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#Post#: 100--------------------------------------------------
Gods knowledge and the senses
By: Crash Date: February 28, 2020, 3:20 am
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In some arguments for dualism, consciousness is treated as a
form of knowledge in itself. To see red is to have real
knowledge, knowledge of what it is like to see red.
Since neither God nor the angels have senses corresponding to
the material world, and thus can’t be said to see the redness of
an apple, does this limit Gods full apprehension of what is to
be an apple. Does it limit his knowledge in general since he can
never be said to know what it’s like to see red. Or is there
some sense in which he knows what it’s like to see red in a more
intimate and fuller form then we do?
Another question slightly related to the previous. In what sense
does God know. Our knowledge is clearly very much so tied to the
senses. Is it correct to distinguish between the senses and
consciousness, as the senses fall under consciousness, but are
not all there is to consciousness. Surely intellectual faculties
are conscious, but I struggle to see in what sense they are
conscious. From experience, there evidently is something it’s
like to grasp a thing, but it doesn’t seem particularly vivid,
or perhaps intense in the same way seeing a colour is.
I hope someone here can shed some light on my difficulties. I’m
fairly sure I’ve misunderstood the idea of the intellect and
it’s relation to the senses.
Thanks
#Post#: 101--------------------------------------------------
Re: Gods knowledge and the senses
By: Atno Date: February 28, 2020, 6:20 pm
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Thee are some very complicated questions.
I'm on record saying that the Aristotelian-Thomistic view helps
us with qualia, but doesn't really solve the hard problem of
consciousness. That is, qualitative forms and the power to have
first person subjective experience of these qualitative forms
(consciousness) still seems like a sui generis perfection that
transcends the body in a way.
Anyway, I'd say God does know what it's like to see red. He is,
after all, the ultimate cause of minds and of red things, so He
does have knowledge of that. He has that perfection. Per the
PPC, there is something like consciousness in God. But it is a
far more perfect consciousness; unlimited and unchanging. As
humans, we cannot imagine it (though we might be able to
conceive of it), sorta like having all possible qualia all at
once. But God's knowledge of propositions is also unimaginable
to us - somehow God knows all possible propositions, try to
imagine that. We can't.
God perfectly knows all things, but is not affected by them. We
cannot imagine that, but that doesn't make it false or
impossible (we can't really imagine a tesseract either, it blows
our mind, but we know it's perfectly consistent).
God knows things by being their cause. Since all things
ultimately trace back to God, all things are in a way present in
God - in His knowledge and powers.
Now, in these complicated metaphysical issues, knowing *that* is
more important than knowing *how*, and we don't need to know
*how* something plays out in order to know *that* it plays out.
So I personally don't even bother much with specifying "how" God
knows or does this or that. What matters is knowing *that* God
knows this or that, in a way infinitely superior to our
imaginations.
And we can know that. By PPC, God must have all possible
perfections of things in Himself, in at least the same degree of
ontological perfection, or in a higher way. It seems
consciousness is a perfection. So God has consciousness and
these powers, or something even greater.
And as I said, I don't think consciousness is limited to the
senses, or even that the senses can reduce qualitative
experience. So the fact God doesn't have sense organs would be
quite irrelevant for his conscious power.
I also agree that there is a conscious experience connected with
thoughts, which is another immaterial aspect of consciousness.
We can be conscious of completely abstract forms, such as the
concepts of humanity, logic, numbers, catness, being, etc. David
Oderberg himself argues that there is a phenomenology of reason,
such as a difference between doing algebra and calculus.
God must have all those perfections, but without any of the
limitations characteristic of our finitude.finitude
#Post#: 102--------------------------------------------------
Re: Gods knowledge and the senses
By: Crash Date: February 28, 2020, 6:43 pm
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Thanks very much Atno for your detailed response.
There is a great mystery in it all. I think in this life at
least, we can only try our best to understand God, but quite
obviously there’s going to be some things that are left
mysterious.
You raise some important points. It would seem odd if red was
not in someway present in God. Surely he knows what it is like
to see it, perhaps even without seeing it (in the same way we
do). If red were material, wouldn’t it have a form of sorts?
Surely God would have to know all the accidental properties
possible for every substance too.
Another question I hope you can help me out with. By the PPC,
how do we explain matter? Is it virtually, formally, eminently
present in God? God is obviously not material, so in what was is
matter present in him? Likewise, I struggle to see how you could
ever get potentiality out of something that is Pure Act from all
eternity.
I do recall Oderberg noting there is phenomenology to our
reasoning. I think he’s correct. Knowing seems to imply
consciousness. It what sense could an unconscious thing ever be
said to ‘know’. Yet whenever I try to focus on the sensation of
knowing, it’s always very dull. It’s different to all the other
senses. It’s more determinate. We usually associate active
knowledge with auditory thoughts, at least I do. And yet
intuitively, without any effort, we just grasp the concepts that
are associated with said words. I’d imagine in God, there is an
unimaginable clarity and vividness in his grasping of forms we
can only hope to experience.
#Post#: 103--------------------------------------------------
Re: Gods knowledge and the senses
By: Atno Date: February 28, 2020, 8:21 pm
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Matter is not a perfection, it is a lesser form of being. One
way to understand it is as an act of existence that is so little
unified that it becomes extended and limited to space.
Aristotelians also consider matter to be pure potentiality, just
that which receives different forms in composition and cannot
exist by itself.
If matter were a perfection, however, then God would have to
have it in some way. This might be compatible with theism in
some way. But I don't think matter is a perfection.
Potency is, obviously, just a limitation on being. It is not a
perfection, it is less than actual. Something cannot give more
than it has, but it can definitely give less than it has.
Potential things are just these limited, finite things that are
less than perfectly actual and powerful.
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