Dr. touched on various philosophers and their ideas in this class with the following being a brief summary....

As discussed in the previous class concerning Anselm's ontological argument: both parties need to agree on a definition.  Anselm does not speak of the origin of God.  We perceive God from our experience.  The existence of God (as well as the immortality of the soul) can be known through natural means (reason) not strictly from Faith.

THE SELF EVIDENT  St. Thomas says:  It is self evident that we know the material world as it is through our senses and the fact that it exists in an objective way is self evident.  We recognize this truth, but...modern philosophy will say NO.  Modern philosophy puts forth that what we know is not the world around us but rather what we know are our ideas.

Why do people put forth arguments against the obvious?  The answer lies in the will.  The will intentionally distorts reality.  Most philosophy is the discussion of the obvious.  A statement needs to be self evident.  Example:  A part is not greater than the whole.  In the example, nothing can be argued against.  The predicate of the statement is contained in the subject and is undeniable, obvious.  The predicate does not add to our knowledge in a self evident proposition.

SI FALLOR SUM:  If I am in error, I exist.
St. Augustine fought against the skeptics.  The skeptics (Cicero, etc.) claim that everything is open to doubt.  St Augustine brought their skepticism full circle:  skeptic: I doubt everything.  Nothing can be known for sure.  Augustine:  If I doubt, I know for certain I exist...in the act of doubting, I exist.  Therefore, there are other things I know that must exist and cannot be doubted.
 
Rene Decartes (appr

THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPAL   Everything in the universe is constructed in such a way as to allow man to exist.
Where did this principal come from?
Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term "anthropic principle" (1974),¹³ noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years "preparing" for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).¹⁴ Carter formalized this enormous imbalance between the time required to produce the possibility for human life and the brevity of the species' (potential) survival as the "anthropic principle inequality."¹⁵
 
SI FALLOR SUM:  If I am in error

Class this week:

Rescheduled for Thursday, April 11th, to accommodate the talk in the church basement by Fr. Pfluger Wednesday evening.

See you all there!

The Ontological Argument

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." ps. 14:1



Is proof of God, based solely on the definition of God, possible? St Anselm of Canterbury was up for the challenge. God did say: "I Am Who Am", so I guess Anselm figured his chances at success were pretty high.

Titled as the father of scholasticism, Anselm was an Italian Benedictine abbot in the 12th century. I was going to google him and give everyone a brief history, but I figured you could do that yourself if you wanted! Or I can do another post separately. Maybe. Provided a few nice renditions, anyways....
His monks asked him to come up with a proof of God not based on scripture, dogma, fathers of the church teachings, tradition, nothing. They wanted a fool proof extra-religious argument. Anselm said "Sure! I'd love to do that for you guys. In fact, I am going to do even better, and come up with an 'a priori' proof of God, which means a proof that does not rely on any prior experience." Well, maybe not quite in those words, but more or less. (St. Thomas' proofs of God are 'a posteriori' proofs, or require prior experience of the world.) His (Anselm's) argument is based solely on the idea of God.


Just as we had the pleasant opportunity to struggle with words and definition making, Anselm began with making a definition of God, the perfect definition of God. He came up with this: God is "that greater than which nothing can be conceived". We also played with it and turned it into perhaps a more cognitive form, saying that God is that substance which is greater than anything that can be conceived. I think this 2nd definition is more relatable to the formula of a perfect definition that we had discussed, and seeing it helped me realize that St. Anselm's definition was indeed a perfect definition, "substance" being the genus division, and "greater than which nothing can be concieved" being the particular difference. None of us could think of a better definition, and none could disagree, and none could contradict. Anselm was not defining God as creator, savior, founder of a church, but as what He is completely.

Both the "fool" and the one who believes in God must agree with this definition before they begin to argue God's existence, just like any argument, where agreement on terms must be established in order to even spend your time arguing your side. If the fool will agree to this as your definition of God, he has simultaneously agreed to His existence. Very convenient for us, but why?

As Dr. so clearly stated, if that greater than which nothing can be conceived did not exist, then that greater than which nothing can be conceived would not be that greater than which nothing can be conceived, because then the lowest thing, a rock, a worm, would be greater than that greater than which nothing can be conceived, because it possess the the quality of existence, since something that exists is greater than something that does not exist. So that greater than which nothing can be conceived must have existence, since that greater than which nothing can be conceived IS that greater than which nothing can be conceived.

At this point I really feel like I can't reread that paragraph, but kudos if you can get through it and get something out of it! So relieved I don't have to think through all that and figure it out anymore. Got it down finally. Dr. says it helps to think of "that greater than which nothing can be conceived" as "T" and it isn't so confusing sounding. So you can try that. When you get it, you can do an "I am debt free!" scream, but instead it could be an "I understand the ontological argument" scream.

