[lit-ideas] Re: Faith
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 14:23:24 -0400
Eric writes that it is rational to prefer chocolate ice cream because it
agrees with my conditioned expectations of ice cream taste. I am not quite
sure what this means but it is certainly not what is meant by rational. If
it were, then every action would, by definition, be rational since it would
accord with some conditioned expectation. I have been trying to avoid
defining 'rational' since there are at least three distinct traditional
accounts of what it means to be rational. Whatever it means to be rational,
it must include some account of how it is not a matter of instinct or
idiosyncratic. I am not acting rationally but instinctively when I pull my
hand away from a flame. I am acting idiosyncratically, not rationally, when
I ask for chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla. I do not choose to love
my wife but rather just do love my wife.
It is rationalistic to believe that there is a reason lying behind pulling
my hand away from the flame, preferring chocolate ice cream, and loving my
wife. It is the desire to ground human activity in something other than
being human. Myself, I don't have enough faith for that. Here I am
satisfied with going natural so that, for most of human life, description is
all there needs to be. I find the older I get, the less use I have for talk
of motives and grounds. I do understand why people are attracted to the
metaphysics of 'underlying causes', it's just that, to paraphrase
Wittgenstein, my knees are too stiff.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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