Brain and Embodiment
A theory of hiatus makes possible the capacity for human beings to inhibit animal instincts and to delay the gratification of basic needs. With this theory in mind, Nessan concurs with Dennett, who argues against “Cartesian theater.” What exists is a pandemonium of parallel circuits simultaneously creating “multiple drafts” of experienced reality, playing a transitory role in facilitating immediate activity and variations. Dennett’s idea of multiple drafts discards the Cartesian principle of Cogito as the center of conscious thought.
According to Dennett, the consciousness of the self is made up of wordless images, articulating bits of language and ideas. These images and ideas take root in the circuitry of the brain, expressing the so called ‘self’. This self is in reality an abstraction, because it is “employed to describe the continuity of the impressions, feelings, images, and thoughts experienced by the brain.”
At this point, a question could arise. Could the brain itself experience emotional feelings, imagination, and intellectual thinking, without reference to perception, the body, and the world?
Sociologists of science are primarily concerned with the relation between brain and mind or cognition and life, and they advocate for the significance of the body as the site of cognition, through which we perceive the world. Cognitive function is influenced by the embodiment, expressed in language of communication within the life context. Meaning occurs in the intentionality of the consciousness engaged with life-world, by bringing forth the horizon of meaning.
Linguistic universals have arisen out of the life context, and linguistic conventions are shaped by situations to develop authentic speech, impelled by a deep drive for conceptual clarity. We are condemned to meaning and language beyond language instincts of mimesis (Merleau-Ponty and Francisco Valera’s cognitive science of embodiment).
Other than chimpanzees, human beings have an immense capacity for symbolic language as symbols within larger contextual units of culture which are polyvalent in meaning. The multilayered nuances of human language is called by Richard Dawkins “meme” in cultural heritability.
The functioning of human language is described in analogy to genes. Memes, derived from the Greek mimeme (imitation), refer to ideas whose explanatory power leads to their replication, as they are transmitted from brain to brain. Competition among memes also takes place, according to the logic of natural selection, in which successful memes survive and propagate, while others disappear from the meme pool.
Human culture might be interpreted as a competition among memes, as human consciousness with its capacity for complex use of language creates the occasion for a number of other human behaviors, such as play, art and aesthetics, and religion. This refers to the genetic construction of reality, which contrasts with sociology of multiple realities (Robert Bella), which involves a structural theory of evolution according to the dialectics between structure of conservation and innovative variation of novelty (hiatus).
Cultural meme in this regard cannot neatly be influential in a unilateral and deterministic way, but there is an aspect of unpredictability and indeterminacy in the life of organisms for evolvability to dynamically interact with the environment.
Learning from Symbol of Imago Dei
According to Nessan, the self can experience the other as an experiencing self. “Moreover, the self can apprehend the other as a self-reflecting on the self-experience of other selves. This characteristic of human thought is here referred to as reflective self-consciousness.” This interpretation is challenging, jumping beyond Dawkin’s genetic interpretation of cultural memes and human behavior.
To what extent would the self experience the other? How would the self apprehend the other as a self-reflecting on the self-experience of other selves? Within such dynamics of intersubjectivity remains a lack of conceptual clarity in evolutionary biology.
This said, Nessan turns to theological understanding of God, human beings, and environment. In particular, a biblical narrative (or historicized sage) of the fall is identified as the dislocation of the human animal. A story of the fall tells that with the crossing of the threshold human consciousness has emerged in the ecology of Eden, in which everything unfolds according to nature.
For Paul Tillich the meaning of the fall is symbolic of the transition from essence (non-actualized potentiality) to existence given the possibility of reflective self-acknowledges. The human condition is existentially experienced, such as alienated, anxious, and finite. It refers to the meaning of the existentialist hiatus between instinct and action with freedom.
More than that, Nessan argues that the human animal experienced the dislocation, since it implies an inherent consequence of the emergence of human consciousness. This emergent interpretation would make the case for an ecological understanding of human consciousness and new development far from equilibrium.
This perspective runs counter to Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, rather relocating the sin within human responsible action. We are all like Adam standing before God, exercising our freedom and responsibility. God still remains gracious not in rescinding a symbol of image of God, regardless of punishment. A sinful human being is a graced being, standing in the face of culture of life and culture of violence.
