Two - Three Thirds of the Spectrum

Two Three Thirds of the Spectrum
Note:2@@@@@@@@@@@@

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“Top of the spectrum” means your best, clearest reasoning—
Note:LO SPETRO DELLA MENTE

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For some people, logical thinking consumes more territory than for others.
Note:ASSUNTO COMUNE

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Our energy and focus levels determine our current spectrum position.
Note:ENERGIA E FUNZIONAMENTO

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natural work costs us less energy
Note:ASSUNTO

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personal qualities and habits
Note:COSA PESA

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View 1: The Transformation in How We Make Sense of the World
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mind has a powerful urge to make sense of the universe
Note:IL PROB DEL SENSO

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how the countless pieces at countless scales relate;
Note:METTERE IN RELAZIONE

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big picture.

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using logic.

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UN MODO

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inventing stories
Note:ALTRO MODO

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This is the logic-versus-narrative axis.

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As energy dips and freshness fades, and our thinker makes his way down
Note:IL PASSAGGIO DA LOGICA A STORIA

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using less logic and more experience (what usually works?),
Note:COSA FUNZIONA

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increasingly distractible.

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memories, daydreams, and fantasies
Note:COSA CONTA

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another strategy for building thought sequences emerges.
Note:MAN MANO CHE SUBENTRA LA STANCHEZZA

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It can be hard to turn a collection of memories and ideas into a story,
Note:IL SOGNO....COME COLLAZIONE...COME METTERE INSIEME

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from premise to goal.
Note:METTERE INSIEME...SENSO

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minds are in business to make sense. Logic and narrative are different ways

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The scientist explains the origins of the universe with a logical argument. The religious believer tells a story.
Note:SENSO...FEDE E RAGIONE

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logical argument has predictive power.
Note:PREDIZIONE

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Only the story has normative moral content.
Note:PRECETTO

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Only a fool would pronounce one superior.
Note:COSA VIENE PRIMA

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STORYTELLING
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how satisfying stories are at the end of the day.
Note:A LETTO

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bedtime story

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calming children,

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to tell exactly the same bedtime story
Note:RICHIESTA COMUNE

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if she varied in the slightest particular
Note:CAZZIATONE

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They don’t want to know the story; they want to hear it, as one hears a song.
Note:L ESIGENZA

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the perfect lead-in to dreaming.
Note:VIATICO

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Some adults read themselves to sleep.
Note:NOI STESSI

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Proust
Note:UN CASO SINGOLARE

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Story and dream would blend perfectly.

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Stories are plainly easier to remember than other forms of information.
Note:RICORDO

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Illiterate bards sing long epic poems

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in Liberia remember the histories of whole clans and tribes.

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MEMORIA INCRED

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stories are made for remembering.
Note:DIREI DI PIÙ

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The mythical Scheherazade,
Note:L EMBLEMA DELL URGENZA DI UNA STORIA

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THEME CIRCLES
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They have thematic unity.
Note:STORIA

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A dream is a loose bundle of scenes that change abruptly
Note:SOGNO

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more a set of anecdotes

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we usually discover that they are all about the same thing—
Note:GUARDANDO MEGLIO

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“theme-circling”
Note:NOCCIOLO

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the whole circle points to the center,

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like a mature novel by the eminent V. S. Naipaul.
Note:ANALOGIA DEL SOGNO

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a carefully plotted work that builds to a climax.
Note:STORIA E ANEDDOTI

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the repetitions in a theme-circling narrative, each segment pointing toward the same center
Note:NEL RACCONTO ANEDOTTICO

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Awareness of the theme grows naturally

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To retrieve a recollection, we reconstruct the full scene from our notes—a
Note:SI RIPESCA LIBERAMENTE DALLA MEMORIA

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“Re-creation is the key term here,”

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David Foulkes.
Note:PSICOLOGO DELLA RICREAZIONE

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We are like reporters transforming notes into news stories.
Note:REPORTER

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FROM LANGUAGE TO IMAGES
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Dreaming is storytelling in pictures.
Note:DEF

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“Visualization of the fluid sort that we find in our dreams,”
Note:FORMA DI PENSIERO...GIÀ FREUD

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we teach children how to speak and write but not how to draw;
Note:NOTATO?

