You have this tendency to regard your own experience as the sole criteria for what anyone else should accept.

Why would you say that? I haven't made any claims about what others should accept.

Right. Should have been ‘me’ then, rather than:

what could it be to us? — Janus

:roll: It was a question. You posited a sense we can have no sense of. Given that it seems a fair question.

You posited a sense we can have no sense of. — Janus

As I said.

It seems then that you are redefining metaphysics as philosophy and not as merely one domain of philosophy. If metaphysics is philosophy then of course you can't do philosophy without doing metaphysics; you have simply stipulated that by your definition. I'm not going to agree because I don't think philosophy is all, or even mostly, metaphysics — Janus

And that's fair enough. All the more reason not to worry about what's metaphysics and what isn't! I like your move toward asking about "assumptions" instead.

I'm not familiar with Sider. . . . So I would see it as semantics, not metaphysics. — Janus

Sider is a good contrast with Wittgenstein, since Sider believes that most of the traditional metaphysical questions that Witt rejected are reformulable, and to a degree resolvable, using the apparatus of formal logic. He thinks they're good questions. But once again, while you may well be right that this winds up as semantics rather than what many call "metaphysics" . . . need we care? Let's read Sider and see what he actually says about the issues, not the vocabulary. (And BTW, Writing the Book of the World is one of the best works of contemporary philosophy I've ever read.)

To repeat, for me doing metaphysics means holding to a particular position regarding the fundamental nature of reality. — Janus

But this, I must admit, is interesting. What if we did reserve the term "metaphysics" for the stance you're describing? To me that's a referendum on "holding a particular position," not on "the fundamental nature of reality." If I understand you, you're saying that there's nothing intellectually shoddy about speculations on fundamental reality, whether in the form of philosophy or fantasy. That is, you don't think the very idea of a fundamental reality is incoherent. But you do think that holding a particular position about it is unacceptable. Would you want to say more about why that is so? Is the difference to do with degrees of certainty?

We find the world to be comprehensible, so I don't see a need for any assumptions in that matter. — Janus

So back to "assumptions" . . . This is a bit brisk, no? Surely the world is to varying degrees comprehensible, not tout court, and the "we" for whom it is comprehensible is also going to vary a great deal. Maybe we should put it this way: When I find the world (or some aspect of it) comprehensible, is it true that this involves no assumptions?

So, when I say we obviously comprehend the world, I'm only speaking in an everyday sense, a sense in which I would include science as an augmentation of the everyday. — Janus

OK, this is from your reply to @Tom Storm. I don't mean to impugn your everyday experience -- or Witt's, which must have been much the same -- but it isn't mine. I seem to walk around in more or less constant puzzlement about how my experiences connect with the world that appears before me. This is particularly acute when I try to examine the experiences themselves, self-reflexively, including the question of why the idea of "comprehensibility" is so powerful. But all this is only to say that I think "like a philosopher" -- or more accurately, like the muddle-headed type of philosopher who Witt believed needed therapeutic release!

I think it's nonsense to say that science doesn't require or imply a metaphysic. — Wayfarer

Let's try rephrasing along the line of Janus's "assumptions": "It's nonsense to say that science doesn't require or imply any assumptions." OK, "nonsense" is kinda harsh, but I agree that it's implausible. What, then, are these assumptions? What are scientists assuming when they do science? Probably no one would say they're arbitrary -- that scientists just like scientific method -- so what justifications can philosophy of science offer for them?

The metaphysic of early modern science was: no metaphysics. — Wayfarer

More evidence that "metaphysics" as a term may only muddy the waters. Presumably the early modern scientists meant "metaphysics" in one way, and the cultural historians that you cite meant it in another way, such that someone who denies having any metaphysics may nonetheless be convicted of having them after all. But all this demonstrates, surely, is that the word is equivocal.

I may be pushing this too far, but how about if we said: "Early modern science assumed a clear and knowable division between matter and mind, between so-called objective and secondary qualities, and conceived it the duty of science to investigate the former, not the latter." This phrasing allow us to ask a number of interesting questions about the degree to which any of this might be justified.

EDIT - switched "latter" and "former," above, eeech.

I hope God does come between you and anything else one day. I’m actually sure God will, and expect that will be a pleasant meeting. But not today. Cheers!

