As barefootwisdom mentioned, that is a good read from Butler...and the principle he mentioned is indeed crucial. To each god, then, as a supreme individual, the cosmos is a monotheism consisting of itself as the totality of all things, including all other gods. As you note, things do indeed get weird as we get to the deep metaphysics of Neoplatonist theory...
Another way of thinking about it, perhaps: if we accept that the gods are ontologically "prior," as it were, than things in the mundane world (starting with "Being" but including things like memory, space-time, et al.), then we cannot readily ascribe any limits to their knowledge. I can't quibble with your description of how information is encoded in the physical world, but the physical world itself is an emanation "downstream" as it were, from the gods. We can speak casually (and even in a more rigorous, scientific way) about physical processes in the mundane cosmos in this way, as it's convenient shorthand; but when we consider deep er ontological questions—and if we accept Neoplatonic theory, of course—we must reframe how we regard the relationship of the gods to the realms that reside "below" them. That's my conjecture, at least.
This does wrap back into Iamblichus, as well, because much of On the Mysteries involves Iamblichus reframing his interrogator's philosophical questions to just such an orientation, and the practical (for theurgic purposes) and theoretical implications of such a reframing.
no subject
Another way of thinking about it, perhaps: if we accept that the gods are ontologically "prior," as it were, than things in the mundane world (starting with "Being" but including things like memory, space-time, et al.), then we cannot readily ascribe any limits to their knowledge. I can't quibble with your description of how information is encoded in the physical world, but the physical world itself is an emanation "downstream" as it were, from the gods. We can speak casually (and even in a more rigorous, scientific way) about physical processes in the mundane cosmos in this way, as it's convenient shorthand; but when we consider deep er ontological questions—and if we accept Neoplatonic theory, of course—we must reframe how we regard the relationship of the gods to the realms that reside "below" them. That's my conjecture, at least.
This does wrap back into Iamblichus, as well, because much of On the Mysteries involves Iamblichus reframing his interrogator's philosophical questions to just such an orientation, and the practical (for theurgic purposes) and theoretical implications of such a reframing.