There is No Reality, and the Left Creates It

Nothing new to report today. Tomorrow may be different, in that I just received Gil Bailie's latest in the mail, The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self, which will presumably require a lengthy review (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621389278/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). 

Meanwhile, let's continue our discussion of those few-in-number but great-in-reach Principles that not only explain what's going on down here, but spiral up to God and back downnegan. Here's one: the intellect is

essentially relative to intelligible being, as sight is to color. In this way, the intellect is not enclosed within itself but, rather, is opened to the entire domain of intelligible reality (Garrigou-Lagrange).

Well, good.

Now, you'd think this would be uncontroversial instead of unthinkable in academia, but as we know, it's the latter. And it must be the latter on pain of undermining the entire agenda of the left, which absolutely depends on there being no absolute -- or of there being no immutable laws of being and no one to know them. For example, 

The transgender ideology is an attack on the idea that the world is intelligible. Instead, [it] is an affirmation of the opposite idea, namely that the world has no objective existence. Instead, things are what we SAY they are. If we say that a girl is a boy, then she’s a boy. And if we say that an unborn baby is not human, then it’s not human; and if we say that same-sex marriage is perfectly natural, then it’s perfectly natural.

In short, "reality" is a projection of the inside out instead of a reception of the outside in, and therefore no reality at all. It places the Principle of Delusion at the foundation of its metaphysic, for if extra-mental reality -- intelligible being -- exists, it is the end of the left. 

Truly truly, this is an existential and even ontological struggle for the left, from which only one side can emerge victorious: progressivism (in all its nasty guises) or reality. 

But who defends reality and its immutable laws? Know them by their enemies:

the ultimate aim of present-day progressivism is the ruination of Christianity, Catholicism in particular.... Underlying Christianity are two fundamental beliefs expressed in the first article of the Nicene Creed: (a) the belief that God exists, and (b) the belief that God created an intelligible world that can be understood, at least in part, by the human mind (https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/06/23/teenaged-girls-in-progressive-america/?mc_cid=6e0a85fcdd&mc_eid=c604663a22).

In the exact degree to which these principles are not respected, "the intellect suffers and dies, as we see in positivism and Kantianism (Garrigou-Lagrange). 

Indeed, this denial -- if consistently followed to its inevitable conclusions -- is an absolute fustercluck for intellect, for if it is the case that the intellect is not conformed to reality, then 

we would be left to suppress all language, every essence (or substance), and indeed, every distinction between things.... 

[S]uch a denial would lead us to destroy every form of truth, indeed even every form of opinion, all the degrees of probability, and all those of error. No longer would there be any difference between a great error and a small one. Consequently, we would also in this way be led to suppress every form of desire and action. Thus, we would not only be faced with the death of the intellect but, moreover, with the death of action in all its domains.

Now, there are two kinds of people: those who absolutely understand and agree with this passage, and those who are absolute idiots. 

Notice too how this mirrors a famous crack by St. Thomas to the effect that a small error at the beginning of one's metaphysic results in ginormous errors at the end -- or, in Petey's pithy phraseology, garbage in, tenure out.  

Knowledge comes down to the question of Is or Is Not. But if the very first act of knowledge is to sever its link to what Is -- AKA reality -- then the mind is forever enclosed in its own knowledge of other knowledge, never of reality.  

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there, because while questions of Is and Is Not are off the menu, this leaves the field open for the more critical question of Who and Whom, i.e., power. Progressives may have no idea what is what, but they have no doubt whatsoever as to who's in charge. Their vindictive credo is There's no reality, and we create it. Or else. Very much like God, only divested of truth, beauty, virtue, justice, and mercy.

Charlie Don't Surf

Are there immutable laws of being?

It's an interesting question, because we know there are scientific laws, but being as such is not the object of science, rather, being under this or that aspect. Being as such is more general than the restricted being explored by this or that particular science.

One of my hobbies is to sit around and apply pure thought to being, and see what I can come up with. Surf on the waves of being.

So, you're not just lazy?

I didn't say that. I can engage in two forms of nondoodling at the same time, i.e., multislack.

In this case, I like to dive into the now and reflect upon the sheer existence of it all, with no preconceptions, just to see how far I can get. Careful, there's a beverage here!

After all, being is intelligible, or we couldn't know anything about anything -- which is identical to knowing nothing about everything. But since being is intelligible, just how much can we know about being qua being, using only the tool of intelligence as such?

It's the difference between, say, studying the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of water, and diving into the ocean. Knowing that water is H2O, or that it freezes at 32º, or that it seeks its own level, will all be rather beside the point. 

Let's say the ocean is to being as surfing is to knowing. I suppose the first question to sort out is whether the ocean is really real -- whether there is an extra-mental body of water -- or whether it's just a projection of some intracranial transcendental Kantian category.

Hmm. I'm going to go with the former, since I'm literally all wet, whereas Kant is only figuratively so. Yes, I could pretend that I am immersed in phenomena, and that I can't really say anything about the the nature of water itself. 

Likewise, I could could console myself with the certitude that the principle of causality is only in my head, and thus safely ignore the causes of drowning. Tell that to those poor submariners at the bottom of the ocean. 

I say the ocean of being is real -- in other words, not just projection of my own neurology. This is in accordance with the traditional (i.e., pre-Kantian) definition of truth, which is the conformity of our mind or judgment with extra-mental reality. Indeed, to say "reality" is to say "extra-mental," for what is the alternative? That reality is all in my head?

Yes, that is actually the alternative, although you will have noticed that it shatters into a billion pieces, since it means that literally every human being resides in his or her own truth; that perception is reality, and that we can all relax in the comfort and safety of our own delusions.

If that's the case, why do progressives choose such unpleasant delusions? For example, for the last five years Greta Thunberg has been laboring under the terrifying delusion that the world (curiously, not just her world) would end exactly yesterday. 

Now, you'd think she'd at least be relieved, but what are the chances? No, she'll just recalibrate the delusion. 

