I wonder if creation includes beings that are qualitatively as high above mere persons like us as mere persons are qualitatively above non-persons. Persons have agency and intellectuality (let’s say) and that gives them a dignity above non-persons. Is there some quality Q that is even more impressive than agency and intellectuality and that is actually found in some creatures?
We have no idea what that quality Q would be, and just as personhood is surely inconceivable to a non-person, Q would likely be inconceivable to us.
I think our only approach to the question is through divine revelation, and it may be that divine revelation just does not include enough information.
Here is my best line of thought towards a negative answer. Jesus Christ is king of creation. Moreover, plausibly, he is king of creation not just as God, but as a human being. As God, he presumably would have Q. But as a human being, he lacks Q. But just as having personhood seems a prerequisite for being king over persons, it seems that having Q would be a prerequisite for being king over those with Q.
On the other hand, one might think that God might want to make the possessors of Q humble, and being ruled over by a human being might be a good way to do that. So I don’t think we have a decisive answer.
It isn’t decisive, but I would still lean negative for another reason.
ReplyDeleteYou are supposing two things about Q: one is that we have no idea what it would be and another is that a being which has it would, by virtue of Q, stand in an order of impressiveness wrt persons.
We say basically the same thing about each of the divine attributes. But in the case of the divine attributes, we have a diversity of names we are able to apply appropriately, and whose creaturely meaning we understand pretty well.
But Q seems like it would have to be the sort of thing that could not even be named by analogy with some name we otherwise understand. And so it feels somehow unfitting that Q would stand in a nameable order of MoreImpressiveThan(Q, Personhood), which is the same order (or at least an order appropriately named the same as the one) that holds between personhood and non-personhood.
Hmm. Good point.
ReplyDeleteWhen I now think of the way personhood is more impressive than, say, mere conscious interactivity, I see that the reason it's more impressive is that it INCLUDES conscious interaction--all persons have conscious interaction. And conscious interactivity is more impressive than mere causal efficacy--all conscious interacters have efficacy.
Analogously, then, I think I should have supposed that Q includes personhood. So Q is not something of which we have no idea--it includes personhood, and hence conscious interactivity, and hence causal efficacy. But we might hypothesize that the impressiveness gaps increase. From efficacy to consciousness is a smaller gap than from consciousness to personhood which in turn is a smaller gap than from personhood to Q.
While we can say something about Q, we cannot conceptualize the difference between Q and personhood consists in, just as the merely conscious interacter (say, a cat) can't conceptualize the difference between personhood and conscious interaction.