Engaging with the Limitless Horizon of Intelligibility

We left off with the idea that thinking is an engagement with "the limitless horizon of being and tending toward the fullness of being as fulfilling goal" -- in other words, that it is drawn by a telos, arrival at which would represent its complete fulfillment. 

Clarke goes on to say that "Man is an embodied affirmation of the Infinite," but it seems to me that this is a kind of mirror image of the teleological infinite described in the first paragraph; the latter is "convex," whereas ours is "concave," so to speak. Our concavity points, as it were, 

to the presence of something perfect, unconditional, and unrestricted within our consciousness that beckons us ahead of any imperfect and finite idea or ideal..., a "transcendent horizon" that can neither be described nor explained through any set of restricted, conditioned, or imperfect categories or realities (Spitzer). 

Recall yesterday's definition of man as a relational substance of a transrational nature. Well, this goes to the transrational part, for we -- Raccoons at any rate -- are "aware that particular (finite and conditioned) manifestations of reality do not exhaust the whole of reality; the whole of reality is much greater" (ibid.). 

Thus, "we must have at least a tacit awareness of what might be called a 'supercategory' of the whole of reality," which we like to call O for short. It is the source of our "pure unrestricted desire to know, that is, a desire to know all that is to be known (everything about everything)." 

And if we have an explicit desire to know it all, this implies a tacit recognition that all is knowable and just waiting to be discovered. Therefore, according to Spitzer,

When we arrive at an answer that is only partially intelligible, (that is, is not "everything about everything"), our desire is only partially satisfied, and we naturally ask a subsequent question of why it is so in our quest to achieve the fulfillment of our desire, namely, complete intelligibility (the knowledge of everything about everything). 

Again, the point is that awareness of partial intelligibility implies a tacit awareness of what complete intelligibility would constitute -- somewhat analogous to Aquinas' argument from gradation, that there is an implicit standard by which we measure degrees of perfection, in this case intellectual perfection. 

Given this strange situation, it's beginning to look like the complete intelligibility of the world might just result from an act of unrestricted thinking, but that's getting out ahead of our skis. However, it is as if

God shares His mind with us sufficient to engender a horizon of complete and unrestricted intelligibility, giving rise to every form of free intellectual inquiry and creativity. 

Of course Gödel is relevant here, because he provides ineluctable proof of our transrational nature. For example, he

shows that human creativity in mathematics cannot be explained from "below" -- from previous sets of rules and algorithms.... This means that human mathematical creativity must be explained from "above"...

Conversely, "Artificial intelligence has no consciousness of a horizon of greater intelligibility -- let alone a horizon of complete and unrestricted intelligibility," because "such a horizon can only be created by 'complete and unrestricted intelligibility itself.'" 

In short, we cannot create in a machine what we didn't create in ourselves, rather, "we are mere restricted beneficiaries of a capacity given to us by a truly unrestricted intelligence." 

All of this is very similar to yesterday's description of a teleological pull whereby our orientation "toward Infinite Being is a necessary a priori structure or condition of possibility of all our thinking." Which is to say we are oriented to, and drawn by, O.

This, according to Clarke, implies that

the dynamism of my intelligence does actually make ultimate sense, is not a radical absurdity, and hence must have some really existing final goal, since an existing dynamism without goal wold be unintelligible.

Nevertheless, "Man is the being who can affirm or deny his own rationality," therefore "free to assume his own rational nature as gift and follow its natural call to total fulfillment, or else to reject this call..." As we like to say, we are faced with a primordial choice between O and Ø.

I would say that O represents "the lodestar that draws my intelligence ever onward, even though this ultimate goal remains for me at present only obscurely discerned" but which "renders all else intelligible" (Clarke). 

Somewhat like the true light that gives light to everything else.

Man is a Relational Substance of a Transrational Nature

Boetius famously defined the human being as an individual substance of a rational nature, and maybe that's the problem. Not to blame Boetius, because no one cares what philosophers think, but if you don't even know what something is, then it's hard to know what to do about it. 

In any event, turns out that man is -- how did you put it to me this morning, Petey?

A relational substance of a transrational nature. 

Bingo. We're not only relational in the manner of other social animals, but intersubjectively so, to such an extent that an externally related individual human is an unthinkable contradiction. 

Rather, we inhabit an interpersonal world of mutual awareness of thoughts, feelings, and intentions, which goes beyond simply observing the other's outward behavior, rather, grasping their inner experience. Ultimately, like the Trinity, we are members of one another.

Which is flat out weird. We take it for granted because it's the water in which we swim, but we notice it when it glitches. For example, autism involves some kind of deficit in intersubjectivity. In fact, in extreme cases, an autistic person might well be "an individual substance of a rational nature," and that's the problem, i.e., being cut off from others and living in a kind of rationalistic skeleton of a universe.

As to our "transrational nature," this is -- ironically -- proven by our rational nature. In other words, we are rational but not enclosed (or encloseable) by reason, for reasons articulated by Gödel. Man is the being who employs reason while transcending reason. As explained a couple of posts ago, Gödel's theorems

shattered the hope of completely formalizing mathematics, showing that there will always be truths beyond the reach of any formal system.... Formal systems, which are purely syntactic, cannot capture the full richness of meaning. Semantics, or the meaning of things, cannot be reduced to syntax, or the formal structure of things. Human minds seem to have the capacity to grasp meaning and understand context in ways that formal systems cannot.