So, it turns out that Kant is correct, but only about crazy people, who do indeed inhabit a world of projected appearances, utterly oblivious to the underlying reality. 

To put it another way, they live in their own models of the world, and if there is a disparity between model and world, it's the world that's wrong, certainly not the model (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/is-there-a-penalty-for-wrong-predictions.php).

Unfortunately, in the binary choice between Reality and My Reality, Reality already lost. Moreover, there's a name for people who cling -- whether naively or maliciously -- to Reality: fascists, deplorables, and MAGA extremists, et al:

today we live in a time when even human biology is a social construct, such that people can change their gender simply by saying so. I’ve started calling our time “the Age of Proprietary Truth,” in which people believe they can have their private “truth” that should be just as binding on the rest of us as the truth of gravity. 

So a commonplace phrase today is “my truth,” or “living my truth,” which ranks up alongside other progressive cliches such as “the right side of History,” as though History was self-conscious, and... its consciousness happens to coincide with whatever the Democratic Party platform is at the moment (https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/06/the-age-of-proprietary-truth.php). 

Such a view no doubt feels "liberating," and yet, it is precisely the mechanics of the Matrix -- of how one ends up living in an oppressive delusion.

Conversely, our point of departure is 1) that there is an extra-mental reality, and 2) that we can obtain genuine knowledge of it. Or that there is an ocean and that we can learn how to surf. Or just say civilization.

In other words, knowledge, to the extent that it is knowledge and not something less, is knowledge of being; we are not enclosed in our own private Idaho, or sealed in tenure, but always -- this touching on the very nature of the human station and the privileges flowing therefrom -- able to transcend what would otherwise be a vicious circle of progressive sophistry.  

No, we didn't get far this morning, but then again, our principles may be few in number but they are great in reach, so much so that they ultimately reach all the way up to God. 

Cosmic Bridge Repair

FYI, the following cogitations -- pneumatations? -- were provoked by a chapter called The Analogy of Truth, in the book The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie. 

I'm pneumatating on it because it provoked more thoughts than I could follow up on or digest at the time. I suppose I was struck by certain language that is reminiscent of Schuon, but from an unlikely source, Garrigou-Lagrange, a strict, no-nonsense Thomist.  

For example, "Only the Divine Truth is perfect, 'absolutely absolute.'" That sounds very much like Schuon, right down to the capitalized terms. "All other truths are complex and deficient," i.e., number two or lower. These latter 

imitate the simple truth, but in their multiplicity, they cannot equal it. They are, in a word, truths that are analogous to the First Truth (italics in original).

This means that we could add up all the lesser truths -- and there is a virtual infinitude of them -- but their sum would not equal this First Truth, i.e., the Absolutely Absolute. 

Hmm. Perhaps this has something to do with Infinitude, which must be the first entailment of the Absolute. 

just as the multiplicity of creatures imitates the simplicity of the Divine Infinite without any of these fragmentary images on its own... being able to claim that it is the perfect image, so too the multiplicity of truths imitates the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth, which infinitely surpasses each of these truths. 

In other words, none of the "fruits" of infinitude -- nor their sum -- add up to the transcendent Absolute; each is a kind of fractal image that may be situated somewhere along the vertical flowchart, which is to say, the more or less Perfect. But -- obviously -- all earthly perfections don't add up to Perfection as such, for they are at once mirrors and shadows of the Perfect. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more perfect -- idea of how all this perfection exists down here.

So, -- and this is Bob speaking -- every truth is an imitation of the Simple, Infinite, Eternal Truth that infinitely surpasses it, with this difference: man alone has the (vertical) freedom to consciously participate in -- which is to say, move toward or away from -- this Eternally Perfect Truth. 

Unless you have a better -- which is to say, more veridical -- idea of how all this truth exists down here.

Just as creation is the nexus between time and eternity, man is the bridge. But at some point in mythic timelessness there was some sort of ontological bridge collapse. Nor does man have the know-how or be-who to repair the bridge, meaning that the reclamation project has to be undertaken from God's end.  

In a way, History is the history of man's various attempts to repair the bridge, but -- you will have gnosissed -- these are always bridges to nowhere, since no tower is tall enough to reach the Absolute, nor any amount of babbling equal to Infinitude. The best human system will never be the best possible system, and besides, Gödel.

Speaking of whom, Gödel did not take this to mean that we are thereby condemned to relativism; rather, to the contrary: that man has access to truths that he cannot prove. 

For example -- Bob speaking -- intelligence as such has access to the Absolute, whether explicitly or implicitly. Again, any truth is anchored in the Truth as such that is its principle.

I can explain that, but I'm going to let Bina and Ziarani handle it. They begin with the question, "how do we know if anything is true?" Notice that the question presupposes the existence of the very thing it wants to prove, truth. Is there any way around this "faith" in truth?

We could say, for example, that the truth is "logical," but who says logic is true? Certainly not Gödel, since logic is tautological, nor is our selection of premises dictated by any logical operation. And besides, how does logic get here, and how is it that man has unique access to it? 

Does sense experience give access to truth? No doubt, except to say that empiricism itself is not an empirically verifiable belief system, nor is any belief system.

There's no way around it:

before we can begin to look for the criterion of truth, we have to ascertain that there is such a thing as truth. 

And "unless one accepts that there is indeed such a thing, nothing holds: remove truth, and everything collapses."

Everything? Yes, vertically speaking there is a total collapse. Of that Bridge referenced above. Truly truly, nothing holds, and it holds nothing.

Not only does one have "to assume that there is such a thing as truth before one presents any reasoning," but one must also assume that it can be symbolically formulated and communicated to other minds, and this presumes a cosmos so peculiar that it would take some kind of soph-styled meta-poet to even attempt a description. Petey once took a stab at it, and only his absence of a body saves him from the Eternal blush and Absolute cringe:

Brahmasmi the Truth. The whole Truth. Nothing but the Truth. So ham, me God. We'll meet again. Up ahead, 'round the bend. The circle unbroken, by and by. A Divine child, a godsend, a bloomin' yes.

