The Transcendentals - Revision history

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 Part Two – the Five Transcendentals
-© Robert J. Spitzer, S.J./Magis Institute July 2011 – All rights reserved
+© Robert J. Spitzer, S.J. Ph.D./Magis Institute July 2011
 == The What and Why of Transcendentals ==

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 If we wish to reduce humanity to mere materiality, to mere artificial intelligence, and to mere animalic consciousness, we will not only have to ignore Gödel’s proof for non-reductionistic human intelligence, 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 (desires which cannot be explained through algorithmically finite – physical – structures).  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 or justifying serious violations of the principle of non-maleficence?  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.
-== References ==
+== Footnotes ==
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+For more information on works cited, please see the <http://www.magiswiki.org/index.php/Believe_in_God_Reference_List reference page>.

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 == 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.  This is confirmed by Mircea Eliade’s exhaustive study of world religions,  which may be summarized as follows.  Religion is grounded almost universally in a sense of the sacred which is not reducible to a mere subjective projection.  Rather, the sacred is a source or cause of human striving to live in a spiritual and transcendent domain.  This domain is not a sterile concept, but rather is filled with transcendent awareness and emotion frequently resembling what Rudolf Otto terms the sense of “creatureliness,” “mysterium tremendum,” “awesomeness,” “overpoweringness” (or “majesty”), “energy” (or “urgency”), “fascination,” and “transcendent otherness.”
+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.  This is confirmed by Mircea Eliade’s exhaustive study of world religions,<ref>Eliade was editor of the 16-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion. See Eliade 1987.</ref>  which may be summarized as follows.  Religion is grounded almost universally in a sense of the sacred which is not reducible to a mere subjective projection.  Rather, the sacred is a source or cause of human striving to live in a spiritual and transcendent domain.  This domain is not a sterile concept, but rather is filled with transcendent awareness and emotion frequently resembling what Rudolf Otto terms the sense of “creatureliness,” “mysterium tremendum,” “awesomeness,” “overpoweringness” (or “majesty”), “energy” (or “urgency”), “fascination,” and “transcendent otherness.”<ref>See Otto 1958, chapters 3-6.</ref>
 Exhaustive as Eliade’s (and others’) studies are, it is important to validate this conclusion for ourselves.  Have you ever felt, either as a child or an adult, a sense of alienation or discord – a deep sense of not belonging?  You ask yourself, “What could be the source?” and you look around and see that at this particular time you have a good relationship with your friends and your family.  Your work relationships seem to be going fairly well, community involvements have produced some interesting friends and contexts in which to work.  Yet, something’s missing.  You don’t quite feel at home in a general sense.  Yet you do feel at home with family, friends, organization, etc.  You feel like you are out of kilter with, and don’t belong to, the totality.  And yet, all the specific contexts you look at seem just fine.  You feel an emptiness, a lack of peace, yet there is absolutely nothing you can put your finger on.
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 What is the origin of our desire to be at home with all that is, to live in what Eliade termed the “sacred domain”?  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 ==

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 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:
-I have conceived being in love with God as an ultimate fulfillment of man’s capacity for self-transcendence; and this view of religion is sustained when God is conceived as the supreme fulfillment of the transcendental notions, as supreme intelligence, truth, reality, righteousness, goodness.
+I have conceived being in love with God as an ultimate fulfillment of man’s capacity for self-transcendence; and this view of religion is sustained when God is conceived as the supreme fulfillment of the transcendental notions, as supreme intelligence, truth, reality, righteousness, goodness.<ref>Lonergan 1972, p. 111</ref>
 Once again, the human awareness of and desire for the perfect and unconditional manifests a dimension which is not reducible to algorithmically finite (physical) structures; and so it seems that we have yet another trans-physical (spiritual), self-transcendent power.
 == III.  The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Goodness/Justice ==

