Is Fideism inseparable from Reason?

[Birdmanman]

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, we see that Fideism can be somewhat defined as:

A philosophical term meaning a system of philosophy or an attitude of mind, which, denying the power of unaided human reason to reach certitude, affirms that the fundamental act of human knowledge consists in an act of faith, and the supreme criterion of certitude is authority.

Fideism, in whatever sense it was condemned by The Church, must be false, so any statement I make below supporting Fideism is flawed or false, and made only to help present my question, do not take anything I say below as true or as fact unless it is personally known to you or taught by The Church to be true and factual:

It would seem that some of the most fundamental points of reason, that I exist, that others exist, that reason exists, or that I should trust reason, are in a sense based on faith or a belief. For example, to show I exist, many might say “I think therefore I am”, but if you do not believe or trust (that is, have faith, in the non-theological-virtue sense) that you are the one thinking, or that you are able to think, or that what you are doing is actually thinking, or that nothingness does not think, then it seems you will have no proof of your own existence, nor will you believe you have any proof.

Likewise with Practical Reason, we begin by accepting a basic moral axiom as true, but what reason do we have to accept a basic moral axiom as true? “Some things are morally good” may be quite basic, but what process of inductive reasoning can give us certainty of the truth of this moral axiom, without relying on the belief that we have a thing called Practical Reason, or that we have the capacity to make Moral evaluations?

If belief in Reason is prior to Reason, is that not Fideism?

 

[wmw]

I think this is very closely related to free will. It’s like a dimension that we can move along.

I’ll use “accept” because I use the word “belief” as that which there is good reason to accept not just something that I can imagine or conditionally accept for the sake of a train of argument or a story.

We can doubt our way until we are unsure that anything truly exists.
We can accept our way to merry fantasy stories of talking animals.

To my thinking this is an extreme range of free will; this human ability to move to either or even both directions and points in between total doubt or acceptance on any given subject. To accept either direction as the only “truth” is to defy reason and to say we cannot know is to abandon reason. You see you must accept the rationality of total doubt to doubt everything or accept the rationality that all can be true if you just imagine it hard enough to be in total acceptance.

With reason we can make a decision; without reason we would be hopelessly lost. Yes, decisions can be provisional and not as sure as others, but we are limited creatures and must weigh the evidence from our own understanding and must weigh our doubts and acceptance with our own imperfect ability to gather the evidence and reason it out and do so with the help of all around us and those who wrote before us.

 

[Birdmanman]

Thanks for responding, wmw!

So, from how I understand your post, Free Will, the ability to accept or reject, is an aspect of Reason (sort of) that is prior to belief (acceptance itself).

Example: If we do not accept as true that we have the ability to accept things as true, I have accepted the negative of this statement as true, or I have accepted the difference between the two options as a true difference, which is still technically an ‘act’ of accepting something as true.

We know with certainty from reason that we can know from reason. If we cannot know, we cannot know that we cannot know, and to know that we have the ability to either know or not know (principle of non-contradiction) is still to know something (about contradiction), and proves a priori that we can know. No belief that reasoning really exists is required to know this basic aspect of what we call reasoning.

I think this handles my question; belief or faith (in the non-theological-virtue sense) is not required as a fundamental act of human knowledge. However, I would say that belief in the actual existence of other humans is required to escape from Solipsism.

 

[wmw]

Well, my goal was never to prove reason or that knowing exists, but your follow up statement that if there is none it would be contradictory to any reason or logic; so, I don’t find any faults with that proof.