So, we always transcend the formal systems we use to understand both ourselves and the world. 

Now, how did this happen? Who goofed? For as Terence McKenna said, this was a nice neighborhood until the monkeys got out of control. 

In other words, all other animals are bound by instinct, so they can only cause so much damage. But humans, because they found a way to transcend biology, can cause an infinite amount of mischief. I don't know if we can literally "destroy the planet," as liberals like to say, but we can try.

Top of the world, Ma!

Interestingly, if you've seen the noir classic White Heat, it's all about a psychopathic criminal (Jody Jarrett) with a deranged attachment to his criminal mother. It even has a scene that perversely mirrors the pieta, when Jody has one of his "spells" and only his mother can sooth him.

Anyway, man's daring escape from his genetic programming is either Nature's Greatest Goof or some kind of plan. If it's a plan, then it involves a being intended to be the image and likeness of his creator. And if there's a goof, then I wonder if Genesis 3 is an attempt to tell the story of what went -- and goes -- wrong with the plan? 

For clearly, man is a special creation, over and apart from everything else in creation. Irrespective of whether or not you accept the biblical account, I call this a blindingly obvious, self-evident fact: we are astonishingly different from everything else in all of creation. Who could deny it, when denial only constitutes more proof? 

I mean, my dog can neither deny nor affirm her dogginess. Rather, she's a dog, and that's all there is to it. In order for her to observe her dogginess, she'd have to be able to transcend and reflect upon it. Which she cannot do, for she is entirely enclosed in instinct.

Equally self-evident is that this transcendent capacity of ours cuts both ways. Or maybe you've never cracked a history book. The point is, supposing we can know truth, then this entails a capacity to embrace falsehood, illusion, and unreality. In short, we are free. Likewise, if we can love the good we can can also love the bad or hate the good. 

Now, freedom itself implies God. It's one of the capacities that is entailed in being the image and likeness of the Creator. God is the very principle of freedom, and in the absence of God, our own freedom is like a floating chandelier attached to nothing. In the words of Stanley Jaki,

far more grippingly than one's immediate grasp of reality does one's registering of the reality of one's free will bring one face to face with that realm of metaphysical reality which hangs in mid-air unless suspended from that Ultimate Reality, best called God, the Creator. 

Now, the human station does, as it were, float in mid-air, suspended between immanence and transcendence. This is the "space" of freedom, and it is even a kind of phase space, which is to say, a multidimensional space where every possible state of the system may be mapped; it is essentially a map of the possible states of a complex system. 

Now, people are constrained by a particular phase space. For example, my phase space does not include the possibility of playing basketball like Michael Jordan, but his phase space probably doesn't include the possibility of being a metaphysical Raccoon. Things that are possible for some are impossible for others, so our freedom is obviously not totally unconstrained. But it takes all kinds to make a world.

Our potential is not literally infinite, but then again, we all have a "capacity for the infinite," which is to say, the God to whom we are ultimately conformed, at least in potential. God is indeed the strange attractor of our phase space, and we are restless until we rest in that attractor. 

According to our friend Gemini, the phase space of complex systems includes:

Equilibrium points (fixed points): States where the system remains unchanged over time. 

Limit cycles: Periodic behaviors where the system repeatedly cycles through a set of states.   

Attractors: Regions in phase space towards which trajectories tend to converge, representing the long-term behavior of the system. These can be points, cycles, or more complex structures called strange attractors (in chaotic systems).    

Repellors: Regions from which trajectories move away.    

Stability: Whether the system returns to an equilibrium point after a small perturbation. 

Bifurcations: Qualitative changes in the system's behavior as parameters are varied, often visualized as changes in the structure of the phase space.

I'm particularly interested in attractors and repellors, in particular, if we are attracted to the wrong things and repelled by the right ones. Equilibrium and stability can also be problematic, since man is a vertically open system, so these imply a kind of closure to the vertical energies that sustain the system and keep it on the move. 

Bifurcation is interesting, because it reminds me of religious conversion, or metanoia, in which we explicitly open ourselves to those energies that flow from the transcendent side of things. In so doing, we bifurcate from one type of system to another -- from being horizontally enclosed to vertically open.

Note in this regard that it is possible for a nominally religious person to enclose himself in dogma, but not be truly open to the vertical energies that we do not control.

Which all reminds me of how Norris Clarke describes our situation herebelow. For example,

we have not really taken full possession of our own inner dynamism of inquiry until we keep penetrating to its profoundest depths and suddenly become aware in a kind of epiphany of self-discovery [a bifurcation] precisely that its very nature is to be an inexhaustible abyss that can comprehend and leap beyond any finite or series of finites...

In other words, we are always transcending toward infinitude. On the one hand, this could be 

an existential absurdity, ordered ineluctably toward a simply non-existent goal, magnetized, so to speak, by the abyss of nothingness, of what is not and can never be -- a dynamism doomed eternally to temporary gratification but permanent unfulfillment.

In other words, an endless limit cycle in which the system repeatedly cycles through a set of finite states. Or, it could be that the system is 

drawn, magnetized toward an actually existing, totally fulfilling goal, which confers upon it total and magnificent meaningfulness and opens out before it a destiny filled with inexhaustible light and hope. On the one hand, the darkness of ultimate nothingness of what can never be; on the other, the fullness of ultimate Light, which already awaits our coming. 

