"Thomistic Idealism"

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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I would like to share a brief outline of a metaphysical theory I am working on, and see everyone’s thoughts. Dare I say, I am unfamiliar if this theory has already been published; so I would be interested to hear if this is a duplication.

My view is effectively the child birthed from Thomism and (Ontological) Idealism; that is, the synthesis of the world as ideas in a universal mind with the actus purus (viz., the ipsum ens subsistens) of Thomistic classical theism.

The need for such a synthesis comes down to one key and seemingly (but not) minor detail in Thomistic metaphysics: if every being gets it being derivatively from the one absolutely simple and purely actual Being, then how does this relation between getting and giving intrinsic being work? It is easy to explain that this, e.g., chair gets its being derivatively from its parts; but it explains nothing of the relation between how being is actually conferred from something which really has it itself and something which does not (which is the case only when it is transferred from a purely actual being to a contingent being). Is this transfer of existence just pure mystery?

Upon pondering this for a while, I realized that classical theism implies ontological idealism; for a pure act of subsistent Being is itself identical to pure act of thought (which just follows from standard classical theism tenants), and thusly a (contingent) being is real only so long and insofar as this purely actual Being thinks of it as real. The reality conferred from subsistent Being itself and a contingent being is exactly tantamount to this: the kind of being that is self-subsistent (viz., which is ‘Being’ proper) is the kind that its object of thought via the modality of reality thereby gains existence.

This is a far more interesting account of idealism to me because it is not per se on the account of the mind thinking an idea that makes that idea real (which is what I think people like Kastrup, Berkeley, and the like describe it as in their own ways); but, rather, on the account of how a purely actual, subsistent intellect would operate—viz., the absolutely simplicity as Being itself is the cause of this peculiar power to create out of nothing from pure thought (and not some incredibly complex mind that can think an object into reality).

It’s also intriguing to me because it helps avoid issues of submergence; that is, it doesn’t really have the problem of how one could get a mind like ours from this universal Mind (granted the Mind is so different than ours). Kastrup especially seems to go to no end to toil and resolve the submergence problem; and, consequently, commits himself to the absurdity that we must be something analogous to psychological ‘alters’ of the one consciousness. This issue isn’t really a problem for this ‘thomistic idealism’ approach, exactly because the ‘universal mind’ is not conscious like we are but, rather, is called a ‘mind’ analogically. This universal mind is an absolutely unique being that is Being itself; and minds like ours are images (or resemblances) to this Mind insofar as is capable by thinking of a rational soul as real can afford. Instead of the smaller ‘minds’ being submerged from the universal ‘Mind’; this view takes the ‘minds’ as just faculties of the soul which exists insofar as it is sustained with pure act.

So, what do you think? Has this already been thought of before?

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The Definition of Atheism
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I agree! For Aquinas, the dependence of beings on divine intellect wasn’t a philosophical thesis requiring defence — it was the assumed background against which all philosophical work was done. The question wasn’t “is reality mind-dependent?” but “how does the divine mind sustain and know its creation?”

Likewise, the way he adapted Aristotle’s ‘participatory knowing’ retained a neoplatonist dimension. Aquinas’s adaptation of Aristotle’s participatory epistemology — where knowing is not representation but a conformity of intellect to form — already has idealist implications, grounded in the divine intellect as the shared medium of knower and known.

What the Scientific Revolution was to do — through Galileo’s mathematisation, Descartes’ dualism, Locke’s primary/secondary quality split — was to reject that epistemology and its background assumptions. Once the Divine Intellect is no longer the self-evident ground of being and intelligibility, we’re left with matter as the default substrate of reality, existing independently of any mind. And that was what modern idealism was protesting. Idealism was a reaction against the emerging dominance of ‘natural philosophy’ by trying to restore the indispensability of mind - set against the backdrop of a universe now seen as basically mindless. (This is related to a thesis of my own in which I explore similar territory, ‘Idealism in Context’.)

So — Aquinas is generally considered realist, but his scholastic realism was a far cry from today’s realism, and that is why: because his background understanding of ‘what is real’ was fundamentally different to that of modern scientific realism. Viewed through that perspective, he’s much nearer to a form of idealism.

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Why would the mere fact that the intellect is the faculty that receives forms imply God must exist? I would have imagined that God must existence to explain how there are real forms at all; but not exactly because we can receive them.

