Does Jesus have two consciousnesses?

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We have no idea how a divine mind and a human mind can be united into a single “consciousness” - whatever that might mean. I suppose it is possible to have two separate consciousnesses operating at the same time if their intelligible objects never actually conincided.

Human nature perceives reality in effects, the Divine mind in their causes.
These two approaches to knowing created reality do not seem to overlap.

As to how far the Divine intelligence can augment earth bound human intelligence (without glorification) we do not know. There has only ever been one instance!
But as Jesus in his earthly life did not know everything and made prudential mistakes it seems there were limitations. Whether those limitations were inherent in a fallen human world or self imposed by the Godhead itself (kenosis, Jesus’s Divine self emptying in becoming human) we do not know.

I don’t think it really matters.
 
FrDavid96 said:
The part towards the end that I put into bold is why I would say “yes, 2 qualia.”

I understand what you’re saying (or think I do, at least). You’re saying that to have a qualia necessarily requires physical senses, and since God has no physical senses, there is no such thing as a divine qualia. Do I have that right? If so, my response would be that somehow God still perceives the physical world. Not with eyeballs and fingers, of course not. That gets me back to your text: He does have “2 modes of accessing information” one of them Divine, not sensory.
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The thing that I would want to distinguish though is that God’s ‘access’ to information is to be all knowing. Thus he doesn’t reason to a conclusion like us. That is something limited humans have to do because they are not all knowing. Humans gain knowledge through the senses. God doesn’t have to do that because he already knows everything.

The OP seems to wonder if Jesus is 2 persons with 2 different loci of ego or I’s. However, Jesus is not a human person. He is a divine Person. A Person is who someone is and a nature Is what something is. Jesus only has one answer to the question of who am I. He is the divine Person of the Second Person of the Trinity. So that is who he is and what his sense of self would be. Now, what he is, is that he has 2 natures since the Incarnation. Yet his sense of self, who he is, is still the same. Does that make sense?
 
I understand Aquinas and the teachings of the Church as reiterated above. Now where did I ever say Jesus is a human person? I even wrote above that Christ in his fullness, human and divine, is the Son. You’re shifting focus away from the actual discussion here and insulting my intellect.
 
fisherman_carl said:
The thing that I would want to distinguish though is that God’s ‘access’ to information is to be all knowing. Thus he doesn’t reason to a conclusion like us. That is something limited humans have to do because they are not all knowing. Humans gain knowledge through the senses. God doesn’t have to do that because he already knows everything.

The OP seems to wonder if Jesus is 2 persons with 2 different loci of ego or I’s. However, Jesus is not a human person. He is a divine Person. A Person is who someone is and a nature Is what something is. Jesus only has one answer to the question of who am I. He is the divine Person of the Second Person of the Trinity. So that is who he is and what his sense of self would be. Now, what he is, is that he has 2 natures since the Incarnation. Yet his sense of self, who he is, is still the same. Does that make sense?
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Here is the part where I think I disagree.

I think you’re putting too much emphasis on omniscience of God.

This is what I mean:
Right now, I’m holding a coffee cup in my hand. Say I drop the cup. I would say that God somehow perceives the fact that I drop the cup. Yes, He knew even before I thought of it that I would drop the cup. He knew it 1000 years ago. Yet, still somehow He still perceives (not learns but perceives) that I drop the cup. He doesn’t see it happen with eyes nor hear it with ears (of course). The fact that He has foreknowledge that it will happen doesn’t change that.

What I am reading in your posts, and maybe I’m wrong, is that because of omniscience, God doesn’t “see” anything happening.

I am struggling with the vocabulary here. I am using the word “see” in reference to God to mean that He perceives what is happening. Not learns, not grows in knowledge, not sees with physical eyes. I am trying to say that God perceives, He observes–but of course, not the same way we do.

My concern here is that I’m misunderstanding how you are applying omniscience to the discussion.
 
thephilosopher6 said:
I understand Aquinas and the teachings of the Church as reiterated above. Now where did I ever say Jesus is a human person? I even wrote above that Christ in his fullness, human and divine, is the Son. You’re shifting focus away from the actual discussion here and insulting my intellect.
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I didn’t see it as an attack on you, nor as an insult.

From my reading here, I do not think anyone thinks you are saying anything about the term “person” as applied to Christ, which contradicts accepted Christology.

I did not read those comments as being addresses to you as much as being merely a way to introduce that member’s subsequent discussion. It wasn’t to say “you’re wrong” but to say “before I say what’s next, let’s review what we all accept as given.”
 
I am not sure what you are trying to say here about God perceiving. Qualia is simply a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person. For instance I perceive redness from a red apple. Or I perceive pain through an itch, or the taste of an apple. All of these correspond to sensory (name removed by moderator)uts and our subjective experience of them. God doesn’t experience things like that. He does not need to. He grasps them wholly and completely with his intellect. Jesus on the other hand can perceive things like we do through his human nature. I don’t know what it is to say God has his own version of qualia because it seems like trying to ascribe human characteristics to God. Like saying God got angry or he walked in the garden. Well he didn’t actually. He is immutable, unchanging, and he has no body. Nothing from outside can enter into God and change his ‘perception’. If God is immutable he cannot change. He doesn’t have a subjective experience of redness. He grasps completely all that redness is for he created it.

Now if you want to talk about modes Jesus has to access information. Aquinas talks about 4 modes of knowledge in the Summa part 3. The first mode is through his divine nature, which means complete omniscience. The second mode is through infused knowledge (prophecy). The third mode is through the beatific vision which Jesus has the highest of, above Mary for instance. And the fourth is through acquired knowledge, ie. Learning through the 5 senses (This is where your qualia comes in.
 
