NOTES ON DEVISING AN ARCHITECTONIC-ORGANON

OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

1) To describe Reality, devise an Architectonic/Organon of Human Knowledge of

Environing Realities, which would include ourselves.

2) To describe ourselves, devise such an account as would include the Human

Knowledge Manifold as an Environed Reality, which would include both evaluative and

rational continuua.

3) When devising a model of epistemic virtue (values), avoid the usual (and many)

overworked distinctions and employ the very real but often under-appreciated

dichotomies.

4) In our modal arguments for this or that reality, we must rigorously define and

disambiguate our terms. Employ such criteria that, if met, will guarantee the conceptual

compatibility of any attributes we employ in our conceptualizations of this or that reality.

In order to be conceptually compatible, while, at the same time, avoiding any absurdities

of parodied logic, attributes must not be logically impossible to coinstantiate in our

arguments and they must also be described in terms that define a reality's negative

properties. For an example, see:

browser facility to scroll down quickly to the first occurrence of the word “negativity”

and then also for the name of philosopher “Richard Gale”

5) In defining such attributes as will describe the various aspects of this or that

reality, we must draw the proper distinctions between those aspects that are predicated a)

univocally b) equivocally or c) relationally vis a vis other realities. Univocal is defined as

having one meaning only. Equivocal means subject to two or more interpretations. These

accounts necessarily utilize some terms univocally and others equivocally. The equivocal

can be either simply equivocal or analogical. The analogical can be attributive (if real

causes and effects are invoked) or proportional (if we are invoking similarities in the

relationships between two different pairs of terms). If such an similarity is essential to

those terms we have a proper proportionality but if it is accidental we have an improper

proportionality, a metaphor. And we use a lot of metaphors, even in physics, and they all

eventually collapse.

6) In our attempts to increase our descriptive accuracy of this or that reality, we

must be clear whether we are proceeding through a) affirmation [kataphatically, the via

positiva] b) negation [apophatically, the via negativa] or c) eminence [unitively, neither

kataphatically nor apophatically but, rather, equivocally]. We must be clear whether we

are proceeding a) metaphorically b) literally or c) analogically [affirming the

metaphorical while invoking further dissimilarities].The best examples can be found in

, Reality and Mystical Experience by F. Samuel Brainard.

7) We must be clear regarding our use of First Principles: a) noncontradiction b)

excluded middle c) identity d) reality's intelligibility e) human intelligence f) the

existence of other minds and such. See Robert Lane’s discussion:

8) We must be mindful of godelian (and godelian-like) constraints on our

argumentation: a) complete accounts in formal systems are necessarily inconsistent b)

consistent accounts in formal systems are necessarily incomplete and c) we can model the

rules but cannot explain them within their own formal symbol system [must reaxiomatize,

which is to say prove them in yet another system, at the same time,

suggesting we can, indeed, see the truth of certain propositions that we cannot otherwise

prove]. We thus distinguish between local and global explanatory attempts, models of

9) We must employ semantical [epistemological] vagueness, such that for

attributes a) univocally predicated, excluded middle holds and noncontradiction folds b)

equivocally predicated, both excluded middle and noncontradiction hold and c)

relationally predicated, noncontradiction holds and excluded middle folds. Ergo, re: First

Principles, you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to

walk away, know when to run. See Robert Lane’s discussion:

10) We must understand and appreciate the integral nature of the humanknowledge

manifold (with evaluative and rational continuua) and Lonergan's sensation, abstraction

& judgment: sensation & perception, emotion & motivation, learning & memory,

intuition & cognition, non- & pre-inferential, abductive inference, inductive inference,

deductive inference and deliberation.

11) We must appreciate and understand the true efficacy of: abduction, fast & frugal

decision-making, ecological rationality, evolutionary rationality, pragmatic rationality,

bounded rationality, common sense; also of both propositional and doxastic justification,

and affective judgment: both aesthetic and prudential, the latter including both pragmatic

12) We must draw the distinction between peircean argument (abduction, hypothesis

generation) and argumentation (inductive & deductive inference).See

13) We must draw a distinction between partial apprehension of a reality and total

comprehension of a reality.

14) We must employ dialectical analysis, properly discerning where our different

accounts of this or that reality a) agree b) converge c) complement or d) dialectically

reverse. We must distinguish between this dialectic and hegelian synthesis and resist false

irenicism, facile syncretism and insidious indifferentism, while exercising due care in our

attempts to map conceptualizations from one account onto another. Also, we should

employ our scholastic distinctions: im/possible, im/plausible, im/probable and un/certain.

15) We must distinguish between the different types of paradox encountered in our

various attempts to describe this or that reality a) veridical b) falsidical c) conditional and

d) antinomial. We must recognize that all metaphysics are fatally flawed and that their

root metaphors will eventually collapse in true antinomial paradox of a) infinite regress

b) causal disjunction or c) circular referentiality [ipse dixit - stipulated beginning or

16) As part and parcel of the isomorphicity implied in our epistemological

vagueness, we must employ ontological vagueness, which is to say that we must prescind

from the necessary to the probable in our modal logic. This applies to the dance between

chance & necessity, pattern & paradox, random & systematic, order & chaos.See

and non-necessary reasonings and also probable deductions.

17) We must properly integrate our classical causal distinctions such that the

axiological/teleological [instrumental & formal] mediates between the epistemological

[formal] and cosmological/ontological [efficient/material]. These comprise a process and

not rather discrete events.This follows the grammar that the normative sciences mediate

between our phenomenology and our metaphysics. See

18) We must recognize the idea of emergence is mostly a heuristic device inasmuch

as it has some descriptive accuracy but only limited predictive, hence, explanatory

adequacy. It predicts novelty but cannot specify its nature. Supervenience is even more

problematical, trivial when described as weak (and usually associated with strong

emergence), question begging re: reducibility when described as strong (and usually

associated with weak emergence).See

19) We must avoid all manner of dualisms, essentialism, nominalism and a priorism

as they give rise to mutual occlusivities and mutual unintelligibilities in our arguments

and argumentations. The analogia relata (of process-experience approaches, such as the

peircean and neoplatonic triadic relational) that is implicit in the triadic grammar of all of

the above-described distinctions and rubrics can mediate between the analogia antis (of

linguistic approaches, such as the scotistic univocity of being) and the analogia entis (of

substance approaches, such as the thomistic analogy of being). This includes such triads

as proodos (proceeding), mone (resting) and epistrophe (return) of neoplatonic dionysian

mysticism. It anticipates such distinctions as a) the peircean distinction between objective

reality and physical reality b) the scotistic formal distinction c) the thomistic distinction

between material and immaterial substance, all of which imply nonphysical causation

without violating physical causal closure, all proleptical, in a sense, to such concepts as

20) We must avoid the genetic and memetic fallacies of Dawkins and Dennett and

the computational fallacies of other cognitive scientists, all as described by Deacon.See

21) We must denominate the "cash value" of getting our metaphysics correct in

terms of the accuracy of our anthropologies and psychologies because getting our

descriptive and normative accounts correct is preliminary to properly conducting our

evaluative attempts, which will then inform the prescriptions we devise for an ailing

humanity and cosmos, rendering such prescriptions efficacious, inefficacious, and even

harmful. This signals the importance of the dialogues between science, religion,

philosophy and the arts. Further regarding “cash value” and the “pragmatic maxim” and

all it might entail, asking what difference this or that metaphysical, epistemological or

scientific supposition might make, if it were true or not, can clarify our thinking, such as

better enabling us to discern the circular referentiality of a tautology, e.g. taking existence

as a predicate of being (rather than employing a concept such as “bounded” existence).

22) We must carefully nuance the parsimony we seek from Occam's Razor moreso

in terms of the facility and resiliency of abduction and not necessarily in terms of

complexity, honoring what we know from evolutionary psychology about human

23) At wits end, confronted with ineluctable paradox, in choosing the most

compelling metaphysic, there is always the reductio ad absurdum. And remember,

whatever is going on in analytical philosophy, semeiotics and linguistics, you can know

thus much is true: A single, even small, thermonuclear explosion can ruin your whole

day.

24) Regarding multiverse accounts, Polkinghorne rejects any notion that science can

say anything about same if science is careful and scrupulous about what science can

actually say, and this may be true, but it does seem that such an explanatory attempt can

be indirectly determined at least consonant with what we are able to directly observe

and/or indirectly measure (thinking of Max Tegmark's ideas). It is plausible, for example,

insofar as it is an attempt to explain the apparent anthropic fine-tuning.

