Where you start determines where you wind up.....

[tanstaafl72555]

Nowhere is this more important than what BASIS you use for thinking. The basic assumptions one begins with determine where you wind up. Unfortunately, most modern westerners simply start with certain beginning building blocks about life and how we view it, believing "this is just the way we do it." Anything else seems ridiculous. These are called "presuppositions" in that we "pre suppose" them.

In older, wiser times this was not so. Much time was spent examining and thinking through what we can "know" and what we can reasonably believe, with explanations and observations about how we get there and where it will take us. When I first read Calvin's INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, I was confused and befuddled on why he started out with this long stream of blabber about whether self knowledge or knowledge of God was the proper starting point in examining knowledge. Now I see the sheer genius of it, but then I was so mesmerized by the assumptions of modern westerners that I could not even see that I did not see. Someone said once that these "axioms" or starting points of thought are not something you see. Rather, you see THROUGH them or WITH them and almost never stop to examine the ideas themselves. You just use them to filter and sort the data you have.

That said, I absolutely love this article in "bombthrower.com." It is about bitcoin, and the main point is that money and valuation of it is, at its core, a statement of values about life. He goes from there to how one should expect a materialistic, humanistic, reductionisic neopaganism to morph into a statist totalitarian goo that seeks to absorb and govern everything. Atheistic materialism with its silly pretentions of being irreligious is simply an alt-religion and will always behave like one. It is why bitcoin is favored by most, if not all, thoughtful believers in a Christian world view. That is the summation of the article.

However, he does spend a little time laying out the STARTING POINT for why he rejects the reductionism of the west. He starts with the most "science" part of science itself, which is physics. This is an area which is the most immune to the silly flatheaded obtuse dogma of materialism in academia. The best thinkers in science are the physicists who refuse to simply recite an "orthodoxy" of reductionism and expel heretics who deviate. Physicists are about the only group left who do so.

We live in a world of radical material reductionism. Conventional canon holds that thought is simply a by-product of brain activity. At its most reductive level, thought, and consciousness itself are just accidents of innumerable material processes randomly iterating over billions of years until one day, some apes suddenly became aware of themselves. “The rest is history”, goes the logic.

Contrary to this, we have multiple streams of philosophy, mythology, certain currents of depth psychology and over the last hundred years even science, namely quantum mechanics, that takes a completely different position. The material world is a consequence of non-material reality, not the precursor to it, and that non-material reality is self-aware and conscious:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we talk about as existing, postulates consciousness.”
- Max Planck

With that, we are suddenly past the pompous know nothings who assume "religion" is irrelevant superstitious nonsense, and are pushed back to Heraclitus (500 or so BC) who observed that all human thought is governed by RULES of thought. That is our logic is NOT something which springs from our heads, but rather conforms to patterns which all human reasoning conforms, and MUST conform. We simply cannot think, or reason, without these external "rules" or "laws" of thought. These "rules" of thought belong to the realm of THOUGHT, and are thus immaterial and not physical. Thought comes from a mind, thus the rules of inquiry into the physical word, observations of order, dispute, reason, logic and rationality must come from a PERSONALITY. Heraclitus wasn't sure WHAT that personality was, so he just called it a reasoning power, or an undefined entity in the universe. He called it the LOGOS, which is Greek for "WORD" and said this "WORD" was the key to order, reason, mental coherence, logic and rationality.

So, when you pick up the gospel of John, and you read the first 14 verses or so, it is not simply some obscure dilly dallying you see there. It is truly a bombshell of a challenge to something the Greeks understood, but had not "finished out" in their thought. Rationality itself, thought itself, in modern parlance, is based in "consciousness."

This is such a slap in the face to the pseudointellectual blabber of some twit who adopts an academic posture and sneers at the religious rubes because he took "Darwinism 101" in an intro biology course.

You will pardon my contempt for this kind of addle headed empty arrogance, but my contempt is not based in an assumption that I am "smarter" than these cretins (and they are truly cretins!). It is, in my better moments, based in wonder, awe, amazement and yes, even humility (if I can use that word about myself) before the presence of a superintellect. Reading the scriptures with an eye open to the history of human thought reveals an infinite and vast supermind whose expansiveness and detailed planning make it impossible to deny Him, unless one deliberately shuts down and remains appallingly ignorant about what road of thought they used to get there.

In my older age, I am more and more content to be a "little" person and take my proper place in the universe. In doing so, I have a deeper understanding of the verbal creativity in the Psalms seeking to reveal and illuminate the unspeakably vast and glorious creator, who has for some reason, chosen to be my redeemer.

"In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God." (John 1.1)

I kneel.

 

[TheWallrus]

@tanstaafl72555 , we really should do lunch sometime.

 

[JBoyette]

@tanstaafl72555

One step the the left, the words that we type, think in and speak are nothing short of a label.

that label is agreed upon by a group of people and we all agree the label green represents a light spectrum.

Once I understood this simple concept of labels, the whole world opened up to me because if you want to something to disappear, or be so hard to explain, just remove its label.

and most will not agree on the context of the word anymore.

 

[Flashpoint]

@tanstaafl72555

One step the the left, the words that we type, think in and speak are nothing short of a label.

that label is agreed upon by a group of people and we all agree the label green represents a light spectrum.

Once I understood this simple concept of labels, the whole world opened up to me because if you want to something to disappear, or be so hard to explain, just remove its label.

and most will not agree on the context of the word anymore.

Similarly, I've always wondered if what I see as red is what someone else sees as green, etc. How would we ever know?

 

[Flashpoint]

Tans your posts make my head hurt. But in a good way. Kind of like a cerebral burn, lol. Guess I don't use that muscle enough.

 

[noway2]

Once I understood this simple concept of labels, the whole world opened up to me because if you want to something to disappear, or be so hard to explain, just remove its label.

This is exactly what Orwell described as Newspeak in 1984.

 

[tanstaafl72555]

@tanstaafl72555

One step the the left, the words that we type, think in and speak are nothing short of a label.

that label is agreed upon by a group of people and we all agree the label green represents a light spectrum.

Once I understood this simple concept of labels, the whole world opened up to me because if you want to something to disappear, or be so hard to explain, just remove its label.

and most will not agree on the context of the word anymore.

This is very true. Categories themselves are empty without a mind to assign places to them. It is interesting to me that in the Genesis account, part of having "dominion" or rule over the creation was God "delegating" the task of assigning names and classification to the living creatures (the first taxonomy lesson, as well!).

Part of naming something is claiming the authority to classify it properly. This is why the Genesis creation account makes such a big deal over God "naming" the periods of light and dark, earth and seas and sky, etc. It is a claim of dominion and authority over all. This is, again, why the first act recorded is God "bringing" the animals to man to name and classify them. It is an old Hebrew thought of authority over. We have authority over many things (which may extend to the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum we call "colors"..... I dunno) but all that authority is a derivative authority. God owns and has authority to properly classify everything. He has delegated that rule and authority over the creation to man, which is why the scriptures talk about creation itself "groaning" under the devastation of the fall, and longing to be set free, along with redeemed man.

It can't come quickly enough for me, frankly.

Thank you for the interaction.

 

[Starkherz199]

Someone said once that these "axioms" or starting points of thought are not something you see. Rather, you see THROUGH them or WITH them and almost never stop to examine the ideas themselves. You just use them to filter and sort the data you have.

R J Rushdoony?

 

[tanstaafl72555]

R J Rushdoony?

Rushdoony is definitely a presuppositionalist. I have not read his stuff (to my shame). I read his son in law pretty extensively and have read a number of books by many of his followers. IBL is on my bucket list to read.

 

[Starkherz199]

Rushdoony is definitely a presuppositionalist. I have not read his stuff (to my shame). I read his son in law pretty extensively and have read a number of books by many of his followers. IBL is on my bucket list to read.

I also recommend "Revolt Against Maturity: A Biblical Psychology of Man"

Although, half of it may only affirm what you already know to be true.

 

[cubrock]

Good post, Tans. I have this conversation, in abbreviated form, with people quite frequently. We all think based on assumptions. We have to. No one can know everything. So, at some point, we have to make assumptions on what sources are trustworthy on what subjects and be prepared to adjust our downstream thinking when (not if) we find those assumptions to be flawed or flat out untrue.

If you build a house on a bad foundation, it can not stand and it can not be rebuilt when the foundation is shown to be insufficient for the task of supporting the house. If you build on a good foundation, any flaws shown in what is built on that foundation can be repaired without taking down the whole building. We should all spend a lot of time making sure our foundation is sure.

Seems like I read a parable or two along those lines….

 

[cubrock]

This is very true. Categories themselves are empty without a mind to assign places to them. It is interesting to me that in the Genesis account, part of having "dominion" or rule over the creation was God "delegating" the task of assigning names and classification to the living creatures (the first taxonomy lesson, as well!).

Part of naming something is claiming the authority to classify it properly. This is why the Genesis creation account makes such a big deal over God "naming" the periods of light and dark, earth and seas and sky, etc. It is a claim of dominion and authority over all. This is, again, why the first act recorded is God "bringing" the animals to man to name and classify them. It is an old Hebrew thought of authority over. We have authority over many things (which may extend to the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum we call "colors"..... I dunno) but all that authority is a derivative authority. God owns and has authority to properly classify everything. He has delegated that rule and authority over the creation to man, which is why the scriptures talk about creation itself "groaning" under the devastation of the fall, and longing to be set free, along with redeemed man.

It can't come quickly enough for me, frankly.

Thank you for the interaction.

It is interesting that this is one thing shared between ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek thought. Naming/classification gives one authority over the thing named or classified. we have inherited this in our “modern” way of thinking, as well. We are sure that if we can classify something that we then have power and dominion over it, which tends to make us a very unhumble people when it comes to our place in creation.

 

[Moylan]

St. Thomas wrote that "Man named the animals (Genesis 2:20). But names should be adapted to the nature of things. Therefore Adam knew the animals' natures; and in like manner he was possessed of the knowledge of all other things." This is pretty tightly-packed, in typical Thomistic form, but the gist is pretty straightforward. There's a normative claim at the center: our work of naming ought to be an act of recognition of the truth.

So the line of inference here on its surface runs contrary to Tans's claim that 'part of naming something is claiming the authority to classify it properly,' since St. Thomas is emphasizing Adam's docility to the realities of the natures of the animals, rather than any sort of authority he exercises over them. But of course, the docility is to the animals as created with intrinsic natures by God. So the one who creates the 'categories' is God, not man, and even the first Father, Adam, can use his authority over Creation only in properly recognizing what God has made, not in shaping it according to his own independent preferences. Our work of classification is either in accord with God's prior acts of creation of things with real natures, or it is renegade.

The modern twist on this has no corresponding story that restrains our power over nature, and explains a great deal about certain new political trends involving, say, the idea that we "assign" sex at birth or whatnot.

 

[cubrock]

St. Thomas wrote that "Man named the animals (Genesis 2:20). But names should be adapted to the nature of things. Therefore Adam knew the animals' natures; and in like manner he was possessed of the knowledge of all other things." This is pretty tightly-packed, in typical Thomistic form, but the gist is pretty straightforward. There's a normative claim at the center: our work of naming ought to be an act of recognition of the truth.

So the line of inference here on its surface runs contrary to Tans's claim that 'part of naming something is claiming the authority to classify it properly,' since St. Thomas is emphasizing Adam's docility to the realities of the natures of the animals, rather than any sort of authority he exercises over them. But of course, the docility is to the animals as created with intrinsic natures by God. So the one who creates the 'categories' is God, not man, and even the first Father, Adam, can use his authority over Creation only in properly recognizing what God has made, not in shaping it according to his own independent preferences. Our work of classification is either in accord with God's prior acts of creation of things with real natures, or it is renegade.

