This was a refreshingly on-point response, thank you for it. Our article has gotten a lot more attention than we thought, and most of the responses have been quite poor, critiquing postmodernism in general but leaving our claims untouched (and presumably unread). This was much better.
A few thoughts:
"This is the point where I depart. The authors of this article assume a very modern view of truth, where if something is to be true it must be accessible to everyone, independent of experience, learning, culture, language, or tradition."
Let's refine this — for something to be true it must be accessible to all in principle, though not necessarily in practice. It can be true that you solve a differential equation by doing X, Y, and Z, though this truth is inaccessible to my four-year old. But in principle, all truths are universal.
Take the example of "for the good of the student a teacher must XYZ" that you raised. XYZ will of course differ depending on the student but this statement can always be abstracted into a universal truth from which the particular can be deduced, e.g. "for the good of the student a teacher's method must be fitted to her abilities and with a view to her interests". On the "good is a kind of truth" view, even practical truths cash out to universals. This works, it just means that the practical truth is only partial and pragmatic expression of a universal truth. There's nothing wrong with that, but the folkish turn maintains objective good without reference to universalism.
"If I understood them rightly, the teacher and doctor do not possess knowledge, their particular, and non-universal, judgments do not traffic in truth, and MacIntyre’s project is impossible, either on a practical, or linguistic level."
To clarify, the teacher and doctor have knowledge, but knowledge is a subset of morality/command. And yes, MacIntyre's project is impossible in that even the evaluation of other traditions is ultimately only an evaluation of one's own tradition. This is why, even thousands of years after paganisms supposedly disappeared, they are experiencing a revival. Ultimately we can never escape our oldest traditions, only hold them inconsistently, because they furnish us with the resources with which to justify the new traditions.
What I am objecting to is your definition of truth. I am not sure I know what it means for something to be accessible to all in principle. For example, because of who I am, the talents I have been given, my experience, and abilities, I do not think I could ever be neuroscientist...I do not think I could ever know a patient in the same way they could. To say that "in principle" I could access this knowledge, or "if we imagine a possible world where Rose had such and such talents, experience, and abilities, and then became a neuroscientist..." is to imagine a world where I am not me. Because I agree with you that how we think is intimately tied to our tradition, culture, and language, while we can talk about universalizing knowledge and making it accessible to all in principle, I do not think it makes sense, because it would be divorcing the knower from all that makes him who he is. You might have the proposition, but who it applies to no longer exists.
I, for example, can never know what it is like to be a Frenchman. With empathy I can listen to a Frenchman, and translate his experience into terms I can understand, but while communication is possible, that does not mean I can have *his* knowledge.
What I am trying to get at, and please excuse me if I am doing it poorly, is that while there are moral truths that are universal, or can be universalized, their meaning, the meaning of those commands, are not universal, because their meaning is intimately tied to the persons involved. The "do as your told" example can be universalized into "children ought to respect their parents", but the meaning of "do as your told" coming from your father will mean something very different than if my father told me that. We are different people, were different children, and had different fathers, and while the words, or even circumstance might be identical, the tone of voice, look in the eyes, facial expression, all make that circumstance unique. Sure, I might obey because in principle this is what is expected, but in reality I obey because of my relationship to my father, I do not want to disappoint him, fear him, look up to him, etc.
Ok, I thought you were saying that morality and knowledge were divorced from each other.
So you do think you can evaluate your tradition? Of course you will be using your tradition's resources, perhaps in view of rival traditions, but evaluation none the less. This might have been a misunderstanding on my part, which makes sense because in your article you were evaluating your tradition in light of its interactions with Christianity. If you think you can, then do you see any problem with a Christian and pagan evaluating their own traditions after dialoguing with each other?
What if I can (or ask you to) list out all of your specific worldview's foundational assumptions & presuppositions (stated & unstated)?
What if I can then show that some or all of these are self-contradictory, therefore the downstream conclusions which form the basis of your worldview are (on it's own terms) self-refuting, thus provably false?
What if I can further show that your worldview is so deficient that it cannot even use itself to give (on it's own terms) an internally consistent justifiably true account for why there are such things as ontologically-positive, non-material categories of things with fixed, persistent, non-reducible identities; Time, Knowledge, the Property of Distinction, Truth, Persons, Logic, Language, Contingency, etcetcetc?
