The knowledge of love, revelation, meaning, morality, intrinsic purpose - are these all convenient , subjective mental fictions inside our heads ? How is the universe intelligible to us ? Is there a rational structure to the world ? Can our minds even make contact with what’s really out there ?
Paul Tyson, in his superb book, Returning to Reality, (only 2.99 on kindle HERE ! ) gives a different vision of reality, one based on an ancient understanding of mind and cosmos, he writes,
“To Plato, these spiritual powers are extra-mental realities that inform all en-mattered things. That is, these “ideas” do not originate in our minds even though they can be apprehended by our minds. To Plato intelligible essence is a deep feature of reality, it is not something subjectively generated within our consciousness and then projected onto a meaningless objective cosmos.
So the tangible realm is seen as a partial reflection of the spiritual realm and hence all physical things are never simply physical, but are incomplete and passing functions of spiritual powers, intelligences, ideas, values, meanings, and authorities, which are the real source of the dynamics of our immediately perceive reality contexts.
Significantly, this does not entail a dualism between the physical and the spiritual, for there is no possibility here of the physical being in any way viable without its dependent relation to the spiritual. To the ancient worldview, the material could not be comprehensible, ordered, or meaningful were it not for its participation in the spiritual.
Jesus, Paul, John, and Plato all consider the material world to be fundamentally dependent on eternal meaning (Logos) and value (the Goodness of God); for them it is simply inconceivable to consider it as a discretely and self-contained material reality.
To Plato, the realm of tangible appearance would simply not be sensible or comprehensible were it not for eternal forms being transiently expressed in space and time.
Further, to Plato, if we did not have minds wrought and formed of spiritual reality we would not be able to comprehend the ever-present traces of eternal Reason as expressed partially within time. To Plato what we now call scientific knowledge would not be possible without divine order and value being expressed in nature.
*“If you think about the “grace and nature” controversies of modern theology you will quickly notice that these controversies could not arise within a broadly Platonist outlook on reality. In ancient terms one might think of nature as space, time, and matter and of grace as order, value, purpose, and meaning. In those terms nature is the medium for the partial expression of grace.
But notice, within this outlook there is no way in which it is possible to conceive of nature as other than fundamentally graced.
How could you have matter without form, how could you have facts without meaning, how could you have objectivity without value, how could you have time without eternity, how could you have thinking without reason? *
For to Plato, everything expressed in space, time, and matter is a derived and on goingly dependent creation of the divine Reason that emanates from The Good.
That reality is intelligible and full of qualitative richness is the start and grounds of meaningful knowledge; knowledge cannot be asked to establish the intelligibility of reality or the reality of value and meaning."
Likewise David Bentley Hart here asks us to notice the way our minds seem to mirror nature,
“And, with Plotinus, we may ask if “being” can be separated from notions of intelligibility, if not, then things exist already “intending” to be known - they purposely “fit” the human mind. There IS a constant correlation between that act of rational consciousness and the intelligibility of being, a correlation that is all but unimaginable if the structure reality were not already rational. Better than the essentially magical theory of perception as representation anyway…
The reciprocity between the mind and objective reality seems to indicate a universe that is mind-like, or mental.
….the seemingly indivisible relation that exists between them in the very encounter between nature and mind: the intelligibility of the world and the power of thought to lay hold of it. Perhaps all we need consider is how the inherently formal and intentional structure of rational thought seems to correspond so fruitfully to the rational structure of the world.
This by itself invites us to reconsider something at least like the causal language proposed in the Aristotelian tradition, in which (again) nature’s deepest rational relations are more like the syntax of a sentence, or mathematical equations, than like mere accidental concrescences of physical forces.
….the ancient intuition that nature and mind are not alien to one another precisely because nature already possesses a rational structure analogous to thought. Perhaps the ground of the possibility of regular physical causation, in the energetic and mechanical sense, is a deeper logical coinherence of rational relations underlying all reality; and hence mind inhabits physical nature not as an anomaly, but as a revelation of the deepest essence of everything that exists.
The intentionality of mind then is neither a ghostly agency inexplicably haunting a machine, nor an illusion reducible to non-intentional and impersonal forces, but instead the most intense and luminous expression of those formal and teleological determinations that give actuality to all nature.
