The Fox, the Hedgehog, and the Fedgehox

I'd like to highlight some additional insights from this short book on Thomas Aquinas. Given its brevity, it can only be quite general, but I myself am a generalist. Or, as some would say, a dabbler and dilettante. I feel like the latter when I read someone like Ed Feser. 

For example, yesterday I was reading his defense of the Aristotelian Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science. The man clearly knows his stuff, but it's dryasdust. Which I suppose is one of the features of scholastic philosophy, which is to say, the elimination of what we call "personality." Thomas's writing is likewise unencumbered by Thomas, any more than math should be contaminated by the mathematician. 

Or, it's like pure light before it passes through the prism of humanness and becomes colored thereby. Of course, postmodern philosophy veers altogether in the opposite direction: it is personal to the point of solipsism, i.e., "my truth." Some philosophies are little more than the articulation and elaboration of a foul mood. Or dysfunctional personality. 

Now, Christ wasn't just anybody or everybody, but a particular person. Very different from, say, Buddha or Shankara, whose philosophies could be boiled down to an impersonal essence.

That's the thing about humans: they're an oxymoronic species of individuals, each one unique. However, this is not to the point of angels, each one literally being the sole member of his own species. For one thing, the unit of man is no less than two, for "it is not good that man should be allone." Or, at the very least, there's an irreducible complementarity between individualism and collectivism -- not the bad kind, rather, as in the family.

In a post yesterday, Rob Henderson touched on the difference between hedgehogs and foxes, those who know one big thing vs. those who know a little about everything. Hedgehogs "inflexibly view the world through a single overarching idea," while foxes "draw from multiple frameworks and experiences that are often contradictory." 

The key difference is that foxes pull information from a wide range of sources, piecing things together intuitively rather than relying on rigid, all-encompassing theories. They... approach their own ideas with humility. They are open to criticism and revision. 

Conversely, hedgehogs

have no such reservations. They dismiss self-doubt, double down when challenged, and assert big, sweeping explanations with absolute confidence. If they start digging themselves into a hole, they don’t stop -- they just dig deeper. Their certainty makes them sound persuasive, even when they are completely wrong. But their predictions usually fall flat because they’re too committed to their own narratives to adapt.

I don't know that I fit into either category. On the one hand, I do like to pull from a wide and diverse range of sources, but only in order to assert one big, sweeping explanation with absolute confidence, dismissing self-doubt and doubling down when challenged.

After all, it is one cosmos. However, this one cosmos is a vast field of diversity-in-unity and unity-in-diversity. Ultimately it's all reducible to God, but the funny thing about Christianity is that God himself is not reducible to God, but rather, is likewise a kind of diversity-in-unity. 

As for my one big sweeping explanation, it's more of vision thing. For this reason, I could scarcely blame the critic for saying "who is this Bob, and who gives a fuck what he sees?" The world is teeming with visionaries, dreamers, and crackpots. Always has been and always will be. What makes me any different?

Come to think of it, this is one of the barriers to writing the Sequel. Over the years, I've grown accustomed to addressing an audience that already gets where I'm coming from, i.e., intuits the same big sweeping generalization. I don't have to prove things from the ground up, nor would I want to do so, a la Feser. Pedantry is not my thing. 

Rather, maybe I'm shallow, but I actually want to be entertaining. There aren't too many metaphysical entertainers out there, like a Terence McKenna or Alan Watts. I disagree with much of what those two said, but I still find them entertaining. Conversely, Feser is perfectly sound, even nihil bobstat, but reading him is like eating one's vegetables. Necessary but not necessarily enjoyable.

Anyway, there are passages in Saint Thomas Aquinas that perfectly reflect the One Cosmos vision, without getting bogged down in pedantic detail. For example, Thomas has

concern for the finite and particular as well as for the Infinite and Incomprehensible. Could these two so divergent outlooks be unified? That was, ultimately, the one question that was being asked [by Thomas].

In other words, he addresses everything in a fox-like manner, but all in support of the mother of all hedgehog visions of unity -- a unity that is so endlessly comprehensible it's downright incomprehensible.  

Thomism has room for everything, even while being "bound to no particular scientific theory." For any such theory "may well be discarded by a later generation," so any "discarding would have no effect upon his thesis." The point is, scientific theories come and go, but the metaphysical vision is forever:

he made sure, by keeping his thought free from physical theories and maintaining it always on the metaphysical, and therefore eternal, plane, that his synthesis should not be a dated system, should not be something static, final, and therefore bound to become obsolete.

Rather, IT'S ALIVE, as living as the intellect that makes use of it, for it is

a vital organism, embryonic, but endowed with an infinite capacity for the assimilation of new truth and for adjustment to new conditions and environments without loss of its substantial identity. 

Foxes are welcome, as are openminded hedgehogs, for this vision is "so elemental and so elastic that it could include all future discovery and speculation," giving "unity to all human knowledge, past, present, and future." Thomas "brought whatever he found of truth into the unity of his own synthesis," and why not? Long story, but mainly because

the life of our world is split into a thousand fragments because of our defection from metaphysics: the various levels of life cannot be unified because the one unifying factor has been excluded; and it will never be unified, and consequently the world will never be sane, until that metaphysical level is rediscovered and the manifold levels of life are re-integrated into its unity.

The unity of science, wisdom, philosophy, metaphysics, mysticism, and more. For 

it is the office of the wise man, the philosopher, to direct, put things in order, and through his contemplation of the "highest causes" to provide the ultimate why and whither in the light of which we may make orderly use of science with its knowledge of the how. 

Science, of course, has nothing to say about the Why and Whither, which is to say, formal and final causes.

On the one hand, there is what we like to call (↑), 

knowledge whereby [man] rises by the light of natural reason from the knowledge of created things to knowledge of God.... so every means of apprehending truth is utilized.

On the other hand, there is (↓),

the knowledge given by the divine truth, which exceeds the power of [the] human mind, coming down, through revelation, to our level... 

These two are dynamic and complementary, like the epistemological metabolism described in yesterday's post. 

Truth is one; the mind of man can know truth by its own natural light; the mind of man can know truth since God has revealed it; but these two testimonies cannot be contradictory. 

"These things, though supra-rational, are not contra-rational." Having said that, "man's final end is beyond his reach. He needs help; and help is provided by God's grace," AKA (↓). 

Any way you cut it, philosophy "looks necessarily beyond itself":

It leads us far; but it leads us in its turn to a point at which we are bound to acknowledge that reason, even illuminated by faith, can go no further. It ends in an assertion of ignorance.

Here, "philosophical-theological synthesis breaks down," and we are confronted with the Mystery, with Celestial Central. We'll plunge into this in a subsequent post, because I'm out of gas. But Gemini has some aphoristic and even poetic things to say about the post, including the coining of a helpful new term: fedgehog (although I prefer "fedgehox"), which I suppose is synonymous with raccoon:

You've woven together some compelling ideas, and I'll try to offer some aphoristic responses in kind.

