Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

How the mind must work?

Here is how Steve Shiffrin insists the mind must work -- it's an exhaustive trllemma that he liberally asserts: "People either need to accept forced arguments, follow deliberative intuitions, and/or be comfortable with ambiguity."  

Steve thus offers three and only three epistemic possibilities. I am not persuaded.  The consequences of the argument, in the context Steve means to address in his post, are the reality of "human rights." Needless to say, there are additional important consequences that would follow from alternative possible resolutions of Steve's trilemma.

Steve's first possibility = "accept forced arguments."  The meaning of this proposition is unclear, but surely no one reasonably defends "accepting" what is "forced."  

Steve's second possibility = the actual possibility of "deliberative intuitions."  The question on this is the one Lonergan raised: Are there "intuitions" that *I* can validate? Lonergan's own recovery of his own epistemic functioning discarded the reality of intuition.  He could only validate experience, understanding, judgment, and love.  I cannot do better.   

The final possibility Steve offers = "comfort[] with ambiguity."  I have intellectual reason to prefer clarity concerning the conditions of judgment based on understanding and rooted in data, and full scope for probable but precise judgments.  

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/07/how-the-mind-must-work.html

Brennan, Patrick | Permalink

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