A Lesson in the Practicality of Philosophy I Learned Today

[Mudhammam]

I think the following quote aptly applies to Wooters and his ilk:

"Now how do these gentleman help themselves? They just assert that the existence of God is a matter of course. Indeed! After the ancient world, at the expense of its conscience, had performed miracles to prove it, and the modern world, at the expense of its understanding, had placed in the field ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological proofs--it is a matter of course with these gentleman. And from this self-evident God they then explain the world; this is their philosophy."
- The World As Will and Representation

[fr0d0]

"Practical philosophy"

That's an oxymoron isn't it?

[genkaus]

"Practical philosophy"

That's an oxymoron isn't it?

Nope.

[Neo-Scholastic]

@Pick-up & Genkaus, I think you both mistake the demonstration for the inquiry when it comes to theistic ontology. Take for instance a premise like "Everything that changes is caused to change by another." A common critique is the the term "everything that changes" slips in the idea that there is something that doesn't change, i.e. God, into the initial premise. This critique does not take into account the history behind it. In this instance, the premise is designed to avoid the erroneous conclusions of Parmenides (change is not possible) and Heraclitus (there is only change). Thus, the fault is not in the demonstration but on your insistence that it stand alone, uniformed by any historical context.

[bennyboy]

"Practical philosophy"

That's an oxymoron isn't it?

What's this stuff about "oxy"?

[Mudhammam]

Putting scholastic arguments in the context of history, the majority of philosophers since Kant have agreed that he once and for all obliterated theological grandstanding in the dress of the syllogism by demonstrating their highly fallacious and inadequate nature as proofs for God's existence. Go read his Antithesis in the Antimony of Pure Reason section in the CPR. If you must have a permanent substance, I'll give it to you: matter.

"That philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is written down, as it were, from nature's dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature, and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo." Theism may have been a very grounded, even rational, philosophy when Francis Bacon wrote. Then came Hume, Kant, Darwin and other perennial figures that gave Nietzsche right to declare of his madman, "'Whither is God' he cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him--you and I.'" It's going to take much more than a trick played on a few uneducated minds to resurrect your deity this time.

[Neo-Scholastic]

…the majority of philosophers since Kant have agreed that he once and for all obliterated theological grandstanding in the dress of the syllogism by demonstrating their highly fallacious and inadequate nature as proofs for God's existence…. Theism may have been a very grounded, even rational, philosophy when Francis Bacon wrote. Then came Hume, Kant, Darwin and other perennial figures…

The majority opinion of analytic philosophers does not count as proof; although does rightly give pause. The majority opinion of neo-Scholastic philosophers is otherwise. We could pit my experts against yours, but either way determining who is correct based on the number of adherents would be fallacious.

As I understand it, from reading Neo-Scholastic sources, Kant’s critique is self-refuting. Why does he allow the use deductive logic in his attempt to undermine the idea of deduced findings?

Of course Hume is the darling of atheists, yet some of the problems he pose are not really problems at all just errors, like his unjustified divorce of efficient from final causes, in favor of ‘constant conjunction’. What principle provides for the said constancy of observed conjunctions?

…Go read his Antithesis in the Antimony of Pure Reason section in the CPR.

Sure, I’ll re-read it . I am open to contrary ideas otherwise I would not be participating on AF.

…If you must have a permanent substance, I'll give it to you: matter.

Primal Matter to be exact, i.e. whose only attribute is the propensity to be. But whither its ability to instantiate the many substances known by experience?

[Mudhammam]

The majority opinion of analytic philosophers does not count as proof; although does rightly give pause. The majority opinion of neo-Scholastic philosophers is otherwise. We could pit my experts against yours, but either way determining who is correct based on the number of adherents would be fallacious.

As I understand it, from reading Neo-Scholastic sources, Kant’s critique is self-refuting. Why does he allow the use deductive logic in his attempt to undermine the idea of deduced findings?

Of course. As you said, though, it ought to give pause. As a further matter, what's Neo-Scholasticism and who are its proponents? I imagine they're quite popular in the church...and very little elsewhere. That's not stated as an argument against their merit, merely as an observation that would seem to coincide with my intuition: Redressing old arguments in new language does nothing to counter the force upon which Kant dealt his fatal blow.

Among all else, Kant demonstrated that one cannot deduct from concepts positive knowledge about noumenal reality when the entirety of their content and application relates only to the phenomenal. One cannot borrow the law of causality from the parts--only meaningfully conceived as a condition of objects in time--and then insist that it applies to the whole (time itself); oh, and with one exception, of course!

Of course Hume is the darling of atheists, yet some of the problems he pose are not really problems at all just errors, like his unjustified divorce of efficient from final causes, in favor of ‘constant conjunction’. What principle provides for the said constancy of observed conjunctions?

Primal Matter to be exact, i.e. whose only attribute is the propensity to be. But whither its ability to instantiate the many substances known by experience?

As those are questions about a reality that isn't given to us in immediate experience, we can only defer to those fields of inquiry that expand the limits of the understanding that perception imposes by expanding the limits of perception that the understanding imposes, and therefore, are best suited to address them: the physical sciences.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Kant says that only ideas are that which can be known. In contrast to this, Aquinas says that ideas are the means by which we know. Personally, I think Aquinas makes the better case and that Kant's distinction between noumenal and phenomenal is a difference without a difference. Just because someone doesn't have complete knowledge of a sensible object doesn't mean that the object isn't knowable.

As for physical science, I thought everyone knew that scientific inquiries take certain metaphysical positions for granted, like the existence of universals.

[Mudhammam]

Kant says that only ideas are that which can be known. In contrast to this, Aquinas says that ideas are the means by which we know. Personally, I think Aquinas makes the better case and that Kant's distinction between noumenal and phenomenal is a difference without a difference. Just because someone doesn't have complete knowledge of a sensible object doesn't mean that the object isn't knowable.

Well, as I understand Kant, he failed to make a distinction between intuitive knowledge and abstract knowledge, the latter of which we draw from the former. That's probably a cause of tension between him and Aquinas, whom I have not read directly, but seems to be saying that concepts, rather than intuition, precede perception, which I would judge incorrect (by intuition I mean the structure of the mind that allows for understanding). We begin with perception, through touch, and then with the addition of a particular intuition that includes language, abstract as one means of acquiring and communicating "knowledge" about the objects of perception. Insofar as Aquinas admits this, swell, but...

As for physical science, I thought everyone knew that scientific inquiries take certain metaphysical positions for granted, like the existence of universals.

...if he wishes to submit that concepts which never establish a connexion to objects in perception, i.e. exist concretely, can nonetheless be asserted in the actual and objective, then I find it quite probable that he has failed to demonstrate as much. Clearly, science only makes presumptions so far as they yield predictive value.