Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being

MetaChristianity

The Interaction Problem

Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to Time & Timelessness. Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to the First Adam. Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to the Last Adam. To attempt the claim of, “Pure Act Becomes” entails an Uphill Ontic with respect to Pure Act (…which is a metaphysical absurdity…). Pure Act in the Downhill Ontic reveals – Communicates – all ontic possibility. What we find there is Logos in descent and Being’s superseding ontic over both material and non-being. We will come back to this paragraph and content but first the question of the interaction problem between Mind & Material has some relevance to the nature of any proverbial Uphill Ontic and/or Downhill Ontic within all relations or we can say within all interactions or we can say within all causes and, so, let’s go to that first.

So much of Non-Theism’s bizarre and unavoidable treatment of the perceived Self / “i-am” / Intentionality / and so on when it comes to the First Person Experiences||Perceptions ((…which actually sum to our Epistemic Experience vis-à-vis our Mind and Being and Existence….)) is presented in a way in which any explanatory terminus somehow lands in some flavor of physicalism.

But of course that begs the question. Interaction Problem?

The interaction of God With The World just is an interaction which does not “Violate Physics” and as such there is no such thing as “The Interaction Problem” ((…arguments for that are widely available and are not the focus here…)). The reasons WHY that is the case have to do with Being’s Superseding Ontic over both Material & Non-Being.

We ask “What Interaction Problem?” but the Non-Theist never realizes that BOTH the landscape of Creation Ex Nihilo AND the landscape of the Mind-Body Interaction converge at [Being’s] superseding ontic over both [Material] and [Non-Being]. The SAME Superseding Ontic which forces BOTH the Finite Universe AND any Timed/Tensed Eternal Universe into the Ground of Being Itself and into the Unmoved Will is the SAME Ontic of God’s Relationship to the world AND our own relationship to it. Pure Act vis Being Itself and all of those SAME reasons why [Miracle] does not ((and in fact *cannot*)) “Violate-Physics” are the SAME reasons we find in the “Relationship-And-Interaction” of the “Divine-Mind-And-Contingent-Mind” with ALL ontological vectors of [Material-Full-Stop].

We must not make the mistake of Pantheism or of Idealism or of Physicalism or of Panpsychism here. Sound metaphysical closure is the goal and we find that Relational-Closure in any Uphill Ontic||Downhill Ontic sums to Interactional-Closure which itself has the uncanny feature of providing Causal-Closure and THAT is what is needed even as THAT is in fact available. The exclusive ontic real estate of [A] proportionate causality ((…defined further down…)) and [B] concurrentism and [C] the aforementioned “Being’s Superseding Ontic over both Material and Non-Being” reveal the Map & Topography of the Ground of all Ontic-Possibility vis Pure-Act||Being-Itself as all such contours seamlessly converge within that which [Informs] and that which is [Informed].

Because of the unique ontological real estate in the aforementioned Collection ((…Proportionate Causality & Superseding Ontic & Concurrentism & Absolute Consciousness & so on..)) we find the SAME content in [1] WHY God’s [Miracle] does not ((…and in fact cannot…)) “Violate” Physics AND in the “Content” of [Relation] vis-a-vis [Interaction] vis-à-vis Causal-Closure. Another way of saying it is that because of the aforementioned Collection we find [1] The ((supposed)) “problem” of the Divine Mind moving into [B] Interaction with [3] The World and when we unpack THOSE three items we discover that there never was a “problem” at all —and — then — from there we find [1] the SAME misunderstandings leading into [2] the SAME ((supposed)) “problem” of ((in the contingent being/mind)) vis-à-vis [3] the ((supposed problem)) of Mind||Body Interaction. As before, when we unpack THOSE three items we discover that there never was a “problem” at all and for all of the SAME reasons.

“The Nature of God and of His Relationship to the World” is a section in E. Feser’s book titled “Five Proofs of the Existence of God” and there we find an appropriately nuanced approach to Negative & Positive Theology as well as to the triad of univocal vs. equivocal vs. analogical. Eventually in this arena we find that Negative Theology takes a backseat to Positive Theology and the reason why is because of the exclusive ontic real estate of [1] proportionate causality and [2] concurrentism and [3] the aforementioned “Being’s Superseding Ontic over both Material and Non-Being” all seamlessly converging vis-a-vis that which [Informs] and that which is [Informed].

Meanwhile the Non-Theist continues his appeal to the Illusion of Mind||Abstraction and continues his slight of hand with his *Trilateration* by which he tries to “Stack Up” differing “Layers” and thereby “Create” the Irreducible “i-am” vis-à-vis the First Person Experience/Perception vis-à-vis the perceived epistemic experience of the Intentional Self/Mind vis-à-vis “i-am” vis-à-vis “i-reason” vis-à-vis “i-exist” — and so on.

Quote: “….Hence to write many paragraphs about the scientific banishment of teleology from everywhere else in nature while insisting that teleology is real in the case of human beings, and then casually to insinuate that the history of that banishment gives hope that someday a scientific explanation of the teleology of human consciousness will also be possible… to do that is something of a conjuring trick, a bit of sleight of hand….” ((…from https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.html …))

The Nature oF Mind

“I-AM” & “i-am” & “l-Exist” & the First Person experience of being||consciousness? The veracity of THAT is the veracity which Non-Theism cannot salvage/retain. The Non-Theist must *demonstrate* BOTH where his own Syllogisms fail to Collapse into a full-on Metaphysical Absurdity AND where the Christian Metaphysic vis-a-vis Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material & Non-Being ((Etc.)) fails to achieve full-on Metaphysical Closure vis-à-vis what D.B. Hart and others describe as “….the metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility….”

From another discussion:

You said you wanted to discuss Reliable Arguments || Reliable Proofs WRT “God”. Well okay let’s start with step one:

God or No-God? Mind or Eliminativism?

Terminus of Absolute Consciousness||Being or Terminus of Illusion||Non-Being?

We simply start with the Neonate’s Presupposition-Free-Blank-Slate and move outward into observational reality and outward via perception & science and outward still into natural theology and outward still into Scripture. Alternatively *if* you want a NON-Christian Metaontology that starts WITH rather than WITHOUT presuppositions and that “Leaps-Over//Bypasses” the trio of observational reality & perception & science rather than “Dives-Into” that trio *then* okay fine *but* that’s not a RELIABLE path — at least according to the Christian mindset.

You’re being offered reliable arguments & proofs. Interested? Then interact with & discuss the location of & relevance of the Divine Mind, of Absolute Consciousness, of “Reason Itself” *as* “Being Itself”. Arguments & Syllogisms & Proofs & a Metaphysic housing the nature of Mind — of “Mind Itself” wrt “Being Itself”. You’re dishonest to describe “THAT” as well as content within “the philosophy of mind” as “trolling” when you ASK for reliable evidence, arguments, and proofs. You’re dishonest to ASK for “ABCD” Etc. but then do a 180° flip-flop & REFUSE all replies from the get-go.

We’ve already placed a few basic introductions at your feet. You know — WRT “GOD”. Are you interested? Do you value Lucidity over the [Reductio Ad Absurdum]? Do you value the [Reductio Ad Absurdum] over Lucidity? Let’s try again:

Step 1. God or No-God? Mind or Eliminativism? Terminus of Absolute Consciousness||Being or Terminus of Illusion||Non-Being?

You’re being told your evidence is available. Yet you don’t actually want to interact with it — which is inconsistent and/or dishonest. Or perhaps you actually prefer/expect a series of your own Straw-Men instead? For example something like the following:

Part 1 of 2 https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/10/walter-mitty-atheism.html?showComment=1444541683395&m=1#c5184040431704814012

Part 2 of 2 https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/10/walter-mitty-atheism.html?showComment=1444541694376&m=1#c6385469427809387454

Let’s try again:

Step 1.