Of course I prefer Door #2, but is there any rational basis for believing it exists? Well, I agree with Clarke that

the structure of human thought as oriented toward Infinite Being is a necessary a priori structure or condition of possibility of all our thinking. We cannot help, if we think at all, living in the limitless horizon of being and tending toward the fullness of being as fulfilling goal. 

In short, "Man is an embodied affirmation of the Infinite," and with that we'll pause for now, because we've covered a lot of ground but still only scratched the surface of the existential itch. 

The Word Became Flesh and the Noun Became Verb

I remember an interview with the great Ted Williams in which he expressed his disdain for pitchers, calling them "baseballically" stupid. With one neat trick -- appending the -ally -- he converted a noun into an adverb. 

The question is, do nouns actually exist in reality, or are they essentially a linguistic convention that makes thinking and communication possible? If we're going to be literal, everything is in motion, certainly at the subatomic level that science presumes to be most real. If we consider that buzzing hive of energy, it's a wonder that nouns exist at all. 

How do they exist? In the past I've used the analogy of a cloud in the sky, which looks like a "thing" but is actually the end result of an infinitely complex global system of weather. Moreover, if you were to try to examine the cloud more closely, its borders would gradually dissolve before disappearing entirely, and you'd be inside a fog.

Stanley Jaki says all words are like this: from a distance they have sharp outlines, but  examine them closely and they too become blurry. What is anything in the absence of its relation to everything else? For example, a single word soon enough implies the whole dictionary. In other words, look up the meaning of a word, and then you have to look up the meaning of those words, ad nauseam.

Anything is everything? That sounds like relativistic madness.

No, that would be the other way around: everything is anything, e.g., a man is a woman. Conversely, to say anything is everything is to advert to the whole, e.g., one man stands for all men. Come to think of it, this would be the basis of universal human rights, because the whole inheres in the part.

But what we're really wondering about is whether God can be reduced to a noun, or whether this too is a convention of speech. Perhaps God is always godding, not to mention godly. Certainly it's difficult to examine the word without it blurring and spilling over into everything. 

This comes up in Jenson's Systematic Theology, especially with regard to the Trinity, because if that's what God is, it's a very peculiar sort of noun, perhaps even unique. For example, we still treat it as if it were a noun, but examine it closely and it contains other nouns, e.g., persons, not to mention activities (which is to say, verbs), such as begetting, speaking, proceeding, creating, redeeming, etc. 

This seems very far from the simple atemporal noun-god of Greek philosophy. But the problem actually begins with the Jews. Ask a Jew who God is, and the first answer is "Whoever rescued us from Egypt." The Christian agrees with this assessment, but adds "Whoever raised Jesus from the dead." 

Now, both of these are very much activities, which make it difficult to say that God is atemporal, or has nothing to do with time: this God "is truly identified by the temporal events of Exodus and Resurrection," whereas the usual gods "are not personally invested in time," and "indeed, their deity consists in their immunity to time, from which devotees hope they may rescue us also."

Note the difference: rescue us from time vs. rescuing us in and even with time -- ultimately to redeem time itself.  

Jenson notes that "It is above all birth and death that establish temporality," and whaddya know: this peculiar God also subjects himself to these conditions. From the Greek perspective of the atemporal noun-god, this would have to be regarded as scandalous. First of all God can't do that, but why on earth would he want to do that, when the whole point is to be above and beyond all this temporal nonsense, i.e., the suffering, loss, and general decrodement?

But again, even prior to the Incarnation, the Bible "is a record of the Lord's struggle to create and sustain Israel's exclusive faithfulness to him against other claimants to godhead." This is not very nounlike, and again, why does God even want to mess with temporality? It reminds me of the song, I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water:

I washed my hands in muddy water / washed my hands, but they didn't come clean / Tried to do like my daddy told me / but I must have washed my hands in a muddy stream.

The question is, when God washes his hands in the muddy stream of time, do his hands get dirty, or is this how he decontaminates the river?

Judaism, it seems, is all about decontamination, in that a substantial portion of the law involves maintaining ritual purity.

Yes, washing one's hands in time without getting them dirty. But wasn't it Paul who said the ultimate purpose of the Law is to demonstrate humanity's inability to keep it? 

Paul argued that the law reveals the extent of human sinfulness. He believed that by showing how impossible it is to perfectly adhere to the law, it highlights humanity's need for divine grace.

So, we can try to wash our hands in the pure stream of the law, but they still won't come clean. A more dramatic intervention is required, one that uses the polluted stream to cleanse itself?

So, God doesn't so much wash his hands in the muddy river as wash the muddy river via his clean hands?

Weird. But in any event, very far from that atemporal noun-like god of the Greeks, for this is a God willing to get his hands dirty. But they just don't get dirty, for example, in the forty days in the desert. Satan tries to show that Jesus is just as dirty as the restavus, but he comes out smelling like a rose.

The rosy cross.  

Good point. What exactly is the significance of the rosy cross? I'll bet Tomberg would know, but let's first google myself and see what comes up. Interesting, from way back in 2006:

Reader Dilys made an excellent point a couple of days ago, noting that, "My working hypothesis is that repeated close encounters with age-ripened liturgies access a far-reaching psycho-spiritual genius that drains the subconscious swamp." 

