Nous

[Aethel]

Therefore they contradict themselves by making any claim.  Their theory is incoherent simply by making any claim.

Could you explain the contradiction?

you need to presume uniformitarianism as a metaphysical truth to be able to perform science for the purposes of scientific inquiry.

I don't think so. You can believe that nature does exhibit certain regularities but is not necessarily absolutely uniform.

I guess if we are talking about Quantam Physics, sure. But it's still a non-provable assumption. Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists by making sure that the consistent results they are achieving is fixed. You don't know that, it's an assumption that he isn't.

[Aethel]

The entire project of modern Epistemology relies on a host of presuppositions and concepts that neither the coherentists nor the foundationalists (which the Thomists don't really fall under despite holding some concepts in common) are capable of "justifying" - for the simple reason that they set out to accomplish an impossible task. They want to answer the question "How do you know what you know" starting from a universal doubt which takes nothing for granted - while the very question itself is only possible to utter once an individual has been alive for some time and possesses a great deal of certain knowledge and the question itself only arises in cultures that have undergone centuries if not millenia of philosophical "development". This fact alone should discredit the whole ordeal: that the only foundationalists and coherentists and foundherentists on earth are a bunch of nerds
(and even they don't live out their theories, save for a convicted few whom are always driven insane such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kant) with more knowledge than wisdom, and that both children and your average idiot operate under a completely alien Epistemology to that of any school of modern philosophy. Yet, miraculously, children are able to have "justified true beliefs" (a definition for knowledge which is as unjustified itself as it is mechanistic and asinine) and even to know things! Not just mere phenomena either, but real things that exist.

Maybe it's my Salafism coming out, but I think Tertullian said it best:

Unhappy Aristotle! Who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh, in its arguments, so productive of contentions — embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing! Whence spring those fables and endless genealogies, 1 Timothy 1:4 and unprofitable questions, Titus 3:9 and words which spread like a cancer? 2 Timothy 2:17 From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost. He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, while it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Wisdom 1:1 Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

Yeah but none of this is a logically valid argument.

My personal knowledge, or even the personal knowledge of people in the past, has nothing to with the true or the false.

Medieval doctors had no knowledge of bacteriae or viruses. In fact the reason why Plague doctors had snouts during the Black Plague was because there was a wide-spread theory that smell caused disease, and that perhaps the Black Plague was spreading through smell. They put a rose in the nose of the mask.
A child is also unlikely to fully conceptulalize how bacteriae or viruses work.

None of this means bacteria or viruses don't exist.

Likewise, our ability or inability to know or conceptualize the process of how people come to know things, has nothing to do with how people come to know things.



Also, the "look at the insanity these people believed in ergo it's false" is an emotional appeal and has nothing to do with the true or the false.

Saint Gregory the Great's Dialogues has a nun almost get possessed by the devil because she didn't say grace before eating her lettuce, and the devil was sitting on the lettuce. Does this mean that Post-Chalcedonian Apostolic-Succession Nicene Christianity as a whole is false, given the craziness of the outlook of that time period, to believe that one could get possessed by eating lettuce?


I mean no offense to you, but none of this was an argument.

[Aethel]

Also, Khalid, as you study the Patristic Fathers (best of luck to you), you'll come to realize that the criticism of Plato and Aristotle as "spiritually lost fools who didn't even see God through a glass darkly" is largely a rhetorical point to show inconsistency between the teachings of the Nicene Church and the pagan sources theological authorities were drawing their reasoning from.

Get far enough, you'll realize that much of Saint Paul and Saint John the Divine (or the Theologian if you prefer) drew from Philo of Alexandria, a Greek-Alexandrian Jewish Theologian who thought to systemize Abrahamic monotheism with Platonism. The very concept of the "Logos" comes from this source, it's the point in God at which mankind is able to access and comprehend the incomprehensible nature of God (which is why John stresses that nobody comes to God but through Christ, who is God made comprehensible).