God or No-God?

Mind or Eliminativism?

Terminus of Absolute Consciousness||Being or Terminus of Illusion||Non-Being?

A Few Basic Baby Steps as per https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2020/01/comments-wrt-realism-vis-vis-meta.html

End.

Emergence & Formation & Non-Reductive Lines

A quote of David Bentley Hart here:

An emergent reality is one that, though remaining ever dependent upon the native properties of the elements composing it, nevertheless possesses new characteristics that are wholly “irreducible” to those properties. But this is certainly false. At least, as a claim made solely about physical processes, organisms, and structures — in purely material terms — it cannot possibly be true. If nothing else, it is a claim strictly precluded by most modern scientific prejudice. From a genuinely “physicalist” perspective, there are no such things as emergent properties in this sense, discontinuous from the properties of the prior causes from which they arise; anything, in principle, must be reducible, by a series of “geometrical” steps, to the physical attributes of its ingredients.

Those who think otherwise are, in most cases, merely confusing irreducibility with identity. Smith, for instance, uses the example of water, which, though composed of the two very combustible elements hydrogen and oxygen, possesses the novel property of extinguishing fire; therefore, says Smith, water “is irreducible to that of which it is composed.” But it is nothing of the sort. Yes, water’s resistance to combustion is not identical with any property resident in either hydrogen or oxygen molecules, but it is most definitely reducible to those special molecular properties that, in a particular combination, cause hydrogen and oxygen to negate one another’s combustible propensities.

A seemingly more promising example adduced by Smith is that of a computer, which (he notes) is composed of silicon, metal, plastic, electrical impulses, and so on, but which possesses functions that are not present in any of its parts and that are qualitatively different from a mere aggregation of the properties of its parts in some sort of total sum. Here, however, Smith compounds his earlier error by failing to notice that what distinguishes a computer’s powers from those individually possessed by its various elements is not any emergent property at all, but rather the causal influence of a creative intellect acting upon those elements from without. Taken as a purely physical phenomenon, nothing that a computer does — as distinct, that is, from what an intending mind does with a computer — is anything more than the mathematically predictable result of all its physical antecedents. At the purely material level, whatever is emergent is also reducible to that from which it emerges; otherwise, “emergence” is merely the name of some kind of magical transition between intrinsically disparate realities.

In any event, I have no great quarrel with Smith. In the end, he is quite correct that a computer is not reducible without remainder to its physical components. He is even more correct in arguing — as is the purpose of his book — that human personality is not reducible to purely physical forces and events. The problem with his argument is merely a matter of the conceptual model of causation that he has adopted.

For, in the end, what reductionism fails to account for, and in fact fails even to see, is not the principle of emergence, but the reality of formal causality. In the case of the computer, for instance, its functions are more than the sum of the properties inherent in its physical constituents because a further, adventitiously informing causality, itself directed by a final causality, has assumed those physical constituents into a purposive structure that in no meaningful sense can be said to have emerged from them. (The captious physicalist, of course, would want at this point to assert that the mind and actions of the computer’s designer are themselves only physical events, and so the computer is still emergent from and reducible to a larger ensemble of material causes; but that is both beside the point and, as it happens, entirely wrong.)

Why is this distinction particularly important? Principally because it seems quite clear to me that there are realities in nature that are indeed irreducible to their physical basis, and that this fact renders materialism — or physicalism, or naturalism — wholly incredible. Existence itself, for what it is worth, is the prime example of an indubitable truth about the world that is irreducible to physical causes (since any physical causes there might be must already exist). But consciousness is perhaps an example more easily grasped. And, just to refresh our memories, we should recall how many logical difficulties a materialist reduction of mind entails.

The most commonly invoked is the problem of qualia, of that qualitative sense of “what it is like” that constitutes the immediate intuitive form of subjectivity, and that poses philosophical difficulties that even the tireless and tortuous bluster of a Daniel Dennett cannot entirely obscure. There is also the difficulty of abstract concepts, which become more dazzlingly difficult to explain the more deeply one considers how entirely they determine our conscious engagement with the world. And of course, there is the problem of reason: for to reason about something is to proceed from one premise or proposition or concept to another, in order ideally to arrive at some conclusion, and in a coherent sequence whose connections are determined by the semantic content of each of the steps taken; but, if nature is mere physical mechanism, all sequences of cause and effect must be determined entirely by the impersonal laws governing the material world. One neuronal event can cause another as a result of physical necessity, but certainly not as a result of logical necessity; and the connections among the brain’s neurons cannot generate the symbolic and conceptual connections that compose an act of consecutive logic, because the brain’s neurons are connected organically and interact physically, not conceptually.

And then there is the transcendental unity of consciousness, which makes such intentional uses of reason possible and which poses far greater difficulties for the materialist than any mere neurological “binding problem.” Then, of course, there is perhaps the greatest difficulty of all, intentionality, what the great Franz Brentano regarded as the supreme “mark of the mental,” inseparable from every act of consciousness: the mind’s directedness, its “aboutness,” its capacity for meaning, by which it thinks, desires, believes, represents, wills, imagines, or otherwise orients itself toward a specific object, purpose, or end. On the one hand, the mind knows nothing in a merely passive way, but always has an end or meaning toward which it is purposively directed, as toward a final cause; yet, on the other, there is absolutely no intentional reciprocity between the mind and the objects of its intentions (that is, thoughts can be directed toward things, but things, at least taken as purely material events, cannot be directed toward thoughts). Intentionality is finite and concerned with its objects under specific aspects, whereas material reality is merely an infinite catenation of accidental events; and so the specific content of the mind’s intentions must be determined by consciousness alone. One could never derive the specific meaning of a given physical event from the event itself, not even a brain event, because in itself it means nothing at all; even the most minute investigation of its physical constituents and instances could never yield the particular significance that the mind represents it as having. And so on.

Not that there is room here to argue these points. Nonetheless, there are very good reasons why the most consistent materialist philosophers of mind — when, that is, they are not attempting to get around these difficulties with nonsolutions like “epiphenomenalism” or incoherently fantastic solutions like “panpsychism” — have no choice in the end but to deny that such things as qualia or intentionality or even consciousness as such truly exist at all. The heroic absurdism that, in differing registers, constitutes the blazingly incandescent core of the thought of Daniel Dennett, Alex Rosenberg, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and other impeccable materialists of the same general kind follows from the recognition — not very philosophically sophisticated as a rule, but astute nonetheless — that consciousness can exist within the world of nature only if matter is susceptible of formation by a higher causality, one traditionally called “soul.” And the soul, as such a formal cause, is precisely that which cannot simply “emerge.”

End quote ((…from “Emergence & Formation” – by Hart, David Bentley. A Splendid Wickedness and Other Essays…))

Moving Forward Now:

Let’s Move FROM Pure Act In What Must Be A Down-Hill Ontic By Degrees And INTO The Adamic

Several overlapping segues via comments follow here and are taken from a few threads relating to the Mind Body Interaction, to Pure Act (God) in the Creative Act (God does not “become”), Mind and Intentionality, and the Principle of Proportionate Causality:

Fist as noted earlier a few baby steps as per https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2020/01/comments-wrt-realism-vis-vis-meta.html

Further, in the blog post of E. Feser at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/05/mind-body-problem-roundup.html the thread which follows it includes the following comments:

A distinct topic which has overlapping areas to those items is in the post of E. Feser at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.html and the thread which follows it includes the following comments, which are re-plays of http://disq.us/p/1mj0his and also of http://disq.us/p/1mj0j0k – themselves labeled as the following:

Intentionality, Mental States, Searle, Networks, and Causal Backgrounds

Reason Itself: The Parasite Upon Irrational Physical Events & The Colony of Memes In the Ecology of Cerebral Cortices

Here’s those replayed in Feser’s thread:

Initial Primer:

“….Hence to write many paragraphs about the scientific banishment of teleology from everywhere else in nature while insisting that teleology is real in the case of human beings, and then casually to insinuate that the history of that banishment gives hope that someday a scientific explanation of the teleology of human consciousness will also be possible… to do that is something of a conjuring trick, a bit of sleight of hand….”

