Last night I was talking with an old friend of mine, an atheist Jew, who is now in the best relationship of her life with a devout Roman Catholic. We talked about the fact that she was more surprised than he was about the fact that their connection transcends their difference in metaphysics. He sees himself as a devout Roman Catholic; she sees him as a good human being.
This conversation reminded me of an older thought that’s been swirling around in my head for a few weeks: the disunity of reason.
It is widely held by philosophers (that peculiar sub-species!) that reason is unified: that the ideally rational person is one for whom there are no fissures, breaks, ruptures, or discontinuities anywhere in the inferential relations between semantic contents that comprise his or her cognitive grasp of the world (including himself or herself as part of that world).
This is particularly true when it comes to the distinction between “theoretical reason” and “practical reason”. By “theoretical reason” I mean one’s ability to conceptualize the world-as-experienced as more-or-less systematic, and by “practical reason” I mean one’s ability to act in the world according to judgments that are justified by agent-relative and also agent-indifferent reasons (“prudence” and “morality”, respectively).
The whole philosophical tradition from Plato onward assumes that reason is unified, and especially, that theoretical and practical reason are unified — different exercises of the same basic faculty. Some philosophers think of them as closer together than others — for example, Aristotle distinguishes between episteme (knowledge of general principles in science, mathematics, and metaphysics) and phronesis (knowledge of particular situations in virtuous action). But even Aristotle does not doubt that episteme and phronesis are exercises of a single capacity, reason (nous).
However, as we learn more about how our cognitive system is actually structured, we should consider the possibility that reason is not unified at all. If Horst’s Cognitive Pluralism is right, then we should expect that our minds are more like patchworks of domain-specific modules that can reason quite well within those domains but not so well across them.
To Horst’s model I’d add the further conjecture: that we have pretty good reason to associate our capacity for “theoretical reason” (abstract thinking and long-term planning) with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and also pretty good reason to associate our capacity for “practical reason” (self-control and virtuous conduct) with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (and especially in its dense interconnections with the limbic system).
But if that conjecture is on the right track, then we would expect to find consistency between theoretical reason and practical reason only to the extent that there are reciprocal interconnections between these regions of prefrontal cortex. And of course there are reciprocal interconnections — but (and this is the important point!) to the extent that these regions are also functionally distinct, then to that same extent reason is disunified.
And as a consequence, metaphysics and ethics may have somewhat less to do with each other than previous philosophers have supposed.
Nice to see Patrick finally abandon Sola Scriptura as a solitary source of knowledge.
Perhaps bacteria reason that food is good for them and that toxin is bad for them and act according to reason. Somehow they must know what is good for them and what is bad for them and thus they must have acquired knowledge.
Can you tie this in to state changes and acknowledgment of state changes? Do bacteria have knowledge?
Since you’ve studied this much more extensively than I and you seem to be commenting in a serious tone, I believe you. I find it lowers my opinion of humanity, but I believe you.
I’m not making claims in this thread, fifthmonarchyman is. He’s also utterly failing to support them.
Or perhaps they’re merely chemical machines and they react to certain chemical signatures innately. Or perhaps…or perhaps…or…
And you know what? People have actually researched this. Doesn’t appear that bacteria have a lot of, if any, knowledge.
The point is, there is a lot to wonder about in the world and universe and it would seem that “God” isn’t much of an answer to any of those wonderings.
It strikes me that the more one believes in gods, the less time one spends wondering how and why things actually work the way they do.
Research indicates yes to the first part and no to the second. How’s that?
Actually Fifth is assuming a specific God
In slight fairness, I was adopting a disparaging tone, and I haven’t studied presuppositional apologetics closely. I’m largely working off of second-hand knowledge, including what I know from a friend of mine who is writing his dissertation on epistemological problems in contemporary apologetics.
Self-refuting nonsense, but par for the course.
FMM says that he’s not making an argument. I believe him.
Details…details…
😛
I haven’t seen that he knows how to make an argument.
Not an intellectually persuasive one, anyhow.
Glen Davidson
When I look at the sky at sunset, I like to believe that the colors and forms I see are there on the horizon, not simply splashed across some screen inside my mind. This is not merely because I desire to know what my environment is like. Even if God were to assure me that there is a systematic correspondence between what I see and what is there, my pleasure in the experience would be diminished by the thought that the beauties I see are only in me.
– James Van Cleve
I do, too. I haven’t seen him support any of his claims with any arguments (or evidence).
oops – I made a cut & paste error above.
Let’s try that again.
