Mephi: God's "cognitive space" (as you are calling it) would be God's ability to know whatever realities come into being besides Godself.

Tom: Well, it would also include God’s knowing Godself as well, not just whatever non-God realities come into existence. God’s “cognition” is active sans creation. God knows Godself, and this knowing is, you agree, part of what constitutes God’s aesthetic satisfaction. To experience Godself and be satisfied with Godself, God has to “know” Godself. And for God’s satisfaction to be unsurpassable, God would have to have unsurpassable knowledge of Godself. Right.

So far so good.

Mephi: What I'm hearing you ask is: Is all of this ability invested in God's own satisfaction pre-Creation such that NO MORE of this ability is available for non-God reality?

If this is what you are asking, the answer is no. This would be a variation of "actus purus" if this were so.

Tom: That is what I’m asking. And since you believe God’s cognitives states REALLY do change, I knew your answer would be “no.” Do you see what I see here, Mephi?

Mephi: Just like God's aesthetically satisfying experience of beauty within Godself doesn't delimit the total amount of beauty that God can experience...so also God's aesthetically satisfying experience of beauty within Godself doesn't delimit the total amount of reality that can be known by God. The amount of experience that aesthetically satisfies God (including all the things you've mentioned earlier) does NOT equal the sum total of all possible beautiful experience God can have. It is only the amount which brings God to the "peak experience."

Example: Overeating.  At one sitting, a person has the CAPACITY to eat well more than they truly need to feel "full". This capacity is not taken up at the point of "feeling full." So, the "full feeling" does NOT equal the total amount of food that be consumed by one person at one sitting.

Tom: Now this doesn’t jive in my view. If God’s “maxed out experience of beauty” means God can still experience new beauty, then how is his experience of beauty maxed out to begin with? And how is the new experience an experience of “beauty” per se? True, I can experience “fullness” with respect to food intake and still EAT MORE, but the eating more wouldn’t be an experience of “fullness” per se. So your analogy doesn’t quite work. You’re calling God’s contingent experience of the world an experience of beauty and also calling God’s own experience of Godself an experience of beauty. But your analogy can’t call any more food you eat an experience of “fullness” once your “full.” The food analogy would in fact suggest that God is “full” in terms of beauty and though he can eat more, experience more of the world, he cannot experience it in terms of ‘beauty’. It can’t BE beautiful to him. He’s maxed out on that already. So his sans creational satisfaction WOULD delimit the total amount of beauty God can experience. What you have to do is distinguish between the “beauty” that God appreciates necessarily (within himself) and the contingent beauty God appreciates in the world. They can’t be the same “in kind.” That’s in fact what you do. I’m just not sure it makes all that much sense. But I’m open.

What I'm trying to do is explain why it seems to me that if we (a) admit ALL of what God is, ALL of his capacities, are 100% invested sans creation to actualizing God's own unsurpassable satisfaction, but then (b) admit that God really does KNOW a continent world, then (c) viewing God's knowledge in elastic/infinite ought to help us out in viewing God's genuine emotions vis-a-vis the world. 

So then, back to cognitive states. If sans creation God is able to invest all his cognitive powers in knowing and so actualizing unsurpassable satisfaction but still able post-creation to turn his cognitive capacities to embracing contingent realities, then perhaps the door is open to understanding how God might be able ‘emotionally’ to enjoy Godself and still turn his emotional capacities to embracing contingent realities, and so REALLY grieve, REALLY rejoice. I get the feeling that you're ‘quantifying’ God’s capacities, Mephi. But if God can turn his cognitive attention (his cognitive capacities) to really knowing the world while still infinitely knowing himself (and not undermining UP), then why should God be unable to turn his emotional attention (his emotional capacities) to feeling the world while still infinitely feeling himself (and not undermining UP)?

You don’t like the healthy marriage analogy, I know. You insist that whatever emotional drag a rebellious son would have upon his parents would necessarily drag upon the parents’ relationship to each other and their experience of satisfaction. But this is just not so. It doesn’t follow logically that emotional drag on me with respect to my son would necessarily affect my enjoyment of my wife. And you make the distinction that opens the door to understand it this way when you admit to a necessary cognitive “maxed-out-ness” with respect to Father-Son-Spirit but yet the real possibility of contingent cognitive states in God vis-à-vis the world all the while admitting to the unity of God’s ‘knowledge’ per se, that is, that God’s knowing (whether necessary or contingent) constitutes one cognitive field of play. How do we do this with God’s knowledge? We say God is infinitely intelligent. Well, why not say God is infinitely emotional, or even infinitely emotionally intelligent?

Whatever other parents do, Anita and I really do see our relationship as a couple as one “thing” and our relationship with our kids as another “thing.” And we try to distinguish between the two and protect the former from the effects of the latter. Both are mutually influential loving relationships, true, but if the kids in fact affect our ability to relate well to each other, that is ONLY because we possess finite ‘emoters’. We’re as emotionally finite as we are intelligently finite. Just as our intelligence gets spread thin the more information we have to deal with, so our emotions get spread thin the more we have to experience and embrace the world.

But if we have released God’s knowledge from the need to spread itself thin to account for any number of truths, so we ought to view God’s emotional capacities as never spread out among all there is to experience. God can bring 100% of his intelligence to himself and so constitute his own unsurpassable satisfaction and also bring 100% of his intelligence to any or all of the contingent facts that compose the world and so constitute a relatively satisfied or unsatisfied experience of the world. Likewise God's emotions. Why should we assume God is as emotionally limited as we are? We shouldn’t. The whole difficulty you have with understanding how God could be truly grieving over our sin and truly rejoicing over himself stems from your own over-anthropomorphisized view of God’s capacities. You’ve already seen your way out of this with respect to God’s cognition. Just do it with respect to God’s emotions. God is infinitely emotionally intelligent. He can bring 100% of his heart to himself and unsurpassably rejoice and also bring 100% of his heart to you, and to me--all the while it being the case that God "feels" and "emotes" within one emotional field of play AND his experience of himself is unsurpassably wonderful.

This is the problem with the “peaked-out” language. It assumes a limited “capacity” in God to feel.

Just trying to be consistent. You like that, right?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 11/1/2005 10:49:22 AM (GMT-6)

For reasons I've ALREADY TALKED about!

Unfortunately (yet again) I don't have a lot of time today or tomorrow, or yesterday, or whenever but just a quick thing (Meph, again I havent' been able to read page 12 of this yet, but I got as far as this post I'm quoting...

just a quick note/thought/ah-ha moment:

  I'm still learning though! 

Post Edited (MephEternal) : 11/1/2005 2:55:47 PM (GMT-6)

VFG: I held this idea too, that God's knowledge "grows" until I talked with Alan about it (a week ago)... and what he said made sense: (sump'n' like) God's knowledge doesn't "grow" but the *content* of His knowledge changes.  His knowledge is always 100%, but that "stuff" WITHIN that 100% changes. (Hopefully I got that out right)

Tom: Yeah, Vi, that’s Mephi’s view too. He said God’s knowledge “grows” but what he meant is “changes” as the world changes and so the content of truths to be known changes. “Grow” is bad word perhaps. It suggests movement from ignorance to knowledge, which Mephi agrees never happens with God (though Jeff does believe this is always the case with God--i.e., there are always SOME truths God is ignorant of; God is constantly moving from ignorance to knowledge! aha ha ha ha ha Jeff! ;o)

Tom