• On Thomistic dryness: The desert blooms with hidden springs. What seems barren of personality may be fertile ground for universal truth. The mathematician's equation is impersonal, but its implications are deeply personal for those who understand it.

• On postmodern solipsism: "My truth" is a prison with only one inmate. The echo chamber of self-reference offers no escape, only a distorted reflection.

• On the oxymoronic nature of humanity: We are each a unique note in the symphony of existence. The solo is beautiful, but the harmony is divine.

• On hedgehogs and foxes: The hedgehog sees the forest for the trees, the fox sees the trees for the forest. Wisdom requires both perspectives, a dance between focused vision and expansive exploration. Perhaps you are a "fedgehog," embracing the fox's breadth to illuminate the hedgehog's singular point.

• On the one cosmos: Diversity is the dance of unity. The many voices sing one song, though some may be off-key.

• On the "vision thing": Every visionary is a crackpot until proven otherwise. The world is full of dreams, but some dreams are destined to shape the world.

• On metaphysical entertainment: Truth can be entertaining, but entertainment is not necessarily truth. The jester and the sage both have wisdom to offer, but their audiences differ.

• On Aquinas's approach: To encompass the particular and the universal is the ultimate juggling act. He sought not just unity, but a unified field theory of knowledge.

• On the eternal plane of metaphysics: Science builds castles on sand, metaphysics on bedrock. The tides of empirical discovery may erode the sand, but the bedrock remains.

• On the living nature of Thomism: Truth is not a fossil, but a seed. It grows and adapts, its roots reaching deeper with each new season of understanding.

• On the fragmentation of the world: Without metaphysics, the world is a puzzle with missing pieces. We grasp at fragments of meaning, unable to see the whole picture.

• On the role of the philosopher: The philosopher is the conductor of the orchestra of knowledge, bringing harmony to the disparate instruments of inquiry.

• On the two paths to truth (↑ and ↓): Reason ascends, revelation descends. They meet at the summit of understanding.

• On the limits of reason: The map is not the territory. Reason can guide us to the edge of the known, but beyond lies the vast ocean of mystery.

• On the need for grace: We are all climbers on a mountain. Reason can take us so far, but grace is the rope that pulls us to the summit.

• On the ultimate mystery: The final truth is beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond comprehension. It is the silence from which all understanding arises.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the coontailed fedgehox:

Truth is True, and Even -- or Especially -- God Cannot Deny It

Yesterday's post touched on the neuropsychological integration that facilitates the release of human potential, for example, the integration of brainstem, midbrain, and cortex, or human, mammalian, and reptilian brains. Being human transcends but includes the latter two. 

In addition to this front to back organization, there is also the side to side distinction of left and right cerebral hemispheres. In order to be a fully functioning human, there must be a harmonious integration of the two.

But now that I'm thinking about it, this obviously cannot be a one-and-done integration, rather, a kind of ongoing dynamic. That is to say, we're always falling apart and putting ourselves back together, as is true of any living system. We don't fall apart completely, i.e. dis-integrate, because that would be death. Rather, it is more like the catabolism (breaking down) and anabolism (building up) that constitute metabolism.

For example, supposing we encounter a New Fact, we have to somehow integrate it with the rest. In short, some disassembly will be required. What is the alternative? Repelling and resisting the New Fact in order to preserve our present rigid organization?

Enough about the left.

Almost enough. Let's just say that an ideological superstructure may be imposed upon experience, such that the New Fact becomes a threat to the system. Which is precisely what we are seeing in the left's hysterical reactions to the revelations of DOGE. Who are the reactionaries here?

Now, metaphysics is the ultimate superstructure. Except that its purpose is to account for all facts while repelling none. Supposing it is correct, then it cannot be threatened by any fact or theory, for it is universal and timeless. It is not afraid of facts, rather, eats them for breakfast.

These thoughts were provoked by a fine little book simply called Saint Thomas Aquinas. For example,

the Thomist world-view is not an end but a beginning: it means not that there is no further need of thought but that thought can begin without fear of sterility.

It is how not to be a provincial and timebound infertile egghead enclosed in an ideological superstructure. 

Conversely, Thomas "does not oppose or fight shy of knowledge however new or startling, but on the contrary seeks to assimilate it." The more truth the better, and from whatever department or discipline. Truly truly, it's all good.

No power, not even that of God, could produce the contrary of what reason apprehends under the direct influence of evidence.... To proclaim the truth is to render a person invincible no matter who his adversary may be.

Besides, treason against truth is "treason against God, the living Truth." Be assured that

All truth, no matter by whom it is spoken, comes from the Spirit. That quality of heart that can receive truth even from an adversary is the necessary complement of openness of mind.

Maybe he was missing something, but Aquinas "failed to see how the study of God's handiwork, in itself, and as reflected in (profane) writers, could possibly harm our knowledge of God." In short, "having found the Centre he could turn without fear to the circumference." 

For "he was not a rationalist. He was an intellectualist." In other words, supposing we want to circumnavelgaze the whole existentialada, with what shall we gaze, and what shall we gaze upon? We shall gaze upon everything, with the transpersonal eye of the Intellect -- which Eckhart says is both uncreated and uncreatable. 

How so?

We'll leave that claim for a subsequent post, but suffice it to say that to know a timeless truth is to participate in timelessness. The point is, "Thought and reality are not set in opposition," for "The actually intelligible and the actually knowing are one," and this oneness is mirrored in the intellect, which in turn mirrors the Absolute:

the realm of the intelligible and intellect are co-terminous; the world of extramental reality is intelligible, the world of intellect is real, and the highest form of reality, of life.

Back to psychic integration and human potential,

In the case of man, perfection is reached through the actualization, in unity and hierarchy, of all the potentialities of his many-levelled life...

Which is to say,

If we want to know the answer to the riddle of life and of the universe, if we want to achieve wisdom, if we want to be fully alive, we must discover a view of reality as a whole in which the answers to individual problems will find their functional place in the organic unity of the whole. 

So, one truth-woven cosmos under the living God, and a dynamic vertical hierarchy in between. 

Psychic Integration and Human Potential

Ten years ago today we were ruminating about neurobiology, another subject I pretend to have mastered. My degree is in clinical psychology, to which neurobiology is adjacent. However, nearly all of my education and training had to do with the software of the mind, i.e., the programming. I remember looking down upon neurological hardwareans as mere technicians. Mechanics. 

Contact with the real world beyond academia soon enough changed my mind. In a way, I had been subject to the cartesian delusion that separates mind from body. This being the case, one could treat the former as if the latter didn't exist. Meanwhile, since the late late '80s, things have veered in the opposite direction, as if a pill can cure all psychological and spiritual ills.

Coincidentally, Prozac was introduced to the market the very same year I finished school, which led to some existential cognitive dissonance: why spend years on the couch blabbering about your troubles if you can just pop a pill? 