[Khalid]

The entire project of modern Epistemology relies on a host of presuppositions and concepts that neither the coherentists nor the foundationalists (which the Thomists don't really fall under despite holding some concepts in common) are capable of "justifying" - for the simple reason that they set out to accomplish an impossible task. They want to answer the question "How do you know what you know" starting from a universal doubt which takes nothing for granted - while the very question itself is only possible to utter once an individual has been alive for some time and possesses a great deal of certain knowledge and the question itself only arises in cultures that have undergone centuries if not millenia of philosophical "development". This fact alone should discredit the whole ordeal: that the only foundationalists and coherentists and foundherentists on earth are a bunch of nerds
(and even they don't live out their theories, save for a convicted few whom are always driven insane such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kant) with more knowledge than wisdom, and that both children and your average idiot operate under a completely alien Epistemology to that of any school of modern philosophy. Yet, miraculously, children are able to have "justified true beliefs" (a definition for knowledge which is as unjustified itself as it is mechanistic and asinine) and even to know things! Not just mere phenomena either, but real things that exist.

Maybe it's my Salafism coming out, but I think Tertullian said it best:

Unhappy Aristotle! Who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh, in its arguments, so productive of contentions — embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing! Whence spring those fables and endless genealogies, 1 Timothy 1:4 and unprofitable questions, Titus 3:9 and words which spread like a cancer? 2 Timothy 2:17 From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost. He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, while it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Wisdom 1:1 Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

Yeah but none of this is a logically valid argument.

Fair enough, I'll rephrase it. If in order to develop an epistemological system you have to abandon the very methodology that enabled you acquire knowledge of words, concepts, experiences etc. that are necessary conditions to even be able to begin to develop your system, and instead start from universal doubt abd scepticism, then any results are self-evidently nonsensical. It's as if I were to use a ladder to get on my roof, kick the ladder off, and then sit their speculating as to how I got on the roof in the first place (while also, of course, not admitting the existence of ladders until they can be syllogistically demonstrated to exist). The exercise is a rather straightforward exercise in insanity. And I don't mean that rhetorically; it is almost entirely an exercise in question begging gobbledygook. Thomism, despite some of its faults, is right to reject this methodology.

Also, Khalid, as you study the Patristic Fathers (best of luck to you), you'll come to realize that the criticism of Plato and Aristotle as "spiritually lost fools who didn't even see God through a glass darkly" is largely a rhetorical point to show inconsistency between the teachings of the Nicene Church and the pagan sources theological authorities were drawing their reasoning from.

Get far enough, you'll realize that much of Saint Paul and Saint John the Divine (or the Theologian if you prefer) drew from Philo of Alexandria, a Greek-Alexandrian Jewish Theologian who thought to systemize Abrahamic monotheism with Platonism. The very concept of the "Logos" comes from this source, it's the point in God at which mankind is able to access and comprehend the incomprehensible nature of God (which is why John stresses that nobody comes to God but through Christ, who is God made comprehensible).

I've read a good many of the pre-nicene Fathers, thank you. They are excellent in their explication of the Old Testament, not so excellent when they start playing Plato. Origen is an excellent case in point.

The connection between the "Logos" of Philo and the "Logos" of St. John is in the word and little else. The "Logos" of John 1 is conceptually the same as the Divine Speech in Genesis 1 and the Divine Wisdom of Solomon's writings. St. John used the word because he wrote in greek. Philo's Logos was essentially just a less developed precursor to Arius' Logos.

And I am free to believe Aristostle and Plato are pederastic polytheists whose salvation is a very dubious proposition. They had many good points, sure; but many grievous errors too. The Propaganda Fide ruled under St. Pius X that Confucius (an actual Monotheist) was damned, after all; what hope do those two Athenians have?