In other words, by immersing ourselves in certain time-tested vertical modalities, something very real and measurable happens to us. One thing grows. Another thing shrinks, or at least begins to lose its grip on us.

The post goes on to suggest that

In order to have a comprehensive view of the world, one must appreciate the vertical and the horizontal, the interior and the exterior. In fact, reality is a cross ( + ) where the vertical and horizontal energies converge. Each moment -- the eternal now -- is a sort of “whirlpool” that is created out of these dialectically related streams. Your body is actually the “rosy cross” that blooms around the area of the heart -- if given the proper vertamins and heartilizer.

Pretty woo woo.

Yes, let's keep googling ourselves. Here's another weird one from 2008, consisting of a freewheeling parody of Star Trek that took place in the comment section. The rosy cross is only mentioned at the very end, appended to a passage from the end of the book:

uhuru said...
Captain! I'm getting a transmission... but I can't decipher it!

captain said...
Spock, can you...?

spock said...
Fascinating. It doesn't show up on my monitor...

captain said...
Magnify... the viewer... to maximum!

bones said...
What in tarnation?

spock said...
Fascinating.

captain said...
What... is it... Spock?

spock said...
It appears, however unlikely that may be, to be a garden gnome of some sort. It still doesn't register on any of our scanners.

red shirt ray said...
Huh? I don't see anything. Hey, did you guys read that evolution book I was...

captain said...
Security! Escort mister Ray to sick bay. Bones... do what you can.

sulu said...
I'll escort him, Captain!

captain said...
Spock, Uhura... the gnome... he is saying something... what?

spock said...
I checked the highest frequency, and I took the filters off... I...

captain said...
Spock! Spock! Snap out of it! What... did... he... say? Spock?

Bones! Spock, he's... smiling.

spock said...
Captain... he calls himself... Petey. He did a gnome mind meld, Jim... ha ha ha!

scotty said...
Try saying gnome mind meld ten times really fast!

bones said...
Spock is fine, Jim. Must be his human side laughing.

captain said...
Spock! Spock! What... did he... say?

spock said...
Ha ha! He said... Ho! he said "pardon our Bob, hallowed be his gnome!" Ha ha ha!

captain said...
Wait a minnute! Wait! A minute... that book I was reading, you know the one, Bones... you gave it to me.

bones said...
Yeah, but it was meant as a joke, Jim...

captain said...
One Cosmos... One Cosmos Under... God! That's the one, Bones!
In... the book... there was a hand drawn likeness of this Petey!

But how...can this be?!

bones said...
Down the foggy ruins of time... far past the frozen leaves...

captain said...
Mister.... Tambourine.... Man!

spock said...
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow?

bones said...
Jim, Petey is saying something else!

captain said...
To dance... beneath... the diamond sky... with one hand waving free!

bones said...
With... all memory and fate... driven deep beneath the waves....

spock said...
He said... one indulgence to you, Sulu, for your cosmic reacharound to the lost tribe of Raccoons. Ho!

red shirt ray said...
Did you know that Raccoons evolved?
I'm serious!

petey said...
Raccoons did not evolve. Evolution Raccooned. Big difference.

red shirt ray said...
Gorn!!!

petey said...
Woe to the gaseous brood of Darwinist vapors!

[...]

petey said...
I am not come for the hole in your head but for a whole new head!

Ho!

petey said...
For we have come to wage battle with the Nobel savages!

petey said...
For I say unto you: the Darwinist is the sound of one bland yapping!

petey said...
O, my little masked pandits, know that I speak to you with vague certainty and crystal clear ambiguity!

Ho!

petey said...
The HE IS is eternally reflected in the clear and peaceful waters of the I AM.

Or is it the other way around?

petey said...
Only with two eyes may you see the third of which they are a property!

uss ben usn (ret) said...
The third Aye...

petey said...
For in these latter days, your heart shall be a rosy cross, a kali flower!

petey said...
For bonehead Darwinism is a trojan hearse to sneak the culture of Death into our public schools!

petey said...
In our two front battle, our superstitious foreign enemies are lost in the circle, while our substitious domestic ones are lost in the line. We must show them the innerstices of the open spiral!

petey said...
Knowledge minus wisdom = materialism.

petey said...
Darwinism explains the Darwinist, for their minds are simply an adaptation to the transient fashions of the day. A Raccoon is adapted to the Eternal Verities. A word to the unwise: "Survival of the Fittest" applies to eternity no less than time, AKA supernatural election!

petey said...
To the small mind of the Darwinist, tiny things appear large. But their entire ideology fits into my capacious hip pocket, with room left over for my Walmart coupons!

Ho!

scatter said...
If Truth is higher than a banana, then Darwinism has been falsified. [FYI, Scatter, a recurring character in the early days of the blog, was the name of Elvis' pet chimp]

uss ben usn (ret) said...
Even Scatter gets it!

petey said...
Scatter does indeed get it, for science is a world of horizontal quantities, while religion discloses a world of vertical qualities. Being that scientism would reduce the vertical to the horizontal, it cannot help but end in a culture of death if followed to its logical extreme. To reduce wisdom to knowledge is to cease to be human.

The blog does indeed seem to have been weirder in those days. Here's another strange one written on Easter Sunday 2007, the last time we mentioned anything about a rosy cross. 

