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[davidwright2000]

I enjoyed the thread on Chesterton and classical education. Part of the Chesterton quote mentioned there said, "Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." This reminds me of a St. Anselm quote:

"I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand, for this I feel sure, that, if I did not believe, I would not understand."

It seems that in both quotes, perception of truth precedes logic. Belief comes before logic, and then logic functions properly.  Apprehension of spiritual realities does tend to work this way... quite ironic. It envelops, surrounds, informs, and shapes logic. Belief means submission and humility. Logic puffs and moves one away from God (I think of the Pharisees and Saducees here).

In many ways, the enlightenment project and scientific/Darwinian materialism reveal the trappings of logic:  logic before belief will never arrive at belief, will never arrive at a true understanding of our nature, but instead moves us away from God, away from truth.

And so it's quite possible that the movement away from a right understanding of our nature comes from the enlightenment scientific project-- the more it studies "nature" scientifically and logically, the less it understands true nature. This is irony at its finest. Scientific materialism, puffed on its "science" and reasoning, arrives at misunderstanding and folly.

This irony is beautifully (sarcasm) reflected in progressive education, which attempts to educate through scientific logic with its Darwinian foundation-- thereby misconstruing our nature and thereby actually "de-educating" or dumbing down. I might add, that this is the cruel nature of human irony:  what we seek apart from God, we never  find.

David

[BAP]

[P]erception of truth precedes logic. Belief comes before logic, and then logic functions properly.  Apprehension of spiritual realities does tend to work this way... quite ironic. It envelops, surrounds, informs, and shapes logic. Belief means submission and humility. Logic puffs and moves one away from God (I think of the Pharisees and Saducees here).

This paragraph reminds me of the idea of poetic knowledge.  (Have you had the opportunity to read James Taylor's Poetic Knowledge?) Poetic knowledge is neither rational nor irrational, but prerational. It's presupposed by rationality in that rationality operates on direct apprehension and experience of the world. Poetic knowledge is poetic in the sense that it's formative, taking place in the formation of experience and thereby forming a substratum for rationality.

In many ways, the enlightenment project and scientific/Darwinian materialism reveal the trappings of logic:  logic before belief will never arrive at belief, will never arrive at a true understanding of our nature, but instead moves us away from God, away from truth.

I think this is because knowledge and logic require the commitment of belief.  This in turn is because knowledge can only be had by personal beings.  Even a "repository" of knowledge such as a computer or other sophisticated machine doesn't really have the knowledge in a sense even remotely as meaningful as possession of knowledge by a personal knower. A computer can't have poetic knowledge because its processes are governed by the rigidity of mechanistic rationality. It doesn't experience reality; it operates on the experience(s) of a person. The attempt to circumvent this problem is a primary motivation of much research in artificial intelligence.

[davidwright2000]

BAP,
  I hope to get a chance to read Poetic Knowledge. It looks really solid. You mentioned "Poetic knowledge is neither rational nor irrational, but prerational." That's perfect. I think the concept "prerational" provides an essential term or definition to that very crucial space, often overlooked, discredited, or outright denied. I love that it's "formative"-- that it happens within the formation of experience, or in some sense the creation of experience. By contrast, rationality happens in response to experience or "by direct apprehension of experience."

  Your example of computers and artificial intelligence is especially apropos because we can clearly see by contrast how humans have knowledge while machines have logic and facts. I had never really thought how distinct these two domains really are. Clearly they are related and they do overlap, but the example elucidates their difference. And we haven't even brought in the notion of wisdom yet!

    Dickens's Hard Times is an outstanding novel that portrays this grave distinction. Millions of humans have been on the brunt end of "logic" without knowledge... indeed, our planet has, too.
 
  Thanks for your comments.

David

[Andrew]

What leaps out to me in your exchange is the fact that everybody begins with belief - including Descartes, who famously resolved to begin with doubt. The enlightenment belief that one could begin with doubt separates enlightenment thinkers from reality in a manner so fundamental that from the moment a person adopts this mode of thinking till he either dies or abandons it he is bound necessarily to self-deception.

Poetic knowledge is pre-rational. There is a mode of knowing by which we simply know - as persons, as living souls. The notion that we can only know what a computer verifies for us, or what data demonstrates, or what experimentation provides evidence for, is the suicide of knowledge. Well, such a person can engage in and absorb a limited form of knowing, but it won't help him much when he has to deal with grief or success.

Because, as David indicates, it's a rejection of nature.

And it's not nice to ...

And there is no anger like that of a ...

Well, you know.