25) Importantly, not all human knowledge is formal, which is what so much of the

above has been about!

26) The major philosophical traditions can be described and distinguished by their

postures toward idealism & realism, rationalism & empiricism, which are related to their

various essentialisms and nominalisms, which can all be more particularly described in

terms of what they do with the PEM (excluded middle) and PNC (noncontradiction) as

they consider peircean 1ns, 2ns and 3ns, variously holding or folding these First

Principles as they move from univocal to equivocal and relational predications.

27) With the peircean perspective taken as normative, PEM holds for 1ns and 2ns

and PNC holds for 2ns and 3ns (hence, PNC folds for 1ns and PEM folds for 3ns).

28) In a nominalistic perspective, PNC folds for 3ns and classical notions of

causality and continuity are incoherent.

29) In an essentialistic perspective, PNC properly holds for 3ns but PEM is

erroneously held for 3ns, suggesting that modal logic drives algorithmically toward the

necessary and not, rather, the probable.

30) The nominalist’s objection to essentialism’s modal logic of the necessary in 3ns

is warranted but folding PNC in 3ns is the wrong response, rendering all notions of

causality incoherent.. The essentialist’s objection to nominalism’s denial of any modal

logic in 3ns is warranted but holding PEM in 3ns is the wrong response, investing reality

with an unwarranted determinacy. The peircean affirmation of PNC in 3ns and denial of

PEM in 3ns resolves such incoherency with a modal logic of probability and draws the

proper distinctions between the univocal, equivocal and relational predications, the

univocal folding PNC in 1ns, the equivocal folding PEM in 3ns and the relational holding

PNC and PEM in 2ns.

31) The platonic rationalist-realist perspective is impaired by essentialism. The

kantian rationalist-idealist perspective is impaired by both essentialism and nominalism.

The humean empiricist idealist perspective is impaired by nominalism. The aristotelian

empiricist realist perspective, with a nuanced hylomorphism, is not impaired by

essentialism or nominalism but suffers from substantialism due to its atomicity, which

impairs relationality. Finally, even a process-relational-substantial approach must make

the scotistic/peircean formal distinction between objective reality and physical reality.

Radically deconstructive, analytical, and even pragmatist, approaches seize upon the

folding of PNC in 1ns and then run amok in denying PNC in 3ns and sometimes even

2ns. Phenomenologists bracket these metaphysical considerations. Existentialists argue

over what precedes what, existence vs essence, losing sight of their necessary

coinstantiation in 2ns in physical reality and failing to draw the proper distinction

between the objective reality of an attribute (its abstraction & objectification) and the

physical reality where it is integrally instantiated. Neither essence nor existence precedes

the other in physical reality; they always arrive at the scene together and inextricably

intertwined.

32) The peircean grammar draws necessary distinctions between univocal, equivocal

and relational predications of different aspects of reality but, in so doing, is a heuristic

that does not otherwise predict the precise nature or degree of univocity, equivocity or

relationality between those aspects. In that sense, it is like emergentism, which predicts

novelty but does not describe its nature or degree. To that extent, it no more resolves

philosophy of mind questions, in particular, than it does metaphysical questions, in

general. What it does is help us to think more clearly about such issues placing different

perspectives in dialogue, revealing where it is they agree, converge, complement and

disagree. Further, it helps us better discern the nature of the paradoxes that our different

systems encounter: veridical, falsidical, conditional and antinomial, and why it is our

various root metaphors variously extend or collapse in describing different aspects of

reality. It doesn’t predict or describe the precise nature of reality’s givens in terms of

primitives, forces and axioms but does help us locate how and where univocal, equivocal

and relational predications are to be applied to such givens by acting as a philosophical

lingua franca between different perspectives and accounts.Where are reality’s

continuities and discontinuities in terms of givens? The peircean grammar speaks to how

they are related in terms of 1ns, 2ns and 3ns but not with respect to nature or origin or to

what extent or degree (if for no other reason that not all phenomena are equally probable,

in terms of 3ns). Is consciousness a primitive along with space, time, mass and charge? Is

it emergent? epiphenomenal? explained by Dennett? described by Penrose? a hard

problem as per Chalmers or Searle? an eliminated problem as per the Churchlands? an

intractable problem as per William James? Each of these positions can be described in

peircean terms and they can be compared and contrasted in a dialogue that reveals where

they agree, disagree, converge and complement. They cannot be a priori arbitrated by the

peircean perspective; rather, they can only be consistently articulated and framed up

hypothetically on the same terms, which is to say, in such a manner that hypotheticodeductive

and scientific-inductive methods can be applied to them and such that a

posteriori experience can reveal their internal coherence/incoherence, logical

consistency/inconsistency, external congruence/incongruence, hypothetical

consonance/dissonance and interdisciplinary consilience/inconsilience.

33) Do our various metaphysics collapse because of an encounter with paradox that

is generated by a) the nature of the environing realities, which are being explained? b) the

exigencies of the environed reality, which is explaining? or c) some combination of

these? Is the paradox encountered veridical, falsidical, conditional or antinomial? Did we

introduce the paradox ourselves or did an environing reality reveal its intrinsic

paradoxical nature? We can describe reality’s categories (such as w/ CSP’s

phaneroscopy), a logic for those categories (such as CSP’s semeiotic logic) and an

organon that relates these categories and logic (such as CSP’s metaphysical architectonic)

and then employ such a heuristic in any given metaphysic using any given root metaphor.

When we do, at some point, we will encounter an infinite regress, a causal disjunction or

circular referentiality (petitio principii, ipse dixit, etc), and we might, therefore, at some

level, have reason to suspect that those are the species of ineluctable paradox that even

the most accurate metaphysics will inevitably encounter. If circular referentiality is

avoidable, still, infinite regress and causal disjunction are not and our metaphysics will

succumb to one or the other, possibly because these alternate accounts present

complementary perspectives of reality and the nature of its apparent continuities and

discontinuities (as measured in degrees of probability or as reflected in the dissimilarities

between various givens and their natures and origins, some belonging to this singularity,

some to another, this or another realm of reality variously pluralistic or not).

34) What it all seems to boil down to is this: Different schools of philosophy and

metaphysics are mostly disagreeing regarding the nature and degree, the origin and

extent, of continuities and discontinuities in reality, some even claiming to transcend this

debate by using a continuum of probability. The manifold and multiform assertions

and/or denials of continuity and discontinuity in reality play out in the different

conclusions of modal logic with respect to what is possible versus actual versus necessary

regarding the nature of reality (usually in terms of givens, i.e. primitives, forces and

axioms), some even claiming to transcend this modal logic by substituting probable for

necessary. Even then, one is not so much transcending the fray as avoiding the fray if one

does not venture to guess at the nature and degree, origin and extent, of reality’s

probabilities, necessities, continuities and discontinuities. Sure, the essentialists and

substantialists overemphasize discontinuities and the nominalists overemphasize

continuities and the dualists introduce some false dichotomies, but anyone who claims to

be above this metaphysical fray has not so much transcended these issues with a new and

improved metaphysics as they have desisted from even doing metaphysics, opting instead

for a meta-metaphysical heuristic device, at the same time, sacrificing explanatory

adequacy. This is what happens with the emergentistic something more from nothing but

and also what happens in semeiotic logic (for infinite regress is just as fatal,

metaphysically, as causal disjunction and circular referentiality).

35) Evaluating Hypotheses:Does it beg questions?Does it traffic in trivialities? Does

it overwork analogies?Does it overwork distinctions? Does it underwork

dichotomies?Does it eliminate infinite regress?

36) Not to worry, this is to be expected at this stage of humankind’s journey of

knowledge. However, if the answer to any of these questions is affirmative, then one’s

hypothesis probably doesn’t belong in a science textbook for now. At any rate, given our

inescapable fallibility, we best proceed in a community of inquiry as we pursue our

practical and heuristic (both normative and speculative) sciences.

37) Couching this or that debate in the philosophy of science in terms of dis/honesty

may very well address one aspect of any given controversy. I have often wondered

whether or not some disagreements are rooted in disparate approaches to epistemic

values, epistemic goods, epistemic virtues, epistemic goals, epistemic success, epistemic

competence or whatever is truly at issue. I don't know who is being dishonest or not,

aware or unawares, but I think one can perhaps discern in/authenticity in a variety of

ways.