Thought this would be a fun video clip to include just now, for everyone's enjoyment, and very apropos.  :)

INCONCEIVABLE!

St Thomas takes St Anselm's proof even farther by saying that God is existence itself, included in His very essence. We come into and out of existence, but God eternally IS because God is the Necessary Being.

Existence is the most fundamental aspect of a thing, because without it something cannot be anything at all. Not the smallest thing, not the greatest thing!

I found it a pretty convincing argument, but am excited to hear all the objections. I assume there must be objections to the actual definition of God St. Anselm proposes too, since that would be the root of any logical argument. I guess we will find out!

Homework is to read pgs 50-56, and consider,(perhaps take a few notes as well...) If you can think about being, can you necessarily infer its existence? Hmmm....

And a final few photos on what we are up against here.

Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world.

 

There are a bunch of crazy people out there. Thanks for Logic class Dr Chojnowski!

See ya next time!

Dani

Perfect definitions

There was a little bit of overlap from a list Dr. handed out in class and the ones we Saurette's had come up with at home. Feel free to comment below with examples of your own perfect definitions! Meanwhile, here's a list:

A cheetah is a cat without retractable claws.

A praying mantis is an insect that can turn its head 350 degrees.

Black is the colour absent of light.

A strawberry is a fruit with its seeds on the outside.

A square is a shape with sides of equal length and 4 90 degree angles.

A dime is an American coin with 118 ridges.

The blue whale is the heaviest animal that ever lived.

A giraffe is the tallest animal.

Football is a sport with a quarterback who is the captain of the team.

Volleyball is a sport in which the ball is in constant motion. (We proved this is not a perfect definition...)

Honey is food that does not spoil.

Elephants are mammals that cannot jump.

The lesser bamboo bat is the smallest bat on earth.

A snake is a reptile with no legs.

A bat is a mammal that can fly.

A baby is a human being that has recently been born.

A sister is a female sibling. A brother is a male sibling.

A basenji dog is a dog that cannot bark.

Humans are animals with opposable thumbs.

Butter is churned cream.

A bacteria is a living cell that has no nucleus.

A novena is a prayer that you say 9 times.

Baldness is the condition of having no hair.

Glass is melted silica sand.

Wine is firmented fruit juice.

Music is an art which uses sound as its medium.

Mercury is a metal that is liquid at room temperature.

Chocolate is a food which melts at body temperature.

I am sure you all have many more, so please share them with the blog! And if there are any fallacies, let me know. I am sure there are several more definitions of chocolate we women can think of! :)

See ya after!
Dani

After the weekend...

...I will post all that we learned yesterday. Class seemed to fly by and we didn't even make it to St. Anselm's ontological proof of God. So now we have to go back just to hear that!

Good luck on the homework all! Three perfect definitions here we come. Meanwhile, I am posting Mr. Jim Kozin's response to the Gonzaga article that Dr. handed out a few weeks back. Enjoy. And I have posted the link to the article itself in a previous post, so you can reread it as well. I really enjoyed rereading it myself. Any other responses I would be happy to post as well, and comments are always welcome.

Remember our next class will be next week, Wednesday, February 27th, 2013.

The Logic of a Jesuit Education

 Now and Then

Now

When I was a young man there was a commercial advertisement on television that affirmed, “You’ve come a long way Baby!”  As I recall it referred to “liberated” women smoking in public, which may give you some idea of how long ago it was that I was a young man.  Well the Jesuits, judging by this article, certainly have come a long way…from Aristotelian Logic and Thomistic Philosophy, the bedrock of Roman Catholic thought for over nine hundred years, to the Neo-Pagan relativism of Gonzaga University’s Department of Philosophy, which has as its principal goal to instill “doubt” in the minds of its students.  The author of the article proudly proclaims that Philosophy classes at Gonzaga University are “not meant to convey a predetermined value system.”  The phrase “predetermined value system” of course refers to the Philosophy, Theology, and Morality formerly believed, taught, and practiced by Catholics for the last two thousand years.  How curious, presuming that this article was reviewed by some representative of the Philosophy Department, to use such a dismissive phrase to describe Catholic teaching.  Not so unusual though when you understand what Dr. Theodore Di Maria considers to be one of the primary objectives of the Department. According to Professor De Maria “The good thing about philosophy is that it challenges your faith.” And challenge your faith it does, at least how philosophy is taught at Gonzaga University.  To be more precise philosophy courses at GU don’t merely challenge your faith, they encourage their students to doubt it.  The article informs that philosophy courses at GU are “meant to cause doubt” because, according to Dr. Douglas Kries, “you should not be dogmatic about questions of faith and reason.”  But the Department of Philosophy at GU is not quite so single minded in its intellectual pursuit of doubt or in its crusade against dogmatism in all its forms and philosophical manifestations.  Readers of the article will be relieved to know that at least one student was able to complete the program offered by the Department of Philosophy doubt free and dogmatically unscathed.  Mr. Nathan Smith rose to the challenge presented to him by his professors at Gonzaga, discarded his former “unexamined” beliefs and reached the conclusion that atheism was the only intellectually valid option.  The article does not indicate if the members of the philosophy department offered any serious challenge to Mr. Smith’s newly acquired dogmatic faith or that they were disappointed in the philosophical conclusions he reached after completing his studies at their feet; quite to the contrary, Mr. Smith is used as an example of one of the programs successes.  Poor Alice, the second year engineering major who clings to her Catholic beliefs in the hopelessly naïve assumption that her beliefs are supported by sound reasons, is considered the stubborn, unthinking student that presents such a challenge to the professors of the Department.  There is hope, in fact there is strong reason to suppose, that after sufficient exposure to the courses provided by professors Kries, Di Maria et al, this young woman will renounce her former unexamined beliefs and conclude, along with Mr. Smith, that atheism is the more rational approach.  At the Gonzaga University’s Department of Philosophy success is measured one student at a time.

