Actually it does matter who you are, Ender. We can’t use the same arguments against a radical sceptic as we can against someone who accepts that we have a lot of perfectly legitimate natural knowledge. Arguments aren’t free floating absolutes - they are responses to particular questions, problems, difficulties, etc. If we don’t know your specific questions/problems/difficulties, we can’t offer you a helpful response to these difficulties.
A more accurate statement:
Betterave
Let’s start with this: you invented premise 2; it is not something I wrote. You made another invalid assumption from something I said. Go back to the post on which you base this premise and quote exactly what I said and let’s go from there.
You will know what my “specific questions/problems/difficulties” are when I state them; there is no reasonable way to assume you can know them from knowing something personal about me. The reason I am so reluctant to give out any personal information is that it merely encourages invalid assumptions having nothing to do with the statements I make.
From your post 154:
Ender, please! Your specific problems are personal. If I am to know what your specific problems are, it will ipso facto be because I know something personal about you!
This doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Even if you’re working from a skeptic’s approach, it is based on your personal take on what a skeptic will/should say. (Skeptics are real people too, who always bring their own specific difficulties to the table.)
Hi DP,
What part of* “we differ over what it means to ‘know’’ something”* is not clear? I even asked for clarification as to how Syntax was using the word because obviously we were using it differently. Could you really not understand my position? I addressed the issue in a number of posts:
Betterave
You’re missing the point and avoiding answering my question. I showed you where I got premise 2 from. It seems pretty straightforward to me. There are other issues we can get to, but not if you can’t even tell me whether or not you see that you committed yourself to premise 2 with what you said (the part I bolded). And if you want to claim that you did not, why not? What did you really mean to say? How should I have interpreted “we don’t know what is morally right”? Why would you claim that “It is not true that we can know objective moral truths by the use of natural reason” is not your view, but continue to say things like “we don’t know what is morally right”? I can see you don’t need to say the latter, based on some of the things you’ve said, but let’s just get clear on why you shouldn’t, then maybe you’ll stop!What part of* “we differ over what it means to ‘know’’ something”* is not clear? I even asked for clarification as to how Syntax was using the word because obviously we were using it differently. Could you really not understand my position? I addressed the issue in a number of posts:
*I don’t doubt that even the unformed conscience can in large measure determine right from wrong *(147)
We’re using the word “know” differently. I do not know the Church speaks the truth. I believe she does but I cannot know it. (161)
If we can know all of this, what is the role of faith? If we know something is true we don’t need faith to believe it. (163)
*
Man cannot know everything about morality merely through his own reason* (169)
Clearly the question of knowing and believing is not as either/or as you attempt to make it- what are you talking about?], as even if you assume that what you discern through reason is something you therefore “know” there are still things one cannot discern through reason alone. Even with your definition there is no way to say all things can be known, otherwise we wouldn’t need a Church to interpret the word of God for us.
I think the question is much more complicated than you imply. Explain, for example, how you “know” that murder is always immoral.
Ender
Abu
I assumed you understand what the phrase “we are using the word differently” meant. The word we used is the same; the meaning is not. I questioned whether it was appropriate to say one could know something if it could not be proven. In my use of the term, we cannot know what is moral because it cannot be proven, but that is not how the Church uses the term. We may be using the same word but don’t pretend you don’t realize we’re using it differently.
How perverse at this stage. God-given natural law which Adam knew far above our fallen nature, as well as specifically given limits by God. But pride comes before the fall and with his free-will he chose evil. Just like today; and even what is clear is said to be opaque by perverse unreality today.
I assumed you understand what the phrase “we are using the word differently” meant. The word we used is the same; the meaning is not. I questioned whether it was appropriate to say one could know something if it could not be proven. In my use of the term, we cannot know what is moral because it cannot be proven, but that is not how the Church uses the term [whuh…???]. We may be using the same word but don’t pretend you don’t realize we’re using it differently ******.
So you want to be a Catholic and accept it when the Church says “we can know…” - but you want to claim that you have carved out a new concept of ‘knowing’ that you want to discuss. So my reductio ad absurdum of your position was all a big equivocation. I was mixing your sense of know and the Church’s sense of know in the first and second premises? Have I got that right?
So you want to say that the Church thinks that we know, but cannot prove, that morality exists? Why do you want to say this? Where do you find this other sense of ‘knowing’ being taught by the Church, a sense that doesn’t require ‘proof’?
Or maybe you’re using ‘proof’ in a special sense too, different from the sense used by the Church? What do you mean by ‘proof’?
Yes, since what I asked several pages ago was whether it was proper to say one could know something if one could not prove it, that is exactly what I meant. JPII talks about the two senses of “knowing” in Fides et Ratio:
Abu
If atheists claim not to believe in God, they have no basis for believing in reason and the proofs for God’s existence. If they deny God’s existence they have no reason to believe in the natural law, and make their own morality. As against this phobia, Dr Wiker explains: “We are rational, moral animals—the only rational, moral animals. We are the one animal that must think even to survive, and the one animal whose actions are not governed by instincts but are judged by standards of good and evil.”