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RE: Higher Order Thinking: An Introduction

in #education7 years ago

If, as you say, no one understands the true or right definition of "rationality," then it is strange for you to refer to my position as "not very rational."

But there is an important distinction to make here, namely: you can know what truth is even while lacking an exhaustive understanding of that truth; so knowing what the truth is does not necessarily stop open inquiry. Certainly this is true with respect to God, who is (aside from revelation) infinitely beyond anything we can think, say, or write. Your point about the limits of human understanding is thus well taken.

In fact, that is what attracts me to the religious mindset! Sincere religion makes one alive to the mystery of things, keeping in check mankind's tendency to "know it all."

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If, as you say, no one understands the true or right definition of "rationality," then it is strange for you to refer to my position as "not very rational."

lol

You might be starting to get the idea, ax.

Opinions aren't true, no matter how hard we might want them to be.

There are many different ways to describe a concept, many shades of meaning, none of which is absolutely true. We each have general (often quite vague) ideas about what things mean.

Otherwise we couldn't converse.

In formal language there are no vague ideas. In natural tongues practically everything is vague. That's why philosophy and empirical science are useful, because they're our only tools for cutting through the crap.

you can know what truth is even while lacking an exhaustive understanding of that truth; so knowing what the truth is does not necessarily stop open inquiry...Your point about the limits of human understanding is thus well taken.

Knowing what 'truth' is (i.e . correspondence) is easy. Knowing that we don't know the certain truth about things makes open inquiry possible.

In fact, that is what attracts me to the religious mindset! Sincere religion makes one alive to the mystery of things, keeping in check mankind's tendency to "know it all."

To me, the Absolute must remain mysterious; I trust in Being and I live in mystery. To me talking about the unknowable distracts people from things that are more important than discussing the nature of deities. That's why I emphasize the importance of understanding the limits of human understanding.

If you want to cut the crap, learn philosophy!

We both have a sense for what is rational (and what is not), even if we lack a formal definition of rationality. Mathematics is much larger than formal language, which is what Gödel proved. There are certainly obscurities in mathematics.

I heartily disagree with your campaign against rationality and truth. By the way, what I have proposed as truth (which, as I said, may not be interesting to you) has nothing to do with correspondence or coherence; it is transcendent in the sense that it goes beyond methods used in science or philosophy.

When the Lord told Pilate he was the truth, Pilate responded philosophically, "What is truth?" You are in Pilate's camp, I suppose. But the philosophical denial of truth is just one way of disguising the Tyranny of Relativism, which always results in the use of force over reason (because it denies reason its critical role).

The practice of goodness is accompanied by a spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendor of spiritual beauty. Truth is beautiful in itself. Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect. But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltation of the soul, the mystery of God. Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos -- which both the child and the scientist discover -- 'from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,' 'for the author of beauty created them.' (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2500)

I don't campaign against rationality; you're mistaken about that.

I'm not in Pilate's camp.

I campaign against bullshit asserted by people who don't understand what's what.

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