I am always moved/inspired by the existential embrace of the absurdity of being a person. Kierkegaard is good reference.

a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’ — Wayfarer

Because there is such a thing as “making sense”, I agree it therefore makes sense that there is a being that makes all sense of everything. And I agree, such a being is not one of us, so we may never apprehend it, or will never make sense of everything.

And absurdity creeps in when we think, until it all makes sense it remains possible that “making sense” is a house of cards and so nothing ever made sense in the first place. Meaning, if we admit we don’t know everything, we must admit we haven’t yet learned the one thing that would undercut all that we thought we knew, so maybe we never know anything.

But I also think there is a possibility that, in our likeness to God (the higher one), we sometimes apprehend things completely, that when we know something, we know the same thing God knows. We will forever pursue all-knowledge, but along the way, possess particular knowledge the same as any knowing being would possess. That makes sense to me - that I am not God, but that I can know God anyway (because of God, not my own discoveries).

Count T and I, in contrast, want to use "metaphysics" more broadly, to mean any framework that results in a philosophical position about "the world as we find it." On this usage, it looks impossible to do without metaphysics, since philosophy presupposes it.
— J
I agree. — Gnomon
Sure, it's perfectly good way to use the word, and my own preference. — J

I too expected that using the ancient concept of "metaphysics" to distinguish theoretical Philosophy from empirical Science would be non-controversial. But on this forum it is still associated --- primarily by Atheists & Materialists --- with Religion instead of Philosophy. So, I'm forced to spend a lot of time explaining why I like the functional distinction that Aristotle made, without naming it*1.

Aristotle's encyclopedic Physics (Nature) began with empirical observations, but in a separate chapter --- later labeled The Metaphysics --- discussed theoretical philosophical Ideas about Nature-in-general. Book 5 is sometimes described as a compendium of then-current theories about the Natural world, including conceptual abstractions (Justice & Ethics) and its immaterial functions, such as Life & Mind*2. Admittedly, "Metaphysics" viewed narrowly is a Theological term. But considered "more broadly" it's a categorical label that distinguishes conceptual Philosophy from materialistic Science. :smile:


*1. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

*2. In the famous chapter on the meanings of the term “nature” (phusis), contained in Book V of the Metaphysics, which is considered Aristotle's dictionary of philosophical terms, he distinguishes among the various meanings of this term, present in common parlance or in the theories of the philosophers preceding him: “
https://www.pas.va/en/publications/acta/acta23pas/berti.html

cosmological evidence that our space-time universe had a beginning in philosophical time — Gnomon
I can't make sense of the idea that the Universe had a beginning in time, and certainly not "philosophical time" (whatever that is meant to be). The beginning of the Universe was the beginning of time according to my understanding of the current theory. — Janus

That's why I specified that the Cosmic Birth Event was in "philosophical time" not clock time. Can you make sense of Einstein's notion of "Block Time"? It's a metaphorical concept, not to be taken literally*1.

You may need to imagine that our subjective experience of Sequential/Cyclic Time is an exception to the timeless state we call Eternity --- or Frozen Time, or Block Time. Then, imagine yourself as a god-like observer of the Big Bang, like the Trinity Atomic Bomb test. From your philosophical perspective, the Bang would be Now, and the Past would be Potential-not-yet-Actualized. Metaphorically, our little bubble of space-time is passing through non-dimensional changeless latent Possibility. :smile:


*1. Einstein's theory of relativity, specifically the idea of a "block universe," doesn't mean time doesn't exist or is an illusion. Instead, it suggests that space and time are interwoven and that all moments in time, past, present, and future, exist simultaneously. This challenges our subjective experience of time passing, but it doesn't negate time's objective reality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Einstein+block+time+not+literal

ETERNITY IMAGINED AS A BLOCK OF ICE


PS___ Maybe you could imagine yourself as the "Hotel Manager" at the grand opening of the Hotel Cosmos.

It's an interesting subject. The empiricist tradition often justifies itself by pointing to the fruits of modern science and ascribing these to its philosophy (and thus to its rejection of much of what came before). However, historically, the "new Baconian science," the new mechanistic view of nature, and nominalism pre-date the "Great Divergence" in technological and economic development between the West and India and China by centuries. If the "new science," mechanistic view, and nominalism led to the explosion in technological and economic development, it didn't do it quickly. The supposed effect spread quite rapidly when it finally showed up, but this was long after the initial cause that is asserted to explain it.

