Reality is an Open Relationship

We've been discussing a mysterious principle of openness that not only permeates being but may in a sense be being; or at least being is literally inconceivable in its absence, because there would be no one open to it, nor anything intelligible to which to be open.

The reason this principle is mysterious is similar to the reason why relation is mysterious. We usually -- at least insofar as the left brain is concerned -- think of the terms related as more real than the relation between them. These terms are cutandry objects or nouns, while the relationship between them seems posterior to the relata. Or, the relation seems both contingent and subjective.

But it turns out that relation is ontologically prior to the relata. This is one of the surprising implications of quantum physics, in that it turns out that everything is related to everything else, and that oneness underlies or sponsors many-ness.

For example, Bell's Theorem shows that reality is nonlocal, and that subatomic particles are irreducibly entangled with one another -- that they are linked in such a way that their fates are intertwined, even when separated by galactic distances.

Now, I say this entanglement, nonlocality, and relationship must be the entailment of a higher or deeper principle, and this principle is none other than the Trinity. If the Trinity is the ground of being, then no wonder everything is interrelated and open to everything else. Openness is no longer an accidental feature but an irreducible property of the ground.

For Thomas Aquinas and other bright-minded thinkers, being is inherently active and self-communicative. It is is essentially diffusive, meaning that it naturally tends to share itself. Here again, this is a reflection of what goes on in the Trinity, what with the Father diffusing and sharing himself with the Son, and vice versa.

The intellect, whatever else it is, is open to reality. Along these lines, Dobie writes of how it "is essentially open to existence or being as such." At the same time, "being is the cause of truth in the intellect." Thus, "being is essentially Word, whose essence is to communicate -- to communicate existence, truth, and goodness." Intelligence to one side, intellect to the other, always in open relationship.

And here we are. The intellect is "none of the things it knows," but a potential to know everything knowable, up to and including God. It is not only open to God, but it is openness as such. But in order to be radically open, we must detach ourselves from all created images and concepts, for that way lies idolatry. 

"The detached intellect is pure receptivity" (Dobie), and in such a state "the soul is able to know God 'without any mode' and share in God's pure act of of understanding since understanding in and of itself is 'without any mode' (i.e., unlimited by any act of finite existence" (ibid.). 

Here we're verging upon the unsayable, into the mind-blowing paradox and perplexity discussed in yesterday's post, but it can't be helped -- not if we want to purify the soul and render it fit for God. I don't make the rules.

Eckhart compares the soul to a wax tablet that can receive God's "writing" only to the degree that it is blank and free of all "words." The soul is the place where God "writes" his revealed Word, and it is the proper end of the soul to allow God to write himself as the divine Word or Logos in itself.

In short, "Because the human intellect is pure potency to form, it also has a potency to be conformed to God.... Being pure potency, and thus empty and free, it is... able to be conformed completely to the divine understanding as its actuality and thus to be the vehicle for the revelation of God's Word." 

It is as if God and man are dual nothings reflecting one another. For Ibn 'Arabi, "the self is an ocean without shore, so knowledge of it has no end." Nor is there any end to knowledge of God, and for the same reason: 

To enter into the essence of the human self is... tantamount to entering into the essence of the divine, because human existence is essentially linked to the divine existence.

There's that relationship again, which links the two relata, in this case ourself and Godself: "there must be a mediating link between the individual human being and the divine Essence in its utter transcendence," and this link is "the logos of creation that is, importantly, also the immanent essence of human existence." 

In other words, there something linking "the divine reality and the human knower," this being "the vehicle in and through which human beings return to God by realizing the full potentialities of their own humanity." (This, of course, touches on the Incarnation, but we'll leave that for a later discussion.)

Now, this principle of self-reflection -- which is to say otherness -- exists first in the Trinity. This otherness is, of course, mediated by love, truth, and beauty, which are at once names of God and God himself in the mode of the Holy Spirit. I suspect. Things are beginning to get a little caliginous, as it were.