Hard to say, but I think what this big apophat-head is trying to say is that this divine child was sent here on a mission to repair the bridge, or something.

Clearing the Space Weeds & Time Junk from In & Around Your Headhouse

In the previous post we alluded to the principle that creation is the nexus between time and eternity; or creation is the principle that unifies them. At the same time, we might say that Intellect is the principle that unites intelligence to supraformal realities.

Backing up a bit (or coming down a couple of rungs), everyday garden-variety human intelligence accomplishes what exactly? It is the conformity of mind to reality, which results in knowledge of being, AKA a true judgment that something is. If knowledge can't even know that, then to hell with it.

But there are levels of being, whether you want to call them depths or heights. Let's say that science deals with the depths, penetrating from one level to another in search of the principles that account for appearances. 

As for the heights, these are the supraformal realities situated above the formal and material. Again, you could say there are only two degrees -- Creator and creation -- and that's technically true, but in positing such an impoverished model of reality, you're going to miss a lot of stuff in between. 

What? Where are we? Oh, we're still dabbling with the vertical flowchart. At the moment I'm just flipping through The Philosophy of Science in the Light of the Perennial Wisdom by Bina and Ziarani -- that and an essay by Schuon called The Five Divine Presences, seeing if we can nail down some of the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of our flowchart. We'll just see where it leads and hope for the best.

From our perspective,

the Divine Principle is hidden behind a number of envelopes, the first of which is matter. Matter presents itself as the outermost sheath, the shell or crust, of that invisible Universe whose main features are made known to us by both the Intellect and Revelation (Schuon).

The most remarkable thing about matter is undoubtedly its interiority and intelligibility. Over and above its sheer isness is the fact that it speaks to us. 

Of what? Of a lot of things, but in this case I'm thinking of form. Always and everywhere matter transmits invisible forms to our intelligence, and that is flat strange. And yet, it is so commonplace that even babies do it.  

Now, while it looks like we are surrounded by matter, this is not, and cannot be, the whole story. What I mean is that you can't really be enclosed in something that is totally transparent, or rather... how to put it... To the extent that we are enclosed, it's more like a house made entirely of glass. Yes, our head is a glass house.

But even then, that's an inadequate image, since there's a constant two-way flow between what's inside and outside your headhouse. Look out at the world and what do you see? Whatever it is, it is never formless matter, rather, forms everywhere -- trees, rocks, water, birds, chairs, a basketball hoop... weeds... 

Weeds are an interesting case, because they have a kind or moral and aesthetic connotation; they're there, but they're not supposed to be there. Sez who? Not the weeds, that's for sure. They're like the "homeless." Of course they have a home. It's just not where we want it to be.

I also see a big container of Round-Up. I suppose it's like the sherriff, or maybe the art critic. It promises to eliminate the unwanted forms from the scene. It stands there like a threat to the weeds, but the weeds aren't frightened, so it's a stand-off

Speaking of unwanted forms, now that I'm looking, I also see dirt on the window. Yes, I'm lazy, but it's more that I normally just don't notice it. The window is a form, but I don't typically look at this form, rather, through it. 

The point is, we are at once surrounded, but by a totally transparent material world, which is actively trans-lucent in two direction, toward us and vice versa. 

In a way, there are no strict nouns anywhere, since the nouns speak their way into our heads, and then they take on a new mode of existence inside us -- which is what knowledge is. 

In reality, however, it is the Principle that envelops everything; the material world is only an infinitesimal and eminently contingent content of this invisible Universe (Schuon). 

Above it was suggested that the earth circles the sun. But if I am not mistaken, they actually circle each other, or rather, the entire solar system is circling around its own axis, but that's not all, because our galaxy circles around another axis, on up to various superclusters and whatever comes after that. If there's a still point of the turning world, it is reflected in us. But we can't be it's ground, source, and principle.

Yesterday I was thinking about the two hands in Michelangelo's painting in the Sistine Chapel, of Adam and God. It was an Important Thought, but now I can't remember what it was.... something to do with that space in between and how it is everything, or rather, the relation between is everything...

Oh well. It will come to me. Just not in this post.

Starting from the material world that is in principle knowable to our senses, we perceive the first state of being, that is, the material state that surrounds us, encompassing the entire system of galaxies, however inaccessible to us they may be in fact. To some, this state represents all that is (Bina & Ziarani).

Sad! But even on its fact this is inadequate model, because a galaxy is an immaterial concept we can think about. 

Say, are there weeds in outer space? Things that are there but shouldn't be? There are now. 

Below, "A computer-generated image representing the locations of space debris as seen from high Earth orbit (HEO). The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit":

What about time junk? Or are we it? It depends, I guess.

Lookin' Under God's Hood

Way up at the toppermyst of the vertical flowchart there is Absolute reality, Infinite possibility, and Perfect quality. If that's the case, then what are we doing here? How did we get here?

Easy: Infinitude "projects the Principle into Relativity, and thus produces the metacosmic 'space,'" or what we've been calling the vertical flowchart. 

Being that there is no relativity "prior" to the projection (since it must be coeternal), I suppose we could say that relativity is this projection (and vice versa). To paraphrase el Grande Aphoristo, this creative projection is the nexus between time and eternity.

But there are two ways of looking at it, from our perspective and from God's perspective -- the latter only being a "perspective" by way of analogy, since it excludes nothing, in the same way a sphere contains every possible circle.  

Beginning with God's POV, Schuon describes it thus:

The Absolute is infinite; therefore it radiates, and in radiating it projects itself; the content of this projection being the Good.... This is the very foundation of what Christian doctrine terms the Hypostases.

Oh? Say more. 

In projecting the Absolute, Infinitude "thus produces the image," this being the Logos; it is like a "refraction of the Light which is in itself undivided." 