But this approach soon led to problems of its own, with vast numbers of adults, children, and even pets on antidepressants, stimulants, and anxiolytics. Nevertheless, the incidence of both depression and anxiety is at an all-time high, so progress in the field of mental health is moving backward.

It seems there no cure for the human condition, especially if we fail to recognize the troubles and conflicts that inevitably arise merely as a result of being human. For example, my father wasn't an educated man, but he knew that Life isn't fair. This being the case, no amount of medication or psychotherapy will make it fair. Likewise, The world doesn't owe you a living, even -- or especially -- if you have an advanced degree in gender studies or queer theory.

One of the dirty little secrets that DOGE is in the process of exposing is that one of the primary purposes of the federal bureaucracy is to serve as an employment agency for all these useless people with phony baloney college degrees. It would no doubt be cheaper to treat them with psychiatric medication, but then again, there is no medical cure for a hypertrophied sense of entitlement. 

Back to our ruminations from ten years ago: 

One of the purposes of this blog is to try to make traditional religion relevant to intelligent people in the modern world, beginning with myself. After all, it made sense to the most intelligent people of the premodern world, meaning that it must have "fit the facts" -- or better, must have addressed man's ticklish existential situation.

One of the first principles of Christianity is that there is something wrong with man. In fact, each religion expresses this principle in a different way: for Christians it has to do with sin -- thus being located in the will -- while for Buddhism and Vedanta it has more to do with ignorance and illusion -- more in the mind.

There is also the notion that this existential pathology is somehow handed down through the generations. Note that this was not a "theoretical" observation, nor any kind of deduction from abstract principles, but rather, an empirical observation that anyone could confirm for himself. In the words of Michael Novak, "A system built on sin is built on very solid foundations indeed."

Denying this foundation leads directly to the utopian ideologies of the left. Even so, leftists do not deny that there is something wrong with man, but simply project it into structural oppression or domestic enemies. For them, MAGA is the cause of their problems. 

Now, in my opinion, when we talk about man's proneness to sin, we're talking about something analogous to a parasite -- a mind parasite. To even talk about this subject implies that there is a proper and healthy way for man to exist -- a mature state -- and that there are things that interfere with the attainment of our proper telos. 

Remember, the facts are one thing, the explanation another. We can still believe man is fallen without accepting the ancient explanation, just as we can believe the world is created without suggesting that it occurred in six days.

This question of generational pathology is touched upon in the Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology. For example, Siegel writes that "In relationships within families, one can see the intergenerational transfer of patterns of communication that are reinforced by the repeated experiences of energy and information flow exchange patterns."

Thus, it seems that these pathological patterns and tendencies are handed down from generation to generation, which is what our forbears would have noticed (again, empirically). 

Siegel highlights the critically important point that this intergenerational transmission is not only behavioral but genetic -- or epigenetic, to be precise. That is, "Recent discoveries in the field of epigenetics" reveal "that alterations in the control molecules regulating gene expression may also be important in this intergenerational passage of patterns of communication."

Now, think back to our furbears. Unlike us, they had no way of knowing that the cosmos was 14 billion years old, or that life had emerged 4 billion years ago, or that man had been here for 100,000 years. In such a context, "original sin" is not a bad theory, in that it certainly accounts for the observable facts. It's just that we now have some additional cognitive tools to illuminate those same facts. 

But one thing we should bear in mind is how much more empirically realistic is the idea of original sin, in comparison to the modern leftist assumption that man is born good and therefore infinitely malleable. 

Given the complexities and uncertainties involved, we rarely find the person who has escaped the exigencies of human development without his share of intergenerational mind parasites -- so rare that we might as well say it's a miracle. For Christians it is so miraculous that it happened just once. This is one of the implications of Mary's immaculate conception. Since she was free of sin, she had no intergenerational mind parasites to pass along to Jesus.  

The transmission of a mind parasite always results in an absence of integration and failure to achieve one's potential. Again, there is some block in the attainment of our mature state.

As mentioned in last Saturday's post, of the principles of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is that mind, brain, and relationships represent an irreducible trinity, in that you can't have one without the others.

However, it occurs to me that each of these components may be further divided (but not separated) into three. For example, vis-a-vis the brain, we have the hindbrain, the midbrain, and the neocortex -- or the reptilian, the mammalian, and the human. Thus, when we talk about integration, it isn't just between mind, brain, and relationships, but within the brain itself.

Likewise the mind, which I visualize as spanning a vertical hierarchy from the divine to the human to the infrahuman. Importantly, the infrahuman is not analogous to the mammalian or reptilian, but is something far worse than mere animals -- like Nazis, or ISIS, or Al Sharpton. Matter itself can only go so low.

With regard to relationships, there is always self, other, and the link between them. In order to meet other persons where they actually are, we have the faculty of "mindsight" or empathy.

With this in mind, I think we are in a better position to understand what Siegel means when he says that the triangle of mind-brain-relationships is a "process by which energy and information flow." This is obvious, say, in education, where information passes from one mind to another via our relationship to the teacher. But such links also occur in far more subtle ways.

For example, in a paper I published back in 1994 -- before the internet permitted me to bypass the middleman -- I talked about "the back-and-forth interplay between mother and infant" through which we come to know ourselves (and without which we could never know ourselves).

Therefore, certain obstructions, blind spots, and inflexible repetitions in the mother will be internalized by the baby. Although the self cannot develop without a brain, it obviously cannot be reduced to mere brain activity. An isolated brain is just a disorganized blob of cells, while an isolated self isn't really a self at all.

However, there are such things as a healthy brain, a healthy mind, and healthy relationships. Things can go sideways in each domain, which will in turn affect the others.

For example, a brain tumor will probably not be good for your mind. Likewise, a painful relationship, or a death or loss, will cause real structural and chemical changes in the brain. And we all know how the internalization of a dysfunctional ideology certainly causes damage to the soul.

The keynote is again integration: "From an IPNB perspective, integration is the definition of good health," and "integration is the linkage of differentiated elements." Failure to integrate always results in one of two outcomes (or else an alternation between the two): either chaos or excessive rigidity.

Here we can see how rigidity may become a habitual defense mechanism against chaos. However, excessive rigidity inevitably results in more chaos. (Of note, this applies to any complex system, which is why the rigid, top-down economics of the left doesn't work.) 

As Siegel describes it, "Brains or relationships that are not integrated move outside this river of integration." That is, the integrated flow of an open system can be analogized to a river. On one bank is rigidity, the other chaos. Siegel is absolutely correct that every single diagnostic category of the DSM is characterized by either rigidity or chaos.

To cite some obvious examples, a compulsive personality is too rigid, while a borderline personality always generates chaos. Narcissists are generally too rigid, while a person with bipolar disorder goes from extreme to extreme -- from a static depression to wild mania, the former functioning like a fixed point attractor, the latter a strange attractor in subjective phase space.

