Hell is Logical

There is such a thing as feeling-logic alongside the logic based on observation. Feeling-logic assures me that there is such a place as hell—however abhorrent that seems to the modern mind. It is abhorrent because it seems to imply a vengeful God—whereas it only implies that (1) reality is lawful and (2) that agents are free to violate the laws. The first is quite evident merely from the observation of nature; the second is proved by self-observation. If the material order is lawful, and uniformly so, it is an extraordinary claim that a moral order is altogether absent—except as enforced by humanity itself. If it is absent people can “get away with it” unless they are caught. And let’s assume that “it,” in this case, is harvesting organs from poor, healthy, innocent people lured into situations by a corrupt system at the peak of which are doctors doing the harvesting (story in the New York Times this morning). If even one of these people “got away with it,” the entire cosmic whole in which we exist would be hopelessly corrupted and utterly meaningless. Therefore feeling-logic, call it logic based on intuition, powerfully asserts that justice triumphs always; and if it appears to fail in the here and now, be sure that it will not fail in the hereafter.

Deprived of Bodies?

A post on Just Thomism (link) reminded me, again, of the problematical nature of substance as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas (hylomorphism). An earlier post on that subject is here. If we assume that reality is a created structure and, as it were, complete in all important details from the beginning, this translates, in Aquinas’ thought, into the assertion that humans belong to an order in which the human being is a body-soul composite. If you separate soul from the body, the immortal soul, which Aquinas acknowledges, is in a deprived state where it is incapable of thought—which requires both intellect and sensory inputs. Therefore the brain is necessary. James Chastek, in the post referenced above, provides a very subtle argument of how you can escape this dilemma—while still retaining the problematical hylomorphic view.

What strikes me, however, is that we have what might be called empirical evidence—and here I refer to Near Death Experience reports—that disembodied souls continue to see, to sense, to think, and to perceive, even in situations in which they are comatose. And, yes. They do reach the edges of what here I call the Borderzone.

There is, of course, a difference between philosophy and faith. Christian belief does not demand assent to hylomorphism as such; that concept, after all, isn’t really revelation. It is something that must have seemed a happy schematic structure for a super-bright Greek pagan philosopher: matter and form, potential and act. God’s creation of man, taken from Genesis, requires an excessively literal belief to be interpreted as God making man from the dust of the ground. A more poetic interpretation leaves us lots of room for imagining vastly more complex answers. What experience and NDE reports suggest is that the soul is the real agency. The body is something we need in what may very well be a fallen dimension. And Aquinas’ own view that the intellect can only perceive universals, not particulars, and that it needs sensory organs even to see this apple, is more an accommodation to his principal teacher’s, Aristotle’s, scheme. Reality suggests something more simple: souls can perceive just fine, in or out of bodies. But while in these bodies, alas, we’ve got to have brains to think.

Is it “Tender” or is it “Open”?

One of my habits is to re-read an old textbook of mine, Thomism and Modern Thought by Harry R. Klocker, S.J. This tends to be good-weather, outdoor reading. Last summer I left the book outdoors, forgot that it was there, and a downpour damaged it. All of my copious marginal notes, made (foolishly) in ink were obliterated in the process. But then I found another copy on the Internet… Anyway, trying to tease Spring into action, I took the new copy out the other day and came across this interesting classification:

The Tender-Minded	The Tough-Minded
Rationalistic (going by principles)	Empiricist (going by facts)
Intellectualistic	Sensationalistic
Idealistic	Materialistic
Optimistic	Pessimistic
Religious	Irreligious
Free-Willist	Fatalistic
Monistic	Pluralistic
Dogmatical	Skeptical

Those familiar with William James, particularly his The Varieties of Religious Experience, will have heard the phrases used in the title. But this side-by-side characterization of these two psychological types, as viewed by James, appeared in Pragmatism (New York, Longmans, Green & Co., Inc., 1908) in a chapter titled “The Dilemma in Philosophy.”

The scheme is reproduced in Klocker’s segment on Pragmatism on page 127 of his book. Pragmatism, of course, falls decided under the tough-minded category. This time around, I got to thinking about the words James had used to classify these two opposing tendencies. Why “tender”? What really underlies these two classifications? Other words he might have chosen are “sensitive/insensitive,”  “inner-oriented/outer-oriented,” and from that last, echoing Jung, why not “introvert/extrovert”?

Now pragmatism, logical positivism, and other related philosophical positions are absolutely anchored in the assertion that all knowledge reaches us by the senses (hence the tough-minded are sensationalistic). And, furthermore, there is absolutely no way that sensory experience can give us proof of the metaphysical. But there are those tender-minded people who, perversely, assert the opposite. Should the pairing therefore include “stupid/bright” and “deluded/realistic”?

My simple solution here is to borrow from pragmatism its emphasis on “experience”—experience as the crucial and sole source of knowledge—but modifying that by asserting, based on experience itself, that some people do obtain additional knowledge that comes from a source beyond the senses. Call in inspiration. But if that is so (and I certainly think it is), then the tender-minded have greater access to reality than the tough. They are more “open” to ranges of reality than the tough-minded. The tough-minded feel it too—but at so marginal a level that they do not notice these ranges.

The “tender” classification used by James signals awareness of the tougher job the tender-minded have of dealing with reality. There is much more there. The tender are over-stimulated. They turn inward. And the tough, to be sure, have an easier time of coping with the world. Why then are they “pessimistic”? Could it be that, having nothing beyond the sensorium on which to build their world-view, they tend, ultimately, to despair? While the long-suffering tender-minded are “optimistic”?

The classification also shows that we are really mixtures of these two. It is very “tough” to choose but one.  My guess is that most people would rather pick and choose. But a forced choice will produce the actual leaning of the individual; it will mean, however, letting go of quite useful or inspiring products on the shelf of philosophy.