The Revelation of Intelligence and the Intelligence of Revelation?

To review where we left off, Gödel believed man could see mathematical realities directly through a kind of perception, no different in principle from the perception of empirical reality.

He further believed that human beings "will always be able to recognize some truths through intuition" which "can never be established even by the most advanced computing machine." 

But again, the theorems only reveal what the mind cannot be; to know our mind is not a computer is not to know what it is. 

In fact, depending on the premises we plug in, we can conclude anything we like. But no rational operation can furnish its own premises.

For Schuon, "The effectiveness of reason essentially depends upon two conditions," neither of which can be reduced to reason. There is first "the value and extent of the available information" with which to reason upon, and garbage in, tenure out.

But secondly, there is "the acuity and profundity of the intelligence" in question, which bears a kind of vertical relation to reason itself, going "beyond the indirect processes of reason in calling upon pure intellection."

Again, as discussed in yesterday's post, Schuon's pure intellection seems to share something in common with Gödel's direct perception of mathematical realities.

If mathematical realities can be directly perceived in this way, why not other realities? God is a mathematician, but surely not only a mathematician. Come to think of it, I'll bet God cannot be limited to a formal system for the same reason we cannot be. 

That's just a hunch, but perhaps it can in turn help account for the bad religion bemoaned by Gödel, because people are forever absolutizing their religion instead of understanding it to be about the Absolute. 

Here again, I wonder if this is an ultimate entailment of the theorems, since reality can never be contained by any formal system. 

It's a tricksy business, because we have a word -- reality -- that can lull us into thinking we have domesticated that to which the word refers. 

In any event, the rationalist -- which is to say, someone who irrationally encloses himself within the constraints of logic -- can never reason adequately "in light of the total and supralogical intelligence" that must be prior to logic itself. 

Such a person "thinks he can solve every problem by means of logic alone," but this is to put the cart of rationalism before the horse of intelligence. By way of analogy, "A line of reasoning that is square in shape" will "reject a spherical reality and replace it with a square error." 

Or worse, a line of reasoning with a circular shape won't even see the higher dimensional sphere; at best, it will reduce the three dimensional sphere to a two-dimensional circle. 

Reason divorced from intellect be like... like left cerebral hemisphere divorced from right, or letter from spirit, words from music, prose from poetry, abstract concept from concrete experience, particle from field, etc.

In a footnote to this essay, Schuon makes the rather important claim that

Revelation is a kind of cosmic intellection whereas personal intellection is comparable to a Revelation on the scale of the microcosm. 

Now, I happen to believe this, especially the idea that the human subject is probably the first and most important revelation of them all. After all, without it, there could be no other revelation, because there would be no one to whom to reveal it. 

Intelligence is the First Miracle? Why not?

The first thing that should strike man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle of intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- whence the incommensurability between it and material objects, whether a grain of sand or the sun, or any creature whatever as an object of the senses.

 Is he wrong? 

Nothing is more absurd than to have intelligence derive from matter, hence the greater from the lesser; the evolutionary leap from matter to intelligence, is from every point of view the most inconceivable thing that could be.

Now, at the other end, is Revelation "a kind of cosmic intellection"? 

Surely not just any revelation, otherwise we might be tempted to believe that the revelation of mistakes in the TV Guide is a result of sabotage.

This will take us Far Afield -- too far for a single post, but -- just spiritballin' again -- but could there be some extra-Revelational standard by which to judge Revelation? Or perhaps some way to harmonize all the good ones? The ones deemed Good Enough by Intelligence itself?

For example, I think the Tao Te Ching does a pretty, pretty good job of describing the ultimate Principle. Now, is this Principle the same one described in Genesis and then in John? And are these the same as the one described in the Upanishads?

I say, why not? Which was kind of the implicit point of the opening and closing sections of the book, but I could probably do a better job of it today. 

It's today. Let's see you try.

Today I also know better than to try such an outlandish and impudent exercise. Rather, let this guy have a crack at it -- to present the Tao Te Ching in light of the Christian revelation, and vice versa -- "a Gospel according to Lao Tzu."

Before light was made

There was the Primal Light that was not made:

The Primal Essence,

Dwelling in the Darkness of incomprehensibility.

Yada yada, "There is no name whereby the Primal Essence can be named,"

For He is a sea of Essence,

Indeterminate and without bounds...

He is wholly Essence, and solely Essence,

Yet He is above essence,

Because He is not the essence of anything that is. 

If this is an attempt to describe the metacosmic intellect, our own intellect must again be its reflection, 

for how could the intelligence limit itself, seeing that by its very nature it is in principle unlimited or it is nothing? 

In other words, who or what places this so-called limit if not intelligence itself? "For an intellectual limit is a wall," 

hence one of two things: either the intelligence by definition includes a principle of illimitability or liberty.

Either this, or 

on the contrary the intelligence includes -- again by definition -- a principle of limitation or constraint, in which case it no longer includes any certainty and can function no differently from the intelligence of animals, with the result that all pretension to "critical philosophy" is vain. 

Recall yesterday's bottom line:

In place of limits on human knowledge and certainty, he [Gödel] saw only the irreplaceable uniqueness of the human spirit. 

 Compare this to what shall have to be today's bottom line: 

Man is intelligence, and intelligence is the transcending of forms and the realization of the invisible Essence; to say human intelligence is to say absoluteness and transcendence (Schuon).

Limited animal intelligence or unlimited human spirit? Just asking.