History of Philosophy and Christian Thought - Lesson 41

Dr. Ronald Nash
History of Philosophy and Christian Thought
th620-41
Two Worlds
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:02] Can't believed that human beings live in two different worlds. Yup. You've heard that before. Now you've heard it again. You know, you could almost say. Put this down in your notes and give me credit. There is nothing new under the sun. Go ahead. Put that down and give me credit. There's nothing new under the sun. Did anybody else ever say that? No. Okay. There are human beings live in two worlds. Now, here are constant names for these two worlds. Only instead of using a horizontal line, we're going to use a vertical line. Okay. One world. One of the two worlds is called the Phenomenal World. This is the world as it appears to us. The world as it appears to us. The other world is called the Numinous World. Now, this comes from the Greek word noose. We've seen that word before. There's no close affinity between Noose and Numenera. But, you know, it's and this is the world as it really is. This is the world as it really as it really is. Now, let me relate these two worlds to our picture of the sausage machine. The phenomenal world is the world that we become aware of. After all of our sense information has been modified, categorized, organized after the pattern of these categories. But this cannot be the real world. This is only the way the world appears to us. And the reason the world appears to us in this way is because our mind forces us to perceive the world. This is we think of the I mean, just supposed to use a bad example that you were born with, rode rose colored lenses on your eyes. Everything then would appear to you as though it's rose colored, even though it isn't.

[00:02:42] Well, something very much like that. Someone in something analogous to that is what's happened. Only we're talking about the cognitive faculties of the human mind. So this is the world as it appears to us. The norm in a world is the way the world really is. Okay. And the way that the normal world is way up here, outside of the sausage machine. In back of the sausage machine. And that's a world which is really unknowable. If you're listening and you're getting this stuff in your notes and you're reading the textbook, you're going to understand can't. Okay. The reason why the real world is unknowable is because it lies beyond the boundaries. Of our cognitive faculties. We can't know what. Now let's make a distinction between what I'm holding in my hands for the sake of. Our many friends listening by audiotape. I have a magnificent mug with a picture of the Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo. Okay. And what's it say here? Oh, there's no message. I have another mug. I call it my Armenian mug. It's got a picture of Chief Wahoo, but it says Good luck Indians. That's the Armenian mug. Pardon me while I take a swig of water Here. This is only the phenomenal mug. Now, we could make some jokes there, couldn't we? We can say that's a phenomenal mug. But it is the phenomenal mug. Because it is. It is the mug as it appears to you. Does anybody look at this and not see or read Chief Wahoo? Anybody not see? So you all see the same phenomenal mug in the same way. But do you understand that this is not the numeral mug? The nominal mug is what card calls the mug in itself. The pun is intended.

[00:05:04] The mug in itself. Now, card, of course, did not write English. He wrote German and he talked about the din on. See, here's the German spelling ding on Sikh. The thing in itself. You see a tree. What you see is a phenomenal tree. The tree as your mind forces you to perceive it. But there is a tree in itself. Now, the the mug in itself is unknowable. We don't know what its shape is, although presumably it's of a shape that will enable it to hold some liquid. All right. An ice. But who knows? Maybe the nominal mug is a very unusual mug. All right. And we don't know its shape. We don't know what's color. We don't know. Have we heard of something like this before? Dum dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. That were almost back in the world of the op from that which is unknowable. Hmm. Now, Conte says a number of things here. Conte says that the phenomenal world is also the world of science. Okay, but what does it mean to talk about the world of science? It is simply to talk about the world as our cognitive faculties force us to understand it. And then Conte says, Over here in the world of science, there are three things that we can say about the phenomenal world for. For one thing, there is no free will. There is secondly, no God. And there is no life. There is no immortality. We'll use that word because they all use it, even though, you know, I prefer a different word. I prefer survival after death. Here's what Conte means. If you're if you're going on the basis of what you know about the phenomenal world. There is no proof that human beings have free will.

[00:07:33] In fact, the basic assumption of science is that everything that happens has a cause. Everything is determined. And furthermore, there is no proofs for God's existence. Conte thought that he had disproved all of the all of the arguments for God's existence. And I'll give you the basic objection he has to the proofs for God's existence. And then there is no life after death. That is, there is no scientific proof for God. There is no scientific proof for life after death. However, Conte says that's only the phenomenal world. We must not despair here. We must remember that there is the real world, the world of things in themselves. Even though the world of things in themselves is unknowable, I have already given you some advice about what to say to anybody who tells you that something is unknowable. He's contradicting himself as Katia. If the world of things in themselves is unknowable, how does can't know what exists? Okay. And notice all of these other things. We can't know about the unknowable world. But here's where Conte reaches one of his major famous points. If we forget the phenomenal world and if we can find a way to get ourselves into the normal world, what we're going to discover is that there is free will after all. Now, remember, Scott is not a Calvinist, so we put up with him here. There is no free will, but there is free will. There is God and there is immortality. And let me quickly tell you what what con thought were arguments for these three things he called them. Not that I'm going to ever ask you this. I guess he called these three things, postulates of practical reason. And to make a long story short, what he meant by all of that was, even though we can't prove that human beings have free will, that there is a God, that there is life after death.

[00:09:44] We have to presume these things because without these presumptions, life would lose all purpose, meaning, significance. Isn't that an interesting way to slip in certain things that you can't prove? But here's how. Can't. Oh, boy, I'm losing time here. Let me just suggest here that if you want to know his arguments in this case, that you'd better look them up in other books.