Masks of Mind
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atom to molecules (such as the water molecule), and moving on through inorganic life forms to more complex systems within organic life forms. At each level more alternatives are in principle open to the system.and richer forms of freedom arise as we go up this hierarchy, with deepening (^22) Richer
awareness of the entanglement of consciousness in the interdependencies of life and increasing realization of the responsibility that comes with freedom for the integrity of life.This model of embodied freedom as a fundamental property of con-
sciousness steers between extreme tendencies of overhumanization, exp-ressed in materialism or reductive naturalism, and hypertheism, found in dualism. Accordingly, it is no longer possible to think of an absolute division between matter and spirit, mind and body. Matter already bears the elemen-
tary traces of consciousness, and consciousness is always materially embod-ied. Moreover, humans share with other things the structure of embodied consciousness, although inorganic life forms admittedly possess only a proto-consciousness at the level of elementary particles and cannot other-
wise be called conscious. Nonetheless, the unity of matter and conscious-ness expands the scope of human responsibility. Think, for example, of the double love-command to love God and one’s neighbor. When someone asks, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer is not merely “anyone in need.”
Under the terms of this model, our responsibility to love and care for the other extends to life in its integrity. Human beings are indeed distinctive in terms of the sophistication of capacities to exercise freedom. This distinc-tive capacity is the responsibility we bear for our own species, other species,
and the earth on which we all live.envision the real connection, the interrelatedness, between consciousness and matter enables a deeper comprehension of the integrity of life. Drawing The model of consciousness has theological implications. The ability to
from Christian and other sources, God’s being is taken to be manifest in the integrity of life. A theological humanist freely feels and sees the real presence of the divine in all realms of life, and we formulate that presence as “the integ-rity of life.” God is neither a supreme being – a heavenly deity or the light
of the world – nor the nothingness of critical negation. God’s being is imagined and sensed in the integrity of life. The masks of mind reach from subatomic matter At this point in reflection we turn to visual art as a mask of the mind. By through human and non-human life to divine life itself.
engaging visual art we want to show how this model of consciousness helps to conceived provides the means to grasp the dynamics of consciousness.understand the reflective goods expressed in art, but also how art so