A Short Epistemology of Proximal Dependence

In this post, I aim to lay out a short epistemological construct of thought, in terms of dependence upon the mind thinking it. I call this post "short" because 1) very few implications will be discussed, and 2) the Biblical presuppositions for this philosophy will be assumed, though not all of them explicitly stated. If these two conditions were to be reversed, then I do believe that a good many pages could be written on this subject, but that is neither my concern nor goal at the present time.

The thesis of this construct is that the ability to think thoughts is an essential property of rational minds, that this ability is a creative act within a certain mental scope, and that such thoughts are brought into a proximally dependent existence within that scope.

To begin, it is an essential property of rational minds to think thoughts. This is implicit in the term "rational mind," which at the very least implies some ability to reason, use logic, etc. Furthermore, we have Biblical support that we do, as we suspect, think thoughts, as is implicit in such verses as Phil. 4:8 and 2 Cor. 10:5. Furthermore, we have Biblical support that God has thoughts, in verses such as Ps. 139:17-18. With this obvious point established, I will move on.

Next, it follows that a thought is a creative act, within the mental sphere, or scope, of the mind thinking it. This follows from the fact that the thought did not previously exist in the mind, but was brought into existence by the mind. If the property of rational minds is to bring thoughts into existence, and the thoughts do not previously exist in the mind, then the mind must bring them into existence creatively. Some might be reticent at this point to affirm any creative power of the mind, as if such a notion is wrong our blasphemous. But if this is not true, then how else would thoughts come into existence? If our minds do not create the thoughts that they think, then they must be implanted by some other source. Now, Biblically, we have four classes of beings from which a thought might possibly come into our own minds. First, such a thought might come from another human. However, this is a bad option, as there is no Biblical basis for telepathy. Second, such a thought might come from fallen angels, or demons. This might be valid in a few cases, but looking at the stories in which Christ cast out demons during His earthly ministry, we see a contrast between the demon (or multitude of demons) that speak to Christ, and the man who speaks to Christ after they have been cast out. Thus, this option also fails. Third, such a thought might come from unfallen angels, but we have no Biblical evidence that this happens on any consistent basis. Finally, our thoughts might come directly from God. Such a view is consistent with the philosophy of Occasionalism, which purports that there are no true secondary causes, and that God is the only efficient cause of anything that happens. However, this view makes God the author of sin. If our thoughts come directly from God, then God must be a sinner, for we think sinful thoughts often. Such views are ridiculous however, for man is not man if man cannot think on his own, by his own mind. Man's responsibility for sin is based on knowledge (Rom. 1:18-21), but man cannot be responsible himself if he cannot deny this knowledge himself, as all sinners do, and to deny knowledge entails thinking a thought wherein one denies something. Now, God may indeed send thoughts our way from time to time, as He certainly revealed His Word to the Prophets and Apostles, and inspired them to write the canon of Scripture. However, such actions are the exception, and not the rule, of the origin of our thoughts. Thus we see that rational minds think thoughts, and that this thinking is a creative act.

Furthermore, it follows that the mind defines a scope wherein the created thoughts exist. When I think, the thought exists in my own mind, not someone else's mind. Neither does it exist physically, but only mentally within my mind. Similarly, we do not know God's thoughts in and of themselves, for such are in His own mind, to which we do not have direct access. However, He has revealed some of them to us in His Word, which, in the act of reading and meditating upon it, His thoughts, at least the revealed ones, become our thoughts as well, and as Van Til might say, we think God's thoughts after Him. Thus, we see that our minds form a "space", "sphere" or "scope", wherein the thoughts we think exist.

(As an aside, what about communication? Does this not transfer thoughts? Not directly, as by telepathy, but indirectly, through physical media. When I speak, or write something down, I encode a mental thought into some logical representation, and transduce that representation onto some physical medium. However, this is only helpful if you are familiar with the representation that I am using. If so, you can use your own physical senses to observe the physical component of the logical representation - i.e., to read the written words, or hear the spoken speech, and you can then use your own mental capabilities to decode that back into thought. Thus, for communication to work, we must have 1) a physical body and rational mind, 2) a mental capability whereby we can put our thoughts into some logical representation (i.e. a language), 3) a physical ability, inherent in the physical body, to transduce the representation into a physical form. Likewise, to receive the communication, one must have 4) a physical ability to observe the logical encoding of the communication (i.e. eyes and ears), and 5) a mental capability to decode that logical encoding back into thought. Thus, God has given us minds with language capabilities, but we must also know the same particular language in order to communicate thoughts. There is no Scriptural support, at least of which I am aware, for telepathy, or direct thought-thought communication from one human to another.)