The Absolute is necessary being, AKA that which must be and cannot not be. 

However, its first and intrinsic entailment is Infinitude, and this is where we come in: we always partake of both, since we exist (which is to say, participate in Absolute Being), but always "more or less," since there is the potential that is the shadow of our participation in Infinitude; and "progress" is movement toward the Good, or a round trip back to Perfection. At any rate, it's a trip. 

In this way we are analogous to God, in that we too are made of Absoluteness and Infinitude. I suppose we could reason up from this existential fact to the Principle, or from the Principle down to us. Either way, at least it gives us a way to think about our situation. Or something to argue about.

But our predicament is a bit more complex than this bipolarity suggests, since there are degrees of being, like concentric circles around an infinite point. 

Again, there is the material world that answers to our senses, and the formal to which the mind is an adequation. 

The latter is immaterial -- for example, the concept of a circle, a tree, or a dog. Every material tree we will ever encounter is unique, and yet, we spontaneously discern the subtle concept beneath the gross matter perceived by the senses.

Which means that the world is "transparent" or "translucent," or something, for every form is like a window into the essence. 

Imagine what the world would be like in the absence of this interiority. You can't, because you would have to eliminate the interiority at both ends, i.e., intelligibility and intelligence, the two being mirror reflections of one another. Such a cosmos is literally inconceivable. Especially for God, who is the very principle of Intelligence.

Here you can appreciate all the trouble Kant -- and prior to him, nominalism -- landed us in, because he collapses the world of intelligibility and form into the ego, as if the world is just a projection of our own concepts, instead of a discernment of these immaterial forms in extra-mental reality.

And now it occurs to me that Kant's conceptualization only confuses man with God, for it is God -- as outlined above -- who projects and radiates ideas, forms, and archetypes into the world, not us (pathological projection notwithstanding, but that's a different post). 

Rather, the forms were all here before we arrived on the scene, and will still exist after we're gone. 2 + 2 will always = 4, and more generally, truth will always be true irrespective of whether anyone believes it. More generally, Being is intelligible, and that's my final answer.

Are there people who think there were no laws of physics before the emergence of man? Probably, since there is no idea so stupid that it hasn't been promulgated by some tenured primate. 

A more interesting question is whether the cosmos was beautiful before we got here. I say yes, because I'm just not that creative, except maybe in my dreams. I also say it was good, but of course, God said that before I did.

Oh, I guess there will be no post tomorrow, since they tell me there will be no electricity from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Speaking of which, I don't know if you heard it here first, but Brandon won't make it to 2024 for one reason or another (i.e., health or scandal), so get ready for President Newsom. He'll save the world, one blackout at a time.

Absolute Convergence

So: Absolute reality, Infinite possibility, Perfect quality; these are at the top of the cosmic flow chart, and are of the same substance, each contained virtually in the others. 

Now, in Trinitarian thought, there is the idea of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, the former dealing with God's relations vis-a-vis Godself -- thus technically none of our isness -- the latter touching on God's activity herebelow in creation and history, so, very much at the heart of all this bipedal monkey isness.

Is there some way to reconcile Schuon's description in paragraph one with orthodox Christianity? Indeed, could they be two ways of talking about the same divine reality? 

I'm always inclined to say Yes to the latter, even though there are real theologians who would say that this is a no-go zone, the reason being that God provides us with a revelation precisely because it is beyond anything we could ever wrap our minds around. 

But I'm not trying to wrap my mind around it per se; rather, I fully respect the apophaticity of the Godhead, and in either case the words are just pointers to what cannot be grasped. Dogmatic formulations are important, but they're not walls, they're windows. Maybe not totally transparent windows but neither are they opaque.

I even wonder if Pure Intellection converges upon what it is these formulations point to. Analogously, think of how biological evolution is said to be convergent in important ways. 

For example, I read somewhere that it has evolved the eye as many as 40 separate times, suggesting to me that natural selection really likes eyeballs (and vision), and that outward eyes must be a consequence of an inward, nonlocal form, morphogenetic field, or attractor in evolutionary phase space.

Irrespective of whether such archetypes guide the biosphere, there is no doubt that they exist in the vertical space of the pneumosphere; it's just another way of saying that human nature exists (it is an essence) and is one. In our day, affirming an essential human nature has become controversial, if not fascist, but that's human nature for you.

If there is a vertical convergence toward various nonlocal archetypes, then we should see evidence of it in anthropology, and indeed we do. I hold in my hands The Book Of Absolutes, by William Gairdner, which describes the multitude of ways we are alike because we share the same human essence (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Absolutes-Critique-Relativism-Universals/dp/077353413X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1BMRSNLJM40IE&keywords=William+Gairdner&qid=1687022162&s=books&sprefix=william+gairdner%2Cstripbooks%2C163&sr=1-2 ).     

I lied. I don't hold it in my hands. It's over there in the bookcase, and I'm too lazy to pull it out. Rather, I'm going to let an amazon reviewer handle it while I lean back and sip coffee. Surely they can't all be idiots.

Relativism is a particularly modern disease that has come to infect many aspects of life and thought in the modern world, especially and increasingly over the past hundred years. Gairdner makes a strong and persuasive case for the existence of absolutes or universal truths and constants by examination of ancient and modern evidence in many areas of human life and cultures, nature, physics, mathematics, cosmology, biology, sexuality, morals, natural law, and language. 

His central thesis is that "all of nature, all human experience, cultures, moral systems, and all sciences, from the softest to the hardest -- while they are repositories of sometimes countless differences... are characterized by the existence of a very large number of absolutes without which the subjects themselves could not be meaningfully discussed in the first place" 

Some fine insultainment here, meaning that Cousin Dupree can also take the morning off:

Gairdner trains his sights on the philosophy of relativism, the intellectual (more accurately, anti-intellectual) matrix out of which many of the most malodorous orthodoxies of the day have arisen. The palaver of relativism (epistemological, moral, cultural) can now be heard practically everywhere, from the public square to the private cocktail party. Everyone knows that truth and right, like beauty, exist "only in the eye of the beholder." (That there is no absolute truth is the only truth we dare to affirm with absolute certitude.)

