Source: https://metachristianity.com/beings-superseding-ontic-over-both-material-and-non-being/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 20:57:36+00:00

Document:
Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to Time & Timelessness. Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to the First Adam. Pure Act does not “Become” with respect to the Last Adam. To attempt the claim of, “Pure Act Becomes” entails an Uphill Ontic with respect to Pure Act (…which is a metaphysical absurdity…). Pure Act in the Downhill Ontic reveals – Communicates – all ontic possibility. Logos in descent.
As per http://disq.us/p/1u20xbr we’ve the following: God Can Suffer? Feel? As I do? Taste? Smell? As I do? Yes. (…again, see http://disq.us/p/1u20xbr which is also at https://randalrauser.com/2018/07/the-problem-with-a-god-who-suffers/#comment-3994170039 …). The Truly Human houses “I Feel X” & every bit of that noetic frame is Downhill invention, gift, by Pure Act. Logos in descent.
But then that is true of any and all possible worlds – or we can say that such is true of any and all world-contingent reference frames. The attempt to ground the Contingent Conscious Observer in its own Mind – in its own Contingent Reference Frame – just is the absurdity of attempting to define this or that ToE by something less than Totality – something less than the Absolute’s Reference Frame.
One of the goals of this brief primer is to comment that the following content will be more clear if one has already read the above linked items and, also, to comment that the concept of Communique vis-à-vis the Processions within the Trinitarian Life is an entirely different metaphysic than that of Particles In Motion / Physics.
Another goal of the primer is to bring all of “that” into focus “so that” we can make the proverbial connection FROM all of “that” over TO the concept and actions or metaphysic of the Principle of Proportionate Causality.
Recall that we are, here, discussing the overlap and ontic-arrow in-play within, not one or the other, but BOTH the landscape of Creation Ex Nihilo (on the one hand) AND the landscape of the Mind-Body Interaction (on the other hand). In short we are (…again see the linked essay in the opening primer…) looking at Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.
Important preliminaries are discussed in http://disq.us/p/1lx3d2k which opens with “Mind Body Interaction” – and – then – God can interface seamlessly with nature. Move it. And far more. Etc. And He not only creates said nature, but other natures too. One of the differences between a tree’s nature and the nature of Man is, well, among other things, the immaterial which outreaches the corporeal. God creates that too. He might, and certainly can, even grant it authority, as in the ontic-reach of faculty or capacity over and above. And so on. If interaction is a problem, then God isn’t interacting.
Think about what it is that God creates with respect to proportionate causality. We must not make the mistake of Pantheism or of Idealism here. Perhaps our tendency toward mechanistic physicalist thinking muddies our premises with respect to interaction whereas sound metaphysical causal closure vis-à-vis the exclusive ontic real estate of proportionate causality, concurrentism, and the ground of all ontic-possibility seamlessly and causally amalgamates that which Informs and that which is Informed.
Quote: “A thing is said to move in two ways: First, as an end; for instance, when we say that the end moves the agent. In this way the intellect moves the will, because the good understood is the object of the will, and moves it as an end. Secondly, a thing is said to move as an agent, as what alters moves what is altered, and what impels moves what is impelled. In this way the will moves the intellect and all the powers of the soul, as Anselm says (Eadmer, De Similitudinibus). The reason is, because wherever we have order among a number of active powers, that power which regards the universal end moves the powers which regard particular ends. … Now the object of the will is good and the end in general, and each power is directed to some suitable good proper to it, as sight is directed to the perception of color, and the intellect to the knowledge of truth. Therefore the will as agent moves all the powers of the soul to their respective acts, except the natural powers of the vegetative part, which are not subject to our will.” (S.T. I q. 82 art. 4) End quote.
We find in reality the unavoidable “order among a number of active powers” in the real sense of concurrentism [.. http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html ..] moving from the ontic-proximal to the ontic-distal and Top Down Causation finds all created realities in some real sense within that same state of affairs (concurrentism) and, just the same, moving downhill, we find other (created, fully ontic) beings/wills who in like manner fully “concur” with that which is their own swath of ontic real estate.
How real are those more distal sorts of concurrence?