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 == 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:
+In his famous work Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,<ref>Lonergan 1992.</ref>  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.  We may remember our childhood when we besieged our parents with questions such as: “Why is this?”  And our parents would respond, “Oh, because of that,” and we would immediately ask, “Well, why is that?”  And they would respond with yet another answer, to which we would ask another question.  This ability to continuously ask questions reveals our awareness that an answer is incomplete, that is, that the answer is not completely intelligible; that it does not explain “everything about everything.”  If we did not know that an answer was incompletely intelligible, we would not ask any further questions “What?” “Why?” “How?” etc.  We would be very content to know our names, and to respond to biological opportunities and dangers – nothing more.  It is the awareness of “something more to be known” at the very moment when something is known that drives the further question.
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 (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” (“the notion of being,” or what I would term, “the notion of complete intelligibility”).  What is a notion?  It is a presence to consciousness – not a presence that is held or controlled by my consciousness, but one 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.  This would explain how I would know that there is more to be known at the very moment I have understood something new, and would explain how I would know that the tensor is not the complete explanation of mathematics, and that mathematics is not the complete explanation of intelligibility itself.  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 how can this be?  Lonergan uses the terminology of “notion” (“the notion of being,” or what I would term, “the notion of complete intelligibility”).  What is a notion?  It is a presence to consciousness – not a presence that is held or controlled by my consciousness, but one 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.  This would explain how I would know that there is more to be known at the very moment I have understood something new, and would explain how I would know that the tensor is not the complete explanation of mathematics, and that mathematics is not the complete explanation of intelligibility itself.  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.<ref>Lonergan expresses it as follows: “[T]he notion of being penetrates all cognitional contents. It is the supreme heuristic notion. Prior to every content, it is the notion of the to-be-known through that content. As each content emerges, the ‘to-be-known through that content’ passes without residue into the ‘known through that content.’ Some blank in universal anticipation is filled in, not merely to end that element of anticipation, but also to make the filler a part of the anticipated. Hence, prior to all answers, the notion of being is the notion of the totality to be known through all answers” (Lonergan 1992, pp. 380-381).</ref>
 Now, as I said, I do not understand, hold, or control this idea; it is, as it were, held and controlled for me as a backdrop to compare the intelligibility of the ideas that I have understood.  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.
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 The above argument for the existence of our transcendental awareness of complete intelligibility (and the presence of its trans-physical, unrestricted source to our consciousness) is remarkably probative.  Regrettably, the cost we must pay for this probity is the nuance and complexity of the argument.  The reader will be relieved to know that the other arguments for the existence of our desire for perfect and unconditional love, goodness/justice, beauty, and being/home are less nuanced and complex, but consequently have less probity.  Perhaps it is best for the reader to use the above argument as a foundation for and a light through which to see the other four transcendental desires, which express the fullness of our communion with their trans-physical source.
 == II.  The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional Love ==

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 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.<ref>There is a much larger percentage of working scientists who are believers.  Many prefer not to profess their faith in a public scientific setting. </ref>  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.
+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.<ref>There is a much larger percentage of working scientists who are believers.  Many prefer not to profess their faith in a public scientific setting. </ref>  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.<ref> Collins 2007.</ref>
 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”).
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 So what is the philosophical and scientific origin of this belief in the specialness (and transcendence) of human beings?  It is predominately grounded in a longstanding observation about nonhuman animals, which continues to be verified in recent empirical investigations.  Bernard Lonergan expresses it as follows:
-…[I]t 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.
+…[I]t 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.<ref>Lonergan 1997, p. 108-109.</ref>
 This might be summarized quite simply as follows.  When animals run out of biological opportunities and dangers, they fall asleep.  When you stop feeding your dog, or giving it affection and attention (biological opportunities), and introduce no biological dangers (such as a predator) into its sensorial purview, it will invariably and inevitably fall 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.
+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.<ref>“When an animal has nothing to do it goes to sleep. When a man has nothing to do he may ask questions. The first moment is an awakening to one’s intelligence. It is release from the dominance of biological drive and from the routines of everyday living. It is the effective emergence of wonder, of the desire to understand” (Lonergan 1997, p. 54).</ref>   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.  Thus, in the view of many philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, human beings seem to have an awareness of and desire for perfect and unconditional truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and Being/home. Since these five transcendentals are necessarily beyond all algorithmically finite structures (which determine all physical realities and laws constituting subatomic particles, molecules, cells, and complex organic structures such as a brain), many philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists have held that human beings are more than mere matter.  Human beings seem to have a transmaterial or spiritual power or dimension which enables them to move beyond every algorithmically finite structure (physical structure) and to be creative in ways that defy the possibilities of artificial intelligence.
-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.
+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.<ref>The theorem was published by Kurt Gödel in 1931 (1931, pp. 173-198), and was revised by John R. Lucas in 1961 (Lucas 1961, p. 120), and by the eminent physicist Roger Penrose in 1989 (Penrose 1989). An excellent summary of Lucas’ rendition of Gödel’s proof may be found in Barr 2003, p. 214.</ref>
 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.

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 So why do philosophers, scientists, and people of common sense assert that human beings have such a special value?  The answer lies in several interrelated observations which will be discussed below.  These observations are present in the works of many philosophers and scientists,<ref>The origin of this idea precedes the advent of formal philosophy and science, and can be found in a large number of religions which are premised on the spiritual powers of human beings. Judaism formalized this belief (see Genesis 1-2), which was transmitted to Christianity, and later to Islam.</ref>  beginning with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, moving through St. Augustine, Moses Maimonides, Averroes, St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, John Henry Newman, and into the 20th and 21st centuries (e.g., Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Jacque Maritain, Henri Bergson, Emerich Coreth, Bernard Lonergan, and many others).  This idea is also central to the works of many prominent physicists and biologists in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Two examples of this will suffice to make our point.  The first comes from the great physicist/astrophysicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, who observed, after detailing the equations of quantum physics and relativity physics:
-We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammelled by the world of physics.  In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the soul grows upward and finds the fulfillment of something implanted in its nature.  The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born within our consciousness or an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours.  Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will not be suppressed.  Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
+We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammelled by the world of physics.  In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the soul grows upward and finds the fulfillment of something implanted in its nature.  The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born within our consciousness or an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours.  Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will not be suppressed.  Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead and the purpose surging in our nature responds.<ref>Eddington 1928, pp. 327-28</ref>
 The eminent geneticist Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, expresses a similar insight: