TMF!

Just wondering, were you able to draw any distinctions between (or consider) human intelligence and animal instinct?

One reason I ask is when reading your OP regarding doubt, I thought of another analogy relating to mammals. For example, a shark in the water often mistakenly attacks someone on a surfboard flapping their arms paddling presumably perceiving it as prey (like a seal, etc.). Apparently that is known to happen when the water is murky v. clear (though not all the time). So the shark visually confuses it with prey, seemingly more on an instinctual level (emergence), v. an intellectual level of doubt, wonder, creativity, self-awareness, the will, and other so-called metaphysical features of consciousness and intelligence.

(Since animals have the capacity to sense tsunamis, weather patterns, seasons, and other natural phenomena presumably from emergence), perhaps some other interesting questions there that could follow would be:

Is mankind just a more advanced animal? Is intelligence just a more advanced animal instinct and intelligence? Are mankind’s emotions and feeling just more advanced animal emotions and feelings? Do animals have synthetic a priori knowledge? Do they have a will to survive or an instinct to survive. So on and so forth...

That's a great question.

In the case of a shark that attacks a paddling surfer because of resemblance to a seal when viewed from below, I think it displays the absence of the faculty to doubt or if present, total disregard on the shark's part. Just speculating here but predators, specifically apex predators don't need to doubt, at least on the matter of feeding, for the simple reason that everything is, for certain, food [for them]. The same is not true for animals that are lower down in the food chain - they need to be extremely cautious about whether what's in front of them is either prey or predator i.e. they must always doubt.

It appears then that the way we make such a big deal of skepticism in our lives - proof/evidence presented as the foremost of our concerns - suggests that we have a predator-prey relationship with the universe and, unfortunately, with our own fellow humans, and no points will be awarded for knowing to which category we belong.

At the end of the day then doubt is simply the desire not to end up as someone's or something's lunch.

del

Is mankind just a more advanced animal? Is intelligence just a more advanced animal instinct and intelligence? — 3017amen

I feel strongly that this is not the case. But - surprisingly - it’s a very controversial claim.

I recognise the biological continuity of h. Sapiens and the other primates, and indeed the broader evolutionary story. But my firm conviction is, that when h. Sapiens suddenly evolved the massive forebrain that distinguishes this species from others, with it come capabilities and ‘horizons of being‘ that are not available to other species.

One consequence of this is the ability to reflect on meaning - which is required, in order to even begin to philosophise, or to create art. You could argue that the ‘myth of the Fall’ symbolically recapitulates the human realisation of being separate or other to nature. Animals never have that realisation. The seal is predated, the other seals will dodge and then regroup and then simply keep going. They don’t stop and ask themselves ‘hey that could have been ME’ That’s the existential plight of humankind. Some ancient worthy said that, but for ‘the consolation of philosophy’, man would be the most miserable of creatures.

That is all gone by the board in modern culture. Modern culture believes we’re basically well-organised animals, and act accordingly! As someone in a project team I used to be in said ‘sets low standards, and consistently fails them.’ That’s part of the Faustian bargain of modernity - you’re relieved of the burden of self-questioning by living in a global entertainment quarter.

Have a read of Jacques Maritain’s Cultural Impact of Empiricism

from the Empiricist point of view, man should be capable only of what an animal in which sense-knowledge had reached its highest point of development would be capable of; though, as a matter of fact, this same animal, namely, the Empiricist philosopher himself, uses supra-animal intelligence and supra-animal universal ideas, without admitting it.