Nor was there a "great divergence," in technological progress between areas dominated by rationalism as opposed to empiricism. Nor does it seem that refusing to embrace the Anglo-empiricist tradition's epistemology and metaphysics has precluded people from becoming influential scientific figures or inventors. I do think there is obviously some sort of connection between the "new science" and the methods used for technological development, but I don't think it's nearly as straightforward as the empiricist version of "Whig history" likes to think.

In particular, I think one could argue that technology progressed in spite of (and was hampered by) materialism. Some of the paradigm shifting insights of information theory and complexity studies didn't require digital computers to come about, rather they had been precluded (held up) by the dominant metaphysics (and indeed the people who kicked off these revolutions faced a lot of persecution for this reason).

By its own standards, if empiricism wants to justify itself, it should do so through something like a peer reviewed study showing that holding to logical positivism, or some similar view, tends to make people more successful scientists or inventors. The tradition should remain skeptical of its own "scientific merits" until this evidence is produced, right? :joke:


I suppose it doesn't much matter because it seems like the endgame of the empiricist tradition has bifurcated into two main streams. One denies that much of anything can be known, or that knowledge in anything like the traditional sense even exists (and yet it holds on to the epistemic assumptions that lead to this conclusion!) and the other embraces behaviorism/eliminativism, a sort of extreme commitment to materialist scientism, that tends towards a sort of anti-philosophy where philosophies are themselves just information patterns undergoing natural selection. The latter tends to collapse into the former due to extreme nominalism though.



By all means, I'm just laying out the case as I see it. That the sciences involve discussions of causality, identity, emergence, or universals just seems to me like a good starting point for common ground.

Anyhow, people wedded to the Wittgensteinian approach are constantly making metaphysical assertions of TFP and other venues. Rorty's use of Wittgenstein is a fine example. And these assertions are based on an analysis of language as prior to metaphysics (which I'd argue just results in implicitly presupposing an unclarified metaphysics for that analysis of language). Yet if the very thing in question is the existence of, or role of metaphysics/first philosophy, and one turns to philosophy of language as the arbiter of this question, it seems that one is already picking an answer, no?

Now, the classical metaphysician must do something similar, but it's explicit. "Metaphysics is first philosophy because it is most general." This is different from, "there is no first philosophy, or if there is, we must be skeptical about it, thus we must analyze language to decide the issue (i.e., philosophy language is defacto first philosophy, and will decide the issue of first philosophy as first philosophy).

The reason I think this is often not profitable is because, as noted above, I think metaphysical assumptions are inescapable. So, the analysis just assumes certain assumptions. I think I pointed this out to you before vis-á-vis the extreme authority given to Wittgenstein's "rule following argument," which is often taken as "this is something that is always and irrefutably true about rule following," not "this is what is true about rule following given we grant Wittgenstein his metaphysical and epistemic presuppositions." Wittgenstein's assumptions, premises in the argument, then have to later be analyzed in light of the very conclusions of that very same argument, i.e., "here is what can be said about epistemology and metaphysics, and how we can justify them, given what we have already said about language." The horse cannot pull the cart on the grounds that we have already set the cart before the horse.

That is why I tend to be skeptical of the approach in a nutshell. There is nothing wrong with wrangling about definitions IMO, it's a time honored tradition.

I don't like the term 'universal' much because I think it's loaded with metaphysical baggage, and it really doesn't mean anything more that 'general'

Does swapping in "general" for "universal" resolve the issue of "in virtue of what are different things the same as respects some feature?"

It seems that "general" would just require the same sort of metaphysical assumptions. Likewise, how does saying "things that share properties actually share 'morphologies'" resolve the issues of universals and natural kinds?

And of course I don't see universals coming into play, but just a human capacity to generalize on account of the ability to recognize patterns and regularities, as I already noted above.

I mean, this just seems to me like: "we will call them 'morphologies' to presuppose nominalism without debate." I don't see how a word swap justifies such a move though. We could call them "tropes" just as well, but it doesn't remove the issue of presuppositions.

Edit: actually, to be fair, I think "patterns and regularities" could probably qualify as universals. It's perhaps more profitable and accurate to define nominalism as the rejection of form and nature than of universals, since only the most extreme, self-refuting sorts of nominalism denies "universals" in a broad sense (normally in the context of anti-rationalism.

