No Robots

Not at all. From a scientific perspective, reality is deterministic; but from an ideal perspective, it is free.

Let's not quibble too much over terms. Perception and cognition are two phases of thought, the third being volition. Together these three faculties constitute the whole of our thinking.

It relativizes the scientific method. Scientific truths are inherently contingent and relative.

God acts solely by the laws of his own nature, and is not constrained by any one.—Spinoza, Ethics I, prop. 17

Neither intellect nor will appertain to God's nature.—Ethics I, prop. 17, Note

God is the sole free cause. For God alone exists by the sole necessity of his nature.—Ethics I, prop. 17, Cor. 2.

No Robots

Cogitans, which is the condition and “primal ground” of everything that is thought, is not itself an object of thought: it is that which thinks all ideata, but does not itself become all ideata. It has no part in the object of thought and cannot be compared with any object of thought. It is eternal and infinite, and so space and time do not apply to it; it is immaterial substance: non-thingly, without shape, formless; it cannot be seen, heard or felt. All predicates applied to the God of the Jewish-Christian religion are actually statements about the Absolute, the cogitans; and since the mystic and mysticism consider the ecclesiastical cult to be worthless (whereas the church maintains that this cult is more or less ordained by the God of religion, or at least desired by him), not only does the mystic deny religion and its God: his “God,” his “soul,” his “spark” is the Absolute of philosophy, Spinoza’s “substance” and hence Brunner’s cogitans ("Das Denkende”).
It is true that the great mystics had a profound influence on the founding of religion, but this is only the influence which great men of the spirit have always had on the masses at all times. And they have always been misunderstood, the Logos becoming a God external to the world. Jesus’ “I and the Father are one” is taken to mean that Christ, after his death, sits in heaven at the side of his divine Father. Nothing really changes: the words of Christ, just like everything all the mystics say about unity, are always reinterpreted by the “non-thinking” multitude in terms of religious dualism. And dualism has no part in mysticism: it is the very opposite of mysticism. The most important mark of mysticism is “love for the One reality which we live as relative reality and which we are as absolute reality" (letter by Brunner).— To live is to think : the thought of twentieth-century German philosopher Constantin Brunner / Hans Goetz, p. 75-6.

Amedeo

Well said!!

I like to add a note on the conception of truth that Brunner and many theologians functionally have; that is, they did not think out and formulate a theory or a criterion of truth, but somehow their minds developed one. Similarly, most people have not formulated a method to distinguish what is real and what is a dream, but have instinctively developed one.

Incidentally, the Old Testament and the New Testament cite many instances where God communicated with humans IN A DREAM. Those who believe in either books obviously cannot tell the difference between a dream event and a real event: If somebody says that a dream event is a real event, it is a real event. If somebody says that he spoke with God [when he was either awake or sleeping], then he spoke with God. Some people have no conception that it takes a physical being to be affected and heard by a sound-producing man.

Back to the Brunner and theological conception of truth:

DECET [= it is fitting; it befits; it is proper] for certain things to occur.
For example, the roof of a store collapsed and everybody was killed, except my son. So, I who believe that God protects people who are in his grace [who believe in him or who believe to be His closen people] think that a miracle occurred, that God did not allow the fatal consequences of the collapse to apply to my son.

Another example: A battle in the late afterrnoon lasted for a very long time [or so it seemed to the fighters]; so, it if fitting that God, who wanted one army to be victorious, to stop the sun from setting so that there would be time to slay the enemies.

Another example: The Pauline Christ came to restore the innocence lost in the Garden of Eden. So, it is fitting that both he and his mother were immune from original sin to begin with. And since death is a consequence of original sin, its is fitting that their bodies were never corrupted: they flew to heaven in their wholesome condition. There is a further proof in the case of Christ: He died, but his resurrected body did not show signs of corruption. [To a naturalist and logical person, the lack of signs of curruption implies that he did not really die -- in the modus tollens of a conditional syllogism, but the laws of physics do not apply to what is non-physical... and that is why some early Christians logically maintained that Christ did not have a real body. This was a heresy unto those who believed what is absurd, namely that something can be physical and be caused to lack the properties of what is physical. Can't something be real and lack the properties of what is real wherefore we call it a dream? Of course!

