Summary of text [comment] pages 46 & 47

[This section (1.6) on “Analogy of Sin and Physical Evil” proved difficult because the relation between the two is not one of analogy.  Rather, any model of moral evil must incorporate natural evil.

Schoonenberg went to the desk of de Chardin for insight into natural evil (that is, “failures due to limitations and challenges in biological spontaneous orders”) and found a quote that could be modeled as interscoping nested forms.

He then got stumped on how to bring this insight back to the level of freedom and morality, concluding that statistical necessity belonged freedom and morality. Then, in the next paragraph, he changed his view.

Finally, he set out some criteria that would have to be met in order for natural evil to be incorporated into moral evil.

Notably, the intersecting nested form meets that criteria.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 46 & 47

[I am looking at how the intersecting nested forms clarify Schoonenberg’s text about “statistical necessity” not fully describing the moral dimension of evil.

In the previous blog, I suggested that the horizontal axis was subject to “statistical necessity”.  In addition, the horizontal axis interscoped, so that statistics applied to more than one interscoping nested form.

In contrast to the horizontal axis, the vertical, moral religious axis, is categorical.

The vertical axis of the intersecting nested forms meets with the horizontal axis in the realm of actuality.

The other two categories in the vertical nested forms, normal context (think^{divine_or_group}) and possibility (conscience^specified), act like a voltage that is applied to a transistor (sin or virtue).  Small changes can produce magnified consequences, to the point where the horizontal axis may be in the state of “on” or “off”.

If that is not a categorical attribute (that is, one where statistical variation is reduced to two options, so statistics no longer seems to apply), I don’t know what is.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book on the phenomena, entitled The Tipping Point.

The take home point is that a little moral turpitude can cause a lot of natural evil, (and maybe visa versa) depending on conditions and luck (that is, bad luck).  The worst scenario rarely happens, because spontaneous orders, including the cultural orders of unconstrained complexity, adapt.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 46 & 47

Schoonenberg argued that this added “level” [now “dimension”] of morals and freedom does not have the character of “statistical necessity”.

[The complete intersecting nested form, as developed in prior blogs, may be helpful.

Take the last point first.

The horizontal axis of law^essential₃(human action₂(disposition₁)) has the character of de Chardin’s “statistical necessity”; including, both metaphysical (limitations) and physical (challenges) evil.

Law^essential₃(human action₂((disposition₁)) also encompasses interscoping nested forms, covering a range of nested forms, each with its own natural evils.

This explains a question that I have held since formulating the idea of “intersecting nested forms”:  Why do they appear to apply to a wide range of topics, including individuals, institutions, and societies?

Well. this would be expected if the horizontal axis of the intersecting nested forms interscoped.

The horizontal axis of the intersecting nested forms interscopes with other nested forms.]

Summary of text [comment] page 46

[Schoonenberg’s waffling, described in the previous blogs, leads to a question:

What makes the spontaneous order of human culture (in unconstrained complexity) different from the spontaneous orders of biology (of ecology, environment and matter – as well as – perhaps, of the human culture in constrained complexity)?

Schoonenberg did not know that he formulated a question that has never been asked before (1962). Still, he listed some fundamentals that could go into an answer.]

The free person possesses ‘his’ own value for eternity.

Each person is touched by the grace of God, who wishes for all ‘men’ to be saved.

Sin and virtue manifest attributes (especially, the final impenitence or total self-giving, respectively) that do not fit into the concept of “statistical necessity” because they are categorical attributes.

[To me, these criteria indicate that freedom and morality in our current Lebenswelt mark another dimension in addition to the dimensions of ecology-environment-matter.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 45 and 46

Schoonenberg asks: Can the same act be both unavoidable (similar to natural evil) and guilty (pertaining to the level of freedom and morals)?

He concludes: No, because that would violate the concept of free will.  But his conclusion is conflicted.  He agrees with de Chardin that “moral evil must parallel natural evil” (in that it must entail statistical necessity).  Yet, that would imply that “moral statistical necessity” violates freedom.

The conflict is highlighted by the rhetorical side-step that immediately followed: “It may be true that for one saint, a large number of good (but not necessarily “saintly”) people are needed, but it is not true that for a large number of good people, an even greater number of damned are required.”

Summary of text [comment] page 45

I continue with page 45, where Schoonenberg accepts that “evil is a statistical necessity” for God’s natural creation and wonders whether it applies to the realm of freedom and morality, that is, to us.  Since Schoonenberg accepts de Chardin’s view that “unification” is a “law of nature” (and that “statistical necessity” applies), evil must also intrinsic be to the level of freedom and morality.