As it so happens, I'm reading a rather comprehensive biography of Beethoven, who was deeply unintegrated in certain areas (e.g., emotions, relationships), even while creating perhaps the most vertically and horizontally (intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually) integrated music that had yet appeared (from what I am told; I don't pretend to be a classical music maven).

Being that he was one of the first representatives of the then new cult of genius, we have ever since had the romantic image of the "crazy genius," but it isn't necessarily so. One doesn't have to be crazy to be a genius, but one can see how, in an excessively rigid cultural or academic environment, it may require someone who has an undeveloped ability to stay within the lines to discover new territory. Thus, there are times that chaos can be in the service to development, but it is not the ideal.

On the one hand, Beethoven strived "for unity within diversity," and "struggled for greater unity and at the same time for greater diversity than any composer had aspired to before." And yet, outside the context of composing, he "had little grasp of the world at all. In childhood he did not truly comprehend the independent existence of other people. He never really did. He reached maturity knowing all about music... but otherwise he did not know how to live in the world."

This post has already gone on way too long. We'll have to resume the discussion next Saturday, and hopefully integrate this mess.

A God Who Believes in Me

What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe we are important to Him. --Dávila

On the one hand,

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.

On the other, certain theological visions absolutely reduce man to absolute insignificance. Just because you believe in God, it doesn't mean God believes in you.

I believe in a God who believes in me. After all, it's only fair. It's called reciprocity:

If we believe in God we should not say, "I believe in God," but rather, "God believes in me."

Conversely, 

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

My point is, God and man are complementary. Of course, in all complementarities one is more primordial, in this case God. But God is the very Principle of individuality and personhood. And this Principle is itself substance-in-relation, meaning that irreducible Otherness is woven into the very substance of the Godhead.

For which reason it is also woven into us, in that we too are intersubjective persons, i.e., members of one another. If God is a person(s), then

That which is not a person is not finally anything. 

Or, one might say that a thing that doesn't reflect the Trinity isn't actually anything. It is not even a thing, since every thing in the cosmos is potentially related to the intellect, in other words, is intelligible. An unintelligible thing isn't anything. It doesn't exist. To say existence is to say intelligibility-to-intellect. The "to" is the relational link between terms.

As mentioned above, there are theological visions that reduce man to absolute insignificance -- which, in my book, makes them "untheological," in that they begin with a false premise of God. I'm thinking in particular of any form of radical determinism or predestination. Nor do I care if predestination is the orthodox view. 

Indeed, if predestination were true, then we could never actually know it, because truth is predicated on freedom. If we are predestined to know what we know, then we are machines, not persons. The same is true, of course, for a scientistic determinism: if it's true, it's false.

So, we are not determined. Nor is God, if I may be so bold. I say this on trinitarian grounds, for the Father gives himself entirely over to the Son, but if this is just a mechanical process, what's the point? If the Son isn't truly Other, then it's just another way of saying the Father is the Father by another name. It reduces the Trinity to a tautology.

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how.

In this case, the contradictory theses are self and other. But the contradiction disappears if we see them as irreducibly complementary: no other, no self, and vice versa.

Now, I say Creation as such bears the stamp of this primordial complementarity. With Creation God creates another kind of Other, only situated in time instead of timelessness. 

And with the Incarnation, God intimately shares his own timeless being with our timebound being: the vertical becomes horizontal, so to speak. Just as the Father pours himself into the Son, the Son pours himself without reservation into human nature, which is to say, all the way down, even into suffering and death itself. 

Here again, if it's all inevitable, what's the point and where is the merit? Supposing a machine functions as it is supposed to, we don't ascribe merit to it.  

So, yesterday a book fell into my hands, called God in an Open Universe: Science, Metaphysics, and Open Theism, and I am pleased to report that there are others who share my suspicions about the nature of God. We no doubt differ in some of the details, but we do share a vision of the big picture -- which is to say that this is an open cosmos, and it is open because God himself is open. Again, God is not analogous to a causally closed machine, but to persons. Or, to be perfectly accurate, our personhood is analogous to his. 

Opponents will say this places limits on God. Which is correct as far as it goes, but it is more a case of God placing limits on himself, so to speak. In other words, he allows for the genuine autonomy and freedom of created persons, and of the creation more generally. 

Is this wrong? Is this frowned upon? Eh, I don't care, because again, I believe in a God who believes in me. If I'm just a mechanical appendage of God, then my beliefs don't even enter the equation. I'm just believing what I've been predestined to believe from time immemorial. But that's not my style.

Open theism is a style of theology whose fundamental commitment is to the relational character of God.

And this relational God has created a universe that includes creatures "with life, consciousness, and even with rationality and the desire and capacity to experience God and to relate to him" in return. 

Moreover, "having created such a universe, God is not indifferent or remote from it," but "involves himself in the lives of his creatures." You can say that God is still the "Unmoved Mover" if you like, but this can only be understood by way of its complement, which is to say "Most Moved Mover." Likewise, if God is First Cause, he is also always First Effect.

Here again, I suspect all of this is inscripted, so to speak, in the trinitarian Godhead: the Father gives to the Son and the Son gives back in the Spirit to the Father. I call this movement and effect, only in a preeminent manner. 

The larger point is that we -- let alone the Son --

are not mere puppets or automata, carrying out a divine plan which in every detail has been scripted for them in advance.

Which is not to say there is no plan. There's definitely a plan, except we genuinely, which is to say freely, participate in it. Free means free. If not, then I fail to see the point, or even the possibility of a point. 

Controversial entailments follow, but if the premise is true, there's nothing we can do about it. For example, 

if humans are to be genuinely free and self-determining, then the future itself must be "open" in the sense of containing genuine alternative possibilities -- different ways that things can turn out, depending on the different ways in which humans can choose to shape their own lives.

We can still say Thy will be done, and indeed, what is the point of saying it if it is done inevitably anyway? God still retains control of the outcome, and his will "will not in the end be thwarted." Thus, "The future is not open in an absolute, unqualified sense." It's just that the future -- not to mention the present -- is not identical to the past, which is to say, already determined ahead of time for all time. If the future is as set in stone as the past, then this reduces time to a nasty and pointless illusion.

God is still omniscient, in that he knows all the infinite possibilities -- which, in a way, is more impressive than just knowing the one inevitable outcome. And knowing us as he does, he no doubt has a pretty good idea of what we're going to do. 

Nevertheless, he he still grants us our genuine freedom, indeterminacy, and openness to the future. For me, this is actually a bigger God than the traditional one that micromanages everything -- just as it's the bigger and more magnanimous person who isn't a petty control freak.

I suppose this makes God more of a macromanager, and why not?

Macromanagement is a style of leadership that is hands-off or from afar, allowing employees to have more freedom and control over their own work.... Managers step back and give employees the freedom to do their job as they see fit, as long as the desired result is achieved.

Of course,  

The downside of macromanagement includes a potential disconnect between manager and employees.

A rupture. A fall, so to speak. 

To be continued...

