(Look, I realize that there is no explanation of the content of the article, that I give no background information to acclimate you to the discussion. Get over it, I'm that lazy. You get what you get. If you want more info, ask me some questions and I'll either give unsatisfactory answers or none at all. Your lucky day!)
Peirce makes a claim that we have no ability to introspect. If we have no power of introspection, if we cannot know anything without reasoning from external facts, how do we approach religious knowledge that is described as inherently introspective? There are several options: 1. Peirce is wrong about introspection. 2. Religious knowledge is not knowledge after all. 3. Religious knowledge does not come through introspection.
Considering the first: Could Peirce be wrong? Sure, but it sure doesn’t seem like it. He persuasively explains that everything we know is from external facts, down to our very existence. If we do not have introspection about our own being, can we have introspective knowledge of other things?
Second: Perhaps, as many have suggested, religious knowledge is not knowledge after all, but merely delusion or false hope or what have you. This may be so. Perhaps religious knowledge is a hope for knowledge, a desire for something better. This certainly requires a different stance to be taken on how we approach religious knowledge, but does not necessarily make it obsolete or bad.
Third: A more interesting idea to think about. When we as mormons speak of learning things through the Holy Ghost, is it always introspection. Surely not in the cases of inspiration where the faculties of reason are increased, where those under the influence of the spirit are able to quickly put things together. But what of those cases where we just “know”? Where the knowledge comes from the “inside?” Does it really? Or do we approach it externally? Perhaps we’ve been taught that the spirit feels a certain way in certain situations… when we feel this feeling, we attribute it to the spirit, an external fact. Perhaps religious knowledge is never actually introspective the way we think it is…
Peirce makes an interesting point when he argues that emotions are known through external facts as well. Anger, for instance, seems to always be pointed at an object. Do we ever have un-directed anger? Peirce admits that some emotions, melancholy, for instance, are non-directional, but goes on to show that these emotions do not manifest themselves spontaneously but are shown through objects of thought. I feel melancholy ABOUT things in the world, ABOUT my life, ABOUT life. Is it ever just melancholy? Another good case seems to be the existential angst referred to by Sartre, Kierkegaard and others. I’m in no position to fully define this “angst”, neither do I intend to for this line of thought. It has been described as a general feeling of unease, a feeling in inadequacy or a general feeling of meaninglessness in life. Does this manifest itself through objects of thought as well? When and how do I feel the angst?
4 comments:
Cute fonts/formatting. :)
I really like the last paragraph there. Interesting food for thought. Seems like our "broken" times are when we learn/grow the most.
Hmm... some initial thoughts here for you/Peirce.
1) What does Peirce mean by introspection? Does he mean looking inside my "mind" and reporting what is there? I can't imagine he would be against that. Rather, he must be attacking innativism (innate ideas), a tradition in vogue since around the time of Locke.
2) I am not as hostile to innativism as I used to be. While I do not think that there are principles everyone perhaps just knows (the existence of God, an exact moral code), I am not convinced there are no innate principles (strangely, couldn't all of us experience different innate principles?). To use a quasi-Mormon word, and to read it in a Karl Jaspers way, there is a veil to human understanding. We first existed, and then were given lives (became self-conscious beings with an "I"). I have no idea if I was born with any innate ideas or discovered some ideas innately because I cannot remember that conscious, formative experience. I cannot return to that conscious level by willing to observe it, and viewing babies doesn't necessarily help me either. I simply don't know if there were innate principles I received or not. I don't know if I am a tabula rusa at birth a la Locke, a marbled stone with ingrained veins (genetic propensities) that experience will ignite a la Leibniz, or something different. I am skeptical towards those who simply throw out innate ideas.
3) Another question for anti-innativists: How does one, without any principles know how to try things by experience? Or how to organize/categorize/whatever their experience? By what does one gauge his experience by? How does experience work with someone who is consciously nothing? It seems like everything would be a creation ex nihilo with ideas then. Wouldn't there have to be something to work with? Or is it a swirling chaos in the mind, with random combinations in the brain until something connects? A sort of big bang in the brain? Just wondering. How is all of this sensual information conglomerated without hardly any effort for daily functionality?
4) Must innate principles be true? Even if I could discover something innately, why must it necessarily be true?
5) Religious Knowledge and the senses. Some people may claim spiritual intuition (which is what I think Peirce means) is in itself a germ of another sense. A couple of thoughts here. I think we are sometimes too axiomatic with our senses, claiming this sense means exactly this. It could be our "senses" pick up much more than we think of religious knowledge. Perhaps we disect the senses too much. I am intrigued how the blind people's brains can tell which basic shapes (very strongly defined) are being shown to them (circles, squares, triangles) without sight. Is sight more than light hitting the retina, transferring to the optic nerve, etc? I don't know if senses have strong demarcations. As for spiritual experiences, I don't see why they can't be sensual, nor why they can't be activated through the gateway of the subconscious. Messages can be conveyed through pre-existing symbols (after all, isn't that what you are reading write now; a language of pre-existing symbols?). Emotions can be activated to convey messages too.
6) Brokenness. I would agree here, but I would also agree with its cousin: Progress. Something doesn't need to get worse for someone to appreciate an object. Things may be a certain way, and an object improve one's situation. The alleviation can easily bring as much satisfaction as appreciating it when it is no longer there. It may just depend if you start with it, or discover it. "I hurt" can rather be "I am happy," "I am in love," "I feel joy," "I feel my purpose," etc. Self-discovery and object discovery/appreciation can happen both ways.
Oh, and what about instincts? How do those classify for Peirce? Or reflexes? Are those not genetically innate, or does he hold them to be something else?
I think I'm kind of in the same boat as Martin's #2. Frankly the discussion just really gets me thinking about John 14:26. There is something innate about spiritual knowledge, hence why the Spirit reminds us. Now the question of whether or not introspection was an ability in a life before this one might be a different story. Frankly I don't know enough about the premortal existence or our nature at that time to even begin to tackle that question, but it seems like the ability to be introspective at that time could be brought into question. Of course at the same time, it probably doesn't matter, that's not a state we're ever going to revisit.
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