Even Descartes thought that if a finite creature like man can have the idea of God (infinite and superlative in every way), then he cannot be the author of the idea; it is fitting that God exists and that God implanted His idea of himself in man! [Of course, a logician might say: the presence of the idea of God implies that the container of the idea is not mentally finite. However, more accurately speaking: the thought that something is infinite is NOT a understanding of anything infinite; the thought or concept of something infinite (like an infinite series) is not itself infinite, just as the thought, the knowledge, of paint is not painterly, and the concept of Napoleon is not Napoleonic.]

Finally, given a man who unwittingly believes in what we call the aburd [miracles which suspend the nature of things, and the reality of things which are unreal/unsubstantial], he will find that IT IS FITTING THAT an impressive picture, like that of the miraculous Christ, who is both physical and non-physical, human and divine, and miracle working, is true.

Isn't it also fittingly true that our resurrected bodies will be bodies that will last forever (just as the Yahweh-created things, before the sin)? Incorruptible bodies are exactly like dream-bodies: they can go through a blade without being broken up, and they can operate in the world without the need of energy-providing nurishment. That's paradise, which we sometimes live in our dreams.

Tertullian expressed the derangement of the human mind: CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM: I believe because it is absurd!

No Robots

Truths cannot stand in opposition to one another; rather, all truths must jibe with each other. This is the criterion of all the individual truths: that they must be able to be arranged without contradiction against other truths into the context of true thought, which is itself a continuum of the one true thought-content.—Constantin Brunner

Emphasis added.

Amedeo

Above, Brunner is talking about truths; he is not defining what a truth is.

When he says that truths cannot stand in opposition to one another, I agree. But when he uses the word "truths", what on earth is he talking about? By virtue of what is a proposition true?

He seems to be saying that a proposition is true [what is stated being " an individual truth"] if it coheres with another. In more accurate words, this had been called the "coherence theory of truth."
Accordingly, when you see a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth (or a thousand and one other plays), you can be use you are watching kings, killings, and real deaths.

By the same token, propositions about self-contradictory entities, such as Christ, God, square circles, and dehydrated water, cannot be true, because the predicates of these entities do not cohere which each other.

(The method of Reduction to absurdity is valid; the method of coherent adduction, which rests on what is possible -- to show or prove the existence of something-- is invalid. The coherentists have not discovered logic yet.)

No Robots

Brunner's distinction between truths and Truth derives from his distinction between relative understanding and absolute spiritual thought:

The faculty of understanding yields the complete truth of relative reality, or of things; the faculty of spiritual thought yields the complete absolute truth, which, to be sure, is not the truth concerning any absolute things; likewise, the faculty of superstitious thought is entirely perfect, that is to say, the perfect untruth; it consists precisely in the belief that things are absolute, knowably or unknowably so.

For more on this, see here.

He is saying that in order for a proposition to be true it must cohere with all true propositions.

Some definitions of Christ are self-contradictory, but others are not.

It is important to bear in mind the distinction between relative truth and absolute truth. The absolute truth is simply the assertion of the oneness of all beingness. Everything else is merely our perception of this beingness as conditioned by our sensory illusions which separate the unity of beingness into discrete material things.

Solo

What do you think of Karl Polanyi's dictum: the opposite of trivial truth is falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is again truth ?

Jiri

Solo

It looks like he was misquoted.

Jiri

No Robots

It seems to be a kind of irresponsible quip. Do you have a context? I googled it and found it attributed to Bohr. In any case, it looks wrong to me. There is only one absolute truth:

Jahve ehad [Beingness is One]! All truths become untrue and come to grief when faced with this word; all else is deceit. Your life is a deception, your being good is a deception, and this entire, starry veil of nature is a deception, but Jahve Ehad! Hear, O Israel, this sole true word in the world—and hence a word that is always new.—Brunner, Our Christ, p. 404-5.

There is no absolute untruth, there is only the truth and distortions thereof.

Amedeo

The faculty that makes us sleep is called the Torporific Power; the faculty that makes us dream is called the Oneric Power, with subordinate powers such as Incubus and Succubus; and the faculty that makes us awake is the same Angel that at the end of time resurrects all the dead ones.

THE FACULTY OF SPIRITUAL THOUGHT THAT YIELDS THE COMPLETE ABSOLUTE TRUTH is the same God that spoke through the Prophets! THE FACULTY OF SUPERSTITIOUS THOUGHT is Satan. (Any objection? I have complete absolute truth.)