Ask a Different Christian Philosopher a Question

[durangodawood]

Suppose I read a beautiful piece of poetry and am taken out of myself in such a way that a desire is awoken which is not directed toward anything I know or apparently anything I have ever encountered in my earthly life. What prevents me from reasoning with this? What prevents me from reasoning about the nature of the human being, the sorts of experience open to us, the possibility of the desire being fulfilled, etc.?.....

Yes, you can certainly reason about the nature of being human, that we experience the 'mystical', that we desire it, even that its good for us. But the content of that eternal experience cannot really be penetrated through reason.

 

[zippy2006]

Yes, you can certainly reason about the nature of being human, that we experience the 'mystical', that we desire it, even that its good for us. But the content of that eternal experience cannot really be penetrated through reason.

Okay. But suppose you have lived in the desert your entire life and have never seen a large body of water. You take a shower. Presumably the shower could be desired and it could be reasoned that it is good for us. Could the content of the experience of a shower be "penetrated" through reason? What is the difference here?

Furthermore, you earlier took issue with my statement about God transcending time. Suppose you have sufficiently many of these ecstatic experiences to allow you to come to the conclusion that there is some existing reality that is high, transcendent, and greatly to be desired. Call it God. Are you claiming that we could never have sufficient reason to believe this reality to be beyond the realm of time? Or to even form a conception of that which surpasses time? Not to comprehend it, but merely to have some glimpse that is sufficient for the knowledge that it is not limited by time.

(In reality, a large part of the timelessness ascribed to God is a rational conclusion drawn from the notion that temporality is a measure of movement, movement is something only found in material reality, and God is not part of material reality. Yet there is no doubt an experiential basis in addition to the syllogistic reasoning.)

 

[durangodawood]

....You say reasoning seems time-dependent and you also have a post on "ultimate proofs." You seem very focused on syllogistic, temporal reasoning. But pre-syllogistic reasoning--whether found in modern epistemology or ancient philosophers--has a very strong transcendent, contemplative quality. For example, what is "a triangle"? You could show a monkey a million different triangles and they would still have no idea what it means to be "a triangle." They would not understand the underlying principles that universally define triangularity, apart from all material and concrete manifestations. Yet we do. We come to an act of understanding by which we understand what triangularity is, and it is far more than a matching and picking with a large memory bank (although, as Aristotle points out, experience with material manifestations is very helpful in making that "jump" to the abstract, universal concept).....

Perhaps utter abstracts like the triangle are some kind of intersection point between the temporal and the eternal, in that they are identical from either point of view.

But the actual objects and events of life seem totally different from either pov. In time, we can point to an object NOW, in the 'present', and functionally speaking call it "A". From there we can develop the logical law of identity and so on.

But if we try to take an eternal pov, that object A does not exist as a definite object. Its an artificial 'slice' taken along the time dimension. And “each thing is the same with itself and different from another” only applies at that artificial 'instant'. The reality of the thing (lets say 'you', or a certain stone, or a leaf) is never the same over time.

And so, its more reasonable to propose an eternal law-of-NON-identity that says "each thing is never the same within itself".

Point is, its hopeless to map reasoning from a temporal pov onto an eternal, or vice versa, given that the most foundational notion of reasoning does not translate from one realm to the other. Or at least it seems that way, given the limits of our understanding. And so, I circle back to poetry > reason, for describing the eternal.

 

[zippy2006]

But if we try to take an eternal pov, that object A does not exist as a definite object. Its an artificial 'slice' taken along the time dimension.

Why? What do you understand the "eternal point of view" to be?

The reality of the thing (lets say 'you', or a certain stone, or a leaf) is never the same over time.

Was I not the same person yesterday as I am today?

What you say seems more like a temporal parts theory of time than anything having to do with eternity.

And so, its more reasonable to propose an eternal law-of-NON-identity that says "each thing is never the same within itself".

But Aristotle replied to Heraclitus and we left that view behind as less reasonable.

