Causality and Temporality: An Uneven Relation

Causality presupposes temporality---allow me to give an example: in searching for a cause of something, its arche, principle or beginning each account given includes time---same for astrophysics as biblical narratology; namely as seen in Big Bang Cosmology and in Genesis. Every quest for causality, to give an account, or reason for anything and everything; quasars, chipmunks, clouds, wars, etc...To ask  for its cause is to ask for a temporal account.

But temporality does not presuppose causality---this fine irony, this  disconnect, this uneven relation should be considered very carefully! All metaphysics and natural sciences are based upon these architectonic principles---and yet what has been left unthought is the unevenness for their relation. Causal accounts (logoi based upon archai and aitia (beginnings, principles and origins---all sense of the term cause---to give a reason is a to give a type of cause). Moreover, what is commonly known as reason and reasonability presupposes causality and in doing so  all the more presupposes temporality but temporality does not presuppose or "precede" causality.

One begins with temporality tout court, it is the ground.

The temporal sense of the Big Bang Cosmology enters when one reaches the idea of the Big Bang itself as an originator of temporal phenomenality in the cosmos. One naturally seeks an account of the cause of this purported 'first cause' but to no avail. Would you like Father George Le Maitre, physicist, philosopher, priest, and professor at Louvain University in Belgium conceive the Big Bang theory to give an account for God's creative fiat act: Let there be light.

Hence we must next consider the Genesis narrative. Big Bang Theory at least in Le Maitre's conception, presupposes God's Creative act. He is merely giving a physical, scientific account for what Genesis describes.

Notice the absurdity (groundlessness) of asking well what happened before the Big Bang, which yet presupposes a causal regress in search of a cause for the origin of temporality itself.  St. Augustine has presented this precise dilemma in a charming story in his Confessions: he comes upon a boy playing on the beach and he observes this little boy fetching and taking a cup of water and pouring this into a hole in the sand on the beach. Naturally the philosopher and phenomenologist asks: what are you doing little boy? "I am putting the ocean in to this hole in the sand!" Augustine said, "That's absurd!"

"No more absurd than you attempting to ask: What was God doing before he created the universe?"

Augustine tells this charming story in order to highlight the absurdity of asking for a temporal or causal account for the origin of time itself.

Well, we have been lead to a number of impasses (aporiai) here: time accounts for cause but cause cannot account for time. This is the uneven relation.

The Big Bang theory ends up being derivative from the Genesis account or at least we can say that the account given (this theory, this logos) ends up in a fundamental impasse---just as one can not pry beneath or before the first instant of time, and this is the case in both the Big Bang and Genesis accounts. One may ask which account is more adequate to the truth---the answer is as follows---for whatever account is given as the account of the origin of the universe, no matter how effectively the Big Bang theory accounts for subsequent temporality and spatial dimensionality, the scientific account resolves into a fatal, causal regress---it reveals a fundamental impasse for thinking the quest for cause ends with time as the ultimate logos of phenomenality, but no causal account can be given for time's coming-to-pass since all that cames-to-pass comes to pass temporally. It is therefore absurd and contradictory to attempt to describe "preconditions" of the Big Bang event--it is as absurd as Augustine's charming story of the little boy who would put the sea into a hole in the sand. So at least in this account---there is a principle to account for the coming-to-pass of the universe but one meets here the end of reason. and Not in a trivial way but the absolute limit of reason, reason being the giving of an account for the being of things as cause. Yes, both God's 'Fiat lux' as well as the Big Bang event give quasi-reasonable accounts for grounding the true account of the beginning of the universe in a first cause. Both accounts possess merit and yet, the Genesis account succeeds more both in terms of adequacy and in terms of economy (Occam's Razor: do not multiply entities without necessity))  because a narrative account offers an account of the creation of the universe without presupposing a causal regression into infinity. It does so thanks to a transcendence that Augustine identifies---One does not ask what God was doing before He Created the universe because the very notion of God is a a dynamic, living being, who is fully Person, and who speaks the universe into being.And this brings us back exactly to where we begin our inquiry today.

"Todayness is a point that punctuates infinity, " writes Robert Archer Smith. God's hic et nunc, God's presence is eternal, that is not temporal---George Le Maitre's Big Bang Theory reminds us that all causality can be provided for the universe save for the unique preconditions to the origin itself. One might say the universe is just there without any cause, But since reason is evidently the same as giving a cause for the coming-to-be of anything---its seems counterproductive to guarantee the coming into being of the entire material universe with a principle that in itself is not reasonable or susceptible to the use of reason as giving cause which science presupposes. Nonetheless this is precisely the absurd impasse that Big Bang Cosmology brings us to---the Big Bang event just happened and no further account can be given, no additional why. One may assert: Well that's the way it is with Genesis as well---its narrative presupposes God.

