Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D.

Lecture

Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962, he is internationally recognized and honored for his work in philosophy, particularly phenomenology. In 1994, Catholic University sponsored a conference on his work and published several papers and other essays under the title, The Truthful and the Good, Essays In Honor of Robert Sokolowski. Fr. Sokolowski came to the College as part of the E.L. Wiegand Distinguished Visiting Lecturers Program, which was established to bring distinguished educators to Thomas Aquinas College and St. John's College. Following is abridged from a lecture he gave at the College on March 26, 1999.

I'd like to begin with a rather confrontational claim: That phenomenology can help restore the understanding of being and mind that was accepted in classical Greek philosophy and medieval thought and can still take into account certain contributions of modernity, especially those of science. Phenomenology, in its classical form, understands the human mind as ordered towards truth, and this is the understanding of the mind that prevailed in classical thinking. Phenomenology develops this understanding through its doctrines of intentionality and evidence but with a consideration of modern problems.

 

COMMON SENSE PRINCIPLES OF DISCUSSION

by Anthony Rizzi

 

 

Effective and civil discussion is absolutely essential in reestablishing science on its firm foundation. Since discussion has in recent times become less and less clearly centered on its purpose — which is to get to the truth — we find we have developed bad habits of discussion. Indeed it often happens that, despite our good intentions, discussions degenerate into incivility. It is our hope that the following thoughts will help restore the right emphasis and civility in conversation.

 

l) The aim of discussion is to arrive at a precise statement of a problem  and a true answer. It is profitable if progress in achieving this goal is made even if there is not ultimate success.

 

2) The first step in critical thinking must be to state a problem clearly in the form A is B, or at least that A is not B. Many disagreements arise from not being clear about what problem is to be solved.

 

3) lf you are speaking to someone who has more education and knowledge in the field under discussion, give deference to him. This means that conversation will not equally split with each person speaking 50% of the time. Clearly, the one who has more knowledge will necessarily have to

spend more time relating it.

 

a)       The receiver of knowledge should not resent the giver merely because the giver gives more, i.e. speaks more. Indeed, like the receiver of a wonderful material gift, the spiritual gift of knowledge should be received with sincere appreciation. Few who receive a gift of gold will respond with accusations of unfairness about the inequity involved of them not being able to respond in kind. Rather, most will receive it with great thanks and enthusiasm as lottery winners do. Since the spiritual gift of knowledge is literally infinitely more valuable, the gratitude of the receiver of knowledge should be immense.

 

                b) One essential way of showing gratitude to the giver, which is also an exercise of justice, is to remember his gift and acknowledge him to others. Remembering is key in the process of finding and verifying trustworthy sources, for one needs to remember who has given what to be able to note whose information is reliable.

 

GRAMMAR

 Grammar is indeed more fundamental than our truth claims: before something can be true or false, it must be meaningful. Now even on this more fundamental level of grammar there is a peculiar feature of our language that cannot escape theological implications, namely the futurum exactum or future perfect. Tomorrow it will have been true that I am now writing this text. If tomorrow it turns out not to have been true that I am now writing this text, then I am not now writing this text. The reality of the present depends on what will have been true in the future, and this as a matter of principle. But for whom will this have been true tomorrow? Truth resides in the mind, and whose mind will it be, if humanity has suffered its demise, or after the heat death of the universe? Here, too, we need a mind that exists unconditionally as a foundation for our grammar and its implications. And that is the mind of God.

From Teleology And Transcendence: The Thought Of Robert Spaemann, by Anselm Ramelow.

TRUTH (Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei.)

 

  Truth is the correspondence of the mind and reality.

We are true and we live in the truth not because we never err or never fail into falsehood, but because we already are and always have been within the manifestation of reality. We are in the truth because, even when erring, "we are" a relationship with reality. And reality "awaits expectantly," if we may so express it, for our openness so that it can manifest itself in its true sense.

The mature thinker would probably compare the question--'Is there really such a thing as truth?'--to a young man's first hesitant conversation with a girl, from which he came away convinced 'she loves me!' Now it would be a strange lover indeed who would be content with the mere ascertainment that this is in fact the case. No, this fact, like a door springing open, becomes the starting point of a newly beginning life of love. In this life, the eternal question of lovers--'Does he or she love me?'--the question of whether they love one another, is revived every day; love can never be questioned enough, because love never has enough of hearing the reassuring affirmative reply. Behind every answer there is a new question, and behind every reassuring certainty there is an expansive new horizon.

Truth is never actually an absolute to possess. Rather, and surprisingly, it is an event to be touched by.

The following from Fides et  Ratio from Jean Paul II

    Freedom is not realized in decisions made against God. For how could it be an exercise of true freedom to refuse to be open to the very reality which exalts our self-realization?