On Plotinus Hart notes,
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/mind-over-matter
“Plotinus gave exquisitely refined expression to the ancient intuition that the material order is not the basis of the mental, but rather the reverse. This is not only an eminently rational intuition; it is perhaps the only truly rational picture of reality as a whole.
Mind does not emerge from mindless matter, as modern philosophical fashion would have it. The suggestion that is does is both a logical impossibility and a phenomenological absurdity.
Plotinus and his contemporaries understood that all the things that most essentially characterize the act of rational consciousness—its irreducible unity of apprehension, its teleological structure, the logical syntax of reasoning, and on and on—are intrinsically incompatible with, and could not logically emerge from, a material reality devoid of mind.
At the same time, they could not fail to notice that there is a constant correlation between that act of rational consciousness and the intelligibility of being, a correlation that is all but unimaginable if the structure and ground of all reality were not already rational.
Happily, in Plotinus’s time no one had yet ventured the essentially magical theory of perception as representation. Plotinus was absolutely correct, therefore, to attempt to understand the structure of the whole of reality by looking inward to the structure of the mind; and he was just as correct to suppose that the reciprocity between the mind and objective reality must indicate a reality simpler and more capacious than either: a primordial intelligence, Nous, and an original unity, the One, generating, sustaining, and encompassing all things.”
This is true for Christianity as well, the Orthodox theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae writes,
“But man and the cosmos constitute a natural revelation also from the point of view of knowledge. * The cosmos is organized in a way that corresponds to our capacity for knowing. The cosmos - and human nature as intimately connected with the cosmos - are stamped with rationality, while man (God's creature) is further endowed with a reason capable of knowing consciously the rationality of the cosmos and of his own nature.
We consider that the rationality of the cosmos attests to the fact that the cosmos is the product of a rational being, since rationality, as an aspect of a reality which is destined to be known, has no explanation apart from a conscious Reason which knows it from the time it creates it or even before that time, and knows it continually so long as that same Reason preserves its being. On the other hand, the cosmos itself would be meaningless along with its rationality if there were no human reason that might come to know the cosmos because of its rational character.
In our faith, the rationality of the cosmos has a meaning only if it is known in the thought of an intelligent creative being before its creation and in the whole time of its continuing in being, having been first brought into existence precisely that it might be known by a being for whom it was created, and that a dialogue between itself and this created rational being might thus be brought about through its mediation. This fact con stitutes the content of natural revelation.
The "reasons" or inner principles of things reveal their light in human reason and through the conscious rational action of man. Likewise, our reason reveals its own power and depth even more richly by uncovering the reasons within created things. Yet, in this reciprocal influence, it is human reason and not the reasons within things which has the role of a subject working consciously.
The reasons within things disclose themselves to human consciousness and must be assimilated by it and concentrated in it. They disclose themselves in so far as they have human reason as their virtual conscious center and by helping reason to become their own actual center. They are the potential rays of human reason on the way towards being revealed as its actual rays, and it is through these that human reason extends its vision farther and farther.”
Instead of believing what our direct experience of reality tells, us, that the cosmos is full of value, we artificially put that direct experience into some secondary category, into our “unconscious” or some other ideological construct, Paul Tyson says,
“For value and purpose understood in the actual categories of our existential experience are magical to the terms of modern realism. This is because modern realism only counts what you can materially observe, quantifiably measure, and then mathematically model as real.
This means we modern people are required to reinterpret our direct (magical) experience of value and purpose in the abstract (so-called “realist”) terms of quantification and instrumental function.
Thus, biological necessity and social conditioning become the primary realities of human motivation (for these things are materially measurable) and quality becomes a secondary and subjective fiction produced by “real” material causes.
Both Plato and Aristotle thought that we can know the world because all beings in the world have an intellective essence, a “form.” That is, it is in the nature of a being to have defining qualities and characteristics, and it is in the nature of the world that it is an intellectively integrated and logical cosmos where all individual beings are unified through Being itself.
When we know something, we grasp something of its essence in our mind. Now we may only ever have a partial knowledge of the true essence of things, and we certainly have a very limited knowledge of Being, and even less of its divine grounds, but what truth we can grasp is genuine truth.