There is nothing wrong with wrangling about definitions IMO, it's a time honored tradition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

God knows you're right about that! :smile: I just think that, too often, the wranglers actually believe someone must be correct, which, when it comes to definitions of abstracta, or terms that appear in different contexts in different traditions, is rarely possible. This leads to a lot of wasted effort, not to mention ire. Better to say, "OK, for purposes of this discussion, let's say 'metaphysics' means X, and we'll both know what we're referring to, at least. It's that piece on the board." (The game metaphor here is, I hope, inoffensive: It doesn't matter whether you call the piece a rook or a castle, as long as everyone knows it's the one that moves in straight lines.)

Another reason I'm in favor of being more self-conscious about terminological wrangles is that we can learn something, in the process, about what can be usefully defined. That poor tiger we talk so much about can in fact be given a definition which admits of being accurate or inaccurate. It may not be the "only way to define a tiger," but it allows us to sort them out with near-perfect success, and accords with a naming tradition (biology) that has won universal acceptance. Such is not the case, sadly, for putative definitions of love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to name three. So . . . what is the difference? Plenty of food for philosophical thought here.

Lastly, as I've often said, I don't think we should encourage a view of philosophy that says, in effect, "You pit your definition/position/viewpoint against mine; these positions include differences in the 'rules' each of us thinks we should follow in this agon, so we'll never agree; but nonetheless, let the games begin and may the strongest argument win!" I mean, huh? How often is this really a good way to philosophize? And yet so many wrangles about definitions seem to assume this model. The problem goes all the way back to what I believe is a misunderstanding of Socratic dialogue.

What, then, are these assumptions? What are scientists assuming when they do science? Probably no one would say they're arbitrary -- that scientists just like scientific method -- so what justifications can philosophy of science offer for them? — J

Totally other thread - but it’s along the lines I suggested. Early modern science and philosophy - Galileo, Newton, Descartes - the division of mind from matter, primary attributes from secondary, the exclusion of factors not considered amenable to quantification. The description given in Nagel’s ‘Mind and Cosmos’. But meta-physics never goes it away, per the famous remark about philosophy burying its undertakers. Quantum physics has brought up large metaphysical questions which remain unresolved. Philosophy of biology has expanded to include biosemiotics and the metaphysics of symbols. And so on. But the positivist spirit is still powerful - ‘all that can be known, can be known by science’.

Much more to say but family duties call for a couple of hours.

what justifications can philosophy of science offer for them?"
— J

Totally other thread - but it’s along the lines I suggested. Early modern science and philosophy - Galileo, Newton, Descartes - the division of mind from matter, primary attributes from secondary, the exclusion of factors not considered amenable to quantification. — Wayfarer

the positivist spirit is still powerful - ‘all that can be known, can be known by science’. — Wayfarer

Yes, these are the assumptions we're talking about, but I'm asking for the justifications for them, as they would have been put forward by early modern scientists, and perhaps some philosophers of science today -- assuming you agree that the assumptions are far from arbitrary, but reflect a powerful (if mistaken) worldview. But maybe it does require a new thread.

Much more to say but family duties call for a couple of hours. — Wayfarer

Unacceptable, but if you must . . . :wink:

You posited a sense we can have no sense of.
— Janus

As I said. — Wayfarer

:roll:

but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’ — Wayfarer

From my point of view you certainly seem to see through a glass darkly.

I don’t at all but I recognise the metaphor.

a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’
— Wayfarer

Because there is such a thing as “making sense”, I agree it therefore makes sense that there is a being that makes all sense of everything. And I agree, such a being is not one of us, so we may never apprehend it, or will never make sense of everything. — Fire Ologist

I don’t generally quote scripture, but one of the New Testament aphorisms is ‘blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall know God’ (Matt 5:8). In saying that I’m well aware of my own lack of purity and the probable consequences of that. But I want to consider this through a philosophical rather than confessional perspective.

I understand that teaching to be a reference to what came to be called ‘theosis’ or ‘the divine vision’, It is described as a state of union with the Divine and is the culmination of the spiritual life in both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity (although with a few exceptions it is not nearly so explicit in Reformed Theology for reasons I won’t enlarge on here.)