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we want precision and conciseness and often rely on abstraction.
Note:CON IL LINGUAGGIO

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Nabokov wonders whether a memory of his first girlfriend will “survive captivity in the zoo of words”
Note:LE PAROLE SBIADISCONO

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uncertain whether words will convey the sensory richness and mystery of memories
Note:DUBBIO

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vision is our primary sense. When we remember the past, we usually remember in pictures.
Note:VISIONE DEL PASSATO

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thinking without Images,”
Note:PERICOLOSO PER COLERIDGE

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the real alternative to language as a form of communication is the body itself.

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BODYLANGUAGE

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We have developed an interest in objective truth.
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legal worldviews are more sophisticated than religious ones,
Note:INDIZIO CHE LO SPETTRO ALTO È SEMPRE PIÙ VALORIZZATO

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View 2: The Transition from Acting to Being as the Main Focus of Mind
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acting and being—what the mind does and how it is.
Note:DUE FATTI SULLA MENTE

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the deliberate manipulation of conscious mental states:
Note:ATTIVITÀ MENTALE

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sensation and feeling: feelings, physical or mental.
Note:L ESSENZA DELLA MENTE

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Spectrum Law: Up-spectrum, the mind is dominated by doing. Down-spectrum, it is dominated by being.
Note:SECONDA LEGGE

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ABOUTNESS DISSOLVES
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Much of mental life has a topic: my car, your car, where to park, Mike and Erica, tension in the European Union, peanuts. And much has no topic: I am dizzy with happiness, in pain,
Note:CONTENUTO...RIFERIMENTO

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I might be giving a lecture about fear, or (on the other hand) I might be afraid. Or I could be both:

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By “sensation,” I mean the many subtle body feelings associated with fear; by “experience,” I mean those feelings
Note:SENSAZIONE...ESPERIENZA

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aware of my sensations or feelings,
Note:DIPENDE ANCHE DALLA PARTE DI SPETTRO CHE PRIVILEGIO

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thinking about,
Note:PARTE ALTA

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Down-spectrum I tend, increasingly, not to think about, but just to be.

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Intentionality is the quality of aboutness,
Note:INTENZIONALITÀ => RIFERIMENTO

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Being depressed is about nothing. It is just a way to be.
Note:SUBIRE => SENSAZIONE

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Franz Brentano,
Note:IL PRIMO A INTRODURRE L INTENZIONE

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from the medieval scholastics, who found it in Aristotle.
Note:FONTI

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states of mind
Note:INT.PROPR DEL

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No mere physical state,
Note:NEGAZIONE

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Only states of mind can be intentional,

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what is specifically mental about the mental?—
Note:LA DOMANDA A CUI VOLEVA RISPONDERE

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The answer, I believe, lies in subjectivism.
Note:RISPOSTA ALTERNARIVA A B.

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subjective face that is visible to you alone.
Note:LO STATO MENTALE E SOLO LUI POSSIEDE INTERNALISMO

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Only our eyes are turned backward. . . .
Note:RILKE

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Animals only look out,

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In terms of aboutness, feelings and music are analogous.

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IL RIFERIMENTO DELLA MUSICA

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Music is not capable of aboutness.
Note:SENZA CONTENUTO

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communicate emotion but not information.
Note:INTERIORITÀ

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THE SPECTRUM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EMOTION
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emotion disrupts thought
Note:ELIMINARE DALLO SPETTRO ALTO

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Early mornings are rarely the time for storms of rage or despair.
Note:MATTINO

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Many dreams are highly emotional.
Note:BASSO

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even our sense of self is shouldered aside. We forget ourselves, lose our selves.
Note:QUANDO LA SENSAZIONE DOMINA

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mere experiencers.

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we are wide open and have no defense against nightmare.
Note:LA PERDITA DI SÈ CI TERRORIZZA

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AT THE BOTTOM OF THE “EMOTIONS SPECTRUM”
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“selfless state of pure being.”

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simple.

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awareness in general has been pushed out of the way.