Of the two----nothingness (abyss) and God, the latter is a more adequate account for the coming-into-being of the material universe. And indeed, as was Father LeMaitre's intention, it is to conflate both accounts. Thus the ideal account may include aspects of Big Bang Cosmology but only insofar as this cosmology rests with a transcendent, living and personal Creator, whose evidence is still present even now as I say "I am writing," and my reader says "I am reading this." To say 'I am' is evidence of the presence of the living, personal God whose creative act grounds reason and causal accounts of the coming to be of the universe. It grounds the causal regress of reason in a transcendent personal 'I am"---thus what survives the Big Bang as it were is not only the physical universal process, is eternity. The hic et nunc of the Creator remains---my personal act of coming to awareness of this presence is the substance and evidence of unchanging eternity. But the universe always arrives to a somebody in todayness. Dear reader, it is the same with our today. This present moment spearheads todayness, the same today in which God speaks the universe: I am aware of this God's day! I give thanks for this awareness. Giving thanks is the adequate response to this gift of today which stretches all the way back, hic et nunc, to the Divine 'Fiat lux'. 15 billion Light Years ago, or five seconds ago. All of these times are held together and contained in one time this is todayness!

The Relation of Level of Soul and human understanding

This idea came to me today---I do not know how to express it---at risk of being confused I will just try to write the idea---sketch it.

Pardon me if I make preliminary remark:
The background I expect of my reader: a basic knowledge of Aristotle's book on the soul (De Anima)---and in particular, the insight that souls are purely figurative and allegorical---it is the best approximation or adequation of human knowing to the actual state of affairs under inquiry. The actual essence and truth concerning the soul can never be stated simply because it is the soul that is doing the thinking in the first place. The correct order of the investigation is hence, "I am I find myself first of in thinking---this act of thinking is evidence  of a truth that may be expressed verbally but I am not under the illusion that my account is the substantive truth of the actual phenomenal evidence --- the truth is the source and beginning of my investigation---it is the awakening of this question which begins the move of thinking toward understanding.

Be this as it may: it is soul that gives understanding to human beings---this phenomenal act is is not a thing, we must not hypostasize it---it is not somehow imbedded in algorithms, quanta, or neural connectivity or any materialistic reduction of the act of understanding which dear reader may I remind you that you too are engaged hic et nunc in the act of understanding that is, reading with understanding!

Understanding rises as it were from the level of the mineral through the vegetative and into the animal or mammal soul. It is also evident that in the material world---certain animals possess capacities that are not shared equally amongst all levels of soul---for example the worm has a far greater capacity to move than does a mineral, though there may be 'movement' even at the level of the mineral---think of the crystal's glacially slow movement---if soul means the cause of motion within a particular kind of being---the human being moves toward the store because he or she has decided to get a 6 pack of beer----the worm moves as it were blindly wriggling its way toward ??? the amoebic protoplasm moves away from a toxic chemical injected into its environs. The 'principle of motion' is what Aristotle calls 'psukhe' which is rendered in latin as 'anima'----motion starts, has a cause, begins---but how? It is different in each case and each case must be considered carefully and individually in order to be understood properly. (The proper method for the study of nature is analog observations using eyes and ears---the method is phenomenological---one describes the coming to be of that which is coming to be and passing away.

You read this essay and you can take my word as evidence of my honesty but at the end of the day you know and understand the truth not because you read it in this essay, it is true because you may obtain evidence of the same phenomenal truth by conducting the same method of investigation where all substantives are held at bay, methodically---Husserl called this 'bracketing'---when I mentioned above that I am using the term 'soul' and yet I am not hypostasizing this soul as a thing---it is not a thing! It is the soul that first of is thinking, that is conducting this investigation. The act of thinking is immediately present from the very beginning of any inquiry I dare to make in to whatever realm of understanding nature, the soul is coextensive with any investigation whatsoever. This is what Thomas Aquinas means by saying "the soul is in some sense all things." All of this by way of introduction.


Now here is the insight that I had this morning: the meaning of human existence is not to be found on "higher" levels of the soul. Meaning arises as understanding does---from below. It begins in the nascent cosmos be it 15 billion light years or right now in the eye's next blink. Understanding in a simple way manifests itself as order in a crystalline formation, evidence of a "mineral soul"?
But charting the "ascent" of higher levels of reasoning through primitive mineral levels, up through the vegetative soul and up to the mammal soul, finally to the level of the human soul.One familiar with Teilhard de Chardin's book called the Phenomenon of Man can grasp this easily. The insight of this morning is that understanding and meaning arises from the "lower" souls' (mammal, vegetable, mineral, and as many more as there may be. It is not necessary to seek a transcendent source of thinking---the earth thinks man through and through!