38) In trying to sort through and inventory such matters, through time, I have come

to more broadly conceive the terms of such controversies, not only beyond the notions of

epistemic disvalue, epistemic non-virtue and epistemic incompetence, but, beyond the

epistemic, itself. Taking a cue from Lonergan's inventory of conversions, which include

the cognitive, affective, moral, social and religious, one might identify manifold other

ways to frustrate the diverse (but unitively-oriented) goals of human authenticity, whether

through disvalue, non-virtue or incompetence.

39) Our approach to and grasp of reality, through both the heuristic sciences

(normative and theoretical) and practical sciences, in my view, is quite often frustrated by

the overworking of certain distinctions and the underworking of certain dichotomies, by

our projection of discontinuities onto continuities and vice versa. And this goes beyond

the issue of the One and the Many, the universal and the particular, the local and the

global, beyond the disambiguation and predication of our terms, beyond the setting forth

of our primitives, forces and axioms, beyond the truth of our premises and the validity of

our logic, beyond noetical, aesthetical and ethical norms, beyond our

normative/prescriptive, speculative/descriptive and pragmatic/practical enterprises,

beyond all this to living life, itself, and to our celebration of the arts.

40) In this vein, one failure in human authenticity that seems to too often afflict

humankind is the overworking of the otherwise valid distinctions between our truly novel

biosemiotic capacities and those of our phylogenetic ancestry and kin, invoking such a

human exceptionalism (x-factor) as divorces us from nature of which we're undeniably a

part. Another (and related) failure, in my view, is the overworking of distinctions

between the different capacities that comprise the human evaluative continuum, denying

the integral roles played by its nonrational, prerational and rational aspects, by its

ecological, pragmatic, inferential and deliberative rationalities, by its abductive, inductive

and deductive inferential aspects, by its noetical, aesthetical and ethical aspects. These

otherwise distinct aspects of human knowledge that derive from our interfacing as an

environed reality with our total environing reality (environed vs environing realities not

lending themselves to sharp distinctions either?) are of a piece, form a holistic fabric of

knowledge, mirrored by reality, which is also of a piece, not lending itself fully to any

privileged aspect of the human evaluative continuum, not lending itself to arbitrary dices

and slices based upon any human-contrived architectonic or organon of knowledge, for

instance, as might be reflected in our academic disciplines or curricula.

41) So, perhaps it is too facile to say religion asks certain questions and employs

certain aspects of the human evaluative continuum, while philosophy asks others, science

yet others? Maybe it is enough to maintain that science does not attempt to halt infinite

regress because humankind has discovered, a posteriori, that such attempts invariably

involve trafficking in question begging (ipse dixit, petitio principii, tautologies, etc) or

trivialities or overworked analogies, often employ overworked distinctions or

underworked dichotomies, often lack explanatory adequacy, pragmatic cash value and/or

the authentication of orthodoxy by orthopraxis? Maybe it is enough to maintain that

science does not attempt to halt infinite regress because humankind now maintains, a

priori, with Godel, that complete accounts are inconsistent, consistent accounts,

incomplete? Maybe it is enough to maintain that science traffics in formalizable proofs

and measurable results from hypotheses that are testable within realistic time constraints

(iow, not eschatological)?

42) Or, maybe we needn't maintain even these distinctions but can say an hypothesis

is an hypothesis is an hypothesis, whether theological or geological, whether eliminating

or tolerating the paradox of infinity, and that the human evaluative continuum, if

optimally (integrally and holistically) deployed, can aspire to test these hypotheses,

however directly or indirectly, letting reality reveal or conceal itself at its pleasure --- but

--- those hypotheses that are intractably question begging or tautological, that overwork

analogies and distinctions and underwork dichotomies, that lack explanatory adequacy

and pragmatic cash value --- are, at least for now, bad science, bad philosophy, bad

theology, bad hypotheses? They are not authentic questions? Pursue them if you must.

Back-burner them by all means, ready to come to the fore at a more opportune time. But

don't publish them in textbooks or foist them on the general public or body politic; rather,

keep them in the esoteric journals with a suitable fog index to match their explanatory

opacity.

43) In the above consideration, it was not my aim to resolve any controversies in the

philosophy of science, in particular, or to arbitrate between the great schools of

philosophy, in general. I did want to offer some criteria for more rigorously framing up

the debates that we might avoid talking past one another. It does seem that certain

extreme positions can be contrasted in sharper relief in terms of alternating assertions of

radical dis/continuities, wherein some distinctions are overworked into false dichotomies

and some real dichotomies are ignored or denied.

44) Thus it is that the different “turns” have been made in the history of philosophy

(to experience, to the subject, linguistic, hermeneutical, pragmatic, etc). Thus it is that

nominalism, essentialism and substantialism critique each other. Thus it is that fact-value,

is-ought, given-normative, descriptive-prescriptive distinctions warrant dichotomizing or

not. Thus it is that the One and the Many, the universal and particular, the global and

local, the whole and the part invite differing perspectives or not. Thus it is that different

aspects of the human evaluative continuum get singularly privileged without warrant

such as in fideism and rationalism or that different aspects of the human architectonic of

knowledge get over- or under-emphasized such as in radical fundamentalism and

scientism.

45) Thus it is that certain of our heuristic devices get overworked beyond their

minimalist explanatory attempts such as when emergence is described as weakly

supervenient, which is rather question-begging, or as strongly supervenient, which is

rather trivial. And yet one might be able to affirm some utility in making such

distinctions as a weak deontology or weak teleology, or between the strongly and weakly

anthropic?

46) Thus it is that idealism and realism, rationalism and empiricism, fight a

hermeneutical tug of war between kantian, humean, aristotelian and platonic

perspectives, transcended, in part, even complemented by, the analytical,

phenomenological and pragmatic approaches. Thus it is that various metaphysics must

remain modest in their heuristic claims of explanatory power as we witness the ongoing

blending and nuancing of substance, process, participative and semiotic approaches. Thus

it is that our glorious -ologies get transmuted into insidious –isms.

47) Thus it is that all of these approaches, whether broadly conceived as theoretical,

practical and normative sciences (including natural sciences, applied sciences, theological

sciences and the sciences of logic, aesthetics and ethics), or more narrowly conceived as

the more strictly empirical sciences, offer their hypotheses for critique by an authentic

community of inquiry --- neither falling prey to the soporific consensus gentium

(bandwagon fallacy) and irrelevant argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) nor

arrogating to one’s own hermeneutic some type of archimedean buoyancy for all sure

knowledge, as if inescapable leaps of faith weren’t required to get past unmitigated

nihilism and solipsism, as if excluded middle, noncontradiction and other first principles

could be apodictically maintained or logically demonstrated, as if knowledge and proof

were indistinct, as if all human knowledge was algorithmic and could be formalized.

48) Miscellany: In the peircean cohort of the American pragmatist tradition, one

would say that the normative sciences mediate between phenomenology and

metaphysics, which could reasonably be translated into philosophy mediates between our

scientific methodologies and our cosmologies/ontologies.So, there is a proper distinction

to be made between our normative and theoretical sciences, both which can be considered

heuristic sciences, and yet another distinction to be made between them and what we

would call our practical sciences.

49) I think it would be fair to say that we can bracket our [metaphysics] and our

[cosmologies & ontologies] when doing empirical science but, at the same time, we do

not bracket those aspects of philosophy that comprise our normative sciences of logic,

aesthetics and ethics, which contribute integrally and holistically to all scientific

endeavors and human knowledge pursuits. At least for my God-concept, properly

conceived, suitably employed, sufficiently nuanced, carefully disambiguated, precisely

defined, rigorously predicated --- to talk of empirical measurement would be nonsensical.

50) I more broadly conceive knowledge & "knowing" and my conceptualization

turns on the distinction between knowing and proving, the latter consisting of formal

proofs. Since a God-concept would comprise a Theory of Everything and we know, a

priori, from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, that we cannot prove such employing any

closed formal symbol system, a "proof" of God is out of the question.