Regarding Mung’s contention”
I just wanted to say (with no little sense of irony) that indeed it is…
…NICE to see Mung finally abandon Sola Scriptura as a solitary source of knowledge.
I would not hold my breath on that one. I have no interest presenting arguments to you till I know where you are coming from .
I’m sure one of us would only mock them and declare victory or get angry.
quote:
If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet.
(Pro 29:9)
End quote:
I’ll let you decide which one us is the wise man in the proverb but the end result is still the same lot of noise and little thought.
If on the other hand you want to have a discussion please tell me how you justify believing stuff given your worldview.
Once we’ve established that you have ground with which to reason then we can get to other topics like what qualifies as evidence and who has the authority to judge
peace
All I’m asking is for something that can justify you believing stuff. I have found your attempts at defending your epistemology to be interesting but so far all of them assume something to true with out justification.
For example you claimed to know there was no wall between the subjective and the objective but you did not offer a reason why you can know this is true.
I’m just asking for something in your worldview that is capable of justifying knowledge.
If you want to know what will satisfy me ask yourself how can I know this stuff if you come to something that has the capability to ground your beliefs then you’ve done it if not ask again.
It’s not a difficult exercise a bot can do it
If on the other hand you are satisfied with a worldview in which you do not know how you know that is fine too.
“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer to my “how do you know stuff?” question
peace
How do you know it works?
Get the point?
peace
So you have abandoned the “I’m hungry” route?
Or are you just saying that “I’m hungry” is not enough the justify believing stuff.
Either way I’m glad to see you gave that one up. I comes across as a rather goofy foundation with which to build an epistemology
peace
I’m alive. QED.
No.
So you have moved from “I’m hungry” to “I’m alive” as a starting point.
Good luck with that route. It’s well worn and doesn’t get you very far. I suspect Cartesian philosophy won’t get you past a possible brain in a vat
I apologize if you instead meant “I’m alive and I’m hungry”
peace
Robin,
I would not have expected anything else at this point.
peace
right, If definitions are merely human constructs we have no way of knowing if they are correct.
It’s only justified belief if it is true.
How can we know it is true?
revelation
It’s God all the way down or absurdity
Peace
PS thank you for your tone and obvious consideration
That’s an interesting point about the aesthetic or existential dimension of the impulse towards direct realism, and I think Van Cleve is right about that. But if direct realism is true, then we are simply not in the Cartesian problematic at all. One of these days I shall read Reid.
I loved this comment about Reid:
Reid is renowned for his response to the skeptic. But does he really have one? If ridicule is a response, the answer is yes.
Mung,
To be honest, that always seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to me.
No it’s not. Your epistemology doesn’t begin with god. You postulate god, but that requires reason, so you must begin with reason like everyone else. Trusting reason can produce knowledge is the inescapable premise. The skeptic recognizes that and also that reason is not guaranteed to produce true knowledge, therefore truth must be deemed tentative, provisional. Reason, evidence and repeatability produce the scientific knowledge that has proven so consistently successful throughout history. There’s nothing circular in that, unlike your useless question begging approach that can’t settle a single debate.
FMM: I recognize that you know things, I just want to know how you think this happens.
EE (Pretty much everyone else): Well, I take knowledge to be something like justified true belief. so I know something when I have all of those, and don’t when any of the three are missing or the justification is insufficient.
FMM: How do you know that?
EE: Know what?
FMM: That you have knowledge when you think you do.
EE: Same thing. I believe it, it’s justified and true. But I don’t need to know THAT in order to know something. Kids may know their names without knowing what knowledge is. Knowing doesn’t require knowing that or how one knows.
FFM: I still don’t understand how you think you know anything. I think you are able to do it through God’s grace, but you don’t seem to have any idea how you manage it.
EE: Maybe an example or two would help.
FFM: OK.
EE: I think I know the chair I’m looking at is white. I think I know that the sun will rise tomorrow.
FMM: How do you know those things?
EE: My evidence that the chair is white comes from my senses and knowing what the words I’m using mean. My evidence that the sun will rise comes both from highly confirmed scientific theories and my own experience.
FMM: Well, it seems to me that the first relies on your senses being reliable and the second requires that some sort of law of induction be true.
EE: Yes, that’s right.
FMM: How do you know that your senses are reliable or that some law of induction is true?
EE: As I’ve already said, I may or may not know those things. It’s not necessary that I know them for me to know the two items I’ve claimed to know. It’s only necessary that my senses BE reliable and that some law of induction BE true. It is NOT necessary that I know either of those things for me to know that the chair is white or that the sun will rise tomorrow. If it were necessary for me to know the truth of those ostensible justifiers, then I would find myself in a vicious regress. In that case, knowledge of anything would always require knowledge of something else. And it doesn’t.
