The A Priori Gambit
"Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" - Thomas Aquinas
This statement from Thomas Aquinas, known as the peripatetic axiom, expresses the basis of empiricism, and was adopted from Aristotle's teachings. It became part of his Thomistic philosophy. But Aquinas had a religious agenda. He needed to justify his belief in something (namely God) that doesn't present itself to the senses. So as he did with other parts of Aristotle's teachings, he modified it to fit his religious purpose. Aquinas said that the intellect extends beyond what is evident to the senses, to reach a higher realm of understanding that is yet justified on the basis of perception. His five ways are said to be a posteriori arguments for the existence of God because they are based on observation (as well as a system of metaphysics that assumes God from the outset). So at least Aquinas pays lip service to the idea that knowledge of God is something that is derived from from the evidence of the senses.
Perhaps it was because there was a recognition that Aquinas employed something more than observed evidence to derive his proofs of God, it has become more fashionable in modern times for religionists to rely more heavily on a priori knowledge as an epistemological basis for their belief. In general, a priori refers to things that are known without reference to sensory experience - they are known beforehand, through intuition or by deductive process rather than empirical observation. This concept has been extended further by religionists to refer specifically to knowledge of God by other than empirical means. In particular, the term "Religious A Priori" has been deemed to mean a rational and certain knowledge of God based on subjective religious experience.
Religious A Priori: A separate, innate category of the human consciousness, religious in that it issues certain insights and indisputable certainties concerning God or a Superhuman Presence. Man's religious nature rests upon the peculiar character of his mind. He possesses a native apprehension of the Divine. God's existence is guaranteed as an axiomatic truth. For Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) this a priori quality of the mind is both a rational intuition and an immediate experience. God is present as a real fact both rationally and empirically. - Runes Dictionary of PhilosophyThis is taken to the extreme by Joe Hinman, who not only justifies his belief on the basis of religious experience, but also exempts his belief from any examination or critique from an empiricist perspective - or from any scientific or philosophical discipline whatsoever. One of his numerous blogs is dedicated to the religious a priori. The main page explains his religious epistemology, and presents an "argument" that comes across as more of a manifesto, wherein he both rejects empiricism and walls his beliefs off from any and all scrutiny:
(1) Scineitifc reductionism loses phenomena by re-defining the nature of sense data and quailia.Basically, Joe is saying his beliefs are based on nothing more than subjective feelings, and so he rejects empiricism, as well as any scientific or logical approach to justifying those beliefs or to challenging them. Which is strange, given that Joe has written a book that purports to provide scientific evidence that belief in God is warranted. Just don't try to pin him down on any technicality in his arguments, because he will simply revert to the epistemological isolationism expressed in his manifesto: I argue from a priori knowledge and there's no way you or anybody can possibly argue against that.
(2)There are other ways of Knowing than scinetific induction
(3) Religious truth is apprehended phenomenoloigcally, thus religion is not a scientific issue and cannot be subjected to a materialist critque
(4) Religion is not derived from other disciplines or endeavors but is a approch to understanding in its own right
Therefore, religious belief is justified on its own terms and not according to the dictates or other disciplines
This a priori stance even takes precedence over logic itself. When I accused him of begging the question in one of his arguments by assuming the conclusion up front, his response was this:
we are talking about God a priori so it can't be begging the question that is really foolish reasoning,makes me wonder if you understand begging the question - HinmanIn other words, by claiming this a priori stance, Joe is immune from even the need to present a valid argument. If you try to tell him his argument isn't valid, you're the one who doesn't understand logic. And this is what I call the A Priori Gambit. It's a sure-fire way to win all arguments. Perhaps I should try the same tactic. But no. I don't think it impresses much of anybody so much as it impresses Joe.
I'm not quite sure what Joe means by him not begging the question by talking about God 'a priori'.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking Joe is intending to say that he is not begging the question about assigning some property to God since the property he is attributing to God is being attributed a priori. That is, Joe is saying God has the property of being simple because that property is implied by being God.
From what I read, Joe was accused of arguing that not all designers are more complex than their design(s) by assuming his conclusion. It seems to me that he has simply not understood what he was accused of.