Here, the essential nature of all things is fundamentally communicative and fundamentally intellective. So Being conceived of as in some manner the divinely given framework of reality; Logos as the ordered communicative reason expressed in all aspects of the cosmos; and form or essence, giving specific knowable characteristics to beings in the world, all conspire to make the world intelligible to us.
Here, the cosmos itself is embedded in Mind (Nous), and our minds are in communion with the cosmos-ordering Mind that is the ground of being and that defines the field of reality.
*To the essentialist stream of classical and medieval thinking, thought is meaningful and knowledge can be true because **the nature of reality itself is intrinsically intellective.**”
(Let that sink in . . . there is a lot in that sentence.)
“To classical and medieval epistemology and metaphysics, Mind was the most basic feature of reality, and all material beings (as well as immaterial beings) were embedded in thought. Anyone who did not take this as the premise of reasoning was not serious about reason itself, and you would be wasting your time if you tried to reason with them.
Thus, those skeptics who were not prepared to have good faith in reason itself could be relied on to play sophistic linguistic tricks in conversation, and to substitute irrational desire or power or pleasure for reason as the basic ground of human communication and action.
This entails an irrational and instrumental fatalism that both Plato and Aristotle and their many types of followers found beneath philosophical reasonableness.
For the truth possibilities of reasonable speech were—to the essentialists—all premised on the cosmos being produced and enchanted by divine Mind. In this cosmos, value, purpose, beauty, unity, meaning, and goodness were all real features of natural reality, as well as human reality.
In this cosmos, a reasonable knowledge of the world is entirely natural, and the world itself is embedded in the higher values and meanings of Mind. What I want you to notice here is that divine Mind—which is also, to Plato, the ground of Being, and the Goodness beyond Being—is the ontological foundation of knowledge to this outlook.
*That is, a vision of reality as intrinsically ordered, intrinsically meaningful, intrinsically valuable is the ground of our sense experience, and of all human meaning, purpose, reason, and knowledge.
Nature (as far as we are concerned) is here a medium of communication between the divine Mind and human minds, and we are ourselves situated within this shimmering, beautiful, and yet unmasterable and inherently mysterious, meaningful medium (nature).
The intellective essence of any being or thought we experience has its first source in the Mind of God, and when we comprehend any intellectual truth, we are hearing the Logos of God speak into our minds.
As a quick aside, I should point out that one does not need to be religious to think about the meaning of the cosmos along these sort of lines. Professor Paul Davies—see his book The Mind of God—is a physicist and entirely non-religious, and yet the intellectually brilliant structures and the delicately balanced and beautifully elegant synergies of nature leads Davies to think about reality in ways that have quite serious ties to this ancient essentialist outlook.
Instead of believing what our direct experience of reality tells, us, that the cosmos is full of value, we artificially put that direct experience into some secondary category, into our “unconscious” or some other ideological construct, Paul Tyson says,
“For value and purpose understood in the actual categories of our existential experience are magical to the terms of modern realism. This is because modern realism only counts what you can materially observe, quantifiably measure, and then mathematically model as real.
This means we modern people are required to reinterpret our direct (magical) experience of value and purpose in the abstract (so-called “realist”) terms of quantification and instrumental function.
Thus, biological necessity and social conditioning become the primary realities of human motivation (for these things are materially measurable) and quality becomes a secondary and subjective fiction produced by “real” material causes.
Both Plato and Aristotle thought that we can know the world because all beings in the world have an intellective essence, a “form.” That is, it is in the nature of a being to have defining qualities and characteristics, and it is in the nature of the world that it is an intellectively integrated and logical cosmos where all individual beings are unified through Being itself.
When we know something, we grasp something of its essence in our mind. Now we may only ever have a partial knowledge of the true essence of things, and we certainly have a very limited knowledge of Being, and even less of its divine grounds, but what truth we can grasp is genuine truth.
Here, the essential nature of all things is fundamentally communicative and fundamentally intellective. So Being conceived of as in some manner the divinely given framework of reality; Logos as the ordered communicative reason expressed in all aspects of the cosmos; and form or essence, giving specific knowable characteristics to beings in the world, all conspire to make the world intelligible to us.
