Original SINO

 "To be human," writes McGilchrist,

is to feel a deep gravitational pull towards something ineffable, that, if we just for once get beyond words and reasons, is a matter of experience..., something outside our conceptual grasp, but nonetheless present to us through intimations that come to us from a whole range of unfathomable experiences we call "spiritual."

This is a superficially attractive view of religiosity, and it comes close to what I might have said a couple decades ago. But is it true, and is it enough? For it places the primacy on our end of the deal, with "experience," rather than the reality of the object of experience, and the next ineluctable cosmic bus stops are subjectivism --> relativism --> nihilism --> tenure.

On the one hand, "experience" is unarguable -- unless you want to argue that it should be spelled inarguable. 

But what if one's experience suggests that murdering Jews is the shortest path to paradise? Or that the "something ineffable" toward which we are drawn is called Gaia, or that maybe the Aztec were onto something with their system of human sacrifice? 

No, there's gotta be something objective in the equation, otherwise it's SINO: Subjectivity In, Nihilism Out. 

I have a better idea, or rather, Dávila does: 

In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter.

Now, I believe this aphorism with ALL MY FEELINGS, but this doesn't matter if it isn't true that man may know truth, i.e., that what we call Truth consists mainly of three things: first there are the universal metaphysical principles, or the first immutable truths of common sense, which inhere in intelligence as such.

Second -- because it is one of those first immutable truths -- is the principle that truth is the adequation of mind to world, not merely of mind to "experience," which can literally be anything. For example, I can experience myself as a woman, but that doesn't make it so, because it does not conform to reality. 

(Thus, as an asnide, one can appreciate the centrality of a metaphysics of subjectivism and relativism for the left: everything for them hinges on the non-existence of objective reality and our ability to know it. Ironically, for them subjectivism is objectively necessary, otherwise they will inevitably fall into reality.)

The third Truth comes to us directly from God, i.e., revelation. It is at once more controversial than the first two, but no less necessary, for if there is no communication of truth from outside the closed circle of human opinion, then we are well and truly f.... subject to the tyranny of relativism.

In another aphorism which I feel is totally correct, Dávila suggests that 

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow is to make fun of the rest.

He has too much respect for our intelligence to name them, but maybe he gives us too much credit, so I will: these must include, at a minimum, the principle of identity (or non-contradiction), of sufficient reason, and of efficient causality. 

Is it asking too much that a theory not contradict itself, and be adequate to explain the phenomenon without resorting to magic?

Magic, for example, that the human intellect just sprouted from matter (boo!). Unless we revise our opinion of what matter is. But if matter is both material and immaterial, it violates the principle of non-contradiction, and renders reality unintelligible at the foundation.

But wait: matter is both material and immaterial at the foundation, otherwise it would be unintelligible. 

Which is another way of saying that we never encounter matter in the raw, rather, as form + matter. If there exists formless matter, then truly truly, it is none of our isness. 

Literally, for it can have no innersection with Being. Formless matter is the first word of non-being, therefore no word at all, in a language no one can speak or hear.

Let's get back to what McGilchrist says up there in paragraph the second: is there some way to preserve what is helpful, or perhaps to tweak his conclusion to render it sound? 

Let us flip ahead a couple of pages, to p. 1198, where there is a section called Denying the Ground of Being, which he claims not to do: 

ultimately there must just be an uncaused cause, or an ungrounded ground....

OK Thomas. 

In whatever way we recast it, we are faced with an exception, and an exception that cannot be rationalized so as to be safely packed away again within our familiar categories. 

I'm not entirely sure what he means there by "exception," for surely the Ground of Being must be the rule. Nor can we be an exception to the rule, rather, an adequation to it (otherwise we couldn't even know if it).

To his credit, McGilchrist rejects scientistic McMagic -- i.e., "brute emergence" -- as some kind of plausible escape from God, as if Being -- which is to say, intelligible reality -- just 

emerged out of Nothing: nothing here to explain.... in this strategy the miracle is not denied, but confirmed: one miracle is simply recast as another.

It's just substituting one word -- "emergence" -- for another -- "God" -- and certainly attributing godlike abilities to a supposedly godless process:

Just as the emergence of consciousness is a miracle, brute emergence of Being from non-Being is either the miracle of all miracles or a straight impossibility.

Agreed.

Well, what are you gonna do about it? 

Oh, we'll do something about it alright. Tomorrow.