Having said that, we can obviously beg the question with a priori claims.
1. All tigers are mammals.
2. Therefore, all tigers are mammals (from 1)
The above is the shortest a question begging argument can be. The conclusion is derived by simply reiterating itself. The fact that the premise is known through no more than an understanding of the terms does nothing to make the argument not question begging.
How about:
ReplyDelete1) All tigrs r mammals.
2) So, 1 is tru.
Shorter.
I think you got Ryan on that one.
Delete(BTW, getting near the end of the book.)
2 lines, so same length theoretically.
DeleteThis is what I think Joe's argument might be:
1. It is a priori that God is simple.
2. Therefore, God is simple.
That looks question begging to me since premise 1, by how Joe thinks of a priori statements, is just saying that God is simple by definition. It doesn't try to say why God is simple by definition, so it looks question begging.
That's the way I see it.
DeleteWhat is the book?
ReplyDeleteGeorge Lakoff
DeletePhilosophy In the Flesh - The Embodied Mind And It's Challenge To Western thought
I am interested to know if you think that their criticism of traditional philosophy is fair.
ReplyDeleteI think they take it a little too far. One of the early claims, that philosophers must abandon the correspondence theory of truth, didn't sit too well with me, for example. I understand the subjective (embodied) nature or our perceptions of external reality, but correspondence theory can certainly take that into account. So I think that there are good insights that should become more mainstream in philosophical thinking, and I think it is worthwhile for philosophers to absorb this, but that doesn't mean we have to throw all older philosophical traditions away.
DeleteOne thing relating to this post that we can say as a result of cognitive science is that a priori knowledge is bogus. But I think we already knew that.
That's an interesting thing to say...how do you mean it's bogus, skep?
DeleteCognitive science reveals how we acquire our cognitive capacities. It is by means of experience. The first things we understand about the world are based on the movements and activities of the body in relation to external objects. And that is the grounding of a full range of subsequent cognitive understanding - based on metaphorical associations with bodily activities. This includes things that have traditionally been thought to be "intuitive" understanding, otherwise known a "a priori" knowledge.
DeleteWhen my nephew was a toddler his favorite toys were tupperware! He spent hours nesting the bowls. It took him a few months to learn that you can put a small bowl in a big bowl but you can't put a big bowl in a small bowl. It also surprised (and delighted) him that an object that had "disappeared" inside a container would reappear when the container was opened. So much of what we think is inherent knowledge of space and time and logical relationships is really learned information.
DeleteI have long thought that much of our early learning process is long forgotten by adulthood, and those lessons seem to be intuitive knowledge. But they are just as empirically based as anything else we know.
DeleteWouldn't even the ability to "metaphorically associate" successfully in itself imply the prexistence of some 'a priori' intuitions of some kind?
ReplyDeleteLike "the ability to acquire languages" instead of an 'a priori' knowing of some particular language?
I don't see why making associations requires some a priori knowledge. Perhaps you could explain further,
DeleteMinimally, isn't a preexisting capacity to associate necessary? (As with language...)
DeleteThe ability to associate is inherent in the brain. The most primitive concepts are acquired through interacting with the world. After that new concepts can be associated with those primitive concepts.
Deletelawd! Really, this is a complex topic.....
ReplyDeleteI've read a couple of the hardest books I've ever read on Kant and his transcendental deduction.....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_(Kant)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental/#ConKanTraArg
I think that using the term 'a priori', with all of it's metaphysical baggage is all that useful to use in terms of innate cognitive abilities. All of those abilities are the result of species interacting with their environments and evolving. What might appear as 'a priori' knowledge for an individual is, at the species level, just an evolutionary adaption.
DeleteThat should be 'is not all that useful'
DeleteBut, jd, can you even say what our abilities are the "result" of unless there is something "transcendent" about them? Ie some capacity for your reasoning to be impersonal and authoritative, transcending both personal and evolutionary goals?
Delete(Contra Platinga, this isn't necessarily a theistic proof, imv, since the "transcendence" COULD be a purely structural thing, some correlation between "subjective processes" and "objects" if both are rooted in of the same processes.)