This is a little tricksy, but there are never really two things, or rather, the two are related in oneness; for our purposes, "there is only the self-disclosure of God refracted back upon himself in various modes according to the preparedness of creatures to receive and refract it." 

Man as such is "the 'place' in which God comes to self-awareness," and this awareness comes in various modes such as love, truth, and beauty, each of which revealing a relationship between terms.

My brain is flaming out, so I guess that's about the size of it this morning.

How to Think About God

What a condescending title. It reminds me of those patronizing emails I receive from the NY Times, telling me how I should think about everything from inflation to transgenderism to DOGE, but which, like the Times itself, is aimed at an 8th grade comprehension level. 

Besides, what kind of assoul pretends to comprehend God, and presumes to tell others how to do so?

How about How not to think about God?

Maybe, but who am I to tell people how to think or not think about God? Isn't that a personal question?

Or impersonal, depending.

Yes, but can there really be an impersonal Christian mysticism in which the self is transcended in order to unite with the One? That's neoplatonism or Vedanta, and how can they be reconciled with Christian personalism? Besides, I'm not sure such an approach would be good for me, since it would only aggravate my tendency to detachment and self-sufficiency. 

At any rate, I'm deep into Logos and Revelation, which is a study in comparative nonsense between Meister Eckhart and Ibn 'Arabi. My instinct would be to seek the universal reality beneath their particular approaches, a la Schuon, but this author claims that this is precisely what one should not do.

That is to say, he wants to reverse the trend of attempting "to identify a core set of characteristics common to all mystical experiences," as if there is "some sort of 'pure' experience 'transcending' religious norms and conventions." In a footnote he directly addresses Schuon's writings, which,

as insightful as they often are, are still redolent of a nineteenth-century romanticism that seeks "authentic" religion in esoteric teachings and initiations.

Them's fightin' words, since Schuon certainly had no use for romanticism, and was harshly critical of the subjectivism and individualism at its core. I just consulted my artificial friend on the question, and it correctly points out that Schuon

emphasized the importance of objective truth and traditional values over individual feelings and preferences. In this sense, he would likely have viewed the unrestrained emotionalism and individualism of romanticism as a departure from traditional norms and a symptom of the modern malaise.

One of Schuon's central themes is the timeless and universal truths underlying all genuine spiritual traditions, whereas romanticism often emphasized historical context and cultural particularity.

Having said that, although Schuon sought the universal in the particular, he nevertheless maintained that it was necessary for one to practice a particular religion, which gives flesh and blood, as it were, to the skeleton of universal metaphysics. 

Me? I take a middle position, for clearly there must be a universal and supraformal Substance beneath the forms of religion, but some forms more adequately map the Substance than others. Here I'm thinking in particular of the Trinity, which is impossible to reconcile with any form of impersonalism, nor with a radically monistic monotheism, Islam included. 

I remember Schuon saying something to the effect that Eckhart was one of the greatest men Europe had ever produced, but I suspect this is because it's not difficult to see parallels between Eckhart and the nondual Vedanta that was Schuon's controlling metaphysic. 

In short, Schuon would say that Eckart essentially preached the universal metaphysic of Vedanta in Christian clothing, whereas Dobie is saying that it is both impossible and illegitimate to wrench Eckhart from the particularity of his Christian context.

But I don't want to tell others how to think about God. Rather, I'm just trying to figure out how I should think about God. Or rather, trying to find someone who thinks as I do -- who shares my peculiar sensibility. Which I'm not sure anyone does, although these two guys -- Eckhart and Ibn 'Arabi -- occasionally come close. 

Lately we've been talking about a principle of openness, in the absence of which we couldn't be open to anything, much less to reality as such. But for Ibn 'Arabi, the purpose of revelation is to provide images and symbols that carry reason

beyond its categories to a sort of "opening" onto the Real in which reason does not grasp the Real but rather it is the Real that reveals itself to reason. 