The modern twist on this has no corresponding story that restrains our power over nature, and explains a great deal about certain new political trends involving, say, the idea that we "assign" sex at birth or whatnot.

I don't think it runs contrary to Tans' claim at all, if I understand his claim properly. During the naming, Adam was properly exercising the dominion given him by God, to include the aspects about which Thomas and you wrote.

Fallen nature takes that dominion to a fallen place, where we are trying to recreate the universe in our image and to our liking, rather than recognizing what God created and called "good" and, in the case of male and female together, "very good." The end of this is calling "bad" what God called "good" and, eventually, destruction of not only that good, but everything.

 

[Moylan]

You may be right. I was taking Tans as a Calvinist, which is to say, as a nominalist. The nominalist doesn't allow for real natures in the world that someone like Adam--or us--could recognize. Because the Calvinist still has God, he can have real, normative, objectivity out there 'in the world,' due to the Will of God. But the modern secular Calvinist lacks God and thus lacks that objectivity. It's hard to do this kind of thing in internet posts, and I was too brief despite being longwinded. But I guess part of what I was getting at is that the talk of labels and presuppositions is all modern anyway, and what we need is some Aristotle here.

 

[cubrock]

You may be right. I was taking Tans as a Calvinist, which is to say, as a nominalist. The nominalist doesn't allow for real natures in the world that someone like Adam--or us--could recognize. Because the Calvinist still has God, he can have real, normative, objectivity out there 'in the world,' due to the Will of God. But the modern secular Calvinist lacks God and thus lacks that objectivity. It's hard to do this kind of thing in internet posts, and I was too brief despite being longwinded. But I guess part of what I was getting at is that the talk of labels and presuppositions is all modern anyway, and what we need is some Aristotle here.

What we need is an evening around a campfire with those who wish to discuss such things.

 

[Dale Gribble]

Was reading a thread in the members section where climate change was being discussed…the thought I was going to post fits this subforum and specifically, this thread, more appropriately.

I am a firm believer in climate change, but I find it laughable when mankind, in his arrogance, believes he wields the type of power to have any appreciable effect on nature/weather; especially on a global scale…there is One and ONLY One who controls that.

Fact is, our next inspiration and contraction of our ventricles is controlled by the same One…

And we ain’t Him.

 

[tanstaafl72555]

You may be right. I was taking Tans as a Calvinist, which is to say, as a nominalist. The nominalist doesn't allow for real natures in the world that someone like Adam--or us--could recognize. Because the Calvinist still has God, he can have real, normative, objectivity out there 'in the world,' due to the Will of God. But the modern secular Calvinist lacks God and thus lacks that objectivity. It's hard to do this kind of thing in internet posts, and I was too brief despite being longwinded. But I guess part of what I was getting at is that the talk of labels and presuppositions is all modern anyway, and what we need is some Aristotle here.

I have no idea what a "secular Calvinist" is.

 

[tanstaafl72555]

St. Thomas wrote that "Man named the animals (Genesis 2:20). But names should be adapted to the nature of things. Therefore Adam knew the animals' natures; and in like manner he was possessed of the knowledge of all other things." This is pretty tightly-packed, in typical Thomistic form, but the gist is pretty straightforward. There's a normative claim at the center: our work of naming ought to be an act of recognition of the truth.

So the line of inference here on its surface runs contrary to Tans's claim that 'part of naming something is claiming the authority to classify it properly,' since St. Thomas is emphasizing Adam's docility to the realities of the natures of the animals, rather than any sort of authority he exercises over them. But of course, the docility is to the animals as created with intrinsic natures by God. So the one who creates the 'categories' is God, not man, and even the first Father, Adam, can use his authority over Creation only in properly recognizing what God has made, not in shaping it according to his own independent preferences. Our work of classification is either in accord with God's prior acts of creation of things with real natures, or it is renegade.

The modern twist on this has no corresponding story that restrains our power over nature, and explains a great deal about certain new political trends involving, say, the idea that we "assign" sex at birth or whatnot.