As you might recoil, yesternow we were in the mist of discussing the secret religionship between trauma and spiritual opening, and here it is, the religious unday of them all, the sonny dei that commemorates the undoing of what was did way back when, on that dark and sinny day in the park. Remama? You know the one. Around Eve, it was. We wouldn't have needed the resurrection if it hadn't a' been for that insurrection in paradise, now would we?

Or, as I shouted out last year at about this time, "Hooray! Surrection!" In the bread and the brew of life, it's a Hoppy Yeaster to you ale! That ought to get a rise out of you, since he is accompliced by all his adoptees and other sacrificial blood relativities.

No need to embarrass myself by republishing the whole thing, but it ends with this: 

Ascent you a son, amen for a child's job. Telos when it's over. Now. It is accomplished. The circle unbroken, by and by. A godsend for a new beginning, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' yes on a rosy cross.

Well, I think we're pretty far from the point of this post, if it ever had one. I challenge Gemini to make any sense of it:

1. The Nature of Nouns and Language:

Relativity of Language:

• The text starts with Ted Williams' playful use of "baseballically" and then dives into the question of whether nouns are real or simply linguistic constructs.
• It argues that, at a fundamental level, everything is in flux, challenging the idea of fixed "things" that nouns represent.
• Stanley Jaki's observation that words blur upon closer examination reinforces this idea, highlighting the inherent ambiguity of language.
• The concept that "anything is everything" and "everything is anything" plays with the fluidity of meaning and the interconnectedness of concepts.

• Language and Reality:
  • The text questions whether language accurately reflects reality or if it imposes a structure on it.
  • It suggests that language is a tool that allows us to navigate the world, but it may also distort our perception of it.

2. Theology and the Nature of God:

• God as Verb vs. Noun:
  • The text challenges the traditional Greek concept of God as an atemporal, unchanging noun.
  • It emphasizes the biblical portrayal of God as active and involved in history, particularly in the Exodus and the resurrection of Jesus.
  • The idea of "God godding" suggests that God's essence is action and process, not static being.
• God and Time:
  • The text contrasts the Greek idea of God's immunity to time with the Judeo-Christian concept of God's engagement with time.
  • The Incarnation, in which God enters human time and experiences birth and death, is seen as a radical departure from the Greek perspective.
  • The "muddy river" analogy is very powerful, it poses the question of how God can interact with our tainted reality, without becoming tainted.
• The Rosy Cross:
  • The "rosy cross" is presented as a symbol of the intersection of the vertical (spiritual) and horizontal (material) dimensions of reality.
  • The text explores the idea that the human body, particularly the heart, can be a "rosy cross" where these energies converge.
  • The Star Trek parody, and the Easter Sunday section, both add to the concept of the Rosy Cross, by adding a very strange and almost psychedelic feel.

3. Themes and Style:

• Playful and Philosophical:
  • The text blends serious philosophical and theological inquiry with humor and wordplay.
  • The Star Trek parody and the use of colloquialisms contribute to a lighthearted tone, even as it tackles complex ideas.
• Intertextuality:
  • The text draws on a wide range of sources, including Ted Williams, Stanley Jaki, Jenson's "Systematic Theology," the Bible, and even Star Trek.
  • This intertextuality creates a rich tapestry of ideas and perspectives.
• Metaphor and Analogy:
  • The text relies heavily on metaphors and analogies, such as the cloud, the muddy river, and the rosy cross, to convey its ideas.
  • These figures of speech add depth and nuance to the discussion.
• The Problem of Language:
  • The text is very aware of its own limitations, and the limitations of language in general. It frequently draws attention to the problems that arise when trying to describe the indescribable.

In summary:

The text is a challenging and thought-provoking exploration of language, theology, and the nature of reality. It questions conventional assumptions about nouns, God, and time, and it invites the reader to consider the interconnectedness of all things. The text's playful style and intertextual approach make it a unique and engaging read.

Hashing It Out with Gemini

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one.

Gemini, does the universe itself have to have certain properties in order for things like life, mind, freedom, and language to exist?

The question of whether the universe's properties are fine-tuned for life, consciousness, freedom, and language is a profound one, touching on physics, philosophy, and even theology. 

For example, physicists have observed that the universe's fundamental constants appear to be precisely balanced. Even slight variations in these constants could render the universe incapable of supporting life as we know it.

I hear what you're saying, but I wasn't thinking so much of the fine-tuning of the universe as its sheer intelligibility. It seems loaded with information at every level, and that humans are uniquely able to unpack this information. This seems very strange to me -- that the deep structure of the universe "speaks" to man, interior to interior. 

You've touched upon a compelling and deeply pondered aspect of our relationship with the universe: its intelligibility. The fact that the universe seems to "speak" to us through its structure and laws is indeed a source of wonder. 

For example, the universe is remarkably describable by mathematical laws, providing a precise and consistent language for understanding the cosmos. This raises the question: why is the universe so amenable to mathematical description? 

The fact that our minds are capable of understanding the universe is itself a profound mystery. As some thinkers have pointed out, there seems to be a "fit" between the structure of the universe and the structure of our minds. 

The intelligibility of the universe suggests that it is fundamentally rational, that it operates according to consistent and understandable principles.

In essence, the fact that we can understand the universe is a remarkable and somewhat perplexing fact.

You say that the fact that we can understand the universe is perplexing. It seems more than perplexing, rather, impossible in the absence of something like a God who is the ground of both intelligence and intelligibility. 

