Vertical CausalityThis model suggests that the causes of events in our physical world don't just come from prior events in time (horizontal causality), but from a "higher," timeless, and more fundamental plane of reality (vertical causality).Concept: Our physical reality is a shadow or a reflection of a blueprint of archetypes, ideas, or divine intentions. The ultimate "why" behind an event isn't found in the moments before it happened, but in the timeless pattern it is expressing. Plato's Theory of Forms is a classic philosophical example, where physical objects are imperfect copies of perfect, eternal Forms.Analogy: Imagine you are a character in a novel. You experience events because of what other characters did in the previous chapter. That is horizontal causality. But the true cause of everything you experience, your personality, your challenges, your destiny, is the author's intention, which exists entirely outside of your timeline. To you, the author's mind would be a "higher," incomprehensible causal plane.
Isn’t this just Gnosticism / every religious or esoteric philosophy?
>>24692126the true cause of everything you experience, your personality, your challenges, your destiny, is the author's intention, not quite the same.
>>24692120
>>24692120Books on this concept?
>>24693227We didn't reach so far Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality
>>24692120>>24693227thats literally just formal/final causation as opposed to material/efficient causation. Read Aristotle, or Aquinas if you want to stick with the christian theology. Aquinas also clusters those two causes together like you do i believe, with material/efficient causes explaining 'facts of existence' and formal/final causes explaining 'essence and purpose'
>>24692120Kant already did it.
Ok, so what? How is this model useful?
>>24692120>>24692126>>24693227>>24695275This is literally Kabbalah
>>24695315It's useful because instead of investigating the actual causes of social change you can just look through your list of archetypes until you see something that looks sort of similar. Thus, whatever happens in the world, you can offer a neatly prepackaged esoteric explanation and thereby amass tens of thousands of twitter followers.
>>24693231I would recommend Joe Sachs translation and commentary on the Physics of Aristotle. David Bentley Hart's All Things Are Full of Gods is a decent introduction too in that it deals with a lot of contemporary issues.But to really get it takes time. Eric Perl's Thinking Being and Robert Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism are both really good resources for getting to core concepts. Keep in mind that the principle of self-determination and self-governance vis-á-vis the Good in psychology that Wallace showcases in Plato is expanded into a metaphysical principle of how anything is anything at all. Neoplatonism adds a lot here and Aquinas is a good source for a synthesis. It is just that he is sort of dry and the writing style is less familiar.It's worth pointing out that this is/ought gap and the vast majority of issues that lead to the dominance of moral skepticism, relativism, and anti-realism spring from the denial of final causality. Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue is quite good on this history, or for something really in depth, John Millbank's Social Theory and Theology, which shows how the suppositions of modern empiricist analytic thought come historically from theology, not "science" and have become unquestioned dogmas that are supported by equivocation and trying to falsely identify them with science. The language of "natural laws" that things "obey" is straightforwardly from Protestant theologies of divine command, and the idea that "good" always means something like "thou shalt" or that ethics is primarily about rules is all theological baggage that athiests nonetheless cling to with religious intensity. Final causes themselves were initially rejected because they seemed to deny a theology of a God who is sheer will who commands what is good for instance. It isn't something 'science discovered" but a religious dogma. Other scientific principles like the "atomized self-interested utility maximizer" of liberal economics also come from the Calvinists tradition. It is widely agreed now that Marxist economic dogmas were unfalsifiable, but not as many have caught on that this is the same sort of dogma. Not to say that economics isn't a science of predictive, far from it, it's just that the interpretive lens of the atomized selfish actor isn't scientific but interpretive. Whenever observations from other cultures fail to align with it, the data is just reinterpreted as *really* being utility maximizing. There is a lot of Hume's anti-realism leaking into this interpretation (he being a close friend of Smith). It's unfalsifiable though. Literally any observation can be made to fit the theory, and not in the weak sense that everything is unfalsifiable, but in the strong sense that Marxist economics was also unfalsifiable.
>This model suggest [completely arbitrary made up bullshit]
>>24692120"vertical" is a grossly physical metaphor that Socrates expressly mocks in the Republic. I believe he says something like: do you want to get wise by studying the ceiling?
>>24692120now that Wolfgang Smith passed away, who will continue his work? Btw in a youtube discussion he stated that Thomas Taylor is his favourite modern platonist. Interesting choice for a christian.
>>24699601Perhaps Borella?
>>24696964>The language of "natural laws" that things "obey"Hm, what's the alternative to that?