Similar motifs can be found in other spiritual traditions, of divine union, mystical absorption and so forth. Of course there are also profound differences between them and I’m not suggesting they all be blurred into a kind of mushy new-age syncretism. But from a philosophical perspective it’s the convergences that are interesting, as it suggests archetypal forms found across cultures. And all of these traditions - not only religious teachings, but also philosophical traditions - indicated the importance of purity of motive, lack of attachment, abandonment of craving, and so on, as preconditions for that insight to arise. That is the kind of ‘saving insight’ that the Biblical verse is referring to. It is not an empirical observation about states of affair in the world, but insight into the divine origin of being- mystical insight, known under various terminologies in different cultures - Gnosis, Jñāna, Prajñāpāramitā being examples from different traditions. Again, the cultures differ amongst themselves as to the specifics, but again the similarities are of more significance than the differences: they are agreeing and disagreeing about something real.

I also think there is a possibility that, in our likeness to God (the higher one), we sometimes apprehend things completely, that when we know something, we know the same thing God knows. We will forever pursue all-knowledge, but along the way, possess particular knowledge the same as any knowing being would possess. — Fire Ologist

Well, your own Catholic tradition has a noble and still esteemed school of philosophical theology, namely, that of St Thomas Aquinas, who (again from a philosophical perspective) I would propose as an example (and possibly the last example) of the philosophia perennis in the Western tradition. Thomas’ adoption of Aristotelian hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism conforms with your general idea. See Sensible Form and Intelligible Form in Aquinas. I’m not presenting it as ‘holy writ’ (which many will present Aquinas as) but as a philosophical model which I think still holds up even in light of the many scientific discoveries since Thomas’ day. That idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes, which themselves arise in the Divine Intellect. I know there are many ways to criticise that philosophy and that it is overall regarded as superseded in the Western tradition, but I’m not sure how many of those who criticise it really understand what they’re rejecting. Underlying all of this is a different mode of knowing and being to that of the detached observer of states of affairs in the world.

Incidentally, the ‘through the glass, darkly’ is part of a Pauline scripture that is very often read at wedding ceremonies, and indeed one of the most poetic invocations of the spirit in the whole New Testament. The complete verse is

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. — 1 Cor. 13-12

‘Then’ is a reference to entering the divine presence, nowadays generally understood as something that happens only at the time of death, but in the mystical sense, corresponding with the advent of the beatific vision.

I don’t at all but I recognise the metaphor. — Wayfarer

I see...we see through a glass darkly but you don't. :rofl:

Everything I say here is well within the bounds of philosophy of religion in which this thread is situated, although it will be meaningless to positivism as a matter of definition.

More labelling. Seems to be all you are capable of. Oh well, back to the ignore-ance.

Similar motifs can be found in other spiritual traditions … But from a philosophical perspective it’s the convergences that are interesting, — Wayfarer

I agree. Much to ponder peering into the wisdom that overlaps cultures, religions, times.

purity of motive, lack of attachment, abandonment of craving, — Wayfarer

they are agreeing … about something — Wayfarer

I agree as well. And I see Aristotle and Heraclitus everywhere too, as well as I see God everywhere. We are all after the same thing. I’m not afraid to call it wisdom, or more directly, truth, and more practically, admit it is universal to persons who love other persons. Love is at the heart of all. Motion, being, becoming, unity, community, knowledge and truth (unity of mind and object), and language itself - the deepest personal expression of love in the one who truly means “I love you” to another…

idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes, which themselves arise in the Divine Intellect. I know there are many ways to criticise that philosophy and that it is overall regarded as superseded in the Western tradition, but I’m not sure how many of those who criticise it really understand what they’re rejecting. — Wayfarer

I see a philosophic leap too far when you or Aquinas end up “…in the Divine intellect.” I know God can be an essential ontological feature of many philosophies, but I think it is a scientific cop-out (so far in our experience) to use “God” in philosophy (again, so far in human history, not even Aristotle settled such an assertion) (and not that that is what you are trying to do). I hope you follow me here.