51) Charles Sanders Peirce offers another useful distinction, which turns on his

observations regarding inferential knowledge, which includes abduction, induction and

deduction. Abductive inference is, in a nutshell, the generation of an hypothesis. The

peircean distinction is that between an argument and argumentation. Peirce offers, then,

what he calls the "Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," which amounts to an

abduction of God, distinguishing same from the myriad other attempts to prove God's

existence, whether inductively or deductively through argumentation. Even the scholastic

and thomistic "proofs" realize their efficacy by demonstrating only the reasonableness of

certain beliefs, not otherwise aspiring to apodictic claims or logically conclusive

demonstrations. Peirce made another crucial distinction between the "reality" of God and

the "existence" of God, considering all talk of God's existence to derive from pure

fetishism, affirming in his own way, I suppose, an analogy of being rather than a

univocity.

52) Given all this, one may find it somewhat of a curiosity that Godel, himself,

attempted his own modal ontological argument. Anselm's argument, likely considered the

weakest of all the classical "proofs" of God, was first called the "ontological" argument

by Kant and was more recently given impetus by Hartshorne's modal formulation. I think

these arguments by Godel and Hartshorne would be more compelling if the modal

category of necessary was changed to probable and if the conceptual compatibility of

putative divine attributes was guaranteed by employing only negative properties for such

terms. At any rate, that Godel distinguished "formal proof" from "knowing" is instructive,

I think, and his attempt at a modal ontological argument is also revealing, suggesting,

perhaps, that one needn't make their way through half of Whitehead and Russell’s

Principia in order to "know" that 2 + 2 = 4, but, rather, that would be necessary only to

"prove" same.

53) I would agree that the statement, God cannot be measured, is true for science as

narrowly conceived as natural science. More broadly conceived, science includes

theology as a discipline and many typologies of the science-religion interface would, for

instance, affirm the notion of hypothetical consonance between the disciplines. Much of

Hans Kung's work entailed an elaborate formulation of the God hypothesis, not

empirically testable by any means, but, which uses nihilism as a foil to proceed reductio

ad absurdum toward what Kung calls a fundamental trust in uncertain reality that, given a

suitable and "working" God-hypothesis, is not otherwise nowhere anchored and

paradoxical. Another focus of theology as a scientific discipline is that of practical

theology where orthopraxis might be considered to authenticate orthodoxy.

54) Strong cases have been made by historians of science that sustainable scientific

progress was birthed in the womb of a belief in creatio ex nihilo, in other words, a belief

in the contingent nature of reality, which, when combined with the Greek belief in

reality's rationality, provided the cultural matrix for science's explosive growth in the

Christian West.

55) I suppose there is an element of the aesthetic that guides one toward such an

interpretation as Bohm's rather than Bohr's, Chalmers, Searle or Penrose rather than

Dennett, the Churchlands or Crick, Pascal rather than Nietzsche --- but something else is

going on, and it is not time-honored, when anyone chooses info to fit an interpretation,

which is a different enterprise from the formulation of alternative interpretations that are

hypothetically consonant with whatever info is available at the time.

56) To say more succinctly what I elaborate below: Approaching facts is one matter,

rules another, and facts about rules, yet another. There's no explaining or justifying rules

within their own systems and one hops onto an epistemological pogo stick, incessantly

jumping to yet another system with such explanatory/justificatory attempts (cf. Godel).

Thankfully, Popperian falsification short circuits rule justification in our pursuit of facts

and the reductio ad absurdum (with some caveats) short circuits formal philosophy in our

pursuit of rule justification, which is otherwise, inescapably, going to be question

begging, rendering our metasystems, in principle, tautological. An example of a caveat

there is that one overworks the humean dictum re: existence as a predicate of being when

asserting that existence cannot be taken as a predicate of being -- because it certainly can.

One underappreciates the humean perspective when one forgets that taking existence as a

predicate of being is a tautology. But so are all metaphysics, which are all fatally flawed.

None of this is about escaping all antinomial paradox but, rather, finding the metasystem

least susceptible to multiple births of paradox, least pregnant with paradox --- or, finding

that metasystem which, however fatally flawed, is least morbid.

57) In dealing with metasystem formulations, inevitably, we must confront the timehonored

question: random or systematic? chance or necessity? order or chaos? pattern or

paradox? At least, for me, this seems to capture the conundrum at issue.This conundrum

is ubiquitous and presents itself not only in metaphysics but in physics, not only in

speculative cosmology and the quantum realm but also in speculative cognitive science

and the realm of consciousness. This is reminiscent of the dynamic in the TV gameshow,

Jeopardy, for these dyads --- of random, chance, chaos, paradox vis a vis systematic,

necessity, order, pattern --- offer themselves as answers to a larger question posed in a

bigger framework. That question might be framed as: What is it that mediates between

the possible and the actual?

58) My brain loves that question and pondering the implications of those dyads

seems to help keep my neurotransmitters in balance, quite often firing off enough extra

endorphins to help me pedal my bike an extra mile or two, any given day. That question

presents when we consider reality both locally and globally, particularly or universally, in

part or as a whole. I have pondered such extensively as set forth here:

and one day I may take on the task of making such musings more accessible. For now, it

seems that I have practiced the Franciscan virtue of seeking to understand rather than to

be understood and turned it into a vice, practicing it to a fault.

59) I will say this: Science is a human convention, an agreement entered into by an

earnest community of inquiry. It seems to operate on a consensus regarding 1) primitives

(space, time, mass and energy/charge) 2) forces (strong and weak, electromagnetic and

gravity) and 3) axioms (laws of thermodynamics and so forth) and the relationships they

reveal as this community proceeds via 4) popperian falsification, which, as Popper

properly understood and many others do not, is not, itself, falsifiable. There are no strict

lines between physics and metaphysics inasmuch as any tweaking of these categories by

theoretical scientists is meta-physical, for instance, such as by those who'd add

consciousness as a primitive, quantum gravity as a force and statistical quantum law as an

axiom. The crossing-over from philosophy to science and from metaphysics to physics by

this or that notion is not so much determined a priori as based on any given attributes of a

particular idea regarding primitives, forces and axioms but, rather, takes place when such

can be framed up in such a manner as it can be empirically falsified. We know this from

the history of philosophy, science and metaphysics -- although the pace of cross-over has

slowed a tad.

60) Framing up reality in falsifiable bits and pieces is no simple matter to one who

agrees with Haldane that reality is not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we

can imagine. Still, as is born into our very nature as epistemological optimists, we might

temper this view by taking Chesterton's counsel that we do not know enough about

reality, yet, to say that it is unknowable. We just do not know, a priori, either where we

will hit an explanatory wall or where we will break through same, this notwithstanding

such as G. E. Pugh's remark to the effect that if the brain were simple enough for us to

understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.

61) What we do know, a priori, are our own rules and conventions and we can

predict whether or not an explanatory wall will either be hit or penetrated --- but only if

we narrowly conceive of that wall as being built with the bricks of empirical evidence

and the mortar of formal proofs. An explanatory wall thus conceived is indeed subject to

godelian constraints, which allow us to model rules that we are otherwise precluded from

explaining. In reality, though, one would commit the equivalent of an epistemological

Maginot Line blunder if one built her explanatory wall exclusively of such materials, for,

as we know, a large portion of human knowledge lies outside of any such a narrowly

conceived epistemic structure. Indeed, we know far more than we can ever prove (or

falsify)

62) Now, to be sure, we must remain well aware that we are freely choosing our

axioms and first principles and that, consistent with godelian and popperian constraints,

they can neither be logically demonstrated, a priori, nor scientifically falsified, a

posteriori. We should keep an eye open, too, to the critiques of Descartes, Hume and

Kant, insofar as they seem to have anticipated, in many ways, these godelian and

popperian formalizations, as well as some of the dynamics explored by the analytical

cohort. What I personally cannot countenance, however, is any epistemological caving in

to such constraints and critiques (cartesian, kantian and humean); the proper response, if

the normative sciences are to retain any sway whatsoever, would seem, rather, to be a

trading in of any naive realism for a critical realism (staying mostly aristotelian cum

neoplatonic?). So, too, the humean fact-value distinction, worth considering, should not

be overworked into a false dichotomy?

63) If, in our inescapable fallibility, we have been dispossessed of any apodictic

claims to necessity and logical demonstrations of our first principles, still, we do have at

our disposal the judicious use of the reductio ad absurdum as our backdoor philosophy.