Oh, I would think there is. It is quite justified to not fault the method, when it is at least possible, if not probable, the use of it is the sole and complete fault. If it’s 50/50, it becomes proper NOT to fault the method alone, in disregard of its use, which is what I said. In order to prove the method at fault, it must be shown that irrationality is impossible, which historical precedent determines not to be the case.
————- — Mww

:chin:

The impossibility of the absence of another method presupposes the method necessarily, the validity of which has yet to be established with any apodeictic certainty; such method being only an idea, or at best, a mere notion, the conceptual predicates for it being highly arguable.
————- — Mww

:chin:

What is faith, but rationality without the ground of experience, or, which is the same thing, empirical knowledge? As such, it is not so much a different methodology, but rather, the same methodology operating under different conditions. It follows that it may be all well and good to have faith in that for which experience is merely possible, but it is not all well and good to have faith in that for which experience contradicts. Otherwise, the Earth would still be the center of the universe. — Mww

Last I heard, faith is to believe without evidence

Now the typical rejoinder is: do you have faith in your perceptions, or, do you have faith that reason isn’t fooling you? Or that the fundamental laws of logic and mathematics are universally and necessarily irrefutable? Then it becomes a question of whether not yet having sufficient reason to doubt is the same as having faith. I suppose semantically it is, but still, that doesn’t magically turn faith into an entirely different methodology distinguishable from rationality. Technically, to have faith alone as a determinant quality is nothing more than using rationality without regard for its intrinsic logical legislation, again, in conformity to, and justified by, experience. — Mww

So, is reason fooling us or not?

and

Faith: requires no evidence

Rationality: requires evidence

Are they not different?

faith is to believe without evidence — TheMadFool

No. That is fideism.

No. That is fideism. — Wayfarer

We may define “faith” as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of “faith.” — Bertrand Russell

No. That is fideism. — Wayfarer

Doubting Thomas

Thomas was nevertheless an apostle of Christ. Bertrand Russell was a card-carrying atheist, judgement of the worth of his conception of what constitutes ‘faith’ ought to take that into account.

Faith: requires no evidence

Rationality: requires evidence

Are they not different? — TheMadFool

The other point about this is, only certain kinds of ‘evidence’ are credible in scientific method - reputable, third-party, and so on. You yourself might see a UFO out for a walk one day, but you would never be able to prove that according to scientific method. No matter what you saw, your report would just be ‘anecdotal evidence’.

Thomas was nevertheless an apostle of Christ — Wayfarer

But the fact remains that he (Thomas), unlike others who accepted the resurrection on faith, wanted and was given evidence.

The other point about this is, only certain kinds of ‘evidence’ are credible in scientific method - reputable, third-party, and so on. You yourself might see a UFO out for a walk one day, but you would never be able to prove that according to scientific method. No matter what you saw, your report would just be ‘anecdotal evidence’ — Wayfarer

Well, I agree that there are different kinds of evidence and scientific evidence is just one subset but by far the kind of evidence that qualifies as scientific is the one we all seem to agree on.

But the fact remains that he (Thomas), unlike others who accepted the resurrection on faith, wanted and was given evidence. — TheMadFool

Indeed. Thereby giving the lie to fideism.

Indeed. Thereby giving the lie to fideism. — Wayfarer

Just curious and you're probably the right person to ask this question to but are the religious fideists?

Protestants and fundamentalists place an emphasis on fideism, in particular, which is the natural implication of Luther’s ‘salvation by faith alone’ Fideism is the insistence of the primacy of faith over reason. Aquinas and scholastic philosophy generally were not fideistic - consider Aquinas’ proofs of God, he plainly believed that reason had a place in the life of faith, and believes that there can be no ultimate conflict between science and religion. But then, he never would have said - and it’s a Catholic heresy to say - that the articles of faith can be established by reason alone. Feser has a decent current article on all this.

In my view, faith is in some sense an intuition of realities that are over our cognitive horizon; it’s the sense of an order that seems implicit in nature, which we can’t quite pinpoint. That, I think, is a pretty good minimalist definition.

:up:

Truth can not be contained in any philosophy, because the truth is what's real, and any philosophy any one might come up with is merely a collection of symbols which point very imperfectly to the real. To confuse a philosophy, any philosophy, with the truth is like confusing a highway sign pointing to the next town with the town itself. — Hippyhead

Strange. Is it not true that you just used a collection of symbols to point to the truth and reality of the relationship between symbols and what is true? Are we suppose to take what you just asserted as the truth about symbols and truth?