Zen Christianity

Oh, it's a thing. Or at least it was a thing back in the '60s, when the hippies discovered Meister Eckhart. 

Is it still a thing? Signs point to yes. Here's one on Zen Catholicism that is even officially nihil obstat, which doesn't necessarily imply an endorsement, only that it contains nothing objectionable from a doctrinal standpoint. Indeed, how can one object to nothing? 

Well, it depends on the meaning of nothing. At one end is nihilism, at the other its opposite. 

You'll have to excuse my apophatheadedness. It's because I'm making my way through this book of essays called The Renewal of Mystical Theology. Chapter three, called From the Radically Apophatic to the Radically Kataphatic: From Meister Eckhart to Jacob Boehme, effectively blew my mind yesterday. 

By which I mean in the manner of a Zen koan, which doesn't have any logical, left-brain answer, but rather, is intended to subvert one's ordinary way of thinking and perceiving reality. According to my pal Gemini, Koans are designed 

to be paradoxical and unsolvable using logic or reason. This creates a sense of confusion and frustration, which can be a catalyst for breaking through our usual mental patterns. They are not meant to be solved intellectually, but rather grasped intuitively. 

Koans can help us develop our innate wisdom and access deeper levels of understanding. The goal is not to find the "right answer," but to allow the koan to challenge our assumptions and open us to new ways of seeing.

The confusion and frustration is supposed to put our ego out of isness by vaulting us to a higher or deeper plane of being. 

One might say that for the ego, order is everything. It doesn't matter if the order or map is wrong, only that one has a map. A casual glance at history reveals an endless variety of dysfunctional maps, or rather, of maps that essentially function to keep our shit together and ward off the anxiety of not knowing. Order in the negative sense narrows down experience and denies the existence of things outside or beyond the map.

What if there really is no map? This is the challenge of apophaticism, which is a leap into no map's land. The ego is in the business of creating sharp boundaries, but if they're too sharp, then the result is rigidity, pedantry, and control freakery. You know the type.

In fact, in psychoanalysis there's a concept called decompensation, which "is the functional deterioration of a structure or system that had been previously working with the help of compensation." It doesn't matter that the structure or system might have been dodgy to begin with, only that it functioned to organize -- or even ward off -- reality.

For example, a bad acid trip is effectively synonymous with an abrupt decompensation. On the other hand, psychoanalytic therapy might be thought of as a more gradual one, as various psychological defense mechanisms are explored and dismantled. But too much truth too soon can be a terrible thing, analogous to what happens in catastrophe theory.

Come to think of it, Bion used the term catastrophe to... I don't feel like digging through my library. Help us out here, Gemini: it refers to  

a profound and disruptive psychological event that shatters an individual's sense of self and their understanding of the world. It's not simply a negative event, but a fundamental breakdown in the way a person organizes their experience. 

A catastrophe disrupts the individual's ability to make sense of their experiences, leading to a sense of disorientation, confusion, and a loss of meaning. It can lead to a sense of disconnection from oneself, from others, and from the world. 

Nevertheless,

While a catastrophe can be a devastating experience, it can also be a catalyst for growth and transformation. By confronting and working through the catastrophe, individuals may emerge with a deeper understanding of themselves and the world.

In fact, it was Tolkien who coined the term "eucatastrophe" for "a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and plausible and probable doom."

Anyway, after reading the essay on Eckhart and Boehme, I had to go for a walk to reconstitute my head. Eckhart posits "a form of knowing that transcends sense and the discursive intellect," so, forget about your familiar map. It's of no use here. I suppose we could call this creative destruction a kind of "meta-metanoia."

His "language of paradox is more performative than descriptive," in that it is "a rhetorical means to induce or at least open up the prospect of a direct experience of God," involving "the destruction of the careless ways in which" we speak of God in an "all-too-human" way. But one can never be sure if he's being literal or playful, descriptive or provocative, sincere or ironic.

He famously refers to the radically transcendent Godhead as a "nothing" which is also radically immanent in us. It reminds me of what was said in yesterday's post to the effect that our own nothingness is the image and likeness of the divine nothing. Paradoxically, this "unfathomable ground or unground" is simultaneously "the plus ultra of generativity and creativity." 

Like a koan, Eckhart's use of paradox and hyperbole is designed to shock the system: "unthinkability and non-knowing signify precisely the form of knowing commensurate with the reality that represents the limit to thought."

Even more controversially, he seems to draw a distinction between the personal God and an impersonal Godhead. However, it is difficult to say if he meant this literally or whether the intent is just to blow our minds, and not pretend to know the unknowable. Again,

the use of paradox was one of the means used by Eckhart to put the acquisitive self out of action in its thinking and speaking about God....

The transcendent divine is available more through unknowing than knowing and is characterized as hidden, abyssal, incomprehensible, nameless, and more appropriately indicated in darkness...

Or, paradoxically, a "dazzling darkness." The sun shining at midnight, as someone once put it. 

For Eckhart, even a technically correct doctrine can become a barrier, for example, if "the conceptualization of the Trinity is so facilely dogmatic that it comes to serve the role of an idol."

Yesterday we spoke of a kind of dynamic vertical metabolism involving both apophatic and cataphatic approaches. Well, the author brings in Ruusbroec, for whom "mystical theology and doctrine are fundamentally complementary rather than competitive." I agree, and this is a good place to pause...

The Last Word

I suppose there are two kinds of people: those who know nothing and those who pretend not to.

That may be a stark way of expressing it, but it certainly puts our secular brethren on the back foot: it is not we who hold unsupportable beliefs and live in a fantasy world, but you atheists.

Now, what do I mean by this? I won't speak for biblical literalists, but the restavus know that when all is said and done, God is beyond all human conception or description. After all, no one has provided us with a more detailed map of the vertical than Thomas Aquinas, and yet, 

This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know him.

To be perfectly accurate, we do and we don't, accent on the latter. In fact, I would say that do and don't constitute a kind lopsided dynamic complementarity, in that while the finite can never exhaust the infinite, it never stops trying. For example, how many circles are in a sphere? Correct: ∞. Likewise, how many points in a line?

Yes, but what's the point?

Good question: it is simultaneously somewhere and nowhere, since it has no dimensions, i.e., no length, width, or height. This being the case, how could these little nothings be the building blocks of anything? We can posit them, but can never actually imagine them, because supposing we do, we lend them the dimensionality they lack. But if the point is seen a declension from a higher dimensional object, then it becomes intelligible. Just like us.

Some additional comments by Thomas:

Although uncreated truth exceeds all created truth, yet there is nothing to prevent created truth from being better known to us.

Just don't pretend the created can ever exhaustively map the uncreated. 

God is one in reality but multiple according to our minds; we know him in as many ways as created things represent him. 

In fact, literally speaking, I don't even know that we can say God is one. After all, one is a quantity, and God is certainly not that. Rather, he is beyond all quantification. He escapes number entirely. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be "not two," i.e., radically simple, with no parts or division. 