I like where you said, “the idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes.” I’d say “ the mind sees the formal.” Like the eye senses light. And leave it at that. I haven’t yet explained the formal ( though we obviously keep seeing it in mind) just like I haven’t fully explained light or eyes seeing light consciously… though I obviously “see”.

different mode of knowing and being to that of the detached observer of states of affairs in the world. — Wayfarer

And here, in my view, there is one mode, one knowing. It may take complexity to lay down the science of it all in a language, but if it all doesn’t end up how it starts, with the naive, hand-in-hand with all things in the world, we have lost our way.

Illusion stands out against its only possible context, namely, reality. We can’t bemoan illusion until we know something else, namely the real, so we need to recall and rejoice, for however illusion has been delivered to me, it came with the real!

reference to entering the divine presence, nowadays generally understood as something that happens only at the time of death, but in the mystical sense, corresponding with the advent of the beatific vision. — Wayfarer

I feel like here, in this forum, we are miles away from a more measurable, more strictly philosophical conversation. We’ve leapt into mysticism at its most universal (and more TPF friendly form), or something more like theology in more particular form, and neither are too comfortable here at TPF (and that’s ok with me).

Personally, I see what Aquinas meant when he said his philosophic thoughts about his beloved Father in heaven were straw. The beatific vision will come as a gift and a surprise and I would expect it to be utterly unlike anything I could expect. God’s visage, to me, is different than the aspirations of mystical enlightenment. Enlightenment can be sought and found through one’s own effort (or one’s own complete quelling of effort). To me, in the end, it is only because God wants me to see him that I would ever come to be able to see him and then actually see - and in the end, when it comes to God, I’d rather just look for his own words first, see if God will come to me, then discuss my interpretations (again probably better received in some other forum).

I think we have a similar approach to this thing of ours - this love of wisdom.

And see how far I stray from the problem of evil where “God” is falsely taken as an object that can be fixed in a syllogism that concludes “God is not”; I feel obliged to save God from the fiery pits of Hume’s “to the flames!” Or Nietzsche, or Russell..

But then I recall, philosophy is its most pure when it remains science first and foremost, so it is likely no one cares God has been spared by me.

Anyway, always interested to know what you think. Cheers.

I believe anyway. Because God makes no sense either, and really my own existence with all of its questions and knowledge of illusion, makes no sense either. None of it makes sense, so, to me, there is plenty of room to trust God anyway. — Fire Ologist

I know I’ve already said plenty, but your comment has stayed with me—partly because it touches on a deep philosophical issue that I’ve reflected on before.

One of the most insightful books I’ve read on this is The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie. Gillespie challenges the usual story that modernity arose from reason overcoming faith. Instead, he shows that the transition to modern thought was deeply shaped by a theological struggle within Christianity itself—especially the debate over divine reason versus divine will.

Brief summary: Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descarte and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which according to Gillespie dismantled the rational God / universe of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, born of a concern that anything less than such would jeopardize His divine omnipotence. This combined with the emerging nominalism to form the basis of much of modern thought.

Subsequent intellectual history is, in Gillespie's reading, a grappling with the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will in order to preserve God's absolute power. However, this in turn culminated in an ambivalence about salvation. If God simply wills whom to save, human action has no real merit (ex. Luther's "sin boldly"). Gillespie's chapter on the debate between Erasmus-Luther was among the most interesting in bringing this out. — Christopher Blosser

In medieval scholasticism, especially in the work of Aquinas, God was understood as transcendent but also rational. The universe was seen as ordered in a way that human reason could, at least in part, comprehend—since human reason reflected the divine logos. But Gillespie argues that a shift occurred with the rise of theological voluntarism, particularly through the influence of Franciscan thinkers. They insisted that God’s will was absolutely free and not bound even by rationality. To suggest otherwise, they argued, would limit divine omnipotence.

This paved the way for a more fideistic view of God, where faith meant trusting in the unknowable will of God, even when it seemed to make no sense. This tension played out dramatically in the Reformation, especially in Luther’s rejection of scholastic rationalism and his emphasis on trust in God’s inscrutable will.

So your comment, about trusting God because nothing makes sense, actually reflects a deep-standing thread in Christian culture —a move away from the idea of a rationally ordered universe toward a faith based on trust in God’s sheer will. In that light, what feels like a modern attitude is actually rooted in a much older theological shift. This is what Gillespie brings out. But, be assured, Thomist philosophy lives on, and there are many profound Thomist philosophers to this day.