Every truth present itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true then it must be true for all people and at all times.

Beyond this universality, however, people seek an absolute which might give to all their searching a meaning and an answer--something ultimate, which might serve as the ground of all things. In other words, they seek a final explanation, a supreme value, which refers to nothing beyond itself and which puts an end to all questioning.

 

”SHADOWS OF THE MIND” Sir Roger Penrose

     From the Wikipedia: Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contributi- on to our understanding of the universe.  He is renowned for his

work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.

    I am a great admirer of Penrose. As a scientist he pushes boundaries, I find him fascinating. However my admiration
of him as a philosopher went down a few notches after reading “Shadows of the Mind”. After all he is a ‘materialist" and materialism goes so far and no further. It’s interesting to see him trying to wiggle his way out, trying to explain the non-material in a material way.

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE WILL

 Click here to listen to Prof Edward Feser

Dr Feser argues that metaphysical errors about the nature of the will have caused significant damage to moral theory and practice. The best way to clear up such errors is to take things back to first principles and work them forward again. In this Quarantine Lecture, Dr. Feser considers what a substance is in general and what the power of a substance is. The technical Aristotelian-Thomistic way of capturing the difference between a true physical substance and a mere aggregate or artefact, is to say that a physical substance has qua substance a substantial form, whereas an aggregate or an artefact has qua aggregate or artefact a merely accidental form

A power is a capacity to act or operate in a certain way. A power is a kind of attribute and exists only in a substance rather than in a free stranding way. Because powers have a kind of teleology, for an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysician, the notion of a causal power is closely related to the notions of formal and final causality. Aquinas tells us that every form has some inclination following upon it and every agent acts for the sake of an end.

A rational substance is a substance with an intellect; an intellect is precisely to have the capacity to conceptualize what one knows. We have then a hierarchy of degrees to which the source of a thing's behavior is within it. A rational substance such as a human being or an angel (as opposed to an inanimate, vegetative or non-human animal substance) has a perfect knowledge of the ends toward which its powers are directed insofar as the very essences of those ends are within it. It possesses a kind of causal power which we can classify as rational appetite.

To have a will is, for Aquinas, precisely to have a rational appetite, to have in the most perfect way possible the source of one's activity within. Having a will also entails immateriality and possessing forms abstracted from matter.

Dr Feser concludes by touching on Aquinas's treatment of the reality of free choice and the lack of changeability of the human will after death.

Dr. Feser argues that metaphysical errors about the nature of the will angeability of the hu

EXPERTS,

 What should be my attitude in regard to EXPERTS?

 

1.   Do I believe the experts?

a)   No matter which expert on which subject, I never suspend my judgment which means analyzing the facts at hand and see if they make sense so that the action(s) I am going to take based on those facts will be reasonable.

Ex.: I need surgery. Question of life and death.

        My judgment in every case with any expert will be limited due to my limited knowledge, but I owe to myself to go as far as I can. There is no question of questioning his technique, how could I; but I can check to see if he has a good reputation for example.

In this case, if possible I inquire if his previous patients were satisfied.

How long as he been practicing?

Does he inspire confidence when I talk to him? Etc. etc.

Then I make a decision after I’ve done the best I could.

 

Ex.: I listened to an expert on nuclear energy.

         How much will it affect me personally? Not immediately, I suppose but maybe in the long run, if not me, my descendants.

However if it is an interest of mine, I will find out the pros and cons of many experts to compare and at least have a general idea before I could give my opinion on the subject one way or the other.

The immediate consequences of me not “being right” would be negligible, so I will not worry about knowing so little about the subject.

After all, I’m only satisfying my curiosity as perhaps I’ll have to make a political decision in a voting boot, later on.

 

Ex.: What the expert says can be applied in my personal life.

        Like: which way to set a ceiling fan in the winter.

Does the info comes from a ‘reliable’ source or is it simply something repeated so many times by journalists or others?

Does it make sense when I think about it in details?

If it does not make sense, I have to know why it does not and be able to demonstrate that it does not.

a)   Ceiling fan clock wise in winter I did not agree with.

See attached diagrams.

                  

                    b)another one is when pressure washing the side of                     a house one should start from the bottom and finish at the                 top.

                             Common sense told me right away that it could not         be right.

                             Experimenting I quickly discovered that the expert         was wrong and that I was right.

        Measurements would probably show very little difference either way, I'm guessing. But if I have to choose, I definitely think CCW is better in Winter for the reasons shown in diagram.

Critique of my logic or of my diagram is very welcome indeed.            

 c)This last one. I heard from the weather person on tv             that one should save water by taking baths instead of showers.

I remember my father-in-law saying that he had experimented, a very simple thing to do, and that one uses much less water by having a shower.

So, I did my own experiment to make sure and found out that he was right.