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We have trouble finding, as well as forming, these low-spectrum memories. We encounter the problem of overconsciousness.
Note:LA COSCIENZA È COSÌ IMNERSA NELL EVENTO CHE NN LASCIA MEMORIA

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TESTIMONY: OVERCONSCIOUSNESS, “CONSCIOUSNESS BURN”
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eyewitness to an accident in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron
Note:ESEMPUO DI OVERCON

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in one instant the boy put out a hand to save himself, in the next he was part of a tangle in the gutter.”
Note:GAP TRA DUE MMENTI NELL INCIDENTE

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Ernest Hemingway
Note:COLPITO N GUERRA

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“A roar that started white and went red

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I can experience something, as I have mentioned, without being aware that I am experiencing
Note:COSCIENZA NN RADDOPPIATA

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I have no basis for memory—except for memory of the sensations themselves.
Note:IN QS CASI

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utter misery, that it cannot be remembered”
Note:THOMAS THE QUINXEY

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“Delphine is so stunned that, later, she does not remember putting down the receiver or rushing in tears to her bed or lying there howling his name.”
Note:ROTH...LA MACCHIA UMANA

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newcomers to Auschwitz saw sights they simply could not absorb,
Note:MRTIN AMIS

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“One seldom remembers a moment when one’s whole self goes into a passionate or violent action.”
Note:RIASSUNTO

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“Nikki was explosive, crazily emotional, and could do and say bizarre things and not even remember them afterwards”
Note:ROTH...ALTRO ESEMPIO

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Georg Büchner’s manic-depressive hero Lenz
Note:UN ALTRO

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“Remember what April was like when we were young,” writes John Banville,
Note:OVERCONSC...TIPICO DEL INFANZIA

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A child’s mind is biased toward the spectrum’s low
Note:BIASED

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Karen Blixen
Note:ALTRI ESEMPI

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sits down and lives.”

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“Boredom is a sentiment not available to the Hottentot,”
Note:DETTO CON DISPREZZO

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PURE BEING AND THE DREAM
Note:Tttttttttrrtr

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Every night we experience, in dreams, sensation or emotion so vivid as to occupy our minds almost completely
Note:CASO TIPICO DI OVER

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“They slept again . . . , dreamlessly, or so they believed” (Cynthia Ozick, Foreign

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When we hallucinate, we don’t just recall the memory; we reexperience
Note:MEMORIA E ALLUCINAZIONE

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we do not tend to reflect about the dream
Note:NEL SOGNO

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sleep researchers Inge Strauch and Barbara Meier
Note:STUDIOSI

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in dreaming, “we deal predominantly with events of the moment”
Note:LA LORO TESI

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total attention.”

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Foulkes wonders, “How can our awareness of dream events be so vivid, while we are so little aware of what our minds in fact are up to?”
Note:UN IO VIVISSIMO...TROPPO

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THE EMOTIONS AXIS, IN SUM
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As we move down-spectrum, we gradually lose control over thought; we grow passive. Mental states grow more vivid and enveloping. We daydream, fantasize,
Note:RIASSUNTO...ZERO DISTACCO

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Overconsciousness is also a contributor to the other great mystery of forgetting
Note:DIMENTICARE

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infantile amnesia,” Freud called it.

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between two and four years, we recall nothing.
Note:ETÀ DELL OBLIO

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sensations overwhelm us,

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View 3: The Transition from Outer to Inner Field of Consciousness
Note:Tttttttttt

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As we move down-spectrum, we become increasingly inner-focused until, drowsy and with mind wandering,
Note:OGGETTIVO...SOGGETTIVO

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sink into ourselves,

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“deepening himself,”

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Coetzee’s narrator should plunge into a boyhood memory.)

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Spectrum Law: Up-spectrum, we live in the present. Down-spectrum, we tend increasingly not merely to recall but to revisit, briefly to reoccupy, the past.
Note:TERZA LEGGE

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As we move lower, memory takes on its more characteristic function. I am reminded of scenes and events that emerge from memory
Note:MEMORIA

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Our focus moves from outer to inner.

