Does the Divine exist ?

prolegomena to a possible religious philosophy

© Wim van den Dungen

Can the transcendent be conceptualized ? No. Is the world conserved & intelligently designed ? Yes. Is there gnosis beyond atheism & agnosticism ? Yes.

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen."
Wittgenstein, L. : Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7.

Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction

1. Windows on the traditional proofs of God.

1.1 Aristotle on the Supreme Being.
1.2 To battle over universals.
1.3 Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof.
1.4 The "quinque viis" of Thomas Aquinas.
1.5 Ockham's first Conserver.
1.6 Cusanus and the coincidentia oppositorum.
1.7 The Cartesian proofs of God.
1.8 David Hume and the cause of order.
1.9 Kant and the architect of the world.

2. A revised ontological proof of Divine existence ?

2.1 Kant and the ontological proof.
2.2 Phenomenology and the question of Being.
2.3 The logic of the revised proof.
2.4 Process philosophy and God.
2.5 The a priori argument rejected.

3. Towards an exposure of the Divine.

3.1 The Münchhausen-trilemma in science & religion.
3.2 The genetic approach to knowledge.
3.3 The argument from design - the anthropic principle.
3.4 The "Anima Mundi" and the worship of Nature.
3.5 Memorial & wager-argument of Pascal.
3.6 Uncertain objectivity in authentic existence.
3.7 Objective chance.
3.8 The case of Raja Yoga.
3.9 The God-spot : a brain wired for the Divine.
3.10 Atheism - agnosticism - gnosis.

Bibliography

Abstract

Can logical atheists, arguing against the existence of the Divine, be refuted ? Can the concept of a theist, omnipotent, omniscient & transcendent God be made meaningless ? Is a rational discourse on the Divine possible ? Answering these three questions with a yes is the aim of this essay.

Studying movement, Aristotle conjectured a Supreme Being. Rooted in fideism and Platonism, Anselm of Canterbury tried to prove God's existence a priori, from mere concepts. Thomas Aquinas offered five arguments a posteriori intended to help believers apologize Divine existence by observing the world. Like Ockham, Kant argued with success the impossibility of any possible proof of a transcendent God, but like the Franciscan, accepted a highest cause in the finite order of actual things. Although no definite concept of it is possible, its greatness, intelligence and conserving power can be admired.

What formerly was called "cognitio experimentalis Dei", although deemed possible, is limited by genetico-cognitive criteria, leading up to a "desperate leap" (Kant) or a "leap of faith" (Kierkegaard), and a reevaluation of the "psychic mechanism" (Breton) advocated by surrealism and put into practice by the Dadaists. First Patañjali's yoga is taken as a historical, non-Western, example of a common religious practice of spiritual emancipation and experience, and then the neurological structures computing this are referenced.

These considerations lead to a re-evaluation of "atheism" and "agnosticism", bringing to the fore the quest for a gnostic (Hermetical) interpretation of the existence of the Divine, in terms of an immanent metaphysics of becoming (cf. Whitehead) and a henotheist pan-en-theism. The experience of the unity of the world serves as the exclusive stepping-stone to a non-conceptual, mystical experience of outwordliness and transcendence. These exceptional experiences, so do mystics testify, may be poured in non-propositional statements of the most sublime poetic excellence, exemplaric of God. This pataphysics is suggestive, intimate, subtle, tactful and non-directive. True religion is applied poetry.

Introduction

"How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology ? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."
Einstein, A. : "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine , 9 XI 1930.

§ 1

According to Sextus Empiricus, it was the skeptic Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 365 - 275 BCE) who taught that conflicts between two (or more) criteria of truth automatically lead to an apory or an antinomy, i.e. a contradiction posed by a group of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions. The truth of a given criterion can only be argued using true propositions. But, whenever a given criterion is justified, a petitio principii or circular argument is involved. Discussions about the criterion of truth are therefore unending and without solution.

This holds true within and between the monotheist religions, based on a criterion of truth rooted in a particular "revelation" of "God", called "Adonai" by the Jews, "Father" by the Christians and "Allah" by the Muslims.

Ad intra. Catholics claim the New Testament is true because Jesus and the authors of these books were inspired by the Holy Spirit and thus expressed the "Word of God". Because of this, the New Testament is absolutely true (Ratzinger : Dominus Iesus, § 8). But why believe God is the author, and not some malin génie ? Because these books say so. Muslims claim the Koran is the last and most true revelation of God. Why ? Because God said this to His prophet Muhammad. How do we know this ? Because the Koran says so, and authors claiming the presence of Satanic verses in it should be executed.

Ad extra. As major differences between these faiths occur, no truth-bearing communication is possible between them, for none will relinquish the "sacred" set of beliefs adhered to, and this despite the conflicts with the other revelations (of the same God). For example, the ontological identity between Jesus Christ and God will never be accepted by the Jews and the Muslims, whereas the revelation of the Koran to Muhammad by God will never be accepted by the Christians, who see Christ as the fulfillment of Judaism. Neither is it likely for them to ever change their core dogma's. Because of this, in every communication, an implicate, silent and hidden a-symmetry will be maintained by both sides, each considering the other as holding a lesser truth, a lesser view on God. Hence, only strategic action is possible, but truth-bearing communicative deeds are out of the question.

This emphatically points to the pivotal importance of science in a possible religious philosophy, for ecumenism is bound to book marginal advances only, which, given the popularity of the Abrahamic "religions of the book", nevertheless may be of crucial practical significance (like peace).

§ 2

The existence of God is the propositional core of the doctrine of theology. God is not merely symbolical, but always theo-ontological, not only restricted to myth, language and mentalities, but involving nature, humanity and the future of creation. One cannot worship God if there is not something worthy to be worshipped. To not take the proposition "God exists" literally, is equal to not believing in the existence of God, which is the thesis of historical atheism. The matter of God's existence is the core dogma of all possible theologies and its "proof" the task of religious philosophy.

To facilitate the entire argument, let us avoid a relative treatment of the subject, i.e. one posited from the perspective of a single theological system of beliefs among many. Hence, in what follows, "the Divine" is divorced from the exclusive milieu of Abrahamic monotheocentrism (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). The question is not : "Does the God of Abraham exist ?", but : "Does the Divine exist ?". This intention calls into being the "fuzzy" set called "Divine", encompassing all possible supernatural entities (like the Abrahamic God, Hindu, Jain, Shinto, Taoist, Shamanist Divinities, etc.), as well as all natural entities with unequivocal supernatural capacities (like the Buddha, Guru's, Masters, etc.). Logical concerns thus invite the non-casual use of the word "God", suggestive of historical monotheocentrism and religious philosophy (cf. the "God of the Philosophers").

Hence, the words "Divine" and "Divinity" will cover monotheism, henotheism and polytheism, yes, even non-theist Buddhism. The complete fuzzy set of the Divine is targeted when we ask : "Does God exist ? Do Gods exist ? Does the Buddha exist ?", in short : "Does the Divine exist ?" Atheism then, is the denial of Divine existence, exceeding the rejection of the Abrahamic, sole God Alone, but covering the whole range of mystical, religious and spirito-communal phenomena in all religions of all times. To better identify the contents of this fuzzy set, let us distinguish between four historical theo-ontological models of the Divine :

1. Semitic model : God is One & Alone. He, the sole God, is an unknown and unknowable Divine Person, Who Wills good & evil alike (cf. Judaism & Islam), calling man to do what is good ;

2. Greek model : God is a Principle of principles, the best of the best (Plato), the unmoved mover (Aristotle), the One even ecstasy does not reveal, impersonal and in no way evil or tainted by absence or privation of being (Plotinus), the First Intellect (Ibn Sina), a "God of the philosophers" (Whitehead). This abstract God figures in intellectual theologies, in humanism & in atheism. In the latter, by the "alpha privativum" of the Divine, as in a-theism, an absolute term is produced, but this time by negation instead of by affirmation ;

3. Christian model : God is One essence in Three Persons : God the Father revealed by God's incarnated Son, Jesus Christ, because, in and with God the deifying Holy Spirit. A God of Love, never impersonal, always without evil (pure of heart) and sole cause of goodness (Christianity) ;

4. Oriental model : God, The All, is One sheer Being present in every part of creation in terms of a manifold of impersonal & personal Divine Self-manifestations (theophanies), as we see in Ancient Egypt, Alexandrian Hermetism (gnosis), Paganism, Hinduism (Vedanta), Taoism & Hermeticism.

§ 3

Also in science, the problems posed by skepticism had to be addressed. Especially since Kant, the question "What can I know ?" has been crucial. The apory between "realism" and "idealism" (cf. Rules) is also without final result. The foundational approach favored since the Greeks has caused a pendulum movement between two criteria of truth (consensus versus correspondence). To move beyond this, the antinomic problems of justificationism (foundational, fundamentalist thinking within science) must be clear : if, on the one hand, real "sense data" are the only building-blocks of "true" knowing, as realism maintains, then why is the definition of the word "sense datum" not a sense datum ? Also : how can a "naked" or "raw" sense datum be observed if our mental framework co-constitutes our observation ? If, on the other hand, ideal linguistic symbols and speech-situations are the exclusive arena of truth, as idealism maintains, then how can knowledge be knowledge if it is in no way knowledge of something (i.e. a "res" and not only "flatus voci") ?

A focus of truth "behind the mirror" (as Kant put it) comes within reach if and only if both perspectives, experiment (correspondence, objectivity) and argumentation (consensus, intersubjectivity) are used together, and this in a regulative, non-constitutive (unfoundational) way. The criterion of truth is not justified by a sufficient ground outside knowledge, but by discovering the normative principles governing all possible knowledge. The latter are bi-polar but interactive and never exclusive, as 19th century, Newtonian scientific thinking claimed. Insofar as either realism or idealism are accepted, the logical problems of science's truth claim do not exceed the religious criterion of truth. It cannot escape the apory as long as it identifies with objectivity at the expense of subjectivity and intersubjective symbolization (as in logical positivism, materialism, scientism, instrumentalism, reductionism and epiphenomenalism) or with subjectivity and intersubjective symbolic activities with disregard for entities independent of the human sphere (as in spiritualism). Facts are not only experimental and not only argumentative. Empirico-formal object-knowledge is always the product of two vectors at work simultaneously. Not because of some ulterior reason, but because it must be so and has always been so.

The problems of foundational thinking are summarized by the Münchhausen-trilemma. It proves how every possible kind of foundational strategy is logically flawed. For every time a theory of knowledge accommodates the postulate of foundation, three equally unacceptable situations occur. A justification of proposition P is a deduction with P as conclusion. How extended must this deductive chain be in order to justify P ?

1. regressus ad infinitum :
   there is no end to the justification, and so no foundation is found ;

2. petitio principii :
   the end is implied by the beginning, for P is part of the deduction ; circularity is a valid deduction but no justification of P, hence no foundation is found ;

3. abrogation ad hoc :
   justification is ended ad hoc, the postulate of justification is abrogated, and the unjustified sufficient ground is accepted because as it is so certain, it needs no justification.

Kant's epistemology is a attempt to adhere to the postulate of foundation, for synthetic judgments a priori are rooted in the cognitive, categorial apparatus of the subject of experience, without which no thinking is possible. These categories hold true for the object of experience insofar as this object is constituted in observation by our capacity of observation and knowledge. For Kant, scientific knowledge (empirico-formal propositions) does not deal with reality-as-such, but with reality-for-us. However, as relativity & quantum mechanics disagree with the principles of Newtonian physics Kant thought to be anchored in our minds, it becomes clear these categories are not absolutely certain and not a priori. Kant's attempt to anchor science failed.

It took more than a century before the antinomy between realism and idealism was critically superseded by a normative theory on the possibility and the production of knowledge. In contemporary scientific practice, scientific facts are the outcome of two simultaneous vectors, on the one hand, objective experiments and their repetition, and, on the other hand, intersubjective communication between the community of sign-interpreters. Logic provides a few a priori conditions, related to form, clarity and elegance of the symbols of the theory. Epistemology adds a few objective and intersubjective criteria and the local research-unit will foster a series of a posteriori rules of thumb. Nevertheless, despite all possible care, scientific knowledge cannot be absolutist or radical, but instead delicate, prudent & provisional.

Hence, empirico-formal knowledge, or knowledge of facts, is conditional, relative, hypothetical and historical, although a clear theory, explaining lots of phenomena will (provisionally) always be called "true", meaning "very probable", not "certain". A set of such theories will constitute a tenacious scientific paradigm, covering entities which "kick" and "kick back". But things may change ...

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow : and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."
Wittgenstein, L. : Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.36311.

§ 4

Historical atheism, the proposition denying the existence of the Divine, has attacked its counter-thesis on several fronts :

1. theology :
   There are conflicting revelations and faiths. This makes every fundamental theology trivial ;

2. theodicy :
   If the Divine is deemed good, then the massive amount of evil history records could not exist, so the Divine is nonexistent ;

3. irrationality :
   The theologies of the world evidence triviality, lack of elegance, inefficiencies, major contradictions and apories, absence of fact and poor argumentation, in short : irrationality ;

4. criterion of truth :
   A religious criterion of truth cannot be justified, for the attempt will always entail a circular argument ;

5. logic :
   It can logically be demonstrated the existence of the Divine is either an empty set or untrue.

6. science :
   The existence of the Divine is not corroborated by contemporary science.

Contra 1

In a philosophical context, fundamental theology is unnecessary. The revelations and their dogmatic theologies are not the only possible superstructures of direct spiritual experience. Conflicts between superstructures prove the point of mysticology : the phenomena of spirituality have to be put in the center, not their symbolization. Fundamental theologies are indeed trivial. Moreover, they are the origin of fanaticism, closed mindedness, reactionary reflexes and misplaced conservatism. In the context of monotheism, they have been the cause of too many bloody conflicts. Religious philosophy in tune with reason is deeply "protestant", and thus against the canonization and eternalization of spiritual symbolizations, instead promoting the idea of permanent revolution and personal experience.

Contra 2

Directed against Christianity, this argument is valid and strong. The goodness of God cannot be reconciled with the massive presence of evil and death, despite Christ. Tertullian's "Credo quia absurdum est" is the only escape for Christian philosophy, for all the rest is vanity. The just order of the good God and the NAZI death camps form an eternal conflict. Unfortunately, the latter were real.

A religious philosophy in harmony with reason will necessarily have to accept the evil, dark side of the Divine. Divine wrath cannot be avoided if we wish to understand why omnipotence allows us to suffer as we do. To acknowledge this dark side, does not negate the possibility of Divine goodness. Instead of the Platonic "agathon", a balance of Divine attributes prevails. To confess a theological impasse, no "mysterium inequitatis" needs to be invoked. The inability to escape this dead-end, causes a spiritual standstill, a dangerous deadlock in which most world religions fossilize.

Contra 3

Irrationality implies an open conflict with reason. This can be in terms of the norms of thought, affect and action, trivial complexities, multiplication of entities or operators, lack of elegance, inefficient paraconsistency, major contradictions and apories. Irrationality may also manifest as absence of fact and/or poor argumentation.

Unfortunately, in terms of the questio facti, the religions have indeed excelled in irrationality. This has many causes. A religious philosophy has to pose the questio iuris, and first investigate the possibility of a possible knowledge of the Divine. The fact most (if not all) world religions failed to ask about their proper limitations, does not imply religious philosophy has to follow their example, quite on the contrary. The challenge is this : is true religious knowledge possible ? If we limit ourselves to history, the answer will surely be negative.

Contra 4

As long as this argument is raised in the context of the foundational view on science, it may cause harm in all forms of religious knowledge, for its logic is flawless. Circular arguments cannot justify knowledge, but nothing can. If this is not understood, and reality (or ideality) is deemed the rock bottom of knowledge, i.e. a sufficient ground to stop the chain of justification ad hoc, then the circular arguments of fundamental theology are considered inferior to those of science. Then science becomes the only game leading up to true propositions, either as "real facts" or as "ideal symbols". Epistemology has made null the pretence to absolute knowledge, i.e. the complete identity between "real" and "ideal", between "experiment" and "theory".

Scientific knowledge is a system of empico-formal propositions involving "facts" produced by an experimental set-up and a chain of dialogal processes, both strategic and communicative. Besides scientific knowledge, metaphysics speculates to arrive at a global perspective on the world. Being no longer the foundation of science, metaphysics aims to understand the world and man, feeding its arguments with scientific facts, the condensation of the activity of objective and (inter)subjective principles, norms & maxims. Situated "next" to "physics" (or science), speculative philosophy is meta-physics, the inescapable background of all possible scientific knowledge. The demarcation between both is clear, for science is testable and arguable, whereas metaphysics is only subject to the laws of logic and argumentation. Metaphysics is speculative and argumentative, but never experimental and factual.

We define "rationality" as the set of cogitationes uniting three subsets :

1. normative philosophy :
   the normative disciplines delving up the principles governing thought (epistemology), affect (esthetics) & action (ethics) ;

2. scientific knowledge :
   all empirico-formal propositions which are probably true in most tests (regulated by the idea of correspondentio) and for most concerned sign-interpreters (regulated by the ideal of a consensus omnium), but never absolutely true ;

3. metaphysics :
   all speculative propositions which have been the subject of a dialogal & argumentative process (argued plausibly, i.e. backed by arguments).

Religious knowledge is not necessarily anchored in a sufficient ground. If so, circularity ensues. Like scientific knowledge, it is the outcome of objective and subjective states, conditions and symbols. Just as scientific knowledge changes and evolves, so may our insights of the spiritual world grow and emancipate.

Contra 5

If the existence of the Divine is kept outside the set of facts (the "world" in scientific terms), then it is deemed exclusively apophatic, or object of un-saying only. For to those accepting the definition of rationality as the union of normative, scientific and metaphysical knowledge, this exclusive apophatism holds the thesis of the meta-rationality of religion. Then, even metaphysics would be unable to say anything sensible about the Divine, making religious philosophy impossible.

"How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world."
Wittgenstein, L. : Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.632.

The thesis of the meta-rationality of religion can never be put to the test, for according to the thesis, there will never be a fact (in the world) able to objectify the Divine. Likewise, nothing can be said about the Divine, and so no argumentation is possible. The "thesis" is thus not even metaphysical. Logically, this implies the Divine and the empty set are identical. If such exclusive apophatism is maintained, the conclusion of logical atheism is indeed inevitable : the Divine does not exist, for this fuzzy set is not a normative principle (it is not clear how the denial of the Divine involves a contradictio in actu exercito), not a fact of the world, nor a possible concept in an argumentative metaphysical discourse.

Even ps-Dionysius paired apophatism with the kataphasis of the Divine in the world. For the mystics of many religions (but not so for theologians and fundamentalists), Divinity is simultaneously far and near, remote and close. This bi-polarity, the two "eyes" of the Divine, makes logical atheism impossible. Of course, the burden of proof now falls on religious philosophy to demonstrate how the presence of the Divine in the world, Divinity-as-fact, can be a valid hypothesis one may put to the test and argue about.

The theologies accept the katapathic side of the polarity, for otherwise they have nothing to reveal. They eternalize a series of propositions and negate all other possible theophanies. To succeed, they must believe to possess a superior revelation. Even if they accept other (conflicting) revelations (i.e. the Divine as experienced by other believers), they must eventually consider theirs as better and the last word to be said about the matter. This is the hallmark of fundamentalism.

If, avoiding logical atheism, we accept to give factual contents to the Divine, then religious philosophy is burdened to provide the answer to the question : How are Divine facts produced ? If no experiments are possible and/or dialogue is always power-driven, then it is clear that, for the time being, we act "as if" the proposition "The Divine does not exist." is true. For, ex hypothesi, the Divine is not only a speculative object of metaphysics, but also part of the world as a radical experience "totaliter aliter". If conflicting theological foundations may lead to the same spiritual datum, then how to (in the stage of theory formation) isolate genuine spiritual facts and define the Divine in terms remaining close to the phenomenology of its direct experience (mysticism) ? These terms are not to be derived from religious superstructures, although they can never be completely devoid of theoretical connotations. Perhaps religious philosophy may provide a minimal framework derived from the principles of participant observation and critical hermeneutics ?

Suppose the Divine is nowhere found. What does this imply ? Only that for the moment science finds it highly unlikely for the Divine to exist. Just as it is improbable for the Sun not to rise tomorrow. This is something else than certainty, which is not provided by scientific knowledge. As we do not know for certain the Sun will rise tomorrow in the same way as we know it rose yesterday, another question is : How is the Divine probable ?

In short : the factuality of the Divine negates logical atheism, placing the burden of proof on all spiritual people. If the latter are unable to back their musings, based on the fundamental proposition ("The Divine exists."), then religion is not an absolute untruth, but, insofar as our knowledge goes, relatively untrue. In the latter case, we can only confirm (for the time being), that the ideas and practices of religions are indeed insignificant and silly. As such, they should not be allowed to play their games, especially politically and education-wise.

Contra 6

So even if the hypothesis stating the disclosure of the Divine is found to be not (yet) factual, we never absolutely know Divinity not to exist, nor whether some day the Divine may indeed become factual. In the supposed case, we only take a bet on a high probability, nothing more.

"Progress in truth -truth of science and truth of religion- is mainly a progress in the framing of concepts, in discarding artificial abstractions or partial metaphors, and in evolving notions which strike more deeply into the root of reality."
Whitehead, A.D. : Religion in the Making, 1926.

The overall probabilism of science has weakened the position of historical atheists persuing the last line of attack, especially the pretentious roarings of logical positivists and materialists. If no certain foundation is given, then no certain conflict with it can be ascertained, and so the thesis of Divine existence cannot be absolutely negated, only relatively. This does not diminish the obvious fact worshipping an entity that very probably does not exist is rather silly and in conflict with scientific rationality. If so, then in no way must this fictional belief be granted constitutional powers or way of law. This does not take away the right of the most bamboozling of faiths to become a pressure group and influence the democratic process.

In short : atheism's proposition ("The Divine does not exist."), if well argued, is as likely as the rising of the Sun tomorrow. But this is not the same as to know for certain and eternalize the nonexistence of the Divine. This certain knowledge falls outside the domain of normative, scientific and metaphysical knowledge, i.e. outside reason. Hence, dogmatical atheism is impossible. But, it is to the spiritualists and a possible religious philosophy to argue why this position is meta-rational rather than irrational (speculative arguments) and how the experience of the Divine can be produced (experiments).

In what follows, the following main ideas recur :

1. the traditional & revised proofs a priori of God are flawed ;

2. because of the intrinsic limitations of human cognition, no absolute proof (justification) or disproof of any proposition of fact is possible, not in science, ethics or religion, and this a priori - there is no certainty, only probability ;

3. a relative, genetico-cognitive justification of knowledge is the applied epistemological corollary of this ;

4. it is possible to justify the existence of the conserving architect of the world by means of the argument from design and the argument from conservation ;

5. spirituality is impossible without un choix fondamental ;

6. the experience of the Divine is dependent of a specific, rather unique psychic mechanism ;

7. it is possible for the experience of the Divine to be triggered by sustaining this fundamental choice over a long period of time, along with the systematic application of spiritual exercises aimed at the development of the special psychic mechanism of spirituality ;

8. Yoga is a non-Western, historical example of a testable and arguable spiritual research-unit, operating a meditative protocol rooted in factual neurological knowledge ;

9. the principles of the scientific study of mysticism are participant observation and the delineation of religious symbols.

HISTORICAL WINDOWS

1. Windows on the traditional proofs of God.

"The proofs of God have an impressive tradition. The greatest minds of humanity have been concerned with this. Their foundations were laid with the 'pagans', Plato and Aristotle ; they became acclimatized in Christianity, particularly through Augustine ; then, in the Middle Ages, extensively systematized by Aquinas ; and freshly thought out in modern times -in connection with Anselm's 'ontological' argument- by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff ; but, after that, they were all involved together in a radical crisis and replaced by Kant with a moral 'postulate', eventually reinterpreted speculatively by Fichte and Hegel and finally restored by neo-Thomism in neo-Scholastic form."
Kung, H. : Does God exist ?, 1980, III.

§ 5

In the West, since Christianity turned imperial (in the first half of the 4th century), the truth of revelation was no longer in doubt, and fideism became the leading mode of thought, enforced de manu militari. Augustine (354 - 430), the bishop of Hippo, affirmed the continuity between rationality (identified with Platonism) and faith, in casu, Christianity. Without (the Christian) God, reason leads to the worship of idols. For him, reason and faith are not in conflict and should not be separated : "itinerarium mentis in Deum". But, the gospels have no philosophy to offer. They provide no rational system, but a proclamation of the "Kingdom of God" (in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ). If the former is a Greek ideal like "agathon" or the unmoved mover, the latter is a revelation of the Divine : a Divine datum. The tensions are obvious. Is reason equipped enough to arrive at a comprehensive explanation of what works ? If so, then no "eye of faith" needs to be postulated. For Tertullian (ca. 220 CE), Christianity abrogated reason, or "worldly wisdom". The folly of faith ?

In the course of Western philosophy, four major positions between "reason" and "faith" came to the fore :

1. continuity : faith is the accomplishment of reason, the pyramidal capstone finishing its construction ;

2. separation : faith and reason each belong to separate domains of human knowledge, the former revelational (meta-rational), the latter rational ;

3. conflict : faith and reason are in conflict, for the former is empty and/or untrue ;

4. harmonization : meta-rationality and reason are stages in the genetico-cognitive development of the cognitive apparatus, the former being a high-order texture based on stable low-order distinctions or rational categorizations.