I’m not sure from your last sentence if you are using my definition of “belief” as a rational decision; therefore, you do have plenty of reason to believe other people are real or if you are saying you need some other authority to conclude people are real?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, we see that Fideism can be somewhat defined as:

Fideism, in whatever sense it was condemned by The Church, must be false, so any statement I make below supporting Fideism is flawed or false, and made only to help present my question, do not take anything I say below as true or as fact unless it is personally known to you or taught by The Church to be true and factual:

It would seem that some of the most fundamental points of reason, that I exist, that others exist, that reason exists, or that I should trust reason, are in a sense based on faith or a belief. For example, to show I exist, many might say “I think therefore I am”, but if you do not believe or trust (that is, have faith, in the non-theological-virtue sense) that you are the one thinking, or that you are able to think, or that what you are doing is actually thinking, or that nothingness does not think, then it seems you will have no proof of your own existence, nor will you believe you have any proof.

Likewise with Practical Reason, we begin by accepting a basic moral axiom as true, but what reason do we have to accept a basic moral axiom as true? “Some things are morally good” may be quite basic, but what process of inductive reasoning can give us certainty of the truth of this moral axiom, without relying on the belief that we have a thing called Practical Reason, or that we have the capacity to make Moral evaluations?

If belief in Reason is prior to Reason, is that not Fideism?

That we can know the world we live in as it really is, is a self evident fact, you cannot prove it, you just accept it. Otherwise neither our lives nor anything in the universe would make sense. I suppose you could call it an " act of faith " in a certain sense. But not in the same sense as the act of faith we place in the facts of Revelation or the Doctirne of the Faith as taught by the Church.

Too much introspection isn’t good for you. If you want some solid philosophical insight go to St. Thomas. I recomment ’ Aquinas ’ and ’ The Last Superstition ’ ( Just skip pg 146 of L.S., may be morally troublesome).

 

[Linusthe2nd]

That we can know the world we live in as it really is, is a self evident fact, you cannot prove it, you just accept it. Otherwise neither our lives nor anything in the universe would make sense. I suppose you could call it an " act of faith " in a certain sense. But not in the same sense as the act of faith we place in the facts of Revelation or the Doctirne of the Faith as taught by the Church.

Too much introspection isn’t good for you. If you want some solid philosophical insight go to St. Thomas. I recomment ’ Aquinas ’ and ’ The Last Superstition ’ ( Just skip pg 146 of L.S., may be morally troublesome).

I tried to edit my post but too late. I wanted to add that to trust in the certitude of reasoning powers is not " Fideism " as condemned by the Church.

Fideism as condemned by the Church, is the distrust some have in the ability of reason to come to a certain knowledge of God’s existence through the things He has made and come to a basic knowledge of the moral law and the reasonableness of a Divine Revelation and the reasonableness of the Tenants of Faith by reflecting on the world in which we live. According to Fideism, as condemned, the certitude of God’s existence and Divine Revelation, moral law, Tenents of Faith, etc. are had only by an act of faith in the authority of the Church, or on some other authority.

Not condemned is the condition of those of weak intellect and children who cannot exercise reason sufficiently to arrive at these truths and must accept them on the authority of Parents, Church, a trusted friend, etc. I don’t know if people who are just too lazy to think are excused or not, Ha, Ha.

 

[Birdmanman]

Thanks for the help, Linus and wmw.

Just to clarify Linus, when you say Fideism distrusts the ability of man by reason to understand the reasonableness of Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith, you mean also that the opposite is untrue as well, that we can come to accept Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith by reason and not by faith. That is, for Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith, we must, basically by definition, have Faith in these to consider them true, though our reason may be used to show that accepting the Tenets of Faith and Divine Revelation is not contradictory to reason, and we may have proofs of Revelation through external signs (miracles), though the proofs themselves do not make it a necessity of reason to accept the Catholic Faith.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Thanks for the help, Linus and wmw.

Just to clarify Linus, when you say Fideism distrusts the ability of man by reason to understand the reasonableness of Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith, you mean also that the opposite is untrue as well, that we can come to accept Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith by reason and not by faith. That is, for Divine Revelation and the Tenets of Faith, we must, basically by definition, have Faith in these to consider them true, though our reason may be used to show that accepting the Tenets of Faith and Divine Revelation is not contradictory to reason, and we may have proofs of Revelation through external signs (miracles), though the proofs themselves do not make it a necessity of reason to accept the Catholic Faith.