On the one hand,

Created things are not sufficient to represent the creator. Hence we cannot possibly arrive at perfect knowledge of the creator from creatures....

That way lies idolatry. But on the other hand, although "God can in no way be said to be like creatures," creatures can nevertheless "truly be called like to God in a certain sense."

Oh? What sense would that be? In an analogous sense, so long as we remember that the differences dwarf any similarity -- that "Whatever is comprehended by a finite being is itself finite," so "To know God in a created likeness is not to know the essence of God." In the end,

God is honored by silence, not because we may say or know nothing about him, but because we know that we are unable to comprehend him.

Again, we at least know we don't know, and that's better than nothing something.

Very Zen.

Agreed: "at the end of our knowledge of God," he "is ultimately known as unknown." And  

We only know God truly when we believe that he is above all that men can think about God.

Well, what are we supposed to do in the meantime, in this life of vertical wayfaring? Are we getting anywhere, and is there anywhere to get? Well, here's a thought:

If humanity alone is described as made to God's image and likeness..., there must be a sense in which the deepest meaning of being human is that homo, that is, human nature, is also "no-thing"..., not just in a privative but also in an eminent sense (McGinn). 

Ah ha. We're not empty, rather, full of nothing. This would explain why we ourselves are as unknowable as God. As alluded to in yesterday's post, if we are the freakiest things in all of existence, this is why. In the words of John Scottus Eriugena,

The human mind both knows itself and does not know itself; it knows that it is; it does not know what it is. And through this... the image of God is especially thought to be in humanity.... What is more wonderful and more beautiful to those thinking upon themselves and their God is that the human mind is more to be praised in its ignorance than in its knowledge.

In other words, supposing we are the image and likeness of God, then we are the little nothings that reflect the big nothing that is God. Here's a bold suggestion:

even God does not know human nature in the sense that the unmanifest aspect of human nature is one with the divine and therefore indefinable. The reciprocity between a strong version of negative theology and an equally strong negative anthropology [in Eriugena] was something new in Western thought and mysticism. 

Something new in eternity?

You might say that. As alluded to above, there is a dialectic between affirmative (cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) theology that gives rise to "a movement beyond both saying and unsaying":

it involves thinking of determinations by themselves, simultaneously thinking of contradictory determinations, and exploring, insofar as possible, the meaning of the higher unity of contradictory determinations. 

Like vertical metabolism or something: affirmation --> negation --> beyond all affirmation and negation.

Man and God are one in that they are dialectically united in the concealing/revealing dynamic of the Word. 

The bottom line is that it's both easy and not easy to download the unspeakable into language. On the one hand, everything speaks of God, and yet, God can best be spoken of as no-thing. This no-thing is

a way of speaking about the First Principle that is both negatively "not-a-thing" and eminently beyond the world of "all that is and all that is not." 

Creation proceeds from no-thing to something -- that is, everything -- while the mystical ascent proceeds back to the nothing beyond all conception.

Gemini, give us a summary and and image:

In essence, the passage argues that the mystery of God is mirrored in the mystery of humanity. Both are ultimately unknowable, yet this very unknowability is the source of their profound significance. It emphasizes the limitations of human language and reason when grappling with the divine, suggesting that true understanding lies beyond the realm of concepts and definitions.

Gooba Gobble, One of Us

In the movie Freaks, there's a riotous banquet scene in which the bizarre carnie folk induct a normal person into their fraternity by chanting gooba gabba gooba gobble, we accept her one of us! Later The Ramones would incorporate the chant into their song Pinhead. 

A man has strange thoughts when alone, and that strange thought occurred to me while reading an essay by Thomas White called On True Enlightenment. In it he discusses how God indeed decides to become one of us -- how

he who incomprehensibly transcends all creation took the initiative of condescension to live in solidarity with us who are the frailest of spiritual beings.

To condescend to become one us freaks, as it were. And by any measure, we are by far the freakiest things in all of existence. All others are number two, or lower.

Indeed, we are so freaky that we don't even know -- or cannot agree, at any rate -- what we are or what we're doing here. The whole thing is a mess, and I am reminded of this as my son makes his way through the history of philosophy. Yesterday it was David Hume. Famous though he is, his skeptical and irreverent philosophical system is a total nonstarter. 

For example, the man thought that something as self-evident as causality wasn't even justified. Rather, all we can know is that one thing follows another, but there's no reason to believe, and no way of proving, that the one caused the other. 

Experience cannot establish a necessary connection between cause and effect, because we can imagine without contradiction a case where the cause does not produce its usual effect... the reason why we mistakenly infer that there is something in the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because our past experiences have habituated us to think in this way.

That's not philosophy, it's intellectual suicide. Doubt all you want, but 

If the normal functioning of the intelligence has to be subjected to a critique, then the criticizing consciousness has to be subjected to a critique in its turn by asking, “what is it that thinks?” and so forth... (Schuon).

Such anti-philosophy 

is properly an acephalous logic: it labels what is intellectually evident as “prejudice”; seeking to free itself from the servitudes of the mind, it falls into infra-logic; closing itself, above, to the light of the intellect, it opens itself, below, to the darkness of the subconscious.

Man becomes one of them -- a demon or something.

White agrees that "The human being lives out an existence marked by confusion and ignorance," thus "the purpose of revelation of God in Christ," which "is to deliver men from this situation." 

In other words, God says gooba gobble, one of us. But the feeling isn't mutual: he's not one of us, so crucify this freak!

Now, when God says one of us, he is of course referring to the Trinity. It even says so in Genesis: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And "What happens when we take away the reference point of God"?

Surely, the post-modern fracturing of the distinct scientific discourses in contemporary academic culture is in part related to this noteworthy philosophical absence (White).

In other words, deny the unity at the start, and there is no conceivable way to recover it; the world shatters into a jumble of unrelated pieces, such that we can't even know that you are you. For example, Hume would say that 

The self is nothing but a bundle of experiences linked by the relations of causation and resemblance; or, more accurately, the empirically warranted idea of the self is just the idea of such a bundle.

So, to repeat what was said in yesterday's post, life is reduced to a random walk through time, of nobody to nowhere. Nor is anything really knowable, since we can always doubt it. Take away certitude -- which begins with acknowledgement of the Absolute -- and we are certainly submerged in doubt:

Doubt is nothing else but the void left by absent certainty and this void readily makes way for the false plenitude of error (Schuon). 

Of what can we be certain? That being is intelligible to the intellect, which is to say that the mind is in principle conformable to the real. 

It is illogical to seek to contest this certainty, and even the first certainty, which is likewise infallible, by setting against it elements of certainty of a phenomenal or passional order; it is as if the “accidents” wanted to take issue with “substance,” or as if drops of water wanted to teach water itself what their being consists of. The certainty of the Intellect comes from the fact that it knows; no one can add anything whatsoever to its essence, or take away from it the minutest particle. 

