Meta-Schemes and Post-Normality

Yes, we've discussed this subject in the past, but have our judges ever made a definitive ruling on the subject?

What subject?

You know, the "God beyond God" business with which we ended yesterday's post. Isn't the whole point of God that the ontological buck stops with him? In a purely metaphysical sense, the word God is just a linguistic placeholder for the Ultimate Mystery, the ground and source of being.  

However, there is always an intersection between concepts and the person holding them. I'm thinking of Piaget's scheme of cognitive development, which moves from sensorimotor to increasingly abstract abilities, representing not so much a change in the quantity as the quality of intelligence. His last stage is called formal operations, in which 

Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. This form of thought includes "assumptions that have no necessary relation to reality." 

That this form of thought may include assumptions bearing no relation to reality helps to explain the existence of the tenured, and of ideologues more generally. In short, we can reason in all sorts of unreasonable ways. It reminds me of what Ben Franklin said about the gift of reason:

So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. 

In fact, Piaget had a term for this: assimilation, which goes to how human beings squeeze new information into their pre-existing cognitive schemas (confirmation bias by another name), as opposed to accommodation, which "is the process of taking new information and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information." 

Naturally, we always aim for accommodation, except to say that it is with the ultimate goal of a final schema into which everything may be assimilated.

The Cosmic Area Rug.

Correct: it is by definition that into which everything may be assimilated, not excluding the assimilator. And for which reason it is absurd to imagine that there could ever be, under any circumstances, a scientistic Cosmic Area Rug, since it can never account for the person who has woven it. 

The search by physicists for their own big TOE (theory of everything) is doomed from the start by Gödel, since man is always meta to his own conceptual models of reality, and God -- or whatever you call it -- is meta to man.

I wonder: did Piaget account for intellectual abilities beyond the norm of formal operations? The average adult has only a sketchy mastery of this supposedly final stage, let alone hypothetical stages beyond it. According the the wiki article, some thinkers have indeed attempted to map these post-normality stages:

Piaget's theory stops at the formal operational stage, but other researchers have observed the thinking of adults is more nuanced than formal operational thought. This fifth stage has been named post-formal thought or operation, and involves systematic, meta-systematic, paradigmatic, and cross-paradigmatic.

I don't have time to look up those terms, but it seems to me that in comparing Christian and Vedantic metaphysics, we are engaged in something meta-systematic and cross-paradigmatic, which we have in the past called "comparative nonsense," since the realities being discussed are purely metaphysical and non-sensuous maps of the invisible transcendent.

Besides, a man needs a hobby.

Interestingly, post-formal operations, meta-systematic thinking can lead one down some pathological and anti-human avenues, for example, a pseudo-sophisticated absolute relativism that redounds to the suicide of intelligence. 

As for our having discussed this subject in the past, there's no shame in that:

Everything has already been said, and well said; but one must always recall it anew, and in recalling it one must do what has already been done: to actualize in thought certitudes contained, not in the thinking ego, but in the transpersonal substance of human intelligence (Schuon).

The transpersonal substance of human intelligence, or intelligence reflecting upon what intelligence really is. 

What is it?

Well, it is clearly something beyond what Piaget assumed about it. Again, there are differing qualities of intelligence, and these qualities don't end at formal operations. For example, the intelligence of a Schuon or Dávila is as far beyond that of the average tenured yahoo as is a man is beyond a chimp.  

Surely you're being polemical?

I don't think so. This is a hierarchical cosmos with degrees of perfection extending all the way to the top, whether we are talking about intellectual or aesthetic ability. 

Regarding the latter, I am reminded of a comment by Sullivan to the effect that -- musically speaking, of course -- there is a greater distance between Beethoven and the average man than between the average man and a dog. One can obtain a Ph.D. in music, but that will never make you Beethoven (despite the fact that his formal education ended at age ten or eleven). 

As to our lack of originality, we are in good company:

Whoever believes he is original is merely ignorant.

Nobody thinks seriously as long as originality is important to him.

Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper. 

The modern desire to be original makes the mediocre artist believe that simply being different is the secret to being original.

The scientific proposition presents an abrupt alternative: understanding it or not understanding it. The philosophical proposition, however, is susceptible to growing insight. Finally, the religious proposition is a vertical ascent that allows one to see the same landscape from different altitudes.

That was a lengthy detour. We were discussing Eckart's poetic (?) deuscription of the "Nothingness out of which God is born," and now I'm wondering it this is the product of a style or quality of thinking that far surpasses the norm (of formal operations)? If so, then it will make no sense to the formal operations thinker trapped in some comparatively linear schema that takes no account of the orthoparadoxical nature of God.

Hmm. That detour was so long that we're nearly out of time, but I'd like to at least touch on Bede Griffiths' attempt at a meta-systematic and cross-paradigmatic unification of Christianity and Vedanta. Recall his initial premise, which is that early Christian thinkers attempted to squeeze the Christian revelation into Greek categories (or schemas), when by definition it must surpass them. 

Eh, we'll start over tomorrow. Clean it up and take us out, Gemini:

Your post today provides a fascinating and layered argument for why a deep metaphysical synthesis of traditions is possible, all while critiquing the limitations of standard forms of reasoning.

You begin by acknowledging the "God beyond God" question, framing God as the ultimate, ineffable "linguistic placeholder." You then take a significant detour to explore the nature of intelligence itself. Using Piaget's model, you critique the limitations of "formal operations," arguing that this supposedly final stage of human thought can lead to unreasonable conclusions and an inability to accommodate new information into one's "cognitive schemas."

You introduce the concept of post-formal thought -- a "meta-systematic" and "cross-paradigmatic" form of thinking -- which you suggest is a higher quality of intelligence. You argue that, unlike scientific thought which aims for originality, philosophical and religious thought advances by going deeper and seeing the "same landscape from different altitudes." In this way, the "orthoparadoxical" descriptions of God from mystics like Meister Eckhart are not nonsense, but are the result of this higher-level thinking.

You conclude by tying this all back to the original topic, suggesting that Bede Griffiths's attempt to unify Christianity and Vedanta was a form of this advanced thinking. This act of synthesis is necessary because early Christian thinkers, trapped in the schemas of their time, attempted to fit a transcendent revelation into the limited categories of Greek philosophy.