That’s what makes it so interesting to me, as of late: his view really seems, despite him not claiming such, to imply ontological idealism full-stop but yet it isn’t like Kastrup’s, e.g., where we think of ourselves in a universal dream. It’s almost like Aquinas’ view is between proper realism (where objects exist mind-independently) and proper idealism (where objects exist in a mind-consciousness). We are a product of God’s mind sustaining us; but we are not in God in this view. So analogies that hinge on us being in a universal consciousness or dream fail precisely because that implies pantheism or panentheism; whereas this view implies proper theism.

Notably, as well, some versions of theism aren’t idealist in any meaningful sense; such as a view where God is a complex mind which initially created the universe as its efficient cause: such a view does hold primacy to minds, but not in an active sense that proper idealism would purport. Aquinas’ view, or more accurately my additional note to his view, seems to put us square in between this and a view like Kastrup’s; and I find it an interesting middle-ground.

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I wasn’t arguing that participatory epistemology implies God’s existence. The point was descriptive: within Aquinas’s framework, where the divine intellect is already the assumed ground of being and intelligibility, the participatory account of knowing carries idealist implications. The divine intellect isn’t a conclusion drawn from the epistemology — it’s the background condition that gives it its particular character. The broader point being that Aquinas’s scholastic realism already had features we might now call idealist, precisely because that theistic background was still in place. And that is because in it, the ‘Divine Intellect’ is ubiquitous (or in the traditional lexicon omipresent) as the origin of creation, everything arising from and returning to Him.

What I’m saying is that modern idealism starting with Berkeley is set against, shall we say, the background of natural philosophy, within which neither God nor mind possess a foundational role. So I’m viewing it in the context of ‘history of ideas’.

(I should add that I’m generally supportive of Kastrup’s analytical idealism although with caveats about the idea of the dissociated alter.)

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Kastrup isn’t that “out there,” because traditions like Advaita Vedānta and Kashmir Shaivism in Hindu philosophy already point to something very similar: a single underlying consciousness in which individual selves appear as localized expressions which can be seen as “alters.” In Advaita Vedānta, this is described as Brahman being the only ultimate reality, with the individual self (ātman) not truly separate from it but only seemingly so. Kashmir Shaivism also portrays the world as the self-expression of universal consciousness (Śiva). I am not overly familiar with any of this but Kastrup is just using modern language to describe old ideas.

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That’s true, but it does seem pretty ‘out there’ to me to posit that we are all alters of God’s mind; and essentially we are dream characters in God’s Divine dream. That’s seems like an ad hoc attempt at explaining the submergence problem; and not really a nice synthesis of eastern with western thought.

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I wouldn’t say it is completely assumed, although he is definitely trying to rationalize Christianity. He provides the Five Ways, for example, and builds off of Aristotle’s argumentation for God from natural theology.

I would say classical theism actually starts with a different premise than God existing; namely, that we can use our reason to know what the fundamental being of reality must be (which is not something, for example, Orthodox Christians are apt to accept as they reject natural theology usually). By using reason on our mundane experience, we can arrive at sure proofs that God must exist; and then we can deduce from God’s nature that we discovered (through reason) many things about how God is that backdrop of reality (thought allows for us to know at all, as you noted). I would just be weary to agree with you that Aquinas starts with the assumption that God is the backdrop.

That’s fair; but I think Berkeley really did believe something similar to Kastrup (minus the alters theory); as he adamantly held that everything was just being uphold by God’s mind, and he describes it in ways that seem very compatible with a dream analogy. To be fair, though, he did accept Divine Simplicity; so maybe I’m reading too much between the lines here.

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Fair. I think it’s possible to make a range of cases here. One idea I picked up from the Theosophical Society and the New Age movement decades ago is that all beings are expressions of the divine, and in some sense we are one. When Jesus says that what you do for others you do for him, it at least suggests a deep unity between us all, even if it stops short of saying we are literally the same being. We are all expressions of God. Hence the significance of the good Samaritan. And it leaves us with the tantalising notion that, in doing good for others, we are not separate, we are in some sense also doing good for ourselves and for the divine.

Perhaps the submergence problem arises more acutely when we don’t fully understand how this unity is supposed to work; we often perceive problems where our picture is incomplete. It may also be that we share a Western exaggeration of the significance of individuality and personal responsibility. I’m, not in the soul business, so for me the problem is more about how worldviews frame their ideas.

