After nearly two years of heavy-duty entries exploring ways of updating Thomistic existentialism to account for modern empirical knowledge, I’ve started to move on in some ways, continuing this general task but trying to reach deeper. Specifically, I’m struggling to learn more of modern physics that I might better tackle metaphysical issues of being and space and time. One of the future goals would be the development of ways of speaking more clearly about causality and freedom. As always, I’ll claim a true meta-physics must be that, it must build upon the best physics available. In my updated Thomistic existentialism, all created being has a common origin in the Primordial Universe which is the manifestation of the truths God chose for Creation. If we can properly abstract from physics its most general principles, we’ll have a core of principles which correspond to certain aspects of being. Among those principles will be those which speak of physical causation which is clearly important to questions of moral freedom, determination, moral responsibility, etc. But we also need to have principles which speak of the general nature of created being, principles which must be consistent with modern empirical knowledge, which after all describes certain aspects of certain phases of created being.
One of my goals is to find ways of speaking about causality, freedom, and related matters in terms that are consistent with what we know of this universe and with what we know of the nature of that unique animal called man. It’s actually more important to first reach a firm understanding of the stuff of which we’re formed and of the universe, the totality of being in this phase of Creation. Tentatively, we can set this plan:
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The human mind is formed as it responds to its environments. The conjecture that a rational universe exists will allow that mind to respond to the universe as a whole, potentially shaping itself as an encapsulation of that rational entirety. If that mind sees that cosmos or universe as part of a Creation of a rational God, that mind will be able to see that universe as a morally ordered narrative, what I call a world.
We have a duty to properly form our minds by way of appropriate responses to reality. This doesn’t mean all human beings have to be physicists or meta-physicists. A farmer who truly inhabits his farm, nurturing the human beings in his household, the cattle and poultry in his barns, and the soil and plants in his fields is shaping his mind properly in response to God’s Creation.
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A truer moral freedom is largely dependent upon a solid body of knowledge and a mind capable of working with that knowledge. Each part of the body plays its role in such a task of building a new understanding of God’s Creation, a task which — if successful — will lead to a new phase of Western Civilization. Physicists contribute empirical knowledge about the nature of being in this universe and speculative knowledge about the being from which this universe was shaped. Metaphysicians speculate beyond the range of physics, but subject to the discipline of the knowledge of physics. Theologians, poets, politicians, and many others play their part in bringing this understanding of being into concrete cultures: language and customs and institutional forms and so forth.
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The above two items are opposite sides of the same coin. We need to understand our universe and from that understanding we can maybe attain a greater understanding of the entirety of Creation. We also need to shape our minds in response to God’s Creation. By way of a complex movement involving both of these tasks, we can begin to see the coin as an entirety and realize that a properly formed human mind, simple or intellectual, is one formed to think the thoughts which God manifested in this world, the thoughts God wishes us to share with Him.
The end result of this project will not be a bottom-up explanation of our situation in terms of basic physical forces but rather an understanding of created being in general. Though this greater understanding will eventually be squeezed into textbook form, it will actually be realized in properly formed human minds and in the structures and content of one or more human civilizations which I believe to be in embryonic forms. This effort isn’t an academic exercise but rather part of a creative movement towards a new phase of Western Civilization.
If we’re successful in moving towards those new civilizations, we’ll likely see new possibilities for dealing with our personal and social moral problems. We’ll see new possibilities for building moral forms of human life, new realizations of concrete human communities. For example, we might come to some understanding of the way that systems organize themselves. From this necessarily abstract understanding of systems, we might be able to gain some greater moral control over the various large-scale organizations of which we’re part.