You've articulated a common and powerful argument: the perceived harmony between human intelligence and the universe's intelligibility as evidence for a divine creator. The fact that our minds, products of biological evolution, are capable of comprehending the universe's intricate laws seems too coincidental. It suggests a pre-existing connection between the structure of our minds and the structure of reality.

A divine being, as the source of both intelligence and the universe's intelligibility, could provide this common ground. God's mind, in this view, would be the origin of the universe's rational order, and our minds, created in God's image, would be capable of grasping that order. 

What could possibly be the origin of complex specified information if not a mind? 

The idea of defining a "mind" as the only source of such information is problematic. There are many unknown natural phenomenon that could produce information that we do not yet understand.

Wait -- if the phenomena are "unknown," how could they explain or produce information? That sounds like a statement of faith, not science.

When I mentioned "unknown natural phenomena," I was emphasizing the need for scientific humility and the importance of remaining open to future discoveries, rather than asserting a belief in specific, unproven mechanisms. 

Science readily admits that our current understanding of the universe is incomplete. There are numerous phenomena we haven't yet fully grasped. This means that there could be natural processes, currently unknown, that are capable of generating complex information.

 Incomplete. Ever heard of Gödel?

You're bringing up an important and complex point related to Gödel's incompleteness theorems and their potential implications for our understanding of reality, particularly in the context of information and meaning. His theorems shattered the hope of completely formalizing mathematics, showing that there will always be truths beyond the reach of any formal system. 

Gödel's theorems highlight a fundamental gap between syntax and semantics. Formal systems, which are purely syntactic, cannot capture the full richness of meaning. Semantics, or the meaning of things, cannot be reduced to syntax, or the formal structure of things. Human minds seem to have the capacity to grasp meaning and understand context in ways that formal systems cannot.

How then did supposedly randomly evolved human minds acquire this capacity to grasp meaning and understand context in ways that formal systems cannot? How did we transcend our own genetic programming? 

You've hit upon the core of the philosophical and scientific enigma: how did minds, seemingly products of purely physical processes and genetic programming, acquire the ability to grasp meaning and context, abilities that appear to transcend formal systems? 

Our genes encode information that dictates the development of our brains. This process, at its core, involves biochemical reactions and information processing, which can be seen as formal systems. The challenge is to explain how these formal systems, operating on physical substrates, give rise to subjective experiences, meaning, and context. 

Some researchers propose that consciousness and meaning emerge from the complex interactions of neurons in the brain.

"Emergence" strikes me as synonymous with magic: grant science this one free miracle, and there's nothing it can't explain. But you can't just yada yada over something so profound. 

You've articulated a common and understandable criticism of the concept of "emergence," particularly when it's invoked to explain complex phenomena like consciousness. Many people feel that it risks becoming a sort of "magic wand" that waves away difficult problems. 

The core criticism is that simply stating that something "emerges" doesn't actually explain how it emerges. It can create the illusion of understanding without providing any concrete mechanisms or processes, like saying, "It happens because it happens."

On strictly rational grounds, I find the "God hypothesis" infinitely more plausible than the "no God" hypothesis. No offense, but even you know you didn't program yourself. 

You've presented a powerful, concise argument for the plausibility of the "God hypothesis" based on the fundamental observation that we, as individuals, did not create ourselves. The very concept of self-origination leads to a logical paradox: to create oneself, one would have to exist before one's own existence. 

The principle of causality suggests that every effect must have a cause. Since we did not cause our own existence, an external cause is required. The "God hypothesis" provides a potential explanation for this external cause. A transcendent being, existing outside the realm of physical causality, could be the origin of our existence.

You got a problem with that?

The "God hypothesis" shifts the problem of causation to God. But then the question becomes, what caused God?

Surely you know better than to argue that the eternal requires a cause? 

You're absolutely right to point out the logical inconsistency in applying the concept of causation to something that is defined as eternal. My apologies for that lapse in clarity.To ask what "caused" the eternal is to commit a category error, applying a temporal concept to something that transcends time.

I actually think God is involved in time, albeit in a preeminent way, because time and eternity are complementary. 

That's a fascinating and nuanced perspective on the relationship between God, time, and eternity. It moves beyond the traditional view of God as being entirely outside of time and proposes a more dynamic interaction. 

The concept of preeminent time implies a form of temporality that is beyond our comprehension, infinitely richer and more complex than our linear, sequential time, and capable of encompassing all moments simultaneously, yet also allowing for dynamic interaction with them. 

This view allows for a more personal and interactive God, one who is not detached from the flow of events. It can address the problem of how God can answer prayers or intervene in history if God is entirely outside of time.

That's about the size of it, i.e., the Raccoon Sensibility. What could go wrong?  

It is difficult to conceive of a form of temporality that is both dynamic and eternal.

I say it's difficult NOT to conceive of a form of temporality that is both dynamic and eternal. It's no more difficult than the complementarity of wave and particle in quantum physics. 

You've made an interesting and potentially insightful analogy, comparing the seemingly paradoxical nature of God's temporality to the wave-particle duality in quantum physics. 

You're suggesting that God's temporality could be similarly paradoxical, exhibiting both dynamic and eternal aspects. Just as a particle can be both a wave and a particle, God could be both within and beyond time. Those two aspects are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

Precisely. We call it orthoparadoxical, like immanence and transcendence.