Finally, it follows that the thoughts which are created by rational minds are proximally dependent upon those minds. Thus, if a mind thinking a thought were to cease to exist, then that thought would cease to exist. Now, this is to say that the thought would cease to exist in a local, though not necessarily universal sense. If two minds are thinking the same thought, and one suddenly ceases to exist, then one instance of the thought would cease to exist, but the other would continue to exist in the mind still thinking it. Furthermore, it follows that since all minds are ultimately dependent upon God, that each thought must also be ultimately dependent upon God, though each thought is also proximally dependent upon the mind thinking it.


Some Consequences:

One consequence of this formulation allows us to see the superiority of God's thoughts to ours (Is. 55:9). Our existence is bound by a succession of moments, and thus thoughts, and as a result of this, we must think logically by deduction. Thus, we assert one thing to be true, assert that something else follows if that is true, and then assert that as well. We do this in steps, because we are temporally-bound creatures. However, God is eternal, and is not bound by a succession of moments. That is not to say that God is inert, or that He doesn't work in time, but that everything that He does has been known and determined from eternity, and that any changes in His actions (such as Christ being in Heaven pre-Incarnate, coming to earth Incarnate, and rising back to Heaven glorified) are performed out of His own good pleasure and determination, and not out of being constrained by the necessity of a succession of moments. Whatever succession of moments we experience is created by God, and He is not bound by them, nor any other. Indeed, as Van Til would say, God cannot be bound by a succession of moments, else there would be something in Him left for Him to discover about Himself, but this cannot be, for God is omniscient, and infallibility requires omniscience, and God cannot be omniscient if He has yet to experience what He will yet be, and there is something yet for God to be, if God is bound by a succession of moments. Therefore, God is not bound by a succession of moments, and the heresy of process theology and other similar modes of thought, which state that God is in a continual process of becoming, is easily seen. But I digress. Back to the point, if God is not bound by a succession of moments, then God does not know things by logical deduction. This is not to say that God's thoughts are not logical. On the contrary, God's thoughts embody logic! However, if God's thoughts are eternal, then they must be eternally complete in their logical relations. God's thoughts are logical, but if He is not bounded by a succession of moments, then He did not arrive at them by deduction, but rather knew them in their complete logical relations from eternity.

Another way in which we see God's superiority is in His power, or efficiency. Every thought that our minds create is a creative act, and a subset of these are commonly called "creative", such as artistic thoughts, literary thoughts, musical thoughts, etc. However, no matter how much we imagine, we cannot materialize our thoughts into solid matter dependent upon ourselves. However, God can do this, and we exist because of it. By His nature, and more specifically His omnipotent power, God can materialize into existence anything He so wishes according to His will. Now, inasmuch as creation occurred according to a temporal schedule, and since God's thoughts are from eternity, we see that God's thoughts of creation precede the physical act of creation. However, God's creation of the world, and His command for the earth to bring forth vegetation, the appearance of the stars, and so forth, is fiat creation, in that God had a thought about what to create, willed that it so be, and it promptly was. Such is the ability of being able to materialize one's thoughts into physical matter proximally dependent upon oneself. We do not have this ability. Furthermore, since the physical world is dependent upon God, and not us, there is no reason why we should be able to interact with it, except for the fact that God has created us, having physical bodies (also dependent upon Him), which He has ordained to have certain functional abilities in interacting with the world around us. Now, if the world is dependent solely upon God, and if God has ordained for us to have no ability to change the state of the physical world except through bodily interaction (and what Scriptural support is there to the contrary?), then it follows that we do not possess any ability, by which we can mentally change the world around us. This goes against the flagrant and errors of those who promote Positive Confession, Creative Visualization, the Law of Attraction (the secret of The Secret), etc. Such ideas basically promote the lie that we can be as God, determining the physical world by our own minds. Such an idea is attractive to sinful man, who desires to be self-determining, independent of God, and thus as God, but God will not have it, and all such thinking is will inevitably end in self-frustrated failure. Rather, we do much better to accept our place as creatures, and learn to thrive in the role in which has created us to fulfill.


Thus, a philosophical construct of thought in terms of creation by rational minds, and proximal dependence upon those minds, has been established, and a couple of consequences discussed. This construct will hopefully form the basis for more philosophical musings on epistemology in the future.