Given the Decree in question streaming from the wellspring of all proportionate causality, they are absolutely real, and, given said *God* we need not acquiesce to a full throttled Idealism (we are God’s thoughts – full stop) or Absurdity (we do not actually exist) in order to rationally affirm such metaphysical landscapes. Both proximally and distally it is the case that that which informs supersedes that which is informed. The “verb” therein is fully ontic, irreducible and springboards off of the rational ground of all possible being, thereby aborting all collapse into the silly non-starters of deism, pantheism, idealism, or absurdity.
We are speaking here of the Adamic in the sense of the most fundamentally decreed and hence to say of the Last Adam that the Son had no Form and “therefore” was not an individual prior to the creative act of God (Genesis 1:1) or was not in full the proverbial “I” in the full sense “but for” said creative act is to enslave that which informs to that which is informed, which is metaphysical nonsense. Of course that which informs “interacts” with that which is informed and (perhaps) in vectors and degrees which we do not fully appreciate (perhaps) as a consequence of an approach muddied by physicalist thinking rather than by thinking built atop premises of sound metaphysical causation (…speaking of Muddied Physicalist Thinking: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html …).
The Necessary, that which informs, surfaces as that which is not static, is not procession-less, but is “living” in the absolute sense and that which ontologically supersedes the informed in a sense akin to concurrentism. Whether proximal or distal (God downward….), such is the nature of all real estate in question.
The only question is this: Can *God* create in this or that created being the ontologically irreducible Will Itself just as He creates in that same sense and in that same created being that which is the ontologically irreducible “Existence Itself“? Given *God* Who is reality’s eternal wellspring with respect to the principle of proportionate causality, the answer is obvious: of course He can.
Necessary Being Itself affords that which nothing else can: ex nihilo. If God cannot grant to non-entity that which is His Alone to grant (existence, being, will, and so on), well then we, you and I, the created beings, do not “actually” exist as that which is other than God and we are then spiraling once again amid that collapse into the ontic-silliness of the non-starters of deism, pantheism, idealism, or absurdity even as a full-blown Idealism and/or Solipsism lurk in the shadows.
In a roundabout way Feser’s essay (and the com-box in particular) at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/11/averroism-and-cloud-computing.html are insightful in a few ways here.
I’ve never seen one argument, not one, ever, which supports any good reason for the “concern” that there is *not* that which is the ontologically irreducible “immaterial will“, that which outlives the corporeal vis-à-vis survivalism trumping corruptionism. At the end of the day, all our definitions force the reality of that which exists without any material “stuff”.
Again, I’ve never seen one argument, not one, ever, which supports any good reason for the “concern” that there is *not* that which is the ontologically irreducible “immaterial will“, that which outlives the corporeal vis-à-vis survivalism trumping corruptionism. At the end of the day, all our definitions force the reality of that which exists without any material “stuff”.
The essay on “SURVIVALISM, CORRUPTIONISM, AND MEREOLOGY” by David Oderberg at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7SKlRTfkUieTVFfdl8xQjBnU2M/ agrees with Feser and the vast majority of Christians.
The syntax of incarnation of course is extreme should we demand or expect *not* sound metaphysical causal closure *but* instead in muddied thinking demand that the stuff of contingent and mutable causations account for the whole-show. As Sean Carroll’s “Poetic Naturalism” alludes to, the illusory awaits all syntax given such paltry means. What the First Adam *is* and what the Last Adam *is* dissolves any rational concerns about “interaction”.
Christianity just is ontology’s Extreme Dualism as it, and no other, weds the Necessary and Contingent, weds that which Informs and that which is Informed within the Imago Dei amid Groom/Bride in a fashion that is unparalleled by any other such interface/interaction. But then there is only one, and not many, such Decrees from He Who is the wellspring of all proportionate causality.
We are not Angels, nor Galaxies, nor Creatures With Many Eyes around the Throne of God. We are “the Adamic”, that which is predestined for nothing less than the semantics of incarnation (Scotus arrives on scene perhaps) as a wedding is Decreed. Such cannot be defined by “other decrees” with respect to “other created beings”. Not in whole at least. When the body is dust, we yet persist, yet motion, yet see, though in some real sense we are to put on the incorruptible through the corporeal’s (Body’s / Physicality’s) resurrection as the Whole Man soundly, finally, traverses all possible “interaction” amid Bride/Groom.