Contra 1

Cognitive architecture is not devoid of crucial "leaps", and the considerable differences between reason and meta-rationality (the factual component of "faith" explored in religious philosophy) also point to the fact meta-rationality initiates, besides affectional and volitional novelties, a new cognitive standard of measurement (comparable with the bracketing of the context in the step from pre-operative proto-rationality to operative, rational thought). To do this, the spiritual data were cause of the irreversible crisis and disequilibration of the system (to trigger an autoregulative response). The genesis of human cognition is not a continuity, but a stratified texture, completed in steps and jumps.

Contra 2

If meta-rationality is completely outside rationality, then it lacks an object. Also : the continuum of human knowledge is "broken up", with an enduring polarity between dogma and fact.

Contra 3

Accept, for the sake of argument, science evidences the non-factual nature of the Divine. This means science, by a consilience of inductions, or convergence (quasi verisimilitude) of certain propositions about the order of the world and the place of man in it, considers the existence of the Divine as very unlikely. This statement of probability is not a priori, but a posteriori. These empirico-formal propositions are not based on any sufficient ground, but solely on the product of test and argument. The way we observe the world co-determines how we observe the world, but how the world truly is, so must we think, also feeds our senses. The fact thus ascertained are never absolute or in any way eternal and definitive. It can not be excluded in an absolute way the Divine is not a fact, for scientific knowledge is not certain knowledge but probable knowledge. Moreover, suppose a Divine datum can be isolated, then surely a lower probability has to be calculated and a spiritual research-programme initiated ? Have scientist not dismissed the hypothesis because they considered non-spiritual theories to have given an exhaustive explanation of spirituality ? What if these theories have missed the point ?

Pro 4

Affective, cognitive and moral development happens in stages, as explained elsewhere. Meta-rationality, the stage of Self-actualizing spiration, is not a priori in conflict with reason, but, ex hypothesi, entertains a larger perspective. Because of this aspired openness, unconditionality and continuous possibilities, reason may continue to develop, for a new horizon is always presented and the mental attitude of the beginner is never lost. To seem to return from behind the horizon, from behind the surface of the mirror, is the inspiring and heuristic Pharos of intuition and its intellectual perception (the intellect witnessing itself). Of course, given the criterion of testability, the spiritual datum must be repeatable. This must go hand in hand with a clear and concise theory on spirituality. Otherwise spirituality is a mere fiction (like Hamlet saying : "To be or not to be ...").

De iuris, reason cannot reject high-order distinctions, although the post-rational stages of human cognition always involve un choix fondamental, i.e. the fact of freedom. There is no coercion in religious philosophy. A rational system cannot function properly without choice. But for each choice there is a price to pay, and is the price for rejecting the amor intellectualis Dei a mental handicap (the "dry bones" of the "nature morte", the horizon of the pigeonhole) ? Logics of finity function properly in imperial, Fregean calculi, but are inefficient, marginal or too static when non-linear, dissipative systems are studied.

This harmony between reason and meta-rationality implies their distinction as well as their being part of the stratification of the proposed modes of cognition (cf. mythical, pre-rational, proto-rational, formal, critical, creative and nondual).

§ 6

Regarding the justification of its truth claim, science developed its argument in three stages :

1. uncritical & foundational : true knowledge corresponds with real, repeatably observable objects (naive realism under the guise of materialism) or true knowledge is the object of an ideal theory (naive idealism under the guise of spiritualism or ideology). In both strategies, the error consists in the implicate use of the contra-thesis. Real objects are also co-determined by the theoretical connotations of their observers. Ideal objects are always also a "something" outside the grasp of a theoretical discourse. The foundation of science is objectified : the "real" world "out there" or the "ideal" theory of reason ;

2. critical & foundational : asking for the limitations of human knowledge, Kant rooted cognition in the cognitive apparatus (cf. the Copernican Revolution). In this way, the foundation sought was interiorized and its a priori categorized. By making the ego cogito (the "I Think" or factum rationis) the foundation of knowledge, Kant succeeded in making reality-as-such fall outside science ! Likewise, for Kant, meta-rational knowledge (intellectual perception) was denied to science, which, divorced from any contact with "das Ding an sich", seems trivial. The foundation of science is subjectified (not in an idealism but in a transcendentalism) ;

3. critical & normative : in the previous century, the foundational approach was relinquished and in this way, the aporia threatening justification was avoided. Science produces empirico-formal propositions treated "as if" they represent a high probability, but never a certain truth. This likelihood is posited by repeatable tests and the intersubjective dialogues and argumentations of all involved sign-interpreters. The end result is fallible knowledge, although highly probable. The existence of the Divine is (very probably) a fact or not. But even if today the Divine is not a fact, It may be one tomorrow.

With the end of foundational thinking, the time of confrontation between incompatible foundations (reason versus faith) is over. Scientific knowledge is probable, historical and relative. Facts may change over time, and nobody is able to predict for certain what the future will bring. Moreover, scientific investigations are always conducted against the background of untestable information. Insofar as the latter is arguable, metaphysics is possible. But the latter is never testable. Finally, who decides who the "involved sign-interpreters" are and/or when a certain threshold is "critical" ? In order to define these and other matters, science evokes a series of a posteriori conditions representing the idiosyncrasies of the local research-unity, the "opportunistic logic" of their fact-factory and the style of their pursuit of scientific, factual knowledge.

Science has no longer a reason a priori against the existence of the Divine. It may, and does move against it a posteriori. If it finds no evidence for Divine existence, then it is entitled to dismiss the hypothesis as very unlikely, and consider Divine worship as silly insofar as it is not deemed fictional (like art). However, "worship" and "fiction" are incompatible. He who worships, truly believes to worship something more than a personal fiction, more than just sacral art. It is this "something more" which religious philosophy must isolate and make available. For it to do so, philosophy and science should remain open and postpone their final judgments. Both must be totally recuperated from the hang-over of their shameful foundational history over the last two millennia. The only role of science is to confirm or deny probable fact. Is "modern" education not meant to dictate the futility of meta-rational knowledge in the light of independent, rational thought ? Suppose it can be demonstrated such bias is precisely what hinders the emergence of the spiritual fact (just as the rejection of independent thought halted science) ?

§ 7

In the Abrahamic faiths, God as Adonai, God as Father and God as Allah is intensely personal and immanent, either in terms of His elect (Israel), of His Son Christ or of His Koran. This One God Alone is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, transcendent (supernatural), creative and personal (a "He"). He differs from the henotheist "Amun" of Ancient Egypt or the "Brahman" of Hinduism because He is singular (like the Aten of Akhenaten). He does not manifest as other Gods or Goddesses, nor are their appearances His many theophanies. There is no God, but the God.

This monotheocentrism is monolithic. Theology is a petrified entity struck with the unveilings of God. Revelation is a truth of God and hence final. Nevertheless, in order to develop an individual spiritual superstructure or a solid apology to win supporters, rational arguments are necessary and so the need to provide "proof" or "evidence" of God becomes unmistaken.

In what follows, a series of windows are described. Although as such these philosophical speculations are outdated, in each, a "nugget of gold" is isolated and added to the technical apparatus. Together, these assist the argumentation developed in the second and third section, proposing one revised a priori and three a posteriori proofs of the Divine.

1.1 Aristotle on the Supreme Being.

"We hold, then, that the God is a living being, eternal, most good ; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to the God ; for that is what the God is."
Aristotle : Metaphysica Lambda, XII.VII.9.

§ 8

In chapter 1 of his Metaphysica Lambda (or twelfth book of his Metaphysics), shortly written after Plato (428 - 347 BCE) died, Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) tries to demonstrate the existence of two physical beings and one unmoved being. These three beings, or meanings of the word "ousia", are : (a) physical and eternal (planets), (b) physical and moved (plants & animals) and (c) a "first" being beyond physics and eternal ("the God"). The first two beings are the objects of physics. The last is not and demands another approach coming "after" and/or next to physics, or metaphysics, a word Aristotle did not coin. "Metaphysics" appeared as a separate discipline only after the Aristotelian corpus was put together by Andronicos of Rhodos (ca. 40 BCE). He used to place the books on metaphysics "next to" those dealing with physics.

In book 6, the existence of the "first being" is discussed. Although physical considerations are also "wisdom", they are not "first". Instead of thinking this eternal being as a transcendent "idea" (as Plato had done), Aristotle tries to develop its meaning by radicalizing his ideas about the physical world. Physics, as conceived by Aristoteles, discovers an eternal movement.

"time seems to be a circle"
Aristotle : Physica, 223b 29.

In Ancient Egypt, creation was also deemed cyclic and eternal. The deities (or natural differentials), except for Osiris, were born, culminated, died and reborn after the model of the Solar cycle. This "time" was called "neheh" or eternal repetition, and contrasted with "djedet" or eternal sameness or everlastingness. This eternal repetition was the "motor" of rejuvenation, as evidenced by the Amduat. The influence of Egyptian thought on certain pre-Socratics was discussed elsewhere. It cannot be excluded the Egypt of Alexander the Great (356 - 323 BCE), influenced Aristotle, although not in the Afrocentric measure evoked by James (1992).

Indeed for Aristotle, there is no creation at all, no autogenous act in precreation, as in Heliopolitan theology. No "Atum" sui generis splitting in space, life and order (Shu and Tefnut), emerging spontaneously from the primordial matrix of endless possibilities (the Nun). The world is eternal. There is no beginning of time. No exploding singularity (cf. the "Big Bang" theory, remaining silent about what happened at t = 0). Both the poets of the gods (like the Egyptians), who claim the world rose "from the night" (or nonexistent precreation) and the philosophers of nature, who say all things are simultaneous, are wrong.

In De Caelo, Aristotle writes :

"The actualization of the God is immortality, in other words, an eternal life. Hence, it is necessary that there is an eternal movement in the God. Because heaven is of that nature -for it is a Divine body- therefore it has a circular body, by nature always moving in a circle."
Aristotle : De Caelo, 286a 9 - 12.

His demonstration of the Divine involves the justification of this eternal movement (of the world), and this in a necessary and thus not-contingent way. In terms of the famous Peripatetic pair potency versus actuality, this means "the God" is devoid of latency, fully awake, conscious and actualized. As it is possible to think potency as nonexistent, the principle of movement must be "pure" act, or realization without potency and without matter. The principle sought is immaterial & spiritual. It is not necessarily transcendent, as the Stoic "pneuma" proves.

In book 8 of his Physica, the existence of a first mover is justified by considering an infinite, horizontal series of mediating causes cannot be accepted. If every thing moved is caused to move by something else, then the first mover moves itself. This is the concept of the unmoved mover. This mover is not a point of beginning in time, but the sufficient ground of all movement. In De Anima, we read how the "Nous poiètikos" (430a 18) or "active intellect" stands on its own, cannot be influenced, is unmingled and in essence realization (pure actuality). It is inevitable to accept this unmoved mover, not only by the necessities of our mind, i.e. in order to arrive at abstractions and "theoria", but also to provide a sufficient ground for physical reality.

Greek concept-realism is not critical. Hence, the foundational approach is cherished and the "essential tension" of the aporia of reason appears : realism versus idealism. In the Platonic system, "anamnesis" is possible and by its own efforts the mind arrives, by contemplating the world of ideas, at Divine, eternalized truth. There is a "spiritual eye" enabling us to "see" the world of prototypes ("paradigma"). By means of this "intellectual perception" avant la lettre, absolute knowledge is within reach (a similar thesis is proposed by intuitionism). For Aristotle, knowledge derives from the senses, but abstractions are impossible without a Divine active intellect.

For these most influential of Greeks, theoretical knowledge is certain, eternal and sufficient. Plato thinks the "chorismos" or separation between the "world" of ideas and the "world" of becoming, Aristotle does not divide the world in two, but the soul. The Platonic difference returns in his psychology, namely to distinguish between "passive" and "active" intellect. Grosso modo, identical problems will be at work in later, modern, pre-Kantian rationalism and empiricism, albeit in a different conceptual framework and adjacent historical situation. Like the latter, Greek conceptual rationality is entrapped by the Münchhausen-trilemma.

Greek concept-realism, discovering the antinomic logic of the sufficient ground (Plato in ontology, Aristotle in psychology), did not yet make this study the focus of its attention. In Medieval philosophy, the issue of the existence of the Christian God would become of first apologetic importance. Reason was there to serve theology and accommodate the diffusion of faith. Was the God of Christ this sufficient ground ? Could the existence of the Divine be demonstrated a priori ? The answer to these questions was linked with the status of universal concepts, or, in terms of the Medieval dialectica, the position of genera and species in the logical category of substance ("ousia"). For the Augustinian Platonists, the world of ideas, revelation and intellectual perception interlaced. For the Thomists, knowledge only derived from the senses, and so the idea of God could only be acquired a posteriori.

1.2 To battle over universals.

"This universe would never have been suitably put together into one form from such various and opposite parts, unless there were some One who joined such different parts together ; and when joined, the very variety of their natures, so discordant among themselves, would break their harmony and tear them asunder unless the One held together what it wove into one whole. Such a fixed order of nature could not continue its course, could not develop motions taking such various directions in place, time, operation, space, and attributes, unless there were One who, being immutable, had the disposal of these various changes. And this cause of their remaining fixed and their moving, I call God, according to the name familiar to all."
Boethius : The Consolation of Philosophy, Book 3, Proza XII.

§ 9

Medieval philosophy is defined by the tension between Christian "revelation" and Pagan "philosophy". It may be divided in three stages :

1. fideist (IVth - XIth) : before the XIth century, science and philosophy serve theology (cf. Gerard of Czanad's "ancilla theologiae"), and "knowledge" is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Thanks to the Carolingian Renaissance (IXth century), the seven "artes liberales" (or pillars of wisdom) emerged : logic, grammar, rhetoric (trivium), and geometry, arithmetics, astronomy and music (quatrivium). These are contrasted with the "artes serviles", being directed to the satisfaction of a need. Because of political disintegration, the decay of monastic and ecclesiastical life, the degradation of the Papacy, and the attacks of the Norsemen in the ninth and tenth century, the fruit of this renaissance did not come to maturity. Of Greek philosophy, little was known. Part of one dialogue of Plato and only Aristotle's logic were attested. Neo-Platonism was studied through Augustine. Besides the Bible, an intellectual read the works of the fathers of the church. Philosophy was reduced to logic (dialectica). Education was meant to confirm the futility of independent, rational thought and to give a teaching rooted in fundamental theology. Dialectici as Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109) tried to understand the contents of the revealed truths of scripture and to defend it against heretics  ;

2. philosophical (XIth - XIIIth) : in the West, about 1150, Latin translations of unknown Greek philosophical texts become available. Among them, the complete works of Aristotle, as well as the extensive writings of his influential Arab commentators, Avicenna (980 - 1037) & Averroes (1126 - 1198). Aristotelism caused a major crisis. These teachings formed a coherent whole, explained nature and articulated a vision of the world and of man contradicting the tenets of fundamental Christian theology (creationism contradicted the concept of an eternal world). From Padua to Paris, intellectuals debated, and although philosophical knowledge was deemed "according to reason" and not the absolute knowledge of revelation, radical thought slowly emerged. Perhaps reason could provide a comprehensive explanation ? Perhaps revelation could be set aside ! It would take three more centuries before intellectuals dared to openly reject fundamental theology. Meanwhile, Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) was first to address these new sources and harmonize them with Christianity.

3. via moderna (XIVth - XVth) : with the assimilation of Aristotle, a new vision on reality and knowledge emerged. Strict nominalism, with William of Ockham (1290 - 1350) as its protagonist, broke away from Classical Greek and Scholastic thought. Only particulars exist, and universals are not rooted in a sufficient ground, neither inside (Platonism) nor outside (Aristotle) the mind. Universal concepts are nothing but a common name ("nomen") given to different particulars sharing a certain similarity. In this way, thought is more and more considered an empirical phenomenon, and the possibility of transcending a particular physical reality to intuit (or abstact) its essence is questioned. Statements are terministic, not necessary.

After three centuries,  the "spirit" of the European Renaissance broke down the dogma of a revealed God known by faith alone. From within (Reformation and Contra-Reformation) as well as from without (natural science, in particular physics & astronomy) the Feudal model of Christianity came under severe attack. Modern science emerged in the XVIIth century, and in philosophy, the fideist context was eliminated by René Descartes (1596 - 1650) and his clear and distinct intuition "cogito ergo sum" (cf. infra).

§ 10

In Late Hellenism, and particularly in Stoicism, language became an independent area of study. Logic was not longer embedded in metaphysics, but a science of language, or linguistics. Physics studies things ("pragmata" or "res"'), whereas dialectica and grammatica study words ("phonai" or "voces"). This is the approach of "the first scholastic and the last Roman", Boethius (480 - 524 or 525). He created the term "universalia" (the translation of Aristotle's "ta katholou") to denote the logical concepts genus and species. The original metaphysical apory between Plato's Ideas and Aristotle's immanent forms is no longer part of the Stoic context. A reduction took place which brought logic and linguistics to the fore.

In his Isagoge, translated by Boethius, Porphyry (232/3 - ca. 305) wrote :

"I shall not say anything about whether genera and species exist as substances, or are confined to mere conceptions ; and if they are substances, whether they are material or immaterial ; and whether they exist separately from sensible objects, or in them immanently."
Porphyry : Isagoge, 1, introduction.

For Boethius, the answer is Aristotelian : the universals have an objective existence in particular physical things, but the mind is able to conceive genera and species independent of these bodies.

For Isidore of Sevilla (died in 636), etymology was the crucial science, for to know the name ("nomen") of an object gave insight into its essential nature. There exists an implicate adualism between the name (or word) and its reality or "res". This symbolic adualism does not differentiate between an "inner" subjective state of consciousness and an "outer" objective reality, which is a typical characteristic of ante-rationality (cf. psychomorphism).

Thanks to the Carolingian Renaissance, and the organization of the Palatine School, a remote ancestor of the Renaissance "university" ("turned towards unity") was created. Europe, under the political will of Charlemagne, was awakened to its "rational" inheritance and embraced the importance of education and learning (for the upper classes). Although short-lived, its influence would not completely vanish.

Clearly the problem of universals touched the foundation of thought, in particular fideism, which tried to identify general names (like "God") in the mind with universal objects in reality. On the one hand, there is the ultra-realistic position, or "exaggerated realism", found in the De Divisione Naturae of John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 810 - 877) and the work of Remigius of Auxerre (ca. 841 - 908), who taught that the species is a "partitio substantialis" of the genus. The species is also the substantial unity of many individuals. Thus, individuals only differ accidentally from one another. All beings are thus modifications of one Being. A new child is not a new substance, but a new property of the already existing substance called "humanity".

On the other hand, and very early, heretics in dialectic rose. For Eric (Heiricus) of Auxerre (841 - 876), general names had no universal objects corresponding to them. Universals concepts arise because the mind gathers together ("coarctatio") the multitude of individuals and forms the idea of species. This variety is again gathered together to form the genus. Only individual exist. By the process of "coarctatio", many genera form the extensive concept of "ousia" ("substantia"). In the same line, Roscelin (ca. 1050 - 1120) held that a universal is only a word ("flatus vocis") and so "nihil esse praeter individua" ...

§ 11

This apory between exaggerated realists ("reales") and their opponents ("nominales") is best illustrated by the confrontation between St.William of Champeaux (1070 - 1120), and Abelard (1079 - 1142) a rigorist dialectic arguing against the "antiqua doctrina", and, according to St.Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153), an agent of Satan. In his early days, William taught, against his teacher Roscelin, that the individual members of a species only differ accidentally from one another. This identity-theory came under severe attack and later he changed it. Abelard argued, that according to William, only ten different substances or "essences" exist (namely the 10 categories of Aristotle). Hence, all living beings, subsumed under "substance", are substantially identical, and so Socrates and the donkey Brunellus are the same. Some say as a subterfuge, William replied with his indifference thesis, according to which two members of the same species are the same thing, not "essentialiter" but "indifferenter". Peter and Paul are "indifferently" men (possess humanity "secundum indifferentiam"), because as Peter is rational, so is Paul, whereas their humanity is not the same, i.e. their nature is not numerically the same, but like ("similis"). In fact, he is saying that the universal substances of both are alike, applying indifferently to both or any other man. This position was also part of Abelard's polemical interpretations.

Abelard's "nominalism" is a denial of ultra-realism in epistemology, i.e. against the adualism between "vox" and "res". He does not refute Platonic "ideae" preexisting in the mind of God, but understands these as the metaphysical foundation of the real similarities in status between objects of the same species, and not of the objects (as Platonism insists).

Abelard's analysis states the distinction between the logical and the real orders, but without the denial of the objective foundation of the universals. This early nominalism is a moderate realism. He demonstrated how one could deny exaggerated realism without being obliged to reject the objectivity of genera and species. For Abelard, universals were by nature inclined to be ascribed to several objects. They are only words, not things (against the "reales"). When identified with words, universals are not reduced to mere "sound" (which is also a "res"), but to the signifying power of words (against the "nominales"). This "significatio" of words is not a concept accompanying the word (a mere contents of mind, i.e. exclusively subjective), but gives expression or meaning to the objective status of the word (semantics). This status is a human convention based on real similarities between the particulars, but these real "convenientia" are not a "res", not "nihil" but a "quasi res" : it is not the substance "homo" that makes human beings similar, but the "esse hominem".

Summarize these positions with the distinctions introduced by Avicenna :

1. universale ante rem : the universals exist before the realities they subsume : Platonism ;

2. universale in re : the universals only exist in the realities ("quidditas rei") of which they are abstractions : Aristotelism ;

3. universale post rem : universals are words, abstact universal concepts with a meaning attributed to them by human convention, giving expression to real similarities between particulars. The latter are not "essentia" and not "nihil", but "quasi res".

This dialectic juggling may conceal the larger issue at hand : if extramental objects are particular and mental concepts universal, then how think their relationship ? Does an extramental foundation of universals exist ? The Greeks as well as the Scholastics answered affirmatively.

For the Scholastics, given their preoccupation with God, the problem was to know whether an objective, extramental reality corresponded to the universals in the mind ? If so, then the mere concept of "God" might entail Divine existence, as the a priori proof tries to argue. If not, rational knowledge resulted in scepticism and Divine existence might be argued a posteriori only. Greek rationalism was conceptual and ontological, whereas the Medieval dialects were foundational and logico-linguistic (psychological).

Abelard's solution is a crucial distinction : universals are not real, but they are words (real sounds) with a significance referring to real similarities between real particulars. Because of their meaning, they are more than "nothing". The foundation of his nominalism is "the real" as evidenced by similarities between objects, whereas the "reales" supposed an ante-rational symbiosis between "verbum" and "res", between Platonic ideas and material objects ("methexis"). A similar Abelardian line of argumentation is found in David Hume (1711 - 1776), ending in a skepticism preventing Kant (1724 - 1804) from sleeping (indeed, Hume rejected the world of ideas and so could not back the observed similarity between objects with the mind of God). When Aristotle was finally translated into Latin, Abelard could and was recuperated by High Scholasticism.

His pivotal contribution to the historical process of reason becoming conscious of itself is not limited to logic, epistemology and semantics. In his Ethica seu Scito Teipsum or "Ethics of Know Yourself", he stressed the importance of intent ("intentio"). Good and evil are not situated in the action itself (cf. Aristotle's Ethics Nicomachea), but in the intention of the acting subject. Conscience ("conscientia") is therefore crucial, for "non est peccatum nisi contra conscientiam". So also in his ethics, Abelard puts emphasis on the subject of experience, moving far away from the shores of the objective morality of his age (focusing on the virtue of the deed and not on the doer and his motifs).

1.3 Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof.

"But if through your eternity You have been, and are, and will be ; and to have been is not to be destined to be ; and to be is not to have been, or to be destined to be ; (then) how does your eternity exist as a whole forever ? Or is it true that nothing of your eternity passes away, so that it is not now ; and that nothing of it is destined to be, as if it were not yet  ? You was not, then, yesterday, nor will You be tomorrow ; but yesterday and today and tomorrow You are ; or, rather, neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow You are ; but simply, You are, outside all time. For yesterday and today and tomorrow have no existence, except in time ; but You, although nothing exists without You, nevertheless do not exist in space or time, but all things exist in You. For nothing contains You, but You contain all."
Anselm : Proslogion, XIX.

§ 12

Usually depicted as a transitional figure between monastic and scholastic theology, the Benedictine Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109) was a protagonist of the Augustinian tradition. Philosophy is dialectica and part of theology. Nevertheless, his position within this movement is rationalistic, for he seeks the "rationes necessariae" of the existence of God, but also for revealed data as the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ. However, his rationalism is provisional, for Anselm believes so he may understand ("credo ut intelligam"), but does not seek to understand in order to believe. The context in which he operates, does not allow him to make the distinction between philosophy and theology, and so, even if he was unable to find the necessary reasons for Divine existence, he would not reject the existence of God. Perhaps is it fair to say Anselm is the most dialectical pole within the Augustinian movement and its fideism.