No. what I said was that we can with certitude come to know that God exists through reflection on the world around us, by reason we can learn many things about the nature of the God we understand exists, and that there is a moral law, and that it is perfectly reasonable that this God would reveal Himself through Revelation and that it is thus reasonable to see that, even though we may not be able to reason to all the facts of this Revelation, we can see that they are reasonable ( that it is not unreasonable to accept them on Faith on the authority of the Church whose existence and authority is reasonable).

 

[wmw]

No. what I said was that we can with certitude come to know that God exists through reflection on the world around us, by reason we can learn many things about the nature of the God we understand exists, and that there is a moral law, and that it is perfectly reasonable that this God would reveal Himself through Revelation and that it is thus reasonable to see that, even though we may not be able to reason to all the facts of this Revelation, we can see that they are reasonable ( that it is not unreasonable to accept them on Faith on the authority of the Church whose existence and authority is reasonable).

The statement that God’s Revelation is “perfectly reasonable” I’m in agreement. Now, as our PO is in the habit of doing, lets flip it upside down. So, is it unreasonable for people to contend that God does not exist? I think the question has more to do with whether people have all the current facts on the Big Bang.

One being that the Big Bang is only evident to have happened once and second the rarity of the precise values of the cosmological constants (let alone the very structure of the laws of physics). These arguments are well presented at magisreasonfaith.org/.

With the weight of all this information I start to think it must be an act of great doubt similar to doubting that the Earth is close to 4 billion years old to continue to hold to the idea that the universe came to exist and be formed by random chance. Still, there are quite a few intelligent people that either believe the world is about 6,000 years old or that only random chance accounts for our existence and almost none are both. That is why I’m so fascinated with the idea that people have such a wide range of doubt to acceptance and so many people of rather high education come to believe such wildly different concepts.

 

[Birdmanman]

The statement that God’s Revelation is “perfectly reasonable” I’m in agreement. Now, as our PO is in the habit of doing, lets flip it upside down. So, is it unreasonable for people to contend that God does not exist? I think the question has more to do with whether people have all the current facts on the Big Bang.

One being that the Big Bang is only evident to have happened once and second the rarity of the precise values of the cosmological constants (let alone the very structure of the laws of physics). These arguments are well presented at magisreasonfaith.org/.

With the weight of all this information I start to think it must be an act of great doubt similar to doubting that the Earth is close to 4 billion years old to continue to hold to the idea that the universe came to exist and be formed by random chance. Still, there are quite a few intelligent people that either believe the world is about 6,000 years old or that only random chance accounts for our existence and almost none are both. That is why I’m so fascinated with the idea that people have such a wide range of doubt to acceptance and so many people of rather high education come to believe such wildly different concepts.

I would agree that if reason can lead us to certain (not just “a certain” but “truly certain”) knowledge of God’s existence, which it can (see Kreeft, Feser, Craig, Aquinas, Plantinga, this forum, etc.), then it is unreasonable to deny the existence of God.

Discussing why denying God is unreasonable, and the ways in which reason can assure us certainly of God’s existence would be rather off-topic , if you would like to open a new thread or something I’d be happy to join.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

The statement that God’s Revelation is “perfectly reasonable” I’m in agreement. Now, as our PO is in the habit of doing, lets flip it upside down. So, is it unreasonable for people to contend that God does not exist? I think the question has more to do with whether people have all the current facts on the Big Bang.

One being that the Big Bang is only evident to have happened once and second the rarity of the precise values of the cosmological constants (let alone the very structure of the laws of physics). These arguments are well presented at magisreasonfaith.org/.