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I was addressing your original enquiry asking about whether Christ could be thought of as 2 persons under modern thought. And you seemed to think that he had 2 consciousnesses that perceived things and that would imply 2 persons. If I am wrong about that let me know. My point was that Christ in only one divine Person. He is not a human person. And thus his sense of self is of the divine Person. And thus he is only one person.
 
fisherman_carl said:
I am not sure what you are trying to say here about God perceiving. Qualia is simply a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person. For instance I perceive redness from a red apple. Or I perceive pain through an itch, or the taste of an apple. All of these correspond to sensory (name removed by moderator)uts and our subjective experience of them. God doesn’t experience things like that. He does not need to. He grasps them wholly and completely with his intellect. Jesus on the other hand can perceive things like we do through his human nature. I don’t know what it is to say God has his own version of qualia because it seems like trying to ascribe human characteristics to God. Like saying God got angry or he walked in the garden. Well he didn’t actually. He is immutable, unchanging, and he has no body. Nothing from outside can enter into God and change his ‘perception’. If God is immutable he cannot change.

Now if you want to talk about modes Jesus has to access information. Aquinas talks about 4 modes of knowledge in the Summa part 3. The first mode is through his divine nature, which means complete omniscience. The second mode is through infused knowledge (prophecy). The third mode is through the beatific vision which Jesus has the highest of, above Mary for instance. And the fourth is through acquired knowledge, ie. Learning through the 5 senses (This is where your qualia comes in.
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with speaking about God in human terms because those are the only terms we have. Of course, that’s limited.

Example: we can (and certainly do) say that “God hears our prayers.” Of course, we don’t mean that God has ears. We mean that He somehow “perceives” that we are praying. I’m being VERY brief here.

So, when God hears our prayers, that is Divine qualia. That’s how I see it, unless I am misunderstanding qualia altogether.

He doesn’t hear our prayers in the same way that I hear a person across the room speaking. Nevertheless, when one speaks to God in prayer, somehow (some Divine ‘how’) God perceives that to be happening. Would you disagree with this paragraph?
 
fisherman_carl said:
I am not sure what you are trying to say here about God perceiving. Qualia is simply a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person. …
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So are you saying that qualia is a quality that is perceived; or is it the act of perceiving quality?
 
Qualia is simply a quality (notice the similar words) like redness of an apple that we perceive. Someone who is color blind may have a different experience or no experience of redness. That is why it is considered subjective. Some philosphers of mind try to build on that to say that our subjective experience points to the mind being immaterial.
 
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fisherman_carl said:
Qualia is simply a quality (notice the similar words) like redness of an apple that we perceive. Someone who is color blind may have a different experience or no experience of redness. That is why it is considered subjective. Some philosphers of mind try to build on that to say that our subjective experience points to the mind being immaterial.
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All along, I thought qualia referred to the perceiving (the experience), not the thing perceived.
 
FrDavid96 said:
All along, I thought qualia referred to the perceiving (the experience), not the thing perceived.
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Let me quote for you from Edward feser’s book ‘Philosophy of Mind’.
Qualia - the feel of a pinch or an itch or a pain, the taste of an apple or whiskey, the redness of a fire engine or an after-image, and so on for all sensory modalities - constitute, in the minds of many philosphers, the most serious challenge to materialism.
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The perceiving of qualia is of course a subject of interest for the philosophy of mind. But the term qualia itself refers to a quality or property of a thing.
 
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fisherman_carl said:
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FrDavid96:
All along, I thought qualia referred to the perceiving (the experience), not the thing perceived.
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Let me quote for you from Edward feser’s book ‘Philosophy of Mind’.
Qualia - the feel of a pinch or an itch or a pain, the taste of an apple or whiskey, the redness of a fire engine or an after-image, and so on for all sensory modalities - constitute, in the minds of many philosphers, the most serious challenge to materialism.
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The perceiving of qualia is of course a subject of interest for the philosophy of mind. But the term qualia itself refers to a quality or property of a thing.
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Well, that changes everything then.
 
The definition varies, some philosopher consider the perception of qualia as qualia itself and not something separate. That’s the definition I go with.
 
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I could see how that can be if the term is used loosely. At any rate however you define it I don’t see it as applying to God or the divine nature since it is talking about perception of qualitative properties through sense experience.
 
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fisherman_carl said:
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FrDavid96:
Well, that changes everything then.
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It does help to define our terms. Of course how we perceive or experience qualia is still the subject of the philosophy of mind.
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Well then, in that case, just go through everything I wrote and replace the word “qualia” with my new word “qualiation” (plural “qualiatia” because a simple s would be too pedestrian) and all will be good.

Christ is one person, two natures, two wills…two qualiatia.
 
It’s an extension of qualia, you can’t separate self from qualia.

 
I can’t really watch a video right now as I am not in area of good reception. However, to say that you can’t distinguish the sense of self from our perception of qualia only applies to humans not God. Or are you saying God must have a body in order to have a sense of self?
 
I don’t understand how you keep misinterpreting what I am saying, I don’t know what you take me for.

God has self. He has mind. He is not a force. He does not feel sensations like we do because he has no body and he is beyond us in every possible way within his own self. However we are different, we happen to be body and soul, and the fact that we can experience sensations is an extension of our qualia in our bodily sensations, an extension of our self in our body. I am not you. I could never be you. Even if I could somehow see what you see I would still be me, I would have my own self, my own qualia, not yours.

When, of course, we are removed from our body we will no longer have these sensations, and qualia would be restricted to self, to being aware of our own existence.
 
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