Why should cognitive abilities have to be "transcendent"? It seems to me that would be begging the question for some kind of supernatural seat of mind. Where's the evidence?
DeleteWell, if you wanna hang onto some objective value of " truth" - like a correspondence theory of truth of some kind - it seems to me like you'll need to posit some "greater" something to anchor it. Or, otherwise, how do you avoid ending up with nothing but just a bunch socio-symbolically-defined signifiers and "the whirling of metaphors" or whatever...
Delete“Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”
― Richard M. Rorty
how do you avoid ending up with nothing but just a bunch socio-symbolically-defined signifiers and "the whirling of metaphors" or whatever...
DeleteYou might be interested in reading the book I mentioned. It provides insight on how we acquire knowledge, based on cognitive science. I downloaded to from Library Genesis.
As for how we "anchor" truth, it may not be pleasing to think that our experience of the world serves as the basis for truth, but then it should be still more disconcerting to think that theists ground their truth in something unseen, that they only suppose exists.
Well, one problem for these empiricist, acquisitive theories is that there do seem to be some necessities" (at least, eg, in maths)?
DeleteKant wasn't an innatist. He would have admitted that concepts arise from experience too. But there's a balance. His notion is more like, maybe, that the realization of the "necessity" of some "facts" - eg, "1+1" being always and ineluctably "2" - must be transcendent since such insights "transcend" experience. There's a spontaneous arising of ineluctable 'truths," like that, but it's not devoid of empirical input.
Sim'ly then, perhaps, with Joe's "religious a priori." That might not be at all a pure example of an "innate idea of the divine" if he's following Kant...
the realization of the "necessity" of some "facts" - eg, "1+1" being always and ineluctably "2" - must be transcendent since such insights "transcend" experience.
Delete- That's the issue at the heart of the matter. At November 13, 2017 at 12:12 PM, I made this comment: "I have long thought that much of our early learning process is long forgotten by adulthood, and those lessons seem to be intuitive knowledge. But they are just as empirically based as anything else we know." The fact is that if you didn't have empirical experience of the would you would have no concept of "1 + 1". You would not know anything about logic. These are things that you learn by experiencing the world, and much of that experience occurs in infancy and early childhood. Not that you can form a syllogism at the age of 5, but you do have the basis for a foundational understanding of logic, by observing the logic how things work in our world.
Another point to note here is the difference between truths (whether "necessary" or not) and a priori knowledge. If you come to understand logic by empirical means during the course of your life, then the "truths" of that logic cannot be called a priori knowledge.
1 raindrop + 1 raindrop = 1 large raindrop
DeleteThe rules of math apply sometimes and sometimes other rules apply.
There were (maybe still are) cultures where math and counting never developed. For them, objects are very concrete distinct things: one and one is just that 'one and one'. They have no concept that those separate objects should or could be somehow lumped together as a pair or abstracted to a number.
I don't agree. Many animals understand numbers as distinct quantities up to three. Beyond that, they can perceive quantities as orders of magnitude - so they would recognize that 50 is greater than 10. A human culture may not have arithmetic, but they at least know that 1 + 1 is 2. They also know fundamental logical relationships.
DeleteIf you come to understand logic by empirical means during the course of your life, then the "truths" of that logic cannot be called a priori knowledge.
Delete.... but that's just redefining the term in your own way? Which doesn't matter and, if you want, you can call all it "transcendent knowledge" instead cuz, for Kant that's basically the same notion. He's interested in the (spontaneous) arising of a purported "synthesis" between the categories of pure thought and the objects of experience. In some kind of balance. And about what that synthesis says about human powers of reason. That's he's trying to explain. (But, yeh, his writings in the "Critique Of Pure Reason" are often pretty obscure, and highly interruptible)....
We will therefore pursue the pure concepts in their first germs and predispositions in the human understanding, where they lie ready, until with the opportunity of experience they are finally developed ...[and] ... liberated from the empirical conditions attaching to them
There were (maybe still are) cultures where math and counting never developed. For them, objects are very concrete distinct things: one and one is just that 'one and one'. They have no concept that those separate objects should or could be somehow lumped together as a pair or abstracted to a number.