Realism:The Principle of Exigency

I learned the term 'exigency' from Robert Archer Smith in our peripatetic discussions in the mid- 80s in Seattle, when I was an undergraduate studying the field of psychology as a bachelor of science. As I understand it now the prime objective of Mr. Smith's 'principle of exigency' was to think through physics to truth.  Although there are different ways of stating the principle the basic idea is that things cannot be otherwise than what they are.

What at first seems to be cryptic or even simpleminded in exigency when pondered deeply gives way to a fine elegance as sharp as Ockham's razor. It also dispels us of any notion that there is caprice in the universal order---Cosmos Today. The probabilistic and statistical methods of quantum mechanics set truth and reality into perpetual drift---one need not look far to realize the deleterious consequences of probability in the practical and moral domains of human life. Within a century probability and statistical science have triumphed as the primary method of access to knowledge of any type. And though this has given the fruit of technical manipulation and so-called technical success, it has de-centered the human knower from the fundamental urge to know and understand reality. Truth is set adrift.

Old fashioned as it may seem, my entire intellectual effort has been spent in the pursuit of true knowledge and truth. Having been thoroughly schooled in modern science as well as in statistics, I have met with dissatisfaction, not so much with  the scientific dogmas and theories but with the fact that these avenues do not yield truth. Truth must be banished or at least 'postponed' in the quest for probable knowledge. To my mind this is unsatisfactory as the coherency of human understanding is rendered obscure on account of probable physics.

As is well known I have a powerful ally in the greatest of 20th century physicists---Albert Einstein who correctly stated that "God does not play dice with the universe." Indeed, the universe is 'measured', thoroughly finite, this is its principle of order, its proportion. It is 'kosmiotes kosmos' meaning well-ordered cosmos and not some random design.

That the universe is well-ordered is evident to our senses---a single phenomenon of beauty reveals this--the falling leaf, the leaping fish. A poetry of truth! The fact of natural beauty--this very blustery february day---reveals---if not design, at least a phenomenal beauty. If one begins with the fact of phenomenal beauty and then asks: a) what must the universe be like that the phenomenon of beauty is true? and b) How is it possible that the phenomenon of beauty is grasped? and c)how do these two "orders" work in ensemble?

As a matter of fact there are not two orders (the "objective"-the being-true of the phenomenon and the "subjective"-the grasp of the being-true) but only one---the poetic grasp of the beauty of the falling snow which I see is given together with the fact that it is snowing this morning. It is exigent---were it not possible that I could grasp or have a poetic grasp of today; or, were it possible that today could not be present to me, then I could not claim to have seen the beauty of the falling snow today. But I have seen it! And I testify to the truth of this!

Going farther and to state in somewhat crude and primitive expression, things must be what they are and the observer must be in such a way that the ensemble is coherent. And the phenomenon  of beauty demonstrates that this is not merely probable but actual.

Robert Archer Smith's physics of light is to my understanding the 'object side' which answers the question: How must the universe be (physics) such that truth is possible? And my inquiry into Realist Psychology is the 'subject side' which answers the question: How is the truth of the universe knowable? These two questions are as it were two sides of a coin---in this analogy, the coin is the given fact of beauty---this birch tree, this crystalline snowflake. How is the universe ordered such that I grasp the phenomenon and how is it possible that I grasp this phenomenon?

Beginning with what is revealed Today as the primordial fact and fundament of my inquiry, indeed the truth of today--how is this set of affairs possible? This inquiry is the way of exigency!

Chaos today not cosmos today  reigns in all aspects of human affairs in the contemporary regime---it is so to speak a cockamamey world. It does not require a great deal of intellect to observe that the world has lost its marbles! Politics, medicine, science, academia, religion have all gone astray---to the thinking mind, it is chaos and nonsense. And yet as I gaze through my window in the early morning light I see the beautiful snow falling. I vow to take the beauty that I see and to proclaim this as truthful. This is my quest and my mission and I will persist in it as long as I take my breath as Socrates bravely said. I will not stop thinking and searching for an adequate expression of this truth until death forces me to stop!

Now I ponder the scientific and political world that surrounds me---I see that in all of its essentials---IT IS WRONG. Now I ponder the nature that surrounds me---IT IS GOOD. I realize the Herculean task that greets the lover of beauty and truth in any age but especially in this "world gone wrong." This world must be overthrown intellectually. The Monarchical sway of probability must be beheaded, education and science must be seen for what they are---IGNORANCE. Here I stand, my archimedean point is the snowflake. If it is not worth dying for then it is not worth living for.

Realist Psychology: The Startlingly Simple Starting Point

My eyes see and in seeing directly know what is seen. If there is a skeptic, I ask: at what point does the seeing end and the knowing begin? However, this difficult question might be resolved, this much is clear---that in the initial act of seeing, the lion's share of knowing has already been accomplished. Visual grasping does the lion's share of knowing and understanding. This is the starting point of Realist Psychology.