At https://metachristianity.com/absolute-reference-frame-pure-act-incarnation-time/ is “The Absolute’s Reference Frame, Pure Act, Incarnation, Time, The Truly Human, And The Last Adam and it opens with this with respect to Communicates / Communique:

As per http://disq.us/p/1u20xbr we’ve the following: God Can Suffer? Feel? As I do? Taste? Smell? As I do? Yes. (…again, see http://disq.us/p/1u20xbr which is also at https://randalrauser.com/2018/07/the-problem-with-a-god-who-suffers/#comment-3994170039 …). The Truly Human houses “I Feel X” & every bit of that noetic frame is Downhill invention, gift, by Pure Act. Logos in descent.

But then that is true of any and all possible worlds – or we can say that such is true of any and all world-contingent reference frames. The attempt to ground the Contingent Conscious Observer in its own Mind – in its own Contingent Reference Frame – just is the absurdity of attempting to define this or that ToE by something less than Totality – something less than the Absolute’s Reference Frame.

One of the goals of this brief primer is to comment that the following content will be more clear if one has already read the above linked items and, also, to comment that the concept of Communique vis-à-vis the Processions within the Trinitarian Life is an entirely different metaphysic than that of Particles In Motion / Physics.

Another goal of the primer is to bring all of “that” into focus “so that” we can make the proverbial connection FROM all of “that” over TO the concept and actions or metaphysic of the Principle of Proportionate Causality.

The other segue which this basic primer serves is to infuse the landscape here with relevant concepts vis-à-vis the Philosophy of Mind as it relates to Non-Theism’s inability to find singularity in its own explanatory terminus with respect to reason and being. As we push premises through to their breaking points we discover that nothing short of Reason (Itself) as Being (Itself) provides any such terminus. A few basic inroads there are at https://metachristianity.com/reason-being-non-being-ontological-cul-de-sacs/

End primer.

Recall that we are, here, discussing the overlap and ontic-arrow in-play within, not one or the other, but BOTH the landscape of Creation Ex Nihilo (on the one hand) AND the landscape of the Mind-Body Interaction (on the other hand). In short we are (…again see the linked essay in the opening primer…) looking at Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.

Important preliminaries are discussed in http://disq.us/p/1lx3d2k which opens with “Mind Body Interaction” – and – then – God can interface seamlessly with nature. Move it. And far more. Etc. And He not only creates said nature, but other natures too. One of the differences between a tree’s nature and the nature of Man is, well, among other things, the immaterial which outreaches the corporeal. God creates that too. He might, and certainly can, even grant it authority, as in the ontic-reach of faculty or capacity over and above. And so on. If interaction is a problem, then God isn’t interacting.

Think about what it is that God creates with respect to proportionate causality. We must not make the mistake of Pantheism or of Idealism here. Perhaps our tendency toward mechanistic physicalist thinking muddies our premises with respect to interaction whereas sound metaphysical causal closure vis-à-vis the exclusive ontic real estate of proportionate causality, concurrentism, and the ground of all ontic-possibility seamlessly and causally amalgamates that which Informs and that which is Informed.

Aquinas on the will as the efficient cause of movement:

Quote: “A thing is said to move in two ways: First, as an end; for instance, when we say that the end moves the agent. In this way the intellect moves the will, because the good understood is the object of the will, and moves it as an end. Secondly, a thing is said to move as an agent, as what alters moves what is altered, and what impels moves what is impelled. In this way the will moves the intellect and all the powers of the soul, as Anselm says (Eadmer, De Similitudinibus). The reason is, because wherever we have order among a number of active powers, that power which regards the universal end moves the powers which regard particular ends. … Now the object of the will is good and the end in general, and each power is directed to some suitable good proper to it, as sight is directed to the perception of color, and the intellect to the knowledge of truth. Therefore the will as agent moves all the powers of the soul to their respective acts, except the natural powers of the vegetative part, which are not subject to our will.” (S.T. I q. 82 art. 4) End quote.

We find in reality the unavoidable “order among a number of active powers” in the real sense of concurrentism [.. http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html ..] moving from the ontic-proximal to the ontic-distal and Top Down Causation finds all created realities in some real sense within that same state of affairs (concurrentism) and, just the same, moving downhill, we find other (created, fully ontic) beings/wills who in like manner fully “concur” with that which is their own swath of ontic real estate.

How real are those more distal sorts of concurrence?

Given the Decree in question streaming from the wellspring of all proportionate causality, they are absolutely real, and, given said *God* we need not acquiesce to a full throttled Idealism (we are God’s thoughts – full stop) or Absurdity (we do not actually exist) in order to rationally affirm such metaphysical landscapes. Both proximally and distally it is the case that that which informs supersedes that which is informed. The “verb” therein is fully ontic, irreducible and springboards off of the rational ground of all possible being, thereby aborting all collapse into the silly non-starters of deism, pantheism, idealism, or absurdity.

We are speaking here of the Adamic in the sense of the most fundamentally decreed and hence to say of the Last Adam that the Son had no Form and “therefore” was not an individual prior to the creative act of God (Genesis 1:1) or was not in full the proverbial “I” in the full sense “but for” said creative act is to enslave that which informs to that which is informed, which is metaphysical nonsense. Of course that which informs “interacts” with that which is informed and (perhaps) in vectors and degrees which we do not fully appreciate (perhaps) as a consequence of an approach muddied by physicalist thinking rather than by thinking built atop premises of sound metaphysical causation (…speaking of Muddied Physicalist Thinking: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html …).

The Necessary, that which informs, surfaces as that which is not static, is not procession-less, but is “living” in the absolute sense and that which ontologically supersedes the informed in a sense akin to concurrentism. Whether proximal or distal (God downward….), such is the nature of all real estate in question.

The only question is this: Can *God* create in this or that created being the ontologically irreducible Will Itself just as He creates in that same sense and in that same created being that which is the ontologically irreducible “Existence Itself“? Given *God* Who is reality’s eternal wellspring with respect to the principle of proportionate causality, the answer is obvious: of course He can.

On the content of proportionate causality, and Decree, and the Imago Dei, and the irreducible “Will/I” and existence itself, the content at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html is insightful. A brief excerpt:

“…The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way. To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all…”

Necessary Being Itself affords that which nothing else can: ex nihilo. If God cannot grant to non-entity that which is His Alone to grant (existence, being, will, choosing, and so on), well then we, you and I, the created beings, do not “actually” exist as that which is other than God and we are then spiraling once again amid that collapse into the ontic-silliness of the non-starters of deism, pantheism, idealism, or absurdity even as a full-blown Idealism and/or Solipsism lurk in the shadows.

In a roundabout way Feser’s essay (and the com-box in particular) at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/11/averroism-and-cloud-computing.html are insightful in a few ways here.

I’ve never seen one argument, not one, ever, which supports any good reason for the “concern” that there is *not* that which is the ontologically irreducible “immaterial will“, that which outlives the corporeal vis-à-vis survivalism trumping corruptionism. At the end of the day, all our definitions force the reality of that which exists without any material “stuff”.