Deletejd, I don't think the claim is that everyone innately has the concept, but that once you acquire it and really grasp it, you'll also grasp its transcendence. (It won't be necessary anymore for you to test every pair of possible things from aardvarks to zylophones.)
Deletebut that's just redefining the term in your own way?
- No. I am using the standard definition of the term
a priori:
1. relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.
If you learn something by empirical experience, it is, by definition, not a priori, even thought it may be logical necessity. But many think that logical truths are revealed by God, not learned. If you read Kant, you may be conflating his "transcendent" knowledge with a priori.
Kant says transcendental and a priori are virtually synonyms anyway....What's a priori for Kant in a mathematical statement is the universality of the result, and it doesn't require preexisting notions of '1', '2', '+', and '=' or whatever.
DeleteKant stated in 1790 that....
"The [Critique of Pure Reason] admits absolutely no divinely implanted or innate representations .... Such is .... The synthetic unity of the manifold of concepts; for [it is not] derived by our faculty of knowledge from the objects given to it as they are in themselves, put rather it brings them out of itself "a priori"
But, since Kant also denies elsewhere in CPR that we ever even KNOW objects in themselves, but only know the ways we think about them....well, yeh, it's complicated.....
I do believe that all knowledge is ultimately derived from empirical experience. As far as I'm concerned, the existence of a priori knowledge is an illusion.
DeleteWell, one problem there is that Kant's contention that the things we "see" or "hear" is constructed or correlated by our thoughts is quite contemporary in lotsa ways.
DeleteExperiments have tended to show that our pure perceptions are much sketchier and more vague than we believe, and the objects we think we "perceive" have been very much fleshed out by our imaginative/reasoning capacities, no? Ie, thinking and perceiving are highly interrelated...
Right you are. But whatever we know of objects we perceive is still known to us through the senses.
Delete....as sensations, bolstered and ultimately defined (as being one kind of thing or another) by our thoughts. We do not know things in themselves but only the correlation, the agreement between the way we think about things and the experiences we encounter.
DeleteHow do these ordinary perceptions ultimately differ in kind, then, from the sensations/perceptions of "oneness" mystical experiencers have that Joe talks about and that people correlate with the concept "God?" That seems to be the issue for you here....
I think it's very obvious how things perceived by means of the physical senses differ from things perceived by means of subjective feelings. Physical sensations are generally caused by something real. Mystical experiences are produced within the body. In both cases, the mind interprets the perception, fills in the gaps and adds layers to try to make something meaningful of it. But it is only the physically caused sensation of something that is interpreted (at least partially correctly) as corresponding to something real.
DeleteWhen Joe talks about his mystical experiences, he's referring to an emotional feeling. He ignores the fact that many people have these feelings, and they don't always interpret them as having religious significance. He's ignoring the fact that the very same kind of perceptions and interpretations can be produced by a variety of means, which really belies the whole idea that these experiences are made by God. Joe cherry-picks his scientific studies to make his case, and of those he does make use of, he cherry-picks the information he chooses to cite. How do I know this? I've read some of the material he uses for his book. I've read, for example, some of the papers he cites as proof that mystical experiences are genuine experiences of God, but the authors of those papers say they are often not at all religious in nature.
What we know about emotional experiences is that they are produced by chemicals in the body. We know that they are often given some kind of meaning by the person who feels them, and that any such meaning is entirely subjective. Yes, emotions are physical feelings that have physical causes, but they are not sensations (as produced by the sense organs). Despite the way they may be perceived by the mind, they are not sensations of real things external to the body, like actual sensory perceptions are.
When Joe talks about his mystical experiences, he's referring to an emotional feeling. He ignores the fact that many people have these feelings, and they don't always interpret them as having religious significance. He's ignoring the fact that the very same kind of perceptions and interpretations can be produced by a variety of means, which really belies the whole idea that these experiences are made by God.
