Looking at Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution” (Part 19 of 23)

0187 Original justice2c, commitment2c, true and honest word-gestures2c and openness to the One-Who-Signifies2cmanifest only when we cannot pick their inherent triadicity apart.  A triadic relation is composed of three elements.  One stands in thirdness.  One secures secondness.  The other appears in firstness.  The triadic relation cannot be pictured or pointed to in hand-speech talk.  Each element maintains its integrity within the whole.

Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic.  It can symbolize the relation.  It can attach a label to each element.  Spoken words do not respect wholeness.  Spoken words can privilege parts over the whole.

0188 In modern and postmodern times, a major philosophical problem concerns how parts constitute a whole.  Most everything can be taken apart.  When that thing is alive, such disassembly proves fatal.  At some point, the scientist no longer works with a living creature, but a dead one.  Wholeness is lost.

0189 Death is the loss of the wholeness of life.

Evil is the privation of good.

0190 No wonder original sin and original death are mentioned, by Saint Paul, in a single sentence.  As soon as we speak of what puts human subjectivity into perspective2c, we cannot help labeling the term.  We are soon dissecting it2c.  Wholeness is lost.  Sin takes the scalpel.  Death is the consequence.

0191 The semiotics of hand-speech talk images and indicates a whole.  Sometimes, a feature of the whole inspires the word-gesture.  The part represents the whole.

The semiotics of speech alone talk allows explicit abstraction of the parts from the whole.  Sometimes, the whole is composed of its parts.  Is the whole nothing more than the sum of its parts?

0192 I can go farther and say, along with most modernists, “The thing itself, the noumenon, cannot be objectified as its observable and measurable facets, its phenomena.”

And, some triumphalist scientist will chuckle and reply, “No, we build our models based on observations and measurements of phenomena, and these models are more illuminating than their respective noumena.”

0193 In terms of semiotics, speech-alone talk is radically different from hand-speech talk.

In terms of evolution, our current Lebenswelt is radically different from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In terms of sociology, unconstrained social complexity is radically different from constrained social complexity.

0194 I have drawn the circle.  Now, I find one point and proceed along a tangent.

What is a commitment2c?

A commitment2c derives from a judgment2c.

A judgment is a triadic relation, composed of three elements: relationwhat is and what ought to be.

Here is a picture.

Uh oh.  What happened to intelligibility and universality?

Forget that!  This judgment is not holistic.  It is whatever I say it is.

0195 And, here is what I say.

A commitment consists of a nested form derived from the triadic structure of judgment, where the intellect (relation) brings together phantasms (what ought to be) and sensations (what is).

0196 From the point of view of a holistic intellect, hand talk cannot picture or point to any of these elements, much less the relation as a whole.  Hand talk can image and indicate sensations (such as warm or cold) and phantasms (such as symptoms of emotions).  But, hand talk cannot convey how sensations and phantasms pass into the intellect as what is and what ought to be.  Hand talk cannot discuss the intellect.

Commitment2c must be lived.

0197 From the point of view of my fallen intellect, speech-alone talk can not only label the relation, it can also independently symbolize all three elements.  Once one element is named, then that element is different from another element, and the distinction may stand in the foreground.  The remaining element tends to fade into the background and be ignored.  As a result, the coherence of commitment2c is lost.

Commitment2c becomes subjectively incoherent.

But, don’t blame me.  I am only a messenger.

0198 Consider a pagan religion that preaches that gods are everywhere and in all things.  Someone labels this religion, “pantheism”.  What is the label hiding?

What is everywhere and in all things?

Signification2c.

Signfication2c produces sensations and feelings2a.

What virtually situates these sensations and feelings2a?

The phantasm2b that gods are everywhere and in all.

But, what is the commitment2c that this phantasm2b inspires?

I wonder.  Show me a sign.