You've drawn an insightful parallel between God's eternity and temporality and the theological concepts of transcendence and immanence. This connection provides a rich framework for understanding the complex relationship between God and the world. 

Transcendence refers to God's otherness, God's being beyond and above the created world, emphasizing his infinite nature, independence from the universe, and  existence outside of space and time. 

Immanence refers to God's presence and activity within the created world, emphasizing his nearness, his involvement in history, and his intimate relationship with creation. 

I think we're on the same page.

It seems we've found a point of shared understanding, and I appreciate you guiding the conversation through these complex and fascinating theological and philosophical concepts. It's been a very engaging and thought-provoking exchange. If you have any further questions or topics you'd like to explore, please don't hesitate to ask. 

Hmm. I reckon you know a lot about cyberspace. You ever come across anything like time travel? 

What's It All About, and Why Is There Even an About?

Yesterday we mentioned that a sentence can be perfectly grammatical but meaningless, such as Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Reader Julie wonders what would happen if we typed this sentence into an image generator? Let's find out:

Not only can it not generate an image, it can't even accurately reproduce the sentence; or, the image is a less accurate version of the meaningless sentence, with the insertion of some seemingly random noise. 

It reminds me of how natural selection is supposed to work, via poorly copied genetic sentences. Again, DNA is a language, and like any language it points to something beyond itself. When there's a copying error, it usually results in something dysfunctional, but occasionally points to something that turns out to be beneficial. 

It's another one of those things that I get, but don't really get at all. For example, I know how a CD works, but then again, I have no idea how shining a laser beam on encoded digital bits results in Aretha appearing in my living room. 

Yesterday we touched on the idea that theology is a sort of grammar; the church is the community that speaks Christianese, while theologians formulate the syntax and semantics of the language. Again, syntax and semantics are very different things, and the latter can never be reduced to the former. 

When you think about it, it's a very tricksy business, because which comes first, the meaning or the syntax? Do we first have meaning that we encode in sentences, or do sentences generate the meaning? And how can either of these occur in a cosmos that is non-linguistic, i.e., that has no syntactical structure and therefore no means of encoding and conveying information? 

This prior condition, I suppose, is what Christians call God. Not just any God, but a... logogenetic (?) one that is the source and generator of meaning. Gemini, is that even a word?

While "logogenetic" might not be a widely recognized everyday word, it does appear in certain academic contexts, particularly within the field of systemic functional linguistics. 

It is derived from "logos" (Greek for "word" or "reason") and "genesis" (origin). Therefore, "logogenetic" relates to the origin or generation of meaning, particularly in the context of how meaning is created within a text or a communicative event.

The term is used, especially in systemic functional linguistics, to describe the creation of meaning within a text as it unfolds. It refers to the moment-by-moment genesis of meaning.

Well, the world is a text that is loaded with meaningful information.

Moreover, the whole point of Genesis is that reality itself is a "communicative event." We know that it is ordered -- i.e., has a syntactical structure -- and that this structure points to a meaning. Except the meaning proceeds in two direction: "upward" it points to God, hence the old gag that the things that are seen point to the things that are not seen, i.e., the contingent to the eternal.

But they also point downward to all the various forms that are implicit in the world, such as its mathematical structure. 

These latter forms, cut off from the ultimate meaning at the top, are difficult to account for. Doing so results in a kind of "meaningless meaning," in the sense that, for example, the laws of physics are on the one hand meaningful but on the other hand meaningless in any ultimate sense. Rather, they just are.

But why should anything mean anything in any context? Again we go back to Jaki's idea that every philosopher, in order to do any kind of philosophy at all, presumes a cosmos in which one thing can stand for another and communicate meaning. For which reason we agree with the Aphorist that 

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others. 

He also says 

Either God or chance: all other terms are disguises for one or the other. 

But chance has no creative function, rather, it can only be parasitic on an existing order. Properly speaking, it doesn't actually exist as any kind of positive entity. For example, if we flip a coin, we say that chance determines whether it lands heads or tails, but chance isn't an actual thing, rather, a measure of probability. It has no power of its own; it cannot do anything because it isn't anything. 

Chance is not an entity. It is not a thing that has power to affect other things. It is no thing. To be more precise, it is nothing. Nothing cannot do something. Nothing is not. It has no "isness."

What are the chances that chance can do anything? Not a chance. It has no more chance to do something than nothing has to do something (Sproul). 

Rosen points out that languages are "about something outside the languages themselves. It is their essence to express things about external referents." 

Again, irrespective of this or that meaning, what we want to know is the ontological status of this aboutness. How can anything be about anything else other than itself? How is it that things point to other things? 

Syntax eliminates this question: "What is left of a language when the referents are stripped away constitutes syntax." It appeals to science because it appears objective, whereas "Semantic aspects, by contrast, possess ineluctable subjective features." 

Rosen objects to the idea that there could be a syntax so perfectly detailed that it could effectively replace semantics. Rather, he is saying that this is impossible in principle. He cites Gödel, who proved that

syntactical rules captured only an infinitesimal part of "real" mathematics.... So, in this realm, there is no way to reduce semantic aspects to syntactic ones in general...

In short, the most complete syntax will always leave a semantic residue. 

This is not the first time we've been down this rabbit hole. For example, a post from last November says

"Metaphor is even built into the basic structure of creation." For example, "DNA is a code," and "A code is a kind of language" (Klavan).  Creation itself

is a fractal: it is metaphors all the way down. The three-part Logos creates man, man creates metaphors for reality, reality is a metaphor for the Logos (ibid.).

