If God is the Creator, the Author of all events, then a human life ought to be a dialogue with God. Thomas Merton explains:
Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.… every expression of the will of God is in some sense a ‘word’ of God and therefore a ‘seed’ of new life. The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continous ‘talk,’ or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer … but a dialogue of love and choice.
— Merton (1962, 14)
In any one brain, thoughts and intentions emerge into consciousness from the mutual interactions among billions of neurons. If we can see humanity as a single organism, then we can say that its intentional practice emerges from the mutual interactions among its myriad members. The fact that you and i are inside this gigantic pragmatic dialogue entails that our conscious understanding of what the Human Organism is up to, no matter how consensual it may be, is not an overview or god’s-eye view of its practice. Its self-control can only grow from our engagement in the dialogue, not from anyone’s overstanding of it.
In any case, the more individuals act as participants in a group mental process, the less likely they are to be consciously aware of the process.
— David Sloan Wilson (2002, 77)
If our universe is an argument, we are not conscious of its conclusion – but we can take our turns carrying on from its premisses with our own arguments, trusting rather to their multitude and variety than to the conclusiveness of any one (Peirce, EP1:29).