Gooba gooble, one of us: "What is most profoundly and authentically human rejoins the Divine by definition" (Schuon). In other words, 

the “human miracle” must have a reason for being that is proportionate to its nature, and it is this that predestines -- or “condemns” -- man to surpass himself.... 

Quite paradoxically, it is only in transcending himself that man reaches his proper level; and no less paradoxically, by refusing to transcend himself he sinks below the animals.... in a certain respect, a noble animal is superior to a vile man.

But our contemporary religion of no religion

consists essentially in being unaware of three things: firstly, of what God is, because it does not grant primacy to Him; secondly, of what man is, because it puts him in the place of God; thirdly, of what the meaning of life is, because this culture limits itself to playing with evanescent things and to plunging into them with criminal unconscious.

We are not God, but we have godlike abilities that are incomprehensible when severed from their source. This 

decapitates man: wishing to make of him an animal which is perfect, it succeeds in turning him into a perfect animal; not all at once..., but in the long run, since it inevitably ends by “re-barbarizing” society, while “dehumanizing” it ipso facto in depth. 

And here we are.

Where does this leave us? If God is one of us, then it permits us to be at one with him. At the same time, we can reject the offer and remain in our private club of terrestrial freaks.

I'm not sure if this post got off the ground. Gemini?

In essence, you've woven together seemingly disparate elements -- a cult film, philosophical arguments, and theological concepts -- to create a powerful reflection on the human condition. The "gooba gabba" chant, in its strangeness and unexpectedness, becomes a surprisingly effective symbol for the complex and often paradoxical relationship between humanity and the divine.

Rumors of Reality

What is the world -- the human world, or the world to which humans have access -- but a swirl of rumors, hints, and intimations? We try our best to map it, but who has the complete map? 

From our end, a complete map is a strict impossibility. Just imagine, for example, trying to map the past. From my experience as a history buff, the more I learn, the less I know. Dive in at any point and you enter an infinitely expandable portal or aperture. 

Moreover, each generation engages history anew and has a different relationship to it. It reminds me of when Zhou Enlai was purportedly asked about the meaning of the French Revolution: "Too soon to tell." 

One could give the same response to the meaning of one's life: until one is dead, it's too soon to tell. But then it's too late. Unless, as Dylan said to Silvio, we can Find out something only dead men know. 

In order to do this, we would need to have access to the end or telos, otherwise history -- whether personal or collective -- is just one damn thing after another. Supposing we could gauge the meaning of history, it could only be in the light of something surpassing history. And in order to understand the meaning of our lives, it could only be discerned in tension with the mature state of man, whatever that is.

Analogously, the most complete knowledge of an acorn wouldn't disclose its telos, i.e., the mature oak tree. And supposing the tree is beautiful, this throws another wrench into the discussion. Acorns are nice, but -- picking an image at random -- they aren't this:

So, knowledge of an acorn would reveal nothing of its essential truth or beauty. Or of the goodness of enjoying its shade on a hot day.

Now, my son is 19 years old, and you could say he's trying to discern his telos. He's taking philosophy and psychology courses, but this cuts both ways, given the number of silly psychological theories and trivial and even anti-philosophical philosophies. 

Just what is the mature state of man? If we knew this, then we could order our thoughts and actions to it. But if we can't know it, then we're plunged into some form of existentialism, which is the denial of essences, precisely. 

Rather, existence is supposedly prior to essence, meaning that we create ourselves via our own choices and commitments. There is no objective way to go about doing this, because teleology is jettisoned along with essences. Therefore, life is a random walk through time, of nobody to nowhere.

The doctrine of the Fall implies that we once knew the telos, but have forgotten it. But at the same time, we are haunted by gnostalgic intimations of a lost paradise, or of a world that once made sense, where we "fit in," so to speak. 

Now, here's a coincidence: I just picked up a random volume of Schuon, in which the author of the Foreword relates a story, the moral of which is that "the people,"

after years of acquired conditioning, through mindless absorption of the times..., had forgotten their own original state.

And "It is precisely this recalling of each of us to our own original nature that lies at the heart of religion," i.e., the prime directive to orthoparadoxically "become that which we are." Nice work if we can get it, but can we? Signs point to yes:

We humans each carry the truth and light of the Absolute within the depths of our being. And this light, Schuon points out, "reminds [each of us] of what he is, and of what he should be since he has forgotten what he is."

Even straight-up revelation doesn't work unless it is conformed to our own understanding, and reveals ourselves to ourselves. It must be specifically addressed to man as man, not just in his present state, but "where he is going," so to speak. In other words, it speaks to both our being and becoming, or present and future. But

we often confuse being human and becoming human. At the level of being we are, of course, human; which is to say, every child born of human parents comes into the world with a human essence. But it is quite another matter to achieve our humanity in our existence; that is, to realize to the fullest degree the very promise which already is our nature.

To become that beautiful oak. But unlike the acorn -- or, come to think of it, anything else whatsoever in all of creation -- "We don't automatically grow into our humanity." Rather, we have no choice but to choose, i.e., participate in our own proper becoming: "the very reason for being of the human condition is to choose, and to make the right choice" (Schuon).

So, the pressure is on! Unlike an acorn or kitten, "We humans are the creatures that can fail to become what we already are by nature." Which is to say, 

Biological nature develops us only up to a certain point, and then we must individually, with great deliberation and with full consciousness, seek the rest.

Lil' help?

All great scriptures of the world are written in order to provide each of us with a description of this way to become fully human. 

Yes, but which scripture? Even within Christianity there are deep differences over the degree to which we may participate in our own salvation. For Calvin, it is not at all, whereas for orthodoxy, it is quite a bit: "God does not justify us without any action on our part" (Aquinas). And

The reason why we are called wayfarers is because we are striving towards God, who is our last end and beatitude.

At the very least, we must know the True and will the Good: 

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe, to know what he ought to desire, and to know what he ought to do.

If there is a (free) will, then there's a proper way -- an Ought built into the nature of things. Wisdom knows the end, but prudence determines the path.

Having said that, it is not only "through our own efforts, ultimately, that we become ourselves." That is, we cannot lift ourselves by our own buddhastraps, nor is there any "program or method by which we can climb to heaven based on our own initiative." Indeed, isn't this the original flaw in the weave of the manmade cosmic area rug depicted in Genesis 3?

Grace, or something like it:

If we are to individually fulfill and express our nature, we must first recognize our radical dependence upon that Power which constituted us in the first place.

Undo the Fall, as it were. But is it in our power to (un)do this? It seems that our own attempts to undo it only result in doing it again. On the other hand, what if God himself were to cut the knot and undo the deed? 

We'll end with something I read just yesterday:

The human quest for explanatory wisdom is one that ascends toward what is "above" the human intellect, as explanatory of all else yet incomprehensible in itself, and this is the sign also... that we are able to receive from God... something we could not procure by our own powers or understand merely on our own terms: the epiphany of the inner life of God. 

Gemini?