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In the upper spectrum, you dance to the music. At the bottom, you are still dancing, but the music is inside your head,

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UN MONDO NELLA TESTA

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BACKWARD IN TIME
Note:Tttttttt

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The growing vividness of memories, eventually turning hallucinatory,

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STRANGE STATES ON THE WAY TO SLEEP
Note:Tttttttttttt

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As we approach sleep, our minds pass through strange states that we almost never recall.
Note:VERSO IL SONNO

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we are hallucinating, as when we dream. But the distortions of actual dreaming have yet to begin.
Note:ALKUCINAZIONE CHE NN È ANCORA SOGNO

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Sleep-onset thought is rarely mentioned in any sort of literature, but Charlotte Brontë knew all about it.
Note:UN MOMENTO DI CUI SI PARLA POCO

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THE DEPTHS
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What happens once we have fallen asleep? The obvious prediction is that we continue to move down-spectrum,
Note:SONNO

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sleep-lab studies

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1965 study titled “Temporal Reference of Manifest Dream Content,” Paul Verdone

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elements encountered in reality in the last week;
Note:PRIME 3 ORE

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references moved back in time toward more remote events
Note:DALLA QUARTA

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reversal of this trend occurred toward more recent temporal reference.
Note:POI

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we are chronicle composers observing our own lives, living largely in retrospect.
Note:CHI SIAMO

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A Summary Rule of Thumb
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Spectrum Rule of Thumb: Up-spectrum, consciousness feeds memory. Down-spectrum, memory feeds consciousness.
Note:LEGGE GENERALE

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Spectrum Rule of Thumb: Below the spectrum’s midline, thought is increasingly out of control.

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AXES, IN SUM
Note:Tttttttttt

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PERSONALITY
Note:Tttttttttttt

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John von Neumann,
Note:MENTE MATEMATICA

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Eugene Wigner said, “Whenever I talked with von Neumann, I always had the impression that only he was fully awake.”
Note:TESTIMONIANZA

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Napoléon was a different kind of genius. He knew warfare, politics, symbolism, big pictures.
Note:IMMGINE...VISIONARIO

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I do “a thousand projects every night as I fall asleep” (Napoléon).
Note:DETTO

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Proust’s alter ego speaks of his “natural inclination to daydream”

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Jane Austen’s Emma tells us that “a linguist, a grammarian,” “even a mathematician” is very different from her; she is “an imaginist.”

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Everyone has a distinct cognitive personality or thought style—a

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THE BIGGER PICTURE
Note:Ttttttttt

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Only subjectivists and subjectivism can elucidate the deep problems of the spectrum, or at least inch forward in that direction—because only subjectivists can see them.
Note:OGGETTO Ismo UBEE ALLES

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Martin Heidegger
Note:ESEMPI

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van Gogh’s

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in the twentieth century the mainstream scientists climbing higher, rung by rung up the spectrum, like high-wire artists stepping up
Note:SCIENZIATI SEMPRE PIÙ SU ARTISTI SEMPRE PIÙ GIÙ

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The artists were deliberately descending the spectrum
Note:ARTE

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toward pure concreteness,
Note:VAGGIO DELK ARTISTA

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sheer being is a miracle that needs grasping
Note:NN SPIEGAZIONI MA LLUMINAZIONI

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My task in this book is to assemble the fundamental facts about subjective reality,
Note:RIPETIAMO

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the mind in motion,
ORGANISMO

Indurre invidia

SPECIAL: "While most people don’t actually know that much about their income ranking, many seem to be trying hard to inform those who rank low of their low status. Their purpose seems to be to induce envy, to induce political action to increase redistribution. They hope to induce these people to identify more with this low income status, and to organize politically around this shared identity."



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PRIMA COMUNIONE, CATECHISTI IN CRISI

Riccardo Mariani

MEDITAZIONE SULL'EUCARESTIA

Credere o no nel miracolo della transustanziazione, ovvero nel mutarsi di una sostanza in un'altra?

Propendo per il no.

La sostanza di una cosa è, per semplificare, l'identità di quella cosa. Per esempio, la mia sostanza è la mia identità. In genere penso a me come ad uno spirito e ad un corpo particolare. La scienza, si noti, non ha nulla da dire in merito poiché non si occupa dello spirito, ma nemmeno puo' isolare "pezzi" di materia. L'unica cosa che isola sono gli atomi, tutto il resto è semplicemente "materia". Chi crede nell'identità personale, e penso che tutti ci credano, ha fiducia in un sapere che va oltre quello scientifico.