Here, the cosmos itself is embedded in Mind (Nous), and our minds are in communion with the cosmos-ordering Mind that is the ground of being and that defines the field of reality.
*To the essentialist stream of classical and medieval thinking, thought is meaningful and knowledge can be true because **the nature of reality itself is intrinsically intellective.**”
(Let that sink in . . . there is a lot in that sentence.)
“To classical and medieval epistemology and metaphysics, Mind was the most basic feature of reality, and all material beings (as well as immaterial beings) were embedded in thought. Anyone who did not take this as the premise of reasoning was not serious about reason itself, and you would be wasting your time if you tried to reason with them.
Thus, those skeptics who were not prepared to have good faith in reason itself could be relied on to play sophistic linguistic tricks in conversation, and to substitute irrational desire or power or pleasure for reason as the basic ground of human communication and action.
This entails an irrational and instrumental fatalism that both Plato and Aristotle and their many types of followers found beneath philosophical reasonableness.
For the truth possibilities of reasonable speech were—to the essentialists—all premised on the cosmos being produced and enchanted by divine Mind. In this cosmos, value, purpose, beauty, unity, meaning, and goodness were all real features of natural reality, as well as human reality.
In this cosmos, a reasonable knowledge of the world is entirely natural, and the world itself is embedded in the higher values and meanings of Mind. What I want you to notice here is that divine Mind—which is also, to Plato, the ground of Being, and the Goodness beyond Being—is the ontological foundation of knowledge to this outlook.
*That is, a vision of reality as intrinsically ordered, intrinsically meaningful, intrinsically valuable is the ground of our sense experience, and of all human meaning, purpose, reason, and knowledge.
Nature (as far as we are concerned) is here a medium of communication between the divine Mind and human minds, and we are ourselves situated within this shimmering, beautiful, and yet unmasterable and inherently mysterious, meaningful medium (nature).
The intellective essence of any being or thought we experience has its first source in the Mind of God, and when we comprehend any intellectual truth, we are hearing the Logos of God speak into our minds.
As a quick aside, I should point out that one does not need to be religious to think about the meaning of the cosmos along these sort of lines. Professor Paul Davies—see his book The Mind of God—is a physicist and entirely non-religious, and yet the intellectually brilliant structures and the delicately balanced and beautifully elegant synergies of nature leads Davies to think about reality in ways that have quite serious ties to this ancient essentialist outlook.
Because material nature is a medium of divine forms in Plato, the material exists as a secondary order of reality when compared to the intellective (spiritual) realm.
To Plato, the realm of the material is quite incomprehensible if one tries to consider it in isolation from the intellective, because all one will see if one looks for an abstracted, “pure” material nature (matter apart from form) is contingency and flux.
Things cannot be understood—things would have no enduring essence—if matter and energy in temporal and material transience is all there is. Indeed, there could be no such thing as “things” in such flux.
*If the limits of our senses and the grammar of our logic are all we have to go on, then the apparent reality we think we perceive and understand cannot be known as true, and is itself a function of incomprehensible flux and contingency.
Plato has no interest in such an anti-reason, absurdist stances. To Plato, the things that make material nature really (albeit partially) intelligible are eternal truths. Eternal truths are not subject to contingency and flux.
Mathematical truths, for example, are timelessly and essentially true. Through mathematics we see that the material space-time realm of flux and contingence is embedded in the eternal realm of Mind and the eternal “now” of Being.
This embedding gives the tangible world its remarkable order, intelligibility, and reality. This divine realm of Mind produces the high forms: Beauty, Being, *Unity, Truth, and above all Goodness. Value, meaning, reason, and purpose are found by us within nature because nature itself is embedded in the eternal realm of divine forms.
That reality is intelligible and full of qualitative richness is the start and grounds of meaningful knowledge; knowledge cannot be asked to establish the intelligibility of reality or the reality of value and meaning. "
So, metaphysically, that would mean the entire Cosmos IS communication, my next blog post discusses that HERE
And then HOW do we gain this vision if nature as divine revelation, I discuss that HERE
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