Point is, its hopeless to map reasoning from a temporal pov onto an eternal, or vice versa, given that the most foundational notion of reasoning does not translate from one realm to the other. Or at least it seems that way, given the limits of our understanding. And so, I circle back to poetry > reason, for describing the eternal.

You think the notion of identity disappears in an eternal point of view? Heavens, why?? Because not everything exists forever?

 

[GrimKingGrim]

Again, you're stuck on quantity and are thus failing to see the point.

Clearly you didn't get my point. So I'll let you say it.

...albeit the same duration.

And that's the point. Eternal. Punishment. The same kind. Regardless of what happens both are eternal, therefore they are the same. They are both a the fundamental level, a punishment and last for eternity. The same. You are going to be punished eternally for thinking of lust and committing lust. What happens during punishment is completely irrelevant. Whether one bathes in fire and another is skewered on rocks forever it doesn't matter who's punishment sucks the worst. What matters is they're both being punished eternally for different "sins" that may have been of different caliber.

If you are going to compare two sins based on the punishment they merit, then you have to look at both the quantity and quality of punishment. Your whole argument requires that we concentrate on the quantity and completely ignore the quality.

If you want to go with a correct version of the earlier analogy: it'd be like giving life sentences for every crime committed ever. Where they go to be imprisoned and the quality of the prison they go to is irrelevant. It is an infinite punishment. It is the same regardless of small details.

 

[zippy2006]

Clearly you didn't get my point...

I've answered all of your points here (as well as in the post before that). When two punishments differ in intensity/quality but are the same in temporal duration, they are not the same punishment. When two crimes receive different punishments, they are not the same crime. Thoughts and actions receive different punishments, therefore they are not the same crime. There's nothing more to say.

If you want to go with a correct version of the earlier analogy: it'd be like giving life sentences for every crime committed ever. Where they go to be imprisoned and the quality of the prison they go to is irrelevant. It is an infinite punishment. It is the same regardless of small details.

You are saying, "When a punishment is given for a really long duration, then the intensity of the punishment doesn't matter, it's just a small detail." That's a wonderful thought, except it makes no sense. At all.

Apart from that I suppose it's worth pointing out that you completely ignored the part where I pointed out that not every crime receives an infinite punishment. Twice. I suppose that was convenient for you!

Your whole argument requires that we concentrate on the quantity and completely ignore the quality.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

You say reasoning seems time-dependent and you also have a post on "ultimate proofs." You seem very focused on syllogistic, temporal reasoning. But pre-syllogistic reasoning--whether found in modern epistemology or ancient philosophers--has a very strong transcendent, contemplative quality. For example, what is "a triangle"? You could show a monkey a million different triangles and they would still have no idea what it means to be "a triangle." They would not understand the underlying principles that universally define triangularity, apart from all material and concrete manifestations. Yet we do. We come to an act of understanding by which we understand what triangularity is, and it is far more than a matching and picking with a large memory bank (although, as Aristotle points out, experience with material manifestations is very helpful in making that "jump" to the abstract, universal concept).

Similarly with language, parents speak to infants all the time, and it is pure nonsense to them. They are just stimulus-response machines. Until one day, suddenly, mysteriously, they understand. They see that meaning and language is abstract, meaningful apart from stimulus, response, desires, etc. And so they run around pointing at things, asking for their names. They want to know what it is called, what it means. Science itself, in its healthy form, is a maturation of this sense of wonder and desire for knowledge. The syllogisms, the logic, are just tools, they are just means to an end. The illuminations, realizations, understanding that such things help effect are the real goal, and they are really not "logical statements" at all. The act of understanding by which we appropriate what something is--its nature, the way it behaves, its characteristics, its mode of being--is not really a temporal or "logical" act at all. It is given in an eternal moment, not unlike that which is given to the child whose eyes are opened and who sees, at last and at once, that "mama" is not just a button you push when you want something, but is actually a subsistent being/object apart from itself with its own mysterious norms for movement and life, part of which include caring for the child itself.

Questions such as these are what drove me to study psychology and neuroscience.

