--- Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> what i was resisting was what sounded to me like a
> kind of riff on
> pascal's wager, which i don't see in kant. but if
> that's not what you
> meant, that's cool with me . . . as long as the
> meaning of the term
> "knowledge" is properly specified. that's really
> tricky, here, because
> of kant's terminology. don't you think?
I am eight light-years from being a Kant scholar, and it's been a long time since I was dealing with this stuff, but I hazard a guess that what is lurking in the background is the fact that Kant, as a believing Christian, is convinced of the objective existence of the contents of the postulates, even though he is aware he can't "know" the truth of any of them in a theoretical sense. He wasn't an agnostic. Therefore, acceptance of the truth of the postulates is at least akin to knowledge, i.e., it is a correspondence between belief and reality. Didn't Aquinas do something similar, refering to true claims based on faith as akin to knowledge, even though they aren;t? (My scholastics are much hazier than my Kant.)
Andy F:
So you're going to leave conclusions on the existence of that lepruchan behind you up in the air? Act fast, he's holding a sarin artillery shell labeled with Arabic script.
---
At this point, no. However, if I hear lots of reports of Sarin-wielding leprechauns (who are Catholic, so it should be in Latin, maybe this is an IRA leprechaun)prowling around my neighborhood, I will probably start looking for leprechauns. Similarly, if I am an Apache and some starts talking about weird-ass-looking dangerous white men from across the infinite sea with sticks that belch fire, I will laugh at them. However, once I start hearing reports from lots of people saying the same thing, I may change my mind.
Good point about the canonization. Actually, does anybody know about just how the RCC goes about its miracle-checking claims?
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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