“May I receive no reward, but Thyself o Lord.” – St. Thomas Aquinas.

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peace always,

jeff

More information can be found HERE.

My friend argues that reasoning process itself should be swept clean of all bias and with the use of scientific method (which is unbiased) we arrive at correct conclusions.  If there is another method besides the scientific method which makes arrival at truth possible, he is challenging me to enlighten him as to its structure and details.  And so we have been going back and forth for a few weeks now and plan on doing so until we reach some type of resolution.  I am armored with Aquinas and, honestly, everything else sound I can think of.  Here are three excerpts of his part of the argument – from his comments you will know what my criticisms of his position were  (    :

PART I

My comment was about critical and rational thinking. Widening the debate to issues of free will and physicalism will just cloud the issue. Surely, those issues will be secondary.
We have to distinguish between two different kinds of belief.

First, there’s intuition. Intuitions are automatic beliefs. Intuitions are not rational, although they may eventually become rational. You might call them “pre-rational”. They are not necessarily false, but they are yet to be rationally justified.

Second, there’s rational belief. Rational beliefs are based on explicit deductive and inductive inferences. They are based on reasons that have been checked against facts, and checked against bias in order to exclude false rationalizations.

Critical thinking is the process of taking our beliefs and making them rational.

Here’s the important point: critical thinking isn’t just a matter of pondering and reflecting and eventually accepting or rejecting a belief. People who hold irrational beliefs do so with lots and lots of reflection and rationalization. Rational thinking doesn’t mean “thinking hard” or anything so imprecise.

Rational thinking means

(1) Deductive inference. Given some premises, some conclusions must be true or else you will have a contradiction. For example, if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates cannot be a man and be immortal without contradicting the premise.

(2) Inductive inference. The past is a guide to the future, even in thought. You cannot be rational without assuming that there are regularities in nature and thought. If you find yourself shipwrecked on an alien world, and the alien sun has risen every day for the last 10 days, then it’s likely that the alien sun will rise again tomorrow. Certainly, it’s more likely than not, and probably close to a 90% chance.

Inductive inference from experience assumes regularities, and that means it assumes there are rules and predictions! Without predictions, there’s no inductive inference, and hardly any rational thinking at all.

The only beliefs one cannot challenge are the rules of rational thinking themselves. Everything else can be criticized to see whether the belief is a proper inference or just an intuition.

Critical thinking means asking ourselves hard questions about our beliefs:

(i) What inferences support my belief? What are my reasons?

(ii) If my belief were false, what differences would I expect to see in the world? Are there more possible worlds in which my belief is true than there are possible worlds in which it is false?

(iii) Am I sampling my thoughts and experiences in a way that is controlled and free of bias? Am I remembering the hits and not the misses? Am I remembering only events with personal significance? Am I rigging the books to get the conclusion I prefer? Overcoming bias generally requires some sort of blind testing.

(iv) Even-handedness. If I hold up reason X for believing Y, are there any other beliefs that must stand or fall as a consequence of X?

Is there anything in the above that you disagree with?

PART II

It’s always a red flag whenever someone says theory X cannot be tested scientifically. What they are saying is that their theory is indistinguishable from their personal bias. If it’s art, that’s fine, but let’s not confuse art with knowledge. If I claim X is true, and I’m making an “is” claim, I had better have scientific proof (or logical necessity) to back it up.

PART III

None of the principles of reason that I outlined make any prior assumptions about naturalism, physicalism or compatibilism.
Tell me which principle of rationality I need to sacrifice, and why that principle makes an assumption of naturalism.

Conference registration – RSVP - is required, and we ask that you RSVP by February 21 by sending an e-mail to deadphilosopherssociety@gmail.com

Conference is open to all members and friends of DPS at the Holy Apostles College and Seminary as well as Kenrick-Glennon College Seminary DPS members and friends (technical details of either phone-in or skype connection will be announced in the coming weeks)

We invite essay submissions 3 – 10 pages long, MLA or KGS stylesheet (Kenrick Glennon participants), on all aspects of being a human person.  Some examples include: reflections on the work and / or relationship between the faculties, freedom, personhood, etc.  Please send submissions to deadphilosopherssociety@gmail.com

Essays may be submitted until February 21 – essays will posted for reading on the DPS website before the Conference and will be open to comments starting March 10

Full schedule will be posted on or before March 10

The Conference is estimated to last 5 hours, and accordingly we have a limited number of spaces open for presentations.  However, all received entries will be posted on the website and open for reading and comments.  This is a great opportunity to read each other’s work, perfect articulation of arguments, improve presentation skills, and, of course, have a great time!

This is a read for the thinking person who wants to frame an understanding of life based on the stories we tell, the assumptions we don’t make regarding those stories, and the possibility of an examined life. A taxing, but worthy book.

Charlton believes that this idea can provide an answer to the following questions:

Why is modern science less efficient than it used to be [1], why has revolutionary science declined [2], and why has science become so dishonest? [3] One plausible explanation behind these observations comes from an essay published by CS Lewis in 1942: First and second things [4].

Those three questions are worded pretty strongly. I think it would be interesting to look more closely at those three questions to see to what degree they represent the actual state of science, but for the moment, let us take them at face value. Charlton is then claiming that science has become collectively deranged by seeing itself as an ultimate end, rather than serving an ultimate end, which Charlton identifies as transcendent truth.

Charlton’s argument here reminds me an argument often repeated by James Schall, that modern politics also sees itself as an ultimate end, and has become deformed thereby. Schall’s argument is inspired by a passage in Aristotle’s Ethics:

For it is absurd to think that Political Science or Prudence is the loftiest kind of knowledge, inasmuch as man is not the highest thing in the world. – Aristotle Ethics 1141a20-22

Science at least has a better claim here; science sees itself as knowledge about every [natural] thing, so at least in its own terms it could claim the highest kind of knowledge. However, Charlton is claiming that science is not really interested in knowledge per se, and that is precisely his complaint. Science, like politics, and like many other things, can be pursued independently of any vision of a greater good. Each thing sees itself as a First Thing, and there is nothing to orchestrate the whole.

The question is thus: does science [or politics] have a purpose beyond itself by which it can be judged, and that is available at least in principle to the uninitiated, or is its purpose wholly immanent, only judicable by those trained within the discipline?

Stated this way, I think the conflict arises between transcendent purpose and fitness to evaluate. The transcendent purpose provides us with the external referent, while those best suited to judge whether that external standard have been met are those with the greatest ability and experience within the discipline. Charlton thus proposes that it is incumbent upon the most eminent and accomplished scientists to police themselves. But in order to do so these scientists must value truth over success. It is only by placing science as a lesser good that it can truly achieve it’s potential.

In this respect, science is paradoxically stronger when a Second Thing than as a First Thing. Because science is stronger when science is embedded in the larger value of truth, and when truth is embedded in the still-larger value of a concept of the good life. Of course, not all concepts of the good life will be equally supportive of good science; indeed some transcendental concepts are anti-scientific.

I really like the last bit of this paragraph. Charlton has correct identified that any ordering of goods is intrinsically related to a concept of the good life, and there are many different ways of doing this, but not all of them are in fact good, and we can tell the difference.

Cross-posted to With Both Hands