Anselm's Platonic theory of truth contains four pillars :

1. universale ante rem : universals are the "essentiae" of the particular individuals ;

2. the universals are real : universals exist independently of the particulars participating in them ;

3. independence of truth : truth is independent of statements and of things, for every being comes after its truth or "rectitudo", each being "has its truth" ;

4. summa veritas : truth exists in the ideas of God. These are what they are "per se", i.e. by themselves. They are the causes of the essences and their truth.

In the Monologium, Anselm develops two a posteriori arguments of the existence of God, defined as the best, the greatest and the highest being, namely the argument from goodness and the argument from greatness.

1. argument from goodness : The fact good things, despite their differences, are identical in goodness, implies they are good "per aliquid", i.e. not of themselves, but by a cause exterior to them. To avoid an infinite regression of causes, we have to posit a best "per se", a good possessing goodness by itself. This highest and greatest good is the best. And God is the best. Summarized : as there are good things and better things, there must be a best thing and this is God ;

2. argument from greatness : beings exist not of themselves, but because of a self-dependent, uncaused, sufficient ground "per se". Because what exists by itself is greater than what exists by something else, it is "maxime omnium", the highest being outside all possible hierarchical series, being-of-itself in which all participate, or God.

Here, the common feature is the argument from perfection, for both arguments apply only to perfections which do not of themselves involve limitation and finiteness, like quantity. Two "outer" sets of arguments have to be introduced, depending on (a) the study of the order of creation and (b) the Platonic context, dictating that when various beings have one feature in common (receive the same predicate), an exterior cause must be present for that "truth" and self-possess this feature "per se", i.e. by itself and without any other. The autarky & autonomy of this exterior cause is deemed self-evident and ideal. Hence, the argument from perfection is complex, and composed of chains of various arguments a posteriori. In accord with his Platonic streak, Anselmus sought for a more simple proof, one necessitating no empirical study, but only logic.

§ 13

In the Proslogium, the ontological argument a priori is developed. After long, obsessive concentration on the issue, one evening, during night service, Anselm's faith in God's existence suddenly found the "insight" ("fides quaerens intellectum", the original title of the Proslogium).

Anselms defines "God" as "something than, which no greater can be conceived", or "aliquid Quo Majus Nihil Cogitari potest", "QMNC", Anselm's concept of God. This is not an analytical, self-evident proposition, but a description which may also have meaning to non-believers. The proposition "God exists" is not self-evident, as later Thomists will say ("per se notum").

Moreover, faith is not a necessary condition to understand the meaning of this concept of God. The argument is directed against those who deny Divine existence, but affirm to know God's nature if God would exist (like the atheist claiming God is good and denying His existence because of the evils of creation). Anselm adds even a fool understands QMNC, proving its existence "in intellectu" and making this concept of God a psychological reality. How to demonstrate QMNC necessarily also exists "in res" ? The proposition "God does not exist." is a contradictio in terminis if (a) "God" is defined as QMNC and (b) it is "greater" to exist "in res" than "in intellectu" only. The steps of the argument are as follows :

1. Major Premiss : God is QMNC ;

2. Minor Premiss : It is greater to exist in reality than only to exist in ideality ;

3. Conclusion : QMNC exists in reality and in ideality, so God exist in reality and in ideality.

4. Lemma : If QMNC only exists in ideality, then something than which no greater can be conceived is something than which some greater can be conceived (namely that which exists in both orders), which is a contradiction, hence QMNC not only exists in ideality but also in reality, ergo God exists in reality and in ideality.

Plantinga (1974) gave another, more sophisticated version, namely a reductio ad absurdum, based on the acceptance of QMNC :

1. God exists in the understanding, but not in reality.

2. Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone.

3. God's existence in reality is conceivable.

4. If God did exist in reality, the He would be greater than He is (from (1) and (2)).

5. It is conceivable that there is a being greater than God (from (3) and (4)).

6. It is conceivable there is a being greater than the being than which nothing greater can be conceived (from (5) and QMNC).

7. It is false it is conceivable there is a being greater than the being than which nothing greater can be conceived.

8. ERGO : It is false God exists in the understanding but not in reality ((6) and (7) contradict).

9. ERGO : God exists in the understanding and in reality.

In this reductive form, the argument proves that either (1), (2), (3) or (7) are untrue. For Anselm (1) was untrue because (2), (3) and (7) belong to the structure of the argument. Historically, only (2) and (7) prove good candidates for refutation, although Duns Scotus (ca. 1266 - 1308) objected against (3).

(2) What is "existence" ? Either existence "in thought" and existence "as such" are differentiated (cf. Thomas Aquinas), or "existence" is not considered to be a predicate (cf. Kant).
(7) Has QMNC meaning ? If QMNC has no meaning, then how can this meaninglessness be made clear ?

§ 14

Historically the argument has attracted two major problems :

1. QMNC : What is the meaning of "greater" ? Clearly qualitative greatness is intended, i.e. "more perfect" in the Platonic sense, i.e. something with a higher degree of being. The truth of the argument thus depends on the ability to compare realities in an absolute sense (implying an absolute being transcending the order of the world). In the world, a being can never be that "great" that no "greater" can be found. Like the concept "greatest number", QMNC has no concrete value in the order of reality. It is a limit-concept, and so the meaning of the word "existence" is not the same for QMNC as it is for other objects. For Anselm, QMNC had a "special" status. His critic, the Benedictan monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers  (1033 - 1109), in his On Behalf of the Fool, constructed an ontological argument for the existence of the perfect island. He argued as follows : it is enough to conceive the most perfect island for it to exist, for it would not be the most perfect if it would only exist "in intellectu".
   
   Anselm replied such a most perfect island only exists in the world and so its "perfection" is relative, not absolute. QMNC is the concept of something absolutely the greatest, outside or beyond the world. But this answer means Anselm already presupposed the existence of God before he proves it (a fact he accepts), and QMNC is the projection of this. Hence, the statement "QMNC exists" has no meaning. Neither has "QMNC does not exist". Indeed, if the same kind of "existence" of God needs to be demonstrated as the "existence" of objects of the world, then absolute greatness should not be introduced. But if this is not the case, then the argument fails ;

2. "existence" is not a predicate : for Kant, inconsiderate of the specific background of Anselm's thought, "existence" is not a predicate as "great, beautiful or good". The fact something exists "in res" is not an additional quality next to what it is "in intellectu", for otherwise the concept would be incomplete. Anselm may answer that only in the unique case of QMNC "existence" is analytically contained in the concept of God. If we define the logic of "existence" as positing a subject-for-predication, then a proposition as "Dragons do not exist." means the subject "dragon" does not function as a subject of predication in reality.  But QMNC could then be reformulated : "to function as a subject of predication in a proposition about reality is 'greater' than to function in propositions referring to fiction, imagination or concepts".

Apparently, Anselm's argument is not easy to undermine, and several authors have reformulated QMNC in order to counter the attacks by Thomas Aquinas, Kant and others. It "works" against semantic atheists who accept the concept of God having meaning but refuse God any existence. For logical (positivist) atheism, the proposition "God exists." is not equivalent with "Dragons do not exist." (for "in intellectu" the subject is meaningful like all shared fictional objects), but rather with "Square circles do not exist." Logical atheism asserts "God" and "QMNC" are meaningless, i.e. just a series of nonsensical sounds or dots on paper, equal to the empty set. However, if Anselm is bound to show the "meaning" of QMNC, then his opponents must prove QMNC meaningless. Hence, the logical atheist is compelled to demonstrate how the things within our empirical experience are necessarily the only things (a logic of finitude). But if only non-foundational a posteriori arguments are available, then such a feat may prove to be impossible. At best, it may be probable QMNC is meaningless but not certain. QMNC may be semantically richer (and less complex) than the supposed proof of the "greatness" of empirical knowledge at the exclusion of all other types of knowledge : revelation, faith, the Platonic eye, intellectual perception, intuition, gnosis, meta-rational knowledge, mystical experience etc. Is a logic of finitude possible without infinity ?

Anselm's ontological argument makes one crucial point clear : one cannot at the same time state "God exists." has meaning and is untrue. The possibility excluded by the semantic atheist realizes itself precisely when the latter denies God's existence ! This atheism is auto-destructive. Logical atheism is impossible without a terministic proof of the fact empirical experience is the only possible reality.  Certainty can hardly be given, except by the entrapment of knowledge by the Münchhausen-trilemma, stopping the series of final justifications ad hoc, presumably in some form of materialistic and reductionist realism.

1.4 The "quinque viis" of Thomas Aquinas.

"For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator."
Wisdom of Solomon, 13:5.

§ 15

In accord with Aristotelian thought, the provisions of the proof of God made by the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) differ from those of Anselm of Canterbury. Although the latter does not consider QMNC (God is "aliquid Quo Majus Nihil Cogitari potest") to be an analytical statement of a self-evident, intuitive idea, the existence of God is proven to be self-evident if (a) QMNC is accepted and (b) existence "in res" is considered "greater" than existence "in intellectu" (cf. supra). In his Monologium, the Platonic "methexis" or essential connection between the order of existence and the order of ideas is presupposed. This is precisely what Aristotle rejected, as does Aquinas. Also epistemologically this fundamental difference ensues. For Aquinas, truth is "adaequatio rei et intellectus" (ontological realism), for Anselm truth is "rectitudo sola mente perceptibilis" (ontological idealism).

Thomas Aquinas rejected the ontological argument a priori. Firstly, he took Anselm to be arguing the self-evident existence of God, which was not the case, and denies everyone understands QMNC. Secondly, he distinguished between "existence" in thought and existence as such. The jump from existence "in intellectu" and existence "in res" is illicit. At best, Anselm proves only we must think God, defined as QMNC, as existing. But this does not prove God exists "in res", outside the mind. The argument may be structured as follows :

• Proposition 1 : Circles must be thought as round.

• Proposition 2 : God must be thought as existing (Anselm).

• Conclusion 1 : Round circle do not therefore necessarily exist.

• Conclusion 2 : God does not therefore necessarily exist.

Did Aquinas grasp QMNC ? Apparently he did not. For Anselm, this definition of God is a description, not an immediate intuition, per se notum, as Thomas thought. Moreover, this description and the conclusion a priori drawn from it, fit only one Being, namely God as QMNC. Although valid for all other objects, Thomas' counter-argument does not work for "God" defined as "QMNC", for God is the only Being (Э!x) that is its own existence, and so if it is possible for such a Being to exist "in intellectu", then it must also exist "in res". In other words, the Being than which no greater can be thought is the Being existing necessarily "in intellectu" and "in res". It would indeed be absurd to speak of a possible necessary Being, i.e. a Being who's essence is existence but somehow only "in intellectu". Of course, only God is a Being that must exist, round circles and other analytical (tautological) statements do not.

In Thomas' view, we cannot come to know God as He is in essence ("quid sit"), but only that He is or exists ("quod sit"). The idea of God's existence is not, as such, an innate idea, nor is "God exists." a statement with no conceivable opposition (analytical or a priori). John Damascene (676 - 749) had asserted the knowledge of God is innate in man. Bonaventure (1221 - 1274) recognized an initial, implicit awareness of God to be made explicit by interior reflection alone.

Aquinas accepts man's natural desire of happiness (beatitudo), to be found in God alone. But between this "natural" desire of happiness and the realization of God's existence (as happiness), stand powerful side-tracking sensual and imaginal forces (pleasure, wealth, power), making the innate idea of happiness too vague to sufficiently lead to God. To be made explicit, the existence of God has to be elucidated. The proofs given by Thomas will therefore proceed by way of the (outer, exterior) world. This means they are all a posteriori. Can reason, by radicalizing his ideas about the physical world, come to the proposition "God exists." ?

This position is in accord with his Peripatetic premiss : Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (there is nothing in the intellect which was not before in the senses). The human intellect is confined to knowing corporeal entities and can thus not, while on Earth, transcend the world of sense-experience. However, this orientation does not stop the intellect from producing general statements, and if physical objects bear a discernible relationship with a transcending cause, then the intellect can know such a cause exists. Nevertheless, corporeal objects are and remain the natural object of the intellect.

The way to proceed then, is to study God's effects in the world. But because God is infinite and material causes finite, there is an absence of proportion between cause and effect making every a posteriori argumentation indeed imperfect. So although we cannot reach a perfect knowledge of the cause, we nevertheless can come to know its existence, and this is the issue at hand. If we move from effect to a cause in such a way the effect can only proceed from a certain kind of cause, we argue to the existence of a cause of that kind.

§ 16

Aquinas argues in favour of five "paths" to God. In fact, these are not logical deductions leading to certain conclusions, but statements every believer would accept, for they correspond with what is said about God ("et hoc dicimus Deum"). Thomas' arguments intend to proof the "praeambula fidei" (steps before faith) or "motiva credibilitatis", but not to convince atheists.

(1) argument from motion :

Found in Aristotle (cf. supra), Maimonides (1135 - 1204) and Albertus Magnus (1206 - 1280), the patron saint of scientists, the argument, called by Thomas "manifestior via", the more manifest way, points to the fact all things are on the move, or, in Aristotelian terms, they evidence a reduction of potency to act. This reduction is always caused by something already in act, for every moving thing is moved by another thing. Since an infinite series cannot exist in a finite world, in the end, an unmoved mover is arrived at.

With "infinite series" is meant an endless succession in the horizontal (sequential) order of actually depending causes. But, the series as a whole is finite. To be able to give an ultimate and adequate ontological explanation of this experienced world of causal chains, the series must depend on something outside the series. This would be lacking if one would never come to a full stop, and envisage an infinite, historical series. But, in this case, a comprehensive ontology could not be arrived at. Science and philosophy are then impossible.

(2) argument from efficient causes :

Used by Avicenna (980 - 1037) and Albertus Magnus, it focuses on the series of efficient causes. As nothing can be the cause of itself (if not, it would exist before itself), every thing is caused by another thing. Ergo, rejecting an infinite series of efficient causes in a finite world order, a first cause must exist, which all men call "God".

(3) argument from necessity :

This argument, found in Avicenna and developed by Maimonides, brings the contingent nature of all things to the fore. They come into being and perish, they rise and fall. Every thing can be or not and hence no thing is necessary. If it would be otherwise, it would never stop being or pass away. But it does. To understand why such unnecessary beings come into existence, there must be a necessary being, for otherwise nothing at all would exist, nothing could ever have been reduced from potency to act, and actuality would never have been. There would only be nonexistent potency. Ergo, a being, not itself dependent, exists. A necessary being exist, whom we call "God".

(4) argument from perfections :

This argument was favored by Platonists like Augustine and Anselm. It starts from the degrees of perfection, implied by making comparative statements about various actualities, like beauty, truth, goodness etc. If we assume the difference between beautiful and more beautiful has objective foundation, then the most beautiful, the best, the most truthful, etc. must exist and this is the supreme being ("maxime esse"). This a relative best, for there must be one being or several beings which are comparatively supreme. But, what is supreme in beauty, for example, is supreme in all things. Ergo, there must be a supreme Being, which is the cause of all perfections in every other being, "et hoc decimus Deum".

(5) argument from design or finality :

The observed order of inorganic objects cannot come into being by chance, but is the result of intent. Objects without knowledge can not tend towards an end unless directed like "the arrow is directed by the archer". Ergo, there exists an intelligent Being directing all natural objects to an end. The natural world is composed of different objects with conflicting qualities. Nevertheless, these work together towards the realization of the one order. Ergo, this must proceed from an intelligent cause or Providence, and this is what we call "God".

§ 17

A first point. The outstanding logical factor in these a posteriori arguments is the presence of an "infinite series" in the finite ontological order of dependence. Thomas is convinced the world can be explained in an adequate ontological way. For him, this implies the transition from cause to effect refers to a sufficient ground outside the subject of experience (cf. his metaphysical realism), to wit : the reality of the existence of God (taken for granted). For Kant, this refers to the subject of experience (cf. Copernican Revolution), for all rules regarding this transition refer to possible experience only and are categorial. They are valid nowhere except as referring to the object of the world of sense. Hence, there is no "bridge" available for reason to move from a finite "chain" or series of conditions to the existence of a purely, infinite intelligible Being, as Aquinas claims. Hence for Kant, the existence of a transcendent God cannot be inferred, because all the rules involving the argument are meant to work with sense objects and with nothing else. They certainly are not meant to move from the immanent order of causes to the transcendent order of Divinity. The safe route supposed by Thomas is just not there. Instead, there is an unbridgeable gap, necessitating a leap. Hence, the a posteriori arguments are invalid to demonstrate God as QMNC.

Secondly, a necessary supreme Being, intelligently directing the world, unmoved mover & first cause, is not yet the God of Jesus Christ, but this is less a problem for religious philosophy than it was for Thomism and its audience. Indeed, for if the last proof of Thomas Aquinas is valid (in this or another form), then the atheist thesis stating the impossibility of the Divine fact (as effect) is refuted, as will become clear when studying Kant's objection.

"... I say that the properties of the infinite being which refer to creatures are either of causality or of pre-eminence. Those of causality in turn are twofold, the properties of efficient and final causality. What is added about the exemplar does not involve another cause different in kind from the efficient, for then there would be five kinds of causes. Wherefore, the examplar cause is a certain kind of efficient cause, namely an intelligent agent in contradistinction to a natural agent ..."
Duns Scotus : De Esse Dei, Articulus Primus.

Thirdly, for Thomas, the first proof was the "via manifestior". But, in his Oxford Commentary, the Franciscan monk John Duns Scotus (1265/6 - 1308), argued that it is a more perfect and immediate knowledge of the first being to know it as a necessary being than as the first mover. The argument from motion cannot transcend the physical world. As the cause of all motion, the first mover cannot be conceived as the cause of all beings, but only as a necessary hypothesis to explain physical motion. In his De primo principio, he reworks the argument from necessity (contingency), and considers it as more comprehensive than the arguments from motion or causal production, both dealing with specific cases. The argument from necessity asks : Why is there something rather than nothing ? In Aristotelian terms : Why has potency ever been reduced to act ?

If A is the cause of a contingent object, it must either be caused or uncaused. As contingent objects cannot be uncaused (for if so they would not exist), A must be caused. If contingent being is caused, it is caused by nothing or by itself or by another thing. As it cannot be cause by nothing or by itself, it is caused by another thing. Eventually, we arrive at the first cause, and we find what we are seeking. The Doctor Subtilis is right : we cannot proceed for ever in the ascending, vertical order of dependence (as we can in the horizontal), or in the words of Scotus : "Infinitas autem est impossibilis in ascendendo."

Suppose otherwise. Granted the possibility of an infinite horizontal series of successive causes, then the whole chain needs to be reasoned. This reason must be outside the chain, for every object in the chain is caused and so contingent, making the whole series contingent. Therefore, only by postulating a vertical, transcendent cause, can the totality of ordered effects ("causatorum") be understood. This final cause is no longer directed to any more ultimate causes. To postulate an eternal world is of no avail either, for the eternal series of contingent beings is itself in need of a cause. This is a necessary cause, outside the eternal world.

1.5 Ockham's first Conserver.

"All the conserving causes simultaneously concur for the conservation of an effect ; if, therefore, in the order of conserving causes we go on ad infinitum, then an infinite number of things would be actually existing at the same time. This, however, is impossible ..."
Ockham : Questionis in lib. I Physicorum, Q.cxxxvi.

§ 18

With the Franciscan monk William of Ockham (1290 - 1350), theologian & philosopher, the "via moderna" received its most logical of defenders. Thomists, Scotists and Augustinians formed the "via antiqua". It is their realism, Platonic (the essence is transcendent) as well as Aristotelic (the essence is immanent), which was firmly rejected. Instead, nominalism was promoted, but one without objective universals. It was hence more radical than Abelard's. No reality ("quid rei") is ever attained, but only a nominal representation ("quid nominis").

For Ockham, the metaphysics of essences was introduced into Christian theology and philosophy from Greek sources. So, contrary to Abelard's moderate nominalism, his strict nominalism did not incorporate them. There are no universal subsistent forms, for otherwise God would be limited in His creative act by these eternal ideas. This non-Christian invention has no place in Christian thought. Universals are only "termini concepti", terms signifying individual things which stand for them in propositions.

It was Peter of Spain (thirteenth century), who's exact identity is unknown, who had distinguished between probable reasoning (dialectic), demonstrative science & sophistical reasoning. Ockham was influenced by this emphasis placed on syllogistic reasoning leading to probable conclusions. Hence, arguments in philosophy (as distinct from logic) are probable (terministic) rather than demonstrative.

For Ockham, who took the equipment to develop his terminist logic from his predecessors, empirical data were primordial and exclusive to establish the existence of a thing. The validity of inferring from the existence of one thing to the existence of another things was questioned. He distinguished between the spoken word ("terminus prolatus"), the written word ("terminus scriptus") and the concept ("terminus conceptus" or "intentio animæ"). The latter is a natural sign, the natural reaction to the stimuli of a direct empirical apprehension. Only individual things exist. By the fact a thing exists, it is individual. There cannot be existent universals, for if a universal exists, it must be an individual, which is a contradictio in terminis (for universals are supposed to subsume individuals).

This focus on the objects which are immediately known, goes hand in hand with the principle of economy to get rid of the abstracting "species intelligibiles". What is known as "Ockham's Razor" was a common principle in Medieval philosophy. Because of his frequent usage of the principle (cf. the Franciscan vow of poverty), his name has become indelibly attached to it. In Ockham's version it reads : "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate." (plurality should not be posited without necessity). In general terms, this principle of simplicity or parsimony is to always prefer the least complicated explanation for an observation.

Radical nominalists, like Nicolas of Autrecourt (ca. 1300 - ca. 1350), who belonged to the faculty of arts, would say no inference from the existence of one thing to the existence of another thing could be demonstrative or cogent, but only probable. Hence, necessity and certainty, idolized by the foregoing metaphysical systems, were gone. No demonstration of God's existence was possible. Such matters have to be relegated to the order of adherence to revealed knowledge or faith. At this point, theology and philosophy separate and the latter becomes a "lay" activity. This is not yet apparent in Ockham, who remains a theologian seeking to find a way to rethink the "proof" of God's existence in merely a posteriori terms.

§ 19

Against his predecessors, Ockham accepts "being" as one concept common to creatures and God, meaning "being" is predicable in a univocal sense of all existent things. Without such a concept of being, the existence of God could not be conceived. But, this does not mean this concept acts as a bridge between empirical observation of creatures and sense data about God (cf. supra : positing the series and then transcending it). Nor can we form an abstract concept of being and then deduce the existence of God, as Anselm thought. The concept of being is univocal in the sense this concept is common to a plurality of things, neither accidentally or substantially alike (thus avoiding pantheism). The proofs of God's existence given by his predecessors are all rejected. Not to feed skepticism, but because they are not logically conclusive.

Embodied nature is the primary mental object. No direct, natural apprehension of God's essence is given. "God exists." is not a self-evident proposition. God's existence can therefore never be proved with certainty. God is not an object of demonstrative science. Is the existence of God probable ?

Against the first mover, Ockham shows how the basic premiss of the argument is neither self-evident or demonstrable. Angels and the human soul also move themselves. Such exceptions show the alleged principle is not necessary, and so not a sufficient basis for a certain proof. It cannot be proved an infinite regress in the series of movers is impossible. Perhaps infinite objects exist. Perhaps the world is not finite but infinite, not temporal but everlasting. As it is more probable there is a first unmoved mover than no first unmoved mover, the argument from movement is only probable. A first mover probably exists.

Against finality, Ockham argues as follows. In the case of things acting without knowledge and will, they act because of a natural necessity, with is not the same as to say they act "for an end". In the case of intelligent agents of will, voluntary actions are rooted in their own will. Only if one presupposes God's existence, can one speak of things acting for ends, but God's existence is not a given.

The only way to prove God's existence would be as efficient cause of all things, remaining within the finite order. Indeed, Ockham stops at the first efficient cause. The reasons for this move also explain his rejection of the arguments of necessity and perfections. Infinite transcendence is thus avoided. But to identify this cause with God is not possible, for this cause could be a heavenly body (Quodlibet). It cannot be proved this supposed heavenly body is caused by God, for we have only immediate and mediate sense data of corruptible things, not of any transcending concept.

Against the semantic pattern of previous arguments, Ockham argues the difference between Divine attributes like omnipotence, infinity, eternity, absolutely supreme, perfect, unique, the power to create out of nothing, which cannot be demonstrated, and "God" as the first conserving cause of this world. Although we have no certain knowledge about its nature, one can prove its existence as probable. This is Ockham's argument from conservation, a subtle form of the argument from efficient causes (and developed in the commentary on the Sentences). The existence of God as the unique and absolute supreme being cannot be demonstrated, but the existence of the first conserving cause can, and this existence is probable and wholly immanent.

§ 20

The core of the argument favors the move from (vertical) conservation to Conserver, rather than from (horizontal) product to Producer. In this way, the infinite regress is avoided, for this infinite series is conceivable in the case of efficient causes (existing one after the other and so forming an infinite world), but impossible in the actual order of conservation "hic et nunc". If not, actual reality would be inflated to an actual infinity, which is it is evidently not, as everybody agrees.