Things are Exactly as They Appear to Be

My father used to often remark that "things are never what they seem to be". This remark usually referred to a conundrum or disppointment in my social life, something not working out---the best guy not getting the position or job, etc.. Things are not what they appear to be is a wise remark. However, I say that things are exactly as they are (that is, as they appear to be).

Realist Psychology begins with the actual fact or thing, and asks how must the universe be that such a phenomenon is possible. For example, a chipmunk scurries quickly across my porch. Call it a phenomenon, a scurrying four-legged mini-mammal---in other words attempt to decompose the experience of the 'chipmunk' to other substrates or ingredients in an effort to better grasp the chipmunk. One can see that the vast domains of scientific inquiry whether in isolation or in terms of systematic inquiry (quantum mechanics, neuroscience, cybernetics, bioevolution---or the integral synthesis of all of these meta-theories), all proceed toward a goal of better understanding of the phenomenon via analysis. But I say that the total grasp of a given phenomenon cannot be enhanced one iota by turning away from the thing.

For example, I am looking at a candle. This event occurs now. I am reporting this event. I have this experience---the truth of this candle along with an immediate grasping of the candle with nothing left over---the truth only manifests to human beings in now moments.

Almost without exception philosophers and scientists, phenomenologists, theologians, neuroscientists and quantum physicists in the present era all move away (above, below, supra, infra, outside, beyond, within, etc...) from the given thing in order to 'better' explain this thing. This has been a constant and constitutive theme of modern psychology. There is the assumption that decomposition of a thing better reveals the truth of this thing, as for example, this candle is "better" understood as wax, fire and wick, and brass candlestick, and so on... And wax is "better" understood molecularly, and the experience of the candle is "better" understood as a neuroscientific event, and that the synthesis of knowing this candlelight is better grasped through quantum mechanics.

Descartes moved away from the experience of the candle wax through "imaginative counterfactual". He also employed a 'paranoid' consciousness, that things are not what they seem to be ('le malin genie')---brilliant literary trope! Philosophy? No. The modern experience of pychology initiates wthis turning away from truth which is actually prior to 'ego cogito'---thus ending the medieval realist psychology.

Theologians also move away from the phenomenon in an effort to better grasp or explain how the phenomenon and experience of the candlelight is better grasped through a theology of transcendent creation (either before, or simultaneous). It does no such thing! It is not by turning to the past or the future, nor by turning outward (macro) or inward (macro) in space, that one discovers the truth. The truth does not need to be abandoned in its immediate primacy in the here and now, as it is revealed in common sense. St. Augustine seems to be on the right track here---with his 'transcende te ipsum': "Do not go outside. Return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth. If you find that you are by nature mutable, transcend yourself!" [Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, transcende te ipsum. De Vera Religione]

The truth of the candle's unique being is not improved through any such effort, whether scientific, theological, or cybernetic. The very truth of the candle is given entirely in the experience with the candle.

The only legitimate task for science is as follows: to ask how is it possible that things appear to be as they are and not otherwise? This is the direction we take in Realist Psychology.

Several deductions are valid.
#1 Truth appears.
#2 Truth appears now.
#3 Truth appears to a human being (evenso, there is no reason to imagine that other mammals do not grasp the truth of acorns, wet branches in a tree, etc...).
#4 Ontology: the universe is composed of 'real' things, and the universe itself is 'real'.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here we have an adequate beginning point: this day and the trees and hills and rabbits precisely as they are (as they appear to us) [this so called modern/phenomenological distinction between things being and appearing is not valid, honest or truthfull]. This chipmunk is grasped immediately as 'this chipmunk'!

We are not saying that scientific analysis fails to give more data or information about the litle rodent, it most certainly does, but in each step it moves away from the truth of seeing the chipmunk---it looks away from the truth! It discovers new realities such as atoms, molecules, quantum numbers, etc... And each of these newly grasped truths are real. But each one in its own present is revealed. One does not simultaneously grasp the apple at the same time that one grasps the apple's molecular composition. Truth can only be grasped directly by looking at real things. Only one real thing appears at a time! So the molecular account of an apple's material being is precisely that: a true account of the molecular being of an apple. But the initial apple is still precisely this: an apple. Certainly, the empirical scientist discovers new 'facts' through an analytic interrrogation of the phenomenon. Actually multiplying entities without necessity violating Ockam's law. So then instead of a chipmunk we have chipmunk=experience of (neurons, optical perception, ego) chipmunk (4 legged miniature mammal, belongs to rodent family, etc., etc.) an this goes on ad infinitum but never gets back to exactly this chipmunk!

Nor is the truth of this little beast finally re-constructed in a grand meta-narrative such as Sociobiology or Quantum Mechanics or any other type of Systematics.