Again, I’ve never seen one argument, not one, ever, which supports any good reason for the “concern” that there is *not* that which is the ontologically irreducible “immaterial will“, that which outlives the corporeal vis-à-vis survivalism trumping corruptionism. At the end of the day, all our definitions force the reality of that which exists without any material “stuff”.

The essay on “SURVIVALISM, CORRUPTIONISM, AND MEREOLOGY” by David Oderberg at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7SKlRTfkUieTVFfdl8xQjBnU2M/ agrees with Feser and the vast majority of Christians.

The syntax of incarnation of course is extreme should we demand or expect *not* sound metaphysical causal closure *but* instead in muddied thinking demand that the stuff of contingent and mutable causations account for the whole-show. As Sean Carroll’s “Poetic Naturalism” alludes to, the illusory awaits all syntax given such paltry means. What the First Adam *is* and what the Last Adam *is* dissolves any rational concerns about “interaction”.

Christianity just is ontology’s Extreme Dualism as it, and no other, weds the Necessary and Contingent, weds that which Informs and that which is Informed within the Imago Dei amid Groom/Bride in a fashion that is unparalleled by any other such interface/interaction. But then there is only one, and not many, such Decrees from He Who is the wellspring of all proportionate causality.

We are not Angels, nor Galaxies, nor Creatures With Many Eyes around the Throne of God. We are “the Adamic”, that which is predestined for nothing less than the semantics of incarnation (Scotus arrives on scene perhaps) as a wedding is Decreed. Such cannot be defined by “other decrees” with respect to “other created beings”. Not in whole at least. When the body is dust, we yet persist, yet motion, yet see, though in some real sense we are to put on the incorruptible through the corporeal’s (Body’s / Physicality’s) resurrection as the Whole Man soundly, finally, traverses all possible “interaction” amid Bride/Groom.

Physics in contrast to Communique: Within the Trinitarian Life we find that Communicate transcends efficient and final causality as that which is caused does not exist before in Act, whereas that which is communicated exists before in Act, as described in Garrigou-Lagrange’s “The Trinity and God the Creator”. Once again important preliminaries are discussed in http://disq.us/p/1lx3d2k which opens with “Mind Body Interaction”.

Sean Carroll maps all such causation in his essay on Top Down Causation into the materialist’s only option of that which is fundamentally, or irreducibly, or ultimately, or cosmically the illusory at http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/08/01/downward-causation/ as any hope of ontological emergentism ends in nothing more than syntax, a kind of Wittgenstein-esc language game. Given Non-Theism’s anemic metaphysical means/ends, such is forced to do so where causation is concerned. Causal closure just is annihilation of the “I/Will” in question (and far, far more) given the physicalist’s creed.

Segues:

Proportionate Causality, Superseding Ontic, & Interaction:

Another way of saying much of this is to say that the “problem” of the Divine Mind ← → Interaction ← → The World is to say that “that” just is the “problem” of (in the contingent being) the Mind/Body interaction. It’s a bit tedious (perhaps) but, as a rough sketch, something like this:

“The Nature of God and of His Relationship to the World”

In E. Feser’s book titled “Five Proofs of the Existence of God” we find an appropriately nuanced approach to Negative & Positive Theology as well as to the triad of univocal vs. equivocal vs. analogical.

There are nine hits in the search of the Kindle book for the word “negative” many of which zero in on Negative Theology not being the WHOLE story. Also, much of that is in the chapter titled “The Nature of God and of His Relationship to the World”. That chapter also unpacks the univocal vs. equivocal and the analogical modes of reference. Two examples of those two approaches:

“……affirmative rather than negative claims? While negative theology is part of the story of God’s nature, then (since attributes like immateriality and immutability obviously tell us what God is not), it cannot be the whole story, or it would undermine the very arguments that led us to affirm that there is a God in the first place…..

…and…

“…..confining ourselves to univocal and equivocal terms would make it impossible to assign any positive content to what we say about God. We would be left with agnosticism, or (if we cannot even explain what we mean by the claim that God exists) even atheism. Indeed, it would not be clear that we are saying anything with any meaning at all. Yet the proofs for the existence of God that we have considered seem perfectly intelligible and give us positive knowledge about God’s existence and nature. The way to resolve this impasse is to see that there is a third use of language, the analogical use, which is motivated independently of the problem of theological language but is readily applicable to that problem. We can make literal, positive statements about God and his nature by applying the analogy of attribution and the analogy of proper proportionality…..”

Those two excepts are obviously given without the large swath of *context* which the book offers.

Given the fact that our Non-Theist friends lack in their causal means that which causally sums to the Principle of Proportionate Causality (…the PPC for brevity …see definitions at http://disq.us/p/1lwnawv …) then when it comes to God’s Creative Act with respect to being and with respect to volition and with respect to intentionality they are simply at a loss as to how to unpack causality without reducing all of reality to that of the Grand-Automaton (or the illusory – and so on).

We come to this basic word-picture:

Non-Being ← → Proportionate Causality ← → Being ← → Pre-Eden Adamic ← → Proportionate Causality vis-à-vis Dualism ← → Edenic/Adamic (…proposal not wedding…) ← → [A] Privation or else ← → Proportionate Causality ← → [B] God’s Ideal (…wedding not proposal…)

It’s obviously more layered than that, but, it seems so common of an error to conflate non-identicals that it seems worth pointing out the general nature of things with respect to “causal content” and so on.

Proportionate Causality and the Positive Metaphysic (as opposed to “only” a negative theology) arrives again and again in this interface. One wonders whether God *can* and in fact *did* create a being in His Own Image with respect to the principle of proportionate causality *itself*. After all, we rationally affirm that Being Itself, as in God Who is Immaterial, both can and does interact with matter/material, and the reasons why He can are obvious given Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.

And *we* of course necessarily live and move and have and find our own being-itself from the *only* metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility, namely, “Being Itself / GOD“.

I am there using “being itself” to refer to what the Self is in contrast to “Matter”, which requires moving carefully. On the PPC there was the prior of Non-Being, and, then, Being which is not “to be a tree” as Feser notes but rather to be at all. Two interesting facts arise here. First, clearly that sense finds the ontic of be-*ing* and it is *different* than “a tree“. Secondly, it is that same dividing line which grants, and forces, the affairs of Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being mentioned earlier as we approach the rational affirmation of the Immaterial God seamlessly interacting with the Material.

There’s an interface there of ontic distincts, or of ontic non-identicals, and we seem to see the seamlessness of that interface when it comes to God/World, which just *is* the interface of “The Divine Mind / World” but, then, we seem to “pull back” when it comes to “Our Mind / World”, which is curious. Again, the reason that is curious is Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.

The following “Copy/Paste” is added for context as it helps elucidate a few key nuances which are in play here. It’s a bit long and it will close with “End Copy/Paste” so as to avoid confusion it’s [bracketed] interlude here. Note that it is a rough paraphrase of a discussion and so the “you” and “we” and “my” and so on are for the most part as per the original flow of the discussion.

BEGIN COPY/PASTE:

A Question For TULIP

Let’s say there is no created World. And let’s say that God is going to create an agent. The question is CAN God create the volitional being who in fact CAN freely choose within this or that finite [set] of options which God Decrees/Creates? Is that something God CAN do?

You say that in me and you there is no such possibility as the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” and the reason (you say) is because every choice is the result of a preference and every preference is the result of some other preference and that becomes an Infinite Regress. Now, you do not tell us why you Ground the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” in me and in you instead of in God.

1. IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) was me or you, the created self, THEN you would be correct (…well, actually you’d still be wrong given Aquinas’ earlier quote regarding The-Will heading up the Ordering-Of-Powers, and therein such truly is “The-Seat” — singular — and not trillions in an infinite regress….).

2. IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) is in fact GOD vis-à-vis The Uncreated Volitional Self, well THEN you are incorrect.

