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that aperture metaphor applied to nature/obligation

Earlier I tried to sketch a proposal for treating nature as conceived via natural science is related to nature as given in experience as an aperture is related to the light that shines through it.  I'd like to try a different move here, but eventually relate the two to each other.

I'm thinking now of the point that Kantians and post-Kantians make, i.e., that knowing facts about the natural world -- including facts about individual inclinations -- does not suffice to give one knowledge of obligation (in the sense of being absolute).

I would like to point out that the sense of being obliged is had first of all by one looking at a concrete situation: i.e., "do this here and now!" rather than "one ought always do such and such!"  In this sense, it's like being called or vocation.

Secondly, obligation (in the concrete situation) in the sense that I have in mind is identical with the command of conscience

Thirdly, even though this voice is internalized, it also has a social nature: the intelligibility of human actions is inseparable the shared convictions of the rational community to which one belongs.

Fourthly, there is something unbounded about this community.  When you are convinced that doing X is right/wrong, you are convinced that it's true for any rational being.  There is something potentially infinite in the.


So how doe this relate to the aperture?  In the following way: the psychological facts that attend a situation are related to obligation like the aperture is to light.  You can't deduce obligation from facts of nature just as you can't deduce the nature of light from the aperture.  But the human fact naturally gives rise to the call to action just the aperture is naturally suited to let in the light.

RD, in talking about morality, is explaining it in terms of how it originates.  But he recognizes that one can't deduce how one is to act from natural facticity.  But in recognizing this "more" he is leaving an opening to the light, to the transcendant, to the Light itself.

(gotta revise: wrote on full stomach at Panera)
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