I feel obliged to save God from the fiery pits of Hume’s “to the flames!” — Fire Ologist

One my lecturers in philosophy wryly pointed out that Hume’s condemnation at the end of his Treatise actually applies to the Treatise. ‘Take any book of scholastic metaphysic…’ The lecturer compared Hume, like the positivists after him, to the Uroboros, the mythical snake that swallows itself. ‘The hardest part’, he would say with a mischievous grin, ‘is the last bite’.

(BTW I cross-posted my above reply to you before I saw your reply above that, although I don’t think we’ve crossed purposes.)

God was understood as transcendent but also rational. The universe was seen as ordered in a way that human reason could, at least in part, comprehend—since human reason reflected the divine logos. — Wayfarer

I usually cringe at philosophic notions of God. (And I hypocritically philosophize about God, so, no judgment!) I think what you just said here somewhat paraphrases me before. But it strikes me now - how do we know God cares about the things our reason cares about? It makes sense that if there is any logos, there is one logos and if logos is to be known, divine or human, logos is logos. So it clarifies nothing to refer to divine logos in a philosophic manner. What is that?

I see knowing the divine or the transcendent as equivalent to knowing another person. We can know the other person perfectly, but i only to the extent they reveal themselves to us. I now know something of what Wayfarer thinks. You said it, and so I know something of you. I don’t know everything about Wayfarer, but I know something. That is how God knows Wayfarer too (it is always particular knowledge when knowing a person, and God also knows much more than maybe even Wayfarer knows about Wayfarer); and this is how Wayfarer knows God. This is what any knowledge is like - the other, revealed, to me.

It’s easy to know a physical thing - we can use our sense and invent tools to measure it. But to know the transcendent, like God, or like a person, words and revelations of a person to another person, these are most intimate and can be much more true than senses and, as a Christian, they are whole ball game, the purpose of knowing anything. Knowing he person of God who knows the person of me - that is the purpose of everything.

the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will in order to preserve God's absolute power. — Christopher Blosser

your comment, about trusting God because nothing makes sense, actually reflects a deep-standing thread in Christian culture —a move away from the idea of a rationally ordered universe toward a faith based on trust in God’s sheer will. — Wayfarer

Interesting.

God gave me reason so that I could use language and understand what he says when he says “my will is x” - but not reason enough to understand whether what God wills makes sense towards achieving whatever God says he is trying to achieve. We need reason to understand what “go bind and sacrifice Isaac” or “build an Arc in a field” means and reason to put together all the pieces that carry out those commands, but not enough reason to understand how these are good acts reasonably connected to a future for life with a loving God.

My opinion is, when God makes a request that we do not understand, we should trust God and comply with the request regardless of our understanding, because we already understand that it is always good to trust God. But there is nothing intrinsic to God’s will and command that I am unable to understand it. God wants me to understand Him. That includes His will when he reveals his will to me. But if I do not understand, even more than me stopping to use my reason and intellect to seek to understand why God wants what he wants and how what God wants is good, I should not stop and trust God, trust his perfect goodness, and follow him wherever he seems to me and my limited intellect to be going.

The point, to me, about not being able to understand God is, God is so big and unique, I will forever have more to learn - I will never know it all (much like another person’s soul). There will forever be vast oceans of more to know and fulfill my desires to know you.”

So when I say “nothing makes sense” it is more like an acknowledgment that nothing fully makes sense, yet. God isn’t waiting for me to figure him out, so when he bridges the gap between me and him, I am always taken off guard and shown things I can’t understand - like someone giving Newton the formula e=mc2, and telling him to trust it and figure that out. God built me to figure him out (to a similar extent we figure out anyone we love). We can’t ultimately figure him out all on our own - we need grace and gifts to come to God (revelation), but our intellect is not going to be abandoned and left to our own devices forever. So I hope.

Hume’s condemnation at the end of his Treatise actually applies to the Treatise. — Wayfarer

Love it! Hume’s understanding of things is a miracle.

One my lecturers in philosophy wryly pointed out that Hume’s condemnation at the end of his Treatise actually applies to the Treatise. ‘Take any book of scholastic metaphysic…’ The lecturer compared Hume, like the positivists after him, to the Uroboros, the mythical snake that swallows itself. ‘The hardest part’, he would say with a mischievous grin, ‘is the last bite’.

:rofl:

Historically at least, this seems to have proven quite true.