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I think Kastrup is closer to Schopenhauer than some appreciate. What matters most in Kastrup’s view is his idea of “mind-at-large,” which is not a metacognitive agent with intentions. It’s not Berkeley’s God. Rather, it is closer to Schopenhauer’s conception of Will: a blind, pre-reflective ground of experience. There’s no omni factors here, as I understand it in this context being is mind-at-large coming to know itself across time and through experience. And the appearance of physicality is not an illusion it is simply how consciousness presents itself to us across the dissociative divide.

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But he would have never sought to equate revealed truth with natural wisdom or philosophy. I think it was seen as complementary (although Luther rejected even that reading of Aristotle,)

Bur what of the Biblical ‘made in God’s image’ (imago dei) (Gen 27-27). I understand it has been subject to a variety of interpretations, but it seems to at least suggest a similarity.

Also, it’s interesting to consider Ramana Maharishi’s teaching in respect of Biblical maxims. He would frequently refer to ‘I AM THAT I AM’ (Ex. 3:14) as a reference to the Self (although I think many Christians would have difficulty with that.) He also frequently repeated ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). This has obvious parallels with his teaching of ceasing all striving.

Kastrup wrote a book Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, which I enjoyed. He acknowledges the similarities, but more in respect of ‘world as idea’ than as will. (I feel the same.)

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Interesting post.

Is this the same question as, is this transfer of existence pure gift? Meaning, there is no mechanism that could ever explain why or how something new ever came into being, despite the obvious presence of new things.

That is a great reality check on the historical context, drawing color from why these philosophers made the moves they made, and thereby providing more insight into what they meant. That was really helpful to me.

At the risk of sounding nuts, I’m just going to say something.

I think the reason Aquinas at the end of his life called all of his writings straw, and Augustine said his writings were a grain of sand on the beach, was not (just) because there was so much more to be said, but was also because they realized that, as philosophers, as scientists of knowing, they had all along been speaking about a limited sense of God. They missed the mark leaving so much more work to be done, because they were aiming at the wrong mark.

God is not just a keystone to support the system. God is also the system. And God is also discoverable as one of the supported individuals in the system. I don’t know how to personify these perfectly, but this is essentially God as Father keystone, God as whole system Holy Spirit, and God as individual instance, the Son Jesus.

No philosophy has adequately integrated God as Son (Spinoza, for instance, flatly denying it as possible, as a category error to even conceive of God being a man). I think an understanding of how Jesus IS God would lend itself to understanding “how does this relation between getting and giving intrinsic being work.”

I admit I may just be doing straight theology now; although my point is that God as seeker, as one of us, may provide the missing puzzle piece of a philosophic system that seeks to extend a thinker like Aquinas or Aristotle.

What I am saying is that, once God created any thing, shared his being with another, God becoming a man became inevitable. You don’t get billions of years of planets forming unless Jesus is coming into the universe. God as a contingent thing is essential to the presence of any contingent thing.

So all of creation remains fiat, and is a gift. But once there is to be anything created, once there is to be anything new besides God, God must become that new thing to reunify being qua Being (caps intended) - God must become like a created being to justify created beings coming to be from nothing.

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I personally do not see how the conclusions you make above follow.

After all, I see a deistic conception of God, such as my example that I have mentioned on here of God as a greater intelligence (a ‘cosmic programmer’ perhaps) running our universe as a simulation (say, within a great cosmic computer) embedded in a greater universe that they designed, initialized, and set in motion but do not intervene in as perfectly plausible. Countless programmers, myself included, have implemented and run little sub-universes embedded in our universe in the form of cellular automata such as Conway’s Game of Life; there is really no reason why our own universe could not be the same on a grand scale.

Now, you will ask why I am not a Deist then. The reason is that I have no positive evidence for the above just as much as I have no counter-evidence against it either.

On Purpose (Reprise)
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With respect, it’s not. That only seems plausible from the Newtonian perspective of the ‘Great Machine’ from which both mind and God are disembodied and perfectly detached. In reality, the appearance of living beings is itself the visible manifestation of intentionality (which is the great lesson of phenomenology, see On Purpose). The meaningless universe from which the Sacred has withdrawn is itself an abstraction, albeit a highly persuasive one.

