Topics of Discussion:
When dealing with any experience, we must remember that it is always interpreted. This interpretation is of some particular event or chain of actions which we hold collectively in our mind which is what we refer to colloquially as "our experience," which is quite different from "the experience."
For example, if I perceive of blue, my eye sends a signal to my brain and interprets some light frequency on the visible spectrum, relaying the image blue to my mind. My mind in turn processes this all within a moment and I spit up "blue" before I've taken conscious time to really mull over the experience.
Likewise, if I do some action which might be considered "good" or "evil," I must first consider the experience. I might feel guilt from some action, which I can then deduce must be from some belief as the cause. This in turn makes me turn toward introspection in which I better discern this belief I have and search for the justification of it. Now, the action itself is a series of physical gestures, a particular set which I only hold to be "good" or "evil" because I subsume the action(s) under such principles. In short, it takes some intellectual concept of "good" or "evil" for one to label an experience as "good" or "evil." Thus, there is a judgment taking place in which both the universal classification and a particular instance are synthesized. What results is "our experience."
When speaking of experience as a form of knowledge we must be careful then to say "the experience" taught me something, for it alone is meaningless. Likewise, a concept with a particular instance does little good for us. A more intriguing question to ask might be -- Can an experience change a concept?
We are apt to say that through experience we refine our concepts. However, if this is the case, then by what concept was the experience subsumed? By what was the experience interpreted? By what did we come to make a judgment?
Now in one way we might experience things and build concepts based on the outcomes. What we then find is that there is already some sort of other concept at work by which we give outcomes values. For example, I experience the taste of a turkey burger with onions and I enjoy it very much. From this experience I decide that turkey burgers are "good." Vice versa, I experience my friend's wrath when I tell them that their hair looks funny, and call it "bad." In such an example pleasure has become the concept by which I subsume particular experiences under and by which I begin making value judgments. I might experience God and it is pleasurable and I might experience stealing candy from a child and find it pleasurable. Not to be a moral intuitionist, but assuming the former is good and the latter is evil, then I've found inconsistency with pleasure as my concept for judging particular experiences.
Or perhaps we speak of intentions. One in which I intend to help my friend by driving him to the store but it turns out I don't know how to drive, which ends with us in a wreck. Here I've acted out of goodwill but with willing ignorance. In another instance I might intend to wreck a man's life for vengeance but by some strange twist of fate I end up assisting him in finding a lost family member.
Experience alone is fruitless for moral questions. It can only be useful for something like natural laws in which we can derive the laws from repetition. Unfortunately, the moral law is not so easy to discern, for while we can act and observe how our actions affect persons, moral judgments seem to need to concern themselves with both the ends and the intentions of any action. And these two qualifications are what classifies a thing as being part of a concept or not.
A satisfactory answer would be that our experience can lead some concepts to contradiction. Perhaps in showing some potential problems with experience I've actually also showed how it might benefit us. Some experiences can show us contradictory concepts which we then logically ought to forgo. This then allows a time in which we can adopt a new concept and see if it is internally consistent, trying it in the fires of life's experiences. This does not go to mean that we build concepts from experiences though.
It would seem then that experience will either be subsumed under my concept of good and evil, already in me, resulting in what I call "my experiences," which only teach me things insofar as I already had something non-experiential to understand. I then filed the experience under a concept through reason, or it will run into contradiction and my understanding will reach out for a new concept, though empirical information helps me to make the judgment that the experience and the concept are contradictory. Thus, it is even a synthesis of the two as a judgment which tells me to stop using a certain concept and not the experience itself. And even though the experience is beneficial in showing a logically inconsistent concept, it does not form new concepts. It shows what is not, not what is.
B.
This leads me into propositional truths. Our concepts are expressed in our minds as propositions and even experience is interpreted into propositional form so that a judgment can occur. It is then propositions that allow us to discuss and discern what our concepts of morality exactly our, not only within ourselves but with others. The advantages are numerous, in that we can choose at any time to concern ourselves with our beliefs and justifications in an easily manageable format, as well as have the wisdom of others guide our searches for proper and truthful propositional concepts.