Then

Prior to the deconstruction of the Catholic Faith in the aftermath of Vatican II and the corrosive effect of the philosophical and theological innovations of de Chardin, Lubac, Rhaner and, dare I mention, Josef Ratzinger, the goal of the Philosophy Department at a Jesuit College was to remove doubt, not to encourage it, to demonstrate the clarity of Catholic dogmatic truth by exposing each to the light of reason, not to challenge your faith but to support it.  Logic was a tool to be used in the pursuit of truth and no one seriously doubted the usefulness of this tool.  In Epistemology we learned that the images produced by our senses reflected a real world that existed independent of our own minds and we explored the limits of such knowledge.  In Metaphysics we were taught the nature of that reality and, among other important ideas, that the existence of contingent beings implied a creator.  Moral Theology examined the basic tenants of Catholic dogma in light of the metaphysical truths we had learned in that earlier course.  Rational Psychology examined the soul in relation to the body, especially on its relationship to the mind.  Ethics provided the guidelines for leading a moral life in view of the Philosophical and Theological truths that we had established by all our previous studies.  At the time of my matriculation at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia  (quite a long time ago and, in view of the radical devolution of the moral and cultural content of our society, in a galaxy far, far away) all students were required to take at least twenty-four credits in Philosophy along with sixteen credits in Theology.  The primary and overriding goal of the entire curricula was to form intelligent Catholic young men, proud of their faith and equipped to defend it against attack, explain it to the doubtful, and use it to encourage the morally weak.  Apparently, the current goal of the Jesuits of Gonzaga University is to create doubt and disillusionment, to weaken the Faith of its students, and to add their small contribution to the enlargement of the moral cesspool and intellectual wasteland that Western Civilization has become.  

Thank you Mr. Kozin!

See ya after!

Dani

As Doctor had described it...

The tree of universality as a pac man that engulfs the next division completely. Thought I would complete that lovely visual.

Hopefully I will see you all in class tomorrow!

Dani

The Tree of Universality

Thought it would be nice to share a picture of Aristotle, since we seem to chat about him a lot during class. So there he is, The Father of Logic. Should I keep that lower case? I don't know...

Some quick history on him that we covered is that he lived in Macedonia, ca. 384 BC-322 BC. His dad was a physician to King Philip II. He was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Wow. Even though we know these things its still pretty impressive to realize that. History lesson over.
Definition is what we were trying to discuss, despite all of the necessary digressions that always end up taking place! Definition is a method of classification or categorization. While Plato's teaching/belief was that all we can truly know are mathematical essences, ideal things, moral values, Aristotle that came up with the idea that we CAN understand natural reality, by thinking using universal terms, void of all particulars. In fact, Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas all say that this ability, to step back from the word and look at it in ever more general/universal terms, is the mark that distinguishes man from beast. It is the reason we can think! I think Dr. said it was Thomas who went so far as to say that our ability to know universals is proof of the immortality of the soul, because we have the ability to transcend everything material, and therefore a part of us must transcend everything material as well.
So how do universals help us to make definitions? Using the tree of universality, and the hierarchy of being, we can make a statement , including a subject and a predicate, that states that S is P. When you predicate P of S, there is a certain order of universality. You can only predicate a term of equal or greater universality of a term of equal or lesser universality.

Below I have added a "tree of universality" that is pretty similar to the one we took down in class. Substance is the broadest, or most universal division, because everything that is, IS, or has substance. Then comes Body, and here we had one small addition, that body was either natural or artificial. Natural was divided into living, non living etc... all the way to the individual men, Peter and Paula! :) ( We needed to have both a man and a woman...) The funny thing is, the individual men are the only really existing things of the whole tree. All of these more universal divisions, universalities are ideas that man has created in order to be able to define.