And if fact “1” does collapse into a metaphysical absurdity whereas “2” is nothing less than a metaphysical necessity.

“……The principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all……”

Occasionalism is fallacious, and it is where you are trying to land as your terminus of explanation. Occasionalism is not the right-thinking landing zone or terminus for First Cause premises and, so, therefore, it is also not the right-thinking terminus of your attempt to navigate causation wrt God as First Cause. Three resources on that:

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html

https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html

Please keep the concept of, “God-Causes-To-Exist-The-Reality-That-Is-ABCDEF” in mind as we move along here.

Two Areas Where Your Infinite Regress Falls Down:

First: As noted above we found that IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) is in fact GOD vis-à-vis The Uncreated Volitional Self, well THEN you are incorrect.

Second: As we briefly described, we can just GRANT you your terminus in the Created Self for even then you’d still be wrong given Aquinas’ earlier quote regarding The-Will heading up the Ordering-Of-Powers, and therein such truly is “The-Seat” — singular — and not trillions in an infinite regress. All that is needed at that point is the Proper & Proportionate Cause & Ground for such an Ontic Singularity. Do we have such a Hard-Stop? Well of course:

God Creates/Gifts and God Grounds and God Continuously Sustains the very same Volitional Seat That Is The Self, or, the very same Capacity Of Choice (and so on) which we are discussing. There *is* a Hard Stop. That *is* what we in fact *mean* when we say, “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” and Etc. with respect to the Imago Dei. To say that my capacity for X finds its Height / Width / Breadth and begins and ends in “Me” and not “God” is to claim a metaphysical absurdity. Definitions continue onward and upward with respect to Grounding such that as with being so too with will — nether suffers the infinite regress.

God is in fact Being Itself. The Hard Stop of our own *being is nothing less than Being Itself (…on the Principle of Proportionate Causality…). Only that which just is Being Itself, or only that which just is Free Will Itself – or only that which just is Intentionality Itself – can in this case be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely the illusion of Volition-Exists but in fact Volition-Exists-Hard-Stop. It’s all Ex Nihilo and whether we replace Being with Choice (….and so on, and so on…) does not change what is happening there in the Creative Act vis-à-vis the difference between Actual vs. Illusion at the end of the Creative Act. Enter a key phrase: Imago Dei. BTW are our thoughts determined too on your view or is Reason in fact Intentional?

God freely chooses to Create/Not-Create. And, just the same, the Ground-Zero or Hard-Stop of the Created Intentional Self or of the Seat that is the Self, is the Uncreated Intentional Self “just as” the Ground-Zero or Hard Stop of the Created Agent’s *being* is in fact Being-Itself.

Therefore, two questions:

A. When God creates our very being Ex Nihilo is it not quite “Real”?

B. When God creates our very volition Ex Nihilo is it not quite “Real”?

Can you justify Granting the Principle of Proportionate Causality to one but not the other with respect to God Creating, Gifting, Grounding, and Continually Sustaining? Well no and that is one reason why it is the case that when you insist, “God cannot create the Causal Agent capacitated to openly choose amid some finite [set] of actual (ontic) options” you have not shown your conclusion to be “necessarily true”. Yet for some reason you’ve not justified for us why we find you saying, “God-Cannot-Create-And-Ground-That-Intentionality-Amid-That-Set-Of-Options”. You’ve not shown us how your “Cannot” is [necessarily true]. Whereas, we see quite clearly how it is [necessarily possible] that “God-Can” create such a capacity in the Imago Dei given the Principle of Proportionate Causality and the fact that Occasionalism is not where First Cause thinking rightly terminates.

One must differentiate between:

Arguments based on First Cause Premises (rational) and

Arguments based on Occasionalism (fallacious).

You have so far affirmed that God can cause to exist “a-choice” or “one-choice” in the Created Agent. However, you’re muddying up First Cause termini and ignoring the actual question:

CAN God Create the Intentional Agent who can, like Him, freely choose (….amid whatever created and finite [SET] of options God Decrees to exist and so on….)?

It seems you are forced to deny the Principle of Proportionate Causality and argue that it is [Necessarily The Case] that God [Cannot Create Such An Agent Amid Such Options].

Whereas, “just-as”….

….our own “Hard Stop” (…or the metaphysical fountainhead…) of our own being “just-is” Uncreated Being-Itself, so also then….

….our own “Hard Stop” of our own Free-Volition “just-is” the Uncreated Intentional Self….

….and so “God-Can” is [Necessarily Possible].

….just because we can’t freely choose among the Infinite Set of All Ontological Possibilities (….like God who in fact IS the metaphysical Wellspring of all ontological possibility…) doesn’t *necessitate* that we’re limited to one choice & God can’t Create/Will/Decree a (real) SET of (real) options.

Let’s try a Yes or No this time: The question is CAN God create the volitional being who in fact CAN freely choose within this or that finite [set] of Decreed options? Is that something God CAN do?

You said earlier the following:

“…..I would make a distinction between an “ultimate” cause and an “immediate” cause. Our wills can be the immediate cause of a decision, given multiple options. In that sense they are free. But they cannot be the ultimate (uncaused) cause, since they are created (not uncaused)……”

Perhaps but then there is a distinction and Occasionalism is false. Hence (then) the “Adamic” in Eden is free to choose amid options — which means just that and nothing less — that the Adamic in Eden is free to choose amid options. Then, since Occasionalism is False we find that “God Caused My-Choice or Adam’s Sin” is also False. But that assumes that one does not backtrack from one’s earlier rejection of Occasionalism.

A. “God Caused My Free Choice To Exist”

…is not Identical with…

B. “God Caused Me To Make My Choice”

Well not unless one affirms Occasionalism. To blur those two beyond a full-on ontic / causal distinction requires you to go about grounding Adam’s [A—Z] in Adam instead of in God as the final terminus. God’s Capacity for Choice IS the Hard Stop you keep trying to turn into an infinite regress. Recall that there is no infinite regress in God’s Will. Hence the being of the Imago Dei is 1. Actual rather than illusion and 2. itself void of an infinite regress. The fact that the Imago Dei is Finite and not Infinite brings in a matter of Degree and of Reach — not of actuality and of hard-stop. How can ANY X find its terminus of existence outside of God? Or in itself? What do we “mean” when we say “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” with respect to the Imago Dei? Well let’s go further and focus the lens:

First, once again: How can ANY X find its terminus of existence outside of God? Or in itself? Secondly: Since Uncreated Intentionality is the Ground & Hard Stop of the Ontic v. the Imago Dei’s Intentionality, there cannot be an infinite regress in the Imago Dei’s intentionality. Only Occasionalism makes that Grounding error. There’s just more to Occasionalism than you’ve mentioned so far so keep that file open for new information.

God Creates/Gifts and God Grounds and God Continuously Sustains the very same Capacity Of Choice we are discussing. There *is* a Hard Stop. That *is* what we in fact *mean* when we say, “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” and Etc. with respect to the Imago Dei. To say that my capacity for X finds its Height / Width / Breadth and begins and ends in “Me” and not “God” is to claim a metaphysical absurdity. Definitions continue onward and upward with respect to Grounding. There is an infinite regress of preferences in my own will IF I am my own explanatory terminus. However, as with being so too with will — nether suffers the infinite regress. One more time for emphasis:

God Creates/Gifts and God Grounds and God Continuously Sustains the very same Capacity Of Choice we are discussing. There *is* a Hard Stop. That *is* what we in fact *mean* when we say, “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” and Etc. with respect to the Imago Dei.