Human beings, imbued with ensouled body and spirit, are still caught between innate selfishness (our heritage as animals, since we are from earth, as creature within eco-system) and selfless love (our God-given potential as those who live with reflective self-consciousness, since God’s breath in our nostril).
The biblical symbol of the image of God is the foundation for human self-consciousness, reflection, and linguistic capacity in giving names to other animals. Dominium terrae is a cultural program instilled with care and service of the ecological life, nothing to do with ruler of the earth through the survival of the fittest.
On the other hand, “what is particular to human language is that it may even be employed in order to deceive.” Self-consciousness creates enormous problems for interpretation and meaning of life, in terms of authentic speech or faulty witness. The word of God does not cease along with human history, civilization, and society.
Emancipation and World-Openness
In Genesis the first words from the mouth of the serpent are “Did God say?” Words have been used to distort and twist. The dislocation in the fall signifies that human beings no longer know their own place in the world, listening to reality of powers and principalities.
Genesis narrative gives an account of emancipation of Israel from a mythological reality of Babylon’s powers and principalities (tohu wa bohu: Gen. 1:2). ‘Good’ creation reflects an emancipation of Israel from Babylonian captivity, deconstructing the mythical reality of Babylonian Tiamat and Bau in terms of utopian vision of creation as emancipation (F.W. Marquardt).
This emancipatory position would strengthen a theory of hiatus, which offers the human animal a choice between many alternative actions. Where selfishness was once a virtue in the quest for survival, selfishness now presents itself as an acute problem in asserting my self-interest and violating other’s integrity.
The Genesis narrative about Adam and Eve gives mythical (mytos implying the story) expression to the sense of profound dislocation, as experienced by human beings in the form of a historicized saga. The biblical narrative is layered in conceptual reflection, as embedded within a historical life context, especially espoused with prophetic rationality and praxis.
The mythic voice of the serpent designates the crossing of a threshold, making human beings disobedient to God, while the hiatus emerges, distinguishing human behavior from animals who do not disobey God. Breaking the ecology of Eden by virtue of the very form of self-consciousness and action, the harmony of natural existence is disrupted for the sake of the human creativity and freedom, as cast out of paradise.
With the fall into reflective self-consciousness, the meaning of the fall is reconsidered according to evolutionary categories, yet Nessan requires revision of these categories through a biblical symbol of human being created in the image of God (Jesus Christ according to St. Paul), along with proleptic hope.
In so doing, Nessan’s theory of hiatus is more involved in proleptic emancipation than Gehlen’s idea of hiatus and world-openness, which has a lack of utopian-prophetic vision and praxis. Indeed, world-openness originates from proleptic-prophetic awareness of new heaven and new earth, as heralded and embodied in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The world-openness, or bringing forth the world is primarily based on flesh (assumptio carnis), a pre-reflective ground of theologia crucis, which is proleptically actualized and transformed through the body of the resurrected. This perspective features the presence of corporeality, refining the theory of hiatus and the image of God in an integrative-emergent frame of reference.
For Nessan, “Image of God denotes not a lost historical reality but a yet-to-be-fully- realized potential.” Nessan’s emergent approach does not undermine a traumatic sense of dislocation along with the fall into reflective self-consciousness, but he argues for human beings to relate to the world with unprecedented freedom. “Self-consciousness is thus the source of both our misery and our glory as human beings.”
Nessan’s position can share something with Pannenberg, who conceptualizes the image of God as representative of what human beings are in the process of becoming. Image of God refers to the human potential for living with a self-transcendence and in an open attitude toward the world. In fact, Pannenberg’s ontological position is of apologetic character, emphasizing a significance of hiatus and transcendence in the fashion of Gehlen.
However, Nessan maintains that “Christianity envisions a future where human beings realize the fullness of the image of God as they locate themselves at home in God’s grace.” This is characteristic of Nessan’s public theology of the image of God holding an evolutionary-christological profile. “To become like Christ would be the equivalent of becoming fully human” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
Nessan’s proleptic-prophetic vision is grounded in theologia crucis (forgiveness and reconciliation), which gives new possibility for human beings to pursue God’s embodied transcendence in light of new heaven and new earth. Evolution finds its own place within this divine drama of original creation, continuing creation and final creation.