Similtude:
When you really analyze it all down, there is only way to conceive of "faith precedes reason." And that is the view that some beliefs which are foundational to discursive, inferential thought are intuitive. The minute you say those beliefs are believed volitionally (Zach's position), you have created an infinite regress. Because to even claim you remember CHOOSING those beliefs means that you had beliefs about time, causality, being, attribute PRIOR to making the SPECIFIC choice to belief something in particular; otherwise, choice, itself, is meaningless.

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/28/2010 8:41:38 AM (GMT-6)

Buddhi specifically deals with discrimination, apprehension and intuition...while manas is the discursive power grounded by buddhi.

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/28/2010 8:48:05 AM (GMT-6)

D: But when I hear "faith precedes reason", I hear this: the "nous" grounds the activity of the "dianoia" in human consciousness. In other words, our intuitive awareness of reality (including perception of Divine Presence and Working) grounds our discursive abilities.

T: Then you’re saying what Jeff, Asher and I are saying. For Daniel to even “argue” meaningfully that “faith/belief precedes reason” he has to ASSUME a certain priority of reason as a faculty whose function is wired/designed teleologically, and that wiring just is the network of intuitive and other a priori beliefs and assumptions that make meaningful observation and interpretation even possible. So in ONE sense, reason comes first. That is, we cannot fulfill our logoi as created beings apart from discursive thought, even though (and I’ll get to this below on your comments) the goal/fulfillment of our logoi is to transcend discursivity (maps) and attain aesthetic satisfaction (territory).

D: There will always remain an "irrational residue" which escapes analysis and which can not be expressed in concepts: it is this unknowable depth of things, that which constitutes their true, indefinable essence that also reflects the origin of things in God.

T: Right, but I wouldn’t call this a bona fide irrationality. Transcendence, yes. But I get what you’re saying. This is where I’d suggest the distinction between a “map” and its “territory” to help categorize what happens. A “map” of Chicago can be true so far as maps go, but the map cannot BE the territory. When you KNOW Chicago (by visiting it, walking its streets, eating in its restaurants, talking to its people, etc.) you don’t require a map. You transcend the map in that sense. There’s no “irrationality” to this. It’s just that you experience that which the map describes but which it is not. And no map can be experienced the way the territory it describes can be experience.

This distinction, I should think (I’m guessing here), would not be accepted by postmoderns who argue that meaningful experience is irreducibly LINGUISTIC (as Daniel seems to be arguing). For postmoderns, the map IS the territory. (More on language below.)

D: For the EO, theologians are not rationalists who relate to God (and relate about God) solely through use of discursive reason. Theologians are people who circumscribe their discursive reason to their spiritual apprehension of God.

T: It’s a difficult thing to do to map (pun intended) the distinction between “map” and “territory.” We encounter the gospel via map (we “hear” the gospel story) and we’re discipled in terms of maps. So maps are a necessary means for mediating an experience (viz., the “territory”) of God. But once experienced, one’s encounter with God can and ought to (and will eventually) transcend all maps. And we even experience this presently, even outside of faith. Certain aesthetic experiences (experiences of beauty) are not linguistic. You don’t need to even know a language to experience the beauty of a sunset (or pain and pleasure, or good sex). Pain and pleasure are (or at least can be) experienced non-discursively. And you and I would agree that this sort of aesthetic satisfaction is the “territory” we’re created for, for we believe that when God is the territory of our experience, and that experience is all it’s capable of being, it will have transcended the language “maps” we presently use to participate in it. This doesn’t make pure experience irrational. It’s rational in the sense that it CAN be mapped if there is need for a map. At least that’s how I like to look at it.

So, re: the permanence and role of language…

Daniel: Language inflects our perception through its creation of categories….And I think that is the problem I have when the content of a priori beliefs, or intuitive beliefs are universalized. As if because they are a priori everyone MUST agree. That simply doesn’t take into account how significantly our language has shaped the patterns of our thought.

Tom: Gotta run now. But I’ll come back to this asap.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/29/2010 8:46:10 AM (GMT-6)

In the same way, people who have an intimate "knowing and being known" relationship with the Triune God can use the interpretational "maps" made available by Scripture to more effectively to "point to" God's reality...as well as revealing other interpretational "maps" of Scripture that do not cohere well with the "territory" of the God one personally knows.

