Knowledge

[blase6]

Let me begin by defining the words I will use:

Know: to be entirely certain that something is true because falsehood is impossible under the circumstances.

Believe: to hold something to be true because of positive evidence, it is reasonable, trust in one’s own or another’s judgement, et cetera.

So there are main ways we gain ideas of what exists, firstly, from the senses, secondly, from reported information, through media and communication. It is self-evident that we assume something to be true from these sources. However, we see that the second source gives us false ideas often, and in rare instances the first does. Because of these cases we cannot completely trust that we will be receiving true indications about anything.

Therefore, at least for human beings, nothing can be known, only believed. Obviously, it is foolish and unreasonable to believe something against positive evidence, but it cannot be completely determined to be true or false.

You might think that this conflicts with Catholic Faith, but for me, as long as I am as certain about the truth of the Catholic doctrines as I am certain that I or the world exists, I see no conflict.

Any thoughts?

 

[Abu]

blase6 #1
Therefore, at least for human beings, nothing can be known, only believed. Obviously, it is foolish and unreasonable to believe something against positive evidence, but it cannot be completely determined to be true or false.

From Fr Thomas Dubay, Faith And Certitude, Ignatius Press, 1995 – this is relevant.

“They attain truth who love it. One of the chief immoralities is an indifference to truth. It is worse than sexual perversion, said Jesus Himself. Those who reject His representatives are more guilty than perverted Sodom and Gomorrah (Mt 10:14-15). Indifference to truth is nothing less than and indifference to reality and to the Author of reality…One of the too little noticed traits of the saints is their utter commitment to truth.” (p 189-190).

Objective certitude “has three traits. First it is an enlightened assent. One not only knows something, but he also knows why he knows it, and he sees the objective reasons why it is so….[Second] certitude excludes a reasonable fear of being wrong…[Third] certitude is unchangeable. Because it is based on objective reality it is permanent.

Doubt and Difficulty
“A negative doubt is a close relation to ignorance. An opinion is an assent of the mind but with a well-founded fear that the opposite may be true.” With an unhealthy doubt, “a person suspends judgment even when the evidence is conclusive and completely adequate. This is skepticism, intellectual cowardice……A difficulty is a problem, a not-seeing how two realities fit together….a situation we do not yet understand and perhaps will never understand. It is a limitation on our knowledge, a passing or permanent limitation.”

John Henry Cardinal Newman said “ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.” (Apologia pro vita Sua). [Fr Dubay, op. cit. p 82-4].

 

[Ad_Orientem]

I would just add that the virtue of faith, whereby we believe all that God has revealed, is infused and supernatural, so it is not just a matter of reasoning or weighing evidence in the mind as with other branches of knowledge. We do not believe in the Trinity, for example, because we have arrived at this doctrine through a long process of reasoning, but because God Incarnate told us it is so. That said, the intellect is involved insofar as we reason that what God has revealed must be true. And we can of course reason why Christ must be God, though in the end we believe He is because of an infused virtue, a gift.

See CCC 156-159.