Io ho una mia identità. Gesù ha una sua identità. Il pane dell'altare ha una sua identità. L'eucarestia è il miracolo tale per cui la sostanza del pane presente qui ed ora si muta nella sostanza del Cristo.

Ho due problemi con questo avvenimento. Primo, la mia sostanza (e quindi anche quella di Gesù) ricomprende il mio corpo? Non ne vedo la necessità, quindi meglio semplificare con un no. Secondo, il pane ha una sua sostanza? Non ne vedo la necessità, quindi meglio semplificare considerando esauriente il resoconto della scienza, almeno sulle "cose" prive di intelligenza (coscienza, spirito, anima...).

Con il pane privo di sostanza e la sostanza del Cristo priva di un aspetto materiale, la transustanziazione perde di senso. Come potremmo trasformare la solennità dell'Eucarestia in assenza di transustanziazione? Potremmo dire che nell'Eucarestia Dio si fa presente. Ma Dio è sempre presente. Anche se preghi in casa tua Dio è presente e ti ascolta. E allora, cosa resta? Proposta: un momento privilegiato in cui la voce del fedele, unendosi a quella della Chiesa, si fa più alta e più vicina alle orecchie di Dio. Naturalmente, un cattolico tradizionale obbietterebbe che non occorre "alzare la voce" quando si parla con Dio. Ma questo invaliderebbe la preghiera petitoria, che invece ha senso per un cattolico libertario: Dio ci ha donato una libertà talmente radicale che siamo in grado di sorprenderlo, per esempio, mostrando l'entità della nostra gioia e del nostro dolore. Ecco, l'Eucarestia è un momento privilegiato in cui, oltre ad adorare il Mistero divino, disveliamo il nostro mistero alla divinità.

OBIEZIONE: Potrei accettare il dogma su base immanentista, ovvero allentando il mio dualismo sostanziale di partenza: lo spirito, per l'immanentista, richiede un corpo "particolare" a ui ancorarsi, almeno nella fase di emersione, di solito il cervello con la sua particolare configurazione atomica. E' una concessione abbastanza facile da fare poiché, dopotutto, praticamente tutti le "intelligenze" che incontriamo assumono questa modalità. Ecco, attraverso un miracolo, la configurazione atomica del pane fa emergere lo spirito di Cristo rendendolo presente così come lo era quando si incarnò sulla terra. In maniera provocatoria direi che il pane fa, per un istante, le funzioni che il laico attribuisce al cervello. Si tratta di un miracolo particolarmente miracoloso ma, tutto sommato, immaginabile e quindi oggetto di fede. Dovrei pensarci ma non escludo di tornare a credere alla presenza reale. 

Adesso · 

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PRIMA COMUNIONE, CATECHISTI IN CRISI

Come spiegare il Mistero dell’ Eucarestia a un bambino? Come rendere il concetto di Presenza Reale? La dottrina della Transustanziazione – quella ufficiale - non la capisco nemmeno io, e probabilmente è anche sbagliata. Fortunatamente un bambino capisce molto bene la dottrina dell’Incarnazione, i cartoni animati, tanto per dire, sono pieni di esseri che s’incarnano in altri esseri. Alla TV ho appena visto un mago malvagio che s’incarna in un corvo per meglio spiare le mosse dei suoi antagonisti, la comprensione di questa vicenda è stata perfetta, sui divani nessuno ha battuto ciglio o sollevato obiezioni. Si potrebbe allora dire che Dio, al momento della consacrazione, s’incarna nel pane e nel vino (s’impana e s’invina) in memoria della prima incarnazione, quella ancor più spettacolare che si realizzò in un corpo umano.

YOUTUBE.COM

L'Eucarestia, primo incontro del corso di formazione per l'adorazione eucaristica

Significato, Celebrazione, Comunione, Adorazione Don Enrico Finotti, liturgista

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Andiamo alla sostanza

Ha ancora senso parlare di “essenza” (o di sostanza)?

