Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of the origins of knowledge. In ancient times, Plato had a theory of knowledge now dubbed platonic epistemology. According to Plato, perfect knowledge is innate in every human's soul. Thus, knowledge is not learned, but recovered from within. Functionally, this is the same as more modern schools of epistemology in that the things one must do to recover knowledge from within and to learn are the same. Contemporary philosophers have narrowed down the origin of knowledge into a dichotomy consisting of a priori and a posteriori. A posteriori knowledge consists of that which is gained through experience, whereas a priori knowledge is that which is innately true. These two theories of knowledge are not mutually exclusive and coexist. For example, take the sentence (Either the tree is dead or alive). The state of being dead excludes the state of life, and there is no middle ground. So one can deduce that something must be either dead or alive. If the truth of this statment is decided this way, then it would be classified as a priori knowledge because the statement is innately logically true. However, this statement can also be proven through experience. For example, one who is testing a bunch of trees for whether or not they are alive will see that regardless of the state of the tree, one side of the disjunctive is proven to be true, and thus the entire statement is true. From this example we can see that the same bit of information or knowledge can be obtained through either a priori or a posteriori methods.

Free Will

A commentor suggested an article in the NY times that proved to be quite interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=determinism+cells&st=nyt&oref=slogin

This article examines two heavily debated concepts of free will:

1. Free will is the illusion of being a decision making entity.
2. Free will is the ability to as an agent influence your own decisions.

Under the first definition almost everyone agrees that we do indeed have free will, but is it truly free will if it is only an illusion? Thus, many philosophers go with the harder second definition of free will.

Operating under the hard definition, anyone who belives in physical effects only having physical causes will inevitably arrive at the conclusion that free will does not exist. This is the case in that a decision is merely a chemical state in the brain in which certain neurons are firing in a certain way. Free will would hold that one can "choose" to have the neurons fire in this way, but under physical causality, it is merely chemical physical causes that prepare this neural state. Thus, existance of free will rests upon whether or not physical effects can have non-physical causes. Atheists and determinists tend to refute free will by believing in a closed physical system, whereas theists tend to belive in free will even in its hardest definition.

In either case, we can remain comforted by the fact that we percieve free will and can live our lives in this blissfull ignorance.

Determinism

Determinism holds that any event is causally determined by a chain of previous events such that a given event was a necessary effect of the previous event. Thus, strict determinists believe that if all the facts were known and the rule set which governs them (physics) is known, the exact outcome can be determined down to the finest detail.

The concept itself is quite straightforward, but the extrapolations made from it are not. From the basic principle of determinism we can deduce that the origin of the events was one of two things: Either the events causally trace back to an original event, or they trace back to an event that was already part of the chain and an infinate loop is formed. Both cases are paradoxical in that the infinate loop and the original event are both in themselves events which under the rules of determinism necessarily have a cause. Thus, even the most strict of determinists must accept that whichever way the present events causally trace back, there must be an uncaused event which began the process.

Depending on the viewpoint of the determinist, this uncaused event can be a metaphysical god, or in my case, an unknown.

For any pyshical effect, there is a physical cause. This is a commonly held belief of anyone whose religious views lie in the physical realm. From this one can deduce that if souls and gods exist, their presence is irrelevant to the physical world. This is the case in that the statement "for any physical effect there is a physical cause rules out the possibility of a physical effect being caused by a non-physical cause. Thus, spirits, souls or even gods being immaterial would count as a non-physical cause and cannot cause any physical event. In this way, the material and immaterial world are divided and are mutually exclusive. There is nothing to say that immaterial thing cannot interact with other immaterial things, but no matter how long this chain goes, it cannot have any impact upon the physical material world. Thus, I find the existance of souls to be irrelevant and I see no reason to believe in them. While this premise is unproven, it seems difficult to conceptualize an immaterial object affecting a material object. An immaterial object cannot exert force or generate heat or force an electric impulse. So if a physical-immaterial interaction of this type could occur, what would be the mechanism through which it is done?

