About Aboutness

Yesterday we got into an argument with a computer over the existence of teleology. Of course, argument itself presumes its existence, in that its purpose is to discover truth: truth is the telos of the intellect. If not, then truly truly, we're done here.

Yes, but what right have we to expect reality to be comprehensible to the very minds that are its product?

Assumes facts not in evidence, unless you can prove the immaterial to be reducible to the material, in which case you've only proven that proof itself is an illusion. Mind and meaning are not a product of the mindless and meaningless. Purpose is not a function of purposelessness. The human may pass through the subhuman, but this doesn't mean the subhuman is its source. 

Analogously, thoughts pass through the brain, but this doesn't mean math or physics are reducible to neurology. Or that belief in Darwinism is reducible to genetics. Man is not just a poorly copied ape, or a chimp with a lot of genetic defects.

Second, at this point it's not a matter of rights but of responsibilities. We can argue over how it has come to pass that the world is comprehensible to our minds, but no one is relieved of the responsibility to acquaint himself with reality. 

Does philosophy reside at the far edge of the subjective horizon or does it abide at the center of our human capacities? Both: it begins at the center but takes us to the edge and beyond, i.e., outside the cave. 

Animals reflect their environment. Man reflects the Creator (and environment). Which is how he knows the truth that animals only reflect their environment. Man transcends any environment in which he finds himself, and this transcendence is by definition above and beyond. 

Hart agrees that there is "no more conspicuous example of teleology in nature" than in "the directedness of mind and will toward an end," and who are you gonna believe, some tenured determinist or your own lyin' I?

They say reason cannot prove the existence of free will. On the other hand, Schuon says "reason becomes an infirmity" when reduced to "abusive speculation by the ignoramus who pretends to knowledge." 

Elsewhere he suggests that "The purpose of freedom is to enable us to choose what we are in the depths of our heart," and why not? 

But let's get back to Hart. Consciousness is always about something, which is the meaning of "intentionality." Now, supposedly, nothing was about anything in this cosmos until suddenly it was, but how?

[L]ike consciousness, intentionality is either there or it isn't. Where and how was that abyss leapt over? At what point was there suddenly, as there had never before been, mental agency interpreting the world...?

This is really just another way of asking how subjects suddenly appear in a heretofore objective universe, or how exteriority somehow becomes interior to itself. But what if, say, the laws that emerge with the big bang are actually about the later development of life and mind, AKA the anthropic principle?

Now, language -- the subject of the next chapter -- is shot through with intentionality, as its whole purpose is to be "about" something other than itself. But -- and this is me talking, not Hart -- the whole cosmos itself is permeated with aboutness, in the sense that it never stops communicating to us about itself. 

In other words, the cosmos is intelligible to our intelligence. We can learn "about" things because those things are about -- or ordered to -- the intellect. This is very strange, but again, we have more than a right to know reality, rather, a duty.

Language is "a world alongside the world, so to speak, or a plane of reality continuously hovering above the physical plane, a place in which meaning is generated and shared entirely by meaning." 

Yes, but again, the world is also a linguistic contraption that constantly speaks to us via some kind of language, from math to chemistry to logic to beauty. So human language "hovers above the physical," while nature's language is embedded in the physical, just waiting for us to unpack it.

An immanent and transcendent Logos?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Rather, let Schuon do it. The Logos presents himself

either objectively as “Divine Image,” in which case he is transcendent in relation to ordinary men, or subjectively as the Intellect, in which case he is immanent; he is then like the door towards the Divine Self, the immanent Divine Subject in our immortal substance.

So, the intellect is the immanent Divine Image in man, but also the doorway back to God? We call this a form of (↓) and (↑), or emanation and emergence (and ultimately return), and once seen it cannot be unseen, since it's everywhere and in everything.

One point that I think needs to be emphasized is the intrinsic "openness" of things at both ends. In other words, we are open to a cosmos that opens itself up to us, in a kind of spiraling movement. Again, very strange, but there it is.

Eh, that's about enough for this morning. I'd like to have shorter and more impactful posts. Did this post succeed in having a visual impact on you, Gemini?

What's the image about?

The image depicts a human mind reaching out to a vast cosmos, symbolizing the search for meaning and purpose. The intricate patterns and light in the cosmos represent the universe's inherent intelligibility, as discussed in the text.

Ah, so it's about the aboutness of the world.