[Aethel]

Fair enough, I'll rephrase it. If in order to develop an epistemological system you have to abandon the very methodology that enabled you acquire knowledge of words, concepts, experiences etc. that are necessary conditions to even be able to begin to develop your system, and instead start from universal doubt abd scepticism, then any results are self-evidently nonsensical. It's as if I were to use a ladder to get on my roof, kick the ladder off, and then sit their speculating as to how I got on the roof in the first place (while also, of course, not admitting the existence of ladders until they can be syllogistically demonstrated to exist). The exercise is a rather straightforward exercise in insanity. And I don't mean that rhetorically; it is almost entirely an exercise in question begging gobbledygook. Thomism, despite some of its faults, is right to reject this methodology.

But I never made the argument that I was abandoning the methodology by which I gained new information. And as I said, lacking information to conceptualize a thing doesn't mean the thing is false. Bacteriae. Just because medieval doctors didn't know bacteriae existed, doesn't mean bacteriae never existed. I know you're saying that it's different because we are talking about information itself, but I still maintain a difference because both obtaining and using information is distinct from conceptualizing how we obtain information. As an analogy,  riding a scooter and then going into engineering on how to make scooters aren't the same.

I've read a good many of the pre-nicene Fathers, thank you. They are excellent in their explication of the Old Testament, not so excellent when they start playing Plato. Origen is an excellent case in point.

The connection between the "Logos" of Philo and the "Logos" of St. John is in the word and little else. The "Logos" of John 1 is conceptually the same as the Divine Speech in Genesis 1 and the Divine Wisdom of Solomon's writings. St. John used the word because he wrote in greek. Philo's Logos was essentially just a less developed precursor to Arius' Logos.

And I am free to believe Aristostle and Plato are pederastic polytheists whose salvation is a very dubious proposition. They had many good points, sure; but many grievous errors too. The Propaganda Fide ruled under St. Pius X that Confucius (an actual Monotheist) was damned, after all; what hope do those two Athenians have?

I mean that's the traditional answer, but I'm not convinced. That's another topic for another thread though, and I wish not to overstay my welcome on this Catholic forum.

[AlNg]

Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe the devil is pulling a prank on you and only your mind exists. Everything is an illusion so there is no sense in helping your neighbor if his house is on fire. While you are driving, red lights, green lights, or yellow lights, they mean nothing except that the devil is pulling a prank on you so you might just as well ignore those red lights.

[Aethel]

Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe the devil is pulling a prank on you and only your mind exists. Everything is an illusion so there is no sense in helping your neighbor if his house is on fire. While you are driving, red lights, green lights, or yellow lights, they mean nothing except that the devil is pulling a prank on you so you might just as well ignore those red lights.

Yes, it's entirely possible. I mean that's what Gnosticism was. And how is it that dissimilar than simulation theory which even top academics discuss?

Although my point was a little bit over the top, I admit, it was to show the necessity of believing in Uniformatism as an assumption a priori to empiricism.

[Khalid]

Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe the devil is pulling a prank on you and only your mind exists. Everything is an illusion so there is no sense in helping your neighbor if his house is on fire. While you are driving, red lights, green lights, or yellow lights, they mean nothing except that the devil is pulling a prank on you so you might just as well ignore those red lights.

And how is it that dissimilar than simulation theory which even top academics discuss?

I think that says more about the modern Intelligentsia than anything else.

[AlNg]

Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe the devil is pulling a prank on you and only your mind exists. Everything is an illusion so there is no sense in helping your neighbor if his house is on fire. While you are driving, red lights, green lights, or yellow lights, they mean nothing except that the devil is pulling a prank on you so you might just as well ignore those red lights.

Yes, it's entirely possible.

Sure. It is a prank of the devil. So if your house is on fire and your children are screaming for help, and the fire extinguisher is nearby but you might as well ignore the cries of your children. Daddy, please help us! Mommy is burning and the fires are getting closer. Please Daddy! Please.
You might as well ignore your children's cries for help, continue smoking your pot,  and go to sleep, because it is just a prank of the devil. Scientists and others have to be on alert for these devilish pranks and not be fooled by them.
Of course you are right and scientists and their scientific method are completely wrong as they falsely entertain a belief in uniformatism and don't take into account the fact that the devil has been pulling pranks. 