In the traditional argument from efficient causes, it is assumed an infinite regress in causes of the same kind is not possible. The world was deemed finite and the world of ideas infinite. In Christianity, the former was associated with "fallen nature" and the latter with the Dionysian angelic choirs. To say the world was infinite was sheer blasphemy, for it ruined the strict line drawn by the theists between a finite creation and an infinite Creator. In such a context, free natural inquiry was repressed. The "via moderna" is no longer devoted to apology. For Ockham, the finitude of the world cannot be strictly demonstrated. Maybe an infinite series exists, maybe not. All previous proofs presupposed the truth of the proposition "The world is not infinite.", but this is not necessarily so. Nevertheless, probabilities may be assessed and calculated.

To avoid the question of the infinite ingress in time, i.e. as a sequence of interacting and interdependent efficient causes, Ockham jumps to the actual, vertical order of events "here and now", i.e. as they are happening in every moment. By doing so, he avoids an infinite regress, for it is a solid premiss to affirm the world is not infinite in each actual moment.

As a contingent thing coming into being, is conserved in being as long as it exists, its conserver is dependent, for its own conservation, on another conserver or not. As only necessary beings conserve themselves and the world contains contingent things only, every conserver depends on another conserver, etc. As there is no infinite number of actual conservers "hic et nunc", there must be a first Conserver. An infinite regress in the case of things existing one after the other (like horizontal causes of the same kind) is conceivable. But an infinite regress in the actual, empirical world here and now would give an actual infinity, which is absurd. Indeed, to avoid the first Conserver, actual reality would become infinite ! Ergo, the first Conserver probably exists.

This elegant proof of the first Conserver is completely a posteriori. It avoids the order of infinity, and considers the world finite. No limit-concept is invoked, no transcendent being deduced. The "essence" of God cannot be known, lies outside reason. The existence of God cannot be demonstrated by necessity, but argued by probability, for the finite order of contingent beings cannot be conserved without a first Conserver. So, according to Ockham, in the order of rational, empirical knowledge, natural necessity and a first Conserver is all philosophy can infer as proven, probable knowledge. Nothing which is really God can be known by us without something other than God being involved as object. There is no simple concept proper to God mirroring the essence of God adequately. We are left with the first Conserver, and can advance no further (cf. infra, Kant and the architect of the world).

In Late Medieval thought, the ultimate reduction introduced by Ockham was the final organ point closing the process of (1) the assimilation of the new sources in the dialectica, in particular Aristotelian thought, Arabic science and the "Orientale Lumen", and (2) their subsequent rejection. With radical nominalism, a conceptual framework was set in place describing the logical and epistemological conditions for the study of nature that was to follow. Platonism and hylemorphism were rejected. Knowledge derived from direct, actual experience is deemed valid. All other knowledge is constructed. Propositions in which universals operate, may be certain or probable. Logic deals with certaintly, but scientific knowledge is probable. The world is a contingent, corporeal whole. The existence of God lies outside reason, as an object of faith. Natural necessity and a first Conserver of the world are the two pillars of natural theology, based on probable knowledge.

1.6 Cusanus and the coincidentia oppositorum.

"What other, O Lord, is Your seeing, when You look upon me with the eye of mercy, than Your being seen by me ? In seeing me, You, who are Deus absconditus, give Yourself to be seen by me. No one can see You except insofar as You grant that You be seen. To see You, is not other than that You see the one who sees You."
Cusanus : De visione Dei, chapter 5, 13.

§ 21

Nicolas Cardinal Kryfts or Krebs (1401 - 1464), born at Cusa, was a Renaissance philosopher, a transition-figure between the traditional Catholic & Scholastic way and the first, pre-critical stadium of modernism, characterized by humanism, philosophy of nature and empiricism. Clearly, his interest in our knowledge of God and the world's relation to God reflects a strong Medieval root. But, this remarkable system integrated preceding thought and combined it in such a unique way that it looked ahead and stood by itself. He often quotes ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite (4th, 5th or 6th century), and was influenced by Eriugena (ca. 810 - ca. 877), Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260 - 1327/8) and mystical Platonism.

He inspired Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) and influenced Renaissance thinking, in particular the philosophy of nature of the priest Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600), who developed his ideas far beyond the convictions of Cusanus. Was Nicolas of Cusa the first Christian pan-en-theist, thinking both transcendence & immanence in an overarching harmonious unity ?

The philosophy of Cusanus aims at unity as the harmonious synthesis of differences, both in nature as a developing and self-unfolding whole, and in God, who transcends the world but also includes the distinct perfections of creatures. This ideal of unity without the suppression of differences accepts comparison, similarity, dissimilarity and distinction hand in hand with the absolute eternity of God.

§ 22

In De coniecturis, three degrees of knowledge come to the fore : sense-perception, reason ("ratio") and intellect ("intellectus"). Senses only confirm, never deny. Reason confirms A and denies B, while the intellect denies both A and B disjunctively and together (not A, not B, not A and B). The Peripatetics, so we read in De docta ignorantia, are right to deny the actual, real existence of universals, for only individual things exist and universals belong to the conceptual order. Members of the same species have a common nature, existing, in a contracted state, in each of them as an individual nature. But no individual realizes the perfection of its species, and each member has its own individual features. Discursive reason cannot penetrate the nature of God. We rather know that He is than what He is. Hence, insofar as positive knowledge is concerned, our minds are in a state of "learned ignorance", which is not absence of knowledge of God, but comes from realizing God's infinity and transcendence.

As such, the intellect, a superior activity of the mind, grasps God as the "coincidentia oppositorum". But, we cannot have a positive understanding of this. Reason is approximative (like an ever increasing polygon inscribed in a circle) and so only conjecture. The highest possible natural knowledge of God cannot be attained by this kind of discursive reasoning. However, intuitive knowledge can never be stated in language, for the latter is the instrument of reason only. So, to express the contents of the intellect, the mind is bound to suggest meaning rather than to affirm, or state it.

The creation of the world, the "explicatio Dei", is unity contracted into plurality, infinity into finitude, simplicity into composition, eternity into succession, necessity into possibility. Here the doctrine of Eriugena shines through. The universe "vero est ipsa quidditas contacta", and so God is the absolute essence of the world. The world is God in a state of contraction. Hence, God is in the world and the world is in God. In De visione Dei, God is declared as invisible in Himself (as He is in essence), but visible "uti creatura est". This is no pantheism, for man, the microcosm or a certain human world (uniting attributes found in separately in other beings) deemed a representation of the Divine coincidentia oppositorum, is but a human God ("humanus est igitur Deus"), not God in an absolute, essential way. In De docta ignorantia, the world is "infinitas contracta" and "contracta unitas", but in Apologia doctae ignorantiae, Nicolas explicitly rejects pantheism, for the contraction is not the essence.

The universe is one and composed of finite things. But, as Plato said, time is the image of eternity. Indeed, before creation there was no time, so it proceeded from eternity and thus participates in eternity. The world is eternal but not eternity. Time is a measure of motion and intrinsic to the world. Without motion, no time. The universe has no bounds and so in way is spatially infinite. It has no fixed centre and every point is its centre. God may be called the centre of the world because He is everywhere or omnipresent, and, as its circumference, nowhere by local presence.

Up and down are relative. The Earth is not the centre of the world, nor has the Sun any privileged position, for everything moves. As there are no fixed point, there is no absolute, universal frame of observation. A man in a boat on a river unable to see its banks or the moving water, would assume the boat was stationary. All observation is relative and so all knowledge is approximate.

The universe does not exist apart from the things in it and so these individual things embody all the perfections of its species. The absolute greatness, the "absolutum maximum" or God is never contracted or rendered "concrete". The "concretum maximum" is hence a Being uniting all levels of created existence and also God. This mode of union is a mystery. This Being, the perfection of the universe, is both the "maximum concretum" and the "medium absolutum", the unique and necessary means by which human beings can be united to God. For Cusanus, in De visione Dei, that being was Christ Jesus, and the Roman Church His Body.

Regarding Divine nature, he stressed an infinite object is not an empirically given object. Instructed ignorance is precisely the realization of God's transcendence. God alone is "possest", for He is in act what He can be, He is His own definition, He defines everything else, He alone is the source and conserver of all things (cf. De possest, De veneratione sapientiae). Apart from God, the world would not exist, but nothingness would. But the contrary is true, for the world is a mirror of God. Nicolas thought the via negativa to God superior to affirmative theology. The former posits the absence of positive affirmation about the nature of the Divine not in need of any negative qualification. But, in his last work, De apice theoriæ, God is called "posse ipsum", possibility itself or being able Himself, Herself, Itself. This is a positive statement. As nobody would be ignorant of "posse", when knowing that he can eat, run and speak, it would be absurd to ask whether one can do something without the power to do so. Likewise, God as absolute "posse ipsum" is the cause and conserver of all motion, of the world. Both perspectives, the transcendent and the immanent come together in the idea of God as coincidentia oppositorum, of which man is a finite representation.

§ 23

Before Nicolas of Cusa, the proofs of God (a priori as well as posteriori) focused on the proof of the transcendence of God. This in accord with Christian theistic beliefs. Indeed, fundamental theology (Augustinian & Thomist) avoided pantheistic associations, and so exorcised God out of the world (even mystics like Jan of Ruusbroec was charged with pantheism, a heresy). In a sense, this is also at work in the reduction of the fuzzy set "Divine" to the theological "God" of the dialectics. Cusanus (and already earlier John Scotus Eriugena), overcame this exclusive theism, for "God" is conceived as entering the world (albeit in as Christ Jesus).

Indeed, Cusanus has a pan-en-theist perception of the Divine. Bi-polarity is acknowledged, and "God" is absolute as well as relative, unlimited (as the circle) as well as limited (as the polygon multiplying its angles within it), remote as well as near. Moreover, this polarity forms an unconceivable unity, a vanishing-point of all distinctions. God contains all things, He is "omnia complicans". At the same time, He is "omnia explicans", the source of all things. The latter, because they exist, reveal something of Him. He contains them complicative, and is immanent in all things explicative, for they are essentially dependent on Him. He is both transcendent and immanent.

Nicolas brings both ways together in a copulative theology and does away with the "middle" term invoked by the former dialectics. Pushed by logical technicalities (cf. the difference between transcendence and the limit of the finite world at work in the a posteriori arguments), they had construed a "tertium comparationis" between the transcendent God and the finite world. This interstitial entity is then the "Anima Mundi", the Platonic demiurge or some other intermediate between God and the world (like Christ). But, if God is truly a unity, then this division is not ontological but only conceptual. And so although logically the existence of a first Conserver is probable, ontologically this Conserver is none other than a transcendent Being, although philosophically this can only be suggested, and never demonstrated (not for certain and not in probability).

There is no stage between the actual infinite or transcendent God and the potential infinite or created world. The latter is but a contraction or theophany of the Divine being.

While combining neo-Platonic and Peripatetic components, other parts of this remarkable philosophy anticipate Leibniz (1646 - 1716), Schelling (1775 - 1854) and Hegel (1770 - 1831).

§ 24

The Medieval dialectics raised the question of the existence of God in terms of logic and linguistics. Regarding the way of argument, two strategies were used : either Divine existence is demonstrated from within (a priori), i.e. using the concept or idea of God one moves to God's existence, or from without (a posteriori), i.e. from phenomenal experience to an underlying Divine reality. As the foundational postulate was accepted by most, these strategies are either Platonic or Peripatetic. The former is the "via antiqua", the latter the "via moderna". Platonist invoke a nexus between empirical reality and the real world of ideas, rejected by the Aristotelians. Hence, the latter do not develop an argument a priori. Both these Platonic as well as Peripatetic "reales" oppose the "nominales", who, in their radical format, cause the Peripatetic movement to turn into skepticism.

Regarding the arguments a posteriori, the arguments from efficient causes and design are strong. But they do not prove a transcendent Being, the aim of theology, but make probable a first, conserving and intelligent cause well within nature (cf. the Stoic "pneuma").

It is interesting to note both Ockham and Cusanus stress the probable, approximate nature of knowledge. In their writings, we can witness the first cracks in fundamental philosophy. Although they would affirm the existence of a sufficient ground, they nevertheless deny human knowledge the capacity to arrive at certain knowledge (an ideal cherished by Platonists & Peripatetics alike). Ockham is critical of knowledge because of his insight into the logic of demonstration. Cusanus thinks in approximations because he is convinced our knowledge is but a contraction, a finitude in comparison with God's omniscience.

Medieval thought circumambulated God. This dependence made it impossible to arrive at a more critical position, i.e. one not already assuming God's existence. This seems very important, for atheism cannot be rejected a priori. It would take another three centuries, largely filled with religious conflicts and wars, before the free study triggered by the Renaissance gave birth to a new, human-centered beginning in Western philosophy.

"Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much as so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything."
Bacon, F. : The New Organon, Aphorisms (Book One), I.

1.7 The Cartesian proofs of God.

"Il y a déjà quelque temps que je me suis aperçu que, dès mes premières années, j'ai reçu quantité de fausses opinions pour véritables, et que ce que j'ai depuis fondé sur des principes si mal assurés ne saurait être que fort douteux et incertain ; et dès lors j'ai bien jugé qu'il me fallait entreprendre sérieusement une fois dans ma vie de me défaire de toutes les opinions que j'avais reçues auparavant en ma créance, et commencer tout de nouveau dès les fondements, si je voulais établir quelque chose de ferme et de constant dans les sciences."
Descartes, R. : Meditations, 1, § 1a.

§ 25

To seek indubitable truth, René Descartes (1596 - 1650) turned to methodological doubt. He left the Jesuit college of La Flèche and was ashamed of the amalgam of doubts and errors he had learned there. Traditional philosophy consisted of various contradicting opinions, grosso modo Platonic or Peripatetic. History was a series of moral lessons (cf. Livius) and philosophy was still restricted to logic. The experimental method was absent, and various authorities ("auctoritates") were studied (Galenus, Aristotle, Avicenna, etc.). Aim was to harmonize the magisterial contradictions (cf. the "sic et non" method). In the interpretation of these sources, a certain creativity was at work. However, in the mind of Cartesius, the only constructive point of his education, so the Discourse on Method (1637) tells us, was the discovery of his own ignorance.

This discovery prompted Descartes to reject all prejudices and seek out certain knowledge. Nine years he raises doubts about various conjectures and opinions covering the whole range of human activities. Eventually, doubt is raised regarding three sources of knowledge :

1. authority : as contradictions always arise between authorities a higher criterion is needed ;

2. senses : maybe waking experience is just a "dream" or a "hallucination" ? Can this be or not ? Also : the senses give confused information, so a still higher criterion is needed ;

3. reason : how can we be certain some "malin génie" has not created us such, that we accept self-evident reasoning although we are in reality mislead and in fatal error ?

However far doubt is systematically applied, it does not extend to my own existence. Doubt reveals my existence. If, as maintained in the Principles of Philosophy, the word "thought" is defined as all which we are conscious of as operating in us, then understanding, willing, imagining and feeling are included. I can doubt all objects of these activities of consciousness, but that such an activity of consciousness exists, is beyond doubt.

Thus, the "res cogitans", "ego cogitans" or "l'être conscient" is the crucial factor in Cartesian philosophy. Its indubitable, intuitively grasped truth ? Cogito ergo sum : I think, therefore I am. That I doubt certain things may be the case, but the fact that I doubt them, i.e. am engaged in a certain conscious activity, is certain. To say : "I doubt whether I exist." is a contradictio in actu exercito, or a statement refuted by the mere act of stating it. The certainty of Cogito ergo sum is not inferred but immediate and intuitive. It is not a conclusion, but a certain premiss. It is not first & most certain in the "ordo essendi", but as far as regards the "ordo cognoscendi". It is true each time I think, and when I stop thinking there is no reason for me to think that I ever existed. I intuit in a concrete case the impossibility of thinking without existing. In the second Meditation, Cogito ergo sum is true each time I pronounce or mentally conceive it ...

Having intuited a true and certain proposition, Descartes seeks the general criterion of certainty implied. Cogito ergo sum is true and certain, because he clearly and distinctly sees what is affirmed. As a general rule, all things which I conceive clearly and distinctly are true. In the Principles of Philosophy, we are told "clear" means that which is present and apparent to an attentive mind and "distinct" that which contains within itself nothing but what is clear. Although he has arrived at a certain and clear proposition, he does not start to work with it without more ado. Indeed, suppose God gave me a nature which causes me to err even in matters which seem self-evident ? To eliminate this "very slight" doubt, Descartes needs to prove the existence of a God who is not a deceiver. Without this proof, what I conceive as clear and distinct, may in reality not be so.

§ 26

In the third Meditation, Descartes starts by examining the ideas he witnesses in his mind a posteriori. He finds ideas referring to colors and other qualities which might have been produced by himself. And as he is a substance, it is possible other modes of substance (like duration, extension, motion) might be eminently contained in him. But if we define "God" as a substance which is infinite, independent, all-knowing & all-powerful, the question is whether this idea of God could have been produced by himself ?

Insofar as I am substance, I can form the idea of substance, but only as a finite substance. I cannot possess the idea of infinite substance, unless it proceeds from an existing infinite substance. Although I can negate finitude and arrive at infinity, the latter is not merely negative, for I clearly see there is more reality in infinite than in finite substance. Hence, the idea of the infinite must be prior to the idea of the finite. Otherwise I would be unable to recognize my finitude, except by comparison with the idea of an infinite and perfect being. As a blind man cannot form the idea of color, so a finite substance cannot possess an infinite idea by itself.

Another way to come to this is to ask : Can I be the author of my being ? Or : can I conserve myself at the present time ? If this would be the case, then the idea of a perfect substance would be caused by my own mind. In order for this to be, I should have to be God Himself. As this I am clearly not, infinity is before finitude.

Formally, the a posteriori argument has this form :

1. Major Premiss : it is a fact I have the idea of an infinite, perfect being in my mind ;

2. Minor Premiss 1 : a finite being like myself cannot be the cause of the idea of an infinite perfect being ;

3. Minor Premiss 2 : if the effect exists, the cause exist ;

4. Conclusion : the cause of this idea must be infinite and real.

Descartes also tries to prove God's existence without reference to the external world, i.e. a priori. Let us formalize the argument :

1. Major Premiss : what we clearly and distinctly conceive as belonging to the essence of A really belongs to this essence ;

2. Minor Premiss : after considering the idea of a perfect, infinite being, we clearly and distinctly conceive existence as belonging to its essence ;

3. Conclusion : God must exist in reality.

Regarding 1

This is the fundamental postulate of rationalism and idealism. Spinoza (1632 - 1677) gave it this form : "leges cogitandi sunt leges essendi", or : the laws of thinking are the laws of reality. Hence, all things possible in the mind (i.e. without contradictions) are also possible in actuality. Clearly, this postulate is a recuperation of the Platonists, albeit as far as regards the preestablished nexus between the extramental and the mental.

Regarding 2

The premiss affirms the infinite perfection of God. Is this idea truly "clara et distincta" ? As it cannot be derived from sense-perception, and differs from a mental fiction variable at will, it must be innate in me, just as the idea of myself is innate in me. It is like the mark of the workman imprinted on his work (third Meditation). This privileged idea is the image and likeness of God placed in me when He created me. I am conscious of my imperfection only because I already possess the idea of the perfect.

Descartes concludes God, who is perfect, cannot be a deceiver. Hence, those propositions I see clearly and distinctly must be true. This certainty about God's existence enables me to apply this criterion of truth universally.

§ 27

Two major problems undermine the Cartesian proofs of God :

1. the ego as substance : both in the Meditations and the Principles of Philosophy, substance is demonstrated after proving the existence of God. However, the "I" in Cogito ergo sum, is not a transcendental ego (a mere formal condition of knowledge), but "me thinking". Despite various contents of thought, the thing that cannot be doubted is not "a thinking" or "a thought", but a thinking ego conceived as a substance. This ego is not formal, nor the "I" of ordinary discourse, but a concrete existing "I". Descartes uncritically assumes the Scholastic notion of substance, while this doctrine is open to doubt. Thinking does not necessarily require a thinker, and the ego cogitans must not be a thing which thinks, but a mere transcendental ego accompanying every cogitation (cf. Kant) ;

2. a petitio principii : if the validity of the conclusion, namely the affirmation of God's existence, is used to assure myself of the validity of the principles on which it rests, then a circular argument is at hand. The circle can be specified as follows : Descartes has to prove God's existence before using "clara et distincta" as criterion of truth. But in order to prove God's existence, his arguments incorporate the criterion. It is unlikely Descartes can escape this, although he tried so by invoking the difference between what we perceive clearly and distinctly here and now and what we remember to have perceived so in the past. He then needs to prove the employment of memory is not essential in proving God's existence. But, as he still needs to show God is not a deceiver, how can he be assured this is the case if the latter rests on axioms which are themselves subject to doubt until the conclusion has been proved ?

With Descartes, we witness the return of a Platonizing way of thinking. Of course, as the focus of attention is on the conscious ego (and no longer on God), this feature is not immediately apparent. The original intuition of Cogito ergo sum, the reduction of reality to extension, the quest for a mathematical formula of the complete material universe and the strict dualism between "res extensa" and "res cogitans" are the new themes of this Platonizing rationalism. As was the case in Medieval philosophy, this idealism triggers its counter-thesis, namely the realism of empiricism.

1.8 David Hume and the cause of order.

"Nature is always too strong for principle."
Hume, D. : Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 12, 2, 128.

§ 28

In his Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and Enquiry concerning human Understanding (1748), David Hume (1711 - 1776) seeks to develop a science of man. As Locke (1632 - 1704), he envisages a critical and experimental foundation.

"Perceptions" are the contents of the mind in general, divided in impressions and ideas. The former strike the mind with vividness, force and liveliness, whereas the latter are faint images of these in thinking. Impressions are either of sensation or of reflection. The latter are in great measure derived from ideas.

Like Ockham, Hume is a nominalist. Real or ideal universals are not the foundation to erect the science of man. Unlike Descartes, he is an empirist : the senses are the foundation of knowledge. Two kinds of propositions are possible :

1. analytic : the predicate is part of the subject - these tautologies are universal and necessary, but restricted to geometry and arithmetic. All a priori propositions are analytic and have nothing to say about the world of fact ;

2. synthetic : the predicate is not part of the subject and an extramental reality is implied. All synthetic propositions are a posteriori and have always something to say about the world.

The extramental reality sought can be no other than the one offered by direct or indirect empirical experience.

1. direct synthetic propositions : the predicate is attached to the subject because of what is immediately empirically perceived here and now ;

2. indirect synthetic propositions : the predicate is attached to the subject because we move from what be know to be a direct, given fact to a state of affairs which is not (yet) empirically given. These propositions are problematic because a necessary and objective connection between our idea of causality and real events cannot be demonstrated. Moreover, logically the move from a finite series of particular observations to an infinite, necessary law can never be warranted (cf. the problem of induction in naive realism).

Suppose the observed psychological connection between fact A and fact B is continuous. Is it necessary ? My (or our) witnessing the connection more than once, does not imply that it will work tomorrow. Skepticism results. The universal value of scientific laws cannot be demonstrated, neither can the reality of the world (within and without). Science is restricted to statements of probability.

The Achilles Heel of this position is the status of the sense-data and the formation of concepts. It is not clear how sense-data can be identified without some conceptual connotation, which is not a sense datum. Moreover, sensation is introduced as a sufficient ground. "Adequatio intellectus at rem" is presupposed (as in all forms of realism). Finally, how can similarities between sense-data be observed ?

§ 29

And what about God ? Hume refused to accept the validity of the traditional arguments, for he did not accept that God's existence is demonstrable. Hume did not profess himself an atheist, but one can hardly call him a theist. He studied the argument from design, leading to the "religious hypothesis". In the Dialogues, arguments drawn from the analogy between human constructions and the world are rejected as anthropomorphic. But, Hume admitted "organization" was at work in the world, in particular vegetable and animal life, instinct and intelligence. We know the effects of their order and pattern by experience. And although their principles remain mysteries, points of analogy between them exist. However, in this "experimental theism", we can move no further than direct experience and probability.

Perhaps Hume would agree with God's existence if we mean to merely affirm a remote analogy between the ultimate cause of order in the universe and intelligence. This is not a full-blown intelligent Designer, but the minimal hypothesis arrived at in empiricism and skepticism. To arrive at such a minimal hypothesis concerning such a critical issue as the existence of the Divine is not trivial. Maybe Hume realized this and so was reluctant to deny the existence of God in the unequivocal sense suggested by "atheism". It may be the first step to a larger view if another, less restricted, and foundational framework can be better argued. However, for Hume the strength of the argument from design is not its rationality but its inevitability, grasped in terms of human passions and tendencies which lead up to religion (cf. his Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion).

With David Hume, we arrive at the final chapter of the apory between Platonic and Peripatetic foundational thinking. In fact, Ockham had walked that path before, but he was a theologian. Hume is no longer bothered by the dictates of religion, but his empiricism is so strict the science of certainties is no longer possible. Instead, as Ockham and Cusanus had emphasized, we are left with a science of probabilities and approximations.

In all previous approaches, the foundation of science was uncritically identified with an external objectivity, i.e. a sufficient ground : Platonic ideas versus sense-data, idealism versus realism, a perfect thought versus a correct observation. Each time, a special antinomy appeared, for realism is unthinkable without intramental and intersubjective similarities and idealism is unthinkable without extramental realities. For the Greeks, the basic problem of pre-critical conceptual rationality involved the nature of the universal ideas, forms or archetypes : transcendent or immanent. For the Medieval dialectica, the division existed between the "reales", for whom the universals were real, and the "nominales", for whom they were mental constructions. In modern thought, this "scandal of reason" (Kant) was the apory between rationalism (Descartes) and empiricism (Locke), ending in skepticism (Hume).