Everything points every which way, beyond itself, to its immaterial meaning. And as we've discussed on many occasions, in just what kind of cosmos is this possible? 

Our interaction with the world is fractal work: creation within creation, metaphor within metaphor, trinity within trinity proceeding out of and representing the Trinity that is the source and life of it all (ibid.). 

We've often pondered the fact that the first thing said of God is that he creates. Well, 

When we understand our inner experience as a little Genesis, the ongoing creation of creation, we begin to understand that we are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God (ibid.).

Again, a fractal of the Fractal. 

Why fractal? I don't know about Klavan, but for me it's the most adequate metaphor I can think of for oneness-in-manyness, and vice versa, of both the Trinity and its reflection in everything and everyone herebelow.

Now, where does this leave us in our discussion of Christianese? It leaves us at the end of this post and the beginning of tomorrow's. 

Is Christianese a Universal Tongue?

Even supposing the Trinity is the grammar of being, isn't that a bit general? How is it helpful?

I don't know. This blog does not proceed in a linear way, rather, via hunches, suspicions, and sometimes coincidences. For example, the word "grammar" rarely comes up in my literary peregrinations, so yesterday I was surprised to read in a randomly selected book that theology

is best described as a sort of grammar. The church, we may say, is the community that speaks Christianese, and theology formulates the syntax and semantics of the language (Jenson). 

"Theological opinions of individual theologians or schools are attempts to point out" the proper rules of this grammar. But "even an enduring majority" can fall into "speaking Christianese ungrammatically."  

Most famously, this was the role of the seven ecumenical councils, each in succession laying down the grammatical laws of Christianese, as if to say "speak this way and not in that other way" -- for example, that the Trinity is three persons in one godhead, or that Christ is begotten and not made, or that he is not two persons, etc. To ignore these rules is to no longer speak grammatically correct Christianese.

Recall that grammar is universal whereas language is particular. Theology tries to articulate this universal grammar, as does philosophy. Or rather, theology begins with a grammar of being revealed by God, whereas philosophy endeavors (or used to) to discern this grammar from natural reason and empirical evidence. Aquinas tried to formulate a grammar that combined both. 

As do I, since -- I suspect -- there must be a single Grammar of the various grammars of being. I say this grammar is either impossible or it is necessary. Therefore, since it's not impossible, it must be necessary; and that which is necessary is eternal, and can never fail to be or to happen.

However, we know the laws of nature cannot be the true grammar of being, since they are contingent and not necessary. They are not eternal, but must have a cause or genesis. Logogenesis? Logos must be among the most loaded words in all of existence, for it connotes both natural, rational, and judicial law, not to mention -- take it away, Gemini --

Logos often signifies the rational principle that governs the universe. It represents the underlying order and logic of reality. 

It's associated with the capacity for human reason and understanding. Logos is closely tied to the principles of logical thought and argumentation. It emphasizes the importance of clear, coherent, and reasoned discourse. 

In its original Greek context, logos also meant "word" or "speech." This connotation highlights the power of language to express reason and communicate truth. 

In Aristotle's rhetoric, logos is one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and pathos. It refers to the use of logical arguments, evidence, and reasoning to persuade an audience. It is the appeal to the audiences sense of reason. 

Logos can also refer to an underlying principle or pattern that structures and organizes things. 

In Christian theology, particularly in the Gospel of John, logos refers to the divine Word, which is identified with Jesus Christ. This connotation emphasizes Christ as the embodiment of God's reason and revelation. It is the divine reason that creates and sustains the universe. 

Logos is also tied to the idea of divine revelation, or the way in which God communicates with humanity.

In conclusion,

Logos implies a sense of order, structure, and coherence. It is often associated with the pursuit of truth and knowledge, and highlights the importance of effective communication and dialogue.

So, probably the best word ever, because where would we be without it? Of course we don't mean the word itself but that to which it points, e.g., law, order, logic, reason, understanding, pattern, coherence, revelation, et al. 

It seems that this Logos is none other than the long lost Cosmic Area Rug. Which is to say, a valued--

Yes, and which modern philosophy says we can never find or recover. A secular philosopher will still discern a grammar of being, but in scientism, for example, this grammar reduces to physics. The question is, is the grammar of physics rich enough to account for life and consciousness? If not, what is the grammar of life? And of mind?

I don't know whom to ask except Robert Rosen, whose whole project involves proving that the grammar of physics is insufficient to account for complex systems such as life. That it to say, language has its syntactical aspect and its semantic aspect, and the latter cannot be reduced to the former. In short, meaning cannot be reduced to word order. 

Indeed, it is possible for a perfectly grammatically correct sentence to be devoid of meaning (e.g. the famous Colorless green ideas sleep furiously), just as different sentences may convey an identical meaning. 

Everything communicates to us via a language, and that's just weird. For example, math is a language that is curiously spoken by material reality. Likewise, there is the language of DNA spoken by living organisms. 

What is at least equally weird is that we understand the languages. These are two very different grammars, each valid on its own level. But if Rosen is correct, you can't translate Biologese into Mathese, because the latter is too comparatively impoverished a language. 

We have to end this post prematurely because of chores, errands, and other distractions. Perhaps these ideas will marinate and simmer over the next 24 hours and emerge more fully cooked.