What if your worldview cannot be used (on it's own terms) to justify why the future might be expected to resemble the past, or e.g. why any form of logic can be used to discern any sort of truth? Why there is even such a thing as Truth? Why all things are not the same thing? How something can simultaneously have the properties of a Universal & a Particular (ie the One and Many problem). Etcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetc. Etc.
There are no such things as "brute facts" or "self-evident a-priori 'truths' "; something as apparently "self-evident" as 2+2=4 are actually all contingent on many such universal categories as noted above, which the post-Aquinian worldview you're advocating has no justifiable basis for giving an account for, on it's own terms.
If you want to play the game of "worldview X is more or less right or wrong than worldview Y", then you cannot simply assert an unjustified position without being politely deboonked; you have to give an account for precisely WHY suchnsuch is justified to be the case, to the exclusion of other contradictory positions.
You've elsewhere made such related (respectfully) liberal arguments as, e.g. some or all of reality is non-teleogical. Stripping philosophy of teleology is LITERALLY THE ENTIRE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT! If you are not ontologically, non-consensually constrained by a transcendent Telos which is a necessary property of Reality, then you are a strong, independenthuman free to define and embody your own telos (whatever that may be....)!
Dis-teleogical positions, in sum, unwittingly make an apologetic for The Kantian Rift and it's consequences.
Although most people raised in the milieu of degenerated Western Frankish "Christianity" won't likely be deeply familiar with the original & current Orthodox Christian tradition & 'religion', it is in fact the sole, unique explanation of reality which solves all these (and other) issues; in philosophical & apologetic theory, and in actual qualitative praxis.
PS also, there was a curious assertion somewhere that "moral claims are not Truth claims".
......?:
"This is a Thing which is Good to Do. It is True that this Thing is Good to Do. Therefore, because it is True that this this Thing is Good to Do, it is also True that You SHOULD NOT do this Thing, because it is True that this this Thing is Good to Do."
If your assertion was correct, then the above would be a coherent statement.
Is it? Or, can you in fact not separate ethics from such things as epistemology & metaphysics in an internally consistent, coherent worldview?
My blog is not a place for you to chase people around and insult them. Furthermore, nothing drives people away from Orthodoxy like ALL CAPS POSTING, and mocking. You are disrespecting a blog that I have put years into making, and you are being a poor representative of the faith. If you think I am wrong, then show your spiritual father these comments and ask him.
I will be deleting your comments within the day. You are free to comment again, and if you can do it respectfully, then I will keep them up.
Hello! The parts of your post which I understood had some valid critiques, & I've edited & deleted some things in light of them; thanks & please forgive me for any transgressions, intentional or otherwise. However, I will "die on the hill" of using ALL CAPS for emphasis when bold, underline formatting etc is not available on a platform (although, I don't "live online" and am not fully fluent in "internet patois", so, sorry again if I've deployed some e-socialfauxpas?).
Please also accept my forgiveness for those relevant parts of your reply to me.
If you still wish to delete the post, please feel free to do so & or ban me without further comment, or whatever is deemed appropriate.
Please note, FYI, when you are choosing to publicly interact with people (e.g. like Mike) who have spent multiple decades in dedicated practice of ritual magic & (knowingly or unknowingly) sacrificial worship of Lucifer, that 1) their Noetic faculties are darkened in myriad subtle & overt ways, to degrees that you (HOPEFULLY) can't comprehend from your own personal experience and 2) they appear to act as a kind of 'living sigil' for the people who's attention they've successfully harnessed into the 'personality cult' of their audience; this is ontologically distinct from a potentially heated discussion you may have over a beer with a friend about something you each have irrationally emotional polarised opinions about, mainly because occult magic is involved.
You can't reason with them with the same efficacy that you can with a less demonically oppressed person face to face in real life, especially if you're basically communicating via exchanging electronic "open letters". You'll usually end up with a counter-productive effect to what you intend - your good intentions at good-faith discourse will be inverted & redirected, typically further strengthening their resolve in false beliefs leading them away from Christ, further blinding them to Truth, and making you an unwitting accomplice to whatever sorcery is being manifest through them (with all the associated consequences).
I'm increasingly tending towards the opinion that any unsolicited "apologetics" attempts of this sort (my comments here included) are in fact always a Temptation and a net-negative for everyone involved.