Different Takes on Religion

Instead of the typical dichotomy between theist and atheist, this post will discuss variation among theists. Theists have a wide range of beliefs some of which are supported by great philosophers.



The most obvious way to categorize the various beliefs is by the number of gods they believe in.



The simplest yet most prominent and "western" is Monotheism or the belief in a single god. Within this category fall the typical modern religions such as christianity or judaism.


Next, there are the Polytheists. Polytheists believe in multiple gods who usually have different roles and are prayed to for specific reasons. For example, the ancient Greeks would pray to the Aeries, the god of war, before entering battle. While polytheism does still show up in modern religion, it was also the category in which more archaic beliefs took form. Henotheism is a belief system in which the believer recognizes the existance of multiple gods, but is only loyal to a single god.



Another religion that doesnt fit into either monotheism nor polytheism is pantheism. Pantheism views god more as nature than as an independant entity which manipulates nature. According to this belief system, we are part of god just as a rock is a part of god. God is the substance which makes up everything in the universe.

Evolution and Intelligent Design

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the theory of evolution, and many of you may already know its counter argument of intelligent design. However, just to make sure everyone is on the same page, evolution is the theory that states that gradual changes over generations due to genetic mutations have accumulated causing variation and speciation, whereas intelligent design argues that each species was created or "designed" independently by god. Proponents of intelligent design would like it to be taught along with evolution in schools. Their basis for this is that evolution is "just a theory" and can thus have conflicting ideas taught with it. However, evolution is a scientific concept whereas intelligent design is a religious concept and should not be allowed in schools due to separation of church and state being in the Constitution. Practicing and believing in a relgion is perfectly fine, but enforcing it upon children in schools is not.

That being said, the idea of intelligent design is debased by numerous scientific findings. The most obvious evidence against intelligent design is vestigial structures. If each species were designed individually, why would we humans have a tailbone which is unnecessary and partially deleterious. Such structures provide clear evidence for evolution in that a structure that was characteristic of a former species no longer has a use but has not yet been fully written out of the genetic code. Als0, studies of DNA show that humans share a remarkable amount of DNA with many other mammals from those as developed as a chimpanzee to those as archaic as a rat. If god the omnipotent being were to design both rats and humans, surely there would be a superior way to make humans than to simply change rat DNA.

For a hillarious satire of intelligent design check out the flying spaghetti monster at http://www.venganza.org/

Thomas Aquinas

This post is primarily a response to an angry anonymous commentor, but it is also a look into the mind of a prominent theist by the name of Thomas Aquinas. Here are links to information about him that I will refer to throughtout this post Quinquae Viae /// Thomas Aquinas

So, Aquinas believed that there are two pathways to truth: natural revelation and supernatural revelation. Supernatural revelation can be broken down into three different categories: Holy Scripture, Magisterium, and Prophets. Natural revelation consists of information available to people through their human nature such as interacting with physical objects or other people. However, closer examination reveals that the categories Aquinas dubbed natural and supernatural revelation are one in the same. Holy scripture refers to the bible or other texts of a religious nature while magisterium is the authority of those high up in the religious hierarchy such as bishops and ministers. Prophets similarly are people such as Jesus or moses who have been historically documented to have existed as humans. Thus, all the categories of "supernatural revelation" are merely physical objects (the bible,) or people (jesus bishops) and would fall under the category of natural revelation which is knowledge learned through regular human experiences like interpersonnal communication and manipulating physical objects.

The fact that Aquinas could form a dichotomy out of a single thing shows a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, Aquinas is regarded as an empiricist yet his work the Quinquae Viae does not reflect this school of thought. Please read the Quinquae Viae and you will notice that while the argument is valid, the premises are not coming from experimental evidence. Thus this is inconsistent with the thought of an empiricist. Also, the premises are in no way backed up and the truth of a vast majority of them could be debated so the arguments made in the Quinquae Viae are simply unsound.