Sean Carroll maps all such causation in his essay on Top Down Causation into the materialist’s only option of that which is fundamentally, or irreducibly, or ultimately, or cosmically the illusory at http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/08/01/downward-causation/ as any hope of ontological emergentism ends in nothing more than syntax, a kind of Wittgenstein-esc language game. Given Non-Theism’s anemic metaphysical means/ends, such is forced to do so where causation is concerned. Causal closure just is annihilation of the “I/Will” in question (and far, far more) given the physicalist’s creed.
Given the fact that our Non-Theist friends lack in their causal means that which causally sums to the Principle of Proportionate Causality (…the PPC for brevity …see definitions at http://disq.us/p/1lwnawv …) then when it comes to God’s Creative Act with respect to being and with respect to volition and with respect to intentionality they are simply at a loss as to how to unpack causality without reducing all of reality to that of the Grand-Automaton (or the illusory – and so on).
It’s obviously more layered than that, but, it seems so common of an error to conflate non-identicals that it seems worth pointing out the general nature of things with respect to “causal content” and so on.
Proportionate Causality and the Positive Metaphysic (as opposed to “only” a negative theology) arrives again and again in this interface. One wonders whether God *can* and in fact *did* create a being in His Own Image with respect to the principle of proportionate causality *itself*. After all, we rationally affirm that Being Itself, as in God Who is Immaterial, both can and does interact with matter/material, and the reasons why He can are obvious given Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.
And *we* of course necessarily live and move and have and find our own being-itself from the *only* metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility, namely, “Being Itself / GOD“.
I am there using “being itself” to refer to what the Self is in contrast to “Matter”, which requires moving carefully. On the PPC there was the prior of Non-Being, and, then, Being which is not “to be a tree” as Feser notes but rather to be at all. Two interesting facts arise here. First, clearly that sense finds the ontic of be-*ing* and it is *different* than “a tree“. Secondly, it is that same dividing line which grants, and forces, the affairs of Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being mentioned earlier as we approach the rational affirmation of the Immaterial God seamlessly interacting with the Material.
There’s an interface there of ontic distincts, or of ontic non-identicals, and we seem to see the seamlessness of that interface when it comes to God/World, which just *is* the interface of “The Divine Mind / World” but, then, we seem to “pull back” when it comes to “Our Mind / World”, which is curious. Again, the reason that is curious is Being’s superseding ontic over both Material and Non-Being.
The following “Copy/Paste” is added for context as it helps elucidate a few key nuances which are in play here. It’s a bit long and it will close with “End Copy/Paste” so as to avoid confusion it’s [bracketed] interlude here. Note that it is a rough paraphrase of a discussion and so the “you” and “we” and “my” and so on are for the most part as per the original flow of the discussion.
Let’s say there is no created World. And let’s say that God is going to create an agent. The question is CAN God create the volitional being who in fact CAN freely choose within this or that finite [set] of options which God Decrees/Creates? Is that something God CAN do?
You say that in me and you there is no such possibility as the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” and the reason (you say) is because every choice is the result of a preference and every preference is the result of some other preference and that becomes an Infinite Regress. Now, you do not tell us why you Ground the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” in me and in you instead of in God.
1. IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) was me or you, the created self, THEN you would be correct (…well, actually you’d still be wrong given Aquinas’ earlier quote regarding The-Will heading up the Ordering-Of-Powers, and therein such truly is “The-Seat” — singular — and not trillions in an infinite regress….).
2. IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) is in fact GOD vis-à-vis The Uncreated Volitional Self, well THEN you are incorrect.
And if fact “1” does collapse into a metaphysical absurdity whereas “2” is nothing less than a metaphysical necessity.
Please keep the concept of, “God-Causes-To-Exist-The-Reality-That-Is-ABCDEF” in mind as we move along here.
First: As noted above we found that IF the Beginning/End of the Rock-Bottom of “The Volitional Seat That Is The Self” (…or our very being itself….) is in fact GOD vis-à-vis The Uncreated Volitional Self, well THEN you are incorrect.