The Ordering Of God’s Will

When it comes to Eden we find that a Noble Lie told by The Necessary Being (….in Eden to Adam about being free to eat of all but one tree…) isn’t a valid option. The Ordering Of God’s Will (…see http://disq.us/p/1wroxql ….) tells us simply (…and it is very simple…) the following:

Should God Will/Decree “Square” in this or that Possible World well then it is necessarily the case “Round” is impossible unless and until God suspends or reverses His Will/Decree in said Possible World.

That Same Ordering of God’s Will (then) with respect to our own capacity of choice amid this or that finite [SET] of options precludes the possibility of “Every Event Is God’s Will” should we in fact choose (for example) Evil when God’s First Order of Willing is that we as we as Free Agents choose Good, and so on. We find, given the Intentional Adamic, that there are equally possible worlds (….Privation, Eternal Life…) and in the Decree of the Imago Dei God in fact Wills/Decrees (….in all those intersections…) that which is a Singularity. As per http://disq.us/p/1n9y1rc with:

IF In Fact as per Ontic-Fact the “Edenic Adamic” is free to do *otherwise* then in fact that otherwise cannot sum to Ontic Non-Entity nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being. In fact God/Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity or in fact free to do Non-Being. Any epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy.

WRT Cyrus & Isaiah 45:7 and “God Creates Evil” and so on, see:

Abraham, Faith, Divine Command Theory, & Basic Reading Comprehension – at http://disq.us/p/1yh7bgt
Abraham, Isaac, and God’s Foreknowledge – at http://disq.us/p/1yhjehw
Abraham, Isaac, Kierkegaard’s Paradox, Cyrus, & Isaiah 45:7 – at http://disq.us/p/1yhjyrv
??God Emotionally Tortured Abraham?? – at http://disq.us/p/1yhkd08
Divine Command Theory Collapses Into A Metaphysical Absurdity – at https://metachristianity.com/divine-command-theory-collapses-into-a-metaphysical-absurdity/

END COPY/PASTE.

To maintain flow, recall that prior to the copy/paste we left off with the following two paragraphs:

That is all rough and hurried, but, it may offer something on the question of Consciousness or the Mind/Body interaction. Recall again that in the Trinitarian Life – and therefore at Reality’s Irreducible Substratum it is the case that Communicate transcends efficient and final causality as that which is caused does not exist before in Act, whereas that which is communicated exists before in Act, as described in Garrigou-Lagrange’s “The Trinity and God the Creator”.

It is the Trinitarian metaphysic alone which – at the end of the proverbial Ontic-Line – whether one travels Upstream or Downstream – provides lucidity given that there alone is reason’s last reply – reason’s final terminus – found amid the Wider, Thicker Heavy-Meta of Communique as opposed to the Narrower, Thinner Physics.

Our progressions upstream and downstream in fact retain Mind and Reason Itself hence we are rational to stand firm on reason’s last reply – on reason’s final terminus. Or, to say it another way, any and all Midstream progressions cannot retain coherence should one’s Upstream and Downstream termini finally forfeit the proverbial Means & Ends thereof.

Lastly, the items from https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.html which were listed at the start (…taken from http://disq.us/p/1mj0his and from http://disq.us/p/1mj0j0k …).

Intentionality, Mental States, Searle, Networks, and Causal Backgrounds

Reason Itself: The Parasite Upon Irrational Physical Events & The Colony of Memes In the Ecology of Cerebral Cortices

Quote:

“This sort of theory proposes that the meaning or intentional content of any particular mental state (a belief, desire, or whatever) derives from the role it plays within a system of mental states, all of which, as we’ve seen, seem logically interrelated in the manner briefly discussed in chapters 3 and 6, since to have any one mental state seems to require having a number of others along with it. The idea is that what gives the belief that Socrates is mortal the precise meaning it has is that it is entailed by other beliefs meaning that all men are mortal and that Socrates is a man, that together with a belief meaning that all mortals will eventually die it entails a belief meaning that Socrates will eventually die, and so on. If we think of beliefs, desires, and the like as a vast system of logically interconnected elements, the theory holds that each element in the system gets its meaning from having precisely the place in the system it has, by bearing exactly the logical and conceptual relations it bears to the other elements. (More precisely, it is the objects of beliefs, desires, and the like — sentences of Mentalese according to the CRTT, or, more generically and for those not necessarily committed to the CRTT, “mental representations” of some other, non-sentential sort — that bear meaning or intentional content. But for the sake of simplicity, we can ignore this qualification in what follows.)

There seems to be a serious problem with the conceptual role approach, namely that even if it is granted that mental states have the specific meaning or content they do only because of their relations to other mental states, this wouldn’t explain how mental states have any meaning at all in the first place. That a particular belief either implies other beliefs or is implied by them presupposes that it has some meaning or other: nothing that was completely meaningless could imply (or be implied by) anything. The very having of logical and conceptual relations assumes the prior existence of meaning, so that no appeal to logical and conceptual connections can (fully) account for meaning. Moreover, if belief A gets its content from its relations to beliefs B and C, and these get their content from their relations to beliefs D, E, and F, we seem destined to be led either in a circle or to an infinite regress. Either way, no ultimate explanation of intentional content will have been given. To provide such an explanation thus inevitably requires an appeal to something outside the network, something which can impart meaning to the whole. John Searle, who endorses something like the conceptual role theory of meaning, acknowledges that logical and conceptual relations between mental states cannot be the whole story if circularity or infinite regress is to be avoided. He therefore postulates that the entire “Network” of intentional mental states (he capitalizes Network to signify its status as a technical term) rests on what he calls a “Background” of non-intentional capacities to interact with the world around us. We have, for example, such intentional mental states as the desire to have a beer and the belief that there is beer in the refrigerator, and these mental states do, in part, get the specific meaning they have via their relations to each other and to other mental states in the broader Network.

But ultimately these mental states, and the Network as a whole, function only against a Background of capacities, such as the capacity to move about the world of physical objects, pick them up, manipulate them, and so on. This capacity is not to be identified with the belief that there is a real external world of physical objects; for if it were such an intentional mental state, then it would have to get its meaning from other mental states, and thus couldn’t serve as part of the Background that ends the regress of mental states. The capacity in question is rather something unconscious and without intentionality, a way of acting rather than a way of thinking. One acts as if one had the belief in question, though one in fact does not. While this capacity could in principle become a conscious, intentional mental state — one could come to have the explicit belief that there is a real world of external physical objects that I can manipulate and move about within — this would mean that this particular capacity has moved out of the Background and into the Network, and now rests on some other unconscious, non-Intentional Background capacity or way of acting.

There is, in short, always some set of capacities or other that comprises the Background (even if it is not always the same set for different people, or even for the same person at different times), and these capacities serve to ground the Network of intentional mental states. There is much to be said for Searle’s hypothesis of the Background, but it seems that it cannot save the conceptual role theory, for to speak of a “non-intentional capacity for acting” is to speak ambiguously. Consider that when you act without the conscious belief that there is an external world of physical objects, but merely manifest a capacity to interact with the world of physical objects, your capacity isn’t non-intentional in the same sense that an electric fan’s capacity to interact with the world of physical objects is non-intentional. You behave “as if’ you had a conscious, intentional belief in a world of physical objects, but of course you don’t, because it typically never even occurs to you either to believe or doubt that there is such a world: you just interact with the world, period. The fan also behaves “as if” it believed there was a world of external physical objects (that it “wants” to cool down, say); but of course it doesn’t really have this belief (or any wants) at all. In the case of the fan, this is not because it just hasn’t occurred to the fan to think about whether there is such a world, for the fan isn’t capable of such thoughts; it is rather because, strictly speaking, the fan doesn’t really “act” or “behave” at all, as opposed to just making movements. And the reason we don’t regard it as acting or behaving in the same sense we do is precisely because it doesn’t have intentionality — it is a dumb, meaningless, hunk of steel and wires.