By the way, one of the reasons it's so exhausting to read this type of literature is that it's so full of paradox and contradiction that it turns the mind inside-out and upside-down. It's like reading a series of koans, when each one is designed to blow one's mind. But one can only take so much relentless mind blowing. Here are some examples; for Eckhart,

The more [God] is in things, the more he is outside things; the more within, the more outside; the more outside, the more within.

Likewise, Ibn 'Arabi's dialectic "seems designed to lead to a perplexity, to a 'holy confusion' or 'learned ignorance.'" For example,  

The manifest of the Real is creation, and the nonmanifest of creation is the Real.

I get it, but again, not without the mind being a little blown. One can't just breeze over such things, but needs time to digest them. More paradox:

The point is that the true knower of God does not put any limit on the Real to the extent that even nonlimitation would be a limitation on the Real. 

God transcends "the fetters of both 'limitation' and 'non-limitation.' He is absolutely absolute; He is not delimited by either of them, nor does He even exclude either of them."

Again, I get it, but I'm not sure I even agree with Ibn 'Arabi, since in my book God's absolute absoluteness includes being absolutely relative. I am speaking here of the Absolute Relativity of the Trinity, which is irreducibly substance-in-relation. In other words, the very principle of relativity is located in divinas. This relativity is decidedly not any kind of privation.

I would even say that the only reason we are able to relate to God is that the Father first relates to himself via the Son. We'll no doubt return to this later.

I'll go along with this:

the goal of knowledge is not certainty that derives from a dominance over its object but a perplexity, which is an openness to the Real as such.

In other words, if you're not perplexed, you're wrong. That's how I think about God -- by not thinking, in a way. I begin with perplexity and take it from there, in order to make a space for Real-ization:

then the finite self no longer obscures or obstructs its disclosure [i.e., the disclosure of the Real]. The realized knower becomes the locus where the Truth as such manifests itself. 

One hopes at any rate. Paradox ahead:

If you find Me you will not see Me but you will see Me if you lose Me... Finding is losing Me and losing is finding Me.

I suppose this is not all that different from He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Which no doubt blew the minds of his disciples.

Try this one on for size:

nothing so differs from the principle as that of which it is the principle and yet nothing is so identical as the principle and that of which it is the principle.

In this upper world, contraries and antinomies abound. But how many of these annoying contraries can the mind take before being blown to bits?

Everything which is distinguished by indistinction is the more distinct the more indistinct it is, because it is distinguished by its own indistinction. 

Eckhart's point here is that God's radical indistinction is what distinguishes him from everything. Which I get. However, at the same time, God has given us some helpful ways to think about certain distinctions within the Godhead, i.e., Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, it seems that there are certain distinctions in God after all, and which provide us with a way to think about what goes on in there.

Here's a koanological doozy:

You should know that nothing is as dissimilar as the Creator and any creature. In the second place, nothing is as similar as the Creator and any creature. And in the third place, nothing is as equally dissimilar and similar to anything else as God and the creature are dissimilar and similar in the same degree. 

Understood. Which is to say, not understood at all because the mind is blown thereby.

Moreover, it is the negation of negation, which is the purest form of affirmation, and the fullness of the term affirmed. 

What are we supposed to make of that? I don't know, but there is the principle of kenosis whereby the Father empties -- in a way, negates -- himself in generating the Son, and the Son likewise empties himself. Gemini?

Some theologians propose that kenosis is not just an event in the incarnation but an eternal characteristic of God's being. They suggest that the Father, in generating the Son, engages in a kind of self-emptying, giving of himself fully to the Son. 

Similarly, the Son, in receiving this fullness from the Father, also engages in self-emptying by eternally relating to the Father as the one who is begotten. 

And the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, embodies this mutual self-giving in the Trinity

For our purposes, according to Dobie, 

"is-ness" is God, which is also the ground of my soul and which I appropriate in and through the Incarnation of Christ. My sense of existing in any absolute sense is an illusion; I am a negation of absolute or pure being that itself must be negated.... 

