Not Only the Theologian – Everybody uses metaphors within analogies to build cross-domain conceptual bridges
We’re often trying to explain effects as would seem to be proper to no known causes. We do this all the time in our quotidian existence as well as ubiquitously in our theoretical sciences.
Often, we’ll use metaphors within analogies to build cross-domain conceptual bridges. We’ll thereby use combined abductive-inductive inferences to argue proportionalities between familiar & novel or unknown realities.
The higher the degree of inductive testing available & involved, the closer we can come to realizing a sufficient degree of explanatory adequacy. Otherwise, the conceptual bridges built by our analogies remain exploratory heuristics, which will vary in degrees of uberty & security.
There seems to be a real tendency among many philosophers & scientists to imagine that they’ve achieved explanatory adequacy across physical reality’s emergent domains, to declare various patterns like thermodynamic, informational & biological entropies – not just analogous, but – homologous in origin.
Such explanatory pretense is especially true in emergentist thought, where weak emergence is paired with strong supervenience and vice versa. It seems to me, though, that physical reality’s major emergent aporias resist such facile assertions, which, on one hand, can be rather trivial, otoh, totally question begging.
For example, I’m referring to the normalization of the quantum & gravity; the origins of life from the physical & chemical; the origins of sentience & conscious experience of qualia; the origins of symbolic language, nonalgorithmic freedom & genuine teloi.
I don’t urge such aporetic sensibilities with a metaphysics or theology of the gaps agenda, but to argue against premature foreclosures on valuable research programs, over against the conceit, for example, of “consciousness explained.”
Regarding theological possibilities, when we do use our combined abductive-inductive inferences to argue proportionalities between the familiar & putative transcendent realities, the semantical freights carried by our metaphors & analogies with their literal references can logically warrant a sufficient degree of existential actionability. Think in terms of James’ options – forced, vital & live.
Will we continue to look over our shoulders at our various leaps of faith across all types of explanatory aporias with our variously overlapping magisteria? That does seem to be our lot in terms of our epistemic distancing which remains in infinite potency to all that’s good, beautiful & true, i.e. the logoi of relative perfections which process ex Deo from the Logos, Who is, Himself, Goodness, Beauty & Truth.
Asides
By a conjoint free decision the Trinity gradually brings creation into existence.
Does God roll dice?
Sure.
But He also designed them, determining – not only how many sides they’ll have, but – what’s on each side.
No side includes a rational free rejection of God or ECT.
What is “the past” and has it happened yet? Is all becoming necessarily temporal? Did physical reality’s initial, boundary & limit conditions bring about time or were they conditioned by time?
B/c the phenomenological seriality of physical reality possibly transcends time, we best reimagine & explore, in ways directly analogous to these physical becomings, how it is that cosmogonic, metaphysical & theological causes could bring about various series of events?
Beyond “how” they might work, we best explore what they might “mean” – protologically, soteriologically & eschatologically – when we use concepts like essential & accidentally ordered series, cause & effect, arche & telos, temporal & eternal, restoration & apokatastenai?
More concretely, regarding physical reality’s initial, boundary & limit conditions, I’m suggesting that, speculatively, our cosmic origin accounts remain weakly & vaguely plausibilistic (not at all robustly probabilistic).
Specifically, we don’t yet know whether physical reality’s necessarily
volumetrically in/finite,
geometrically un/bounded or un/closed,
topologically un/re/curved,
temporalized spatially or spatialized temporally,
essentially or emergently spatio-temporal,
a/symmetric,
essentially non/inflationary,
quasi/exponentially expansionary,
dimensionally 2/3/4/more-D,
homo/hetero/genous,
an/isotropic,
uni/multi/versial,
with dimension/less physical constancy,
with non/universal constancy,
nomologically im/mutable, etc
A Freedom & Determination Heuristic — nature’s emergent origins & all that jazz!
While a tad counterintuitive, in many ways, higher degrees of essential determination make possible greater degrees of existential freedom.
Complexity “Rules”
Nature’s Emergent Freedoms & Determinations
1) fields (quantum): veldopoietic – teleopotent
2) cosmoi: cosmopoietic – teleomatic
3) life: biopoietic – teleonomic
4) consciousness: sentiopoietic – teleoqualic
5) language: sapiopoietic & teleologic
B/c rational creatures enjoy higher degrees of abductive instinct, the fast & frugal heuristics of our abductive inferences are more flexible & behavioral responsivity, more plastic. The more automated a creature’s essential adaptations, the more autonomous its improvisations.
Dys/Functional Patterns of Interactivity
low amplitude – low frequency = apathetic indifference
high amplitude – high frequency = pathetic interference
low frequency – high amplitude = sympathetic interventions
low amplitude – high frequency = empathetic influence
These patterns of interactivity are ubiquitous & apply to pest control strategies, parenting, co-dependency, etc Might they emulate competing models of divine interactivity? apathetic deism? pathetic theo-determinism?
sympathetic & empathetic incarnational? prayer efficacies?
