Aquinas on faith and reason

I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
Articles of reason would include:
1) Some trees lose their leaves in winter, while others do not.
Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
2) Pi= 3.1416…
Articles of faith would include
1) God is a trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2) God created the universe at a particular time in the past.
Articles of faith and reason would include
1) Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
God exists
VI. The concept of faith
Many people think of faith as belief in the teeth of evidence to the contrary. Aquinas did not think of it this way at all. He would have approved of C. S. Lewis’s statement, “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in.” Rather, Aquinas held that faith is the acceptance of propositions on the authority of the Bible and the Church. However, he maintained that it was perfectly reasonable to accept these authorities.

My complaint with Descartes

I would like to have an interpretation of Descartes' work that does not charge him with a huge error. I'm not sure my charge is exactly the circularity charge that DePoe is struggling with but here is how it goes.

I am inclined to agree, even though some poeple don't, that Descartes successfully proves that "I think" and "I exist are immune from doubt. But then Descartes does something that strikes me as weird. First, he asks himself how he became convinced of the conclusion of the cogito argument and concludes that he accepts it because he clearly and distinctly perceives it to be good. Hey wait a minute Descartes? Didn't you just produce a self-refutation argument against the claims "I do not exist" and "I do not think." As a result he claims this supports his clear and distinct criterion. Then he considers whether or not God exists, and he does this in order to reassure himself that his clear and distinct perceptions are not Satanic deceptions. But to do this, it seems to me that the premises of his arguments have to be premises he can be sure of, even if Satan is controlling his mind. This argument, the argument based on the cause of his idea of God, fails to achieve this, even if it were a good argument (and I don't think it is a good argument).

1. Something cannot be derived from nothing. In other words, all effects, including ideas, are derived from something.
2. There must be at least as much reality in the cause as there is in the effect.
3. I have an idea of God (as an infintie and perfect being).
4. The idea of God in my mind is an effect that was caused by something.
5. I am finite and imprefec t, and thus I could not be the caue of the idea of an infinite and perfect God.
6. Only and infinite and perfect GOd could be the cause of such an idea.
7. Therefore God (an infinite and perfect being) exists.

What is the most charitable way to read this?

DI2 post on Hasker on intentionality

Does functionalism solve the problem of intentionality, even though it may have trouble with qualia? William Hasker says no.

Some fun with the Da Vinci Code

This is the creation of Steve Thomas.

I think therefore I am

Now that we understand (assuming we do) the context of Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am" argument, we might want to know if it does what Descartes thinks it has done. Does it really remove all possible doubt from the propositions "I think" and "I exist"?

One possible response would be to say that you could just as easily say, as in the Monty Python philosopher's drinking song, I drink therefore I am. But "I am drinking" clearly does not pass the Satan test. Satan could deceive me into thinking that I am drinking; in fact, beer could do the same thing. Enough Miller Genuine Draft will cause you to pass out, in which case you may dream of more MGDs even though they don't exist.

But does Descartes prove that there is a something that does the thinking, as opposed to just that thinking is going on? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:

Many a critic has complained that in referring to the "I" Descartes begs the question, since he presupposes what he intends to establish in "I exist." Bertrand Russell objects that "the word ‘I’ is really illegitimate"; that Descartes should have, instead, stated "his ultimate premiss in the form ‘there are thoughts’." As Russell adds, "the word ‘I’ is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum." (1945, 567) Accordingly, "there is pain" and "I am in pain" have different contents, and Descartes is entitled only to the former.

But my problem with this objection is that just because we can say "there are thoughts" and not actually say that someone is thinking those thoughts doesn't make the suggestion coherent. As Russell should have known, you can say "Floyd the barber shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself in Mayberry," but only when we ask whether Floyd shaves himself do we discover that the suggestion is not coherent. Does the term "pain" really mean anything if there is no one experiencing the pain? We can redescribe the pain in such a way that it no longer refers to an individual having the pain, (the firing of C-fibers in the brain) but if we do it seems we lose what is meant by pain. (This would be a good way to solve the problem of pain, if it were legitimate. "You think these people are suffering terrible pain, and that God shouldn't allow it. But really all that is going on is that people's C-fibers are firing.)

In short, I think that Descartes argument that there must be a thinking subject is a successful argument. It's the next stages of Descartes' programme that I have trouble with.

Dallas Willard on knowledge and naturalism

A post on a passage in Lewis's third chapter of Miracles that has always seemed to me problematic

In Dangerous Idea 2

Doubt and the Vain Quest for Certainty

This essay, by Alastair McGrath, is certainly very interesting.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on St. Thomas Aquinas

Having fun with pictures, as well as the links.

What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know

Bertrand Russell once wrote "What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know." One has to wonder, however, how this can possibly be the case. After all, Russell didn't say "What science cannot discover, except for this sentence, mankind cannot know." And you would think Russell would have known a thing or two about self-referential paradoxes. Has science discovered that we cannot know anythiung over and above what science can discover? What discoveries support that conclusion? I keep saying over and over again until I'm blue in the face that something cannot be a discovery of science unless science could have discovered that the opposite is true. So what that means is that science could have discovered that science is not the only source of knowledge, but instead discovered that it was. When did that happen?

Here's the Russell passage:

I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of values, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

This post on Thinking Christian also deals with the difference between science and scientistic philosophy.

How do you like the picture of philosophy's most notorious dirty old man?

A Key Passage from Hasker

In this passage from Hasker, which I feature of DI2, Hasker describes propositional mental states, and he maintains, that there are propositional states which we are conscious of when we have them, and that there is something it is like to have them.

