C. The
following adds to the previous Units’ discussion of human trans-materiality by
examining five transcendent desires (which reveal five kinds of transcendent
awareness): the desire for perfect and unconditional truth, love, justice/goodness,
beauty, and home. These five kinds of transcendent desire (and
awareness) distinguish human consciousness from animal consciousness, and
explain why humans have creative capacity beyond preset rules, algorithms, and
programs (Gödel’s proof), and why human beings have a natural propensity toward
the spiritual and transcendent.
The
eminent geneticist Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project,
expresses a similar insight:
As
the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists
to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA
instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all
living things, as God’s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own
bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God’s plan. …Can you both
pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and
molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren’t evolution and faith in God
incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?
Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of
working scientists who claim to be believers. I have found there is a
wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of
the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or
in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation,
science can actually be a means of worship.
If
the human genome can be viewed as the language of God, then human beings can be
viewed as the consummate expression of that language, and it is not unwarranted
to say, from a scientific and faith perspective, that human beings are made in
the image of God (Gen 1:27 – “So God created man in His own image, in the image
of God He created him; male and female He created them”).
Bernard
Lonergan expresses it as follows:
It
is only when [animals’] functioning is disturbed that they enter into
consciousness. Indeed, not only is a large part of animal living nonconscious,
but the conscious part itself is intermittent. Animals sleep. It is as though
the full-time business of living called forth consciousness as a part-time
employee, occasionally to meet problems of malfunctioning, but regularly to deal
rapidly, effectively, and economically with the external situations in which
sustenance is to be won and into which offspring are to be born. … ¶ When the
object fails to stimulate, the subject is indifferent; and when nonconscious
vital process has no need of outer objects, the subject dozes and falls asleep.
In
stark contrast to this, when human beings run out of biological opportunities
and dangers, they frequently ask questions, seek purpose or meaning in life,
contemplate beauty, think about the goodness (or imperfections) of their
beloveds, think about unfairness or injustice and how to make their situation
or the world better, and even think about mathematics, physics, philosophy, and
theology – for their own sake. When human beings run out of biological
opportunities and dangers, they generally do not fall asleep; they engage in
what Plato and his followers (the neo-Platonists) called “transcendental activities.”
These activities reveal the specialness of human beings, which makes them
deserving of special value.
The
neo-Platonists identified five areas of transcendental activity (termed “the
five transcendentals”): the awareness of and desire for truth,
love, goodness/justice, beauty, and Being/home. They are called
“transcendental” because they all seem to have a limitless horizon,
and human beings seem to be aware of their limitless possibilities, and seem to
desire their perfect (limitless) fulfillment.
Interestingly,
this claim is corroborated in the domain of mathematics by Kurt Gödel (in the
famous theorem named after him). He anticipated the limits of artificial
intelligence which are defied by human intelligence on a regular basis.
Essentially, Gödel showed that there will always be unprovable propositions
within any set of axiomatic statements in mathematics. Human beings
are able not only to show that consistent, unprovable statements exist, but
also to prove that they are consistent by making recourse to axioms beyond
those used to generate these statements. Artificial intelligence is incapable
of doing this. This reveals that human thinking is not based on a set of
prescribed axioms, rules, or programs, and is, by nature, beyond
such prescribed rules and programs.[7]
If
one is to deny this transmaterial dimension, one will simply have to ignore the
stark differences between animal and human consciousness; to ignore human
awareness of limitless horizons of truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and
Being/home; to ignore the remarkable properties of human creativity explicated
by Gödel; and to ignore the natural human capacity to seek a transcendent God.
If one feels uncertain about writing off this body of evidence, then it is unjustifiable
to rush into materialistic reductionism, naïve identifications of animal
and human intelligence, and a denial of the human capacity for
self-transcendence. But if one stops short of these simplistic positions, one
remains open to the specialness of human beings, and therefore
open to their special value.
I. The Desire for
Perfect and Unconditional Truth
In
his famous work Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,[ Bernard Lonergan presents an argument substantiating the
existence of our desire for (and awareness of) perfect and unconditional truth
(which he terms “complete intelligibility”). The argument may be set out in
seven steps:
(1)
Lonergan begins with the frequently experienced phenomenon of asking further
questions immediately upon arriving at answers. This ability to continuously
ask questions reveals our awareness that an answer is incomplete; that it does
not explain “everything about everything
(2) Lonergan affirms that he has a pure
unrestricted desire to know, that is, he desires to know all that is to be
known; and that he has the capacity to ask further questions when he has not
yet grasped “all that is to be known.”