 

[SkyWriting]

All humans are imperfect.
Only perfect entities can enter true communion with God.
God wants us to be able to enter true communion with him.
Thus, he removes the imperfection through a two-step process:
1.) He takes the punishment for the imperfection upon himself;
2.) Then he each individual to believe all this and ask for forgiveness.

I guess my most basic question is: is my understanding flawed in any significant respect?
Then, assuming my understanding is generally okay, my second basic question is: what the rationale behind the two-step process that I outlined?

I ask this question because from my perspective the process seems illogical - indeed, it seems analogous to a non-sequitur.

Well stated.
Imagine one atom.
Now imagine imperfect electrons.
They get released.

God compensates for this release of imperfect electrons
by shouldering the results of being imperfect Himself.

It doesn't make any logical, natural sense for an Atom to
create a method to compensate for disfigured and rouge
electrons, but God is Love.

 

[durangodawood]

Why? What do you understand the "eternal point of view" to be?

Was I not the same person yesterday as I am today?

What you say seems more like a temporal parts theory of time than anything having to do with eternity.

But Aristotle replied to Heraclitus and we left that view behind as less reasonable.

You think the notion of identity disappears in an eternal point of view? Heavens, why?? Because not everything exists forever?

---

Okay. But suppose you have lived in the desert your entire life and have never seen a large body of water. You take a shower. Presumably the shower could be desired and it could be reasoned that it is good for us. Could the content of the experience of a shower be "penetrated" through reason? What is the difference here?

Furthermore, you earlier took issue with my statement about God transcending time. Suppose you have sufficiently many of these ecstatic experiences to allow you to come to the conclusion that there is some existing reality that is high, transcendent, and greatly to be desired. Call it God. Are you claiming that we could never have sufficient reason to believe this reality to be beyond the realm of time? Or to even form a conception of that which surpasses time? Not to comprehend it, but merely to have some glimpse that is sufficient for the knowledge that it is not limited by time.

(In reality, a large part of the timelessness ascribed to God is a rational conclusion drawn from the notion that temporality is a measure of movement, movement is something only found in material reality, and God is not part of material reality. Yet there is no doubt an experiential basis in addition to the syllogistic reasoning.)

I write of the eternal pov as from where all events in time are visible. I dont mean to be definitive about this. What we call 'eternal' probably means something much less open to my simplifying imagination than that. I'm just suggesting one describable possibility, to show how unreliable our norms of reason might be when we apply them 'elsewhere'.... (Leaving aside the more likely possibilities that are indescribable)

Yes, temporal parts exactly, per ^^^. (Btw, what do you mean by eternity?)

But no, the notion of identity does not disappear in the eternal pov. But it cannot refer to the same things it does in-time. In time, people do change enough that A at time 1 is not identical to A at time 2. I would think Christians should understand this perfectly, with their notion of "born again". So in-time A refers to me now. Beyond time, it refers to my entire life (in my simplified 4D view.)

To your last point above, yes, I believe you could have sufficient reason to believe in God, based on experiences or intiutions. But thats a different sense of the word "reason" than we've been discussing. In this case 'reason to believe' means sufficient justification for my personal

 

[Percivale]

Time travel would not "destroy" free will. It might reveal we never had it, though.
Similarly, if our path is already set through the course of a knowable future, that would certainly imply that no options are really on the table.

We have different definitions of free will. It seems you equate 'free' with 'unpredictable,' whereas to me free will means the ability to choose what we really want. Sure, if someone has a perfect knowledge of what we want and how wise we are in figuring out how to get it, that person would be certain of what we will choose; so you could say the choice was predetermined, not free. But that's not the kind of freedom humans are generally interested in. The war for independence was not fought so our future would be more unpredictable, but so that the colonists could make more choices based on what they wanted rather than what the king wanted.

 

[zippy2006]

Questions such as these are what drove me to study psychology and neuroscience.

Were psychology and neuroscience helpful to you? Presumably philosophy of mind or philosophy of neuroscience would address those questions more directly.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Were psychology and neuroscience helpful to you? Presumably philosophy of mind or philosophy of neuroscience would address those questions more directly.

Yes, but I also majored in philosophy.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Was I not the same person yesterday as I am today?

Nope.