[Aethel]

Maybe the devil is pulling an entire prank on scientists

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe the devil is pulling a prank on you and only your mind exists. Everything is an illusion so there is no sense in helping your neighbor if his house is on fire. While you are driving, red lights, green lights, or yellow lights, they mean nothing except that the devil is pulling a prank on you so you might just as well ignore those red lights.

Yes, it's entirely possible.

Sure. It is a prank of the devil. So if your house is on fire and your children are screaming for help, and the fire extinguisher is nearby but you might as well ignore the cries of your children. Daddy, please help us! Mommy is burning and the fires are getting closer. Please Daddy! Please.
You might as well ignore your children's cries for help, continue smoking your pot,  and go to sleep, because it is just a prank of the devil. Scientists and others have to be on alert for these devilish pranks and not be fooled by them.
Of course you are right and scientists and their scientific method are completely wrong as they falsely entertain a belief in uniformatism and don't take into account the fact that the devil has been pulling pranks.

Yes, you're catching on, kid.

[Khalid]

Fair enough, I'll rephrase it. If in order to develop an epistemological system you have to abandon the very methodology that enabled you acquire knowledge of words, concepts, experiences etc. that are necessary conditions to even be able to begin to develop your system, and instead start from universal doubt abd scepticism, then any results are self-evidently nonsensical. It's as if I were to use a ladder to get on my roof, kick the ladder off, and then sit their speculating as to how I got on the roof in the first place (while also, of course, not admitting the existence of ladders until they can be syllogistically demonstrated to exist). The exercise is a rather straightforward exercise in insanity. And I don't mean that rhetorically; it is almost entirely an exercise in question begging gobbledygook. Thomism, despite some of its faults, is right to reject this methodology.

But I never made the argument that I was abandoning the methodology by which I gained new information. And as I said, lacking information to conceptualize a thing doesn't mean the thing is false. Bacteriae. Just because medieval doctors didn't know bacteriae existed, doesn't mean bacteriae never existed. I know you're saying that it's different because we are talking about information itself, but I still maintain a difference because both obtaining and using information is distinct from conceptualizing how we obtain information. As an analogy,  riding a scooter and then going into engineering on how to make scooters aren't the same.

But the two cases are entirely distinct. Growing in knowledge in regard to a particular art (like medicine) is one thing, but the methodology of modern Epistemology isn't a development and refinement of more primitive principles.

Rather it starts with the premise (a rather dogmatic one too) that to attain justified knowledge one must doubt all that can be doubted. However, in order to even formulate the premise you have to make use of innumerable concepts and presuppositions that became known not through a method of systematic doubt but through positive analysis, perception, and experience. It doesn't matter if one takes the approach of Classical Foundationalism to try and find some "undoubtable" proposition from which to deduce everything else or if you judge systems together as a whole based on their coherence. Either way you slice it, doubt isn't a means to attain knowledge but the antithesis of it, so all you can really accomplish with this methodology is a crass agnosticism that renders objective knowledge impossible.

[james03]

Could you explain the contradiction?

Their premise is that there is no absolute truth, or at best absolute truth can't be apprehended. However this is contradicted by them making a fact statement.

On another topic, as a Psychology, the system is at least partially true.  A woman tells a kid to not touch a hot stove.  He doesn't do it.  Unfortunately the local school gives him the jab and he dies of a heart attack a few days later, and thus only operates on the paradigm given to him by his mother.

The problem occurs when Psychology trespasses on Epistemology or Ontology.  We can ask WHY he believed his mother.  WHY did he associate pain with something negative, and thus to be avoided.  We end up with truth having to correspond with reality.  What is true exists.  And you go further back for a basis and end up with I Perceive.  Which doesn't require cognition, it is instantly in front of us.  This is the intellectio intuitio of the Scholastics.