With the weight of all this information I start to think it must be an act of great doubt similar to doubting that the Earth is close to 4 billion years old to continue to hold to the idea that the universe came to exist and be formed by random chance. Still, there are quite a few intelligent people that either believe the world is about 6,000 years old or that only random chance accounts for our existence and almost none are both. That is why I’m so fascinated with the idea that people have such a wide range of doubt to acceptance and so many people of rather high education come to believe such wildly different concepts.

I don’t know if it is reasonable for people to say that God doesn’t exist or not. Certainly many people these days do but I suspect that many are just looking for an excuse to escape responsibility for their life styles and many have been indoctrinated by clever " intellectuals " taking advantage of the vast ignorance that exists today.

I have seen the Magis site but that is a little too much science for me. Who knows whether or not there was a big bang or not. If you stick with St. Thomas you don’t have to worry about it. See Edward Feser.

Good luck.

 

[wmw]

I don’t know if it is reasonable for people to say that God doesn’t exist or not. Certainly many people these days do but I suspect that many are just looking for an excuse to escape responsibility for their life styles and many have been indoctrinated by clever " intellectuals " taking advantage of the vast ignorance that exists today.

I have seen the Magis site but that is a little too much science for me. Who knows whether or not there was a big bang or not. If you stick with St. Thomas you don’t have to worry about it. See Edward Feser.

Good luck.

I think of St. Thomas’s arguments as proofs of pure logic. I think may times I’ve confused being rational (completely based on reason) with being purely logical. I think this at least a part of the Fideism confusion.

I do think that pure logic needs an underpinning of initial assumptions/basic truths whatever you want to call them. I’m saying that Kant followed this path and looked for something that he was logically absolutely sure about and could only find his own thoughts.

I think that rationality is not deducing and being convinced by proof of things to the point of absolute certainty. Otherwise, we sit as Kant at the blank canvas of our mind alone and distrust everything our senses assert to us, but it is making informed choices based on the evidence that our senses present. If something has 1/10^10000 chance of being wrong it is not logically provable, but it is so likely that it is reasonable to believe it and unreasonable to not to believe it.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I think of St. Thomas’s arguments as proofs of pure logic. I think may times I’ve confused being rational (completely based on reason) with being purely logical. I think this at least a part of the Fideism confusion.

I do think that pure logic needs an underpinning of initial assumptions/basic truths whatever you want to call them. I’m saying that Kant followed this path and looked for something that he was logically absolutely sure about and could only find his own thoughts.

I think that rationality is not deducing and being convinced by proof of things to the point of absolute certainty. Otherwise, we sit as Kant at the blank canvas of our mind alone and distrust everything our senses assert to us, but it is making informed choices based on the evidence that our senses present. If something has 1/10^10000 chance of being wrong it is not logically provable, but it is so likely that it is reasonable to believe it and unreasonable to not to believe it.

Of course there are levels of certainty. Certitude based on the facts of Revelation because God has revealed them and the facts of Catholic Doctrine because the Church teaches them are the highest degree. Certitude based on reason is less so because even the greatest minds can make mistakes. Kant, Decartes, Hume, Lock and that whole crowd have been thoroughly refuted. So it is evident that as far as reason goes, the more you distrust you ability to accurately observe the universe and draw valid conclusions the more likely you are to wind up in a universe that has no meaning, a kind of make believe child’s dream. People are so good at fooling themselves.

 

[Franciscanguy]

Good stuff. This is a great place to talk about the sort of meta-issue here. The question you are raising is one of epistemology- the study of how we know what we know. One of the classic articulations of an answer to this is the “I Think therefore I am” from Descartes. This, because of how Descartes gets there and what it actually means, creates 500 years of doubt of knowledge. All kinds of people have tried to understand it. No one’s got close. (You can see Descartes ideas in the Matrix. The idea of the Matrix is essentially the same as his “Evil Genius”)

Thomas’s “Proofs” have always been problematic for me. While they may offer an answer to the “that something is beyond us” it does not answer the “Who”. To rephrase that- Thomas is essentially saying God exists. I would answer to him “How should I understand that God to be?” The “Personhood” of God is not part of the so called 5 ways.

