Metaphysical Yada Yada and Reductive Belowviation

Continuing with yesterday's theme of the 2,500 year argument clinic, Schuon writes that 

Plato represents the inward dimension, subjective extension, synthesis and reintegration, whereas Aristotle represents the outward dimension, objective extension, analysis and projection....

Elsewhere he suggests that 

Platonism, which is as it were “centripetal” and unitive, opens onto the consciousness of the one and immanent Self; on the contrary, Aristotelianism, which is “centrifugal” and separative, tends to sever the world -- and with it man -- from its divine roots.

So, in one metaphysical corner we have inward, subjective, unitive, synthetic, and centripetal; in the other, outward, objective, separative, analytic, and centrifugal. Or interior Self and exterior World.

Now, how could we ever really do without a metaphysic that is itself a synthesis of both? Nothing short of this can describe our predicament. We don't want to exclude anything, let alone on an a priori basis.

This next chapter -- Metabolism and Mind -- mainly bats down some apparently eminent contemporary philosophers who try to do what we just said one should never do. Such approaches try to sneak in things like purpose and value through the side door, but come across as fancier modes of the same old reductionism. 

They also yada-yada over some rather important steps along the way, prompting one character to ask

Can we really move that easily from metabolism to consciousness and then to symbolic thought?

The whole scheme "could be taken to mean that life is a purely structural amplification of the laws of physics, and mental agency a purely structural amplification of the laws of life thus generated." 

But again, why even imagine that subjects could ever be reduced to objects, when in reality, this is about the most implausible thing imaginable? The project fails because it cannot overcome "any of the explanatory gaps -- or, rather, abysses" it "sets out to bridge." And why? Same old reason: it stills proceeds "in only one direction: from below to above." 

But in this world there is always (↑) and (↓), am I wrong? For that matter, there is always O, the transcendent object toward which (↑) is ordered. But we still need the immanent horizon (↓) as well for a total map of the Real.

"Once again, direction is all." The bottom-up project fails "precisely because it's an attempt to yet again ground the mental in the physical rather than the reverse," thus foundering "on all the same causal aporias that plague the mechanistic model."

If interiority isn't irreducible, than nothing is:

And the interiority of organism proceeds from mind, not the reverse.... mental interiority is the source and rationale, rather than merely the result, of metabolism.

For me, this mystery of interiority is the mystery. How does a universe of pure exterior relations -- of unalloyed outsideness -- suddenly gain an inside view of itself? Not just an interior perspective, but again, interiority as such. Truly truly, WTF?!

The next chapter slaps down another reductionist or three, but all "want to suggest that the reflective interiority and self-awareness of mind is just a structural elaboration or continuation" of lower material processes. "We never really come nearer to life or mind" via such reductive belowviating. 

The thing is, "mind isn't actually a structurally spatial interiority," rather, it's immaterial, so it makes no sense to say that some self-organizing physical structure like a whirlpool or tornado just one day developed an inside and decided to go on being. Again, there is a radical discontinuity between any mere dissipative structure and the merest organism.     

No, mind is before all and in all, shaping matter into living organisms; matter is always being raised up into life, and life is always being raised up into mind, and mind is always seeking a transcendental end...

(Raised up. This reminds us of mind being further "teleologically" raised up into Christ, but that's a squirrel we'll have to chase down later.)

Put conversely,

It can't really be a matter of the miraculous appearance of teleological activity within the originally atelic dynamisms of material processes. 

Again, you can't just yada yada over something as important and fundamental as interiority -- a subjective horizon oriented to a transcendent telos -- as if to say "Something very, very significant happened at this point, but let's not dwell on it." To re-belabor the point, this is "a qualitative abyss that can't be crossed from below." 

The next chapter is called Creative Evolution, but we are in need of no convincing on this score, since creativity is one of our top five transcendental categories. Indeed, it is the first thing we know about God -- that he creates, so creative evolution isn't a problem for our metaphysic, rather, what we expect of the cosmos (and of the being made in the image of this creative principle).