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/28/2010 11:02:49 AM (GMT-6)

Got a quick minute…

Daniel: Language inflects our perception through its creation of categories….And I think that is the problem I have when the content of a priori beliefs, or intuitive beliefs are universalized. As if because they are a priori everyone MUST agree. That simply doesn’t take into account how significantly our language has shaped the patterns of our thought.

Tom: I find this so fascinating, i.e., the ontology (you might say) of language. To what extent is language a map? And to what extent does it constitute a part of the territory its terms describe?

Two things…

(1) I’ve always loved languages, and I agree that our languages (our “maps”) are a kind of territory in and of themselves. I can think of examples where ‘maps’ are clearly distinguishable from the ‘territories’ they describe (like a map of Chicago and Chicago itself). But there are examples where the line between map and territory is more difficult to define. Take a ‘poem’ and the ‘experience of love’ the poem mediates to the reader. You can hardly conceive of the experience of poetic beauty (or musical beauty) apart from the words/notes employed to map out the music. What, after all, IS music but a kind of language? But even as language it clearly comes close to being its own territory (though we can still distinguish between the printed notes on the page and the sounds we hear played by instruments).

I guess I’m saying that even if language can be its own territory, there remains a territory (i.e., an experience of aesthetic satisfaction) that transcends all attempts to map (describe/capture) it, however necessary the attempt to map it may be, and however actually inseparable the two may sometimes be. At the deepest levels of our being we are capable of, and designed for, an experience of aesthetic satisfaction which is truly ineffable/inexpressible.

(2) I’m not sure, Daniel, that the category of a priori truth can be universalized without any specific content. If there are no specific truths which are universal I’m not sure what it means to say the category of a priori truths is universal. By definition a priori truths are truths that cannot be denied without contradiction (presumably by Easterners and Westerners). If this only applies to those born under the influence of the Western philosophical tradition but not to Buddhists (i.e., the law of identity only applies to Westerners but not Easterners), then we have a problem, for there’s nothing a priori about a truth-claim that’s true for some and false for others. In that case I’m inclined to agree with Jeff—so much the worse for Buddhists.

[For Dwayne. After reading a bit in Dionysius (who so often glorifies paradox and contradiction), I came across this passage which redeemed him and kept me from throwing him in the trash):

“What has actually to be said about the Cause of all things is this: Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since it surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every affirmation.”

Of course, strictly speaking the minimal amount of truth required to ‘negate’ some claim IS that claim’s contradictory. Pure negation can be had by simply placing the sign of negation in front of a claim. This, Dionysius says, is NOT the kind of negation that divine transcendence requires.]

Sorry to take this off topic (economic theories).

As I understand it now:

Asher’s and Jeff’s point is that there are a priori categories and truths (laws of identity, non-contradiction, causality, freedom, value/importance, cost) which by virtue of being innate or intrinsic to human being per se thus legitimate or invalidate economies to the extent governments respect and base their laws/policies upon them (or not, as the case may be). This obviously favors capitalism (or capitalistic economies, rightly understood as [my own words here] any system of economy that affirms these a priori values by maximizing personal freedom and responsibility with respect to the material world).

Daniel’s point is that however a priori these categories may be, they are not universally understood the same way and thus offer no specific CONTENT (or narrative) that can be said to be innate or intrinsic to human being per se and thus capitalism is per se no better or worse than other forms of economy.

Close?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 11/29/2010 9:36:00 AM (GMT-6)

TOM: Asher’s and Jeff’s point is that there are a priori categories and truths (laws of identity, non-contradiction, causality, freedom, value/importance, cost) which by virtue of being innate or intrinsic to human being per se thus legitimate or invalidate economies to the extent governments respect and base their laws/policies upon them (or not, as the case may be). This obviously favors capitalism (or capitalistic economies, rightly understood as [my own words here] any system of economy that affirms these a priori values by maximizing personal freedom and responsibility with respect to the material world).

Jeff: I would say capitalism is a form of investing that people will pretty much do on their own once they can afford to (kind of like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thang). The question is, should government oppose it? And if so, why? IOW, the way humans seem to be naturally motivated, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the anti-capitalists. And that's part of how human intuition works--it gives us some sense of who has the burden of proof.

As I think about it, the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God cannot be less than a state where all fundamental human needs are met in non-competitive, non-divisive ways allowing for inexhaustible abundance.

"Heaven" has at LEAST gotta be that to be worth having forever...right?

Post Edited (One Love) : 11/29/2010 11:33:51 PM (GMT-6)