Nella filosofia aristotelica, e quindi tomistica, il concetto era importante poiché a tutte le cose erano costituite da materia + forma. La distinzione richiama quella tra sostanza e accidente. In altre parole, la sostanza conferisce identità alla cosa mentre la forma stabilisce come quella cosa si manifesti nella realtà.

Identità e sostanza sono strettamente collegate. Ma per le cose a conferire identità basta la forma: non esistono due oggetti perfettamente uguali. Per le persone è un po’ diverso: due gemelli sono formalmente uguali ma sono persone diverse, in un caso del genere è la sostanza ad identificarli. Faccio un altro esempio: se mi taglio le unghie la mia “sostanza” non cambia, chi mi ama continuerà ad amarmi anche con le unghie corte. Anche se mi taglio un braccio vale lo stesso. Per chi crede nell’anima anche se il mio corpo corpo si dissolve io continuo ad esistere, tant’è che sono oggetto di preghiere in suffragio. Questo perché la mia sostanza (identità) risiede in un’anima immortale. Per le persone ha senso ipotizzare un’anima ma per le cose no (non è necessaria per identificarle). Se la forma di qualcosa si dissolve non ha senso ipotizzare che continui ad esistere, quand’anche la materia che la costituiva continuerà ed esistere. Riassumendo: la persona ha un corpo e un’anima (dualismo sostanziale), le cose materiali no.

La generalizzazione aristotelica non è quindi necessaria. Il concetto di sostanza è ancora utile ma vale solo per le persone.


Nella dottrina cattolica la cosa è rilevante in tema di eucarestia: cosa significa che il pane diventa corpo di Cristo? La scolastica ci dice che muta sostanza ma come abbiamo visto la cosa ha poco senso se per gli oggetti materiali (pane) possiamo evitare di parlare di sostanza. Meglio allora pensare il processo miracoloso della “presenza reale” come ad un’incarnazione del Figlio nel pane (anziché in un corpo umano come avvenne la prima volta). Il pane si fa corpo di Cristo, mantiene le sue molecole ma acquisisce un'identità che prima, in quanto oggetto, non aveva senso postulare.

Transubstantiation vs. Real Presence

Transubstantiation vs. Real Presence (blog.kennypearce.net):





"Here is the metaphysical background: Aristotle was a proponent of what is called a "hylomorphic" metaphysics. That is, he affirmed that material objects were made up of "matter" (Gr. hylas) and "form" (Gr. morphos). There is a lot more complexity than this, but this is the basic idea. This is related to his distinction between "substance" or "essence" (Gr. ousia) and "accident" (I don't know the Greek word for this). The matter of an object is the stuff it's made out of, and it's form is its shape or organization. For the Scholastics, the Latin "species" seems to have been related to Aristotle's "form" but been more closely related to our cognition (the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this didn't make that much sense to me). Objects also have an essence, which is that in virtue of which it is the thing it is, and various accidents, or properties that could change without the object being destroyed. Often, the essence of an object is thought to be a collection of essential properties; thus I might be essentially human."

The last thing I want to cover is the issue of the Platonist leanings of many of the early fathers, notably the Alexandrians and Augustine. I shouldn't have to take pains to show this, because the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "even Augustine was deprived of a clear conception of Transubstantiation, so long as he was held in the bonds of Platonism." Nevertheless, I will at least try to explain it.

Platonism holds that material objects are what they are in virtue of their "participation" (more literally: "having a share") in a transcendant, changeless, immaterial "form" (not morphos, but eidos or idea, which Aristotle also uses, but in a somewhat different meaning than morphos, I think). You and I are both human because we participate in the form of Human, or, as Plato often says Humanity Itself. The bread is bread because of its relationship to Bread Itself. Things are, of course, generally participants in multiple forms, and everything is a participant in Goodness Itself to a greater or lesser degree because Plato holds to a privation theory of evil (which is where Augustine got it), so anything that had no goodness at all would not exist. Christian Platonists generally want to avoid the idea that the forms are co-eternal with and independent of God, so they say that they exist in God's understanding.