On fideism- I would say that true fideism is impossible. Humans are naturally curious and naturally ask questions. We reflexively doubt sometimes. Anslem said we are “faith seeking understanding”. I always loved that.

 

[wmw]

To say Thomas’ work only goes as far as God’s existence is a very huge understatement! His Summa goes very extensively into the nature of God. His Summa is arranged by questions; 611 of them. Here is an index list of questions 2 through 26 on “The One God”. Only question 2 is about His existence and contain the Proofs of God that are so heavily concentrated on in Philosophy 101 courses and popular debates:

Treatise on The One God (QQ[2-26])
Question. 2 - The Existence of God (Three Articles)
Question. 3 - OF THE SIMPLICITY OF GOD (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 4 - THE PERFECTION OF GOD (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 5 - OF GOODNESS IN GENERAL (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 6 - THE GOODNESS OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 7 - THE INFINITY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 8 - THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IN THINGS (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 9 - THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD (TWO ARTICLES)
Question. 10 - THE ETERNITY OF GOD (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 11 - THE UNITY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 12 - HOW GOD IS KNOWN BY US (THIRTEEN ARTICLES)
Question. 13 - THE NAMES OF GOD (TWELVE ARTICLES)
Question. 14 - OF GODS KNOWLEDGE (SIXTEEN ARTICLES)
Question. 15 - OF IDEAS (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 16 - OF TRUTH (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 17 - CONCERNING FALSITY (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 18 - THE LIFE OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 19 - THE WILL OF GOD (TWELVE ARTICLES)
Question. 20 - GOD’S LOVE (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 21 - THE JUSTICE AND MERCY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 22 - THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 23 - OF PREDESTINATION (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 24 - THE BOOK OF LIFE (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 25 - THE POWER OF GOD (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 26 - OF THE DIVINE BEATITUDE (FOUR ARTICLES)

 

[Linusthe2nd]

To say Thomas’ work only goes as far as God’s existence is a very huge understatement! His Summa goes very extensively into the nature of God. His Summa is arranged by questions; 611 of them. Here is an index list of questions 2 through 26 on “The One God”. Only question 2 is about His existence and contain the Proofs of God that are so heavily concentrated on in Philosophy 101 courses and popular debates:

Treatise on The One God (QQ[2-26])
Question. 2 - The Existence of God (Three Articles)
Question. 3 - OF THE SIMPLICITY OF GOD (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 4 - THE PERFECTION OF GOD (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 5 - OF GOODNESS IN GENERAL (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 6 - THE GOODNESS OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 7 - THE INFINITY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 8 - THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IN THINGS (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 9 - THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD (TWO ARTICLES)
Question. 10 - THE ETERNITY OF GOD (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 11 - THE UNITY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 12 - HOW GOD IS KNOWN BY US (THIRTEEN ARTICLES)
Question. 13 - THE NAMES OF GOD (TWELVE ARTICLES)
Question. 14 - OF GODS KNOWLEDGE (SIXTEEN ARTICLES)
Question. 15 - OF IDEAS (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 16 - OF TRUTH (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 17 - CONCERNING FALSITY (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 18 - THE LIFE OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 19 - THE WILL OF GOD (TWELVE ARTICLES)
Question. 20 - GOD’S LOVE (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 21 - THE JUSTICE AND MERCY OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 22 - THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD (FOUR ARTICLES)
Question. 23 - OF PREDESTINATION (EIGHT ARTICLES)
Question. 24 - THE BOOK OF LIFE (THREE ARTICLES)
Question. 25 - THE POWER OF GOD (SIX ARTICLES)
Question. 26 - OF THE DIVINE BEATITUDE (FOUR ARTICLES)

We look for good things from you.!!