things from outside their humanness. It's literally impossible to think about what the world is like without language, since language is how we think. We can't imagine what it's like to be a dog or a bat or an insect. 

In fact, people at situated at the right side of the bell curve can scarcely imagine what it's like to occupy the left side -- say, the mind of Alexandria Cortez -- nor, for that matter, does she know anything about our end. We know this, because everything she says about us is wrong -- e.g., racist, sexist, fascist, homophobic, etc. That isn't intellection, just projection -- like maps of old that that say "monsters be here."  

Anyway, it's easy to take intelligibility for granted, since it is literally impossible to imagine the universe without it; a cosmos presumes its own intelligibility, or it's just a chaosmos.  

And one must be bereft of curiosity to not wonder how and why the intelligibility gets in, and how it is that our minds are able to extract this intelligibility.  Is it just a miraculous coincidence? Or are there sound metaphysical reasons?

As we often say, the humble person of faith who believes in a literal seven day creation is infinitely closer to the truth than the arrogant person of tenure who imagines that everything came about by chance.  In fact the doctrine of creation -- properly understood -- is the initial bifurcation in the flowchart of being and knowing: either the world is created -- i.e., is dependent upon  higher source -- or it isn't.  There is no in between.

But if it is not created, one must accept all the consequences that flow from this.  Which the anti-creationist never does and can never do without committing intellectual suicide.

Note the qualifier: properly understood.  It seems that few Christians and fewer pagans actually understand the metaphysical doctrine of creation. This is because western Christendom departed from the last common teacher of the undivided faith at the same time the scientific revolution was getting underway.  

This led to the split between science and faith that persists to this day -- which is really a disastrous and totally unnecessary division between (lower case) reason and intelligence. And only intelligence can heal the split, because intelligence is what unifies and synthesizes, precisely:

Our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity (Thomas).

This is self-evident: there is no limit to what we may know, for to even draw a boundary between appearances and reality -- AKA phenomena and noumena -- is to presume what is on its other side: "the intellect is therefore naturally capable of knowing everything that exists." And

Our intellect in knowing anything is extended to infinity. This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge (ibid.).

This accords with one of our favorite passages by Schuon:  

The first ascertainment which should impose itself upon man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of that miracle that is intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- and consequently the incommensurability between these and material objects, be it a question of a grain of sand or of the sun, or of any creature whatever as an object of the senses.

In other words, the gap between the senses and the intellect is literally infinite, and demands an explanation: how did we get here, i.e., from the world of concrete sensations to the world of abstract concepts?  

Note that the concrete sensible isn't even a "fact" until there exists an intelligence to regard it as one. Does a dog or a journalist live in a world of disinterested facts?  Nor is it possible to "evolve" into the human world, again, because we're not talking about a continuous line but a discontinuous leap in being. There is no line that leads from touch or sight to pi, or to the theory of relativity, or to the self-evident truths undergirding our political system.

This is not to deny the fact of evolution. Indeed, is to render the fact of evolution intelligible. To imagine evolution "explains" human intelligence isn't superstitious, or even a little stitious. Rather, it's substitious.  It begs the biggest question of all, which is how the intellect transcends the mere shuffling of material genes.

No sense organ is aware of itself or of its operation. The eye neither sees itself, nor does it see what it sees. But the intellect is aware of itself and of its act of knowing (ibid.).

Here again, if you believe this capacity is a miracle brought about on the sixth day of creation, you're closer to the truth than the person who believes it miraculously came about as a result of matter somehow transcending itself. This latter doesn't explain anything, i.e. how transcendence appears in an immanent world -- how objects become subjects, how the outside gets in, how mere existence becomes experience.

To judge one's own judgment: this can only be done by the reason, which reflects on its own act and knows the relation between that upon which it judges and that by which it judges. Hence the root of all freedom lies in the reason (ibid., emphasis mine).

Boom: and now we understand the link between metaphysics and politics. Another foolish commenter suggested that "the true mystic is singularly disinterested in politics or stolen elections." Nah. The reality is that the true mystic is singularly interested in any and all conditions that permit and promote the flourishing of true mysticism. Which any form of materialism obviously doesn't.  

We're running out of time, but the question of real intelligence -- our knowledge of truth -- is very much tied in with the doctrine of creation. To put it conversely, if you're wrong about creation, then you're wrong -- ultimately -- about everything.