God Creates/Gifts and God Grounds and God Continuously Sustains the very same Volitional Seat That Is The Self, or, the very same Capacity Of Choice (and so on) which we are discussing. There *is* a Hard Stop. That *is* what we in fact *mean* when we say, “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” and Etc. with respect to the Imago Dei. To say that my capacity for X finds its Height / Width / Breadth and begins and ends in “Me” and not “God” is to claim a metaphysical absurdity. Definitions continue onward and upward with respect to Grounding such that as with being so too with will — nether suffers the infinite regress.
God is in fact Being Itself. The Hard Stop of our own *being is nothing less than Being Itself (…on the Principle of Proportionate Causality…). Only that which just is Being Itself, or only that which just is Free Will Itself – or only that which just is Intentionality Itself – can in this case be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely the illusion of Volition-Exists but in fact Volition-Exists-Hard-Stop. It’s all Ex Nihilo and whether we replace Being with Choice (….and so on, and so on…) does not change what is happening there in the Creative Act vis-à-vis the difference between Actual vs. Illusion at the end of the Creative Act. Enter a key phrase: Imago Dei. BTW are our thoughts determined too on your view or is Reason in fact Intentional?
God freely chooses to Create/Not-Create. And, just the same, the Ground-Zero or Hard-Stop of the Created Intentional Self or of the Seat that is the Self, is the Uncreated Intentional Self “just as” the Ground-Zero or Hard Stop of the Created Agent’s *being* is in fact Being-Itself.
A. When God creates our very being Ex Nihilo is it not quite “Real”?
B. When God creates our very volition Ex Nihilo is it not quite “Real”?
Can you justify Granting the Principle of Proportionate Causality to one but not the other with respect to God Creating, Gifting, Grounding, and Continually Sustaining? Well no and that is one reason why it is the case that when you insist, “God cannot create the Causal Agent capacitated to openly choose amid some finite [set] of actual (ontic) options” you have not shown your conclusion to be “necessarily true”. Yet for some reason you’ve not justified for us why we find you saying, “God-Cannot-Create-And-Ground-That-Intentionality-Amid-That-Set-Of-Options”. You’ve not shown us how your “Cannot” is [necessarily true]. Whereas, we see quite clearly how it is [necessarily possible] that “God-Can” create such a capacity in the Imago Dei given the Principle of Proportionate Causality and the fact that Occasionalism is not where First Cause thinking rightly terminates.
Arguments based on Occasionalism (fallacious).
CAN God Create the Intentional Agent who can, like Him, freely choose (….amid whatever created and finite [SET] of options God Decrees to exist and so on….)?
It seems you are forced to deny the Principle of Proportionate Causality and argue that it is [Necessarily The Case] that God [Cannot Create Such An Agent Amid Such Options].
….our own “Hard Stop” (…or the metaphysical fountainhead…) of our own being “just-is” Uncreated Being-Itself, so also then….
….our own “Hard Stop” of our own Free-Volition “just-is” the Uncreated Intentional Self….
….and so “God-Can” is [Necessarily Possible].
….just because we can’t freely choose among the Infinite Set of All Ontological Possibilities (….like God who in fact IS the metaphysical Wellspring of all ontological possibility…) doesn’t *necessitate* that we’re limited to one choice & God can’t Create/Will/Decree a (real) SET of (real) options.
Let’s try a Yes or No this time: The question is CAN God create the volitional being who in fact CAN freely choose within this or that finite [set] of Decreed options? Is that something God CAN do?
Perhaps but then there is a distinction and Occasionalism is false. Hence (then) the “Adamic” in Eden is free to choose amid options — which means just that and nothing less — that the Adamic in Eden is free to choose amid options. Then, since Occasionalism is False we find that “God Caused My-Choice or Adam’s Sin” is also False. But that assumes that one does not backtrack from one’s earlier rejection of Occasionalism.
First, once again: How can ANY X find its terminus of existence outside of God? Or in itself? Secondly: Since Uncreated Intentionality is the Ground & Hard Stop of the Ontic v. the Imago Dei’s Intentionality, there cannot be an infinite regress in the Imago Dei’s intentionality. Only Occasionalism makes that Grounding error. There’s just more to Occasionalism than you’ve mentioned so far so keep that file open for new information.