Moreover, any acknowledgment of absolutes of right and wrong, or of innate and immutable factors within our universal human nature, all too inconveniently limits our choices and desires. It is not surprising, then, that relativism has been given such a free ride.

Along the way, Gairdner exposes the grossly political motivation behind the research of such pioneers of the new "science" of anthropology as Franz Boas, and the risible myths of primitive innocence confabulated by the likes of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. And we learn that Einstein, though popularly supposed to have proven that "everything in the universe is relative," was persuaded that he had only demonstrated the universal and objectively knowable constants of nature. It is a little known irony that Einstein came to bitterly resent the misappropriation of his work by the demagogues of moral and cultural relativism.

The main burden of Gairdner's book is, more happily, to show that there exist, in fact, any number of demonstrable universal and abiding patterns, ideas, and truths that transcend and unify all historical epochs and cultures across the world: in mathematics, theology, myth, morality, and law; and that current studies in biology, psychology, and theoretical physics are uncovering new constants of human and physical nature every day.

So there. I guess what I'm saying is that if ultimate reality is in fact trinitarian, we should actually see hints of it everywhere, even if it is something we could never know with certitude in the absence of revelation. 

And now for a sudden left turn, or knight (night) move: we've suggested before that Absolute is to Male as Infinitude is to Female, such that our biological dimorphism is ultimately anchored in the nature of things. With this in mind, check out Joyce's ode to cosmic femininity:

In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!

Infinitude is the "bringer of pluralities," i.e., of mayaplicity and diversity. 

Her untitled mamafesta memorializing the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times.

Thus, a multitude of books, a "polyhedron of scripture" describing one Absolute reality. For Campbell & Robinson, her memorial to the mosthighest is the cosmos itself, while her memorial letter, her mamafesta to the Absolute, is the world's various scriptures: "Though it seems a more scribble to the ignorant reader, to the hardy student" it reveals

a multiplicity of coalescing personalities who merge, their contrarieties eliminated, into one stable somebody.

That's about it this morning. Goodnight and pleasant dreams!

On the Three Who Is and the He Who Are

I was looking around for Schuon's most concise description of the cosmic flowchart, and it appears to be in an essay called Dimensions, Modes and Degrees of the Divine Order. There's even a condensed version of it in The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schuon --  only eight pages to describe the whole existentialada!

In fact, it can be further condensed into a single sentence:

The idea that the Supreme Principle is both Absolute Reality and, for that very reason, Infinite Possibility, can suffice unto itself, for it contains everything, notably the necessity for a universal Manifestation.

Not the necessity for this manifestation, of course, but for a Manifestivus within the Godhead itself, which we call the Second Person of the Trinity. 

Perhaps it isn't kosher to think of the latter this way, but it's how I'm built, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Might as well try to convince me that E ain't mc² or that pie aren't round.

Absolute Reality and Infinite Possibility. Wait, that's only two. Is there room in there for a third Principle or Person, or is that too crowded?

we may envisage a third hypostatic element, namely the Perfect Quality; being the Absolute, the Principle is thereby the Infinite and the Perfect. Absoluteness of the Real, infinitude of the Possible, perfection of the Good; these are the "initial dimensions" of the Divine Order.

I have questions. First, can this abstract account be harmonized with a properly Christian metaphysic, second, is there such a thing as a "Christian metaphysic" over and apart from Christian revelation, and third, is faith in this revelation "higher" than knowledge and understanding of the metaphysics?

I ask the latter question in particular because in the traditional view, faith is ordered to God's revelation of himself, such that faith is said to be a kind of obscure pre-knowledge of its proper object, an object we can otherwise never apprehend short of the beatific vision, when all will be revealed. Until then, bestwecando is have faith in God's revelation.

Still, I wonder.... is this really the bestwecando? Supposing I want to go a little further. Is that wrong? Should I not do that? Is this sort of thing frowned upon? If so I gotta plead ignorance, because I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do it all the time.

I certainly mean no disrespect, I just think -- as I've said before -- that if God goes to all the trouble to reveal himself as Trinity -- and seriously, what trouble! I just read a book on the history of the early church, what with the martyrs and persecutions and catacombs.... Lotta blood, but at the same time, what did they know that we've forgotten? Must have been pretty earth-shattering. 

I'm thinking about the 34th pope, whoever he was. Why him? Because the first thirty three were martyred, so he must have been a pretty jittery guy, waiting for the other shoe to drop. At any rate,

the reader is struck by evidence of a courage so sublime that, viewed on the human plane alone, it places these tens of thousands of willing victims among the most outstanding heroes the world has ever known. As they faced death, all, from the most famous to the most humble, gave proof of a steadfastness of spirit and a tranquility which frequently aroused the admiration even of those who did not share the faith.

We're veering into a rather different post, my only point being all that trouble, and for what? For that little mustard seed?

What a small, insignificant thing this Church had been, on the day her Founder died the death of a common agitator on a bare hilltop.... Less than two hundred years after this date she existed everywhere.

Different post, dude.

Is it really, Petey? Is it really?

Yes it is. Now get back to the subject at hand.

Okay. We're thinking about the cosmic flowchart, and can't help but be struck by the threeness -- not fourness or twoness -- in Schuon's description:

Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect; for each divine mode participates by definition in the nature of the divine Substance and thus comprises absolute Reality, infinite Possibility, and perfect Quality.... being Absolute, these modes cannot not be, and being Infinite, they are inexhaustible; being Perfect, they lack nothing.

Okay then. According to God's own self-revelation, He is a hypostatic union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Is that it? 

I have questions. But I'm a getting little fuzzy with hypoglycemia, so we'll resume in the next post.