[To me, what Schoonenberg and de Chardin labeled as “unification”, von Hayek called “spontaneous order”.

“Failure” or “evil” or “the falling of actuality back into possibility” is intrinsic to all spontaneous orders.

Failure is a statistical necessity in the spontaneous orders of biology.  Failure is also a statistical necessity in the spontaneous orders of freedom and morality, which appear have something in common with biology, but are not determined by biology.

The spontaneous orders of freedom and morality incorporate the statistical necessities of biological order, so failures in “ecology, environment and definition” or “homeostasis, metabolism or definition” may occur.

But does that imply that the spontaneous orders of morality and freedom also express the same statistical necessities as the order of biology?]

Schoonenberg feels compelled to say “yes”.  He is obviously not sure why this is so.   He points to St. Paul’s teaching about the flesh, the Councils of Carthage, and Aquinas’ view that one cannot be free of sin without grace.

[But these resources, rather than supporting a nuanced “yes”, seem to support at tentative “no”.  Paul’s teaching about the flesh does not sound, to me, like a warning about “failure where actuality slips back into possibility”.   It sounds more like a warning about “desires” that have lost their capacity to integrate into a life-affirming order.]

[Being a Jesuit, Schoonenberg was both scholastic and modern.  So, I am confident that he would be amused by what I am about to say, emerging, as it does, from the realm of possibility; the only realm that supports contradictions:

Why not correlate “noumena” to the “spontaneous order” and “phenomena” to “our evolved perception of design”?

Such a correlation would position Modern Philosophy as an unwitting mash of Friedrich von Hayek’s notion of “spontaneous order” (which we always misinterpret as design) and Stephen Gould’s notion of “exaptation then adaptation” (which is why we see design, even when we do not realize what we are doing).

The mash-up highlights the modern problem:  As soon as we start to see designs in the grand spontaneous order that emerges from everyone constructing according to their own designs, we are tempted to play God … or I should say … to act as the Devil, because sovereign interventions, even if well designed, cannot fully take into account the potential ways that the spontaneous order might adapt.]

[The moderns, from Descartes on, pay an odd tribute to this trait of seeing design, even when we do not – cannot, really – comprehend what we see.

Kant labeled the sensical  “phenomena” (“what we see as designed”) and the nonsensical “noumena” (“what is there in itself”).  We see design in the phenomena, conjuring instrumental causes and formal elements, but we cannot justify projecting our contextualizing intuition of design onto the noumena, beneath the appearances.

Thus, Kant’s Philosophy explains why Moderns are either functionally followers of William Paley (like modern scientists who explore phenomena and do not worry about the noumena) or dysfunctional visionaries (like modern philosophers who came up with the idea of “noumena” in the first place, thereby putting Descartes before the horse).]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[The premoderns – including the Scholastics  viewed the world as static, that is, designed.  Before the point where de Chardin was discussed, Man and Sin follows that perspective.

Schoonenberg did not realize that humans evolved to see design.  The reason why we evolved this trait is plain.  By seeing design, we recognized patterns and produced artifacts that increased reproductive success under our ecological, environmental and definitional conditions.  “Seeing design” was adaptive.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

I continue with page 45, where Schoonenberg accepts that “evil is a statistical necessity” for God’s creation and wonders whether it applies to the realm of freedom and morality, that is, to us.

[So far, blogs 1.6J through 1.6AD wrestled with pages 44 and 45.  They cover a lot of territory.  Every attempt to summarize generated a new twist.  Each new insight reveals an implication of the text.  Of course, this is the nature of the theological treatise.

Consequently, I stand in wonder at the freight that Schoonenberg tried to pack within a single paragraph, on page 45, in this section on “The Analogy between Sin and Physical (Natural) Evil”.

Schoonenberg walks the reader back, from a quote in the writings of de Chardin (on the statistical necessity of failure or evil in biological systems), to a consideration of the evil of sin.

What he cannot cover, because he does not have the tools to articulate the ideas, is that the evil of sin occurs in the cultural spontaneous orders that we live in. We interpret failure through the lens of designed order, without an intuitive sense of the way that spontaneous orders emerge and maintain themselves, without a clue that our “designs” are “beings within the cultural spontaneous order”, and, until now, with no awareness that our world is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.]