So, as in the Trinity, self-emptying is the other side of self-finding or something. Or, mind-blowing is prior to mind reassembly.

Enough paradox for one day. 

Glimpses of Infinitude

Like anyone, I get the occasional glimpse of the total inexplicability and utter gratuity of being, but the window no sooner opens than shuts again. 

It's hard to sustain that that vision, but also hard to describe, for it's not a question of what something is, rather, that anything is. It's the answer to the question, Why is there something rather than nothing?, only experiential rather than conceptual. 

Perhaps it's a brief left-brain capture by the right, when it's usually the other way around: the LCH bullying the RCH into submission. Come to think if it, what is meditation but the formal practice of silencing the endless chatter of the LCH?

I think it's safe to stipulate that mysticism must be an RCH phenomenon. Not to reduce it to neurology, any more than conceptual truth can be reduced to some LCH effluvia. Rather, truth is true, whether abstract and conceptual or concrete and experiential.

I see that I touched on this subject during our month-long dive into McGilchrist, in a post called In the Beginning is the Un-word: "Being," says McGilchrist, "is mysterious." In fact, if it weren't mysterious, there would be no reason ask questions of it. 

However, the fact that the questions yield answers only deepens the mystery -- recalling Einstein's gag that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility.

Yada yada, 

We always know more than we did the day before, but we are nevertheless as plunged into mystery as we were the decade, century, or millennium before, which is to say, always. If anything, the world just keeps getting weirder, and yet, people behave as if all this is normal.  

   This is followed by some jolly good aphorisms:

Mystery is less disturbing than the fatuous attempt to exclude it by stupid explanations.

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

The mystic is the only one who is seriously ambitious.

If that's the case, then Meister Eckhart wasn't some goldbricking underachiever, but one of the most seriously ambitious individuals ever, more on which shortly. First let us cull any other useful bobservations from the old post:   

Problem is, the remystification of the world really is a kind of full-time job. But truly truly, someone has to do it, no? Most everyone else is employed to demystify things, and I thank them for their service, I really do. But what would happen if the world -- and human beings -- really were totally demystified?

Bor-ring. For the game would be over. 

Of the inexpugnable mystery, McGilchrist writes that

The problem is that if we are to say anything about it, we still need some sort of placeholder, within language, for all those aspects of Being that defy direct expression, but which we sense are greater than the reality which language is apt to describe, almost certainly greater than whatever the human mind can comprehend.

Quite true. I suggest the empty symbol O, which accumulates meaning via direct experience:

It simultaneously conveys the no-thing of zee-ro and the eternity & everything of the complete circle. It is like a perpetual spiral of nothing --> everything --> nothing, carried out now and forever, i.e., the metabolism of being. 

Our symbol solves the problem raised by McGilchrist, of the need for "a word unlike any other, not defined in terms of anything else: a sort of un-word." 

Here is the dilemma, and why I speak of an un-word: if we have no word, something at the core of existence disappears from our shared world of awareness; yet if we have a word, we will come to imagine we have grasped the nature of the divine, pinned it down and delimited it, even though by the very nature of the divine this is something that can never be achieved.

Agreed. I also suspect that it was easier to grasp this unknown known in premodern times, prior to the hostile takeover of the RCH by the left. 

Which leads directly to this book on two medieval mystics, Ibn 'Arabi and Meister Eckhart. But where even to begin? For this is one dense text, full of contradictory and paradoxical descriptions of the enigmatic. Which inevitably happens when one tries to download the unsayable into speech. There's also the problem of who is speaking, since

the mystic must let go of the finite self and allow him- or herself to be conformed to the revealed, transcendent truth.

This is straight-up Gödelian: "Human reason is indeed powerful," but cannot "be its own ultimate authority." For, 

left to its own devices, it is liable to error and, most important, to confusing its own limited, finite and provisional formulations of the Truth with the infinite Truth itself. Human reason cannot grasp the finite without the help of the infinite. Reason is in need of illumination or an unveiling that frees it from finitude. 