[BAP]

I wonder if the Enlightenment basis of doubt, which Andrew said "separates enlightenment thinkers from reality" in a fundamental manner, might actually be more like a denial of the fruits of direct experience and apprehension, so that Enlightenment rationality assumes them to be undetermined.  In that way, the Enlightenment thinker actually does experience reality, but he rebels against his experience in an effort to mold reality according to his own desires.

[Camille]

Andrew, I had to laugh out loud when I read the end of your reply.

Yes!  we do know, don't we?



(Sorry, bap, back to the subject at hand...)

[Camille]

I highly recommend Poetic Knowledge, David!


You may be right, bap, about the rebellion in the enlightenment thinking. 

We do need to remember the "pre-rational"!
chg

[Buck]

Brad stated:

a denial of the fruits of direct experience and apprehension, so that Enlightenment rationality assumes them to be undetermined.  In that way, the Enlightenment thinker actually does experience reality, but he rebels against his experience in an effort to mold reality according to his own desires.

In any case, knowledge takes place between a knower and that which is known.  The one is a subject and the other an object.  The form in which "direct experience" takes "in an effort to mold reality according to [one's] own desires" displays the kind of displacement made by the subject.   This form of knowledge places too much weight upon the subject; another form of knowledge gives too little weight for the subject.  The fear of individual meaninglessness (pure objectivity) overcompensates by elevating the self over the other (pure subjectivity).  Both isolate knowledge to the will of a single object/subject, and this endangers the nature of things/persons. 

I am reminded of Buber's I/It relations in contrast to the I/Thou relation.  I understand the Enlightenment within the framework of the former; true knowledge takes place in the latter.

Buck

[BAP]

Buck, that's an excellent point.  You've sent me back to a number of metaphysical questions I've been dealing with for years, partly because I'm unable to agree with some fundamental tenets of either Western or non-Western philosophy.  Of course, my appraisal of these tenets is

According to what I think you're suggesting, the state of "individual meaninglessness (pure objectivity)" may characterize much of non-Western philosophy, whereas overcompensation by "elevating the self over the other (pure subjectivity)" may characterize a tendency of Western philosophy.  Much literature has been written on this distinction, although some would reject it as a blanket statement, and I think it's a helpful distinction so long as we keep in mind that people and their philosophies are complex constructs, having many different relations and capable of being spoken of in a variety of different ways.

Your reference to Buber is certainly appropriate.  In the light of what I just said about Western and non-Western philosophical tendencies, I'd propose the following:

The I/It relation is not the absolute opposite of the I/Thou relation, except along a single ontological axis, the basic one-other distinction.  However, the I/I and It/It relations are just as much in error as the I/It relation.  (Actually, the It/It relation may require an I to recognize It-ness.)  I agree that knowledge requires the I/Thou relation and would say that the I/Thou relation is a construct in itself.  The I/Thou relation seems to me to more like a unipole; it is at the center of true knowledge, whereas other relations deviate from the center because they sacrifice one or more elements of the I/Thou construct.

I think this is related to your recent post concerning antithesis because what we're talking about, the I/Thou relation, may not actually have an opposite construct in any sense other than the basic one-other distinction allows.  What do you think?

[Buck]

Brad,

I would agree with your generalization on Western and non-Western philosophies and your caution about using such generalizations.  I find it helpful to mark the parameters of a concept while attempting to understand it.

The I/It relation is not the absolute opposite of the I/Thou relation

I would certainly agree.  In fact, I see it as a mediating point between two extremes--something like an I/It and It/I.  If one extreme drawn from the Enlightenment is to centralize (or perhaps isolate) truth with the knowing subject, the other extreme (its opposite) is to centralize (or isolate) truth with the object known (I suspect that there is a historical precedent for this position).  Buber's I/Thou does not fall in either camp.  Interestingly, Buber begins by stating that the It exists in boundaries whereas I/Thou has no boundaries.  This seems to support your proposal that the I/Thou is its own construct.

Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing.  But he stands in relation.

But you asked if I thought an opposite exists for the I/Thou.  That is a good question.  There does not seem to be...unless the opposite of being is non-being.  The I/Thou marks what I understand to be a relational ontology, that the ground of being is being-in-relation.  I suppose the only possible opposite would be a non-relational ontology, and we would have to ask whether there is such a thing, does it exists (perhaps a contradiction), and what would/does it look like.   Anyone who claims to know outside of any relational framework is deceiving themselves.  Everything stands in some kind of relation to some other thing.  The question is what kind of relation.

Buck