We on the other hand don’t merely make physical movements: the waving of your hand when your friend enters the room isn’t just a meaningless movement, but an action, the action of greeting your friend. If it were just a meaningless movement — the result of a seizure, say — we wouldn’t count it as an action at all; it wouldn’t in that case be something you do, but rather something that happened to you. The fan, however, is capable of making nothing but meaningless movements. For something genuinely to behave or act as we do requires that it does have intentionality — action and behavior of the sort we exhibit are themselves manifestations of intentionality, and thus presuppose it. But in that case, an appeal to a “capacity for action” cannot provide the ultimate explanation of intentionality.

We need to know why our capacities for action are different from the mere capacities for movement that a fan exhibits. Merely noting, à la Searle’s Background hypothesis, that our capacities are non-intentional ways of acting cannot help, for that they are genuinely ways of acting is precisely what needs to be explained. Indeed, since they are ways of acting, they cannot be literally non-intentional, for if they were, they would no more be true ways of acting than are the capacities of an electrical fan. A capacity for action is, as a matter of conceptual necessity, an intentional capacity. In fairness to Searle, it isn’t clear that he intends his hypothesis of the Background to serve as a complete explanation of intentionality. His aim may be just to draw out some implications of the fact that mental states are logically and conceptually related to one another in a Network.

The point, though, is that his way of avoiding the circularity or regress that threaten any conceptual role theory cannot be appealed to in order to vindicate such a theory as a complete theory of meaning — and that it may even be incoherent, if Searle holds that the capacities and ways of acting that form the Background are literally devoid of intentionality.” (by Edward Feser)

End quote.

And then the second of those two:

Quote:

“In any event, my topic is not really the philosophy of mind, though by this point it may seem as if I have forgotten that. I am concerned not simply with the mystery of consciousness but with the significance of that mystery for a proper understanding of the word “God.” I admit that I have taken my time in reaching this point, but I think defensibly so. My claim throughout these pages is that the grammar for our thinking about the transcendent is given to us in the immanent, in the most humbly ordinary and familiar experiences of reality; in the case of our experience of consciousness, however, the familiarity can easily overwhelm our sense of the essential mystery. There is no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience here, and so the mystery is hidden by its own ubiquity. One extremely good way, then, to appreciate the utter strangeness of consciousness — the hither side, so to speak, of that moment of existential wonder that wakens us to the strangeness of all things — is to consider the extraordinary labors required to describe the mind in purely material terms. We have reached a curious juncture in the history of materialism, which seems to point toward a terminus that is either tragic or comical (depending on where one’s sympathies lie).

For a number of “naturalist” theorists it has become entirely credible, and even logically inevitable, that the defense of “rationalistic” values should require the denial of the existence of reason. Or, rather, intellectual consistency obliges them to believe that reason is parasitic upon purely irrational physical events, and that it may well be the case that our nonexistent consciousness is only deluded in intentionally believing that there is such a thing as intentional belief. Or they think that what we have mistaken for our rational convictions and ideas are actually only a colony of diverse “memes” that have established themselves in the ecologies of our cerebral cortices. Or whatever. At such a bizarre cultural or intellectual juncture, the word “fanaticism” is not opprobrious, but merely descriptive. We have reached a point of almost mystically fundamentalist absurdism. Even so, what is really astonishing here is not that some extreme proponents of naturalist thought accept such ideas but that any person of a naturalist bent could imagine that his or her beliefs permit any other conclusions.

If nature really is what mechanistic metaphysics portrays it as being, then consciousness is, like being itself, super naturam; and that must be intolerable to any true believer in the mechanistic creed. Materialism is, as I have said, the least rationally defensible and most explanatorily impoverished of metaphysical dogmas; but, if materialism is one’s faith, even reason itself may not be too great an offering to place upon its altar. If one is to exclude the supernatural absolutely from one’s picture of reality, one must not only ignore the mystery of being but also refuse to grant that consciousness could possibly be what it self-evidently is.” (David Bentley Hart, “The Experience of God”).

End quote.

Fixed Chains, Choice, Determinism, the Intentional Self, & Proportionate Causality

Proponents of Divine Determinism work hard to avoid two key facts:

1— God cannot deny Himself — Yet He Chooses. The [Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] that “is” [God’s Will] does not compel One-Choice. This Immaterial Causality vis-à-vis the Intentional Self sharply diverges from Material Causality vis-à-vis Chains Of Fixed Properties.

2— The Principle of Proportionate Causality and how that funds, sources, grounds, and sustains the Created Agents Intentional Self.

Proponents of Divine Determinism often reply by re-writing the above into something like this: “…..So you are saying that God caused to exist in us uncaused preferences, uncaused interests, uncaused desires, uncaused motivations, and uncaused inclinations. But all of those are not uncaused, but are in fact caused-to-exist as what they are, which is Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires…”

But of course in God we find BOTH 1. The express embrace of that [Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] AND 2. the express debunking on what that is supposed to mean (per Divine Determinism) vis-à-vis Free Choice Amid Ontic Options as, all over again, we find that God cannot deny Himself — cannot deny His Own Yet [Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] — AND YET He Freely Chooses. That should not be possible given the premises/conclusions of the Divine Determinism. The [Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] that “is” [God’s Will] does not compel One-Choice.

Immaterial Causality vis-à-vis the Intentional Self sharply diverges from Material Causality vis-à-vis Chains Of Fixed Properties.

The Principle of Proportionate Causality demonstrates BOTH 1. Divine Determinism’s [Cannot Deny Own Nature Etc.] / [Immutable Fixed Chain of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] AND 2. the Intentional Self housing Free Choice Amid Ontic Options.

The analysis of Divine Determinism has left out something fundamental vis-a-vis how we (…the Created Adamic…) can [actually] Do-Otherwise amid [actual] options. The premise that [Immutable Fixed Chains of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires] precludes Choice is misguided. The Principle of Proportionate Causality unpacks why/how Immutable Fixed Chains of Immutable Properties / Fixed Desires does not yield the result which Divine Determinism’s premises (wrongly) conclude. Immaterial Causality vis-à-vis the Intentional Self sharply diverges from Material Causality vis-à-vis Immutable Fixed Chains Of Immutable Fixed Properties.

The Why/How of that is unpacked a bit more along way here with a copy/paste of (…a few minor edits…) a brief reply to someone defending Divine Determinism in a discussion of our First Person Experience of “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” and whether or not that lands in Illusion v. Self or in an accurate perception of the Self. The context is not with Non-Theism (as it typically is) but instead with a proponent of Divine Determinism in which that core Properly Basic Belief of “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” must end, eventually, in illusion for in fact we cannot do otherwise — whether in Eden or not (according to Divine Determinism). Here’s the paraphrased reply to the proponent of Divine Determinism:

I don’t see that it works on your own terms. The reason why has to do with your regress from this or that “X” in the Created Being back, and back again to its ultimate metaphysical wellspring, namely “X-Itself” vis-à-vis God. The X’s you employ are Reason and Will and Self-Knowledge and you hope to avoid Foundationalism (full stop) and Coherentism (full stop) and Infinitism (full stop). Normally that is all easy, clean, coherent, and therefore okay. But, because of your wish to defend Divine Determinism you have had to pull up short in too many key areas when it comes to Perception vis-à-vis Mind vis-à-vis The Self vis-à-vis the First Person Experience of core Properly Basic Beliefs of “I-Exist” (source/ground v. Being Itself) and “I-Think/Reason” (source/ground v. Divine Mind Itself) and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” (source/ground v. Divine Freedom v. Will Itself).