This was a refreshingly on-point response, thank you for it. Our article has gotten a lot more attention than we thought, and most of the responses have been quite poor, critiquing postmodernism in general but leaving our claims untouched (and presumably unread). This was much better.
A few thoughts:
"This is the point where I depart. The authors of this article assume a very modern view of truth, where if something is to be true it must be accessible to everyone, independent of experience, learning, culture, language, or tradition."
Let's refine this — for something to be true it must be accessible to all in principle, though not necessarily in practice. It can be true that you solve a differential equation by doing X, Y, and Z, though this truth is inaccessible to my four-year old. But in principle, all truths are universal.
Take the example of "for the good of the student a teacher must XYZ" that you raised. XYZ will of course differ depending on the student but this statement can always be abstracted into a universal truth from which the particular can be deduced, e.g. "for the good of the student a teacher's method must be fitted to her abilities and with a view to her interests". On the "good is a kind of truth" view, even practical truths cash out to universals. This works, it just means that the practical truth is only partial and pragmatic expression of a universal truth. There's nothing wrong with that, but the folkish turn maintains objective good without reference to universalism.
"If I understood them rightly, the teacher and doctor do not possess knowledge, their particular, and non-universal, judgments do not traffic in truth, and MacIntyre’s project is impossible, either on a practical, or linguistic level."
To clarify, the teacher and doctor have knowledge, but knowledge is a subset of morality/command. And yes, MacIntyre's project is impossible in that even the evaluation of other traditions is ultimately only an evaluation of one's own tradition. This is why, even thousands of years after paganisms supposedly disappeared, they are experiencing a revival. Ultimately we can never escape our oldest traditions, only hold them inconsistently, because they furnish us with the resources with which to justify the new traditions.
I am glad you enjoyed it!
What I am objecting to is your definition of truth. I am not sure I know what it means for something to be accessible to all in principle. For example, because of who I am, the talents I have been given, my experience, and abilities, I do not think I could ever be neuroscientist...I do not think I could ever know a patient in the same way they could. To say that "in principle" I could access this knowledge, or "if we imagine a possible world where Rose had such and such talents, experience, and abilities, and then became a neuroscientist..." is to imagine a world where I am not me. Because I agree with you that how we think is intimately tied to our tradition, culture, and language, while we can talk about universalizing knowledge and making it accessible to all in principle, I do not think it makes sense, because it would be divorcing the knower from all that makes him who he is. You might have the proposition, but who it applies to no longer exists.
I, for example, can never know what it is like to be a Frenchman. With empathy I can listen to a Frenchman, and translate his experience into terms I can understand, but while communication is possible, that does not mean I can have *his* knowledge.
What I am trying to get at, and please excuse me if I am doing it poorly, is that while there are moral truths that are universal, or can be universalized, their meaning, the meaning of those commands, are not universal, because their meaning is intimately tied to the persons involved. The "do as your told" example can be universalized into "children ought to respect their parents", but the meaning of "do as your told" coming from your father will mean something very different than if my father told me that. We are different people, were different children, and had different fathers, and while the words, or even circumstance might be identical, the tone of voice, look in the eyes, facial expression, all make that circumstance unique. Sure, I might obey because in principle this is what is expected, but in reality I obey because of my relationship to my father, I do not want to disappoint him, fear him, look up to him, etc.
Ok, I thought you were saying that morality and knowledge were divorced from each other.
So you do think you can evaluate your tradition? Of course you will be using your tradition's resources, perhaps in view of rival traditions, but evaluation none the less. This might have been a misunderstanding on my part, which makes sense because in your article you were evaluating your tradition in light of its interactions with Christianity. If you think you can, then do you see any problem with a Christian and pagan evaluating their own traditions after dialoguing with each other?
"And yes, MacIntyre's project is impossible in that even the evaluation of other traditions is ultimately only an evaluation of one's own tradition."
...................................................................................................................................
What if I can (or ask you to) list out all of your specific worldview's foundational assumptions & presuppositions (stated & unstated)?
What if I can then show that some or all of these are self-contradictory, therefore the downstream conclusions which form the basis of your worldview are (on it's own terms) self-refuting, thus provably false?
What if I can further show that your worldview is so deficient that it cannot even use itself to give (on it's own terms) an internally consistent justifiably true account for why there are such things as ontologically-positive, non-material categories of things with fixed, persistent, non-reducible identities; Time, Knowledge, the Property of Distinction, Truth, Persons, Logic, Language, Contingency, etcetcetc?