1.9 Kant and the Architect of the world.

"We thus see that all the wrangling about the nature of a thinking being, and its association with the material world, arises simply from our filling the gap, due to our ignorance, with paralogisms of reason, and by changing thoughts into things and hypostatizing them."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, A394-398.

§ 30

With his "Copernican Revolution", the self-reflective movement initiated by Descartes, focusing on the subject of experience, was completed by Kant (1724 - 1804). Incorporating rationalism and empirism, he avoids the battle-field of the endless (metaphysical and ontological) controversies by (a) finding and (b) applying the conditions of possible knowledge. Inspired by Newton (1642 - 1727) and turning against Hume, Kant deems synthetic propositions a priori possible (Hume only accepted direct synthetic propositions a posteriori). There is a categorial system producing scientific statements of fact which are always valid and necessary (for Hume, knowledge is not always valid and not necessary). This system stipulates the conditions of valid knowledge and is therefore the transcendental foundation of all possible knowledge.

So Kant's aim was to find the conditions enabling statements of fact to be universal & necessary, i.e. as binding as the analytics of mathematics. Hence, a universal and necessary science is possible. Without apory, philosophy explained how the universal physical laws of Newton are what they are. The scandal is over ...

With Kant, rational thought matured. Unlike conceptualism (Platonic or Peripatetic) and nominalism (of Ockham or Hume), critical thought, inspired by Descartes, is rooted in the "I think", the transcendental condition of empirical self-consciousness without which nothing can be properly called "experience". This "I", the apex of the system of transcendental concepts, is "of all times" the idea of the connected of experiences. It is not a Cartesian substantial ego cogitans, nor an empirical datum, but the formal condition accompanying every experience of the empirical ego. Kant calls it the transcendental (conditional) unity of all possible experience (or apperception) a priori. Like the transcendental system of which it is the formal head, it is shared by all knowers by necessity.

"What can I know ?" is the first question asked. Which conditions make knowledge possible ? This special reflective activity was given a new word, namely "transcendental". This meta-knowledge is not occupied with outer objects, but with our manner of knowing these objects, so far as this is meant to be possible a priori (A11), i.e. always, everywhere and necessarily so. Kant's aim is to prepare for a true, immanent metaphysics, different from the transcendent, dogmatic ontologisms of the past, turning thoughts into things.

The transcendental system of the conditions of possible knowledge (or transcendental logic) is a hierarchy of concepts defining the objective ground of all possible knowledge, both in terms of the synthetic propositions a priori of object-knowledge (transcendental analytic covering understanding), as well as regarding the greatest possible expansion under unity of understanding (transcendental dialectic covering reason). These transcendental concepts are not empirical, but are the product of the transcendental method, bringing to consciousness principles which cannot be denied because they are part of every denial. They are "pure" because they are empty of empirical data and stand on their own, while rooted in (or suspended on) the transcendental "I think", the "factum rationis". For Kant, reason, the higher faculty of knowledge, is only occupied with understanding, while the latter is only processing the input from the senses. Reason has no intellect to inform it. There is no faculty higher than reason.

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds thence to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason for working up the material of intuition & comprehending it under the highest unity of thought."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, B355.

The process of acquiring knowledge runs as follows :

1. transcendental aesthetic : empirical knowledge : a variety of direct, multiple, unordered, nameless impressions (Hume), called "Empfindungen" (or sensations) are synthesized by the forms of representation "space" (related to geometry) and "time" (related to arithmetics) and turned into "Erscheinungen" (or phenomena). These representations reflect the structure of our receptive apparatus. They are meant to structure sensations into phenomena ;

2. transcendental analytic : scientific knowledge : phenomena are only objectified by thought, but do not constitute an object of knowledge, for this is realized in propositions. The phenomena need to be structured by the 12 categories of understanding, corresponding to 12 different types of propositions (quantity, quality, relation and modality, each viewed from three angels). This categorization of phenomena leads to object-knowledge (synthetic propositions a priori). The categories are meant to structure phenomena into object-knowledge ;

3. transcendental dialectic : metaphysical knowledge : the variety of objects known is brought to a higher unity. A last, sufficient ground is sought and found in the ideas of reason : "ego", "world" and "God" (derived from the category of relation). These words are not things and only serve understanding, nothing more. While stimulating the mind's continuous expansion, these ideas regulate understanding and bring it to a more comprehensive, reasonable unity. They are meant to structure understanding into an immanent metaphysics.

The 2 forms of representation, 12 categories (brought to unity by 3 ideas) make the object possible, rather than vice versa. The human mind is the active originator of experience, rather than just a passive recipient of perception, as Hume thought. The mind could not be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet", Descartes is right. The whole transcendental system is innate. Even on the level of the transcendental aesthetics, sensations, the only source of knowledge acknowledged, as Locke claimed, must always be processed to be recognized, or they would just be "less even than a dream" or "nothing to us". Both sensations, representation and categorization are necessary to constitute an object of knowledge.

In his "transcendental dialectic", Kant deals with the negative, deceptive meaning of the word "dialectic", namely as antinomy and paralogism. These scandals occur each time the barriers given by our  transcendental logic are not upheld and the ideas are changed into things, which is far worse than a mere mistaken use of the categories.

"I do not mean by this the transcendental use or abuse of the categories, which is a mere fault of the faculty of judgment, not being as yet sufficiently subdued by criticism nor sufficiently attentive to the limits of the sphere within which alone the pure understanding has full play, but real principles which call upon us to break down all those barriers, and to claim a perfectly new territory, which nowhere recognises any demarcation at all. Here transcendental and transcendent do not mean the same thing."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, B350.

When the landmarks are removed, transcendental illusion ensues, or reason forgetful of its own, changing thoughts into things. This fundamental falsehood perverts the principles of reason itself. This natural "dialectic" of reason does not go away once realized, but requires to be removed again and again, for it "will never crease to fascinate our reason" (B354). Human reason has a natural inclination to grossly overstep these limits, to give in to the pull of the "unconditional" idea, to fill the gap between what we can know and what we fancy to know, thereby regarding the transcendental ideas as real things, whereas they are wholly subjective, only needed to organize understanding and have no meaning outside this regulative, non-subreptive way. This reveals a fundamental demarcation or difference in the use of the transcendental ideas : regulative (as it should) or constitutive (as hypostases). In the latter case, they step outside the barriers of transcendental logic.

§ 31

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant defines the existence of God as a necessary subjective condition to solve the antinomy between virtue and happiness. Together with the existence of the person and the existence of human liberty, God is one of the three postulates of practical reason. Even in the Critique of Pure Reason, the idea of God, derived from the causal chain between things, is crucial to co-guarantee the unity and expansion of understanding. Nevertheless, in the same work, he demonstrates how every rational proof of the existence of a transcendent being like God involves an illegitimate use of reason. Hence, just as Ockham had said before him, it is impossible to prove the existence of God defined in transcendent, theistic terms. A natural theology of the transcendent God is impossible.

Those who try to prove the theist God make the same mistake : they objectify beyond all possible experience the unconditional unity of all possible predicates, fill the gap, pass beyond the conditioned, and inevitably end their search for the most perfect being ("ens perfectissimum") in a hypostatized "ens realissimum". Reason cannot cross the borderline of the world. We cannot move outside it and experience the world as an object.

Kant reclassified the proofs of the existence of God as follows :

1. ontological : whatever our concept of an object may contain (for example, the idea of the "ens realissimum" as the idea of an absolutely necessary being), we must always step outside it in order to attribute existence to it. Existence is not a predicate and adds nothing to an object, not even in the unique case of the most perfect being. To say something "exists" is to posit the subject with all its predicates. To say "God does not exist." is to annihilate all the predicates, not just "existence" ;

2. cosmological : this proof will always complete the series of phenomena in the unconditioned unity of a necessary Being, and by doing so, overstep the boundaries of reason, for the categorial principle "everything contingent has a cause" is only valid in the realm of sense-experience (the world) and it is only there it has meaning, never outside it (cf. the arguments from motion, efficient causes, perfections & necessity) ;

3. physico-theological : this proof of finality, aim or design is based on an analogy from human adaptation of means to ends. We can move from the idea of design to the idea of a Designer, but not from the latter to the transcendent Creator of the world. This would again involve a misuse of the transcendental ideas of reason, a crossing over of the ring-pass-not of pure reason.

Kant retained a real respect for the argument from design, being the oldest, clearest and most in conformity with reason. It can prepare the mind for practical theological knowledge and give it "a right and natural direction" (B665). Moreover, it gives life to the study of nature, "deriving its own existence from it, and thus constantly acquiring new vigour" (B649).

To posit a necessary and all-sufficient Being means it is so overwhelming and so high above everything empirical and conditioned, we never would find enough material in experience to fill such a concept. If it is part of the chain of conditions, it would require further investigation with regard to its own still higher cause, but if it stands by itself, it is outside the chain and thus a purely intelligible Being. But then, "what bridge is then open for reason to reach it, considering that all rules determining the transition from effect to cause, nay, all synthesis and extension of our knowledge in general, refer to nothing but possible experience, and therefore to the objects of the world of sense only, and are valid nowhere else ?" (B649).

With regard to causality, we cannot do without a last and highest Being, but such a transcendental idea, although agreeing with the demands of reason, would only give a faint outline of an abstract concept (emerging when we represent all possible perfections united in one substance). It would favour the extension of the employment of reason in the midst of experience, guiding it towards order and system, and would not oppose any experience. But this is not the same as proving the existence of a necessary and self-sufficient God and Creator.

The inference, proceeding from the order and design observed in the world as a contingent arrangement (one with a possibility of happening) to the concept of a cause proportionate to it, teaches us something quite definite about this first cause, namely that it is a very great being of an astounding and immeasurable might and virtue, but not what the thing is by itself. Or, in other words, the harmony existing in nature proves the contingency of the form, but not of the matter or the substance in the world (we grasp the form, but do not observe the matter). To prove the contingency of matter itself would require us to show that in the substance of the things of the world, the product of a supreme wisdom exists. But the latter is not part of the world and thus no object of the senses. The conclusion is clear :

"The utmost, therefore, that could be established by such a proof would be an architect of the world, always very much hampered by the quality of the material with which he has to work, not a creator, to whose idea everything is subject. This would by no means suffice for the purposed aim of proving an all-sufficient original Being. If we wished to prove the contingency of matter itself, we must have recourse to a transcendental argument, and this is the very thing which was to be avoided."
Kant, I. : Critique of Pure Reason, B653.

This argument, although using a variant terminology (rooted in the transcendental method) is in tune with Ockham's first Conserver (of each entity hic et  nunc). In the vertical order of simultaneity, the a posteriori series (of conservers) has to be stopped before exiting the order of the world. Hence, the apex reached is well within the world and at the top of the chain. The first Conserver too is a cause proportional to the arrangements within the world, and does not step outside the world.

Kant's system, although transcendental, and thus devoid of any attempt to explain the possibility of knowledge by ontology, retains the postulate of foundation, by which true knowledge is certain, universal and necessary. Scientific knowledge is a system of synthetic propositions a priori, and so indirect synthetic statements pass the critical test (while for Hume only direct propositions were certain). Kant's philosophy is Newtonian, and so absolute principles are acknowledged both in understanding (forms, categories) as in reason (the ideas). At the same time, clear demarcations avoid their abuse and potential corruptive effect on thought.

§ 32

Kant wished to retain for science the certainty of the sufficient ground. Not finding it in the objective, outward reality (as a world of Platonic ideas or universal forms immanent in matter), his transcendental method cleared the foundations of the subjective apparatus of thought. By thus making the subject of experience active after the reception of the sensation (analytic object-knowledge after of the aesthetic synthesis of phenomena), all possible knowledge is about the "thing-for-us" and never about the "thing-as-such". It is this failure to realize synthetic propositions a priori about the world-as-it-is which proved to the German Idealists Kant's epistemology was flawed.

The first to point to this major problem was F.H.Jacobi (1743 - 1819), who in 1787 asked : Were does the "matter" of the sensation ("Empfindung") turned into phenomena ("Erscheinung") come from ? Kant supposed our sensations were somehow caused by reality-as-such, the famous "Ding-an-sich". How can this be ? Causality cannot be invoked, for the nameless sensations are pre-categorial. Neither can the world-as-such be thought as temporally first and the sensations last, for the former is outside time. Hence, the way our senses receive information is obscured, compromising Kant's epistemology. If Kant needs the "noumenon" to start up the engine of the categories, then he clearly does not use the "thing-as-such" as a negative, formal and empty limit-concept, and the Copernican Revolution is incomplete. And if this is the case, and it is, then his attempt at justifying knowledge a priori fails.

In the previous century, neo-Kantianism, doing the exercise all over again, reconstructed Kant's system. A series of rules could be inferred (cf. Prolegomena, Kennis and Rules). What can I know ? is answered without presupposing synthetic proposition a priori are possible. The science of certainties is replaced by the science of probabilities and approximations.

The Münchhausen-trilemma is avoided by stopping to seek an absolute ground for science. In mathematics and physics, major changes have happened since Newton, and who is able to disprove the revolutions of tomorrow ? Hence, the categorial system is not absolute, although some of its general features are necessary in a normative way (for we use them when we think). Object and subject of thought are fundamental critical concepts. Experiment and argumentation are crucial for scientific method. Realism and idealism are the proposed transcendental ideas of reason (instead of ego, world and God, who remain important in psychology, cosmology and religious philosophy).

The end result of the proper regulative use of the ideas of the real and the ideal (leading to experimentation and argumentation), is not a synthetic proposition a priori, but object-knowledge which is considered, for the time being, as very likely by the community of sign-interpreters. These empirico-formal propositions are always a posteriori, and may be direct (reality-for-me) or indirect (reality-for-us). However, Kant's dialectic, critical epistemology is there to remind us of the natural tendency of reason to hypostatize its ideas.

If the idea of the real is turned into an object, then knowledge is a mere "adequatio intellectus ad rem". But, knowledge is not made possible by a real world. For if so, then how to reconcile this with the fact that observation co-depends on theoretical connotation and observation unfolds in a conceptual pattern which develops in the act of observing ? If the idea of the ideal is turned into an object, then knowledge is a mere "consensus omnium". But, knowledge is not made possible by an ideal theory or ideology. For if so, then we blind ourselves from the fact that synthetic propositions are also statements about some thing extramental, escaping subjectivities. These two criteria of truth operate together, and regulate the development of thought.

In the domain of science, producing empirico-formal propositions, the idea of the real and the idea of the ideal are both necessary and operate simultaneously. Likewise, science is the product of two vectors : objective observation (experiment, test) & intersubjective dialogue (argumentation). In the concrete research-unity, these a priori rules are complemented by a posteriori rules of thumb or practical, opportunistic hypothesis assisting the efficient functioning of the research community. On this level, the difference between what should and what is (between theoretical epistemology and the sociology of science) is felt most ... Indeed, like the rest of us, scientists are not perfect.

In accord with Ockham's terministic probabilism and Cusanus' view of all knowledge as "approximative", contemporary criticism finds comfort in the fact no certain knowledge is possible, and no sufficient ground for the possibility of knowledge needs to be found. This position is open and so free to investigate all possible expansions of knowledge. Dogmatic and ontological fossilizations are excluded from this safe but narrow point of view.

§ 33

So, after these historical windows, where do we stand ?

On the one hand, the problems of the a priori argument evidence the unlikelihood of moving from the concept of God to the reality of God. On the other hand, the traditional form of the argument makes clear semantic atheism (of those who accept the concept of God has meaning but refuse God any existence) is as unlikely.

Take the case of logical atheism. If God equals the empty set, the proposition "God exists." is not equivalent with "Dragons do not exist.", for fictional objects are poetically meaningful, but rather with "Square circles do not exist." Words like "God" or "QMNC" are meaningless, i.e. just a series of nonsensical sounds or dots on paper. How to prove QMNC or for that matter any concept of the Divine (whether theist, pantheist or pan-en-theist) meaningless ? How to demonstrate the things within our empirical reach are necessarily the only ones, except by axiomatics or convention ? But, if only a posteriori arguments, in which the Münchhausen-trilemma is avoided, are available, then such a feat may prove to be highly unlikely. If so, then the attribution of meaning to the concept of God is not illegitimate.

Moreover, how to refute the claims of those who do understand the word "God" to have meaning ? They are not few, despite the fact modern science and virulent atheism have become fashionable. Indeed, the sociological fact of religion can not be denied and needs explaining. Even the most educated of individual may give meaning to the concept of God. How is this possible ? Can an atheist explanation of the fact of religion be given ? Is it possible to have a natural antenna (like the God-spot in the brain) but no broadcasting source ?

My position is clear. The Divine is not meaningless. Hence, a few results of the ontological argument may be used to back the central hypothesis : "The Divine exists." Although the Kantian arguments against the ontological argument are accepted, because "existence" is truly not a predicate, in section two, the logical possibility of a revised ontological proof, based on the aporic axiom existence adds something to an object, and the phenomenology of being are given way.

Together with Ockham and Hume, the absurdity of natural (theist) theology is acknowledged. An a priori proof of the existence of the Divine is highly unlikely. The transcendent essence of the Divine is not an object of knowledge. It is not self-evident, not factual and beyond argumentation. The religions believe it is an object of faith and invoke, in grand Platonic style, an intellectual perception of this essence. But, this meta-rational cognition is, as the mystics and Cusanus rightly observe, not propositional, not even linguistic ! Nondual intuition cannot be spoken of, only shown in what one does and what one does not, which is ultimately rooted one's intention (cf. Abelard's "intentio").

The failure of the theology of theism does not exclude pantheism. If the Divine in the world is not likely, then the logical atheist is right to say the fuzzy set of the Divine is empty. In that case, the presence of religions can be explained à la Feuerbach, namely as collective illusions soothing our fears, in Freudian terms, as sublimations of the Eros/Thanatos drive or à la Marx, namely as systems devised by the upper classes to keep the masses stupid and addicted to their own stupidity.

So at this point, distinguish between the Divine outside the world (transcendent) and the Divine inside the world (immanent). The sterility of any demonstration of transcendence does not by necessity affect the possibility to prove Divine immanence. Hence, the a posteriori arguments, put into perspective in the third section and proceeding from phenomena to their first cause, are crucial. They remain within the order of events and articulate arguments drawn from the world.

2. ARGUMENT A PRIORI

 A revised ontological proof of Divine existence ?

§ 34

We find, at the heart of the argument a priori, this  conviction : pure concepts and existence can be bridged. The "gap" between our experience (of the physical world) and the transcendent reality (the absolute as it is) can be crossed. Hence, a rational approach of Divinity is possible (cf. Graeco-Alexandrian intellectual mysticism). Why ? Because pure concepts are conceived as connected with the "higher" world of being, deemed empty of becoming. The world of sense is of "lesser degree" than the world of ideas. The latter provides permanency, identity and essence to the contingent (the shadows of the empirical). Without such Platonic presuppositions, the argument a priori is invalid.

Surely, as it is more difficult to argue the Platonic scheme than its negation, must we not concede its failure ? Note this : if and only if, and this contrary to the critical way of science, "existence" is allowed to play the role of predicate, positive results can be obtained. But, the failure to prove the Divine a priori without calling in such controversial axioms, entails the impossibility of a self-evident transcendent metaphysics. Positing a Divine transcendent ad hoc, turns out to be explicative either as meta-rationality or irrationality. As the former is not conceptual, the philosopher (not the poet) is left with silence & namelessness.

2.1 Kant and the ontological proof.

"Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing."
Kant, I. : CRV, B626.

§ 35

If we define God as "existent, omnipotent, omniscient ...", and say "God is not existent.", then we contradict ourselves. Just by the meaning of its subject-term, the proposition "God is existent." is true. So, the proposition is analytical, necessary and tautological. This is how Kant reads the ontological argument.

"Existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than can its having three angles equal to two right angles be separated from the essence of a triangle ..."
Descartes, R. : Fifth Meditation.

The word "exist" is a verb describing what things do, and, like all the rest, "God" is also a (possible) "thing". "Existent" is not a determining predicate belonging to the set of predicates defining the concept of a subject. "Being" cannot be added to the concept of a thing, for it is not a property, nor a quality. Neither does it report any detail about it. At times, this verb and its variants behave as predicates, like in : "Unicorns don't exist.", and then seem to report something not done by unicorns, namely "existing". In fact, each time, the verb is only qualified as a grammatical or "logical" copula.

For Kant, "existence" only instantiates, designates or posits the concept. So when the "existence" of something or someone is thus posited, the totality of known predicates of a thing or an individual is affirmed, adding nothing to it. When this existence is denied, the whole set of predicates vanishes and the referent with it. An object is what can be ascribed to it, nothing more. To affirm the set A "exists" is to instantiate (posit) its concept, but does not instantiate the richer concept "existing A". Every statement of existence  ("there is", or "there are"), says about a concept it is instantiated, rather than it exists. Any legitimate existential statement must be built out of propositions of the form : "There is an A.", where "A" stands for a determining predicate.

In general terms, Kant rejects the ontological argument because a pure concept, or transcendental (not transcendent) idea of reason, like God, regulates our object-knowledge, but never constitutes it. Hence, the speculative argument from mere concepts devoid of contact with any perception of facts, cannot provide a safe "jump" to existence as such, i.e. as it were transcend the domain of possible knowledge (the world) to demonstrate God's existence ! One cannot soar above all possible experience on the wings of mere ideas ...

Kant's core axiom is the logical identity between a predicative and an existential (ontological) use of the copula "being". Science, using synthetical propositions only, affirms there is such a thing as "x" or "Эy (y = x)", i.e. empirico-formal knowledge articulates a mere connection between an object and a predicate (cf. the scholastic "esse"). Now determining object x has the property of existence, i.e. the affirmation of existence ("existit"), or "E!x", is deemed unnecessary, for this adds nothing to our knowledge of "x", logically reduced to the set of determining predicates, of which "existence" is not part. Saying "A exist." is asserting something instantiates the concept of A. It does not suggest the richer concept "existing A", for existence does not add a property, nor a quality.

In this Fregean approach avant la lettre, the Platonic-Augustinian intuition of "being" as "some thing" is completely replaced by an affirmation of instantiation by some observer. Here the Copernican Revolution is complete : there is no conceptualization of being as such possible, for only appearances are left. Not being as such is the origin of our knowledge, but the transcendental ego and its categorial synthesis. Of course, this "transcendental idealism" conflicts with its own premiss, namely the quasi-causal relation between being as such and our senses (necessary to provide material contents to the transcendental motor) as well as the problem of temporality (cf. supra). But these issues are of lesser importance, for a neo-Kantian reconstruction of this part of Kantianism is possible, leaving being as such totally empty and conceptually unreachable (like the ever-escaping horizon).

For those who make sense out of the a priori argument, it is this emptiness with regard to the essence of being which is counter-intuitive and smacks of excessive constructivism. If being as such is totally empty and we are left with appearances only, then it is doubtful whether Hume's skepticism has been overturned. But if all concepts are relative and no normative system exists, then all possible knowledge is trivial and our technological advances cannot be explained, nor predicted in probable terms.

Against this forgetfulness of being, one may affirm saying "A exists." is both asserting the concept of A is instantiated plus the fact A is "existing" or "in being". It is this return to the things themselves which phenomenology investigates. Both in Husserl (1859 - 1938) and Heidegger (1889 - 1976), the "Platonic" intent returns as the perception of the essence (or "eidos") of something. After clearing the dross by successive reductions, the untainted core of "being" is observed, and this is the rock bottom upon which to erect, ex hypothesis, the true science of consciousness (Husserl) and being (Heidegger). These are clearly not protest philosophies, sacrificing reason to irrational factors, like Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860), Nietzsche (1844 -1900) or Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855). They pay tribute to Kant, retain a sufficient ground, but without the trappings of German idealism. How does this approach work out ?

2.2 Phenomenology and the question of Being.

"Then if there is not some other substance ("ousia") besides those which are naturally composed, physics will be the primary science ("proto episteme") ; but if there is a substance which is immutable, the science which studies this will be prior to physics, and will be primarily philosophy, and universal in this sense, that it is primary. And it will be the province of this science to study being qua being ; what it is, and what the attributes are which belong to it qua being ("eta on")."
Aristotle : Metaphysics, VI, I.12, 1026a.

§ 36

Making the things themselves pivotal is consistent with conceiving the coming into the light of the immutable essence of being as prior to every possible understanding of the natural composition of what is, i.e. presupposed by the actual entities investigated upon by the empirico-formal sciences and their categorial classifications of entities and intersubjective states. The latter answer the question What ? and so describe a specific behavior of the human being, a game aimed at producing object-knowledge, or the sum total of limitations or contractions of being exposing an actual entity, caught in this form of a particular actual entity that is. This is being-what, a conceptual subset of the totality of the being in question.

Metaphysics does not seek to produce propositional statements of fact. It is not limited by what is actual, but by what is possible in thought. It has no research-cell in which knowledge is produced, sold and exported. Because no actual, factual, contracted entity can be its object, it is not a science. The study of being qua being is not a "study" in the same way or in the same sense as this word is used in science. But, this inquiry into being is not devoid of organization or arguments.

