Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek's Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) Part 2

By Razie Mah

Presumably, the works covered in this commentary cover ideas spanning from long before the period of publication. Mariusz Tabaczek O.P. is first and foremost a Thomist, familiar with the labors of Aquinas, dating to the thirteenth century. At the same time, Tabaczek participates in a Thomistic revival, a quest for a "neo-neo-Aristotelianism" (because Thomas Aquinas marks the first neo-Aristotelianism), called for by a pope in the late nineteenth century in order to provide an alternative to modernism.
Consequently, Tabaczek narrows his Thomism to a slightly modified view of thirteenth century concepts. He does very well, by the reckoning of this commentator, because he selects one of the weak joints in the modernist citadel, the scientific treatment of emergence. Scientists cannot build mathematical and mechanical models of emergence, both in material science (for example, the fairly simple hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell) and in biological science (for example, mitochondria). This is a real weakness, since scientists are supposed to build models based on observations and measurements of phenomena, using their specialized disciplinary languages.
Somewhat disturbingly, this commentator proposes that Tabaczek's initial accomplishment is the dismissal (or perhaps, "termination") of the positivist intellect that serves as the relation within the Positivist's judgment. What great aim! With the positivist intellect "dismissed", the two great illuminations of the Positivist's judgment have no choice but to enter into secondness, resulting in a pair of dyads, one illuminated by the model and the other illuminated by the noumenon.
Yes, a mathematical or mechanical model is not its noumenon, the thing itself, even though a triumphalist science-maven would have you believe that the model is more real than the noumenon (and therefore, ought to replace it).
No, these two illuminations do not see eye to eye.
Weirdly, each sees the other as a mirror of itself.
The agent of science sees himself in the mirror of theology.
The agent of theology sees himself in the mirror of science.
And, the theologian doesn't like what appears in the mirror of theology.
And, the scientist totally ignores what appears in the mirror of science.
Why? The ghost of the positivist intellect tells him to.
Once the Positivist's judgment is reconfigured as Tabaczek's looking glass, then the preacher's intellectual quest becomes more and more gritty, curious and novel, because the most productive way to envision his trajectory is through the lens of the semiotics and the categories of C. S. Peirce. According to Thomist and semiotician John Deely, Peirce picks up a thread spun by the Baroque scholastic John Poinsot and initiates the dawn of a neo-neo-Aristotelian age. Welcome to the Age of Triadic Relations.
Tabaczek speaks the specialized philosophical language of Aquinas.
These comments speak the specialized philosophical language of Peirce.
Both revive Aristotle. Both bring philosophy to life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Jan 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781955931151

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek's Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) Part 2

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2024

Notes on Text

This work comments on three books by Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P., currently a professor of theology at the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas in Rome. These books derive from his interdisciplinary doctoral studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (2011-2016) along with later work. So, I suppose that the titular arc of inquiry covers a decade, rather than five years. Plus, this arc of inquiry covers a lot of territory.

The three books are Emergence: Towards a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (2019) and Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism (2021) and Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotle-Thomistic Perspective (officially 2024). The first two are published by the University of Notre Dame Press in Notre Dame, Indiana. The latter is published by Cambridge University Press.

Plus, an interlude appears between the second and third books.

The interlude comments on the essay, What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformism from the Thomistic Perspective, appearing in The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (2019).

This work exhibits an unusual composition. A major part of this work will appear as blogs, titled Looking At Mariusz Tabaczek's Book..., at www.raziemah.com, for the months of April, May and June 2024. The blogs will cover Emergence and part one of Divine Action and Emergence and the majority of Theistic Evolution. Part two of Divine Action will be covered only in these comments, since this is where my review well... dare I say?... goes off the rails. The interlude will be covered in comments. Comments will be divided into two parts for technical reasons.

My goal is to review these works using the category-based nested form and other relational structures within the tradition of Charles Peirce. At times, this will be a close reading. At other times (in fact, most of the time), the reading will be tangential. For example, I introduce illustrations that take on lives of their own.

As the reader will see, these comments are compatible with the intellectual traditions of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Yet, they are not quite the same. In the course of the examination, I suggest that Peirce provides a framework for what Tabaczek calls neo-Aristotelianism.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction

Recommended: Other articles in the Phenomenology and the Positivist Intellect Series may be found in the smashwords website.

Table of Contents

Comments on Emergence (2019) #0001

Comments on Divine Action and Emergence (2021) Part 1 P0155

Comments on Divine Action and Emergence (2021) Part 2 P0426

Comments on What God and Creatures Really Do (2019) P0545

Comments on Thomistic Evolution (2024) P0644

Addendum: Human Evolution Comes with a Twist P0861

Hegel's Interscope And The Creation Story

0426 Here is where I am.

0427 Soon, I [recognize] things in the world2a (SVs) will specifically stand for I [am in] nature2b (SOs) in regards to my own self-objectification3b operating on my potential for 'being human'1b (SIs).

The word, human, like humus, means of the earth.

Perhaps later, I will find that the perception2b, that I [am in] nature2b (SVe), is exemplary in standing for an Absolute Idea2c, an Unfolding2c and a Judgment2c (SOe) in regards to a wondrous Self-acualization3c operating on the potential of 'ontological significance'1c (SIe).

Philosophy will help in that regard.