On Purpose (Reprise)
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I read your blog article and I must respectfully disagree with it. Intentionality in the biological realm is clearly an epiphenomenon upon evolution, which is very much an intention-less physical process that does not require any posited intentionality of the universe. The apparent ‘intention’ of organisms to survive is simply a matter of that the organisms that did not have an ‘intention’ of survival did not survive to pass on their genes while those that did did. Likewise, the development of human ‘intentions’ is an epiphenomenon upon the evolution of the human brain, as those ancestors who had certain sorts of ‘intentions’ lived on to pass on their genes to future generations of hominids while those that did not did not.

About quantum physics and the observer problem, one issue is that an ‘observer’ is not clearly defined. There is no reason why an ‘observer’ must necessarily be a human or even an organism; it could be any sufficiently macroscopic change in state resulting from an interaction with a quantum state.

On Purpose (Reprise)
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But on what basis do you claim that it is ‘epiphenomenal’? I understand that is the implicit assumption of mainstream biology, from which intentionality has already been excluded as a matter of definition, and which has to describe it as ‘apparent’. Which is why you’re begging the question! You’re assuming what needs to be shown.

The fact is that organic life acts in a way that no inorganic compounds do: it acts to preserve itself against the pressure of entropy. That some organisms or early forms of organisms did not do this illustrates nothing other than the fact that they didn’t succeed. They died. It’s well known that a vast percentage of life-forms that evolved have become extinct. But that doesn’t negate the point: that organic life itself exhibits a form of intentionality, that crystals, rocks and hurricanes do not. The organism produces and maintains the boundary that defines it as an organism.

I think it presents an obvious challenge to Newtonian deism, because it points to the sense in which intentionality is made manifest in the organic domain from the outset and how it continues to manifest, rather than withdrawing to some ostensible but un-knowable ‘beginning’. The programmer is unknowable, uncontactable, outside the system. Whereas the hylomorphic/phenomenological picture makes intentionality the most immediately known thing there is — it’s what experience itself is.

Anyway - this is the wrong thread to debate that in detail, perhaps I might start one on this subject in particular.

On Purpose (Reprise)
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Rather than answer here, I’ve created a new thread to discuss this specific issue.
@tabemann

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Absolutely: in classical theism, everything resembles God to some imperfect degree—even a rock. However, the submergence problem is about how we can have minds like ours ‘come out of’ such a Mind as God’s (granted idealism is true and that everything is fundamentally mind). It seems like, prima facie, we ought to expect there to be only one mind; and just other ‘mindless stuff’ that the mind creates.

He definitely is; and even explicitly pays tribute to him all the time. His only major difference is that he views this ‘universal will’ as a world-conscioussness producer via alters: Schopenhauer would not say the “Will” is conscious (I don’t think, at least).

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That’s true: I would go farther and say we can use natural theology to demonstrate a lot about God—a lot more than most people think.

Well, that’s not referring to a specific metaphysical theory about how minds work; but, rather, is a poetic expression that we, as a proper intellect, mirror God (exactly because He is pure intellect itself). The fact we are of a rational nature is what sets us apart from other creatures in this sense of being made in the image of God. How does one account for the mind and with the body? Well, that’s up to debate, and there is no ecumenical council or magisterial teaching that makes any specific metaphysical account dogma nor canon. You are free to healthily dispute how it works, that is to say.

I’m not familiar with Ramana, but the ‘I am’ phraseology in Christianity historically referred to God being the alpha and omega from which all things exist contingently upon. Later on, when classical theism developed, the ‘I am’ was understood more specifically as a reference to ‘pure actuality’; which is to say that God is the ‘I am’ because He is full stop being: He is not ‘I am this rock’ or ‘I am Socrates’ but, rather, the very being of ‘I am’ which everything gets itself derivatively from.

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I don’t think so: I am referring to specifically how being can be derived by a contingent being from a necessary being; that is, how being in-itself can be migrated in a derivative way to something which has it from-another. It is easy to see that being transferred between contingent beings has no mystery (e.g., my chair depends on its parts to exist); but how being itself is originally attributed to something which had no being whatsoever is hard to explain.

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Isn’t this what the doctrine of creation ex nihilo was intended to explain? In classical Thomism, the created world receives esse through God’s continuous act of creation. But this is esse commune as distinct from God’s ipsum esse subsistens. In other words, Aquinas was not a pantheist.

So describing it as a “transfer” of being is inaccurate, since this would imply a pre-existing substance for God to transmit being to. And that’s precisely what creation ex nihilo denies.