Hence, when we experience something, make our judgment based on concepts, we speak of the experience in propositional form, e.g. It was great, fantastic, depressing, green, dark, etc. When our judgments are complete and we speak of this concept-experiential fusion, what we call "our experiences," it is important then to understand two things: (1) "our experiences" does not mean taste, touch, smell, etc. but any event in which action is taking place in our lives (2) "our experiences" are things that we believe to be true with personal attachment. The first is so that we do not confuse scientific truths or strictly empirical claims with what we speak of when we discuss our lives. The second is so that we distinguish say mathematical claims from claims of faith.
C.
Take something like a creed for example. They are called creeds because of the latin credere. Furthermore, there is a historical difference in ideologies concerning the phrases "craedo que" and "craedo en." The former is to say that "I believe that" and the latter says "I believe in." These are two radically different claims.
D.
It is quite sad that some make the claim that "faith is more than propositional truths," without knowing what our forefathers have meant by this. Love of what the propositional truths mean is vital to faith. What our forefathers warned us was to fall in love with being right, of being able to discern, and forgetting application and learning to love such things. Unfortunately much of our contemporary church has taken it out of context and turned this essential part of faith into an anti-theology rant, supplicating it with moral intuition, fancying experience as an end-all-be-all. As a result there is a sort of intellectual apathy at best, hatred at worst, amongst our own community of the faithful. It doesn't help that some of our spiritual leaders have led the youth to war against history and intellectualism within the Church.
What we have then are poor judgments, those based on experience through some concept that merely points back at the experience as the way to classify things. It's quite silly to try and make a judgment about a particular by pointing to the particular itself, or even to try to point at the set of particulars for it results in impossibilities or empty tautologies. Either way we're left with a faith which is lacking a necessary component for the pious life.
A. Experience + Concept = JudgmentA.
B. Propositional Truths
C. Craedo en & Craedo que
D. Observations today
When dealing with any experience, we must remember that it is always interpreted. This interpretation is of some particular event or chain of actions which we hold collectively in our mind which is what we refer to colloquially as "our experience," which is quite different from "the experience."
For example, if I perceive of blue, my eye sends a signal to my brain and interprets some light frequency on the visible spectrum, relaying the image blue to my mind. My mind in turn processes this all within a moment and I spit up "blue" before I've taken conscious time to really mull over the experience.
Likewise, if I do some action which might be considered "good" or "evil," I must first consider the experience. I might feel guilt from some action, which I can then deduce must be from some belief as the cause. This in turn makes me turn toward introspection in which I better discern this belief I have and search for the justification of it. Now, the action itself is a series of physical gestures, a particular set which I only hold to be "good" or "evil" because I subsume the action(s) under such principles. In short, it takes some intellectual concept of "good" or "evil" for one to label an experience as "good" or "evil." Thus, there is a judgment taking place in which both the universal classification and a particular instance are synthesized. What results is "our experience."
When speaking of experience as a form of knowledge we must be careful then to say "the experience" taught me something, for it alone is meaningless. Likewise, a concept with a particular instance does little good for us. A more intriguing question to ask might be -- Can an experience change a concept?
We are apt to say that through experience we refine our concepts. However, if this is the case, then by what concept was the experience subsumed? By what was the experience interpreted? By what did we come to make a judgment?
Now in one way we might experience things and build concepts based on the outcomes. What we then find is that there is already some sort of other concept at work by which we give outcomes values. For example, I experience the taste of a turkey burger with onions and I enjoy it very much. From this experience I decide that turkey burgers are "good." Vice versa, I experience my friend's wrath when I tell them that their hair looks funny, and call it "bad." In such an example pleasure has become the concept by which I subsume particular experiences under and by which I begin making value judgments. I might experience God and it is pleasurable and I might experience stealing candy from a child and find it pleasurable. Not to be a moral intuitionist, but assuming the former is good and the latter is evil, then I've found inconsistency with pleasure as my concept for judging particular experiences.
Or perhaps we speak of intentions. One in which I intend to help my friend by driving him to the store but it turns out I don't know how to drive, which ends with us in a wreck. Here I've acted out of goodwill but with willing ignorance. In another instance I might intend to wreck a man's life for vengeance but by some strange twist of fate I end up assisting him in finding a lost family member.