The More Weird Cannot Come from the Less Weird

Yesterday we spoke of the material world and the senses that conform to and reveal it. For a strict Thomist all knowledge begins in the senses, but for a lax one like me it begins at either end, with the miracle of subjectivity or with the miracle of objectivity. 

After all, every object or fact presumes a subject, and every subject an object (or objectivity, which is to say, distance and detachment between two terms).

Of course, if I begin in the subject, by no means is this referring to the closed Kantian ego, rather, to the vertically open subject (or self) that is ultimately a kind of prolongation of the metacosmic Subject. 

All subjects -- or rather subjectivity as such -- are intersubjective, just as all objects are "interobjective." By the latter, I am referring to the nonlocality by which, in the words of Whitehead,   

in a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus, every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world. 

Yes, weird, but weird enough? 

At any rate, if the objective world of physics is this weird, then surely the subjective world must be at least as weird, no?

What I mean is, subjectivity is without question the weirdest thing in all of creation, but to leave it at that is to posit a weird effect without a weirder cause; but how could the more weird ever emerge from the less weird? Call it a violation of Petey's Law.

I am permanently struck by Schuon's observation that 

The first ascertainment which should impose itself upon man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of that miracle that is intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- and consequently the incommensurability between these and material objects, be it a question of a grain of sand or of the sun, or of any creature whatever as an object of the senses

If the miracle of subjectivity or consciousness or intelligence is the first, what's the second ascertainment? Again, that would have to be the miracle of objectivity, intelligibility, or form (for we never encounter matter without form).

Now, all of the above surely is, but its isness isn't self-explanatory. Rather, it must be anchored in a principle that is its ultimate cause. 

In other words, every science, to the extent that it is one, is an investigation into causes; knowledge of anything is knowledge of causes, which is why theology used to be regarded as the queen of sciences, because it was an investigation into the First Cause, or even Cause of Causality.

It still is, except theology has been narrowed down and displaced into science, such that science itself is the crossdressing queen of its own theology, and that's just perverse -- literally an intellectual perversion, since any perversion involves a disruption of teleology, i.e., of the proper end of something.

Thus, just as human sexuality is ordered to its complementary other, human intelligence is ordered to Being. Detach it from Being, and what perversions result! Everything from Kantianism to Marxism to the Tyranny of Relativism and Sum of All Heresies more generally.

Really? The perverted and tyrannical Sum of All Heresies? 

Yes, because, just as there is such a thing as cosmic objectivity, there is (and must be) such a thing as cosmic perversion, which is (returning to our cosmic flowchart), a consequence of the very first decision in the tree, which is: Absolute. Or Relative. Pick one, but live with the consequences, entailments, and prolongations herebelow.

Or just say Genesis 3 All Over Again.

Summa Flowchartica

Reality is that which is, AKA Being. 

Now, we've all heard it said that reality is what exists even when we're not looking, but that's not quite right, since there are multiple states of being and corresponding degrees of knowing. We don't know math in the same way we know material objects, nor do we know God in the same way we do metaphysics.

This is not to reduce reality to our ways of knowing it, a la Kant. Rather, knowledge is still the conformity of mind to being, it's just that being has multiple degrees, and that's what our cosmic flowchart is all about: the degrees of being. 

There's a book by that name (The Degrees of Knowledge) by Jacques Maritain which I read back on 2002, way before I would have been capable of understanding it, and now I have to reread it. Look what you made me do!

Let's flip around for any insights into our cosmic flowchart. 

Every attempt at metaphysical synthesis, especially when it deals with the complex riches of knowledge and of the mind, must distinguish in order to unite.

Reality is not a jehovial blob of onederful blubber, but nor is it a scattered manifestivus of middling relativities hurtling higgledy-piggledy into sheer mayaplicity. And you can quote me on that.

Gosh. This pretty much describes the two extremes of the map we have in mind: "starting with the experience of the physicist and ending with the experience of the contemplative," and showing 

the organic diversity and essential compatibility of those zones of knowledge through which passes in its great movement in quest of being... 

And here's an important clue: it's ALIVE!

it is not a system, an artifact; it is a spiritual organism. Its inner connections are vital ties where each part exists by the existence of the whole. 

And you know me: this is because the Archetype of archetypes (i.e., Model of all models and modelers) is and must be the Trinity... or possibly the Trinity in an eternal dialectic with Beyond-Being, neither one being anterior, rather, just the way the Godhead roils. 

But we needn't worry about such deustinctions at this preluminary junkture. Rather, all will be clear in the beatific vision. After purgatory and all that. 

What? Yes, this life is the waiting room of purgatory, but some people blow off their appointment.

This book is too big. Let's get back to something more manageable, Philosophy of Science in Light of the Perennial Wisdom. After all, we just want a simple flowchart, not a Summa. 

Might I suggest a Summa Flowchartica?

That'll do. 

The point is, everybody's got one, whether they know it or not. In other words, we all have a map of reality, moreover, we generally won't see the things that aren't on the map, especially the higher and more subtle things. But also the lower and grosser ones. For example, no one will ever see a quark or 26-dimensional string. As alluded to a few posts back, some folks

may describe total reality as being one indivisible Unity. Some may divide it into two degrees: the Divine Order, and that of all that is created, namely, Creation. 

Or as Joyce says, "Somedivide and sumthelot but the tally turns round the same balifusion," and you can quote him on that. Come to think of it, "When a part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an allforabit."

In plain unglish, our flowchart must at once be petit but large enough to cover the whole meanderthalltale, if you are abcedminded to the allephbed of the cosmic playbook, what curios of signs. Can you rede its world? It is the same told of all.

That means everybody. Now,

Starting from the material world that is in principle knowable to our senses, we perceive the first state of being...

This world encompasses everything from planets, stars, galaxies, and the background radiation of the Big Bang at one end, to atomic and subatomic waves and particles at the other.

This vast thingdom is all just (just?!) a vast vibrating energy field, with (to reJoyce) movibles scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang, so wheenybeenyveenyteeny. And you can say that again!  