God Creates/Gifts and God Grounds and God Continuously Sustains the very same Capacity Of Choice we are discussing. There *is* a Hard Stop. That *is* what we in fact *mean* when we say, “….the ontology of love or of being or of will or of reason or of intentionality…” and Etc. with respect to the Imago Dei.
Should God Will/Decree “Square” in this or that Possible World well then it is necessarily the case “Round” is impossible unless and until God suspends or reverses His Will/Decree in said Possible World.
IF In Fact as per Ontic-Fact the “Edenic Adamic” is free to do *otherwise* then in fact that otherwise cannot sum to Ontic Non-Entity nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being. In fact God/Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity or in fact free to do Non-Being. Any epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy.
That is all rough and hurried, but, it may offer something on the question of Consciousness or the Mind/Body interaction. Recall again that in the Trinitarian Life – and therefore at Reality’s Irreducible Substratum it is the case that Communicate transcends efficient and final causality as that which is caused does not exist before in Act, whereas that which is communicated exists before in Act, as described in Garrigou-Lagrange’s “The Trinity and God the Creator”.
It is the Trinitarian metaphysic alone which – at the end of the proverbial Ontic-Line – whether one travels Upstream or Downstream – provides lucidity given that there alone is reason’s last reply – reason’s final terminus – found amid the Wider, Thicker Heavy-Meta of Communique as opposed to the Narrower, Thinner Physics.
Our progressions upstream and downstream in fact retain Mind and Reason Itself hence we are rational to stand firm on reason’s last reply – on reason’s final terminus. Or, to say it another way, any and all Midstream progressions cannot retain coherence should one’s Upstream and Downstream termini finally forfeit the proverbial Means & Ends thereof.
Lastly, the items from https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.html which were listed at the start (…taken from http://disq.us/p/1mj0his and from http://disq.us/p/1mj0j0k …).
There seems to be a serious problem with the conceptual role approach, namely that even if it is granted that mental states have the specific meaning or content they do only because of their relations to other mental states, this wouldn’t explain how mental states have any meaning at all in the first place. That a particular belief either implies other beliefs or is implied by them presupposes that it has some meaning or other: nothing that was completely meaningless could imply (or be implied by) anything. The very having of logical and conceptual relations assumes the prior existence of meaning, so that no appeal to logical and conceptual connections can (fully) account for meaning. Moreover, if belief A gets its content from its relations to beliefs B and C, and these get their content from their relations to beliefs D, E, and F, we seem destined to be led either in a circle or to an infinite regress. Either way, no ultimate explanation of intentional content will have been given. To provide such an explanation thus inevitably requires an appeal to something outside the network, something which can impart meaning to the whole. John Searle, who endorses something like the conceptual role theory of meaning, acknowledges that logical and conceptual relations between mental states cannot be the whole story if circularity or infinite regress is to be avoided. He therefore postulates that the entire “Network” of intentional mental states (he capitalizes Network to signify its status as a technical term) rests on what he calls a “Background” of non-intentional capacities to interact with the world around us. We have, for example, such intentional mental states as the desire to have a beer and the belief that there is beer in the refrigerator, and these mental states do, in part, get the specific meaning they have via their relations to each other and to other mental states in the broader Network.
We on the other hand don’t merely make physical movements: the waving of your hand when your friend enters the room isn’t just a meaningless movement, but an action, the action of greeting your friend. If it were just a meaningless movement — the result of a seizure, say — we wouldn’t count it as an action at all; it wouldn’t in that case be something you do, but rather something that happened to you. The fan, however, is capable of making nothing but meaningless movements. For something genuinely to behave or act as we do requires that it does have intentionality — action and behavior of the sort we exhibit are themselves manifestations of intentionality, and thus presuppose it. But in that case, an appeal to a “capacity for action” cannot provide the ultimate explanation of intentionality.