You're essentially sayng that it is true that we can't know the truth. Its a contradiction.

Faith: requires no evidence. Rationality: requires evidence

Are they not different? — TheMadFool

Of course they’re different, but their differences have nothing to do with evidence.

Rationality: the use of reason according to principles, the judgements of which are logically consistent necessarily, from which cognitions follow and its objects are given;
Faith: the condition under which judgements are contingent on mere persuasion, the principles be what they may, from which its cognitions do not necessarily follow and the possibility of its objects are not necessarily given.

In the event I don’t know what I’m talking about, or, which is equally the case, in the event what I’m talking about is too systematically evolved to be properly understood by the lesser equipped......

Rationality: the natural inclination for the discovery and use of reason;
Faith: superficial, and possibly but not necessarily unwarranted, confidence in that for which reason is used.
—————

So, is reason fooling us or not? — TheMadFool

It isn’t so much that reason fools us, but rather, it may be that in which we are not being careful enough in guarding against fooling ourselves, by using reason under conditions where it doesn’t work.
—————

The content of your deleted comment is telling, just as much as is the deletion of it.

In my view, faith is in some sense an intuition of realities that are over our cognitive horizon; it’s the sense of an order that seems implicit in nature, which we can’t quite pinpoint. That, I think, is a pretty good minimalist definition. — Wayfarer

Mine: faith is the acceptance as true that which is indemonstrable, and in some cases in defense of faith, the reification of the substance/subject of the faith.

That is, no realities this side or t'other of horizons. As to order implicit in nature, but not quite placeable, I substitute, "makes sense," or even, "I buy it!"

I think yours and mine differ. Do you see it? I find in yours a looking outwards, mine looking inward. I argue that the "inward" is all there is.

Rationality imposes many duties on a person and one of them is to be skeptical in a global sense - everything must be doubted - and that includes rationality itself. — TheMadFool

Actually, I believe the opposite. Rationality acts as a sort of short cut to “understanding,” and I’m using that term loosely. When we see the same patterns over and over to the point that outcomes are predictable, we lose the need, and desire, to doubt. Gravity is a good example of this. Does anyone sit in suspense, just wondering what will happen if they drop an object? Of course not. Because all of our prior experiences show that objects fall when they are dropped, the rational thing to do is assume the object you’re about to drop will fall too.

to wit that it's just one method of removing doubt and there may be other, possibly better, methods out there to tackle the problem of doubt. — TheMadFool

This much I agree with, but considering the fact that as of now rationality is the best method we have, it stands to reason that we should only doubt it when it seems to fail, or doesn’t fully explain the issue at hand. But even in those circumstances it may not be best to discard rationality entirely. It may only need to be improved upon, or adjusted.

How would we know X is better than rationality? — TheMadFool

Probably because it fills in the gaps in our understanding that rationality misses, or is otherwise entirely incapable of explaining. But also note that if X is truly a method, then it must have some sort of order to it that is reliable. This order will almost certainly have to be rational, would it not? Where that leaves us, I’m not sure...

Mine: faith is the acceptance as true that which is indemonstrable, — tim wood

Which implies a view close to 'verificationism'.

Verificationism (also known as the Verifiability Criterion of Meaning or the Verification Principle) is the doctrine that a proposition is only cognitively meaningful if it can be definitively and conclusively determined to be either true or false (i.e. verifiable or falsifiable).

I think Mww's definitions in the post above yours are nearer the mark.

An underlying issue in this debate is the relationship between reason, rationality, and naturalism. To quote the SEP entry:

'The current usage [of naturalism] derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”.

The argument I have with that view could occupy volumes, but the basic premise is from Kant: that reason transcends nature. By this I mean that even in order to begin to appeal to 'nature' or to distinguish 'natural' from 'supernatural', we have to appeal to reason and make judgements. And that faculty is internal to the operation of reason and entirely relies on the relations between ideas.

