{"id":4065,"date":"2018-11-30T07:53:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T07:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/11\/30\/an-irrational-attitude\/"},"modified":"2018-11-30T07:53:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T07:53:20","slug":"an-irrational-attitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/11\/30\/an-irrational-attitude\/","title":{"rendered":"An Irrational Attitude for Human Beings?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is the following attitude irrational for beings of our constitution?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I refuse any truth I cannot know<\/em> to be true. Hence I refuse any truth that can only be believed, or can only be accepted on the basis of another's testimony. I will not allow into my doxastic network any truth that I cannot validate by my own internal criteria. To believe on insufficient evidence is worse than to lose contact with reality.  My intellectual integrity and epistemic autonomy trump all other epistemic values. What is true must pass muster by me for me to know that it is true. It is worse to be fooled than it is better to accept a truth, even a saving truth, that I cannot by my own lights prove to be true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Better to languish in the dark than to accept light from an unproven source!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If we were mere spectators, then perhaps the above attitude would be rational.  But although we are<\/em> transcendental spectators, we are also materially embodied, culturally embedded, and interested<\/em>.  To be between — inter esse<\/em>— is our station: to be between angelic spectatorship* and  animalic embodiment. Both blessed and cursed, man is a being-in-between. We are not merely observers of life's parade; we march in it as well, and our ultimate happiness may depend on the acceptance of truths that we cannot know here below.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I say that it is not practically or prudentially rational for beings of our curious constitution to adopt the stance limned above, except when we are pursuing pure theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

__________________<\/span><\/p>\n

*My pretty formulation is marred slightly by the fact that angels are not mere spectators, but free agents. In that respect they are like us. Where they have it over us is in their freedom from bodies. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don't know enough Thomistic angelology to know whether or not the doctor angelicus<\/em> would say that it is better to be an angel than to be a man. But I do know enough of his anthropology to know that he would hold it to be man's nature<\/em> to be a composite of form and matter.  Pace<\/em> Plato, we are not accidentally embodied. A man is not complete without a body. Thus the disembodied post-mortem state before the resurrection of the body  is a state inferior to the resurrected state wherein man regains a transfigured body. (Would a theologian use 'transfigured' in this context?)<\/span><\/p>\n

There are various questions here that will tempt the philosopher.  One is this. If the soul (anima<\/em>) is forma corporis<\/em>, and if forms are not substances in there own right, and thus not capable of independent existence apart from their material embodiment, how is it that a person can survive his bodily death as a mere soul? This is a bit of Platonism at odds with Aquinas' Aristotelianism.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been said, with justice, that Aquinas was an Aristotelian on earth but a Platonist in heaven. After all, God himself, the form of all forms, forma formarum<\/em>, is yet the absolute substance. A form that is not the form of anything is, in the case of God,  a being in its own right.
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Is the following attitude irrational for beings of our constitution? I refuse any truth I cannot know to be true. Hence I refuse any truth that can only be believed, or can only be accepted on the basis of another's testimony. I will not allow into my doxastic network any truth that I cannot validate … Continue reading “An Irrational Attitude for Human Beings?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics-of-belief","category-reason-and-rationality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}