Reason has its limits, and failure to recognize them again leads to the irrationalism of various desiccated LCH models that exclude the right (that's my way of expressing it, not Dobie's). First, 

there are limits entailed by the materiality or finitude of creatures: creatures, by their very nature as creatures, cannot reveal adequately the infinity of God.

Secondly, 

there is the finitude of the human mind: the human mind, in abstracting concepts from creatures, cannot think beyond what it can clearly conceive, and these concepts are necessarily limited and limiting. 

Nevertheless -- consistent with what we've been saying about a principle of openness -- "the human being is open, at least potentially, to all being as such." 

Well, good. Now what? Well, "In a wide and very fundamental sense, all that exists is revelation, because it reveals or uncovers in some way what God is," albeit in "a limited and finite way." 

Having said that, if literally 

everything is divine revelation, then it is very easy for the human mind to conclude that nothing is such a revelation or fail to recognize anything as revelation in the first place.

In other words, we take it for granted and act as if nothing weird is going on, what with all this revelation. Hence the need for a more specific revelation to supplement the general. With the latter, "the human mind is in a better position to understand the ends and purposes of creation and, most particularly, of creatures like ourselves."

It is a matter of disclosing "the inner meaning for the life of the soul and its ascent to God," and of showing how "all the sciences by which human beings know creatures refer back to God and to the Word of God as found in the sacred text."

[O]ne cannot, so to speak, step outside of God to know God and experience God. One must enter into God in order to know God. And to enter God is nothing other than to enter into his Word, or Logos.... Self-understanding is drawn out -- evoked... -- by something that is higher than itself or transcendent, i.e., by the revealed Word.

For the Sufi Ibn 'Arabi, it is a kind of higher imagination that is "the crucial faculty by which the seeker of God actually sees the spiritual in the material and is thus able to refer all things back to their one Source, God."

I suggest we pause for 24 hours. All this un-knowing is exhausting...

Teleology, Modified Omnipotence, and the Open Cosmos

Yesterday's post touched on an irreducible principle of openness in the cosmos. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising if the cosmos itself is open to something transcending it. Which it either is or isn't. But supposing it isn't, then nothing makes sense.

Literally, since sense -- i.e., meaning -- is only possible if something refers to something else. Now, in this cosmos, literally everything refers to something else. 

For example, take quantum physics. Turns out that every little itsy, no matter how bitsy, is interrelated and entangled with the whole, which prompted Whitehead's remark that "Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms."

This being the case, cosmology must be the study of the largest organism this side of God. By which we do not mean some form of animism, rather, that the cosmos has features of organicity, which include wholeness, interiority, and openness. And if this weren't the case, then biology as such would be strictly impossible. It could never get off the otherwise sterile ground.

In other words, there is no way to account for the features of living organisms if they aren't' already implicitly present in the ground of being. 

For example, if the ultimate basis of the world were radically separate and externally related atoms, there would be no way for them to subsequently develop interiority and part-to-whole interrelation. This would be like expecting billiard balls to spontaneously become interior to themselves and begin relating to one another. 

No, it's organicity all the way down. And up. Where Whitehead goes off the rails is situating God within this organismic process instead of transcendent to it. 

Which does not mean God isn't "in process," so to speak, for what is the Trinity but an eternal dance, i.e., perichoresis? 

As we said yesterday, the Godhead shares all of the features of a living organism, including interiority, openness, relationality, intelligence, verticality, freedom, and creativity. None of these features just pop into the cosmos out of nowhere. Rather, they are sown into the very ground of reality. Again, if they weren't already here, they could never "evolve" into existence.

Darwinism, for example, just assumes the existence of living things. How they got here, no one knows. But they certainly couldn't have gotten here in the absence of wholeness, interior relations, and openness.