FMM: Then you’re admitting that you could be wrong about the things you say you know.
EE: Absolutely. But it doesn’t follow from the possibility that I am wrong that I actually AM wrong when I say I know those things. I AM wrong if and only if one of those three necessary items doesn’t obtain. If they all do–WHETHER I KNOW THIS OR NOT–then I know that the chair is white and that the sun will rise tomorrow. I do not need to study epistemology to know that the chair is white. And I certainly do not need to believe in God.
FMM: I still don’t understand how knowledge is consistent with your world view, which seems to be unable to provide any explanation of how one thing justifies another.
EE: I get that you are confused about this. But confusion is not an argument.
FMM: My explanation for your knowing these things is that you believe in God.
EE: I don’t believe in God.
FMM: You must, if you really know the things you claim to know.
EE: That’s precisely backwards. If I had to believe in God in order to know that the chair is white, then it would be more correct to say that I don’t know that the chair is white than to infer that I believe in God. Fortunately, as I’ve explained above, it is not necessary to believe in God to know that the chair is white.
FMM: It is, if you want to be justified in your supposition that your senses are reliable, that there is a true law of induction, that the principle of non-contradiction is true, etc. You want to use those things, but you are unable to justify them.
EE: Whether or not I can justify those justifiers is another question entirely. I admit that it is a tough philosophical task to do that, and whether I can do it is questionable. My point is that it isn’t necessary to do it, so long as they ARE true. Furthermore, I believe that it is an even tougher task to prove both the existence of God and that one may infallibly deduce those necessary justifiers from that existence. So, if I wanted to justify the justifiers, I wouldn’t go that route anyhow. But again, it isn’t necessary for me to justify the justifiers for me to know things.
FMM: I don’t think that makes sense.
EE: I understand that you are confused about this. You need to try to think about it without letting your fear of dying seep into an issue that has nothing whatever to do with whether your life is meaningful or you are or are not mortal.
FMM: I can’t do that. Everything I think refers back to God in some way.
EE: Yes, precisely. That is why your take on matters like this is entirely unreliable. You may believe what you want, obviously, but you should not think that your views on these matters, shot through as they are with religious irrelevancies, should be taken seriously.
FMM: Peace.
EE: And also to you.
The question is.
How do we know it is true?
peace
yes it does
No you are projecting. I don’t postulate God God revels himself to me (and you)
It’s not inescapable. In fact it’s not even justified.
We simply have no reason to believe that fallible error prone human knowledge can produce knowledge. we have all been wrong about things that we were very confident.
1) Provisional to what. Why more fallible error prone human reason of course.
2) How do you know it has proven consistently successful.
More of that fallible error prone human reason of course.
checking our error prone reasoning ability by appealing to our error prone reasoning ability is not circular……….. Right.
Did you use your error prone reasoning ability to come to that conclusion?
peace
Fifth:
Click…whirrr…ticka ticka ticka ticka…*spoink*:
“The question is.
How do we know it is true?”
no my explanation is that knowledge is possible because God exists.
you are the one who has it backwards
You don’t have to believe in God to know the chair is white. God has to exist in order for you to know that the chair is white, You don’t have to do anything you just know.
Right and that is the question that I am asking. Admitting you can’t do it given your worldview is the response I am looking for.
Acknowledging that it’s questionable that you can do it is the next best thing.
I would hope that you would take some time actually trying to come up with a justification.
I think it’s important for you to do so if you are going to reject mine out of hand.
It’s a good thing that that is not my position.
That is harsh.
I would counter that your own take on these matters is shot through with your own religious baggage in that you are unwilling to acknowledge the obvious that God does exist and is revealing himself to you.
The question is
How do we know which of us is correct?
That requires you to do the hard work of justifying knowledge in your worldview.
Are you finally willing to give it a go?
peace
Right. I left that part out.
LOL
Cool story bro.
How does this revelation take place? You say it is obvious, which to me just reads like you saying that you believe it is obvious. But to me it isn’t obvious at all. You are not me, I am. If it really was obvious to me, I would acknowledge it.
So, I’m sitting here in front of my desk, staring at my monitor. You believe a god is “revealing” himself to me in some way. I don’t see anything I recognize to be gods (I don’t know how they look), I don’t hear any gods (what do they sound like?), I can’t smell any gods (do they smell?). So whatever god is “revealing” isn’t at all something “obviously” god-like. I see furniture, I smell coffee, I hear the hum of my computer. I feel kinda bored also.
What is being revealed and in what way is it obviously god?
