How Big is Heaven, Refined
Jul. 29th, 2022 05:24 amI think I am on safe ground (for example, Porphyry's Sentences XXXII, On the Gods and the World VIII (with Murray's note), etc.) to venture that there are simply four realms of being for the Neoplatonists: the One, Mind, Soul, and Bodies (plural). (If I were to put on my Empedocles hat, these are simply fire, air, water, and earth, transposed an octave higher.)
So I'll refine my Neoplatonic cosmos as follows:
Realm | Root | Size | Virtue | Computational Model |
---|---|---|---|---|
material | bodies | finite (bounded) | civic | finite state machine |
ætherial | spirits | finite (unbounded) | purificatory | Turing machine |
empyrean | Soul | infinite | contemplative | oracle machine |
intelligible | Mind | trans-infinite | archetypal | [all of them] |
unitary | the One | [transcendant] | [transcendant] | [transcendant] |
(It is perhaps folly to distinguish the material from the ætherial, as they are inextricably bound together and anyway of a similar nature. Still, perhaps it is useful to distinguish them in the same sense that the first step upon a journey, while still within one's own home, is nonetheless somehow distinct.)
I think this is a line of argument in favor of the Church-Turing Thesis: if you want to go beyond a Turing machine, you're gonna have to leave this world behind.