Everybody with me so far? Good, because it's about to get weird. 

To some, [the above] state represents all there is. We shall see, however, that this supposition radically falls short of adequacy.

Literally, because our flowchart must be an adequation to the whole existentialada, or rather, the whole dang cosmodilla, since Uncle Rico ate all our steak and the Chinaman stole our rug.

I was Lost But Now I'm... Confident There's a Search Party

I was reading a book yesterday that compared the ascending and descending (or analytic and synthetic, respectively) approaches of the cosmic flowchart to the mouth and watershed of a river. Imagine two explorers;

The first went to the mouth of the river, where it spread out in all its power.... he pointed out the exact position of the springs and ridgelines, measured the flow, and carefully noted the orientation of the streams.

The second fellow starts way downstream, "and no one can describe the misfortunes that awaited him":

Sometimes he followed a promising stream only to find himself interminably lost in the sand or in various caves, and other times he found himself in the middle of a nearby basin surrounded by the inconsistent flow of his river. He went this way and that, sometimes retracing his steps, across trails and dead-end paths, and his explorations were filled with endless hopes and disappointments.

Sad! But it gets worse, because not only did he not find his way to the source, he never returned and is still missing. An unconfirmed rumor spread that he had left an account of his discoveries in a bottle, found after a flood "in the wheat field of a peasant from Cairo."

Extending the metaphors in this allegorical tale, the first approach is pure metaphysics, the second science. Science, of course, can never rise to its source, and only looks foolish when it tries:

Without philosophy, the sciences do not know what they know. 

To put it another way, everything science knows is embedded in a larger metaphysical scheme that provides context and coherence, even a vision (whether explicit or implicit) of the whole.   

Now, knowledge of the watershed is not knowledge of the mouth, but nor is knowledge of the mouth knowledge of the watershed. 

Although the account of the first explorer is (in our metaphor) "absolute," there is considerable contingency between it and all the ins & outs, what-have-yous, and random strands of the terminal moraine below.

At the other end, what can one say via induction about ultimate reality from the presence of a creek or swamp? Not a whole lot, except to say that these are not self-explanatory; they didn't didn't get here by magic.

Nor is a map -- no matter how detailed -- of all the streams and creeks an ultimate explanation, since these are only parts of a larger system. And

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are the appendices of a magician's rule book.

At the same time, a doctrine that explains the lower with sole recourse to the higher is the absolute determinism of Mohammad or Calvin. Not very helpful, and possibly as fatal as the other guy's approach. Either way, you're gonna get lost in between.

The great In Between is the hard part, isn't it? I mean, empiricism is easy, and so too is metaphysics, at least if you have the knack for it. But empiricism is a flat and boring road, such that no empiricist is content to stay in his lane. Empiricism itself cannot be proven empirically, and

The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.     

It's like describing all the creeks below and then imagining reality as a giant creek. But how to explain the paddle and canoe? And canoeist? 

By the way, our little fable is taken from The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie: Concerning the Truth of Dogma and the Nature of Theology. It's a very "inside graceball" sort of book, so not a general recommendation. I've only just started it, but it looks to me like this dispute between strict Thomists and the more loosey-nousy nouvelle theologians is a bit like the up- and downstream approaches.

I don't think Thomas would ever do this, but it's not like you can deduce what you had for breakfast this morning from the metaphysical certitude of God, but nor can you ascend from the taste of breakfast to knowledge of the Absolute without a lot of vertical steps in between.

Which is why a watchword of our cosmic flowchart will be complementarity. We'll try to avoid getting lost in the clouds or stuck in the mud.

The Bob: Impudent Ass or Impertinent Clown?

I know: where's the complementarity principle when you need it?

But if we are to go boldly where no cosmic flowchart has gone before, it must "account for all that, in principle, is knowable to man," and "in such a way that [it] cannot be refuted by evidence" (BZ).  

A tall order no doubt, but then again, is it asking too much to be given a reliable map out of this desert bewilderness? All men look for it, it's just that most either pretend to have found it or give up early for an untroubled life of tenure, or of sensory and affective distraction. 

My feelings are not irrefutable -- sad! -- but this is something I strongly feel: that if we are created, then we are entitled to know why. This is not because I am an impudent and presumptuous ass, but because God presumably isn't. Of course he wants us to know what's going on. Why otherwise would he give us an intellect (not to mention other vertical courtesies, e.g., revelation)?

Every other sense and faculty has an object: colors for the eyes, sounds for ears, tastes for the tongue, nausea for the Tony Awards. Thus, being for the intellect; or intelligibility for the intelligence. 

Now, Christianity per se is not the map I have in mind at this early juncture. We need to draw a distinction between theology and metaphysics, just as we need to draw one between metaphysics and science. However, none of these can contradict the others: a map of California does not contradict a map of the U.S., nor a map of the U.S. the globe.

Unless you pretend California is the world, which is almost as stupid as pretending science is metaphysics or theology.

Here are a couple of allied aphorisms: on the one hand, -- and this will sound hyperbolic, but it's true -- 

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question,

and

Thought can avoid the idea of God as long as it limits itself to meditating on minor problems.

But while science doesn't answer any important questions, it assumes a host of them, for example, that reality (or Being) is, that it is intelligible, that the human intellect has unique access to this intelligible being, that the world is lawful, that knowledge is an adequation of mind to world, etc. 

As for why these are the case, science can't say, and simply beclowns itself when it tries. 

We are all for scientific law, so long as you don't attempt to enclose it in the Law! Otherwise you can expect a late-night knock on the door by Sheriff Gödel. 

As for the second aphorism, why not skip over the minor problems and instead start with the big ones, or even biggest? Who knows, maybe if we sort out the Big One, the little ones will solve themselves, or at least not be so annoying. 

Also, FWIW, ever since my mind came on line, I've always had this idea that people focus and obsess over trivial things so as to defend themselves from awareness of the elephant in the unconscious. This is just psychotherapy 101, except that I extend this idea to the upper vertical. 