For Aristotle, a unique science was possible before those singling out some actual entity. Only this speculative "science" (from "episteme", or "epi" + "histanai", to cause to stand) differed from all other sciences, and this because of the extension of its object and because it was deemed prior to all others. Aristotle tried to make this science stand, but because the object aimed at, namely the Being which makes all actual entities be, is a supreme generic concept, it can not be objectified. There is no standpoint outside this absolute, sheer Being, no subjective stance or possible vantage point "outside" the all-encompassing totality of all what is. Being cannot be equated with any object, and so Aristotle was in error when he viewed speculative philosophy as a science. Metaphysics is not.

"There is a science ("episteme tis") which studies being qua being, and the properties inherent in it by virtue of its own nature. This science is not the same as any of the so-called particular sciences, for none of the others contemplates being generally qua being ..."
Aristotle : Metaphysics, IV, I.1, 1003a

In Ancient Greek, the "beyond" of something is expressed by "meta". To inquire into being qua being is "meta ta physika" and goes beyond entities. It transcends the limitations of science, which are the boundaries of the entities made public or unveiled by categories of thought focused on the being-what of the physical world. Accordingly, the investigation of being qua being is "peri physeo", concerns the being of the entity, not only its being-what, and moves beyond the pre-Socratic concept of "physis". However, as Aristotle identifies being with substance, and takes the latter as object of the first science, it is clear that already in his case the inquiry into being remained unalterably a study of entities, i.e. "physics". Aristotle missed the point, and had better isolated "ousia" from the categorial scheme.

In The Twilight of Idols, Nietzsche called such "highest concepts " as being, "the last cloudy streak of evaporating reality". For him, the study of being qua being is nothing less than the "error of being". As the reversal of Plato, Nietzsche heralded the end of classical metaphysics. This end does not silence the question of Being, for classical metaphysics was a special kind of physics, but not "peri physeo". Although curtained by the diversity of entities and their subsequent localizations in schemata or paradigms, the fact of being remains the heuristic idea enabling the sciences to render their work existential. Although quantum-phenomena appear only in mathematical categories, nobody doubts the atom in some way is a part of what is. Although statisticians calculate probabilities on the basis of abstract tables of frequency, they do not doubt the sum of all frequencies (the population), stands for an actual social entity etc.

But can the question of Being be answered ?

The Wiener Kreis, and with them all radical nominalists, reduced the whole realm of being to sense-data and their formalization in symbols. There is no such thing as "sheer Being" besides the sum total of all observable entities, each predicated as a being-what. Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951), Popper (1902 - 1994), Habermas (1929), Lakatos (1922 - 1974), Feyerabend (1924 - 1994) & Kuhn (1922) put into evidence the co-determining influence conceptual connotations (or subjective viewpoints) have on the macroscopic  observation of the being-what of actual entities. In the subatomic realm, the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave-equation of Schrödinger takes this influence of the observer on the observed for granted. A particle is also a wave and subatomic entities become one or the other only at the moment of measurement. Ergo, (inter)subjective constructions (like a particular experimental setup or metaphysical background knowledge) are always part of the formation of propositional statements of fact.

In a Platonizing phenomenology, object-knowledge, the product of an inquiry into the What ? and Who ? of the entities of entities, does not escape the duality between the reality-as-such of an actual entity (its contraction from Being) and reality-for-us (its appearance as fact). The being-what of entities, disclosed by scientific knowledge, is then but a disclosure veiled by the limitations of the discovered "what-ness" (by the type of question posed) and by the form of the observer, his or her conceptual connotations.

By unveiling that Being which makes that there are things (and not what they are), no new science is born. This being is not mathematical, physical or theological. The study of this Being is logically prior to the sciences, but historically later. It is logically first, because the being-what of entities is also a disclosure of being, albeit colored (as water is by the glass). It is historically later, because there was a time when no humans existed to unveil it through and in their true contraction from Being, or being-there. 

"But all these sciences single out some existent thing or class, and concern themselves with that ; not with being unqualified, nor qua being, nor do they give any account of the essence. (...) And since physical science also happens to deal with a genus of being (for it deals with the sort of substance which contains in itself the principle of motion and rest), obviously it is neither a practical nor a productive science."
Aristotle : Metaphysics, IV, I.1, 1025b

Being is glimpsed by posing the question of Being and unveiling the essence of Being in the questioning. This exceptional, extraordinary and profound human question is the true guide of those who are perplexed by the variety of changing oppositions between the actual, existing entities. The wondrous homeland of Being stands always & everywhere erect in every conceivable actual entity, for the latter limits itself to its being-what instead of revealing its truth, rectitude or being-there, its contraction from Being itself.

"Indeed, the question which was raised long ago, is still and always will be, and which always baffles us - 'What is being ?' - ("ti to on") is in other words 'What is substance ?' ("tis eta ousia"). Some say that it is one ; others, more than one ; some, finite ; others, infinite."
Aristotle : Metaphysics, VII, I.7, 1028b

What is Being ? We experience entities or beings and ask ourselves then Why is there something ? For the moment, we do not question this question, nor the questioning. And this deliberate, primordial choice of the intellect is crucial if the philosophy of being has to come into the light and overcome any departure from this permanent question & questioning. By accepting this fundamental meditation on Being and its flow, every actual entity is made object of the process of questioning, for there is no thing that is not covered by the fundamental question : Why is there something ?

"The question aims at the ground of what is insofar as it is."
Heidegger, M. : An Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press - New Have, 1959, p.3.

The pull of the entities is the tendency of differentiation between the beings, making entities to be categorized unequally. The account of the being of the entity as such eclipses the fundamental Why being-there ? The question of Being is therefore the most difficult of questions, for to really ask it demands not a bracketing (one does not need to move away from the natural world), but a onefold union with what stands as being qua being in all the entities of the natural world. We need to be present in the presence of the essence of entities, namely in their being-there. We have to realize entities, despite our absence, disclose Being.

But also, and foremost, realize all entities pull our consciousness towards the affirmation of their limitations without standing in these limitations. For if the latter were the case, the Being, which the fundamental question elucidates, would be unveiled by the What ? of the entities alone. But this is not so. Science cannot answer the question of Being. The being-what of the beings makes consciousness return to the particularities which the Why ? tries to supersede. In returning, we forget the Being of the entity as such, its being-there, and the entity as a whole is closed to us. For to affirm entities in their limitation, is only given to being-there.

To ask : Why is there something ? opens the possible ground of every thing, including the Why ? of the Why ? Indeed, why ask this question ? For some, the question itself is pointless and the word "Being" empty. Do they realize the fundamental contradiction-in-the-act present in this conceptual performance of theirs ?

The act of questioning is truly the first initiation and exordium into being, for repeated questioning allows the pull of the entities to be firmly countered by a concentrated conscious act of coming forth or engagement for Being, which always implies a functional gathering of consciousness in consciousness. Those who never seriously pose themselves the question of Being are lost to being-there. They have, by their own hands, murdered their father and resorted to useful categories. They threw, in the clear pond of their own consciousness, the pebble of ego and made their tiny ocean fluctuate, like turbulence in a glass of water. They wander about from limitation to limitation, forgetful of the very breath they breathe while its vital being feeds their mental caprices. If they would reflect upon their scattered and dislocated positions or loosen their panic-stricken hold on physical and social being alike, their innate humanity would be able to reflect the light of being, the natural light of the "ens in genere" which falls upon all entities, and the disclosure of which is the sole task of metaphysics, not as a "higher" discipline, but "next to" all possible sciences. Indeed, the proper name for this discipline is thus not "metaphysics", but rather "metascience".

The reader reads a text. The text is "before" the reader. It is an object, an entity, a thing that is. The text is written on a medium. That too is an object, with its particulars. Everything our sciences may know about the text and its medium does not encompass the complete object. For the first preoccupation, which can never be the object of any science, is the primordial, original fact the text and the medium stand in themselves, are there in their being-there, in their own essence. The variety of categories aroused by the What ? does not explain us why anything is in the first place. Why is there something ? How to understand this Being making all beings be ?
 
§ 37

"Gott ist, aber er existiert nicht."
Heidegger, M. : Was ist Metaphysic ?

"Existence" refers to the Latin word "ex-sistere", or "ex" : out of, from, free from + "sistere" : to stand, "stare", to stand (cf. in Greek "histasthai" : to stand or "histanai" : to cause to stand, set). In the present phenomenology, "essence" and "existence" present their being-there as mutually exclusive. From this point on, the word "existence" shall be mutilated (as did the Ancient Egyptians with the demonsnake Apophis) to protect us against ek-sistence. This phenomenology is thus not an existentialism. Neither is it a humanism. Being and essence are the sustenance of being-there. Ek-sistence is the departure from being, which causes an entity to be singled out insofar as its accidental properties, attributes or names (categories) or being-what are concerned.

We do not ask : Why is there ek-sistence ? The question of Being makes Being and ek-sistence depart from each other, Being to the immutable, ek-sistence to the ever-changing. With Being, we aim at the ground, essence, foundation, support & sustenance of all possible entities. Their standing in themselves is not an arising or standing-out-of, as in science, but an enduring, permanent ground, covered, veiled or curtained by the multiplicity of ek-sistence. So what is ek-sistence else than the affirmation of this singleness which allows us to transport every single entity in one of the categories of science ? 

Ek-sistence is the exclusive domain of the entities, the beings caught in their ek-sistential thrownness, the manifestation or contraction of Being as being-what (things) and being-who (individuals) solely. Each actual entity is a variable, a spatio-temporal bundle of accidental events and happenings, i.e. ek-sisting actual entities, permanently coming to pass, ceasing and rising again & again in universes (worlds of worlds) ending, disappearing and appearing again & again. This is the great wheel of ek-sistence, which never stops turning and which transforms every entity into every other. But this intellectual perception is not made. Instead, spatiotemporal ek-sistence is experienced as constantly moving and changing like the water of a swiftly flowing river. 

The same goes for the empirical subject and its ego. Physical, psychological and sociological dispositions and acquired attitudes, prejudices, beliefs, norms, expectations, values and the countless experiences of an entire lifetime together constitute the ek-sistence of the sense of ego. As soon as our mind has acquired to say : "I", an ex-istential quantifier is positioned by asserting there is at least one value of a variable. But the ek-sisting "I" is a fiction, an explicitation of the implicate hidden variables of Being which encompass the whole and interpenetrate every entity, ek-sisting to be accessed or opened up by each and every entity given to its being-there, which is the polishing of the mirror of Being, sullied and dulled by ek-sistence.

Ek-sistence is not exorbitant. It respects the limitations, boundaries, forms, frontiers and bridges of all possible entities insofar as they appear, rise and outwardly project their fiction of aloneness & personality, a dreamworld which can always be allocated to the categories of ek-sistence, to which they are gladly chained. Hence, ek-sistence is precisely that What ? which has to be annihilated for Being to step into the light and grant us the bliss of the joy of Being. By utterly destroying ek-sistence, being-there is brought before ek-sistence and the openness of the latter manifests. Being-there transcends the thrownness of ek-sistence by confronting it with the essence of Being which stands within and without the natural limitations or own-form of every entity.

This openness for Being is out of order, moves beyond the orbit & scope of ek-sistence. It can never be an object of science. Scientific statements never disclose the essence of the totality of beings, neither the Being of any singled out actual entity. In other words, science does not raise nor answer the question of the sense of it all, nor of the sense of any instance. Science is senseless, but not useless. It pertains to ek-sistence, its entities and their accidents or categorial allocations. To properly pose the question of Being and find ways to understand it adequately (the question, the questioner, the questioned) is not the object of religion, bound by its "summum ens increatum". 

Only descriptive philosophy inserts ek-sistence in the possibilities of essence. This radical conflict decenters ek-sistence and unmasks it as an illusion, which can not be taken away, but which can be stopped deceiving us. Entities which ek-sist are the fictions of Being. They are the false doors closed by being-there alone. In this process of reaching Being, philosophy is a midwife (care) and a jester (cunning). The final end of the deception of ek-sistence, the bottling of the evil jinn in its lamp, coincides with the active use of the false doors, which, because of this process, become gateways and ladders to the invisible and subtle essence of Being. Opened up, each and every actual entity is constantly and everywhere being transpierced and interpenetrated by the Being standing there. This being-there is like an infinite, indiscriminate, endless light burning in the core of the purest diamond, eclipsing its facets by the dazzling Sun of sheer Being.

This fundamental questioning, which reveals Being to being-there, may endure as a permanent revolution, a perpetually turning around and away from the changing positionings dictated by the categories of the sciences. This revolution never ends, for the science of chaining entities to what they are and not to that they are, the need of being pulled by the gravitation of the beings to the center of common consciousness, namely the demon of ek-sistence, the blinding of the awareness of the underlying ground revealing itself through the fundamental question, will continue to darken the meaning of Being and make human cultures decline. There is never a station in which the question of Being is finally put at rest. The highest revelation is therefore a station-of-no-station, in which revolution endures, as does the revelation of being. Human culture shines in this presence of eternal change only.

The fundamental question is the most daring of questions. This perpetual revolution is a turning around and away from ek-sistence, revealing that this light which allows us to witness entities is unstable and changing. The light of the Sun makes the Sun to be seen. The light of the sciences eclipses the immutable essence of Being. The circle described by the revolution defines an area in which this dark light of ek-sistence can not conceal the bright light of Being, witnessed as standing upright in the torrents & turbulences which present entities as singular, local, individual instances of a general category of being-what, which, as such, have fallen out of Being. This darkening activity of common being, exemplified in the sciences, is a wasting away, constant misinterpretation and repression of the most daring question and thus leads to active demonism, the glorification of the mediocre and the cult of death.

"Pourquoi il y a plutôt quelque chose que rien ?"
Leibniz, GW : Principes de la nature et de la grâce, 1714.

Why is there something, rather than nothing ? In this Leibnizean format, "nothingness" is introduced and opposed to the things themselves, the self-evident principle of all principles (Husserl). Nothingness seems overcome by this Being of the things. Nothingness is made into nonbeing, absence of Being. However, the elucidation of nothingness is impossible. It runs against the concept itself, for by positioning nothing one makes it into a predictable something. To understand nothingness one has to stop objectifying it. The process of Being entails nihilation (of Being by ek-sistence) and annihilation (of ek-sistence by being-there). Everything happens as part of the perpetual great wheel of sorrow, death and transformation. This is the being-there of the nothingness of ek-sistence which can not be compared with what traditional metaphysics had to offer. Leibniz' formulation is the first step towards the nihilation of Being. This tendency to reshape metascience into a science is detrimental to the authentic philosophical inquiry intended in phenomenology. The fundamental question of Being is wholly focused on the Why ? of Being.

Something ek-sists ! Why ? The fact something ek-sists is confirmed. Something ek-sists ! Then, simultaneously, this ek-sistence of an entity is annihilated by standing in its limitation after having asked : Why does it ek-sist ? Thus Being comes into perspective by the light of being-there. The entity opens up its Being because being-there posits itself, stands there as endurance, permanence and fundamental groundless ground of this particular ek-sistence. In the finite entity an infinite possibility is disclosed. Ek-sistence becomes, within the limitations of the entity, the epiphany of the unlimited essence of Being.

§ 38

Can this phenomenology, which does not really convince, be more than a sophisticated philosophical mysticism ? Does it convey a small spark of its fundamental Platonic intuition : to "be" is more than the sum total of determining predicates ? This "more" is being-there in the world. It cannot be articulated, for it exceeds the sum total of predicates, even if the latter are only abstract, and never instantiated (for I am not yet the person I will be tomorrow). This essential face, own-form or contraction from Being, may be shown or suggested, but never identified. It is not an occurrence, but a sempiternally given.

Considered in this light, the essence of sheer Being implies its existence. Only the All necessarily exists, for otherwise there would be nothing. This Platonic inspiration runs through the arguments of Anselm and Descartes and returns in phenomenology as the un-disclosure of the truth, suggestive of the contraction of Being, or being-there. For Kant, and later Frege (1848 - 1925), existence is nothing more than instantiation, the confirmation or positing of a concept or set of predicates. Existence is not a real predicate because it adds nothing. Being-there is something posited, not contracted or revealed. Hence, it does not differ from being-what. With such presuppositions, it is impossible to appreciate the fine tuning of the ontological argument on the basis of the property of existence, i.e. by affirming existence ("existit"), or "E!x".

Consider the two-step program of metaphysics, of which only one can be completed within the boundaries of reason :

In an immanent metaphysics, staying within the limitations of possible experience, the world is all there is and existence is only instantiation. Science observes and argues a series of predicates ascribed to objects, and pours these connections in non-eternal, probable, approximative synthetic propositions a posteriori. No necessary Being can be inferred. Meta-reason is empty. The highest being to be inferred a posteriori, the "Anima Mundi" and Her burning Word, although implying intelligence and freedom (cf. infra), remains proportionate to the world. But, the existence of the Divine Architect of the world can, with high probability, be inferred from facts. An immanent natural theology is possible.

In a transcendent metaphysics, there is more than the world, for the latter, in phenomenological terms, i.e. as revealed by the things themselves, is the theophanic contraction of absolute Being. Hence, each fact reveals more than the series of predicates ascribed to it, for each fact is (also) an epiphany. To supersede the world, is to stand in one's own essential Being or being-there. The a priori arguments aim to posit this transcendent Being as an existing Being analytically, thus including the finite world in infinite Being. They fail to deliver this. "The Divine exists." is hence not self-evident. A transcendent theology devoid of ineffable meta-rationality is impossible.

2.3 The logic of the revised proof.

"Meinong supposed that whatever can be thought about is an object, and he believed that something is an object if it satisfies some such principle as the following : x is an object if it corresponds to a definite or indefinite description (one having the form 'the F' or 'an F') appearing in a grammatically correct sentence having a truth value."
Crittenden, Ch. : Unreality, Cornell University Press - London, 1991, p.4.

§ 39

Proper names, seemingly failing to refer, such as "Santa Claus", "Atlantis", or "Hamlet", pose difficult problems in semantics and metaphysics. If "Santa Claus does not exist." is true, then "Santa Claus" does not refer. So the sentence is about nothing. But then it seems the sentence should be meaningless, and so not true after all. Consider also a typical utterance like "Hamlet does not exist. He is just a fictional character". The utterance "Hamlet is just a fictional character." seems to be true. If it is true, then (it seems) there are fictional characters. But what are fictional characters ? Moreover, if there are fictional characters, then (it seems) fictional characters exist. But then the utterance of "Hamlet does not exist." is false. To be or not to be ?

The logical reading of Anselm's Proslogium II, inspired by Parsons (1980), Oppenheimer & Zalta (1991), turns on the difference between, on the one hand, affirming that there is such a thing as "x" or "Эy (y = x)", i.e. the articulation of a mere connection between an object and a predicate ("esse"), and, on the other hand, affirming x has the property of existence or "E!x", i.e. the affirmation of existence ("existit"). Note "Э!x" is the quantifier asserting uniqueness, whereas "E!x" is the existence predicate. This distinction exploits the difference between quantifying over x and predicate existence of x, allowing for nonexistent objects and their logic. Parsons asserts there are non-existing objects. For him, the existence of x or E!x entails the being of x or Эy (y = x).

(1) E!x » Эy (y = x)

Anselm reflects the same difference as a regimented use of "in the understanding" and "in reality". Hence, in the argument, the notion of being (expressed as quantification or "Э") corresponds with "being in the understanding". "Being in reality" is covered by the notion of existence, a property of x or "E!x". For argument's sake, (1) is accepted. Although critical thought adheres to the Kant-Frege view, the logic of nonexisting objects has found applications in the study of fiction (Crittenden, 1991).

With this in mind, we also accept the regimented use of "being" and "existence" replaces Anselm's regimented use of "in the understanding" and "in reality". This allowance is made to let the argument gain in simplicity.

§ 40

Query : Does God (G^d) exist ?

A. The factors of the argument to be defined beforehand are :

• denotation of being :
  Эy (y = x) : there is an x

• description of being :
  Эxφ : there is an x such as φ

• denotation of existence :
  E!x : there is an x with the property of existence

• denotation of conception :
  Cx : x can be conceived

• denotation of magnitude :
  Gxy : x > y : x is greater than y

This gives the formal outline of the query :
Either E!G^d or ^¬ E!G^d must be true.

B. The logical tools of the argument are :

Premise 1 captures the expression "there is a conceivable object x such that nothing greater can be conceived" (there is no object y greater than x and there is no object y conceivable as greater than x), or :

(2) P1 : Эx {Cx ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy)}
with φ₁ = Cx ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy)
with ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy) = "there is no y (^¬ Эy) conceivable (Cy) as greater than x (Gyx)"

The added clause ^¬ Cy makes explicit any such object y is itself inconceivable.

To work with Gxy or Gyx, following axiom is introduced : either x is larger than y, y larger than x or x equal to y, or :

(3) A1 : Gab v Gba v a = b

Lemma 1 proves if something satisfies (2), then this something uniquely satisfies it :

(4) L1 : Эxφ₁ » Э!xφ₁

Description theorem 1 : Let δxφ be a definite description of x such that φ. Then it can be determined that if condition φ is uniquely satisfied, then δxφ is guaranteed to have a denotation :

(5) DT1 : Э!xφ » Эy (y = δxφ)

Let the definite description "δxφ₁" be the proper formalization of Anselm's key phrase "something than which no greater can be conceived" ("aliquid quo majus nihil cogitari potest") and the formal definition of "God" :

(6) Def : G^d = _def δxφ₁
with P1 : φ₁ = Cx ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy)

Anselm gives a second premise when he writes "For if it is at least in the understanding alone, it can be imagined to be in reality too, which is greater."

Premise 2 : if that than which none greater can be conceived does not exist (in reality), then something greater than it can be conceived.

(7) P2 : ^¬ E!δxφ₁ » Эy (Gyδxφ₁ ^ Cy)

Description theorem 2 : if there is something that is the Q-thing, then it must have property Q.

(8) DT2 : Эy (y = δxQx) » QδxQx

C. The ontological argument :

Given (1) E!x » Эy (y = x)
given (2) P1 : Эx {Cx ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy)}
with φ₁ = Cx ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyx ^ Cy)

it follows by (4) : Э!xφ₁
it follows by (5) : Эy (y = δxφ₁)
it follows by (2) and (8) : Cδxφ₁ ^ ^¬ Эy (Gyδxφ₁ ^ Cy)

Now by reductio, assume the negation, or ^¬ E!δxφ₁, then by P2 it follows : Эy (Gyδxφ₁ ^ Cy), contradicting ^¬ Эy (Gyδxφ₁ ^ Cy), hence : ^¬¬ E!δxφ₁ or E!δxφ₁
it follows by (6) : E!G^d
God exists.
QED

2.4 Process philosophy and God.

"Speculative philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted."
Whithead, A.N. : Process and Reality, 1929, part I, section I, chapter I.

§ 41

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947), the mathematician who, together with his ex-pupil Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), wrote Principia Mathematica and converted to philosophy, developed a system of thought no one will ever succeed in writing a short account about. His work evidences shifts of opinion and in the course of his long life, he developed many loose and at times obscure expressions, producing desperation in anyone trying to be his chronicler. Hence, Religion in the Making (1926) and Process and  Reality (1929) are fundamental, while dispensing with the technicalities. He is an important figure because he integrated mathematics, biology, relativity and quantum physics into his thought (cf. his The Principle of Relativity, 1922).

In his The Concept of Nature (1920), we learn about his view on the philosophical ideal in general, and metaphysics in particular, as the attainment of "some unifying concept" able to unify science. The metaphysician has a descriptive role to play. He seeks to understand the general characteristics of reality, setting these up tentatively as categories. This description of the most general features of experience is not argumentative, but rather in accord with the "I'm telling You !" method.

Four concepts provide an entry into his complex but interesting system of thought, always circumambulating the relatedness of things, namely the "self model", "creativity", "eternal objects" and "God".

§ 42

Whitehead seeks to introduce a new "ontological principle" able to think becoming and change. The "ousiology" of past thinkers was unable to do this, for it was based on the changeless, permanent nature of the essence and its identity (cf. the Platonic "eidos"). In this traditional view, only accidents change and the "ousia" remains identical with itself. This creates a difference between a "supposed but unknown support" (Locke) and the subjective accidents of predication, returning in Cartesian thought as the polarization between "res extensa" & "res cogitans". Whitehead disagrees with this distinction and seeks to integrate it on a higher level.

The Cartesian "ego", which is ontological (as Kant also stressed), is also rejected. To distance oneself from substantialist thinking means to deobjectify all elements of metaphysics. Being more radical than Kant, Whitehead underlines the subjective nature of reality. He does not need the "fuel" of "objective" sensations to turn on the "engine" of the categories. On the contrary, all is subject. Hence, reality (nature, the world) is a subject. So the whole is an organic unity of those elements disclosed in the analysis of the experience of subjects. We cannot go further. We cannot pull ourselves outside ourselves. Knowledge is subjective, for nobody escapes his or her own form of definiteness.

This "subjectivist principle" is another way to state the principle of relativity. All things are qualifications of actual occasions and there is nothing else. The Platonic world is unmasked as the root of all ousiological constructs. The world is a unity of actual entities and without the latter there is nothing. There is no transcendent world, no ontological stratum "above" the world we observe. The exercise of metaphysics is immanent, not transcendent.

