Light on the Philosophy of Consciousness

We now describe briefly our work-in-progress in the philosophy of consciousness. By philosophy of consciousness we mean the science of the soul (psychology) which is inseparable from the science of the nous (noology) which in turn in intimately connected to the science of the one (henology). We will conveniently refer to these aspects as noetic psychology and in this way avoid a terminological confusion with modern psychology.  The great light and genius of noetic psychology was Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270 CE).  In order to make progress in noetic psychology one needs to be well-versed in analytical dialectics, in intuitive psycho-noetic introspection (phaneroscopy, to borrow a nice neologism) and familiarity with some stages of spiritual realization - all three being present in Ammonius Saccas' pupil Plotinus in a high degree.  Yet Plotinus' noetic psychology is - despite a richness of philosophical concepts, arguments and insights scattered through the Enneads anticipating Kant, German idealism and phenomenology -  not perfectly and completely unfolded in the formal logical plane; nor are the foundations set out clearly accompanied by a detailed manual of inner spiritual phaneroscopy and illumination which serves both as philosophical proof and a guide to spiritual transformation. In other words, a perfect unfolding of noetic psychology must comprise a theory of knowledge imbued system of formal dialectics and a total systematic anagogic and illuminative phaneroscopy progressing from psychology to noology and then back again, establishing metaphysical truths with absolute certainty. In the language of Mahâyâna buddhism the perfect unfolding must encompass both a Madhyamaka and a Yogâcâra including an Abhidharma. Furthermore the special charisma of the Platonic tradition culminating in Plotinus requires that a certain kind of mathematics and formal logic (and there were sophisticated systems of ancient formal logic far beyond the official narrative) be give a special place - and this was done by Porphyry and Iamblichus reviving older mathematical work. While valuable elements for this crucial but lacking unfolding of noetic psychology could be gleaned both from older Middle Platonism (cf. Origen and Saint Clement of Alexandria) and from contemporary Peripatetic, Pyrrhonic and Stoic schools, it fell to Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430 AD) to lay down, as a philosopher  doubtlessly illumined by a Manichean or Christian charisma and theurgy,  a systematic foundation for such a knowledge theoretic, skeptical-dialectical and illuminative phaneroscopic unfolding and articulation. And providentially this occurred in the 5th century as the Neoplatonic School of Alexandria and Athens had reached, under the influence of Syrianus and Proclus, a stage of total corruption and inversion of the original philosophical teaching and spiritual practice of Plotinus and his immediate disciples. Also in the 5th or 6th century it appears that there was a genuine (or "rogue") neoplatonist not connected to the school of Proclus who wrote the foundational texts of the Corpus Dionysiacum. Augustine starts is unfolding of noetic psychology at its proper beginning: the theory of knowledge, the direct and total confrontation with the schools of skepticism, Pyrrhonic and Academic (Contra Academicos), with radical, total and absolute doubt (equal to that of any modern transcendental idealism or phenomenology)  and the recherche de la vérité in the form of luminous indubitable evidence. While within the Islamic Golden Age the true tradition of Plato and Plotinus was continued or revived, it falls to us to construct a systematic, rigorous and formal philosophy of consciousness based primarily on what is called the Platonic-Augustinian tradition: this comprises Augustinian scholasticism which thrived from the early medieval ages in unbroken continuity until the 17th-century (without the direct influence of either Cartesianism or Malebranche), an example being the Milanese Capuchin Friar Valeriano Magni, following the shining wake of Cusa, and then the wonderful school of Ontologism among whose founding fathers are counted Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche and Fénélon and which thrived as a superior form of Christian philosophy until the second half of the 19th century (Ubaghs, Fabre d'Envieu)  when it was persecuted and destroyed by empiricism-leaning Neothomist fanatics backed by ecclesiastic power, the death-blow being dealt by the encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879)  (see Answer To the Letter of An Empiricist Against Ontologism by Fr. Jules Fabre D'Envieu (1864), for an account of the intellectual, social and religious climate). The second part in particular of Fenélon's work Traité de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu which is entitled Démonstration de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu tirée des idées intelectuelles on pages 82-162 offers a particularly clear, concise and systematic presentation of Ontologism as contained in Descartes and Malebranche but in such a way that the Augustinian origins are clearly manifest.C.G. Ubaghs in his Essai d'Idéologie Ontologique (Louvain,1866) on page 40 writes that the Traité is admirably brief, clear and complete and shows directly the influence of Saint Augustine's De libero arbitrio. We also attach great importance to various "spiritualist" schools which had much in common with Ontologism. What was essentially lacking in Augustinian scholasticism and Ontologism - which is demanded by its Platonic roots - was a more systematic development and deployment of formal logic and a special finitist and constructivist philosophy of mathematics (it was only Gödel who developed directly this aspect of Leibniz' work).  Essential spiritual infinity exists, extensive quantitative infinity does not. 

We have sketched an outline of the philosophy of Augustine and expounded some core noetic psychological principles regarding Aristotle, Plotinus and Augustine and their anticipation of German idealism and modern phenomenology.