True enough, the counterintuitive is not, in and of itself, an infallible beacon of truth, for

science has demonstrated many counterintuitive notions to be true, given certain axioms.

Nonetheless, absent any demonstration to the contrary and guided by an earnest

community of inquiry, would we not do best to reject such as solipsism and radical

nihilism, and to embrace noncontradiction and excluded middle (within the norms

suggested by both epistemological and ontological vagueness, which is another

exhuastive consideration)?

64) So, yes, in freely choosing such axioms as we might employ in our attempt to

answer the question --- What mediates between the possible and the actual? --- we are

free to opt for chance or necessity, for order or chaos, for pattern or paradox, for the

random or systematic, and we are free to apply such an option locally and/or globally,

particularly or universally, to the whole of reality or to any part, and no one can

dispossess us, through formal proof or with empirical evidence, of our chosen axioms.

And, yes, once we have chosen such axioms, such meta-systems, we must recognize that,

fundamentally, they are clearly tautological by design and in principle, and that any

apologetic for same will be rather question begging. [Every time we open an ontological

window, reality closes an epistemological door, I like to say.] The only recourse we have

that seems to be at all compelling is the old reductio ad absurdum, taking this or that set

of axioms, applying them to reality as best we have come to grasp same, and, after

extrapolating it all to some putative logical conclusion, then testing it all for congruence

with reality (and with whatever else happens to be in that suite of epistemological criteria

as might comprise this or that community of inquiry's epistemic desiderata).

65) As a relevant aside, I have found that we best modify our modal ontological

logic of possible, actual and necessary to possible, actual and probable, which allows one

to prescind from the dyads of chance/necessity, order/chaos, pattern/paradox,

random/systematic --- as these more and more seem to describe distinctions that should

not be overworked into dichotomies, not that I am an inveterate peircean triadimaniac --

for I am, rather, a pan-entheistic tetradimaniac (seems to me to be the least pregnant,

anyway).

66) What mediates between the possible and the actual? Probably, the probable.

[And that may be the window Reality opened for Hefner's co-creators as God shrunk

from the necessary? And that may be the future-oriented rupture between our essential

possibilities and their existential realizations in Haught's teleological account of original

sin?]

67) When the Beatles were with the Maharishi in India, at the end of one session, he

offered anyone who was interested a ride back to the compound with him on his

helicopter. John volunteered. When later queried about why he decided to go, John

quipped: "Because I thought he'd slip me the answer." jb is going to slip you the

answer.Ever heard of the pragmatic maxim?In my words, jb's maxim, it translates into

What would you do differently if you had the answer? [And it doesn't matter what the

question is or that it necessarily be THE question, whatever that is.] Now, if Lonergan's

conversions --- cognitive, moral, affective, sociopolitical and religious --- were all fully

effected in a human being and that person were truly authentic in lonerganian terms,

mostly transformed in terms of classical theosis, then how would an

authentic/transformed human answer the question: What would you do differently if you

had the answer?S/he would answer thusly: Nothing.

68) That's what I really like most about lovers. I've seen them struggle with all these

questions and have even seen them afflicted by these questions to an extent, but lovers

are clearly among those for whom I know the answer to the above-question is: Zero. Zip.

Zilch. Nada.That's the epitome of unconditional love and that's the essence of the Imago

Dei.And that is a small comfort ... so, it's a good thing that comfort is not what it's all

about, Alfie. Carry on. Do carry on

69) In another vein, all of philosophy seems to turn on those three big questions of

Kant: What can I know? What can I hope for? What must I do?The astute observer might

recognize that these questions correspond to truth, beauty and goodness and have been

answered by philosophers in terms of logic, aesthetics and ethics and by religions in

terms of creed, cult and code. They also correspond to the three theological virtues of

faith, hope and love and to our psychological faculties of the cognitive, affective and

moral (again, think Lonergan). At some point on my journey, I rested and answered these

questions thusly: I don't know and I don't need to know. I don't feel and I don't need to

feel. I love and I need to forgive.All of a sudden --- I kid ya not --- all manner of truth,

beauty and goodness started chasing me rather than vice versa! If we frame the issue in

terms of foci of concern, then the scientific focus will be more narrowly defined than the

theological. The first is positivistic, the latter, philosophic.

70) The scientific focus looks at facts through the lens of popperian falsification. It

structures its arguments formally and thus employs mathematics and other closed,

formal symbol systems through which it can establish correspondence between those

parts of reality we agree to call givens: primitives (space, time, mass/charge, energy),

forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic, gravity) and axioms (conservation,

thermodynamics). It seeks to provide descriptive accounts of these parts of reality and

deals in proofs.

71) The philosophic focus is a wider perspective, which is to say it embraces

additional concerns by looking through the lenses of the normative sciences of logic,

aesthetics and ethics. It looks at rules. Its arguments are not formally constructed but it

does try to establish coherence in its accounts of reality. It seeks to provide evaluative

accounts of reality as a whole and deals in justifications.

72) Lonergan scholar, Daniel Helminiak, defines two additional foci of concern,

which are progressively wider perspectives, the theistic and theotic, the latter having to

do with human transformation in relation to God (and which might represent one of many

perspectives presented at Star).

73) Broader perspectives, wider foci of concern, do not invalidate the narrower foci,

if for no other reason, then, because they are focusing on different aspects of reality, in

fact, additional aspects.

74) In Jeff's frontier town, out on the working edge of science, any novel concepts

being introduced must indeed be precisely specified in the language of science, which is

to say one must introduce a novel primitive, force or axiom, or a novel interaction

between existing givens, into a closed, formal symbol system like mathematics. This

novelty can then be tested for correspondence with reality, in other words, factuality,

through popperian falisfication (which is not itself falsifiable).

75) As for unfortunate trends among scientists, philosophers and theologians,

descriptively, in terms of blurred focus, these are manifold and varied with no

monopolies on same? I am time-constrained, wrote this hurriedly and must run. My next

consideration was going to be Theories of Everything and how they should be

categorized and why? Any ideas?

76) Obviously, I could not elaborate a comprehensive organon/architectonic of

human knowledge categories in only four paragraphs and thus did not draw out such

distinctions as, for instance, the very living of life, itself, from the arts, the practical

sciences, the heuristic sciences, the theoretical sciences, the normative sciences and so

on. The particular point I was making, however, more particularly turned on the

distinction between those matters in life which we prove versus those which we

otherwise justify. As a retired bank chairman/president, I must say that it would have

pleased me very much, too, to have seen the justice system derive more of its rules from

logic. Note, also, the operative word, derive, and you'll have some sense of how my

elaboration will unfold

77) Because one of the manifold criteria for good hypotheses vis a vis the scientific

method is the making of measurable predictions in the context of hypothetico-deductive

and inductive reasoning, we might properly talk about proof as being more broadly

conceived, our descriptive accounts lending themselves to measurements (and

hypothetical fecundity). Of course, induction, itself, is not formal logic, anyway

78) Those trends that frighten me the most are the different fundamentalisms

(including both the religious fundamentalisms and enlightenment fundamentalism or

scientism).

79) By Theory of Everything (TOE). I mean such as M-theory, superstrings,

quantum gravity, unified field theory, etc in the realm of theoretical physics. I believe

there are metamathematical problems that inhere in such a TOE as set forth in Godel's

incompleteness theorems. This is not to suggest a TOE could not be mathematically

formulated but only to say it could not, in principle, be proven. Neither is this to suggest

that, because it couldn't be formally demonstrated, we wouldn't otherwise know we'd

discovered same.

80) A long time ago, my graduate research was in neuroendocrinology Also, the

emergentist heuristic of something more from nothing but may have implications for

some of the difficulties that remain in our understanding of consciousness? As far as

philosophic accounts of same, my overall theological perspective doesn't turn on whether

or not Dennett, Searle, Chalmers, Penrose, Ayn Rand or the Churchlands are correct (vis

a vis the positivistic elements of their accounts), although, presently, I'm leaning toward

Deacon's rather peircean biosemiotic perspective.

81) For me to have written this: "Neither is this to suggest that, because it couldn't

be formally demonstrated, we wouldn't otherwise know we'd discovered same," maybe I

was talking about both? I purposefully left the categorization of any TOE open to tease

out different perspectives. My take, to avoid being too coy, is that a TOE requires more

than a positivistic focus. It necessarily involves a broadening of our scientific focus to

embrace the additional concerns of the philosophic. Some folks go further.