In this "self model", the "cogito" is thus the definition of actuality. Only "actual occasions" of "actual entities" are the building-blocks of reality and the universe. Only entities exist. An event is then a "nexus" of actual entities. Causality is also implied. If there are no events, then there can be no causality. But events happen. If event A exerts its influence on event B (or "causal efficacy"), then B cannot be totally explained by A. This because the "novelty" of event B cannot be explained in terms of past initial events only. So, besides efficient causality, he conjectures a "formal causality", which is the cause of the becoming of the "novelty" incorporated in B. This formal causality aims at Self-realization and Self-creation.

This Self-creation of the actual entities is the Self-constitution of an experience. In the process of the non-I exerting an influence, something is experienced (this is the causal efficacy). Besides, there is the "subjective immediacy" of the Self-experience, which accomplishes a new synthesis between the multiplicity of the many influences and the own form of definiteness. Hence, the actual entities are not solipsist (like monads), but continuously enter in each other's Self-creation. "Being" is hence always to be in another. Being (events) & becoming (Self-creation) imply the capacity to enter in another, new actual entity. The universe is hyper social.

Whitehead understands being from the vantage point of becoming. He does not eliminate the eternal, for not only does he wish to replace a teaching on substance with a teaching on events, but he virulently reacts against the "vicious separation" between "flux" and "permanence". This distinction introduced the bi-polarity between temporality (becoming) and eternity (being) and the adjacent aporic pendulum-movement between the two (the same dyad returns in all areas of Greek, scholastic and pre-Kantian thought and influenced most religions).

"Undoubtedly, the intuitions of Greek, Hebrew, and Christian thought have alike embodied the notions of a static God condescending to the world, and of a world either thoroughly fluent, or accidentally static, but finally fluent - 'heaven and earth shall pass away'."
Whithead, A.N. : Process and Reality, 1929, part V, chapter II.

Traditional metaphysics conceptualized being and identity and so construed a static God, an "aboriginal, eminently real, transcendent creator". Instead, metaphysics thinks "permanency in fluency, fluency in permanence". This slogan reminds us of the philosophy implied by the Taoist Tai Chi symbol, by Buddhism, as well as Bohr's famous complementarity inscribed in his Kopenhagen interpretation of the Schrödinger wave-equation.

Although becoming is the sole point of view, one cannot grasp the ultimate nature of the universe without simultaneously thinking both the changing world of events and the eternal realm of pure potency. The dyad remains, but devoid of possible substantialist antagonism. The universe is dual, for it is both transient and eternal. Each actual entity is both physical and mental. There is nothing "outside" the universe.

§ 43

Although nothing except actual entities exist, the world of events is not the whole world. Although there is no world "behind" the world of events, and this changing, phenomenal reality is all there is, one is able to think (conceptualize) the eternal and the permanent. This is not an ontological realm, source of being, transcendent sufficient ground, "prima materia" or pre-creation initiating a "creatio ex nihilo", for actual entities are the only real things. In separation from actual entities, there is nothing, merely nonentity. A "category of the ultimate" can and should be thought. The actual entities are "real" (concrete, immediate), except for God, who is "abstract" (universal, without spatiotemporality).

In Religion in the Making, three "formative elements" are called in to guarantee order & novelty in the actual world :

1. creativity realized in actual entities : thanks to creativity, the real actual world lapses into a new world order. The dynamism of the universe of actual entities, grasped by the senses, implies novelty, for the unity of experience here and now is an original concrescence of previous experiences and my own form of definiteness and determination. Ultimately, the creativity of the actual universe demands everything influences everything, bringing multiplicity to unity. The actual course of events is not self-evident. The sheer ongoingness of the universe speaks of permanent creativity, from the smallest subatomic particle to God's eternal valuation of possibilities. Creativity is the "natural matrix of all things" and actual (real) when realized in an actual entity. The Self-creativity of the entities is an instance of this creativity, which itself is not a substance, nor an entity, nor a reality. It is a "category" qualifying (determining, limiting) all actual entities ;

2. potential eternal objects forming actual entities : the "perpetual perishing" of actual entities cannot be "saved" by something which is itself an entity, for all entities are "on the move", all what is real changes. Next to (not behind, nor underneath) the world of actual entities, Whitehead postulates a world of pure potency and possibility. This abstract world is the domain of "pure potential for the specific determination of fact". These eternal objects are implied by the fact no two actual entities are completely identical although similarities can be determined. The latter point to a "form of definiteness". These forms participate in the becoming of actual entities, but are themselves not actual or real. Neither are they unreal, but potential, i.e. indicative of possibility. Because they remain identical with themselves, these objects are called "eternal". They escape the permanent change of the real world, and so because they are in no way "subject", i.e. an actual, real entity, they are called "objective" and "grasped" by mental "prehension". Hence, the "objective" is not "the real" (for only actual, subjective entities are "real"), nor is it "unreal" (as nonentity or fiction). The objective is sheer potentiality ;

3. an abstract God harmonizing endless potentiality : the domain of pure potentiality is per definition limitless. The eternal objects give form to actual entities but are themselves without borders. By giving "graded relevance" to the various endless possibilities, God harmonizes these different possibilities and so orders the becoming of the actual entities from within, receiving form & structure. The "key" used by God is called "harmony" and "beauty". God embraces all possibilities but offers them as the esthetic possibility of Self-creation. God rules all possibilities and is also the principle of definiteness. God grasps all possibilities and harmonizes them. God limits the limitless domain of pure potentiality so something may enter actuality. Every valuation is contingent, and without God no possibility can become actual. Because of God's "vision of beauty", continuous pressure is put on all events. As God is not creativity itself, God is not responsible for all what happens.

Among the formative elements, God is an actual entity, while the eternal objects are not. God is the anterior ground guaranteeing a fraction of all possibilities may enter into the factual becoming of the temporal world. Without God, nothing of what is possible, can become some thing, change and create. The universe, its order and creativity are the result of a certain valuation of possibilities. However, God is not the universe, nor its order (derived from eternal objects) or creativity (at work in actual entities). These are real actual entities, while God is an abstract actual entity.

1. real actual entities (the real) : all what exists in the world of facts and events ;

2. potential eternal objects (the potential) : selfsame, "pure" forms outside the stream of actual entities, organizing them ;

3. abstract actual entity (the abstract) : God as the Artist who makes a beautiful world more likely.

God is the instance grounding the permanence and continuous novelty characterizing the universe. This primordial nature of God is completely separated from the actual world. For although an actual entity, God's activity is "abstract", namely in the esthetic (artistic) process of valuating possibilities, which are no fictions. God is engaged in the factual becoming of the actual entities, but cannot be conceived as a real actual entity, a fact among the facts. God is the only "abstract" actual entity possible.

§ 44

In this rather pantheist philosophy, idealism and realism are mixed in a remarkable way.

Whitehead is not an absolute idealist, although his "self model" is suggestive of Hegel's "Geist". Indeed, by radicalizing Kant, we end up in relativism, relinquishing any hope to ground the possibility of knowledge in a sufficient ground outside thought. Although observation of fact is a constructed synthesis of, on the one hand, theoretical connotation and, on the other hand -so must we believe- sense-data, it must be acknowledged that by way of empirico-formal thought, reality-as-such is not known. Hence, all our knowledge is, at best, intersubjective, but mostly highly subjective. Moreover, for Whitehead, only these subjective, ever-becoming actual entities are real, which is in tune with the empirist tradition. The eternal objects are only "potentialities" valuating reality, not reality. Neither is God "real", but "abstract".

Nor can it be said Whitehead is a realist. Although there is nothing more than actual entities, and creativity is the process of relatedness between them, objectivity is nothing more than the potentiality and possibility of the eternal objects. The similarities between actual entities, does not emerge from the process between them (as Hartshorne tried to show), but demands a transcendent potency within the order of the world, namely that of the eternal objects. Moreover, without an abstract but actual God valuating and directing these unreal but virtual potentialities, nothing would enter becoming and no real actual entities would exist. So although God is not a real actuality, this abstract entity is necessary to let anything enter becoming. The sheer ongoingness of the world is impossible without eternal objects and without an artistic God. God is "the organ of novelty, aiming at intensification" ...

2.5 The a priori argument rejected.

"Time and labor therefore are lost on the famous ontological (Cartesian) proof of the existence of a Supreme Being from mere concepts ; and a man might as well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account."
Kant, I. : KRV, B:627-630.

§ 45

The arguments deriving the existence of God from His essence depend on the inherent connection between the universals (at work in the mind) and the Platonic ideas. Without this implicate symbolical adualism between the name (or word) and its reality or "res", they fail to deliver. Hence, existence is turned into a predicate, although by merely stating something "exists", nothing is added to our knowledge. Intuitively, we may appreciate the exclusive nature of God, and so understand why a non-existing most perfect being is "less" perfect and hence not a most perfect being, but it is only possible to demonstrate this logically if symbolical adualism is introduced as an axiom. This runs against what is common in science since Kant, to wit : "existence" instantiates, but does not describe an object. Ergo, the a priori arguments of the proof of God are not valid and so do not demonstrate (nor even make probable) the existence of such a transcendent, necessary Being. They make only some sense in a fideist context, i.e. one in which the existence of the transcendent is already accepted (as in theism), or in a phenomenological discourse, positing a "being" next to "existence" (cf. supra). Both are in conflict with the principle of parsimony, for neither a belief in the Divine, nor a quasi mystical experience of Being restrain the number of entities. Moreover, by their own principle, these efforts lead to complete un-saying.

So far, the debate allows to distinguish between three possible options regarding the proof of the Divine :

1. the transcendent approach : God is the sole necessary Being, posited outside the world (theism) and given Divine Names such as  "summum bonum", omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, spiritual, etc. The latter do not convey His essence, object of apophatic unsaying, but are katapathic affirmations derived from the direct experience of God, either by meta-rationality (intuition or intellectual perception) or by revelation (dogmatic theology). God is summoned to create the world "ex nihilo" and to reveal to creation His intended Divine mediation (a sacred history, a Son, a Book). This position integrated Platonism and with it the identity between essence and existence insofar God or the Divine ideas are concerned. In such a perspective, the concept of a necessary Being must include Divine existence, for otherwise God would not be God. At the heart of the a priori argument we thus find the ontological "nexus" between the real, clear, distinct universals and the illusionary, vague and shadowy particulars. This connection has been overthrown by science and so the a priori argument fails ;

2. the immanent approach : the Divine is the subtle breath, fire and "logos" of the cosmos (Stoicism), sustaining its operations according to natural laws (pantheism). Because of the theist imperative dominating the West for nearly two thousand years, this so-called heretical approach has been divorced from Western thought. Hence, the a posteriori arguments always exceed their logic and transgress the limitations of possible experience to once more arrive at a transcendent Deity. To stop at the limit of the world and explain the ongoingness of things in it with no other means than what the natural world itself has to offer, is truly a "Pagan" exercise no transcendent theology will persue. It belongs to religious philosophy to persue it ;

3. the unitary approach : the Divine is a unity of essence and existence, both outside and inside the world (pan-en-theism). The essential nature of God is unknown and remains so, for mind cannot step outside the world and observe the Divine essence (apophatism). The proof of the Divine is two-tiered : starting with the world and its becoming, a series of revised a posteriori arguments are given. They do not prove the Divine to be a transcendent God, but only an immanent conserving and intelligent first Conserver and Architect, to be conceptualized by the mind as the "Anima Mundi". Next, the direct experience of Divine immanence is approached and systematized in a spiritual protocol. Finally, the idea of the transcendent God is derived from the universal characteristics of the mystical experience. The latter does not prove the existence of the transcendent, nor provide us with conceptual knowledge of it. Stepping outside the world (transgressing the limits), the purifying, totalizing and actionalizing experience of radical otherness may, Deo volente, only suggest and point to God. Without poetry, this cannot be explained or described. It is no object of science or philosophy, but of art. It also reflects in each and every action a mystic does, adding sublimity to his or her exemplaric morality.

The meta-rationality suggested by the  mystics is wholeheartedly affirmed, and the mystics are indeed the grand examples of religious philosophy (cf. Bergson). If we accept the Divine as being continuous (which is not much to ask for if the Divine is thought of as One - cf. Cusanus), then what seems to our rational minds, operating inside the world, as two aspects (namely the immanent soul of the world versus God, the transcendent essence of the Divine) are in reality, from this "impossible" vantage point attained in the state-of-no-state outside the world (cf. Ibn 'Arabi), the One Thing. In this way, the entelechy of the universe may be a stepping-stone to the realization of the meta-rational possibility pointing to the unique transcendent essence of the Divine. A natural, immanent theology and religious philosophy are possible and may be the proper preparations for such meta-rationality, never contrary to reason, although beyond it. This does not involve a rational elucidation, demonstration or conceptualization of God of any kind. Suggestion follows poetic license, not empirico-formal science. Divine revelation is never literal or factual, except in the poetic manifestation of Divine Presence.

§ 46

The failure to provide a valid proof a priori should be pondered upon. Foundational, exclusive dogmatisms are in conflict with reason and science. As there is no formal (architectonic) "nexus" between a "better" world and "this" world, whereas the world ongoingly happening is the only actual occurrence there is, science & metaphysics are silent about what lies beyond the "ring-pass-not" of the mind. In short : the "essentials" of the Divine remain a priori veiled to reason. This makes any "revelation for all times" highly unlikely, a thought undermining all contemporary religions of the Deus Revelatus ...

This fact also makes the distinction between science and organized religion, between propositions containing a truth-claim about the world and revelations of a dogmatic theology (like in the religions "of the book") important. Meta-rationality kept in tune by reason is a suggestive, poetical discipline, like an object of art. But devoid of this corrective bond, it is sheer irrationality. To delegate this to a separate domain and allow it to putrefy on the dunghills of human folly and fundamentalism is dangerous. Not only can every fool then use this waste to produce terror in the name of the Divine, or erect a brontosauric monolith to be worshipped, but the presence of so much idolatric, idiotic, silly and superstitious nonsense, in the light of so much science and metaphysics, is offensive to the dignity of our spiritual intellect, hampered to extend its influence on the mind by this unwholesome quantity of dross and circumstance, causing ontological illusion.

It is not because a possible religious philosophy found a tiny opening in the dense, pristine forest enabling us to climb the mountain of the world and appreciate the panorama offered by its soul, that some of the more grotesque positions of the religions, pretending to hold a transcendent claim, are backed by this effort.

On the contrary, a possible religious philosophy can only underline the importance of a renewed spiritual impetus and discard anything which could force the ship of our common evolution to be stranded or shipwrecked on the deserts of human blasphemy. If the proof of Divine existence is to be used to back the contradicting dogma's of the religions, then nothing has been learned (as is often the case). A possible proof of the Divine, albeit a posteriori, is not an apology for the existing religions, but a plea for a possible spirituality of the future based on science and a metaphysics embracing science. This is not some kind of atheist religiosity, but a philosophical religion. Indeed, the harmonization sought, does not condone irrationality, neither avoids an open conflict with it. But, our cause is not decided by way of arms, but with voice, pen and paper. Its intention is to reach the heart of the intelligent, not to convert the stupid and the already convinced. With gigantic compassion, over & over again, the latter must be (re)educated to better ideas & ends.

3. ARGUMENTS A POSTERIORI

Towards an exposure of the Divine.

§ 47

The trace of the Divine is observable and arguable in both nature and man. This is the core of the approach a posteriori. This proof only takes natural phenomena, events & happenings into account. The ongoing world-process is considered given and not questioned. Access to this process is given by the senses and the mind. When facts are cast in empirico-formal propositions, and rational object-knowledge is acquired, the natural condition of possible experience has been satisfied. When the broader, speculative horizon is argued in terms of these propositions, an immanent metaphysics is at work. Both perspectives are part of the rational approach of the world, and define it, for observation (testing) and communication (arguing) are the two vectors producing factual knowledge.

Because the proof limits itself to the natural perspective, it cannot demonstrate the transcendent God. As no proof a priori is possible (cf. supra), the affirmation of the existence of the transcendent God of theo-ontology can no longer be made probable and is either an object of meta-rationality or the product of the fictional and the irrational. The a posteriori proof, because it stays within the natural order (of which humanity is also a manifestation), demonstrates the existence of a necessary Conserver, without which the natural order could very probably not exist. Hence, natural religious philosophy studies what can be known about this Architect of the world. Speculating about this first cause, a complex network of concepts may be derived, expressing greatness, wisdom, power, authorship, intelligence etc. This "stage of admiration", as Kant put it, is wholly religious and spiritual. It also probes deeper into the natural mysteries of the Divine than does atheist religiosity. It never crosses the "ring-pass-not" (containing the finite), and is dedicated to the immanent view, albeit panoramic.

§ 48

Distinguish between speculative and experimental arguments a posteriori.

Composed of argumentative (not empirico-formal) propositions, speculative arguments are part of an immanent metaphysics, a theoretical speculation on the presence and function of the Divine within nature, and this starting in the atom and reaching out to the outer limits of the observable universe, like in the case of efficient causes (at work everywhere).

Is the production of the Divine fact possible ? Can empirico-formal propositions objectify the Divine ? Is there an experimental methodology, itinerary or protocol leading towards the spiritual experience ? If so, then an experimental argument a posteriori can be inferred. Finally, if the mystics give an exemplaric account of a bi-polar Divinity (transcendent as well as immanent), then can we allow transcendent metaphysics to merely poetically suggest the improvable existence of the absolute totality, entirely impossible on rational grounds ? Can the religions, as institutions of poetry of a certain quality, be given new meaning and momentum ?

In Kant's general argument in favour of the intelligent design of the world, the fitness and harmony existing in the works of nature point to an Architect of the world. Although intelligent, this being is always hampered by the quality of the materials used, but nevertheless shows us the "right and natural" direction. For Ockham, contingent beings are unable to conserve themselves and if we take the complete vertical chain of conservers hic et nunc, we must conclude, hand in hand with natural necessity, the first Conserver exists. Both positions are strong.

To make clear what an immanent perspective means, let us take the example of the rejected a posteriori argument from necessity.

If it is legitimate to ask, which is not beyond doubt, how the world composed of contingent objects was caused, then the totality of objects must have a reason external to itself. Why ? This reason cannot be part of the contingent world (rise and perish), for then it could not be a satisfactory explanation of the reality of the world (it would also rise and perish). Hence, and here the category-mistake creeps in, a transcendent necessary being exists, for an infinite series is deemed impossible. The arguments of motion, efficient causes and perfections (cf. supra) also stop this infinite regress as hoc by "filling the gap" and jumping outside the order of the world. Only the argument from design avoids this problem. However, if Bertrand Russell is right, and the world is "just there and that's all" or "actual process", as Whitehead thought, and together with Kant we reject any illegitimate transgression in the use of the ideas of reason, then the "optimum" our reason arrives at, is a strong form of pantheism, positing the concept of a necessary, first conserving, most perfect, intelligent immanent Conserver of the world.

§ 49

The argument a posteriori calls forth the following witnesses :

1. the fact of design : the world is not the work of a blind watchmaker, but of an intelligent Designer ;

2. the fact of spiritual experience : the experience of the Divine can be (re)produced and its protocol transmitted ;

3. the possible entelechy of the world : the order and beauty of the world point to a final end : to actualize all possibilities (which is an ongoing, endless process).

The fact of design can be demonstrated without the fact of spiritual experience. But, by fulfilling the conditions to experience Divine immanence, one furthermore acquires the necessary "form" or "spiritual attitude", a key to open the "doors of perception" (cf. Huxley). Indeed, the direct, immediate observation of the Divine is not self-evident, nor necessary. Self-realization is only triggered by a free intention. There is no "natural" necessity to seek out, see and meet the soul of the world.

By a strong focus on orthopraxis, the problem of the production of the spiritual fact comes into perspective. A direct plug-in or access to the supposed "soul" of the world must, ex hypothesi, be given. Otherwise, the concept of an immanent Designer would imply remoteness and inaccessibility, which is in contradiction with the relatedness shown in the design. The Architect is not in one place, but in all places all the time. Moreover, if a plug-in (a software) is postulated, then a material manager (a hardware) must be identified to compute & process (execute) this own-form of human spirituality. This line of argument boils down to the presentation of a spiritual protocol with minimal orthodoxy, one which is all about doing, practice, discipline and constant devotion (a userware). This spiritual methodology is then a series of actions, affects and thoughts producing at least a direct experience of the immanent totality conserving the world-process, if not more. A "spiritual reduction" enabling the prehension of the vastness of the universe in the limitations of a single point of density.

3.1 The Münchhausen-trilemma in science & religion.

"... if the process of demonstration can continue to infinity, it would be possible for there to be an infinite number of middles between two terms. This, however, is impossible, if the series of predications has an upward and a downward limit."
Aristotle : Posterior Analytics, I. xxii.

§ 50

Grosso modo, the quest for an "Archimedic point" for knowledge, drove the epistemologies of the last two thousand years to develop Platonic (idealistic) and Peripatetic (realistic) methods to justify knowledge. In each, a sufficient ground was invoked to explain and demonstrate that true propositions are true and wrong propositions wrong. Like the famous "fulcrum" of Archimedes of Syracuse (ca. 287 - ca. 212 BCE), who also introduced the concept of a center of gravity as the average location of an object’s weight, this fixed ground or support on which a lever rests, was supposed not to constantly change. It is a solid standpoint from which one could measure and lift the world. Likewise, the sufficient ground of knowledge must be immutable or no certainty is possible.

In his Life of Marcellus, Plutarch (ca. 45 - 120 CE) tells us that Archimedes, in writing to King Hiero, whose friend and near relation he was, had stated that given the necessary force, any given weight might be moved. In his Book of Histories, John Tzetzes, a XIIth century Byzantine poet and grammarian, quotes him saying : "Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world."  In his Meditations On First Philosophy (1641), René Descartes also mentions him : "Archimedes, that he might transport the entire globe from the place it occupied to another, demanded only a point that was firm and immovable ; so, also, I shall be entitled to entertain the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable." (Meditation II). Hence, this solid rock-bottom could guarantee our knowledge to be eternally valid.

These foundational efforts may be categorized as idealism, realism & transcendentalism :

1. idealism : there is a world of ideas which never changes, the contemplation of which enables us to intuit eternal knowledge. This is the Platonic line of reasoning, which was nurtured by the scholastic "reales" and returned in Cartesian thought as a series of innate ideas. The fulcrum lies outside the actual world, in being as such ;

2. realism : there is a world of realities observed by our senses and independent of our subjective states, providing the solid rock-bottom of reality as it is. This is the Aristotelic line found in the writings of the "nominales" and influencing empiricism and logical positivism (or, in more radical form, leading to skepticism, as in Ockham and Hume). The fulcrum is the actual world, namely becoming and process ;

3. transcendentalism : rejecting both previous foundations as stepping outside the limitations of possible experience, Kant's "Copernican Revolution" situates the unchanging ground in the subject of experience, namely as the categorial motor (fueled by the senses) producing synthetic proposition a priori by virtue of the cognitive activity of the transcendental unity of apperception, the "I think". The fulcrum is the set of laws the human mind utilizes to know nature (as appearance). Like Newton's laws, these are absolute and unchanging ...

Kant made the last effort to provide a solid ground for knowledge, but also failed. Indeed, in the XIXth & XXth centuries, both mathematics & physics went through paradigmatic shifts (relativity, quantum, chaos & string), bringing on the scene alternative synthetic propositions (natural laws) regarding the world (thus reducing their status from a priori to a posteriori, i.e. from universal and necessary to singular and contingent). This heralded the final exposure of the postulate of foundation as an illusion. To root knowledge in a sufficient ground was impossible, and epistemology was back at square one. How is knowledge possible ? How can knowledge advance ?

§ 51

The "Münchhausen-trilemma", mentioned in Albert's Traktat über kritische Vernunft (1958), is an elegant and conclusive thought-experiment to clarify why the various efforts to root knowledge indeed fail, inviting a new concept of rationality, one without a fulcrum.

A justification of proposition P is a valid deduction with P as conclusion. How extended must the deductive chain be in order to justify P ? When is a sufficient ground arrived at ? If a theory of knowledge invokes the postulate of foundation, i.e. tries to root the possibility of knowledge outside knowledge, three unacceptable possibilities arise :

1. regressus ad infinitum : P is justified by P', P' is justified by P", P" by P''' etc. ... there is no end to this chain of justifications, and so no foundation is found : skepticism is the outcome (knowledge has no foundation)  ;

2. petitio principii : the conclusion P is part of the chain of deductions leading to P. Circularity is a valid deduction, but no justification of P, for P justifies P, and no foundation is found : again skepticism ;

3. abrogation ad hoc : the chain of justification is ended at P and the postulate of justification (the condition to justify P by P') is abrogated ad hoc. The unjustified sufficient ground P is then accepted as it stands because, as it is deemed certain, it does not need to be justified : here dogmatism takes over.

The trilemma is a pat situation. Like the Baron von Münchhausen, who tried to pull himself out of the water by his own hair, the traditional models of rationality end up with an absurd apory : skepticism versus dogmatism : knowledge is either unfounded or its foundation irrational (arbitrarious). Science and philosophy are sophisms, i.e. clever illusions. Every possible kind of foundational strategy is logically flawed and scandalous. What is the next step ? The excesses of foundationalism can be avoided if and only if true knowledge is no longer deemed sufficient in a necessary, absolute way. Simply put, the postulate of foundation should no longer be maintained and faillibilism embraced. Knowledge is not certain, but only unlikely, likely and very likely. The science of certainties is to be replaced by the science of probabilities.