We need to know why our capacities for action are different from the mere capacities for movement that a fan exhibits. Merely noting, à la Searle’s Background hypothesis, that our capacities are non-intentional ways of acting cannot help, for that they are genuinely ways of acting is precisely what needs to be explained. Indeed, since they are ways of acting, they cannot be literally non-intentional, for if they were, they would no more be true ways of acting than are the capacities of an electrical fan. A capacity for action is, as a matter of conceptual necessity, an intentional capacity. In fairness to Searle, it isn’t clear that he intends his hypothesis of the Background to serve as a complete explanation of intentionality. His aim may be just to draw out some implications of the fact that mental states are logically and conceptually related to one another in a Network.
“In any event, my topic is not really the philosophy of mind, though by this point it may seem as if I have forgotten that. I am concerned not simply with the mystery of consciousness but with the significance of that mystery for a proper understanding of the word “God.” I admit that I have taken my time in reaching this point, but I think defensibly so. My claim throughout these pages is that the grammar for our thinking about the transcendent is given to us in the immanent, in the most humbly ordinary and familiar experiences of reality; in the case of our experience of consciousness, however, the familiarity can easily overwhelm our sense of the essential mystery. There is no meaningful distinction between the subject and the object of experience here, and so the mystery is hidden by its own ubiquity. One extremely good way, then, to appreciate the utter strangeness of consciousness — the hither side, so to speak, of that moment of existential wonder that wakens us to the strangeness of all things — is to consider the extraordinary labors required to describe the mind in purely material terms. We have reached a curious juncture in the history of materialism, which seems to point toward a terminus that is either tragic or comical (depending on where one’s sympathies lie).
If nature really is what mechanistic metaphysics portrays it as being, then consciousness is, like being itself, super naturam; and that must be intolerable to any true believer in the mechanistic creed. Materialism is, as I have said, the least rationally defensible and most explanatorily impoverished of metaphysical dogmas; but, if materialism is one’s faith, even reason itself may not be too great an offering to place upon its altar. If one is to exclude the supernatural absolutely from one’s picture of reality, one must not only ignore the mystery of being but also refuse to grant that consciousness could possibly be what it self-evidently is.” (David Bentley Hart, “The Experience of God”).
I don’t see that it works on your own terms. The reason why has to do with your regress from this or that “X” in the Created Being back, and back again to its ultimate metaphysical wellspring, namely “X-Itself” vis-à-vis God. The X’s you employ are Reason and Will and Self-Knowledge and you hope to avoid Foundationalism (full stop) and Coherentism (full stop) and Infinitism (full stop). Normally that is all easy, clean, coherent, and therefore okay. But, because of your wish to defend Divine Determinism you have had to pull up short in too many key areas when it comes to Perception vis-à-vis Mind vis-à-vis The Self vis-à-vis the First Person Experience of core Properly Basic Beliefs of “I-Exist” (source/ground v. Being Itself) and “I-Think/Reason” (source/ground v. Divine Mind Itself) and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” (source/ground v. Divine Freedom v. Will Itself).
I don’t have to tell you that Non-Theism cannot get away with Defeaters there and you can’t either – and for all the same reasons. But you’re really only treating Immaterial Actions and Material Actions as if they are in the same Category of Causality/Causation(s) and then tacking on the label “God” / “Divine Determinism” and – then – not pressing through with what happens to the coherence of Non-Theism when it (finally, as it must sooner or later) employs that SAME series of false identity claims, ,equivocations, and half-stops.
We ground the actuality of our own being in Being-Itself. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Exist” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory). So – then we move our lens over to our own reasoning, our own mind and seek to ground our own First Person Experience of reason/mind in Reason-Itself – in Mind-Itself vis-à-vis God. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Think” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory). So – then we move our lens over to our own Willing vis-à-vis Choosing vis-à-vis Can-Do-Otherwise and seek to ground our own First Person Experience of Can-Do-Otherwise in Volition-Itself – in Will-Itself vis-à-vis God. Well yes of course, given the Principle of Proportionate Causality that works and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is as our First Person Experience accurate and reliable (rather than illusory).