What if your worldview cannot be used (on it's own terms) to justify why the future might be expected to resemble the past, or e.g. why any form of logic can be used to discern any sort of truth? Why there is even such a thing as Truth? Why all things are not the same thing? How something can simultaneously have the properties of a Universal & a Particular (ie the One and Many problem). Etcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetc. Etc.
There are no such things as "brute facts" or "self-evident a-priori 'truths' "; something as apparently "self-evident" as 2+2=4 are actually all contingent on many such universal categories as noted above, which the post-Aquinian worldview you're advocating has no justifiable basis for giving an account for, on it's own terms.
If you want to play the game of "worldview X is more or less right or wrong than worldview Y", then you cannot simply assert an unjustified position without being politely deboonked; you have to give an account for precisely WHY suchnsuch is justified to be the case, to the exclusion of other contradictory positions.
You've elsewhere made such related (respectfully) liberal arguments as, e.g. some or all of reality is non-teleogical. Stripping philosophy of teleology is LITERALLY THE ENTIRE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT! If you are not ontologically, non-consensually constrained by a transcendent Telos which is a necessary property of Reality, then you are a strong, independenthuman free to define and embody your own telos (whatever that may be....)!
Dis-teleogical positions, in sum, unwittingly make an apologetic for The Kantian Rift and it's consequences.
Although most people raised in the milieu of degenerated Western Frankish "Christianity" won't likely be deeply familiar with the original & current Orthodox Christian tradition & 'religion', it is in fact the sole, unique explanation of reality which solves all these (and other) issues; in philosophical & apologetic theory, and in actual qualitative praxis.
PS also, there was a curious assertion somewhere that "moral claims are not Truth claims".
......?:
"This is a Thing which is Good to Do. It is True that this Thing is Good to Do. Therefore, because it is True that this this Thing is Good to Do, it is also True that You SHOULD NOT do this Thing, because it is True that this this Thing is Good to Do."
If your assertion was correct, then the above would be a coherent statement.
Is it? Or, can you in fact not separate ethics from such things as epistemology & metaphysics in an internally consistent, coherent worldview?
My blog is not a place for you to chase people around and insult them. Furthermore, nothing drives people away from Orthodoxy like ALL CAPS POSTING, and mocking. You are disrespecting a blog that I have put years into making, and you are being a poor representative of the faith. If you think I am wrong, then show your spiritual father these comments and ask him.
I will be deleting your comments within the day. You are free to comment again, and if you can do it respectfully, then I will keep them up.
Hello! The parts of your post which I understood had some valid critiques, & I've edited & deleted some things in light of them; thanks & please forgive me for any transgressions, intentional or otherwise. However, I will "die on the hill" of using ALL CAPS for emphasis when bold, underline formatting etc is not available on a platform (although, I don't "live online" and am not fully fluent in "internet patois", so, sorry again if I've deployed some e-socialfauxpas?).
Please also accept my forgiveness for those relevant parts of your reply to me.
If you still wish to delete the post, please feel free to do so & or ban me without further comment, or whatever is deemed appropriate.
Please note, FYI, when you are choosing to publicly interact with people (e.g. like Mike) who have spent multiple decades in dedicated practice of ritual magic & (knowingly or unknowingly) sacrificial worship of Lucifer, that 1) their Noetic faculties are darkened in myriad subtle & overt ways, to degrees that you (HOPEFULLY) can't comprehend from your own personal experience and 2) they appear to act as a kind of 'living sigil' for the people who's attention they've successfully harnessed into the 'personality cult' of their audience; this is ontologically distinct from a potentially heated discussion you may have over a beer with a friend about something you each have irrationally emotional polarised opinions about, mainly because occult magic is involved.
You can't reason with them with the same efficacy that you can with a less demonically oppressed person face to face in real life, especially if you're basically communicating via exchanging electronic "open letters". You'll usually end up with a counter-productive effect to what you intend - your good intentions at good-faith discourse will be inverted & redirected, typically further strengthening their resolve in false beliefs leading them away from Christ, further blinding them to Truth, and making you an unwitting accomplice to whatever sorcery is being manifest through them (with all the associated consequences).
I'm increasingly tending towards the opinion that any unsolicited "apologetics" attempts of this sort (my comments here included) are in fact always a Temptation and a net-negative for everyone involved.