Experience alone is fruitless for moral questions. It can only be useful for something like natural laws in which we can derive the laws from repetition. Unfortunately, the moral law is not so easy to discern, for while we can act and observe how our actions affect persons, moral judgments seem to need to concern themselves with both the ends and the intentions of any action. And these two qualifications are what classifies a thing as being part of a concept or not.
A satisfactory answer would be that our experience can lead some concepts to contradiction. Perhaps in showing some potential problems with experience I've actually also showed how it might benefit us. Some experiences can show us contradictory concepts which we then logically ought to forgo. This then allows a time in which we can adopt a new concept and see if it is internally consistent, trying it in the fires of life's experiences. This does not go to mean that we build concepts from experiences though.
It would seem then that experience will either be subsumed under my concept of good and evil, already in me, resulting in what I call "my experiences," which only teach me things insofar as I already had something non-experiential to understand. I then filed the experience under a concept through reason, or it will run into contradiction and my understanding will reach out for a new concept, though empirical information helps me to make the judgment that the experience and the concept are contradictory. Thus, it is even a synthesis of the two as a judgment which tells me to stop using a certain concept and not the experience itself. And even though the experience is beneficial in showing a logically inconsistent concept, it does not form new concepts. It shows what is not, not what is.
B.
This leads me into propositional truths. Our concepts are expressed in our minds as propositions and even experience is interpreted into propositional form so that a judgment can occur. It is then propositions that allow us to discuss and discern what our concepts of morality exactly our, not only within ourselves but with others. The advantages are numerous, in that we can choose at any time to concern ourselves with our beliefs and justifications in an easily manageable format, as well as have the wisdom of others guide our searches for proper and truthful propositional concepts.
Hence, when we experience something, make our judgment based on concepts, we speak of the experience in propositional form, e.g. It was great, fantastic, depressing, green, dark, etc. When our judgments are complete and we speak of this concept-experiential fusion, what we call "our experiences," it is important then to understand two things: (1) "our experiences" does not mean taste, touch, smell, etc. but any event in which action is taking place in our lives (2) "our experiences" are things that we believe to be true with personal attachment. The first is so that we do not confuse scientific truths or strictly empirical claims with what we speak of when we discuss our lives. The second is so that we distinguish say mathematical claims from claims of faith.
C.
Take something like a creed for example. They are called creeds because of the latin credere. Furthermore, there is a historical difference in ideologies concerning the phrases "craedo que" and "craedo en." The former is to say that "I believe that" and the latter says "I believe in." These are two radically different claims.
E.G.1 I believe that 2 + 2 = 4.I can argue craedo que God's exists in reality all day and perhaps make someone less sure of themselves, perhaps even consider religion a little more, but I cannot argue for "craedo en." This type of "belief in" a thing requires a lifetime of prayer, study, meditation, community, memory, and so forth. The summation of all this is that perhaps I grasp the concept for "good" and "evil" and am able to discern good acts from bad. Of course discerning and doing are quite different, but it's a step in the right direction. One must come to love what these propositions mean, what they stand for, not the words themselves.
E.G.2 I believe in my brother.
D.
It is quite sad that some make the claim that "faith is more than propositional truths," without knowing what our forefathers have meant by this. Love of what the propositional truths mean is vital to faith. What our forefathers warned us was to fall in love with being right, of being able to discern, and forgetting application and learning to love such things. Unfortunately much of our contemporary church has taken it out of context and turned this essential part of faith into an anti-theology rant, supplicating it with moral intuition, fancying experience as an end-all-be-all. As a result there is a sort of intellectual apathy at best, hatred at worst, amongst our own community of the faithful. It doesn't help that some of our spiritual leaders have led the youth to war against history and intellectualism within the Church.
What we have then are poor judgments, those based on experience through some concept that merely points back at the experience as the way to classify things. It's quite silly to try and make a judgment about a particular by pointing to the particular itself, or even to try to point at the set of particulars for it results in impossibilities or empty tautologies. Either way we're left with a faith which is lacking a necessary component for the pious life.