(3)
It would seem that I would have to have some awareness (at least a tacit
awareness) of “all that is to be known” sufficient to know that whatever I have
grasped has not yet met this objective.
This
applies to every area of inquiry and every field of knowledge, and I would know
if my idea did not explain everything about everything.
(4) Wouldn’t I have to have some sense of what complete
intelligibility is in order to recognize the limits of the intelligibility of
the idea I have already grasped? Doesn’t the recognition of a limit mean that I
have to be beyond the limit? If I weren’t beyond the limit, how could I
recognize it to be a limit? A limit of what?
Therefore, it seems that I must have a tacit awareness of “what is
sufficient to qualify for an explanation of everything about everything.”.
(5) Any restricted intelligible must leave a question unanswered
because the intelligibility (information) available to answer questions about
it is restricted. Thus, there can always be more questions about a restricted
reality than there will be intelligibility (information within the restricted
reality) available to answer them. Thus, we might say that every restricted
intelligible is more questionable than answerable. Therefore, the tacit
awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about
everything” is always beyond any restricted intelligible.
Therefore, the source of this “tacit awareness which
is always beyond restricted intelligibility” must be unrestricted
intelligibility. Such an unrestricted act of understanding cannot
be viewed as a brain (which is material and restricted by space, time, and
other algorithmically finite structures); so Lonergan refers to it as a “spiritual”
reality. This spiritual reality, this unrestricted act of understanding which
is the ground of the idea of unrestricted intelligibility, would seem to be the
source of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of
everything about everything.”
(6) Even though the idea of complete intelligibility is the source
of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything
about everything,” I cannot say that I understand this idea, because it must be
grounded in an unrestricted act of understanding, which I, evidently, do not
have.
But how can this be? Lonergan uses the terminology of “notion”. It is a presence to consciousness that is held
or controlled outside of my consciousness while still being present to it. Now if
I don’t understand this presence, then how am I aware of it? I must be aware of
it as something on the horizon; as something beyond my understanding, but,
nevertheless, something which can act as a backdrop over against which I
compare the ideas which I have understood. I am comparing it to a backdrop that
is so much more than the highest possible viewpoints, so much more than any
restricted intelligible, so much more than any content of a restricted act of
understanding.
But what is holding and controlling this idea for me as a
backdrop? I must adduce that It would be Its source, namely, the unrestricted
act of understanding.
(7) This would mean that the idea of complete intelligibility,
that is, the divine essence, is present to me as a horizon,
that is, as a backdrop which can be compared to every intelligible content I
grasp through my restricted acts of understanding. The presence of the divine
essence, therefore, must be the impetus for my awareness of incomplete intelligibility,
the impetus for every question, the impetus for every act of creativity.
II. The Desire for
Perfect and Unconditional Love
We
have a “sense” of what this profound interpersonal connection would be like if
it were perfect.
This sense of perfect love has the positive effect of inciting us to pursue
ever more perfect forms of love. However, it has the drawback of inciting us to
expect ever more perfect love from other human beings. This generally leads to
frustrated expectations of others and consequently to a decline of relationships
that can never grow fast enough to match this expectation of perfect and
unconditional love.
As
the fallibility of the beloved begins to be more acutely manifest (the other is
not perfectly humble, gentle, kind, forgiving, self-giving, and concerned with
me in all my interests) the irritation becomes frustration, which, in turn,
becomes dashed expectation:.
The
root problem was not with the authenticity of this couple’s love for one
another. It did not arise out of a lack of concern, care, and responsiveness,
or a lack of desire to be self-giving, responsible, self-disciplined, and true.
Rather, it arose out of a false expectation that they could be
perfect and unconditional love, truth, goodness, fairness, meaning, and home
for one another.
Human
beings cannot satisfy one another’s desire for the unconditional and the
perfect.
Unconditional
love must include a notional awareness of unconditional love to give rise to
the awareness of and dissatisfaction with every manifestation of conditioned
and imperfect love. This notional awareness of unconditional love seems to be beyond any
specifically known or concretely experienced love.
Lonergan
believes that when we fulfill our desire for unconditional love by authentically
loving God, we simultaneously fulfill our capacity for self-transcendence,
which includes our desire for perfect truth, goodness, and beauty:
III. The Desire for
Perfect and Unconditional Goodness/Justice
Not
only do human beings have a sense of good and evil, a capacity for moral
reflection, a profoundly negative felt awareness of cooperation with evil
(guilt), and a profoundly positive felt awareness of cooperation with goodness
(nobility); they also have a “sense” of what perfect, unconditioned
goodness/justice would be like. Human beings are not content to simply act in
accordance with their conscience now, they are constantly striving for ways to
achieve the more noble, the greater good, the higher ideal. They even go so far
as to pursue the perfectly good or just order.
