If Epistemology Models Ontology, then a Scotistic-Peircean Meta-heuristic Implicates a Neochalcedonian Christology & Maximian Cosmology
or why my pan-semio-entheism conditioned me to readily embrace Jordan Daniel Wood's interpretation of Maximus
Hypostatic logic gifts us a speculative grammar of identity, a vague modal ontology or semiotic meta-heuristic but not a robustly explanatory metaphysic.
It does a lot more naming than explaining.
Ontologically, it's more about bracketing than bridging.
To wit:
Theories of "idiomata" suggest that we can employ certain bundles of properties to successfully NAME certain realities even when we can't otherwise EXPLAIN them.
Appeals to "perichoresis" suggest THAT certain realities generate their own opposites, while grounding their identities in those very differences as mutually constitutive entities but need not specify HOW.
Our conceptions of ontological "participation" recognize that novel aboutnesses often emerge in reality. They are novel in the sense that they often present as effects proper to no known causes & participative in the sense that - with respect to those unknown causes, because we're often able to at least successfully analogize them - we can reasonably infer THAT there must be various types & degrees of metaphysical dis/continuity between such emergent aboutnesses, even though, in terms of WHATness, they may intractably resist epistemic reduction (essentially, formally or naturally).
Regarding hypostatic THISness, whether in terms of a Scotistic haecceity or Peircean actuality ("secondness"), we affirm that our recognition of concrete entities primarily involves distinct HOWnesses, the identities of which are grounded, foremost, in terms of mutually constituted opposites/other entities, i.e. prior to & even irreducible & indifferent to any attributions of essence, form or nature, hence, as brute THISnesses, then, secondarily, individualized in particular terms of in/determinate instantiations of universals (always immanent).
For anyone engaged in speculative cosmology, a normative metaphysical impetus will suggest itself, because the logic imparted by this particular architectonic (or meta-heuristic) entails its own speculative grammar, especially as implicated in its peculiar definitions of idiomata, perichoresis, participation, hypostasis & haecceity.
The speculative takeaways for me include, epistemically:
1) emergence without supervenience;
2) a fallibilist, pragmatic, semiotic realism even when both epistemic & ontological reduction elude us, whether due to methodological constraints or in-principle ontological occultings;
3) hypostatic primacy;
4) identities grounded in differences as mutually constituted ententional-absential realities, cf Peircean heuristics explicated in Terry Deacon's neuroscientific oeuvre.
Turning to the practical science of theology, might such a meta-heuristic gift us any normative justifications for our unavoidable Kierkegaardian leaps, Pascalian wagers, Jamesian forced options, Hegelian mediations, Bulgakovian embodied antinomies, those existential disjunctions where we choose to "live as if" one or another vital & live option is true?
One such normatively justified leap indeed comes to mind, especially if our epistemology sufficiently models ontology.
The meta-heuristic set forth above lends itself well to naturalistic accounts, for example, as Peirce & Deacon have both been well appropriated for nontheistic hermeneutics by many. That demonstrates, I believe, its heuristic facility even sans an ontology.
The normatively justified leap that I have always taken is that of attributing the hypostatic property of Scotistic haecceity & Peircean bruteness to the fact that Being, itself, ultimately diffuses ex Deo from a nondeterminate, groundless Ens Necessarium, accessible to us only because, at the same time, it's also a self-determinate reality that’s both hypostatic & supremely personal.
The historical theological formula that most resonates, ontologically, with my own Scotistic-Peircean epistemic heuristic is the Neochalcedonian hypostatic logic of "that which exist in itself," where personal identities are mutually constituted and persons nondeterminately exemplify and/or in/determinately instantiate reality's universals (immanent).
Finally, another takeaway, especially from the definitions of key terms offered hereinabove, our conceptions of idiomata, perichoresis, participation, hypostasis & haecceity, and even persons, remain indefinite & imprecise, properly respecting their depth dimensions as unfathomable mysteries, which allow us to swim in their infinite meanings though forever unable to swallow such an ocean of being, i.e. love. That vagueness & generality, though, has innoculated us from proving too much. Thus, these Christological, anthropological & cosmological contours, radical as they may first sound to some, are really much more modest than they first appear. For example, they go beyond -not without - the analogia entis. They don’t pretend to resolve philosophies of mind, at least, not beyond an obvious affirmation of immaterial realities & formal causations, an affirmation that has increasingly become (been rehabilitated) common sensical even among nontheists. And they certainly don’t reduce to pantheisms or determinisms even though defensibly weakening strict conceptions of divine simplicity.
Yet, there are practical upshots to get excited about, for example, each person’s radical solidarity with cosmotheandric reality. For another example - the radical intimacy of divine presences, both universally & pneumatologically as well as particularly, sacramentally & Christologically. This is all eminently consoling to me and also gifts me enhanced missiological impetus as especially Good News.
Speaking of good news, above all, the identity thesis, hereinabove, which mutually constitutes each person with ALL persons, suggests that, necessarily & somehow, ALL SHALL BE SAVED!