Arising UK wrote:Why? What would convince you to change your ideas?
Excuse me for exclaiming that what convinces anyone of the ideas they hold is that - somewhere, somehow - they were convinced by a persuasive argument! If I have certain ideas, and if it appears that they are inflexible, or that I will not allow them to be flexed or made to lie flat like a Tijuana whore, it is because (I assume and understand) there is
metaphysical bedrock; that is, a sound structure on which ideas can/should be built. A sound structure of ideas to which my ideas have relationship. So, if this exists as possibility - and we certainly act as if it is when we assert that there are ideas worth having, and worth communicating - I must be ready to change my idea when you demonstrate that I should, and why I should, by your argument. Dialectic and rhetoric in the service of truth.
What 'essences' are these?
Well, if one is to take theism and metaphysical realism seriously, I suppose one would be forced to speak about the *meaning* behind the words we use, and the *value* that we seem constantly to refer to, or veer toward, or veer away from, as we rehearse these exchanges on fora like PN. We are either in a process of clarifying our meanings or one of declarification. At least I tend to see things in this way. I think that our 'predicates', as I am fond of saying, contain operative essences. To speak of essences is of course to refer to universals.
Why are you unwilling to allow the individual to construct their foundation upon what they like?
Well, that is a rather easy question to answer. You might as well have asked me if I should allow any person to invent their own meanings to the words that form our discourse. You could say that 10,000 people have every 'right' to refurbish every word and that everyone else must respect that, and even devote time to learning each person's private meaning-system. You could push the metaphor into any category and, I suggest, the metaphor will not work very well. If you pushed into
[paideia (education) you would have to say that each student should have the right to teach themselves. By saying this, you would essentially undermine the recognition of hierarchies which, in all other domains, you likely accept. You don't ask a child to repair your car or come up with a plan to build a nuclear reactor ... (etc., etc.)
As an example we have building codes that insist that if you are going to build a structure you have to use certain materials and to build according to certain standard. There are trained and qualified experts to whom you must turn to get instruction and guidance. Why is this done? Why is it insisted on? Surely you don't want me to explain what is obvious. Yet you seem to imply that an individual has the 'right' to construct an edifice of meaning out of whatever spurious, personal, random stuff as his personal whim shall dictate, and I suggest that this must be considered flatly absurd on the face.
The question then becomes: What is the
predicate that drives and determines your understanding that they should be able to 'construct their foundation upon what they like'? While it is true that we are all quite certainly 'in contingency' we in fact rely on 'solidities' all the time. Or as I said, we are either working in the direction of establishing and bringing our solidities into focus, or we are making them fuzzy and blurring the lines of distinction. I suggest that we are all under the spell of a mass-movement in thinking which feels it right and proper to blur distinctions, or even to do away with them, and to live within the recesses of contingency. But there is an alternative: the discovery and the building-up of
solidities, that is, discovering/rediscovering metaphysical bedrock.
This 'value structure' and 'value essence', is this a belief in a 'God'?
You asked this question to refer to the fact that many people, even in secularised Europe, still 'believe in God', but I am going to abstract just the question:
- "This 'value structure' and 'value essence', is this a belief in a God?"
To answer this question, is, of course, to get right to the essence of what we are attempting to discuss here, or at least what I am attempting to discuss. To say 'I believe in God' is not really to say much of anything, is it? Yet to be able to speak about a structure of value that is part-and-parcel of the Kosmos to which we humans can build links and relationship, is I think what we are really talking about. So, behind the ability to arrive at strong and solid definitions, is the ability to build relationships to meaning, but to operate with the knowledge and assumption that definitions reflect and express real things, and real solidities of value, quickly shows itself as a
metaphysical question, and what then stands behind all metaphysics? What stands behind the 'possibility of meaning' or of sharing meaning in this world, and in all possible worlds?
So, to 'believe in God' is not really a very effective declaration. But to understand that value can enter our contingent world only through defined idea, and that idea in this sense is entirely metaphysical, and that something stands behind the metaphysic, is to approach the
essence of the conversation.