So anyway, I've been dabbling with what is called open theism, or rather, have come to find out there is a name for what I already believe. And what I believe is that God himself is not only open, but cannot not be open. Which implies that the cosmos isn't only open to God, but -- this is the controversial part -- vice versa.

We've actually discussed this in the past -- the idea that an utterly immutable and unrelated God is a Greek import, and certainly not something implied in scripture, which, for example, often depicts God as reacting to his own creation. The immutable God crowd will say that these are crude anthropomorphisms, but we're not the ones who anthropomorphize God, rather, God who anthropomorphizes us.

In other words, God is a person, or rather, persons, which again implies openness and relationality. Now, we are persons made in his image, which is to say persons, period. Which is precisely why we too are irreducibly open, intersubjective, and relational.

Fun fact: yesterday I read an article that touches on the "big five" personality traits, one of which is openness. Everyone is at least a little bit open, but it turns out that the most open are musicians and artists. Which surprises me not one bit, since what is art but open and creative engagement with the transcendent? Where do you think all the creativity comes from? From below?

Sometimes. Maybe you didn't see the Grammys.

Now, "mystic" -- that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. It's not an occupation, although it is a calling. For me it's a pre-occupatition, since I'm just built this way. It's also an a-vocation, since no one's going to pay you for doing nothing, dude. But the mystic is the most radically open of all, even more so than the artist. In fact, if you combine artistry and mysticism, then you've really got something -- a Bach or Coltrane or Arvo Pärt or Van Morrison. 

Yesterday I began reading a book on mysticism called Logos and Revelation, which says that "in order to be conformed to pure being or existence, we must be completely open to its revealed character" (emboldenment mine). However, humans can "become enclosed in and attached to their own finite subjectivity," or "stuck" in "our created concepts about being or beings." 

For both Eckhart and Ibn 'Arabi, the point "is to destabilize and de-center the self, for only then can the human being become open to truth as such" (my boldness again). 

Or you could say restabilize and recenter, in the sense that man tends to live on the periphery of being, far from Celestial Central. But the mystic's stability is a kind of "metastability" that is a feature of all dynamic systems, which have to change in order not to. Much like the Trinity, come to think of it. 

Now, as alluded to above, everything in this cosmos refers to something or someone else, hence the possibility of meaning. What about human life. Does it have meaning? Only if it refers to something transcendent to itself. Otherwise we are sealed in immanence and tautology.

But it turns out we are sealed -- or unsealed rather -- in teleology. This is because we are situated between immanence and transcendence. We never actually arrive at the latter, but that's our proper direction, our true north. Vertically speaking, it is "up," and why there's even an up to begin with. Here again, teleology isn't something that could just magically appear in the cosmos if it weren't already here.

In open theism, this is how God rolls, or exerts his influence herebelow. Rather than determining everything in a mechanistic way, he genuinely bestows upon human beings in particular a

power to make decisions of their own, including decisions as to whether or not to cooperate with God's loving purposes toward them (Hasker).

For example, what could Genesis 3 possibly mean if Adam were foreordained and absolutely determined by God to be naughty? Obviously, that would be on God. It would frankly be insane -- and certainly unjust -- to blame Adam for what God caused him to do.

In open theism, God surely could have caused Adam to fall. But again, he chooses to give us freedom. Or maybe it's not even a choice, but rather, simply an artifact of creating persons in his own image and likeness -- which is to say, open and therefore free.

Yes, Paul? Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Boom. Maybe a good place to pause... 

Open for Isness

If we dig down to essentials, everything depends on a principle of openness. 

How so?

Well, think of the barest knowledge, which is dependent upon the mind -- whatever that is -- being open to being or reality. Or, consider life itself: an organism is first and foremost a dynamic system that is open to the environment. Likewise human relationships: humans are intrinsically open to one another, i.e., intersubjective. 

Now, each of these is a Deep Mystery, for we have no idea how openness comes to exist in a causally closed universe. Feser quotes a number of thinkers who are honest and intelligent enough to acknowledge this -- for example, philosopher Jerry Fodor:

Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything could be conscious.

