Paul Tillich Response to Modern Criticism Essay Example for Free

Paul Tillich Response to Modern Criticism EssayThis course explores the themes of Paul Tillichs philosophical theology, with specific attention to his analysis of meaning and its app arnt loss in modern society. The course will also evaluate Tillichs response to the problem of meaninglessness and his childbed to interpret the Christian message. WHAT IS EMPIRICISM? According to bathroom Scott Gordon Marshall, empiricism, in philosophy, is the attitude that beliefs are to be accepted and acted upon nevertheless if they first have been plump fored by actual take in. This broad definition accords with the derivation of the name from the Greek word empeiria, meaning association. Primarily, and in its psychological application, the term signifies the theory that the phenomena of consciousness are simply the product of sensuous experience, i. e. of sensations variously associated and arranged (Andrew M. Colman 2003242). It is thus distinguished from Nativism or Innatism.Seconda rily, and in its logical (epistemological) usage, it designates the theory that all human fellowship is derived whole from experience, the latter(prenominal) term meaning, either explicitly or implicitly, external sense-percepts and internal representations and inferences exclusive of any superorganic (immaterial) intellectual factor. Empiricism is thus opposed to the claims of authority, intuition, imaginative conjecture, and abstract, theoretical, or systematic reasoning as sources of reliable belief. Its most fundamental antithesis is with the latter (i. e. with Rationalism, also called intellectualism or apriorism). Forms of Empiricism According to Catholic Encyclopedia empiricism appears in the history of philosophy in three principal forms (1) Materialism, (2) Sensism, and (3) profitableness. a. Materialism Materialism in its crudest shape was taught by the ancient atomists (Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Lucretius), who, reducing the sum of all frankness to atoms and mo tion, taught that experience, whereof they held knowledge to be constituted, is generated by images reflected from material objects through the sensory organs into the soul.The soul, a mere complexus of the finest atoms, perceives non the objects but their effluent images. With modern materialists (Helvetius, dHolbach, Diderot, Feuerbach, Moleschott, Buchner, Vogt, etc. ), knowledge is accounted for either by cerebral secretion or by motion. b. Sensism All materialists are of course sensists. Though the converse is not the case, nevertheless, by denying any natural difference between sensations and ideas (intellectual states), sensism logically involves materialism.Sensism, which is found with Empedocles and Protagoras amongst the ancients, was given its first systematic form by Locke (d. 1704), though Bacon (d. 1626) and Hobbes (d. 1679) had prepared the data. Locke derives all simple ideas from external experience (sensations), all compound ideas (modes, substances, relations) f rom internal experience (reflection). Substance and cause are simply associations of subjective phenomena universal ideas are mere mental figments. Locke admits the existence, though he denies the demonstrability, in man of an immaterial and immortal principle, the soul.Berkeley (d. 1753), accepting the teaching of Locke that ideas are all transfigured sensations, subjectivizes not only the sensible or secondary qualities of matter as his predecessor had done, but also the primary qualities which Locke held to be objective. Berkeley denies the objective basis of universal ideas and indeed of the whole material universe. The reality of things he places in their being perceived and this perceivedness is effected in the mind by idol, not by the object or subject. He still retains the substance-reality of the human soul and of spirits generally, God included.Hume (d. 1776) agrees with his two empiricist predecessors in teaching that the mind knows only its own subjective organic impr essions, whereof ideas are but the images. The supersensible is therefore unknowable the principle of causality is terminate into a mere feeling of successiveness of phenomena its necessity is reduced to a subjective feeling resulting from uniform association experienced in consciousness, and the spiritual midpoint or substantial being of the soul is dissipated into a serial of conscious states. Lockes sensism was taken up by Condillac (d. 780), who eliminated entirely the subjective factor (Lockes reflection) and want to explain all cognitional states by a mere mechanical, passive transformation of external sensations. The French sensist retained the spiritual soul, but his followers disposed of it as Hume had done with the Berkeleian soul relic. The Herbartians confound the image with the idea, nor does Wundt make a clear distinction between primitive concepts (empirische Begriffe, representations of individual objects) and the image Denken ist Phantasieren in Begriffen und Ph antasierenist Denken in Bildern. c. Positivism Positivists, following Comte (d. 857), do not deny the supersensible they declare it unknowable the one source of cognition, they claim, is sense-experience, experiment, and induction from phenomena. John Stuart Mill (d. 1870), following Hume, reduces all knowledge to series of conscious states linked by empirical associations and enlarged by inductive processes. The mind has no certitude of an external world, but only of a everlasting possibility of sensations and antecedent and anticipated feelings. Spencer (d. 1903) makes all knowledge relative. The actual existence of things is their persistence in consciousness.Consciousness contains only subjective feelings. The relative supposes the absolute, but the latter is unknowable to us it is the object of faith and religion (Agnosticism). All things, mind included, have resulted from a cosmical process of mechanical evolution wherein they are still mired hence all concepts and principle s are in a continuous flux. d. Classical Empiricism Classical empiricism is characterised by a rejection of innate, in-born knowledge or concepts. John Locke, well known as an empiricist, wrote of the mind being a tabula rasa, a blank slate, when we enter the world.At birth we know nothing it is only subsequently that the mind is furnished with information by experience. e. Radical Empiricism This was advanced by William James, an American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist, based on the pragmatic theory of justice and the principle of pure experience, which contends that the relations between things are at least as real as the things themselves, that their function is real, and that no hidden substrata are necessary to account for the various clashes and coherences of the world.James summarized the theory as consisting of (1) a postulate The only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms cadaverous from experience (2) a factual sta tement The relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of immediately particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves, which serves to distinguish paper empiricism from the empiricism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume and (3) a generalized conclusion The parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience.The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous transempirical junction support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure. The result of this theory of knowledge is a metaphysics that refutes the rationalist belief in a being that transcends experience, which gives unity to the world. According to James there is no logical connection between radical empiricism and pragmatism. One may reject radical empiricism and continue to be a pragmatist. Jamess studies in radical empiricism were published posthumous ly as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).According to him, it is only if it is possible to empirically test a claim that the claim has meaning. As all of our information comes from our senses, it is impossible for us to talk about that which we have not experienced. Statements that are not tied to our experiences are therefore meaningless. This principle, which was associated with a now unpopular position called logical positivism, renders religious and ethical claims literally nonsensical. No observations could confirm religious or ethical claims, therefore those claims are meaningless.