82) It's my guess that Baldwinian evolution captures many imaginations because it

employs the notion of downward causation. Furthermore, if one frames up the problem of

consciousness biosemiotically, in some sense one recovers the classic aristotelian notions

of material, formal and final causality. Exciting? Yes. But ...

83) However, one doesn't need to a priori dismiss cartesian dualism and neither does

one need to a priori embrace a fully reductionistic philosophy of mind (including the

physical causal closure of the universe) to, at the same time, recognize that such

biosemiotic accounts do not, necessarily, violate known physical laws or the idea of

physical causal closure. In other words, there can be strong and weak versions of

downward causation, both being both nonphysical and nonreductive, and the

emergentistic, biosemiotic account of evolving complexity utilizes the weak version. This

does involve a work-around of frameworks that employ strictly efficient causation.

84) What might some of us do with our imaginations? Well, we might invoke

various analogies from different physical and/or semiotic accounts to our philosophic,

metaphysical and even theological accounts. And, sometimes, we might lose sight of how

progressively weak these analogies can become.

85) I suppose I could at least be pleased that Dawkins did not consider mystics and

obscurantists to be a redundancy? My charitable interpretation would be that he

recognized that the conscious and deliberate invocation of analogies by authentic mystics,

who have their eyes open to this analogical dynamic (apophatically inclined as they are!),

is valid (even if he might impute little pragmatic cash value to same), while, for their

part, the obscurantists might even altogether deny the metaphorical and analogical nature

of their extrapolations (not necessarily in bad faith). [The evidence in favor of a

charitable interpretation is not being weighed here.] At any rate, the medieval scotistic

notion of the formal distinction, the peircean distinction between objective and physical

reality, and the semiotic notion of form realism don't invite ghosts into machines or gods

into gaps. Metaphorically and analogically, and metaphysically, however, different

notions of causation are ... let me say ... interesting.

86) All that said, consciousness remains way overdetermined, scientifically

speaking, as well as, philosophically speaking, both epistemologically and ontologically

open (as far as strongly emergent, weakly supervenient systems are concerned, not to say

that supervenience might not be a rather trivial notion). Pugh may be on to something: If

our brains were so simple we could understand them, we would be so simple that we

couldn't (or something like that). I submit we have no a priori justification for selecting a

philosophy of mind and precious little a posteriori warrant either. Gun to my head,

however, I like Deacon (and his important nuances of the accounts of Dennett and

Dawkins re: memetic, genetic and computational fallacies).

87) Godel's relevance to a TOE is controversial. I'd be willing to argue both sides.

But let me agree with you by suggesting physics is formal and physicists (and Nature and

God) are not, by drawing a distinction between proving and knowing, by recognizing that

even if a TOE was mathematically formulated in a positivistic/descriptive framework,

we'd have to fall back on our philosophic/evaluative framework to justify our faith in it.

88) In reading Hawking's take on Godel's relevance to a TOE he does seem to draw

an obvious direct metamathematical connection? But I cannot say that he did so

unequivocally because almost everything else he said after that clearly invoked Godel

analogously. So, at the very least, per Hawking, a physical theory is going to be Godellike

(M-theory per his discussion). Hawking's lecture can be heard here:

89) I can better wrap my positivistic mind around a weak anthropic principle in the

same way I can accept weak versions of downward causation and weak deontological

ethics even as I do not a priori rule out the strong versions. Heidegger's question has been

rephrased, lately, as Why is there something and not rather something else? and this

makes the strong anthropic principle more compelling in some philosophic frameworks

(but understandably trivial in others). Wittgenstein's It's not how things are but that things

are which is the mystical doesn't sway those who'd not take existence as a predicate of

being, but what about a bounded existence, a universe in a multiverse, in a pluralistic

reality? Maybe there is some univocity of being (Duns Scotist) and some analogy of

being (thomism), too? [For instance, a pan-entheism is monistic, dualistic and

pluralistic.]

90) Chesterton said that we do not know enough about reality to say that it is

unknowable and Haldane says that reality is not only stranger than we imagine but

stranger than we can imagine. They can both be correct. If humankind does formulate a

TOE, it could well be something we have stumbled over and not rather worked out

through hypothetico-deductive and inductive reasoning/imagination. It not only takes

faith and the evaluative aspect of the human knowledge manifold to believe a TOE might

be found. Those epistemic faculties would also necessarily be involved in the recognition

that it had indeed been found.

91) To the extent that I may have had an agenda (transparent, I hope), and to the

extent that agenda has been somewhat of an apologetic invoking various (and sometimes

substantial)degrees of epistemological parity between the world's great, extant

weltanschauungs, I am willing (and, in fact, pleased) to argue this point in favor of your

conclusion. In that case, perhaps I have been concerning myself with epistemological

strawmen or shadowboxing with the philosophical ghosts of yesteryear, who advocated

logical positivism, radical empiricism, hyper-rationalism, scientism and such or who

countered these with fideism, radical religious fundamentalism and such, such advocacies

and counteradvocacies being the obverse sides of the same coin of the realm of

epistemological hubris. As you are aware, neither do I countenance an excessive

epistemological humility.

92) Perhaps we can say that for me to make such points on the IRASnet or

MetaNexus would be a preaching to the choir, for the most part, and that no discipline

has adopted that usage in a long time. In that case, I agree that I might have drawn an

unnecessary distinction. Perhaps we can also suggest, however, that not everyone,

perhaps even most (the un-disciplined), have been successfully evangelized and that our

task is not done, our work is otherwise unfinished, and the distinction for that audience

thus remains pertinent?

93) Theology (forgiving the erstwhile - I hope - extreme scholastic realism)

employed what were known as the scholastic notations. Seminarians were taught to place,

in the margin of their notebooks, little notes indicating whether a proposition was: 1)

impossible 2) possible 3) improbable 4) implausible 5) uncertain 6) plausible 7) probable

8) certain. Lately, in the modal logic of a) the possible b) the actual and c) the necessary,

the latter has been amended to the probable, by some.

94) The distinction I'd offer here is something like Hume makes re: skepticism and

induction. It is the distinction between the theoretical and the practical. Even if a TOE is

beyond our grasp strictly theoretically speaking, all TOEs being fatally flawed in

principle, still, from a practical perspective, I think it is fair to say that we may be able to

justify our belief in a TOE, someday, in a universally compelling manner. Does this

undermine my assertions re: Godel? I would say that I meant that it is possible my

assertions could be undermined. How plausible or probable?

95) Since I am working on another project re: Criteria for Articulating a TOE, I used

Michael's evocative query as a springboard in constructing my epistemological preamble

to that project. Below is my original response, which I then edited and sent along just

now as a much shorter version. I think TOE discussions are central to the dialogue

between science and religion. However, they are notoriously difficult to air out on listserv

forums because too much renormalization is required to translate all hermeneutics into a

single lingua franca with logically compatible concepts and axioms. With that caveat,

here it is for the few who may be interested.

96) To the extent that I may have had an agenda (transparent, I hope), and to the

extent that agenda has been somewhat of an apologetic invoking various (and sometimes

substantial) degrees of epistemological parity between the world's great, extant

weltanschauungs, I am willing (and, in fact, pleased) to argue this point in favor of your

conclusion. In that case, perhaps I have been concerning myself with epistemological

strawmen or shadowboxing with the philosophical ghosts of yesteryear, who advocated

logical positivism, radical empiricism, hyper-rationalism, scientism and such or who

countered these with fideism, radical religious fundamentalism and such, such advocacies

and counteradvocacies being the obverse sides of the same coin of the realm of

epistemological hubris. As you are aware, neither do I countenance an excessive

epistemological humility.

97) Theology (forgiving the erstwhile - I hope - extreme scholastic realism)

employed what were known as the scholastic notations. Seminarians were taught to place,

in the margin of their notebooks, little notes indicating whether a proposition was: 1)

impossible 2) possible 3) improbable 4) implausible 5) uncertain 6) plausible 7) probable

8) certain. Lately, in the modal logic of a) the possible b) the actual and c) the necessary,

the latter has been amended to the probable. In semiotic logic, the application of first

principles has been nuanced such that excluded middle and noncontradiction hold or fold

based on modal categories under consideration (for the possible, NC folds but EM holds;

for the actual, NC & EM hold; for the probable, NC holds but EM folds). Such modal

logic reflects ontological vagueness. Such semiotic logic reflects semantical or

epistemological vagueness. Alas, these are oversimplifications, but they fit your thesis

(and mine).

