.Top Down .Causality revisited In the modern view we think of causality as operating only on the microscopic scale and only within the space-time manifold. With immaterialism experience has an immaterial or spiritual basis of which the space-time manifold is a construct.
But why bother with space and time? I would argue that space and time are necessary to support the microcosm. The microcosm is necessary to support the cosmos. Creation is not superfluous. It is the pillar of reality, of which God is the center and circumference. Each of us is a spoke on that wheel. We the microcosms must be able to function as independent members of a society. The space-time manifold is our minimal relational construct. We are the atoms of the cosmos. The material atoms exist only relative to our reality.
Electrons exist in conformity to the requirements of chemistry and electronics, which in their turn exist in conformity to our ecological and social requirements. The rules of chemistry might have been more arbitrary without physics, but biochemistry is not reducible to physics. There are ‘morphogenetic’ structures and vital constructs that supervene on the physics. Physics is a logical substratum that plays a formal more than a causal role.
Perhaps it is then true that the human microcosm is only playing a formal role with respect to the cosmic intelligence. We are the formal subveners of God. The microcosms provide a logical continuity and stability for the cosmos.
Our bodies are composed of cells, on the scientific view. The cells are a rationalization of our socially necessary corporal functions such as eating. They are our microcosm, worlds within worlds. Why does reality act as if it were broken up in this fashion? It may appear this way only from a microcosmic vantage. We see the world in a mirror of our own construction. The logic of science serves to reify the contingency of our existence.
We can experience eating in our dreams without benefit of digestive system. But is that accurate? What if in our dream we started to wonder what was happening to the food that went into our mouths? We would have to postulate some sort of system. If the food simply disappeared there would be a very confusing reality gap. A person could walk into a cave and disappear. In the latter case we would perform rituals to extend our life world into the cave space. Science does this with respect to micro and macro space. Such rituals need not be causal, they can be teleological.
I am suggesting a form of social psychologism. Logical continuity is a requirement of any social manifold. Anything less is highly disruptive to the social fabric. Tears in the fabric will be mended consciously and unconsciously. Notice how our psyches manage to fill in our blind spots. Physics is the logical outcome of a teleologically imposed continuity. Thomas Edison was simply pushing that envelope. Alchemists would occasionally push beyond the envelope into a realm of magic that was later routinized and sytematized.
In the eschaton is the logical end of the social continuity. That is where we enter the space between spaces. Our constructiveness and inventiveness will find greater utility.
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rev. 2/23/99