0428 So does the first chapter of Genesis.

Razie Mah addresses the Creation Story in points 0025 through 0055 in Looking at John Walton's Book (2015) The Lost World of Adam and Eve. These blogs appear in August, 2022.

0429 In the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth.

On the first day, God says, Let there be light. and there was light.

On one hand, I may associate the first day to the formation of the solar system.

On the other hand, I may associate the creation of the light, and the separation of the light from the darkness, as an intimation, a dawning of the contiguity within the content-level actuality2a of Hegel's interscope. Seeing is the beginning of recognition. Animals see things in the world, but they do not recognize them as... well... emerging from (and situating) the possibility of nature1a.

The actuality of [recognition]2a dawns within the normal context of God's voice3a operating on the potential of 'nature'1a, where nature is not God.

Commentators may opine that the Creation Story argues against the recognition2a that things emerge from the potential of divine energies, emanations or copulatory powers1a in the normal context of a demiurge3a. So, the separation of light from darkness2a also renders a distinction in regards to the contiguity between me and things in the world, rather than a contiguity between matter and form (as expected from demiurgic activities). God's Voice3a is not a demiurge. The earth brings forth from the potential of nature1a.

0430 Here is a picture of the dawn of the first day.

0431 Okay, back to the first hand, I may associate the first day to the creation of the solar system.

After all, the solar system is all about the things of the world. The sun is the so-called invincible center, the source of light, and has orbited the center of the galaxy only 18 times in its billions of years lifetime.

If any thing were to be divine, in the way that an Absolute Idea2c occupies the perspectivec-level actuality2, then the sun would be a good candidate. The sun is the one possibility without which the possibility of our world fails. It is a monad. There is only one sun. So, it stands in the category of firstness, the realm of possibility.

But, there is a greater monad, light itself. When I [see] things in the world2a, I notice that there are other sources of light. These are tiny sources, like pinpricks in the obsidian sheet that makes the night sky. The sun is not the only source of light. Light itself is greater than the sun.

0432 And God saw that the light was good.

God separates the light from the darkness. He calls the light, day. He calls the darkness, night. In doing so, from the very start, the Creation Story affirms that our perceptions are real. We situate the light as day and the darkness as night. Nature is not God. Nature is day and night.

0433 In Looking At John Walton's Book (2015) The Lost World of Adam and Eve, Razie Mah proposes that the first chapter of Genesis contains all three types of natural signs: icons, indexes and symbols. Each day of creation signifies a corresponding epoch as an image, an indicator or a symbol. So, the language game consists in identifying any particular phrase as an icon, image or symbol (or some combination) in comparison to the corresponding epoch

In this way, and there was light, is a picture of the sun starting to fuse deuterium and tritium then later, hydrogen nuclei. The separation of light from darkness points to how we experience the creation of the solar system. The naming of day and night are symbols that we attach to that experience.

0434 In the present exposition, the proposition changes. Icons associate to the interventional sign-relation. Indexes associate to the specificative sign-relation. Symbols associate to the exemplar sign-relation.

By the end of day one, the reader enters into all three sign-relations. This is depicted as deepening color in the picture below.

0435 In the first day, perspective-level actuality, God2c, shifts from Absolute Idea2c to Absolute Substance [unfolding into] Its Own Creation2c. The monad shifts to a dyad the moment when God creates the heavens and the earth. Absolute Idea2c might be considered as totally transcendent. When God2c is totally transcendent, then there is no need for... um... naturea or for humanityb, for that matter.

But, here we are. We hear God's voice3a. We recognize things in the world2a. We sense that nature1a is not God, even though it2a unfolds as God's Own Creation2c. So, God2c must be immanent as well, as the nature-level normal context of God's Speech3a.

0436 Such is the problem that Tabaczek wrestles with.

Pantheism (the world is God) portrays God as totally immanent.

Panentheism (the world in God) portrays God's creation as inside of God, implying that creation is within God, therefore God is really immanent, more so than transcendent.

Tabaczek wants to return to classic theism because he is not at ease with the panentheism that contemporary science-agents project into the mirror of theology.

Tabaczek wants to stand as a theology-agent, projecting a classical theistic image into the mirror of science. Aristotle's four causes are a good start. Hegel's panentheistic interscope is a good start as well. But, these instruments, as currently fashioned, are not... um... efficient. They will remain so until they are re-formulated with Peirce's toolkit.

Emergence is key.

The Creation Story portrays I [am in] nature2b as an emergent in God's economy2c of Self-actualization3c operating on the potential of 'ontological significance'1c, whose presence embraces the message of the word, good.

0437 I continue.

On the second day, God says, more or less, Let there be firmament in the midst of the waters. Let it separate the waters from the waters. God make the waters above and the waters below and separates them. God calls the waters above, sky.

The corresponding evolutionary epoch is the formation of the planet Earth.

0438 Here is the diagram. Note how the colors for each element are not so faint. The Creation Story starts with the interventional sign-relation, then activates the specificative and exemplar sign-relations.

0439 The interventional sign is imagistic, characteristic of icons.

The specificative sign points to us, characteristic of indexes.

The exemplar sign assigns ontological significance, characteristic of symbols.

0440 I continue.

At the start of the third day, God says, more or less, "Let the waters under the sky gather together in one place. Let dry land