Man has precisely ZERO authority without a commission from God. Man without God has no "authority" over anything, as authority is predicated on a proper position of order, with things properly in subjection based on design. This is nonsense without God. Everything is an accident and random and there is no order at all, much less a "proper" order. I love it that you quote Aquinas, btw. He had a monster mind and is one of my favorites of history.... as he was one of Calvin's .

I could not agree more that man's classification of the created order was based on their nature. Aquinas thought deeply about such things, and reading him makes me think "Wait a minute! YES! Why did I not see that!?!?!?!"

 

[tanstaafl72555]

You may be right. I was taking Tans as a Calvinist, which is to say, as a nominalist. The nominalist doesn't allow for real natures in the world that someone like Adam--or us--could recognize.

I am very confused by this. I may be misunderstanding what you are saying, but my understanding of it does not represent my position, nor of any Calvinist I know. However, the internet is what it is, and communication is often limited.

What I THINK you are saying, if I understand the term "nominalist" is that things are only assigned value and essence by how we as humans name them. I actually thought that was what someone was saying upstream, and wanted to change the flow of thought to include that when Adam named the creatures, he was acting as a sub-regent for God, who made the creation, understood their essence, and brought them to Adam to "participate" in accurately stating the "real natures" as He had made them. This does not fit with any understanding of nominalism I have, though I was not a philosophy major, and often am unsure of what trade talk is stating. It is possible I need help in understanding what is claimed here.

 

[Moylan]

I have no idea what a "secular Calvinist" is.

David Hume, for example. It's an idiosyncratic term. Probably shouldn't use it. The idea is Calvinistic metaphysics and epistemology but without God. Sort of the way that you can say that Hume on causation is an occasionalist like Malebranche, only without God. Brings me to the next point:

What I THINK you are saying, if I understand the term "nominalist" is that things are only assigned value and essence by how we as humans name them. I actually thought that was what someone was saying upstream, and wanted to change the flow of thought to include that when Adam named the creatures, he was acting as a sub-regent for God, who made the creation, understood their essence, and brought them to Adam to "participate" in accurately stating the "real natures" as He had made them.

Nominalism doesn't have to be human-centric in the way you describe. It can be theocentric.

So according to a nominalist, God can make things and (so to speak) say to them "you are a tiger" or "you are a dog" and then these are the real facts of the matter: the thing God makes to be a tiger really is a tiger, because God has said so. In the realm of morality, one might say, along similar lines, that when God says "murder is evil," then murder really is evil, because God has said so. So if Adam were to tell his boys (sadly ineffectually, in at least one case) that murder is evil and should be avoided, he would be accurately describing the truth about the world as a sub-regent for God. Or if Adam names the tiger 'tiger' he is correct in doing so, and acting as sub-regent for God. The thing that plays the determining role in making the facts be the facts is God's sovereign act of will.

So when a later philosopher comes along and removes God from the picture, there are no such facts that remain, only human will. And then what is truth but power relations, as the progressives tell us?

But the Aristotelian picture has these real natures--which imply real teleology and knowability embedded in nature. These truths are in principle knowable to the unaided human intellect. Special revelation is not called for. Just think--more as an interesting cartoony image than as a definitive point or a "proof" of anything--about the diametrically opposed views on Aristotle of Luther and St. Thomas Aquinas.

This gets back to the central epistemological point you were making in this thread (at least, as it seemed to me) which has to do with Presuppositionalism. In a certain sense, the presuppositionalist holds that everyone is equally irrational, because no epistemic starting points could be shown to be better than any others, from some "objective" standpoint, and so we can only evaluate rationality from within these often unseen starting points. The Aristotelian holds something quite different. For Aristotelians, some starting points really are self-evident. Those are the evidence of the senses, and then the fundamental truths of logic. These overlap at the law of non-contradiction. The way Chesterton puts it in his book on St. Thomas is perfect. Sorry for the long quotation (and the word Ens is Latin for Being):

