Tom:

One claims that God and human beings are “essentially” one, that they are “homoousios” (of one ‘ousia’). Whatever God is, remember, is of God’s essence or being. So there’s no way to affirm One’s substantive monism and deny that all that exists is “homoousios” with God. And that we are, or even become, "homoousios" with divinity is something, I submit to you, that every Greek Orthodox thinker from the Cappadocian fathers to the present day would repudiate. If I'm wrong historically, oh well. But if we are NOT "homoousios" with God, then substantive monism is dead in the water, for there are a multiplicity of ousias running around.

My basic idea is that even if some form of idealism/mentalism is true, we are not yet monists is the sense One argues, namely, that “all is one ‘ousia’ (‘substance’ or ‘essence’),” namely, God. In my view there’s an ontological, i.e., an essential distinction between God and humanity. That is to say, the divine “ousia” and the “ousia” of an individual human being are not numerically identical.

Aristotle gives an example of a ‘house’. If you contract with someone to build you a house and they pull up a truck and unload a heap of bricks, tiles, and wood and say “Here’s your house,” you’d think it was a joke. To BE a ‘house’ everything would need to be put together in certain ways and in a particular structure, noted Aristotle. And by virtue of this structure it would “be” a house. The “ousia” (or “essence”) of the house as an independent entity would emerge from the structure. Obviously “emerge” here precludes “independent” meaning “absolutely independent"; but “emerge” does tell us that what “comes into being,” what “comes into its own ‘ousia’” is not numerically identical with the material from which the house emerges. But the point is that a house's "being," it's 'ousia', is not reducible to the bricks, mortal, and tiles without which it would not be and from which it comes into being. It's 'ousia' (its essence, its substance, is greater than the sum of its parts for it "comes into being." )

[One will appeal to the incarnation as proof of his position. But we went over that. I don’t see anything there that proves substantival monism.]

What I’d suggest, perhaps, is something analagous. The divine creative energies of God are like (just an analogy OK?) the materials out of which a 'house' emerges. But what emerges in our case is a “personal subject” in its own right, over and above that out of which it emerges, instantiating an “ousia” all its own, not numerically identical with the divine “ousia.” The former is contingent and derivative, yes, but that doesn’t negate the real, essential, distinction between the “divine subject” and the “human subject.” Both are personal and sentient, so I'm cool (I think) with an attributive monism or mentalism, but the human subject does not instantiate one and the same divine 'ousia' which is the divine subject. There is a "personal distinction" between us and God. It's RIGHT HERE where One and I differ. It's not over idealism/mentalism. Even if the entire created order derives its being at the quantum level from divine sentient probability waves collapsing into actuality whenever and wherever relationship with some other occurs, it's still possible (and very preferable) that a unique human person "comes into being" or emerges from such activity and that it is its own 'ousia' not reducible to the divine 'ousia' that permeates all the created order as the medium and context in which personally distinct ousias come into being.

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EPIK: What if human self-relational unities (human "selves") are ego peripheries within all humans (ego formation is part of human nature) that develop relationally with the divine self-relational unity, the Divine Ground/Uncreated Center of Personhood, the Logos...which is ALSO within all humans?

Tom: I can live with that, yeah.

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EPIK (after Tom/Greg exchange): Tom, all we have to say is that the non-divine self-relational unities (non-divine "selves" ) are the emergent properties of the Self-Relational Logos formed from contingent (created) relational matrices of God's Uncreated Energies which are in inseparable unity with, but not identical to, the Uncreated Logos.  You said before, Tom, that as long as the emergent property could be considered relatively autonomous from the Divine Disposition (where the "sin" of the human disposition could NOT BE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED to the Logos), you were cool, right? So, you should be cool with this.

Tom: I think so. (I said all that?)

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EPIK: Basically what I hear you saying here, Tom, is that you are willing to go with human self-relational unities being EMERGENT PROPERTIES of contingent relational matrices of God's Energies. Would I be right on that?

Tom: Yeah. But I prefer ‘emergent realities’, because we’re not just properties. The word “property” got carried over from the thing about Aristotle.

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Here's a decent analogy for how this may go...I think...

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/12/2009 4:42:44 PM (GMT-5)

Jesus, the Rapturer...

"Nothing else can compare..."

I ask a sensual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I am I,” and he thinks of his body.

I ask a thinking man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I see two sides in myself and I make my way between them, associating first with one and then the other,” and he is thinking of his instinctive and conscious soul.

I ask a spiritual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “There is someone in the depths of my soul. I stretch out my hand to grasp him but see that to do that I would need arms longer than the universe. Ask him who I am.”

St. Nicholai of Zicha (Velimirovich)

http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/who-am-i/

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/13/2009 7:18:34 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/13/2009 10:31:52 AM (GMT-5)

Hiyati-

Hope you had a chance to skim through Clayton’s article. It’s heavy I know. But he has some excellent thoughts. 

Alrighty then!

Jamila: I totally disagree!

Dad: I can actually hear you saying it. ;o)

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Jamila: I don’t see that just because I don’t believe there is a spiritual identity or self we are simply chemicals and simplistic beings.