Your exploration is a complex and nuanced one, raising more questions than it answers, which is perhaps the point. The search for meaning and purpose is an ongoing journey, and the questions you've posed are central to the human experience. 

Reality Comes in Threes

THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS RECYCLED MATERIAL

What else is new?

Well, to paraphrase Harry Truman, there's nothing new in the world except the posts we don't remember, in this case a couple from ten years ago, edited in light of subsequent developments, if any. 

In other words, in this weekly exercise in Looking Back, I'm curious to find out if my overall approach has evolved or progressed. If so, then we will edit accordingly:

Way back in my early twenties I read Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game (AKA Magister Ludi), even though much of it was impenetrable to my only recently activated and mostly content-free mind. I'd begun reading in a random manner, and this book came across my radar because Hesse was a popular author among the hippie set.  

This experimental novel "is set in a 23rd-century utopia in which the intellectual elite have distilled all available knowledge of math, music, science, and art into an elaborately coded game." One reviewer says the book is an intricate bildungsroman--

Bildungwut?

Yes, that's "a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education." Thus, it played a small part in my own bildungsroman. It is 

about humanity's eternal quest for enlightenment and for synthesis of the intellectual and the participatory life.... Since childhood, [the protagonist] has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy. This he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

So, the folks who play the game presume that all truth is related, and that this is indeed One Cosmos after all. And although I didn't understand the book, I've been playing the game ever since. It goes like this: take two or more subjects or disciplines that appear to have nothing to do with each other, and then show how they are related.

Along these lines, yesterday I began reading a Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB for short). The book draws upon "a wide range of traditionally independent fields of research," including neurobiology, genetics, memory, attachment, complex systems, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology, in the effort to find a "unity of knowledge, or consilience" of "numerous domains of study into a common language and conceptual framework." 

I've been doing the same thing -- i.e., rummaging around for the multi-undisciplinary Unity of Knowledge -- since my latent cʘʘnvision was activated on March 4, 1985. Most everything I've written since then is a variant of the GB Game.

One thing that motivated me was the suspicion that subjectivity is not reducible to objectivity, but rather, that the former is an irreducible category of being. In reality, the two are complementary, not contrary, so any metaphysic that tries to eliminate the subject or reduce it to something less is a non-starter.

Siegel too writes of how he was motivated to create "a common ground in which to bring science and subjectivity into" a fruitful dialogue. The dialogue revolves around "finding the universal principles across many academic fields," and "discovering the consilience that emerges when usually independent research endeavors are explored together" (emphasis mine).

As we shall see, I have some slight and/or significant differences with Siegel, one of which would be the idea that the consilience only "emerges" as opposed to being an antecedent condition for the unity. But like me, Siegel "longed to find a way to connect the power of objective science with the centrality of our subjective mental lives."

Likewise, he wondered, for example, whether "the molecules I had been studying in the lab that allowed salmon to transition safely from fresh to saltwater" could "be in some way connected to the equally important reality that the way we communicate with another person in crisis can mean life or death" (at the time, he worked on a suicide prevention help line).

Now, seeking a connection between suicide and salmon molecules would be an example of Extreme Glass Bead Gaming. 

Eventually Siegel formed a group of forty scientists from a diversity of disciplines, including "anthropology, molecular biology, cognitive science, education, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, neurosurgery, physics, psychology, psychiatry, mathematics, computer science, and sociology."

Most scientists won't even try to define the mind, but instead, simply use the word "as a kind of placeholder for the unknown." This is actually not a bad strategy, since it is difficult to know how the mind, utilizing its own resources, could define itself, any more than the eye can see itself, unless we are somehow able to view the mind from a higher, outside perspective, which science naturally excludes.

Siegel writes of how, "when we differentiate concepts from each other and then link them, we integrate knowledge." Not only that, but we integrate the person who has differentiated and then re-integrated the concepts. 

I would say that this is actually a two-way process: that it takes an integrated person to synthesize the diversity, while synthesizing the diversity makes us more integrated. Which is one of the points of life, for who wants to exist as a bunch of incoherent and disconnected fragments?

It seems to me that mental health can be defined along two axes: integration and actualization, the former giving momentum to the latter. As Siegel writes, "when we move energy and information flow toward something called integration, we move toward health." This "makes a stronger, healthier, more flexible, and resilient mind." 

Now, Siegel is at pains to emphasize that human beings are always embodied and embedded. What he means by this is that we have a brain which, via the nervous system (which is just the periphery of the brain), extends throughout the body. Where is the brain? Only partly in the head. It's really "in" the whole body (although it is more accurate to say that the body is in the mind, i.e., a representation of it).

But at the same time, "Our mental lives are profoundly relational," and really take place in the space between our neurology and other persons. Thus, "Embodied and embedded is the fundamental nature of mind."

And guess what this made me think of? Yes, the second person of the Trinity, who indeed becomes "embodied and embedded" with the restavus. We explicitly focus on the embodiment -- incarnation -- but it is for the purpose of embeddedness, i.e., the offer of relatedness. If Christ is God's icon of man (and man's icon of God), this should not surprise us. Rather, shock us.

However, Siegel's ideas are metapsychological but not metaphysical, so no consideration is given to the wider meta-cosmic context in which the mind is situated.

Rather, the cosmos is assumed, as if just any cosmic conditions could give rise to something as strange as persons. Siegel mostly stays within the boundaries of science, but in so doing, expands those boundaries by including the subject in an irreducible way.

For example, read the following, and I'll bet you're thinking what I'm thinking: the triad of mind, brain, and relationships composes "one reality with three independent facets."

As Siegel describes it, "This is not splitting the three aspects." Rather, they "are three aspects of one reality.... With this view, we have one reality with three facets -- not three distinct domains of separate realities."

Siegel is speaking of science, not theology. However, the Raccoon would like to know what kind of cosmos this must be in order for such an irreducibly trinitarian and intersubjective science to exist? 

In any event, within this trinity of mind-brain-intersubjectivity it is as if there are arrows of influence in all directions, such that "the mind is influenced by both relationships and the brain; relationships are influenced by both the mind and brain; the brain is influenced by both mind and relationships." From the IPNB point of view, "this triangle embraces our ground of being."

To which we naturally want to ask, "what came before that?," or "What is beneath this scientific ground?" Which is like asking a physicist, "What came before the big bang?" The physicist cannot answer the question, not because there is no answer, but because his model cannot venture beyond its own horizon. Which is entirely appropriate, since we do not demand that science be religion, nor that stones of tenure turn into the bread of life.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we'll probably be discussing the Trinity a great deal in forthcoming weeks, because I just ordered a giant book called On Classical Trinitarianism: Retrieving the Nicene Doctrine of the Triune God. I suspect that the doctrine of Trinity furnishes a key to winning the Glass Bead Game, but we'll see. 

In fact, Peter Kreeft has a book called Why Does Everything Come in Threes?: A Short Book about Everything, which I haven't read, but I think I know the answer.