Another facet of the same argument is that the order of nature is assumed, but not proven, by naturalism. The natural sciences are grounded in the discovery of, and exploitation of, regularities in nature. But science doesn't explain that order, even though many people seem to assume it does; Wittgenstein exclaimed that 'the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena' (TLP 6.371).

The attempt to 'naturalise reason' is one of the hallmarks of 20th century analytical philosophy. It naturally (pardon the irony) analyses reason in Darwinian terms, i.e. as an adaptation. But to explain reason is to sell it short; and besides, any such 'explanation' must invariably be circular, as explanation relies on reason, on giving reasons why such-and-such is so-and-so. You can't stand outside reason and describe it objectively; you have to employ reason to even define what is objective. Otherwise you're second-guessing reason, trying to give a reason for reason, in terms of adaptation (a point made with pristine clarity in Thomas Nagel's essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion.)

But in practice, the upshot is that we defer to science as the 'arbiter of what is real', which is what naturalism amounts to. That is both a result and a cause of the instinctive hostility towards what is deemed 'supernatural' that animates many of these debates. What is 'supernatural' can't really be articulated, but in practice it amounts to categorising a wide range of philosophical ideas as being associated with religion, and so, matters of personal faith; acceptable as articles of private conviction, but fiercely rejected as truth claims in any other sense. And the consequences of this attitude extends well beyond the bounds of academic philosophy.

but fiercely rejected as truth claims in any other sense. And the consequences of this attitude extends well beyond the bounds of academic philosophy. — Wayfarer

And does it not seem to you it should? Each, language, science, faith, has its own house, to be in and to keep in order. Trouble comes when one tries to occupy another's house, as well when one tries to evict another from its own house. And sometimes fierceness is required. Yes? No?

This is a philosophy forum. I'm drawing attention to some lines that have been drawn on the territory by culture and history. Maybe it's the case that I draw attention to those lines by crossing them. And when I do cross them - alarms go off, buttons get pushed. I believe many of the ideas I'm trying to explore are legitimately (and fundamentally) a part of the philosophical corpus, but note how they often provoke the response: you can't say that, it's religion. :rage:

Liberal secularism is itself a violent regulator of ‘private’ belief. You can believe whatever you like, provided you do not believe that your personal beliefs are actually objectively true, or matter in any public way. You can have whatever personal loyalties you like, provided you give uncompromising public loyalty to the state in which you are born, to the liberal and secular laws it mandates, . . . in reality, we have a single public cultus, and private cultus pluralism. . . . Because the realm of objectivity is tightly conceptually tied to mere facticity and mere instrumental efficacy, technology has increasingly displaced humanity in the arena of public power. — Paul Tyson, De-fragmenting Modernity

Kant uses many and assorted (distorted?) descriptors for reason, but doesn’t posit or indicate that “reason transcends nature”, so I wonder what he would say to the author who put the notion in so many words. I suppose said author could have derived it on his own, from....

“....cognizing, a priori, by means of the categories, all objects which can possibly be presented to our senses, not, indeed, according to the form of their intuition, but according to the laws of their conjunction or synthesis, and thus, as it were, of prescribing laws to nature and even of rendering nature possible...”

....but that, to me, seems a pretty lopsided interpretation.

On the other hand, Kant never claims to know what reason actually is, and does in fact theoretically prove it is impossible to empirically know anything that transcends natural conditions, so maybe “reason transcends nature” merely indicates the impossibility of knowing what reason actually is. But still, for the language gamer’s benefit, The Good Doctor does say......

“....reason is the faculty which furnishes us with the principles of knowledge a priori.....”

..... in relation to the other participants in speculative transcendental philosophy, but that’s more what its job is, not what it actually is. And of course, ceremoniously grants Freewheelin’ Freddie the liberty of asking....

{...wtf IS a faculty anyway??? A pox on those discovering....no wait, I mean INVENTING.....even MORE of them!!!! Ahhhh...the “piping, singing” “malicious fairy” of German Romanticism, If I do say so myself}
(BG&E, 1.11, 1886, seriously personalized)

(Sigh) Ain’t speculative metaphysics grand???