For faillibilism asserts uncertainty, incompleteness, relativity, indeterminacy and probability belong to every proposition. In the simile of Otto Neurath (1882 - 1945), we are forced to rebuild the boat of science plank by plank while staying afloat in it. Indeed, there is no external vantage point, no first philosophy by which to remodel it from outside. This boat is never docked and crewless on dry land. Philosophers and scientists are like sailors forced to repair the ship of rational knowledge while still at sea. This is a gigantic appeal to modesty, away from the brontosauric monolith of foundational science, which considered rational knowledge as superior and final (cf. Auguste Comte). Even Popper, who remained a realist, wrote :

"Theories are built on piles driven down from above into the swamp, not down to any given base, although they are really firm enough to carry the structure."
Popper, K.R. : The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934.

This non-foundational view on reason as fallible, joins nominalism, pluralism, hypothetism,  relativism, constructivism, methodologism, contextualism, "as if"-thinking and verisimilitude. It goes hand in hand with logical simplicity, elegance, opportunism and parsimony. The essential tension between the fundamental ideas of reason, namely "the ideal" and "the real", is managed by a triplicity instead of by a duality. A trichotomic logic avoids the confrontational, pendulum-swing problems of justificationism. Replace :

with :

When knowledge is no longer certain knowledge, but at best only probable knowledge, then the two criteria of truth, namely realistic correspondence and consensus do no longer function as doors to either reality or ideality.

By shaping the unconditionality of the object of knowledge, the idea "reality" ("Ding-an-sich") guarantees the unity & the expansion of the monologous object-oriented mental knowledge. By shaping the unconditionality of the intersubjectivity of knowledge, the idea "ideality" (ideal subject) guarantees the unity & the expansion of the dialogous subject-oriented mental knowledge.

Both ideas converge towards an imaginal point which, as an postponed horizon, shapes the idea of a complete, universal consensus on the adequate correspondence between our knowledge and reality-as-it-is. This is a heuristic fiction which suggests a position "beyond the mirror surface", a "Hintenwelt" which never grounds (constitutes) but regulates the possibility of knowledge. So, the idea "reality" regulates the objectivity of knowledge and the idea "ideality" its (inter)subjectivity.

The imaginal, heuristic point of intersection between these ideas is a knowledge-leading & knowledge-regulating fiction guaranteeing the progress of knowledge without ever constituting knowledge itself. If not, it would mislead knowledge, thus curtailing its unity & progress. The ideas of contemporary epistemology thus voice the fundamental property of thinking, i.e. the continuous & permanent confrontation between "test" (objects of knowledge) and "argument" (subjects of knowledge).

On the side of the objects of knowledge, we have to think the "Ding-an-sich" as knowable (without being mentally equipped to know whether this is the case). Facts are both intra-linguistic (are co-determined by the theories of the subject of knowledge) and -so do we fancy- extra-linguistic, i.e. the messengers of the "Ding-an-sich". Hence they correspond with reality-for-us ("Ding-für-uns").

On the side of the subjects of knowledge, we have to think the "consensus omnium" as possible (without us ever reaching it in fact). In this way the distinction between "my" consensus (with myself), "our" consensus here & now (i.e. the agreement between the users of the same language) and the "consensus omnium", the regulative idea on the side of the subject of knowledge, ensues.

§ 52

Although we do not know whether a subatomic event is a particle or a wave before it is actually measured, the probabilities given by the equation of Schrödinger are high, yielding operational results and technological applications. However, the good results of quantum theory do not eradicate the possibility of a better theory, one encompassing both relativity, quantum and chaos (such as string-theory ?). The results of science are relative and historical. What is held true today may be a falsehood tomorrow. Modesty does not pretend to know more than possible. Science is not a triumphalistic ideology promoting direct access to reality with a perfect key. Facts reveal the real but only partially. What vastness is eclipsed by our preconceptions, presuppositions, prejudices and idiosyncratic pigeon-holes ? With this in mind, the wise scientist does not indulge in final and certain propositions. By knowing the limitations of reason, s/he ongoingly opens up endless possibilities to be rationally known.

Likewise, the philosopher of immanence, bound to speculate on the basis of such fallible propositions, has nothing more than logic to persue his activities. As such, he may study the rationality of moral and religious needs, aware of the transient nature of his work. Maybe he eventually transcends rationality all together and appreciates a direct insight into the world and beyond. The examples of the mystics suggest the actuality of meta-rational "intellectual perception", but critical reason can no nothing else but to regard direct intuition as non-conceptual and non-propositional. Evidently, it cannot directly contribute to our scientific knowledge.

As such, the indirect, exemplaric role of intuition, like all arguable (immanent or transcendent) metaphysics, is heuristic, suggestive, innovative and spiritualizing. But, the essence known by meta-rationality cannot be articulated but shown as an object of art or given as holiness.

§ 53

And what about the religions ? In order to clarify the issue, a logical analysis of the concept and its evolution is at hand, for a study of the process of justification in religious models always shows an evolution of religious conceptualizations moving away from the original mystical source of the religion to a constructed canon. Consider the process from singular concept to tradition :

Axiom : 

• concept C is a mental construct based on perceptions in time & space of a subject x ;

Given are :

1. a singular perception p of a particular fact f by x or p(x)f ;

2. a string of perceptions P of facts f, f', f"... f ⁿ in time (.dt) by x or P(x)f.dt = p(x)f, p(x)f',  p(x)f" ... p(x)f ⁿ ;

3. an ungoing process of perceptions in time (.dt), shaping a perception-bank B concerning P(x)f.dt or BP(x)f ^{(1 ... n)}.dt.

(1) each p(x)f is an elemental building block of C :

In p(x)f, f is not written as f(x), for no fact can be totally subjectified. 

(2) Hence, p(x)f depends on fact f and the mindgrid mg of x or p(x)f = mg(x) + f which also applies to string of perceptions with co-relative mindgrids : P(x)f.dt = mg(x) + f, mg' (x) + f', ... mgⁿ (x) + f ⁿ.

(3) the generalization C arrived at by a particular subject x on the basis of the given perception-bank BP(x)f ^{(1 ... n)}.dt  is a general notion which has been combined over time.  As it is not logically possible to justify when the jump from the particular to the universal is to be made lawfully, the logical genesis of the concept remains a priori incomplete (cf. non-foundationalism). Comparison (i.e. convention) alone explains why singular perceptions become strings. In fact the only thing we really know are singular instances, nothing more.

(4) The original concept C is communicated to other subjects and confronted with other people's perceptions of facts. Through dialogue & argumentation a consensual, intersubjective concept C ^{(1 ... n)} regarding f ^{(1 ... n)} arises. The movement from C to C', C" ... C ⁿ is the evolution of a concept. If the process of perception stops, the evolution is halted and gradually the meaning of the original C withers.

(5) Over a period of time the process of ungoing perceptions coupled with quasi permanent intersubjective confrontations define a constellation of consensual general notions C ^{(1 ... n)} regarding  f ^{(1 ... n)} which form a tradition T(f ^{(1 ... n)}).

Now consider the following rules governing the evolution present within the five major religions (like Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity & Islam).

The basic mysticological rule is : 

• a human subject x  < >> the Divine (!)

(1) < or from subject x to the Divine : in 4 nominal dimensions of space-time x aspires to transcend (cf. "ascendat oratio") and there exists a preparative spiritual protocol ;
(2) >> or from the Divine to subject x : more than 4 dimensions of space-time answer the call (cf. "descendat Gratia") and this answer has objective validity ;
(3) < >> or the "crux", the experience itself : a direct, immediate, individual experience of a paradoxical, ineffable, totalizing nature.

! : this rule is coherent

The theological set of rules added by the religions is :

(1 - 3) a human subject x = founder x < >> the Divine (!)
(4) the founder = the sacred symbol par excellence (?)
(5) subjects y, z, ... < the sacred symbol >> the Divine (??)

? : this rule is questionable but acceptable
?? : this rule is questionable & unacceptable

Ideally, the authentic poetical elocutions & actions of a founding mystic (1) become the sacred symbols of the tradition initiated by the first direct witnesses or companions of the founder (4). These symbols encompass a model of the world, a theory on man, ethics & the afterlife and a salvic road, defined as the "right path". This superstructuring becomes political when meant to organize a growing mass of believers (cf. (5) the stage of the followers).

Mostly shortly after the founder's death, a large number of texts or parties see the light, and a so-called "sacred" tradition ensues. A lot of this may be purely legendary & mythical, evidencing composition, interpolation and borrowing from other sources for apologetic reasons.

So after the physical death of the founder, corruption occurs, redundancy & conflicts rise, schisms are proclaimed & battles are unleashed. In all five religions, differences operate and continue to do so and hence the fundamental message of unity was and is -historically- lost (each in its own way and with its own particular stories & intensities).

Mystical experiences are far more independent of the imaginations and conceptualizations of the religious group than are religious experiences. The act of adhering to a religion is impossible without assimilating a particular religious doctrine or code. This indicates religious experience calls for a group standard (a totem, flag, waymarks). Mystical experiences move beyond a particular religious doctrine, which does not mean (a) the mystical individual has no theoretical superstructures or (b) he or she does not adhere to a religion (the latter condition is however not necessary for the experience to happen). Self-creation and (to say the least), adherence to the longing satisfied by the unconditional (absolute reality), often serve to prepare and to (afterwards) understand what is implied by radical otherness. But also : these superstructures may (for example in the case of a social mystic who reveals Divine signs in the different phases of an intense prophetic life) become the dogmatic articulations characteristic of a particular religion, fideistically considered holy and eternal.

Religious experiences are always mediated by doctrine. The latter is "invented" (in the constructive sense) by those who claim to have witnessed the founding mystic and to have collected the necessary information for posterity. They (at the stage of companionship) formulate a common picture for the group to imitate (at the stage of the followers). Unfortunately, the limitations of their religious experiences are such they are only allegorically or metaphorically entitled to say anything about the contents of the founding mystical experience (which is an exclusive, vertical matter between the founder & the absolute). Hence, religious experiences, because they are more indirect than direct (i.e. more determined by explicit or implicit religious dogma), are not radical.

This analysis raises the following points :

3.2 The genetic approach to knowledge.

§ 54

In Jean Piaget's (1896 - 1980) theory on cognitive development, two general functional principles are postulated : organization & adaptation.

The former implies the tendency common to all forms of life to integrate structures (physical & psychological) into systems of a higher order. The latter (to be divided in assimilation & accommodation) shows how the individual not only modifies cognitive structures in reaction to demands (external) but also uses his own structures to incorporate elements of the environment (internal). 

Organisms tend toward equilibrium with their environments. Centration, decentration (crisis) & re-equilibration are the fundamental processes forcing this cognitive texture of humans to complexify.

Mental operators are the result of the interiorization of this cognitive evolution. An original, archaic sense of identity is shaped. After prolonged exposure to new types of action -challenging the established original centration and its equilibrium- a crisis ensues and decentration is the outcome. Eventually, a re-equilibration occurs because a higher-order equilibrium was found through auto-regulation (re-equilibration, autopoiesis).

Over time, various different strands, levels, layers or planes of cognitive texture unfold. The process may be analyzed as follows :

In this way, Piaget defined four layers of cognitive growth :

In his Le Structuralisme (1970), he defines "structure" as a system of transformations which abides by certain laws and which sustains or enriches itself by a play of these transformations, which occur without the use of external factors. This auto-structuration of a complete whole is defined as "auto-regulation". In the individual, the latter is established by biological rhythms, biological & mental regulations and mental operations. These can be theoretically formalized.

Piaget refuses to accept that "real" dialectical tensions between physical objects are the "true" foundations of thought and cognition (its possibility, genesis & progressive development), as in most other types of psychology and pedagogy. Piaget never fills in what reality is like. He maintains no ontological view on reality-as-such, considered to be the borderline of both the developing subject and its objective world, stage after stage.

The cognitive is approached as a process, for rationality grows in developmental steps, each calling for a particular cognitive structure on the side of the subject. What reality is, is left open. Why ? Every objective observation implies an observer bound by the limitations of a given stage of cognitive development, i.e. a subjective epistemic form, containing idiosyncratic, opportunistic and particularized information.

Neither did Piaget choose for a strictly transcendental approach. Conditions which exist before cognition itself (like in Foucault) are not introduced. What Popper called the "problem-solving" ability of man, can be associated with Piaget's notion on "re-equilibration". Popper introduced the triad : problem, theory (hypothesis, conjecture) & falsification (refutation). In his dynamical and actional anthropology and psychology Piaget introduced : activity, regulation, crisis & re-equilibration (auto-regulation).

§ 55

His psychogenesis (based on the observation of children) shows how knowledge develops a relationship between a thinking subject and the objects around it. This relationship grows and becomes more complex. Stages of cognitive development are defined by means of their typical cognitive events and acquired mental forms. This development is not a priori (pre-conditions), a posteriori (empirical) but constructivist : the construction eventuates in its own process, in other words, the system has been, is and will always be (re)adapting and (re)creating new cognitive structures, causing novel behavior & different environmental responses, which may be interiorized, forming new internal cognitive forms, etc. The foundation of this process is action itself, the fact its movements are not random but coordinated. It is the form of this coordination, the order, logic or symbolization of the pattern of the movements which eventually may stabilize as a permanent mental operator.

Two main actions are distinguished :

The last three decades has seen the rise of many applications of these crucial insights regarding the functional, efficient (educative) side of the process of cognition. An example is schema theory, at work across the fields of linguistics, anthropology, psychology and artificial intelligence. Human cognition utilizes structures even more complex than prototypes called "frame", "scene", "scenario", "script" or "schema". In cognitive sciences and in ethnoscience they are used as a model for classification and generative grammar (syntax as evolutionary process). 

The schema is primarily a set of relationships, some of which amounts to a structure, generating pictorial, verbal and behavioral outputs. The schemata are also called mental structures and abstract representations of environmental regularities. Events activate schemata which allow us to comprehend ourselves & the world around us.

The term is thus used to define a structured set of generalizable characteristics of an action. Repetition, crisis & reformation yield strands of co-relative actions or stages of cognitive development. Knowledge begins in the coordination of movement. Ergo, in genetical sequence, these consensual types of schemata emerge :

• sensori-motoric, mythical thought (the notion) : aduality implies only one relationship, namely with immediate physicality ; object & subject reflect perfectly ; earliest schemata are restricted to the internal structure of the actions (the coordination) as they exist in the actual moment and differentiate between the actions connecting the subjects and the actions connecting the objects. The action-scheme can not be manipulated by thought and is triggered when it practically materializes ;

• pre-operatoric, pre-rational thought (the pre-concept) : object and subject are differentiated and interiorized ; the subject is liberated from its entanglement in the actual situation of the actions ; early psychomorph causality. The subjective is projected upon the objective and the objective is viewed as the mirror of the subjective. The emergence of pre-concepts and pre-conceptual schemata does not allow for permanency and logical control. The beginning of decentration occurs and eventually objectification ensues ... ;

• concrete-operatoric, proto-rational thought (the concrete concept) : conceptual structures emerge providing insight in the essential moments of the operational mental construction : 
  (a) constructive generalization ; 
  (b) the ability to understand each step and hence the total system (1 to 2 to 3 ...) and 
  (c) autoregulation enabling one to run through the system in two ways, causing conservation. The conceptual schemata are "concrete" because they only function in contexts and not yet in formal, abstract mental spaces ;

• formal-operatoric, rational thought (the formal concept) : abstract conceptual structures positioned in mental spaces which are independent of the concrete, local environment. Liberated from the substantialist approach but nevertheless rooting the conditions of knowledge outside the cognitive apparatus itself ;

• transcendental thought (the critical concept) : abstract concepts explaining how knowledge and its growth are possible, rooted in the "I think", the transcendental unity of apperception (or transcendental Self) ;

• creative thought (the creative concept) : the hypothesis of a possible (arguable), conceptual immanent metaphysics ;

• unitive thought (nondual & non-conceptual) : the suggestion of a possible, non-conceptual but meta-rational transcendent metaphysics (or pataphysics).

ANTE-RATIONALITY

1. MYTHICAL or PRE-LOGICAL THOUGHT :

Comments :

The earliest stage of mythical thought (first substage) is adual and non-verbal. The only "symbols" and "forms" are the material events themselves in all their immediacy and wholeness. It is this non-verbal core, which makes the mythopoetic mind analogical. In mythical thought, everything is immediate and the immediate is all. Ergo, myth goes against the differentiation which feeds the complexification of thought & cognition. The myth of myths is the "eternal return" to the primordial state of absence of differentiation.

Before the rise of language, mythical cognition is imbedded in action and allows for the distinction between an object & a subject of experience by being conscious of the material, exteriorized schematics connecting both (cf. the myth of water & the sacred feminine in Ancient Egyptian Predynastic Gerzean ware-design).

The first differentiation occurs when, on the level of material, actual, immediate actions, the object is placed before the subject of experience. This emergence of subjectivity implies the decentration of the movements of the physical executive agent (the body), which unveils the subject as source of action and prepares for the interiorizations of pre-rational thought. By this foundational difference between the body & the empirical subject, consciousness can be attributed to a focus of identity (ego). 

Mythical thought is non-verbal but actional. Nevertheless, actions are triggered by a subject conscious of a whole network of practical and material actualizations, although without any conceptual knowledge but only through immediate, exteriorized material schemes. Hence ritual comes before narrative myth.

In terms of cognitive texture, mythical thought is the "irrational" foundation of ante-rationality. Indeed, the earliest layer of human cognitive activity is devoid of logical necessity, although patterns & schemes are present, but their flexibility and plasticity are a function of the direct environment and what happens there. There is no cognitive permanency. Action and its source are distinguished, but coordinations which suggest any reflection on the action itself (or on the actor) are absent. Hence, idiotic schemes are obsessively repeated. The "irrationality" being the total absence of means to communicate meaning in other ways than in immediate physical terms (offering something, going away, kicking the other, smiling, crying etc.). Nevertheless, the subject is conscious of being a source of action. There is a non-verbal sense of identity (the I-am-ness of the empirical ego).

Comments :

A tremendous leap forwards ensues. The formation of a subjective focus (at the end of the mythical phase of thought) is necessary to allow for the next step : interiorization, imagination and the actual articulation of pre-concepts, leading up to pre-relations between objects, but the latter remain psychomorph.

The reality of objects is always individualized or made subjective. Natural phenomena, stones, trees and animals "speak" just as do human subjects. Important objects are those with the strongest positive (attractive) subjective potential : family, teachers, ancestors, Divine kings, prophets, angels, Deities, God, etc. These "mediate" when pre-rationality fails to bridge the gap between what is stable (the architecture) & what constantly moves (the process).

Early Dynastic Egypt (ca. 3000 - 2.600 BCE) and the Old Kingdom (ca. 2600 - 2200 BCE) provide us with examples of pre-rational thought. The literary sources evidence a mode of thought less developed than the monumental record would suggest. Incredible motoric skills and organizational abilities were the building blocks of the Pharaonic Old Kingdom State. The link between linguistic abilities and cognitive structure is pertinent and fundamental.

Comments :

Thanks to transitivity, a formal system of concrete concepts arises. It is not combinatoric (but sequential) and not formal (abstract concept are not present). Concrete thoughts manipulate objects without reflecting upon the manipulation. The latter is stored as a function of its direct use, not in any overall, categorial, librarian or antiquarian fashion, although within a given manipulation a series may be present. The contextualism, pragmatism and use of the concrete concept is its stability.

Proto-rationality is always limited by a given context. Moreover, there is no reflection upon the conditions of subjectivity (just as in the pre-rational stage objects remained psychomorph). This contextualization leaves in place uncoordinated actions and concepts which are the expression of many serious (fundamental) contradictions.

With the advent in Ancient Egypt of the "classical" Middle Kingdom (ca. 1940 BCE), cognitive (literary) and motoric (architecture, art) attained a proto-rational equilibrium, as the Maxims of Good Discourse of Ptahhotep, the Instruction to Merikare and the Discourse between a man and his soul put into evidence.

4. RATIONAL THOUGHT :

The formal operations leave contextual entanglements behind, and give a universal, a-temporal embedding to the cognitive process through abstraction, categorization & linearization. Cognition is liberated from the immediate events and able to conceptualize logical & mathematical truths (deduction) as well as physical causalities in abstract terms, without any consideration for their actual occurrence, if any (cf. the inner thought-experiment). Thought is able to combine propositions.

However, although object and subject of thought are differentiated, and grasped as abstract parts in an epistemological inquiry about the origin of human knowledge, continuity and stability in the becoming and fluctuating world is found by projecting these conditions outward (instead of inward, i.e. as particular conditions on the side of the subject of experience), with idealism (Plato and the tradition of a subject without an object) and realism (Aristotle and the tradition of an object without a subject) as a result. The antinomies caused by these major set of solutions, have dominate pre-Kantian thought. Therefore, pre-critical rational thought is the first, somewhat primitive subphase of the mode of decontextualized conceptualization, as it were the infancy of reason.

The Greek miracle initiated the rational mode of thought. Indeed, by the end of the Dark Age (ca. 1100 - 750 BCE), the Greek cultural form had persistent "Aryan", Indo-European characteristics of its own :

• linearization : "Mycenæan megaron", "geometrical designs", mathematical form, peripteros ;

• anthropocentrism : warrior leaders, individual aristocrats, poets, "sophoi" and teachers ;

• fixed vowels : the categories of the "real" sound are written down & transmitted ;

• dialogal mentality : the Archaic Greeks enjoyed talking, writing & discussing (with strong arguments) ;

• undogmatic religion : the Archaic Greeks had no sacred books and hence no dogmatic orthodoxy ;

• cultural affirmation : the Archaic Greeks were a "young" people who needed to affirm their identity ;

• cultural approbation & improvement : the Archaic Greeks accepted to be taught and were eager to learn.

5. TRANSCENDENTAL THOUGHT :

When reflection upon the conditions of object and subject of thought happens and the internal, transcendental pre-conditions of the cognitive apparatus are discovered (cf. Rules, Prolegomena & Knowledge), a new mental world is opened up. The "natural" approach is over, and a new "transcendental" (not "transcendent" !) layer becomes active. This marks the birth of critical rational thought.

With the completion of the rational mode, and as soon as the conditions of the process of thought become the object of thought, a new conflict arises. The transcendental approach aims to understand the reflection of the process of thought on itself, as it were unveiling the ongoing operations of thought without disturbing the flow of empirical consciousness and its continuous cognitive, affective and motoric activity circumambulating an empirical ego. However, the transcendental "I think", placed at the heart of the whole edifice of transcendental inquiry, is formal and devoid of intellectual perception of itself.

The intellect integrates and unifies the two ideas of critical reason : the real (correspondence) and the ideal (consensus). Fed by the senses, the categories produce empirical-formal propositions, or statements of fact. This manifold is brought into focus by reason by means of these two ideas (which constitute the essential tension of reason) and their various categorial schemes. These mechanisms are discovered by transcendental thought.

6. CREATIVE THOUGHT :

According to Thomas Aquinas, metaphysics has its own mode of knowledge, ascribed to what he called the "intellectus". This mode captures one single truth, and implies a direct, immediate intake of knowledge which differs from the mediate ways to gather it. So "ratio" (related to science) and "intellect" were divided. Metaphysics offers a unique synthetical, intellectual insight regarding being-as-such. But Thomas (like Kant), denied reason its "terminus". A direct knowledge of what lies outside the "ratio" was deemed impossible. It was Nicolas of Cusa who introduced the famous expression "intuitio intellectualis" to define the direct knowledge of an evident truth.

To experience the unity of apperception as an active, dynamical and creative Self, is, ex hypothesi, a prehension of the unique, individual ideas of the immanent Self of each individual, i.e. the true observer. To witness these ideas is the origin of all creativity and also the fundamental completion of the individualizing cognitive process, for this wholeself is the intuitional stepping-stone to the non-verbal, unknowing, ineffable "special knowledge" of poets and mystics alike.

The Self-ideas witnessed in the creative mode of thought thirst for manifestation and succeed through intellectual flashes of insight to inspire, initiate & engage new, creative activities of reason. Although immanent metaphysics works with arguable statements, and in tune with the unification reason seeks (namely that of understanding), the own-form of creativity of every actual entity in general and of human beings in particular, i.e. their specific form of definiteness, escapes reason and belongs to the ontological Self. Hence, insofar as immanent metaphysics tries to objectify man (in a possible speculative anthropology), it cannot do away the real ideal Self of every individual, the "soul" of consciousness. The realization of this (higher, more aware) Self being the conditio sine qua non for every truly creative act, whether occasional or sustained over long periods of time. The true observer, a Self different from the empirical ego and its wanderings, is more than "of all times". Here a hidden, invisible and intimate inner ontological stratum is delved deeper into. Intuitional philosophers do accommodate the creative ideas of the Self and are thus able to witness, from the vantage point of the true observer, the latent possibilities of consciousness and its potency to expand its creative and inventive horizon.

7. UNITIVE THOUGHT :