An example of this system of universalities is very simple. A trout is a fish. An unmarried man is a bachelor. An example of equal universality is that Man is rational. The key is that you cannot predicate an individual substance of another individual substance. One cannot say that Peter is Paul. One can only say that Peter is a man and that Paul is a man. And so you cannot define any individual. Divisions between universalities include exhaustive and non exhaustive. Anything that negates, as I just have, is considered an exhaustive division.  You can start with a big universal, and define using lesser and lesser universals before you arrive at any particular.

Homework was to come up with your own tree of universlaities, going form most umiversal to lesser and lesser universals. And also to comment on this article that was published in a student newspaper of Gonzaga's. A pretty frightening reality.

http://www.gonzagabulletin.com/news/article_5f700a42-fd3a-11e1-a2f2-0019bb30f31a.html

See ya after!
Thanks for reading.

Dani

An Introduction

Our first logic class has come and gone. Thank you all for coming, and thank you Doctor, for teaching it!

An inspiration, perhaps, for the title of this blog was the title of the book we will be referring to: Fundamentals of Reasoning: A Logic Book by Robert M. Johnson, 4th edition.

The intended progression of the class is to begin with the art of logic, followed by the study of natural theology, and finishing with apologetics. In this blog I will try to recount the major items discussed in class, perhaps in a digestible order for a reader/onlooker; pertinent and appropriate comments/insights/discoveries are very welcome.

Doctor began introducing us to what is Natural Theology. It is defined as the attempt to understand the existence and attributes of God, and His relation with His creatures, using our human reason alone. Vatican I proclaimed as dogma that there are indeed some truths of the Catholic Faith that can be known by our natural reason alone; for these truths to be known, Faith is not required. Examples of these truths which can be discovered by natural reason are: the existence and nature of God, the immortality of the soul, that men are judged, that good is rewarded and evil punished.
Natural Theology is different from Revealed Theology in that God is the Object of Natural Theology, while He reveals Himself as the Subject of Revealed Theology, opens Himself up for us to see. An object is something that is definitively distinct from ourselves, something that we can look at, walk around, and describe. In the study of Natural Theology, God is that object, and that study tells man that there is only one God.

Until Vatican II, Thomistic reasoning had a monopoly on colleges and universities here in the United States. The Catholic Church had kept the principles of rational/logical thought alive until the 1960's. With the Second Vatican Council, all of the attempts of the Church to translate Thomistic thought into usable and understandable sources for interested and eager students were flushed down the toilet, and the age of doubt began. Logical thinking is no longer a part of modern curriculum, though it served mankind well from the time of ancient Greece until the early 1900's. Talk about reinventing the wheel!

The trivium, or the first three of the seven liberal arts taught in ancient times, were Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Grammar, the art and study of language, learning how words are put together. Rhetoric, the art of speaking well, so as to convince others, because knowledge and sound reasoning are meant to be shared. Where does logic fit in? It seems a selfish art, for it is the creation of one's own orderly thought processes. The formal definition: The art of reasoning well, so as to produce true and valid conclusions from true premises.

The human mind wants and needs truth, and has the ability to recognize truth though judgements based on sense perceptions that are true. The example we used in class was the dry erase board, of which was said: the board is white. The class agreed that this was a true statement, but what made it true? One of the most basic philosophy definitions is that truth is the matching of the mind to reality, or the correspondence of the mind to reality. What man perceives with his senses, unless there is an actual deformity of the organ itself, must be true, and this is the basis of all Thomistic thought, and indeed the basis of any conversation, discussion, or argument that can be had. Disagreement on the fundamentals of what is real was the only option for the modern philosophers, and so they chose to say that we cannot really know anything, and that the board may not be white at all, in spite of everyone's perception.

We know truth or falsity by looking at reality and forming a judgment. Validity and invalidity are a different story. A conclusion is valid when it necessarily follows from the premises, and invalid if it does not necessarily follow from the premises. Logical reasoning culminates in the syllogism, an argument made up of three propositions. The most famous syllogism is that if Aristotle, who said:

"All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal." 

 

A true and valid argument is made up true and valid propositions, but how are these propositions to be understood? What are they made up of? Words.

And so it will be the first object of our study of logic to study words and how to come to properly define and fully understand words, for they are the raw ingredients of logic.
The second object will be the study of propositions, putting the words together into true statements.
And the third object, and one that I am definitely anticipating, is the study of the argument as a whole.

So much to look forward to and so much to ponder. Development of the discussion is encouraged, as well as keeping your eyes and ears open for interesting anecdotes or sources.

Always remember: As Catholics we are not, nor do we wish to be considered blind believers! We hold a Faith based on reason!