98) Of course, a TOE would be, at best, consistent but incomplete. That it would

thus not be absolute follows from any Godel-like implications (arguably even directly

from Godel). It then follows that, having no recourse to apodictic proof, we are thrown

back on the resources of our evaluative continuum as it works in conjunction with the

other aspects of the human knowledge manifold (sensation, perception, cognition,

rational continuum, etc), normatively guiding and regulating and largely capacitating

them. It thus qualifies my godelian assertions only in the sense that such constraints are

not overcome by JOTS (jumping outside the system, as some cavalierly suggest) to the

extent that we are forever chasing the axioms for our axioms but are overcome by JOTS

to the extent that we accept all attempts to justify a TOE as fatally flawed from a

theoretical perspective but not necessarily from a practical perspective. The godelian-like

99) So, what constitutes very persuasive? Is it not an issue of justification? And you

have properly gathered my whole thrust regarding the epistemological parity of many of

our extant alternate worldviews: they all fallback on justification attempts. And this

brings us to the issue of epistemic virtue and vice and how humankind might best define

same as a community of inquiry, whose foci of concern variously overlap or not and do

so with great existential import and tremendous implications for the therapies we devise

for what ails us. Finally, we can arbitrate between the worldviews once we have

established a consensus on epistemic norms, but, if we had those in place, even now, we

don't have enough info to apply them to everyone's complete satisfaction. (However, let's

not forget that many are ALREADY and not, rather, Almost Persuaded, as it is re: their

worldviews).

100) Alas, this brings us back, full circle, to the question of whether or not it is just

too early to tell how a universally compelling TOE might unfold or whether or not we

will ever truly unweave the rainbow and all of its antecedent causes, theoretically or

practically. The following constitutes a longer response to an above-question.

101) The art of epistemological nuance, as I imbibed it from Mother's knee, albeit as

an unconscious competent, was handed down to me, not from the long traditions of

thomism and scotism (which well articulated same), but, from the longer tradition of

patristic theology (including dionysian mysticism and other neoplatonic influences,

which would inform our aristotelian perspectives). My present intuition, which I cannot

substantiate but will investigate further (some day), is that my epistemological heritage

goes back past the early church fathers, even, to the mytho-poetic-practical mindset of the

semitic imagination circa Hebrew Testament days. Let me elaborate.

102) As one looks at the human knowledge manifold, from sensation & perception,

emotion & motivation, learning & memory, imagination & intuition, inference &

deliberation, from instinctive to affective to cognitive, from nonrational to prerational to

rational to suprarational, from noninferential to preinferential to inferential to

postinferential, or any way one prefers to dice it and slice it, I suppose it is not entirely

clear, anthropologically, how and when different peoples integrally deployed these

different aspects. For example, suppose we assume that some of these aspects constitute

what we might call the evaluative continuum of the human knowledge manifold, while

others moreso represent the rational continuum (all of which is tightly integrated).

103) Another correspondent has argued with me over whether or not the early semitic

imagination employed any type of inference (more commonly known as abduction,

induction, deduction & transduction). My guess was that surely it did and that the proper

distinction between the semitic and hellenistic mindsets, let's say ca. when the Christian

tradition was in formation, would not be the latter's employment of inference but, rather,

the hellenistic employment of formal/abstract inference in addition to any

informal/concrete inference. Inference, not otherwise distinguished, is simply abduction,

induction and deduction. To say that the mytho-poetic-practical mindset did not use

humanity's full cognitive capacities, which I do think is possible, maybe even plausible,

is not to say that it did not engage the inferential aspects of the human knowledge

manifold. Rather, one is suggesting that, perhaps, it did not develop formal operational

abilities. It undoubtedly would have developed transductive, inductive and deductive

reasoning and would even have thought abductively about such things as coordinated

action. Still, such reasoning, if concretely operational and not formally operational,

would not employ the hypothetico-deductive or scientific-inductive reasoning that

requires both a more robust abductive facility as well as abstract conceptual abilities.

104) Now, one might also say that many of the hellenistic mindset did not use

humanity's full human knowledge manifold either insofar as many overemphasized, to a

fault, the employment of the rational continuum without acknowledging the role of the

evaluative continuum. (I have a friend who mourns the day Athens met Jerusalem). All

that said, there was apparently a gravitation toward inductive inference in the semitic and

deductive in the hellenistic.

105) We discussed previously that not all logic is binary, that some is fuzzy and

contextual-relational, that we seek symmetry and patterns. The Hebrew literature is

replete with concrete inductive and deductive inference. It gifts us with a heightened

awareness of patterns in creation, for instance. The genius of the mytho-poetic-practical

mind renders such inference wisdom and not merely reason. That genius embodies

everything that gives the peircean perspective some of its advantage (while it also has its

disadvantages) over the classical philosophical traditions insofar as it is concrete,

dynamic, wholistic and relational over against abstract, static, dualistic and ontological

(iow, escapes essentialism, nominalism, substantialism, dualism).

106) It is Our Story (hence the impetus behind Everybody's Story) that unifies and

gives value to our experience, so we do not want to ignore this indispensable unifying

element of the evaluative continuum and concrete inferences (and faith, iow) even as we

do (and must) transcend the mythical-literal aspect. We must proactively engage affective

judgment and imaginative-intuitive thinking integrally, holistically, in conjunction with

inferential thinking (whether concretely or abstractly) for optimal inferential performance

is my view. (Scientists with keen aesthetic sensibilities have an advantage?) Abstract,

formal inferential thinking, including the hypothetico-deductive and scientific-inductive,

of the formal operational stage of cognitive development, is a morally neutral activity,

which can assist virtue or vice, which can become a fetish, but so can any other aspect of

the human knowledge manifold (evaluative and rational continuua) that asserts its

autonomy and denies any relationality with the other aspects.

107) There's a lot going on in philosophy that is analogous to what's going on in math

(and metamathematics). There is a lot going on in metaphysics that is analogous to what's

going on in theoretical physics. In a nutshell, there are a lot of different systems with

different axioms and it requires so much careful predication, high nuancing and

disambiguation of concepts before everyone is reading from the same sheet of music that

most popular philosophical discussion consists of people talking past one another.

Consider the renormalization required in physics as attempts are made at a grand unified

theory because the natures of the alternate decriptions (quantum vs field vs gravity and

such) are logically and mutually exclusive. Well, something like that is required in

metaphysics as we jump back and forth between substance accounts, process accounts,

substance-process accounts, participative accounts, semiotic accounts and so on. Each

account attempts to eliminate the ambiguity (paradox) in the next account and creates

new ambiguities of its own. Everytime a philosopher or metaphysician opens a new

hermeneutical window, the axiomatic backdraft shuts another epistemological door. Any

attempt to halt an infinite regress seems to introduce some type of causal disjunction.

Any attempt at self-consistency introduces circular-referentiality. Attempts to banish such

tautologies introduce stipulated beginning (ipse dixit) and question begging (petitio)

fallacies. Our justification attempts can also fallback on the resources of faith and

noncognitive strategies. Paradox is inescapable. There is no consistent account that is

complete. There is no complete account that is consistent. These accounts necessarily

utilize some terms univocally and others equivocally. The equivocal can be either simply

equivocal or analogical. The analogical can be attributive (if real causes and effects are

invoked) or proportional (if we are invoking similarities in the relationships between two

different pairs of terms). If such an similarity is essential to those terms we have a proper

proportinality but if it is accidental we have an improper proportionality, a metaphor.

And we use a lot of metaphors, even if physics, and they all eventually collapse.

108) These accounts are not Nature, so the godelian constraints and godelian-like

constraints and attendant justification problems don't apply to Nature per se but only to

our attempts to describe nature, which are abstractions. Maybe the clarification we seek is

located in the distinction between a TOE as it might exist in some platonic heaven and

one as might be abstracted by an earthly abstractor. I cannot conceive of how the latter

would even be possible using human inferential capacities to the extent a TOE is

predicated as a metaphysic and with all metaphysics being pregnant with some form of

paradox (some multiple birthing and more fecund than others), all meta-accounts being

fatally flawed (some more morbid than others). If you distinguish this earthly-abstracted

TOE from one existing in a platonic heaven and perceivable from a putative-God's eye

view by some being univocally predicated as a Consistent Comprehendor, then Godel

would certainly not be lurking and neither would anyone else for who could afford to pay

that kind of epistemological rent?