But wait. That all breaks down because the very foundation of your thesis is something which is ultimately an illusion – namely “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” vis-à-vis Perception wrt our own “I/Me” First Person Experience – and all roads lead to The Will – namely our own First Person Experience of this notion of Can-Do-Otherwise which we wish to ground in Will-Itself (God). Those three Properly Basic Beliefs have no Defeaters as the only way to Defeat “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is to finally eliminate the Properly Basic Self. Non-Theism of course does this as all roads lead to [A] a full-on Determinism (at worst) or else to [B] Quantum Indeterminism or Q.I. (at best) which is of no help because Q.I. must then be fallaciously equated to [C] Intentionality – which of course is impossible given the Causation(s) available to Non-Theism.
But quite inexplicably you choose in your own terms the same fate for those three core Properly Basic Beliefs vis-à-vis our own First Person Experience with respect to “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise”. On your view such are not merely suspect but – in fact – such land in that which is completely illusory and not at all what is actually true. We know this because I had said on my view the first person experience of such Properly Basic Beliefs are accurate and, then, I asked you if that First Person Experience vis-à-vis said Core Properly Basic Beliefs are reflective of reality (at bottom) or else illusion with respect to reality (at bottom). And your answer? Well twice we came to the nature of causation vis-à-vis our grounding of Being and of Reason and of Will back, and back again in our regress to their respective termini in Being Itself or Reason Itself or Will Itself and both times you abruptly cut off discussion.
The concept of “illusion” in “the philosophy of mind” as it relates to “intentionality” and “self” is not new or inaccessible material. Yet in order to defend your claim that our own Properly Basic Belief vis-à-vis Can-Do-Otherwise is illusion (we cannot do otherwise) you are willing to engage in discussion and, so, each time that discussion happens it arrives sooner or later, as it always must, to this juncture of Illusion vs. Actual and, once there, you just cut off discussion instead of pushing through. And the reason is obvious as the only way to Defeat “I-Exist” and “I-Think/Reason” and “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” is to finally eliminate the Properly Basic Self – and you cannot afford to go “that far”. So you just cut off the discussion at that juncture.
Well that’s fine as your Determinism has its problems but, here, you wish to traverse all of the same topography and, so, here, you’ve an essay which begins and ends in Reason Itself vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Will Itself. Which is fine. It’s fairly easy to land in such a metaphysical wellspring and easily avoid (in all three) any problems of Foundationalism (full stop) and Coherentism (full stop) and Infinitism (full stop). Unfortunately though you are not consistent in traversing all such landscapes and so you must begin with (or end with) Illusion vis-à-vis our own First Person Experience vis-à-vis Properly Basic Beliefs vis-à-vis *The *Self vis-à-vis I-Can-Do-Otherwise.
Without the Principle of Proportionate Causality the Non-Theist cannot rationally find Reason-Itself sourcing and grounding our own “actual” Reasoning-Itself / Thinking-Itself as there must always be some point of equivocation as our own mind finally streams from something that is ultimately “non-mind”. Well, that’s Non-Theism. But your Divine Determinism ALSO rejects the Bridge of Proportionate Causality (…Non-Theism must do so, but you choose to do so as its not necessary given what the Christian Metaphysic makes available to you…) and you insist that we cannot ground our “I-Can-Do-Otherwise” in God “….because in us its caused instead of uncaused…. therefore it’s illusion…”.
Well that is just you assuming that actions made up of Material Causes have the same reach and the same floor and the same ceiling as actions within Immaterial Causes – which is fallacious because you must equate the category of Immaterial to the category of Material in order to do that and, also, you must reject the Bridge of Proportionate Causality by which the very nature of the Imago Dei retains “actuality” wit respect to Properly Basic Beliefs v. Self. and does not succumb to Non-Theism’s “illusion” with respect to Properly Basic Beliefs v. Self.
If In Fact as per Ontic-Fact the Edenic Adamic is free to do *otherwise* then in fact that *otherwise* cannot sum to Ontic Non-Entity nor can it sum to a kind of Ontic Noble Lie told by the Necessary Being. In fact God / Omnipotence cannot create a being that is in fact free to do Non-Entity or free to do Non-Being. Any epistemic which cannot contain Eden and Eden’s possible worlds has, from the start, a suspicious ontic already in jeopardy (… http://disq.us/p/1n166pv ..).

References: art. 4
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