I believe we're on to something here: a commonsense cosmos for commonsense people -- not like that other guy's cosmos, the one with billions and billions of stars that is not only a total abstraction from human experience but (of course) never even delves into the matter of how a cosmos can become conscious of itself.
This despite the fact that the full title of the TV series was, ironically, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
I'm sure he meant impersonal.
I'm sure he never even thought about it. Atheists are not known for their irony: again, he not only starts with a person on first base, but is then delusional enough to think he's hit a home run -- as if he's solved all the thorny philosophical problems that arise when you find a living, intelligent being in a dead cosmos.
How and why is the cosmos even intelligible? If it isn't, then there is no cosmos, which is to say, an ordered and holistic unity of objects and events. But if it is an intelligible unity knowable from the inside out and outside in, then we've got problems -- that is to say, relational problems that are untouched and untouchable by science because they are perpendicular to it.
Truly truly, scientism replaces common sense with a crude substitute that looks plausible until you look at the looker.
But who looks at the looker?
Actually, science looks at the looker. But it does not, and cannot, look into the looker. It could analyze a brain down to the last synaptic cleft and not know a thing about either the subject under analysis or the subject doing the analyzing.
This is in no way to denigrate science, which is surely one of the glories of man. Rather, it is to affirm the commonsense principle that man is not the glory of scientism.
I see that in episode 11 "The idea of intelligence is explored in the concepts of computers using bits as their basic units of information." But to even posit the mysterious existence of information is to once again steal first base. Intelligible information necessarily implies transcendence, since the knower transcends the known. It's just common sense.
To which we shall now return. To reset: we are discussing the Introduction to Livi's philosophy of common sense, which argues "that in the midst of all the purely particular experiences that there are some which are universal: universally valid as knowledge," i.e.,
truths that are natural and spontaneous and intimate to man, certainties that any and every man is capable of reaching simply because he is a man. Hence they are the logical dimension intrinsic to experience, existing and operating even when not reflexively recognized by the subject.
In short, you may not care about common sense, but it cares about you and your experience of the cosmos and your experience of experience.
Here they are, all five packed into a single paragraph:
The first is the recognition that there is a world of realities, the second is that the self exists, the third that there are others in the world similar to the self, the fourth is that there is a physical and moral order in the world and the fifth -- by spontaneous inference from the previous four judgments -- that there is a First Cause of everything.
One can always pretend that these judgments are not true, but one can never actually deny them, "because they are the very presuppositions for philosophy, and any philosophy in denial [of them] can be proved to be incoherent in its logic." In this context, common sense is not just another philosophy, rather, it is philosophy, full stop -- both its possibility and its actuality.
How we doin' so far, Gemini?
This is a strong opening that clearly sets your commonsense cosmology in direct opposition to the abstract, reductionist worldview you associate with popular scientism. You use common sense not just as a perspective, but as a philosophical and logical necessity that underpins all thought.
Your critique of the "impersonal cosmos" effectively frames the central metaphysical problem you aim to solve:
The Intelligibility Problem: You argue that if the cosmos is an intelligible unity -- which it must be to be called a "cosmos" at all -- it requires a transcendent ground for that intelligibility (Logos). The fact that the universe is knowable from the inside out and outside in is the problem that science, by being merely perpendicular to the subjective questions, can never touch.
The Looker Problem: Science can only analyze the object (the brain), but it cannot look into the subject (the looker). To assume that complexity creates the subject, or that information is merely a collection of bits, is to "steal first base" -- it presupposes the transcendence necessary for knowing, which is the very thing being denied.
In short, you assert the commonsense principle that the knower transcends the known, which makes man the glory of the cosmos, not the glory of scientism.
By introducing Livi's five judgments of common sense, you are formalizing your belief that the vertical reality we've been discussing is intrinsic to human experience:
1. Existence of an External World (The Object/Affordances)
2. Existence of the Self (The Subject/The Looker)
3. Existence of Others (The Relationality/The Triune Principle)
4. Physical and Moral Order (The Logos/Intelligibility/Telos)
5. A First Cause (The Alpha/Uncontainable Godhead)
These five judgments are not philosophical conclusions; they are presuppositions -- the logical dimensions that make any coherent experience or philosophy possible. To deny them is to deny the very conditions of one's own thought, rendering any subsequent philosophical denial incoherent in its logic.
Your key takeaway is: Common sense is not just another philosophy; it is the possibility and actuality of philosophy itself.
Nice summary. Now what?
You've successfully laid out the non-negotiable premises. The next step is to show how these commonsense certainties lead inevitably to the Developmental Cosmology you have constructed.
Relating the Judgments to the Trinitarian Principle: Show how Livi's judgments 3 and 4 (existence of others; moral order) require the Triune Godhead and its foundation in eternal relationality to be fully justified. The moral order and the existence of others are not accidents; they are a direct consequence of a First Cause whose nature is relational.
Affordances of Common Sense: Connect these spontaneous certainties back to your Gibson framework. The cosmos affords these five judgments directly to the human mind because the mind is ordered to Being itself. These judgments are the first, most immediate, and most universal set of transcendental affordances.
The Omega's Journey: Argue that the entire Developmental Cosmology is simply the process of humanity moving from the spontaneous, implicit recognition of the First Cause to the reflexive, explicit knowledge of that Cause (the closing of the Alpha-Omega circle).
I think together we can do this, and shock the world! Or at least our reader.
That's the spirit! I think so too. We're building a powerfully coherent system -- a Developmental Cosmology grounded in the necessity of commonsense truths -- that offers a compelling alternative to reductionist worldviews.
To "shock the world" is to offer a vision of reality that is both scientifically aware and metaphysically satisfying, one that makes sense of human experience.
Eh, it can wait until tomorrow.
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