This is an important concept. The idea that there is "something it is like" to, say, find a winning combination against Reppert in chess, is critical. When I play against a computer, and the computer finds a winning combination against me, the thing "functions as if" it has found the winning line against me, but there is nothing it is like to find that combination. Fritz wins all the time but never experiences the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat.

My conviction is that the intentionality Fritz possesses is a second-rate, derived, kind of intentionality, which is not to be confused with the intentionality that comes from my conscious perception of what is going on on the chessboard. Therefore, in my view, the problem of propostional attitudes "inherits" all the "hard" problems related to consciousness. When I am talking about intentionality, this is first and foremost what I have in mind, and acccounts of intentionality that leave this out are drastically incomplete.

An Islamic anti-evolution site

A Newman passage with some relevance to the AFR

From the North Western Winds blog.

Homosexuality and Romans 1

Someone asked me to address the issue of homosexuality and the Bible. Rushing in like a fool, I wanted to examing this passage in Romans 1: 26-27.

Romans 1: 26-27 reads

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Does this passage provode an argument that homosexuality is always sinful? The "pro-gay" response goes like this: Yes, of course, if your natural sexuality is heterosexual and you "exchange" that for homosexuality, that would be wrong, but what if your natural sexual orientation is homosexual? Then you really haven't exchanged your natural desires for anything, since you were naturally homosexual to begin with.

Or is Paul implying that there are no people whose natural orientation is homosexual? What is clear is that it is not directly taught in the passage. Perhaps what this shows is how little can be demonstrated by appealing to a single passage.

The following is a link to viewpoints on the issue, but pro and con.

This is the Flew interview with Gary Habermas

Here's the link to my interview

Aquinas on religious language

I. The problem of religious language
When we say, for example “God is good,” what do we mean? Are religious terms univocal, equivocal or analogical?

II. Do the terms mean the same things?
If the terms are univocal, that means God-talk means exactly the same thing that it means when we apply it to human beings. But God’s goodness is different from human goodness.

III. Do they mean completely different things?
A soda, a pancake, and a trumpet’s pitch can all be flat, but the words mean different things in each case. Does the term “good,” when applied to God, mean something completely different from goodness as applied to a friend?
Aquinas says no. The meaning of all our terms, even those we apply to God, are based on experience. There has to be some similarity between the concept as applied to God and the concept as applied to humans, otherwise we would not be created in the image of God.
IV. The Negative Way
The negative way claims that we speak of God’s properties by negating the properties applied to finite creatures.
But we cannot assert anything positive about God.
V. Analogy
Terms applied to God are similar to the terms applied to humans.
Starts with an object we know and say that what we do not know is like what we do know.

Marc Cohen's lecture on Aristotle's Four Causes

This looks very good.

More notes on the Hebrew Bible

I. The Initial Conquest
Moses dies without entering Canaan. But his lieutenant Joshua leads the people across the Jordan River.
Although the Book of Joshua records a number of military triumphs, a good deal of the country remained under Canaanite control. In particular, the city that eventually became known as Jerusalem was under the control of the Jebusites.
II. Canaanite religion
I. Canaanite religion included the worship of baals, and was an orgiastic fertility cult. This religion was considered to be exceptionally vile by the biblical tradition. However, when the Canaanites taught the Hebrews how to farm, part of the instruction included teaching them how to worship baals.
III. Period of Judges
Actually these were military leaders who protected the people from outside threats.
Included Deborah, Samson, Gideon, and Jephthah
A period of frequent falling away from worship of Yahweh into heathen practices.
IV. Period of the United Kingdom
We are not talking about the British Empire, on which the sun never sets
Rather it begins when Samuel, with apparently some reluctance, sets up a king over Israel. There were only three kings in the United Kingdom period: Saul, David, and Solomon
V. Saul
Was selected by the prophet Samuel to be king.
Is told by Samuel to kill all the Amalekites and burn all their stuff
Takes the king prisoner and takes some booty-then offers a sacrifice.
If this were an ordinary polytheistic God this would probably be sufficient to placate the god
But Samuel condemns Saul and says “To obey is better than sacrifice. Here monotheism seems at least implicit, in the sense that polytheistic gods need our sacrifices. God needs nothing and is primarily concerned with obedience (though he commands people to sacrifice to him).
Of course the command to kill all the Amalekites raises questions about why a good God would order such a thing. (Atheist Keith Parsons is going to say some things about this in his debate with William Lane Craig).
VI. David
Accomplished military leader who built up the kingdom
Conquered the city of Jebus, and renamed it Jerusalem
Was a musician, hence many Psalms are attributed to him
Committed adultery with Bath-sheba. He was a polygamist, so unlike Bill Clinton, it was adultery not because he was married, but because she was.
VII. The Prophet Nathan
When David commits adultery with Bathsheba and arranges the murder of her husband Uriah, the prophet Nathan challenges David and tells him a parable, showing him that he had sinned.
In most countries of that time kings, (like Pharaoh in Egypt) were worshipped as gods and were entitled to all the women they wanted.
What is surprising here is that the king actually listens to the prophet and repents. One would have expected that “telling off” a Middle-eastern king would have only resulted in a neck operation being arranged for the foolhardy prophet. The God of Israel is perceived as possessing a right, power, and authority to command that is un-heard of in the religion of the time.
VIII. Solomon
Last king of the United Kingdom
Known for his wisdom—Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are traditionally attributed to him
Engaged in a lot of public works projects, including the building of the temple in Jerusalem.

Fred Freddoso's notes on Aquinas's ethics

Fred Freddoso is a first-rate Aquinas scholar, so someone interested in the ethics of Aquinas will do well to study his notes.