When a child looks out of the nursery window and sees anything, say the green lawn of the garden, what does he actually know; or does he know anything? There are all sorts of nursery games of negative philosophy played round this question. A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye. This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope? If sight deceives, why can it not go on deceiving? Men of another school answer that grass is a mere green impression on the mind; and that he can be sure of nothing except the mind. They declare that he can only be conscious of his own consciousness; which happens to be the one thing that we know the child is not conscious of at all. In that sense, it would be far truer to say that there is grass and no child, than to say that there is a conscious child but no grass. St. Thomas Aquinas, suddenly intervening in this nursery quarrel, says emphatically that the child is aware of Ens. Long before he knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically (with a blow on the table), “There is an Is.” That is as much monkish credulity as St. Thomas asks of us at the start. Very few unbelievers start by asking us to believe so little. And yet, upon this sharp pin-point of reality, he rears by long logical processes that have never really been successfully overthrown, the whole cosmic system of Christendom.

There are no presuppositions here, but merely knowledge. I hold that Aristotle gives us this possibility of natural knowledge, and no other philosopher really does, least of all the moderns like Descartes and Calvin.

Sorry, I went a day or two fighting off the urge to post in your thread here because I don't want to drag if off topic or write these massive long posts. Though now that I think of it, people sometimes note that you write long posts, too. It's almost like doing real thinking takes time.

 

[tanstaafl72555]

David Hume, for example. It's an idiosyncratic term. Probably shouldn't use it. The idea is Calvinistic metaphysics and epistemology but without God. Sort of the way that you can say that Hume on causation is an occasionalist like Malebranche, only without God. Brings me to the next point:


Nominalism doesn't have to be human-centric in the way you describe. It can be theocentric.

So according to a nominalist, God can make things and (so to speak) say to them "you are a tiger" or "you are a dog" and then these are the real facts of the matter: the thing God makes to be a tiger really is a tiger, because God has said so. In the realm of morality, one might say, along similar lines, that when God says "murder is evil," then murder really is evil, because God has said so. So if Adam were to tell his boys (sadly ineffectually, in at least one case) that murder is evil and should be avoided, he would be accurately describing the truth about the world as a sub-regent for God. Or if Adam names the tiger 'tiger' he is correct in doing so, and acting as sub-regent for God. The thing that plays the determining role in making the facts be the facts is God's sovereign act of will.

So when a later philosopher comes along and removes God from the picture, there are no such facts that remain, only human will. And then what is truth but power relations, as the progressives tell us?

But the Aristotelian picture has these real natures--which imply real teleology and knowability embedded in nature. These truths are in principle knowable to the unaided human intellect. Special revelation is not called for. Just think--more as an interesting cartoony image than as a definitive point or a "proof" of anything--about the diametrically opposed views on Aristotle of Luther and St. Thomas Aquinas.

This gets back to the central epistemological point you were making in this thread (at least, as it seemed to me) which has to do with Presuppositionalism. In a certain sense, the presuppositionalist holds that everyone is equally irrational, because no epistemic starting points could be shown to be better than any others, from some "objective" standpoint, and so we can only evaluate rationality from within these often unseen starting points. The Aristotelian holds something quite different. For Aristotelians, some starting points really are self-evident. Those are the evidence of the senses, and then the fundamental truths of logic. These overlap at the law of non-contradiction. The way Chesterton puts it in his book on St. Thomas is perfect. Sorry for the long quotation (and the word Ens is Latin for Being):



There are no presuppositions here, but merely knowledge. I hold that Aristotle gives us this possibility of natural knowledge, and no other philosopher really does, least of all the moderns like Descartes and Calvin.

Sorry, I went a day or two fighting off the urge to post in your thread here because I don't want to drag if off topic or write these massive long posts. Though now that I think of it, people sometimes note that you write long posts, too. It's almost like doing real thinking takes time.

Love this kind of dialogue. Will respond later. Busy bidding a job right now. Thank you for your kind interaction.

 

[BigWaylon]

Hmmm…interesting title. Let’s see what this thread is about…