A Platonist does not have a concept of an essence as an Aristotelian does. Furthermore, Plato himself, and I believe most Platonists following him, generally cashes out "participation" in terms of "being patterned after." It is very difficult to see how the bread could change from being patterned after bread to being patterned after the body of Christ without any perceptible change. In what would the patterning consist? How does this object resemble a human body, and how Christ's body in particular? Now, there must be some way of getting this to work, because Father Nicolas Malebranche was a very intelligent Platonist Catholic priest in the 17th/18th century, after the Council of Trent, and he must have come up with something, but I don't know what he said.

At any rate, it is highly unlikely that any Christian Platonist held to anything like transubstantiation prior to Malebranche, and a great many of the early fathers, including, as I have said, the Alexandrian school and Augustine, were Platonists.

The situation is even worse for idealists such as myself (or 18th century Anglican Bishop George Berkeley). We don't believe that there is any such thing as the essence or substance or matter of the bread. All that exists, according to idealism, is what the Scholastics would call the "species." Transubstantiation is thus puzzling for the Aristotelian, more puzzling for the Platonist, and completely incoherent for the idealist. I should also note that most contemporary philosophers don't believe in any of these three theories, but transubstantiation is probably also incoherent for them, since material objects don't have undetectible essences (though they may have essential properties).

Now, a Christian idealist does have to come up with some explanation for the bodily resurrection and be able to say that the body that is raised is in some sense the same body although it is radically transformed in terms of its phenomenal properties. Whatever solution one comes up with for this problem could probably also be used to make sense of the doctrine of the Real Presence. However, this view cannot possibly look anything like transubstantiation, for the reasons discussed above.

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Cosa succede nel corso della Comunione?

E' difficile capire come sia possibile che il pane della Messa si trasformi nel Corpo di Cristo. Bisogna escludere che delle molecole di quel corpo tornino (come avverrà il giorno della resurrezione), si dice con Aristotele che l'azione è a livello di "essenza" ma molti cattolici non credono nell'esistenza delle essenze (è un concetto superfluo). Una soluzione c'è: il Figlio potrebbe tornare ad incarnarsi nel pane così come si è incarnato in un corpo umano a suo tempo. Due nature che si uniscono nel ricordo della prima incarnazione. Una presenza che non viene banalizzata dall'Onnipresenza di Dio... forse il problema è risolto.



Arcadi on Idealism and the Eucharist (blog.kennypearce.net): "To answer this question, Arcadi considers three theories: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and impanation. Now, the doctrine of transubstantiation is standardly explicated in the jargon of Aristotelian metaphysics and this, one might suppose, makes it obviously inconsistent with idealism, a radically anti-Aristotelian metaphysical doctrine. (Indeed, this is precisely what I would have said prior to reading this article!) However, Arcadi argues that this is too quick, for transubstantiation can be formulated without this jargon. What the doctrine claims, at bottom, is that, when the elements are consecrated, the bread ceases to be present and the body of Christ begins to be present, although the sensible qualities of bread remain throughout, and the sensible qualities of the body of Christ are absent throughout. Consubstantiation is precisely the same, except that it holds that the bread continues to be present (201-2). Now these views, Arcadi argues, do turn out to be inconsistent with (Berkeleian) idealism. The reason is that a core principle of Berkeleian idealism is the refusal to distinguish the bread itself from its sensible qualities. Hence, for the Berkeleian, as long as the sensible qualities of bread are present, the bread is present, and as long as the sensible qualities of the body of Christ are absent, the body of Christ is absent (203-4).

According to the third view, impanation, Christ comes to bear to the bread a relation that is somehow similar or analogous to the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ, or Christ's relation to his human body. Arcadi favors the latter approach, and argues that it is consistent with idealism: the bread (while remaining bread) comes to be the body of Christ in the sense that it comes to be related to Christ in the same way Christ's human body is related to him. As indicated at 213n26, consistency with the Chalcedonian Definition appears to require that the relevant relation, on this picture, be a relation to Christ's human soul. Arcadi takes the Berkeleian picture to hold that a given soul is embodied in a particular body just if it bears the right perceptual relation to the sensible qualities of that body (206-8). Clearly, there is no metaphysical difficulty in God's bringing it about that Christ's human soul bears this relation to the Eucharistic bread."



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Come cambia la liturgia

SPECIAL:



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