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Part I Positivist Philosopher, or Sophist?
Thanks to the Processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is right before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively make him think about realities he cant touch or see. There have been sad cases amoung the Physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; dont let him get away from that invaluable "real life." But best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is "the result of modern investigation." Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!
- C.S. Lewis
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis masterfully crafts a correspondence from an Undersecretary for the Devil Screwtape to his nephew, a junior devil Woodworm that details the art of Temptation and the science of deception. Screwtape's first letter asserts that the underlying principle of temptation is to disregard the distinction between right and wrong or True and False but rather to persuade humans to think in terms of validity and soundness of arguments. Having blurred the lines between the Truth and the False, the devil can now persuade the absent-minded human to concentrate on "real issues" such as politics, economics, and current events; and consequently, disregard such disciplines as Philosophy, Theology, and Mathematics as merely theoretical concepts. Furthermore, man now looses perspective on reality and will ultimately digress from the universal reality to a personal reality where "man is the measure of all things." (Protagorus)
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Although Lewis wrote the letters with fictionist characters, the thoughts on deception and temptation are very much real not only in society but academia as well. Since the time of the Enlightenment or the "Age of Reason" as historians so foolishly call it, the great thinkers have been concerned about one thing, i.e. the practical. Modern thought has abandoned the natural concepts of Reality, Knowledge, and Being with relativism and subjectivism and emerged with new philosophies such as John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, Kant's idealism, William James' pragmatics, Nietzsche's nihilism, and Auguste Comte's positivism. These five theories are apart of a larger movement known as Modernism, which takes egregious misinterpretations of Ancient and Medieval Philosophers to their extremes. Although Comte's role is often over looked in Modernism, his impact has divided academia into two pieces, the sciences and the arts, and places sociology as the glue, which holds them all together. His ultimate goal is disprove Philosophy as Knowledge and claims it only the second process of making something Knowledge.
Auguste Comte was a radical French thinker who lived in the French Revolution and later served as an undersecretary to Cluade Henri Saint-Simon, a Utopian who often criticized the French King and Catholic Church as "parasites to society." In 18, they wrote Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society that coined the term "social physics" and established three stages of Knowledge. Comte would later replace "social physics" with sociology; however, "social physics" strived to discover the natural laws of human behaviour and progress as Physics strives to discover the laws of motion and change in the physical world. Comte would build on this principle independently and claim a hierarchy of the sciences.
Part II Comtes Epistemology
According to Comte and Sain-Simon, every science, that is, every branch of knowledge must pass through three stages that are the Theological stage, the Metaphysical Stage, and the Positivist Stage. Comte's theory was that "the study of development of human intelligence, in all di- rections and through all times, the discovery arises of a fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which had a solid foundation in proof, both in the facts of our organization and our historical orga-
nization." (Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy 5) This is to say that observing the history of man's thought will reveal how man achieves knowledge. For example, the law of gravity was conceived in Ancient times and people thought it feel because some deity willed it to be, or God wished it to fall. Then in medieval times, man thought that some- thing fell because it heavy in nature; therefore, the nature of something is the cause of its action. Finally, Newton uses scientific laws to prove that it is right or Positivism.
He also claims that this is evident in the history of ideologies. There are many ideologies in the Theological stage, less in the Metaphysical stage, and very few in the Positivist. Comte called this a "tendency towards unification" that is there are more explanations for less phenomena in the Theological stage while there are fewer explanations or methodologies for more actions in the Positivist stage. This tendency is a demonstration that positivism is the key to finding knowledge (Hume's argument against Inductive Reasoning).
Now, the question arises why is there a need for a hierarchy of knowing and how the Positive knowledge is superior to the Theological or in more explicit terms, how is Newton's Law of Gravity superior to God's will with regards to the falling rock. Comte compares the stages of Knowledge with human development because "the progress of the individual mind is an indirect evidence of that of the general mind" ( ibid.). Children often give fictitious or Theological reasons for events of the world; adolescence, abstract or Metaphysical; and adults, scientific or Positive. Since the adult stage is the highest stage in our human development, it must follow that scientific or Positive knowledge is the highest. Although Comte's pseudo-psychological-anthropological defense may appeal to the common man, it is a "comic book argument" and does not suffice for the most critical minds, i.e. the Philosophical mind.
At the heart of Comte's argument for Positive Philosophy is the idea of "controlling the phenomena." John Stuart Mill, a successor and critic of Comte, provides a simple yet profound syllogism for Comte's episte- mology. Assuming one isolates his mind from all previous Mathematical, Philosophical, or Theological enquiry, man only "knows" phenomena, i.e. experience, which is relative. Man cannot know the essence of any product but only the relation between two or more phenomena in terms progression or solitude. These relationships are constant or absolute, i.e. the link between two phenomena known as antecedent and conse- quent; moreover, man only knows the Laws, relations, of phenomena because they are absolute, whereas, man's knowledge of the essence or phenomena is relative or unattainable. Hence, Positive Philosophy is only concerned with absolute knowledge can only be found in relations between experiences.
Part III The Problem of Modernity and Comte
All the objects of human reason or enquiry may be naturally divided into two kinds, to wits, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short every affirmation, which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures…though there were never a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty. Matters of fact…are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the fore- going. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctively conceived by the mind.
- David Hume
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume's empirical epistemology separates human understanding into two species, "matters of fact" and "relation of ideas." Like most Modern Philosophers, Hume is concerned with the structure of human thought and the dialectic of phenomena and causation. The most fundamental questions are the source of thoughts and ideas; the different "relations of ideas;" how experiences and facts connect with these relations; and how to attain absolute, certain knowledge. For Hume, the polarity of abstract reasoning and axioms is the means of obtaining absolute knowledge. Although the distinction appears in the ways they are obtained, they are both necessary for human understanding.
Comte destroys this polarity by placing absolute knowledge in Hume's "relation of ideas" or better known as "controlling the phenomena." Facts, or the axioms of argumentation, are now sense data; thus, they are subjective in nature and have lost their appeal. The Philosopher Comte must now reevaluate the world and find a fitting substitute for absolute knowledge; consequently, he resorts to the "relation of ideas" as the only true means of knowing. However, these relations which are found most commonly in Theology, Mathematics and Metaphysics, which are not phenomena but merely axioms from which to practice critical thinking, must now be applied to actual phenomena, i.e. physical, chemical, biological, and social.
Both Comte and Hume make valid arguments for absolute knowledge, but that is where their problem is the search for the absolute. Since Descartes' pursuit for an absolute i.e. cogito ergo sum, modern philosophers have been analyzing their own thought patterns and histories probing for an absolute certain answer of knowledge; however, that is not the goal of Theology, Philosophy or Mathematics. The great Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lewis were concerned with Universal Truth. They did not isolate the parts of their mind, such as their perceptions, experiences, innate knowing, critical thinking, ideas, et cetera and transform it into the absolute way of knowing; they used everything at their disposal, realizing the frailties of their understanding in certain matters. Modern Philosophers such as Kant, Hume, and Comte were great thinkers but miserable Philosophers, completely misunderstanding the self-examination of knowing provided by Descartes.
Conclusion
What has happened in the field of Philosophy is a misplacement of values. People are now in search for a hierarchy or a certain methodology, yet cannot find it. When they realize this, they become failed absolutist and can go into two directions relativism or universalism. The former is the temptation, which Lewis describes in opening of The Screwtape Letters; the latter is most difficult to understand, but once you truly see it for all its worth, you will have truly opened your Philosophical mind and Theological eye to the ultimate Truth, God himself.
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