Note that consciousness is always of something, i.e., a relationship. How does relationship exist unless this is already a relational cosmos? Nor are we talking about merely exterior relations, like billiard balls bouncing off one another. 

Rather, consciousness is not only interior, but in rational beings has an interior relationship to that which it knows. In other words, we are able to extract the intelligible form from the "interior" of what we know. How does intelligibility get inside things? How even is there an inside?

Likewise, philosopher Alva Noë writes that science

lacks even a back-of-the-envelope concept explaining the emergence of consciousness from the behavior of mere matter.... how consciousness arises out of the actions of neurons, or how low-level chemical or atomic processes might explain why we are conscious -- we haven't a clue. We aren't even really sure what questions we should be asking.

"I think the time has come to admit candidly that we cannot resolve the mystery" (philosopher Colin McGinn). Of the existence of rational beings, Fodor admits that "it is very difficult to imagine any answer to the question that is not teleological."

Ah, now we're getting somewhere, because teleology implies openness to a transcendent form or nonlocal attractor. Or, a relationship between immanence and transcendence (or even is and ought) within which potential is actualized.

As for Life Itself, 

we don't have any account of how [it] springs forth from the supposed primordial soup. This is an explanatory gap we have no idea how to bridge (Noë).

There are even "card-carrying naturalists like Francis Crick who say that it seems almost a miracle" (Thomas Nagel).

It is clear to me that both life and consciousness are literally impossible within any reductionist paradigm. It doesn't mean -- yet -- that we need to make an appeal to God, only that we need a different paradigm. 

One superficially appealing philosophical paradigm is pansychism: if everything is a little bit conscious, then consciousness is no longer a mystery. 

The problem here is that the existence of the universe itself is also a mystery -- in other words, no one knows what is prior to the Big Bang, nor why this primordial event is so teeming with information. To say it is also permeated with consciousness only deepens the mystery.

Besides, how does the attenuated consciousness of atoms in the void evolve into the full consciousness of rational humans? The principle of sufficient reason still demands a cause that is proportionate to the effect, nor does the lower account for the higher. 

How is there even a high and low? This obviously implies a vertical scale, but how does verticality come to exist in a horizontal cosmos?

Another popular approach is to simply deny the existence of life itself. Which only a living thing could do. Likewise, it takes a conscious subject to deny the existence of consciousness. A subject can pretend to be an object, but an object cannot pretend at all.

So, what is the answer? Feser doesn't exactly say. He mostly debunks the various philosophical nonstarters and nul de slacks before concluding with this: that 

the very possibility of science presupposes the reality and irreducibility of the conscious, thinking, embodied subject. Hence, we cannot coherently eliminate that subject from our conception of the world, especially not in the name of science.

In short, "the problem is with naturalism and not with Aristotelianism," for the latter provides "the true metaphysical foundation for the very possibility of that science."

The true metaphysical foundation? Yes, as far as it goes, but it still has some explaining to do, for it doesn't account for the existence of interiority, openness, relationality, intelligibility, or verticality. 

In thinking about those big five, are any of them reducible to the others, or are they all necessary? Could they be reducible to a single principle, and if so, what would it look like?

Well, it might look something like the Trinity, which is certainly open, relational, and intersubjective. It is also logocentric, accounting for a principle of intelligibility. And although the three branches are coequal, there is a hint of verticality, in the sense that the Father is the eternal source or fount of the other two. 

But verticality really comes into play with a principle of creation, so I think we need to add it (creativity) to our Big Five. This would explain how it is that the creator creates a cosmos that is itself creative -- not to mention interior, open, relational, intelligible, and vertical, i.e., hierarchically ordered. (We forgot to mention the existence of freedom, but that is perhaps an entailment of rationality.)

In any event, we are always open to alternative theories of how the cosmos is irreducibly open for isness.

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 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 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.