I don’t have to tell you that Non-Theism cannot get away with Defeaters there and you can’t either – and for all the same reasons. But you’re really only treating Immaterial Actions and Material Actions as if they are in the same Category of Causality/Causation(s) and then tacking on the label “God” / “Divine Determinism” and – then – not pressing through with what happens to the coherence of Non-Theism when it (finally, as it must sooner or later) employs that SAME series of false identity claims, ,equivocations, and half-stops.

We ground the actuality of our own being in Being-Itself. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Exist” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory). So – then we move our lens over to our own reasoning, our own mind and seek to ground our own First Person Experience of reason/mind in Reason-Itself – in Mind-Itself vis-à-vis God. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Think” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory). So – then we move our lens over to our own Willing vis-à-vis Choosing vis-à-vis Can-Do-Otherwise and seek to ground our own First Person Experience of Can-Do-Otherwise in Volition-Itself – in Will-Itself vis-à-vis God. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory).

But wait. That all breaks down because the very foundation of your thesis is something which is ultimately an illusion – namely “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” vis-à-vis Perception wrt our own “I/Me” First Person Experience – and all roads lead to The Will – namely our own First Person Experience of this notion of Can-Do-Otherwise which we wish to ground in Will-Itself (God). Those three Properly Basic Beliefs have no Defeaters as the only way to Defeat “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is to finally eliminate the Properly Basic Self. Non-Theism of course does this as all roads lead to [A] a full-on Determinism (at worst) or else to [B] Quantum Indeterminism or Q.I. (at best) which is of no help because Q.I. must then be fallaciously equated to [C] Intentionality – which of course is impossible given the Causation(s) available to Non-Theism.

But quite inexplicably you choose in your own terms the same fate for those three core Properly Basic Beliefs vis-à-vis our own First Person Experience with respect to “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise”. On your view such are not merely suspect but – in fact – such land in that which is completely illusory and not at all what is actually true. We know this because I had said on my view the first person experience of such Properly Basic Beliefs are accurate and, then, I asked you if that First Person Experience vis-à-vis said Core Properly Basic Beliefs are reflective of reality (at bottom) or else illusion with respect to reality (at bottom). And your answer? Well twice we came to the nature of causation vis-à-vis our grounding of Being and of Reason and of Will back, and back again in our regress to their respective termini in Being Itself or Reason Itself or Will Itself and both times you abruptly cut off discussion.

The concept of “illusion” in “the philosophy of mind” as it relates to “intentionality” and “self” is not new or inaccessible material. Yet in order to defend your claim that our own Properly Basic Belief vis-à-vis Can-Do-Otherwise is illusion (we cannot do otherwise) you are willing to engage in discussion and, so, each time that discussion happens it arrives sooner or later, as it always must, to this juncture of Illusion vs. Actual and, once there, you just cut off discussion instead of pushing through. And the reason is obvious as the only way to Defeat “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is to finally eliminate the Properly Basic Self – and you cannot afford to go “that far”. So you just cut off the discussion at that juncture.

Well that’s fine as your Determinism has its problems but, here, you wish to traverse all of the same topography and, so, here, you’ve an essay which begins and ends in Reason Itself vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Will Itself. Which is fine. It’s fairly easy to land in such a metaphysical wellspring and easily avoid (in all three) any problems of Foundationalism (full stop) and Coherentism (full stop) and Infinitism (full stop). Unfortunately though you are not consistent in traversing all such landscapes and so you must begin with (or end with) Illusion vis-à-vis our own First Person Experience vis-à-vis Properly Basic Beliefs vis-à-vis *The *Self vis-à-vis I-Can-Do-Otherwise.

Without the Principle of Proportionate Causality the Non-Theist cannot rationally find Reason-Itself sourcing and grounding our own “actual” Reasoning-Itself / Thinking-Itself as there must always be some point of equivocation as our own mind finally streams from something that is ultimately “non-mind”. Well, that’s Non-Theism. But your Divine Determinism ALSO rejects the Bridge of Proportionate Causality (…Non-Theism must do so, but you choose to do so as its not necessary given what the Christian Metaphysic makes available to you…) and you insist that we cannot ground our “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” in God “….because in us its caused instead of uncaused…. therefore it’s illusion…”.

Well that is just you assuming that actions made up of Material Causes have the same reach and the same floor and the same ceiling as actions within Immaterial Causes – which is fallacious because you must equate the category of Immaterial to the category of Material in order to do that and, also, you must reject the Bridge of Proportionate Causality by which the very nature of the Imago Dei retains “actuality” wit respect to Properly Basic Beliefs v. Self. and does not succumb to Non-Theism’s “illusion” with respect to Properly Basic Beliefs v. Self.

The concept of “illusion” in “the philosophy of mind” as it relates to “intentionality” and “self” is not new or inaccessible material. The Capacity-To-Do-Otherwise (amid a set of decreed options) arrives just as Reason arrives, which arrives just as Being arrives, namely vis-à-vis the Bridge Across Non-Being and into Being, namely the Principle of Proportionate Causality. As per (briefly) https://metachristianity.com/beings-superseding-ontic-over-both-material-and-non-being/

There is also the problem of Non-Being & Illusion with respect to God’s Will for Adam in Eden. God cannot Will the Reductio Ad Absurdum of Non-Being v. Non-Entity v. Illusion because “To-Will-Non-Entity” is “To-Will-Reductio” which is “itself” a Reductio Ad Absurdum. You are forced to define God’s Will in Eden along just those lines though, as per http://disq.us/p/1n9y1rc

So on your thesis of grounding coherence in the Will of God, well, you have the Will of God landing in all sorts of Non-Being v. Non-Entity and/or in a category of Ontic Noble Lies told by the Necessary Being there in Eden as God In-Himself Wills Adam’s Disobedience from the get-go (..on Divine Determinism…). Again as per http://disq.us/p/1n9y1rc

For completeness here is that link:

If In Fact as per Ontic-Fact the Edenic Adamic is free to do *otherwise* then in fact that *otherwise* cannot sum to Ontic Non-Entity nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being. In fact God / Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity or free to do Non-Being. Any epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy (… http://disq.us/p/1n166pv ..).

Romans 9 – A Few Brief Segues:

1— Are You Better Than Your Friend Who Refused To Believe? — at https://soteriology101.com/2019/01/13/are-you-better-than-your-friend-who-refused-to-believe/

2— If Salvation Depends On Our Free Choice, How Are We Saved Totally By Grace? — at https://reknew.org/2019/02/if-salvation-depends-on-our-free-choice-how-are-we-saved-totally-by-grace/

3— Three Objections To The [Calvinistic] Doctrine Of Election — at https://soteriology101.com/2018/06/03/tim-keller-3-objections-to-the-calvinistic-doctrine-of-election/

4—William Lane Craig, Doctrine of Man – Part 17 — at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-2/doctrine-of-man-part-17/doctrine-of-man-part-17/ (…for obvious reasons Craig’s Molinism is not necessary for any of this….)

5— God’s Unconditional Love — at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/gods-unconditional-love/

6— Does the Atonement Imply Universalism? — at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/does-the-atonement-imply-universalism

7— the following four together — 1. http://disq.us/p/1ne4r2z and 2. http://disq.us/p/1ne4ujz and 3. http://disq.us/p/1ne55kr and 4. http://disq.us/p/1ne6xjb

8— Given its usefulness here, a repeated link to William Lane Craig’s Doctrine of Man – Part 17 — at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-2/doctrine-of-man-part-17/doctrine-of-man-part-17/

A proponent of Divine Determinism commented: “….NOTHING happens outside of God’s “control”…” A helpful reply to that was the following: “Yes that’s right, not even the FREE acts which YOU are 100% responsible for. Been there, done that.” (by Sye T. Bruggencate)

“God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.” (…by A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God)