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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 5/8/2011 8:34 AM (GMT -6)

Asher, let's take this debate back to the other thread. But I'm wanting to know what it means to you for an action to be "right" or "wrong." To me, an action is wrong if you diminish your over-all satisfaction by doing it. A right action is an action that, at minimum, is not wrong. And, as I see it, there has to be a benevolent designer of us for us to even account for our competent ability to adjudicate between the two.

But you definitely need to articulate your own position. I can't even guess where you're coming from otherwise. E.g., you do agree that killing for self-defense is not necessarily murder, right?

Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/8/2011 9:00:55 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/8/2011 10:17 AM (GMT -6)

Jeff: ...when they get to the point of asserting, as they have to me, that even the LNC is tentative, there's no point in going on.

Tom: Exactly.

Tom

KIXYTΘEMTA

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 5/8/2011 12:14 PM (GMT -6)

So far, I'm on board with CH. I'm not yet sure how he distinguishes mathematical intuitions from metaphysics, but otherwise I hear him saying that all human cognition that is not RAW conscious experience is experienced in terms of those non-restrictive (i.e., in some sense univeral/generic) concepts/relations that make thought (as opposed to mere association) what it is.

I would not contend that there are no other possible categories that humans are not privy to, but I doubt CH is disagreeing with that either. Indeed, it seems to me there might be since it seems that, e.g., God's mode of knowledge is not intelligible to us if we conceive of Him as undesigned. Because then His mode of knowing can't be accounted for by competent design and, therefore, seems to us to be the equivalent of blind faith.

But to the extent that our necessary conception of God implies He is competent, we can't make sense out of His mode of knowledge being blind faith either. The only other route than supra-categorical mystery I can think of is to posit an infinite series of creations of competent knowers into the infinite past with our Designer being one of them. In that case, the category of design resolves the mystery for us.

Some things we only know because they must be true by a correlative relationship--i.e., if we know at all. And THAT'S the key. The assumption of metaphysics and epistemology is THAT we know at least some things. The rest is how and what. There's no getting anywhere if we start as skeptics. And in that sense, to be coherent, you have to be an "ultra-rationalist" in the way Hartshorne and Porter were. Porter was widely read in his day. But his a priori approach to our basic knowledge of God was resisted then just as Greg claims Hartshorne's is now.

It's easy to see why that is the case. Because academe has a higher percentage of determinists, agnostics, atheists, etc than does the general population. It's not in their interest to show themselves wrong or radically-speculative by arguing against that which no one yet has shown to be wrong--especially SINCE most people who are subsidizing those institutions with their tax dollars are both theists and proponents of libertarian free-will. The ID movement is compelling some aspects of that debate to occur, and already the new atheists are being exposed for their incoherence and/or arbitrariness.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/8/2011 12:18:37 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/8/2011 4:32 PM (GMT -6)

Hey Jeff, real quick, what work of Porter's would you recommend one read first, then second?

It seems The Human Intellect: With an Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul (1868) is his best-known work. And then Elements of Intellectual Science (1871) and Elements of Moral Science (1885).

KIXYTΘEMTA

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/8/2011 4:41:55 PM (GMT-5)

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 5/8/2011 4:38 PM (GMT -6)

His "Elements of Intellectual Science" is the abridged version of "The Human Intellect." They're both good and I've never totally finished either. There's a ton to read in each. His "Elements of Moral Science" is excellent too. It doesn't require a thorough understanding of the intellectual science book, but it helps to have read it. They're typically easy to find cheap used. And I think you can read "The Human Intellect" from the internet. Maybe the others are available from the internet too.

Most of his other work is good, but those 3 are the detailed accounts of his philosophical thought.

Asher
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Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477

Posted 5/8/2011 5:20 PM (GMT -6)

Yeah, thanks. Just picked up "Elements of Intellectual Science" for .78 cents.

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 5/8/2011 6:19 PM (GMT -6)

He also has two excellent volumes which are collections of speeches and essays. One is "Fifteen Years in the Chapel of Yale College," and the other is "Science and Sentiment." They're harder to get cheap. But they're available used and new now. The former is more religious in its philosophical tone than the other.

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 8/20/2011 11:40 AM (GMT -6)

Jeff, you've the precious. Have you spent any time in it?

T

KIXYTΘEMTA

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