109) But for reasons we both stated before, not even much depending on how one

predicates a TOE, I don't see it as either a theoretical or practical concern except as might

belong to One predicated, in part, as Primal Ground. [Consistent Comprehendor has been

one of my univocal predications of a hypothetical deity, in fact.

110) I've been giving this much thought of late, especially while reading Merton but

also while contemplating "contemplation" and epistemology and such related issues, in

general. Increasingly, I feel the need to make the following distinction.Whether in

ascetical or mystical theology, formative spirituality or developmental psychology, all as

integrally considered, when one employs the term "simple" or related notions like

"simplicity," one must be clear as to whether one really means "simple versus complex"

or, rather, "simple versus difficult".Very often, spiritual writers have spoken of simplicity

both with respect to prayer and with respect to certain asceticisms, disciplines and

practices that help to dispose one to prayer, cultivating solitude and nurturing a

contemplative outlook. Increasingly, it seems to me that such simplicity is moreso of the

"simple versus difficult" variety, which is to say that we are talking in terms of ease and

facility [Webster's 9th definition, below] and not so much of any lack of complexity

[Webster's 5th definition].

111) If contemplation is simple, then I would say that it is simple in the sense that, for

the contemplative, prayer is facile, easy, readily performed. It is not difficult for the

proficient. So it is with most any art, whether pertaining to dance or music or athleticism.

So it is with many of life's tasks, whether riding a bike or driving a standard automobile,

or performing one's trade as an accomplished technician.

112) The underlying deployment of the various aspects of the human evaluative

continuum --- from awareness, sensation & perception, emotion & motivation, learning &

memory, imagination & intuition, inference & deliberation --- wholistically & integrally

employing our instinctive, affective and cognitive faculties, is clearly complex and not at

all "simple" in the sense of being "uncomplicated" or "artless" or such.

113) Developmentally speaking, there are no shortcuts to such simplicity, to such

artform, to such technical competence, to such proficiency. Preparation through

catechesis, ongoing cultivation through liturgy and lectio divina, fidelity to law and code

both obligationally and aspirationally, and commitment to community, all contribute,

integrally, toward properly disposing one for higher gifts.

114) Now, it is true enough that the Holy Spirit gifts us with charisms that exceed our

natural talents and with infused prayer that can be received only as gift and that there is a

simplicity in such grace that transcends our human categories of simple vs difficult,

simple vs complex. What I speak of, here, are all of the natural and normal preparations

we make, no less cooperating with grace, such preparations and practices being quite

complex when you think about them, psychologically and epistemologically, even as they

are progressively done with great facility and simplicity, iow, proficiency, through time

and dutiful practice.

115) In this sense, contemplation might best be equated with the total offering

[perhaps, Webster's 8th definition] of our entire selves, the total oblation of our entire

lives, the total disposal of our human evaluative continuum, to God. And this offering is

wholly, holy whole.

116) And this offering is progressively easier, more facile, more simple --- even as it

is one of the most complex maneuvers, complicated dance steps, a human will ever

perform. It starts off simple but gets increasingly complex. It starts off difficult but gets

progressively simple (facile).

117) Main Entry: 1sim·ple

Pronunciation: 'sim-p&l

Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, plain, uncomplicated,

artless, from Latin simplus, simplex, literally, single 5 a : SHEER, UNMIXED <simple

honesty> b : free of secondary complications <a simple vitamin deficiency> c (1) :

having only one main clause and no subordinate clauses <a simple sentence> (2) of a

subject or predicate : having no modifiers, complements, or objects d : constituting a

basic element : FUNDAMENTAL e : not made up of many like units <a simple eye>`8 :

not limited or restricted : UNCONDITIONAL <a simple obligation>9 : readily

understood or performed <simple directions> <the adjustment was simple to

make>synonym see in addition EASY

118) Another angle. Recall the distinctions Washburn made vis a vis Wilber and the

pre-trans fallacies.I built upon these such that, ontologically, we distinguish between 1)

(meta)physical structures, 2) developmental stages and 3) phenomenal states, while,

epistemologically, we distinguish between 1) our environing reality (including ultimate

reality), 2) the environed reality (of the human evaluative continuum) and 3) our foci of

concern (recall Helminiak).

119) In terms of simplicity, then, for the proficient on the spiritual journey, what is

going on in one's physical structure (psychologically & spiritually, integrally &

holistically), where one is re: developmental stages, how the environed reality interacts

with the environing reality with ever expanded foci of concern --- all of this is

increasingly complex. There is FAR more going on, epistemologically and ontologically,

with the proficient than there is going on for the novice. If the phenomenal state seems to

be rather quiet, this is only because of the smooth, proficiency and well-practiced facility

of these advanced parts of the journey. A proficient shifting gears and working the clutch

IS going to be QUIETER than a beginner, who is learning to drive the spiritual motorcar.

This is due to a simplicity born of facility and not from a lack of complexity.

120) I think it has been a failure to make this distinction that has led folks down the

paths of error such as quietism, fideism and such, denigrating various faculties of human

knowledge, wrongly deemphasizing various aspects of the human knowledge manifold,

whether the evaluative and/or rational continuum.

121) The trick is not to confuse the distinctions we draw between the instinctive and

the affective and the cognitive for dichotomies, which is to say that, in order to be

authentically human, we employ all of these faculties, in some meausre, all of the time.

There is an inauthenticity, a denial of our own humanity, in being rationalistic (only the

head) or fideistic/pietistic (only the heart). The point is that there is no superiority in the

sense that anyone can be an authentic human, even as we note that it takes some doing.

Theresa, the Little Flower, is a Doctor of the Church, so certainly underwent an

intellectual conversion in addition to any affective, moral, social and religious

conversions. She may not have led with her intellect, let's say, the way her fellow

Carmelite John of the Cross did, but she did not interfere with its being transvalued by

her other conversion experiences. Wisdom results. Authenticity is an "accomplishment"

of wholeness and intellectual conversion is not to be mistaken for academic learning,

alone. If we first follow Lonergan's imperatives to be attent, intelligent, reasonable and so

forth, very much matters of the will, too, it'll take care of itself in the "simplest" of souls.

122) This is not unrelated to Occam's Razor and the Law of Parsimony, eh? And

Charles Sanders Peirce suggests that it is the facility with which we come up with an

hypothesis and not the lack of complexity in same that parsimony should measure. As far

as priesthoods and power-hoarding, or clericalism, although that happens we do not want

to commit the fallacy of misuse, which argues against something that is otherwise good

and which should only be used properly. Arrogance can be a two way street -- one side

arrogating and asserting it has the answers and is here to help and the other side

arrogating and saying it has the answers and needs no help. Alas, good storytelling

(homiletics) seems to be the best way to reach all audiences.

123) .I would agree and qualify that one can, as a proficient, afford to just look

because the look-er's entire evaluative continuum has been so very well prepared

(cultivated, disposed, trained or what have you). Every apophatic moment contains, for

the proficient, all kataphasis, and every kataphatic moment contains all apophasis, too, as

one encounters reality with one's entire evaluative continuum integrally and holistically

deployed. The simplicity is real insofar as an organic whole is in operation and is not

otherwise fractured. If the phenomenal state of the contemplative soul resembles that of

one who has merely paused between sensation and abstraction, that is a superficial

resemblance because the developmental stages and underlying structures could be quite

different (formed, for instance, by catechesis, liturgy, lectio divina, moral development,

etc a la lonerganian conversions). Of course, it does occur to me that Maritain has already

done this work of drawing such distinctions between philosophical contemplation,

connaturality, intuition of being, natural mysticism and mystical contemplation, etc And,

of course, there are all of the problems about the use of the term contemplation in the first

place, such as acquired vs infused, etc But I am just toying with what we mean and do not

mean by simple. The non-reflective aspect is important --- whether driving a car, playing

a guitar, dancing a ballet or praying. All proficiency seems to move toward simplicty a la

facility and ease. I do not think I'll be playing Classical Gas tonight, though, on my

guitar, no matter how simple it is for Mason Williams!