Thomas_More
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” These philosophers imagine they have drawn their theories, not from concrete material, but from the innermost of their brains, while, as a matter of fact, they have but performed an unconscious induction, a process of thought, of argument not without material, but with indefinite and therefore, confused material. Conversely, the inductive method is distinguished only by this that its deduction is done consciously.“
Who, the materialists? Their entire corpus is about impressions from without resonating like a harpstring (Diderot) on our organs and producing thoughts and feelings. So I don’t know which contemplatives you are talking about. The Carthusians?
” we must remember that our mental effort can be successful only because of our previous, if involuntary, experiences and adventures which we, by help of our memory, have taken along into our cell.”
Quite so.
He should have said, “I am, therefore I think.” He expressed it as an idealist, not a materialist, and contemporaries like Gassendi proclaimed him a cruel oaf and a hack.
Descartes spat his venom at the dead too, urging the posthumous anathematization of Montaigne, a far superior thinker and, unlike the hack, a principled man.
” Quite how you can know from that what is going on in your brain you don’t explain. In any event, only empirical research is going to provide the answer.”
I know simply that I have not ever been responsible for a single thought or feeling i’ve ever had. And I know that every thought or feeling has emerged from a prior impulse. Philosophy tells me that, without my needing a doctorate in neurological science.
Thinking preceding brain activity? Here we are again, the ghost in the machine.
Let me say as an 18th century person, that such a neurological quandary is nothing to worry about. Obviously, brain activity produces thought, which then produces brain activity. Neurons must likewise obey the laws of the universe: cause-effect-cause-effect-cause: the chain of causation, whether chemical, mechanical, electric or organic.Unless, oh my! Your thoughts are independent First Causes …
One might as well say the Big Bang was not an effect, but only a cause!
Also, scientists are also products of a society and not always immune to its prejudices. Many experiments are futile attempts at defending those prejudices, like trying to “prove” free will exists so that human arrogance can be justified.
Descartes was a mechanist who affirmed the immortal human soul and tried to locate its habitation in the body. With other animals he didn’t bother, but just cut them up alive, because they don’t have souls!
Today this sort of thing continues, in the search for free will, because most who say they accept evolution are happy to think of it as a ladder, whereby Man keeps his throne, sitting proudly above the rest of nature. And some scientists are openly religious too.
We don’t need to dwell on the latest “marvel” that some are now engaged in to hold on to the illusion of the self for as long as possible: the head transplant.
The cherished illusion has never been sicker!” philosophers sat in their armchairs contemplating.”
Something which I would recommend from time to time, instead of just being a smart-alec!
” It’s you who are being vociferous here by pedantically insisting that the word should only be used in its 18th century sense. Actually I agree with you that it can be confusing to use it other than in that sense but I don’t see the need to make a big song and dance about it. It doesn’t make the user a philosophical idealist.”
And what does someone who thinks of “free will” simply as volition do when he decides to try and tackle the arguments of writers like Voltaire, Holbach etc? He won’t understand and, like Paul Foot (and you a few days back), will dismiss Shelley’s necessarianism as sitting idly and just watching things go by.
Without the discipline to understand the philosophes, he’ll never be able to read them and really learn from them, because his language use is at odds with the processes of thought in the reading.
In my case, who have read and can appreciate the lines of argument in these books, I was never just imbibing them as extern “authority.” Instead, they bore out, and still do, my own self-analysis and contemplation of my thoughts and feelings and confirmed for me truths that my life experience made evident. This is how I came to understand my experience, my neuroses (which we all have in a variety of forms) and my tolerance of errors and mistakes in life.
And I can appreciate aspects of Buddhism too, instead of just scoffing: “What did Gautama contribute? How to best spin a prayer wheel?” and other ignorant and bullying smart-alec remarks.” Not that someone would normally say “I did it of my own free will”. ”
Where have you been? It’s common parlance every day, but especially in the third person: “He did it of his own free will.” “You’ve got free will.” Among party members too, including H.O. “Every socialist knows he has free will.” It’s on TV, in law courts, in the street, everywhere you go. But if you say “volition” you are asked “What does that mean?”
It seems to me you do only hear selectively. You don’t hear common everyday speech, like, “It’s his own free will.”” But I doubt many others will see much difference between your “did it of own volition” and “did it voluntarily” or “did it of own free will”. Maybe they should but they don’t. And it’s unfair to those who don’t to then attribute to them the idea of a supernatural “self” which won’t be what they believe.”
But then they shouldn’t explode with rage when I try to explain that cause and effect apply to feelings and thoughts as much as they apply to a ball hit by a bat. And they shouldn’t then insist that their will is free and that I am a bum who thinks he understands materialism but doesn’t.
No. As I said, Catholics HAVE TO believe in free will. They are not calling themselves materialists.
I have no problem with idealists being idealists. It is to be expected. They are not being inconsistent.
Free willies (even if only linguistically) with a claim to materialism are inconsistent at worst, lazy in thought and expression at best. (And lambasting me for decades and making out I am the one misreading the materialists, or else calling them old hat and behind the times).
The second are those at whom Voltaire would turn in his grave.
The doomsday-sayers among Christians are not just the U.S. type, but the fanatical sects attached to Eastern Orthodoxy too, real Athanasians, creationist and armageddonist. They descend in a direct line from the fanatics of the early centuries C.E.
The Russian state church has even named a 19th century Russian saint the patron of nuclear weapons, and its bishops sprinkle holy water over the missiles.
The best Christians, ready-made for socialism, are the Amish, Mennonites and Hutterites.
The modern Catholics are fine by me too. They don’t try to convert people, accept evolution, and are international, unlike the Orthodox churches.
S.J. Gould says that Italian seminarians he spoke to were astounded to hear that half of Americans reject Darwin.
I have been in and out of the party.
Socialism may (I didn’t say could, ALB, but may – so no overgrown-adolescent remark is called for!) happen in spite of our little party, as various threads come together and realisation dawns. I don’t see party numbers swelling any time soon, so that’s my hope.
Thanks L.B.
Of course, fanatics like Armageddonists of various new churches shouldn’t ever be welcome, because they despise this world and its well-being. They even look forward to a nuclear conflagration, so they can depart to Heaven and see the unbelievers blasted into Hell.
But they would never apply for membership anyway.