I believe many of the ideas I'm trying to explore are legitimately (and fundamentally) a part of the philosophical corpus, but note how they often provoke the response: you can't say that, it's religion. — Wayfarer

Explore? There's no avoiding it: I call the lie, that is ultimately a vicious lie. And what is the lie? That the matters of faith are real. They are ideas. If you or anyone were honest about your efforts, you would first acknowledge what your subjects are. Then you would explore them as they are where found, in situ, so to speak. But what is the universal practice? To insist that the subject matter is real, that it is out there rather than in here. And when requested to show that any criteria for being real have been met, the cry of foul goes up. I do not know where Trump learned his Trumpianism, but he might well have learned it in almost any church! Deny, deny, deny the simple truth, hit back harder.

And were there any truth, any whatsoever, religion should have carried the day. But in their claims is none, and so it all recycles, a parasite feeding on ignorance.

And the sad - and stupid - thing is that it absolutely does not need to be that way. In most religions are at least some good ideas. And good ideas are powerful. Reification in religion is the fatal error. Religion itself as inculcation of good ideas, what's wrong with that? But as purveyor of false promises on false premises has been crumbling for a long time. And the rate of crumbling accelerates.

To borrow a line from a film, if you want it to be real, then make it real! Lacking that, take it as it is and find its latent power there. On its insistence on reality, opium of the people? No, induced madness of the people.

Religion, then, on its claims for reality, is a fraud. And why? Follow the money!

Kant uses many and assorted (distorted?) descriptors for reason, but doesn’t posit or indicate that “reason transcends nature” — Mww

Well, I do wonder, then, as Kant's philosophy is described as 'transcendental idealism', what it is transcendental in respect of. The passage in the book that I'm reading on Kant puts it this way:

.'...we may be sorrrounded by objects, but even while cognizing them, reason is the origin of something that is neither reducible to nor derives from them in any sense. In other words, reason generates a cognition, and a cognition regarding nature is above nature. In a cognition, reason transcends nature in one of two ways: by rising above our natural cognition and making, for example, universal and necessarily claims in theoretical and practical matters not determined b nature, or by assuming an impersonal objective perspective that remains irreducible to the individual I.'

The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy
Alfredo Ferrarin

Also from the SEP entry on Kant's Transcendental Idealism:

'We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or in time, hence all objects of an experience possible for us, are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which, as they are represented, as extended beings or series of alterations, have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. This doctrine I call transcendental idealism. '

And what is the lie? That the matters of faith are real. They are ideas. — tim wood

Ideas are real. Many fundamental ideas of philosophy have become incorporated with religion, and so are now declared taboo on those grounds, matters of private belief.

Kant never claims to know what reason actually is, — Mww

Kant never claims to know what anything actually is.

Ideas are real. — Wayfarer

Indeed. Ideas are certainly real. But not real in any material sense. Not any part of what is usually meant by material reality. Sez I.

As such, as ideas or matters of belief, no complaint here. Some of the best things are ideas, even from religion. And so forth. This is familiar ground between us. I'm not feeling any need to walk it again.

Indeed. Ideas are certainly real. But not real in any material sense. Not any part of what is usually meant by material reality. Sez I. — tim wood

No. Ideas are just as real as the computer you're writing that on. If they weren't, you'd have no computer. So you see, you have a materialist bias that affects the way you see it - no fault of yours, and no pejorative intent on my part. It's just a philosophical observation. You think it's already settled, and it's my argument that it's not.( 'Usually meant' carries a lot of weight here.)

Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what is real. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental stuff. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists as surely as a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.

Thomas Nagel - Thoughts are Real.

Indeed. Ideas are certainly real. But not real in any material sense. Not any part of what is usually meant by material reality. Sez I. — tim wood

If you reduce reality to what is material, you've got a big problem. Sez I.