In other words, just as there are a host of defense mechanisms to keep the demons at bay, there are a variety of means to keep God from bothering us. 

In fact, often the same mechanism does both, and I speak from personal experience, just as you and anyone with a bit of self-awareness will understand what I'm talking about from personal experience.   

Self-awareness. What a thing! Friend or enemy? Gift or curse? All we know is, it is here, and it is very much like the adequation of mind to world, except it reverses its gaze and looks at the interior world. And what does it find? 

For starters, a world. An intelligible world? Yes, but it's bit of a Jung-le, isn't it? Moss covered archetypes everywhere!

Some passages stick with you, and I wonder why? For example, this one, from a book called Man, the Measure of All Things, by Sri Krishna Prem:

From the beginning of time men have sought the solution to a three-faced mystery: the mystery of origins, the mystery of present being, and the mystery of destiny.

Check. This guy's been reading my mail!

Usually their search has been directed outwards amongst the data of sense experience; backwards into the apparent certainty of the accomplished past, forwards in speculation into the indeterminate future. 

Yes, I remember. Good times! 

Only very rarely some wise man seeking Deathlessness, with reversed gaze has seen the inner Self, the Self who is 'Lord of what has been and is to be.'

I'll have some of what he's smoking. Go on:

What has the Self, the mysterious root of human consciousness, got to do with cosmogony, an account of the origination of the material universe?

The Question of questions, and sometimes there is more Light in a good question than in any answer we could provide. This isn't one of them, for I wouldn't be blogging about this if there weren't a plausible answer -- you know, the one to which we are entitled. Unless we are just impudent and presumptuous asses.

To be continued. 

Degrees of Reality and Degrees in Unreality

The senses tell us what is (and is) right here & right now, although hearing certainly gives us a sense of the passage of time, especially music, which, as they say, is time made audible. 

But there is no knowledge per se at the level of the senses, since knowledge is immaterial and transcendent, i.e., vertical.  

Oh by the way, we're still working on the cosmic flowchart, starting this morning at the bottom, where science lives:

Modern science, by and large, ignores those phenomena which are not within the reach of man's sensory faculties (Bina & Ziarani, heretofore BZ). 

I don't know what's worse, when science stays in its lane because it insists there are no other lanes -- as if all of reality is some hick town with only one road passing through -- or when it changes lanes and pretends to be capable of a deeper metaphysic. 

What marvelous insolence any empirical verification has!

But science and material reality are distant effects of what is at the top of the metaphysical flowchart; it would be naive to invert this relationship of dependency, because science could never give an empirical proof of its own metaphysical assumptions.

To establish a scientific law is less satisfying that to discover evidence that destroys it.

If one is going to be logically consistent, to say I am a materialist is equivalent to saying I do not exist, and why would we pay attention to the opinions of someone who doesn't even have the courtesy to exist? First exist, then we'll talk.

The top of our flowchart is reserved for necessary principles that do not rely upon any other principles, and presuppose no prior truth.

A proposition is false when it obstructs truer propositions.

These propositions are in us by nature( i.e., they are self-evident), nor can we deny them without falling into absurdity -- for example, beginning the flow chart with the pseudo-principle that "there is no truth," which is false if true, thus violating the principle of noncontradiction. Sad!

Conversely, everything may be reduced to the principles in our cosmic flowchart, and if not, to hell with it. Our flowchart, whatever it turns out to be,

should be able to account for all beings in such a way that it cannot be refuted by evidence (BZ).

Note the whatever it turns out to be. Sounds like I'm presupposing the success of our quest, but it's true: I am certain the map exists, and that the search for it will bear fruit, even if I am not literally holding it in my hands. I know that if I take the time and trouble to draw the thing, it will be there.

Why so confident? 

Oh, just a feeling. 

Not an emotion, mind you. Rather, like walking along a plain and seeing a rising mountain way off in the distance. You can't make out any details, but you know it's there, obviously. 

Could it be a mirage? Hmm... If you're going to go in that direction, might as well ask, "could I be a mirage?"  

Could everything be an illusion?   

Nah, because then you would have the absolute certitude that everything is an illusion, and whence this certitude? How did it, of all things, get in here? There is just no way to get around the Absolute, even if you absolutely deny it.

The mountain is the Absolute. You may insist it's nothing, but

Nothingness is the shadow of God,

and shadows are a necessary consequence of the Light. Even absurdity presuppsoes the Intelligible.

So let's get on with the climb. Where's our purple sherpa?

Most philosophies are obstacles to avoid enroute but a few are mountain ranges that one is forced to cross.

Especially this one. By the way, a mountain is not a 45º degree wall staring us in the face, rather, more like a rising plain. Just keep walking toward it and before you know it, you're on it. Isn't this the common experience?

It reminds me of when I was studying psychology way down in grad school. There was a point at which I was no longer looking at it from down below, but inside and on top of it (not at the very top, but at least the foothills). The awarding of a Ph.D. is supposed to be a formal ceremony to signify that one has climbed this particular mountain, but...

But what if it means one has only internalized a certain map of the mountain? Worse yet, what if the map is totally detached from the actual mountain? Yes, it gets worse, because what if it is required that one pledge allegiance to a map that is not only unreal but cannot possibly be real?

Lucky for me, I graduated before that happened, but just barely. 

Back to the flowchart. Here is a helpful passage:

The notions of reality and being are interrelated. That is real which is, and that which is is thereby real. Therefore, to speak of reality is to speak of being, and vice versa.

Tautology, or hate crime?

The latter: for example, sex is no longer anchored in the reality of biological and scientific fact, rather, according to the American Psychological Association,

to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions and behaviors....

Some who do not identify as either male or female prefer the term “gender nonbinary” or “genderqueer.”

"Prefer," meaning You had better affirm my delusion, or no Ph.D. for you! I'm a little skeptical, but that's a hate crime too.