ReplyDeleteWell, Joe rather easily associates any kind of experience of oneness or of "the unconditioned" with his own lib-Prot brand of theism, I even Kinda agree there. Some might find his "big tent spirituality with an Xian slant" a bit biased against some other interpretations, too, eg an understanding based in a non-theistic tradition like Buddhism.....
But why is a mystical state "a feeling?" If an apprehension of unity is only a feeling, then why is an apprehension of disunity - as in an analytic frame of mind - eh "I am the scientist and the other thing is an object that I am privileged to examine and judge from the pov of my objectively-positioned subjectivity" - not also just a "feeling", another mindset?
A similar "apprehension" that is not theistic in nature may very well be a feeling. What I'm referring to when I use the word 'feeling' is an emotional state or reaction. In other words, it is caused by body chemistry rather than sensory input. If someone performs some difficult analytical task, and then has a feeling of satisfaction, that is an emotional feeling. Emotion is part of human existence, and we all have these feelings. Mystical experience is rather more exceptional - less common, and possibly more intense than most emotions. And the kind of feeling that it evokes is often associated with thoughts of something beyond ordinary life. But it is emotional nonetheless.
DeleteA lot of the big time Mystics describe their experiences as more a sort of emotional aridity, a "nothingness" that is somehow and paradoxically reassuring. The highest forms of mystical experience are understood (by some at least) as a "perception" of non-duality at a essentially precognitive level.....ie as perceiving the basic, underlying non-duality of everything, not as an emotional "high". That's the mysticism of ordinariness, so to speak....
DeleteIn phenomenogical terms, further, I'm not sure that's exceptional. Except in terms of the intensity and fullness of the awareness. That nondual state is, after all, how we semiconsciously interact with most objects most of the time. Eg, most of the time, when I sit in my comfy chair and post stuff to people, I'm unaware of any duality between it and me and my body conforms to its contours. Nor am I particularly cognizant of any divisions between myself and the words, the concepts, and ideas that I'm typing out and using. All these things get blurred together, formed around the edges of my experience.)
We tend to assume a "separating," subject/object, analytic stance towards things, otoh, when they're NOT working the way we want,. We hold them up, eg, and examine them, muttering something like "what the hell's WRONG with this thing?!" And that's the basis of the scientific/analytic mindset.
So, like that.....
perceiving the basic, underlying non-duality of everything, not as an emotional "high". That's the mysticism of ordinariness, so to speak....
Delete- I don't think all mystical experience should be regarded as a single kind of emotional feeling. But they are typically lumped together. I don't think the "peak experience" of Maslow is the same thing as the "enlightenment" of Nirvana.
Except in terms of the intensity and fullness of the awareness.
- It is well known among sociologists that whatever feelings of awareness or enlightenment you might have, There has never been a documented case of someone having such feelings actually being able to articulate any new piece of knowledge - something that they didn't already know. It really is a feeling more than anything else.
I think you will have to define "knowledge" a bit more carefully there, since someone could certainly argue that if certain experiences correlate with definite personality changes, we might have to think there would be some kind of implicit "knowledge" um...."gained" there....
DeleteFor some experiences like, say, going to war, that would seem true in a negative sense, too, no? Does an ex-soldier with PTSD suffer merely from negative feelings? Or is it an incapacity to process what he or she has seen, felt, and "learned" or to reintegrate that understanding of the nature of war and of violence back into "peacetime" social circumstances?
In short, can a simple dichotomy between rational knowledge and emotional response even be maintained anymore, especially in cases of intense, life-altering experiences?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
...which kinda takes us back to Kant's "correlationist" claim as described above: if we know anything, it's only the correlation between our thoughts (and our emotions) and "the Real," not reality in itself nor "real objects" in themselves.
I don't want to sound as if I deny the value of inner experiences. But there is a distinct difference between the subjective and the objective. Often, people confuse them. They don't distinguish between what is rational and what is emotional, and sometimes what is an illusion. They don't place the appropriate epistemological value on different kinds of knowledge.
DeleteI'm not too familiar with Kant. While I agree that our knowledge of the world is distorted and indirect, I don't agree that there is anything transcendental or anything that is of another world. What we know is what we what we can discern through the senses.