Dad: OK. Tell me what you would call that “something more than just physical parts” that we become.  If not 'spirit', then what do you call it? 

Jamila: I see the brain and the things that are possible because of the BRAIN (frontal lobe – reasoning, logic, feelings) as amazing and awesome!

Dad: Me too. Very amazing.

Jamila: I don’t see it as negative, simplistic, or reducible to just these things. I think that’s where we’re seeing things a bit differently – maybe you’re having a hard time seeing the awesome potential and amazing accomplishments of our biological brain as just that.

Dad: Describe for me the brain’s potential. You mentioned reasoning, logic (which is reasoning—gotcha), and feelings. Is there something more than this? Is rationality and emotion that “something more than just chemicals” which is our full potential?

Jamila: Somehow, a God in heaven needs to be behind it all for there to be some awesomeness and meaningfulness in it.

Dad: Well, let’s get straight on an important definition: materialism (or physicalism). Materialism is the belief that physical entities (matter/energy) are the ONLY entities that exist. That’s it. If you create a set, and call it “Everything that exists,” and put in it every that IN FACT exists, the materialist would say that material entities are the ONLY members of the set.

Are you a materialist?

You like reason. It’s one of the amazing potentials of the human brain, right? OK then. Does reason tell you that material realities are the only possible realities? Explain to me how you reason your way into that conclusion. Now, I’m not a materialist, but I think I have good REASONS for believing there are non-physical entities (i.e., spiritual entities) that comprise the totality of the set “Everything that exists.”

So, tell me, what grounds the meaningfulness of your love for Tuck? If physical entities are all that exist, then physical (material, chemical, biological, etc.) explanations are the only explanations that exist, and if physical explanations are the only explanations, then the “meaningfulness” of your love can only be defined in physical terms (in terms of physical cause and effect, chemicals, etc.). So give me a physicalist’s explanation of the meaningfulness of love, or free will, or ethics, or consciousness, or personhood. If you’re a physicalist/materialist, then you love for Tuck and his love for you is nothing more than the effect of physical causes. It’s reducible to matter/energy.

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Jamila: Everything we believe as fact in this universe is falsifiable and provable. If it’s not, then scientists somewhere are striving to do so. Scientific THEORY has so much more backing it up then religious THEORY. Totally different concepts.

Dad: There’s a BIG discussion here that needs a lot of background work. We’re walking out into deep waters (philosophy of science, the mind/body problem, what is consciousness, freedom, etc.). What I’d like to do is post this on the discussion board in a folder by itself and let others chime in. Could be fun. I don’t mind just taking it a step at a time with you via email either. That’s cool. But opening it up will get more information flowing. I know you’re busy too. You’d only have to get on and comment on the weekends if you want.

I’ll say this though, the little I’ve read from world-class scientists encourages me. I couldn’t believe an article I read last year (don’t have it here) by Heisenberg (famous among quantum physicists for his ‘Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle’ and a lot of other stuff; Tuck will know about him). Sounded like a devotional. There is no shortage of world-class scientists who are totally comfortable with the scientific method when doing science but who nevertheless see much about ourselves and the empirical world that’s not entirely explainable in terms of the materialistic assumptions behind many who employ the scientific method. They’d agree with me that the scientific method does not PRECLUDE the existence of something more than MERELY physical entities.

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Dad: Methodological naturalism (the assumption that all we observe in the universe must be explainable and reducible to MERELY physical determinations) is a quite UNscientific methodology. Nothing about the empirical sciences tells us that this is the way things are.

Jamila: What? Come on! How is this unscientific? EVERYTHING about the empirical sciences tells us this is the way things are! Everything is “reducible” to atoms and even smaller particles than those – light – space – everything is made up of physical matter in some way. I don’t even know where you’re going with this!

Dad: I don’t deny that physical entities (bodies, planets, stars, etc.) are reducible to atoms and photos and quarks. Right. What I’m saying is that we are more than JUST a complex arrangement of atoms. The scientific method can educate us about matter/energy, physical cause and effects, the rotation of planets, the birth of starts, etc. But how can a methodology restricted to the behavior of physical entities theorize on the possible existence (or not) of spiritual entities? What matter IS can’t itself tell us whether or not there are non-physical entities? That’s why I meant. When scientists attempt to employ the scientific method to pontificate on the non-existence of God or spirit, or non-physical entities, they’re stepping outside the strict limitations of their methodology and philosophizing in the name of science. That’s not cool.

My belief is that something not-reducible to the atoms and molecules of our bodies EMERGES from the complexity OF those bodies (viz., a healthy brain) so that there’s MORE to who and what we are than just the physical parts that comprise our bodies. The question is, is there any empirical evidence that might encourage the belief in emergent realities such as this? I think so. What Clayton argues is that there’s a way to relate that something more which we are (over and above our physicality) TO our physical bodies, and the science of emergence helps us do that.

Love you…meaningfully,

Dad/Tom

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Anybody got ideas?

T

Post Edited (Similtude) : 3/22/2009 8:47:51 AM (GMT-5)