The
despairing rhetoric of dashed idealism and cynicism does not belong solely to
early Marxism; it can be found in public defenders who decry the legal system
for prosecuting the innocent, and victims who vilify the very same system for
letting the guilty go free. It can also be found in educators who criticize the
educational system for not setting high enough standards, and in community
advocates who tear down the very same system for making the standards too high
and too exclusive. But our imperfect world will not allow either side to be
perfectly correct.
What
is the source of this “sense” (notion) of perfect goodness/justice,
even the promethean desire to save the world, and to be the “ultimate hero?” As
with the desire for complete intelligibility and unconditional love, the desire
for perfect
goodness/justice seems to go beyond any experience or knowledge of justice we
could possibly have. Our frustrated idealism reveals that we continually
see the limits of any current manifestation of goodness and justice which, in
turn, reveals that we are already beyond those limits. Given that our desire
will only be satisfied when we reach perfect, unconditional goodness/justice,
it would seem that our desire is guided by a notional awareness of perfect,
unconditional goodness/justice. This presence of perfect and
unconditional goodness/justice to human consciousness further reveals the
transmaterial (spiritual), self-transcendent dimension of human beings.
IV. The Desire for
Perfect and Unconditional Beauty
The
positive effect is that it incites the continuous human striving for artistic,
musical, and literary perfection. We do not passively desire to create, we
passionately desire to create, to express in ever more beautiful forms, the
perfection of beauty that we seem to carry within our consciousness. We do not
simply want to say an idea, we want to express it beautifully, indeed, more
beautifully, indeed, perfectly beautifully. We do not simply want to express a
mood in music, we want to express it perfectly beautifully. This striving has
left a legacy of architecture and art, music and drama, and every form of high
culture.
When
one reads the biographies of great artists, musicians, and poets, one senses
the tragedy with which art is frequently imbued. What causes these
extraordinarily gifted men and women to abuse themselves, to judge themselves
so harshly, to so totally pour themselves into their art? Perhaps it’s when art
becomes a “god,” when one tries to extract perfect and unconditional beauty
from imperfect and conditioned minds and forms.
Dissatisfaction
with even the most beautiful objects of our experience reveals our
ability to indefinitely perceive the limits of worldly beauty, which,
in turn, reveals our ability to be beyond those limits, which, in turn, reveals
a notional
awareness of what perfect beauty might be (a notional awareness of
a beauty without imperfection or limit). Therefore it is not surprising to see
the divine associated with perfect beauty, majesty, splendor, magnificence,
grandeur, and glory.
This
notional presence of perfect and unconditional beauty to human consciousness
further reveals the transmaterial (spiritual), self-transcendent dimension
of human beings.
V. The Desire for
Perfect and Unconditional Being/Home
Human
beings also seek a perfect sense of harmony with all that is. They not only
want to be at home in a particular environment, they want to be at home with
the totality, at home in the cosmos. Have you ever felt, either as a child or
an adult, a sense of alienation or discord – a deep sense of not belonging? You
feel like you are out of kilter with, and don’t belong to, the totality.
Many
philosophers and theologians connect this feeling with a human being’s yearning
to be at home with the totality; not merely at home with
myself, my family, my friends, or even the world, but to be perfectly at home
(without any hint of alienation). When the desire for perfect home is even
partially fulfilled, philosophers, theologians, and mystics variously refer to
it as joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet.
What
gives us the capacity to experience what seems to be transcendent joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet? Indeed,
what enables us to sense transcendent otherness, and to be able to bridge the
gap between ourselves and this transcendent Other? Does not the transcendent
Other have to bridge the gap to us? If so, then our sense of perfect and
unconditional home further reveals our connection and participation with a
transmaterial (spiritual), self-transcendent domain.
Conclusion
If
we wish to reduce humanity to mere materiality, to mere artificial
intelligence, and to mere animalic consciousness, we will also have to equate
ourselves with beings that lapse into sleep without the stimulus of biological
opportunities and dangers. More than this, we will have to deny the presence of
all the above transcendental desires within ourselves This seems a rather high
price to pay, for it would mean condemning ourselves to ignore everything that
matters – truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, being/home – at its highest
possible level. Do we really want to do this, all for the cause of defending
materialism. It would seem to be complete self-negation in the effort to negate
the true dignity of every human being. This is probably not the best way to
make the most of our lives.
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