Yes, I am. Let’s take a look at how you justify knowledge:
You first say god is revealing things to you, that’s the only way to know something. But how do you know god is revealing something to you? Because god is revealing something to you (or alternatively, you don’t, you just presuppose it).
So your presuppositionalism is either guilty of the fallacy of circular reasoning, or an unjustified blind assertion. Game over thank you for playing.
It’s just question-begging nonsense spiced up with sanctimonious religiously motivated pocket-psychology (omg you secretly know god exists but just hate his judgement of your sinful nature, so you suppress it and lie to yourself and your surroundings that god isn’t obvious).
This is why they laugh at presuppositionalists in philosophy departments. It purports to have solved a fundamental problem in epistemology it actually hasn’t solved.
That’s just you postulating stuff. Plain and simple.
When you say God must justify reason, it’s you saying that. It’s your postulate, it’s you reasoning, so you need reason to postulate that god is required for reason. That’s obviously circular.
Do you need reason to receive and interpret god’s revelations, or can trees also receive god’s knowledge the same way you do?
You already conceded the “I’m hungry” exercise by not being able to address it. Further, you continue to demonstrate there are aspects of it that you can’t even begin to address.
And no, the exercise has nothing to do with Cartesian thinking.
The “I’m alive” comment was just a snark at your robotic “how do you know?”. The question has become meaningless at this point since you can’t actually address the issue. In other words, my responses, comments, and questions (and those of several others on this list) indicate something other than mindless and unfeeling repetition . Your responses…not so much…
Guess that’s a reflection of the quality of this “god” of yours…
Not at all. See above. Do let me know when you can actually begin to address it though. I won’t hold my breath however…
“I’m hungry” doesn’t lead to beliefs in any common sense of the term. It is an exercise that demonstrates that presuppositionalism is vacuous and that invisible pink unicorns are unnecessary for knowledge.
…says the person whose epistemology boils down to:
Because God, therefore knowledge, therefore God.
Ooo…yeah…that’s not goofy or anything…
Correct in what sense, fifth?
That is a human construct fifth
revelation justifies revelation, that is also a human construct.
I am good with absurdity, sometimes that seems the most likely. But you neglect the third option, both. The Navajo Coyote
It is my worldview
Wouldn’t an all-knowing and all-powerful god that purportedly actively wants a relationship with it’s sentient creations, have come up with a more persuasive line of argument than “god is obvious to you and you know it”?
The alternative to divine revelation isn’t actually absurdity. Even if knowledge is without an objective foundation, that does not qualify as “absurd” as absurdity is commonly taken to refer to the nonsensical or self-contradictory. But things being possibly merely subjective is neither nonsensical nor self-contradictory.
Well…there is that.
I’m more disturbed with the idea of a god that needs to create humans in order to justify his own existence…
From fifth’s point of view , all those things constitute absurdity. Why? Revelation.
I always thought the requirement of worship part was the most troublesome, it seems so human
I never really got how or why God would justify knowledge anyhow, even if by mere definition (and not evidence) God could. Why wouldn’t God, or Descartes’ demon, just be providing a whole lot of false ideas and impressions–like maybe presuppositionalism?
I assume for FMM it’s against some made-up definition, which matters as much as the rest–not at all. For Descartes there was at least a reason (borrowed from scholasticism), which was that he had perceived that there was an infinite God (clearly and distinctly perceived–how axioms were made, they thought), and an infinite God could not be anything but good. That’s because in scholasticism evil was the absence of the good–the real–and an infinite God had no lack or absence of reality, so was all good.
It looks kind of bizarre today, but at least it made some sense at the time, when people thought that “clear and distinct” perception meant that something was true, and “more real” was better morally (infinity is then perfect). Throw out those, and it’s just definitions. FMM does not rely on God, but on definitions someone made for God, so ultimately he’s just relying on somebody’s claim.
The thing is, I do sort of get Descartes’ Meditations, once I realize what was believed by many at the time. It makes some sense, even though I have a bit of trouble thinking that he perceived the infinity of God through anything other than wishful thinking. But just saying that God justifies knowledge, therefore justified knowledge means that God exists, only makes sense via someone’s made-up definition of “God,” and it would work as well/poorly for a rock or the color blue so long as these were defined as justifying knowledge.
The only thing that I am curious about with respect to that is how anybody fell for it in the first place.
Glen Davidson
Reminds me of a book I read not too long ago.
The Omen Machine
Then what does it have to do with knowledge?
So?
I’m guessing fifth is open to allowing you to define knowledge as you see fit. Why not give it a go and see?