09.09
A Philosophy of Common sense
Last night I was reading G.K. Chesterton’s piece about Thomism(the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas). It’s a good read and gets right at the heart of what’s wrong with most modern philosophies. Chesterton has been called the “Apostle of Common Sense” by many and with good reason. He never shyed away from using intuition in his arguments. Human intellectual instincts, or intuitions, are extremely valuable in helping us figure out how well a certain philosophy or worldview corresponds to how the world really is. Make no mistake; Intiutions are unavoidable. Everybody uses them. The achilles heel that Chesterton speaks of with modern philosophies is there reliance on a denial or violation of a basic human intuition at their outset in order to make the rest of their tenets fall into place. He calls it a “queer twist”. Here is what he says.
“Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody’s system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody’s sense of reality; to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each started with a paradox; a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view. That is the one thing common to Hobbes and Hegel, to Kant and Bergson, to Berkeley and William James. A man had to believe something that no normal man would believe, if it were suddenly propounded to his simplicity; as that law is above right, or right is outside reason, or things are only as we think them, or everything is relative to a reality that is not there. The modern philosopher claims, like a sort of confidence man, that if once we will grant him this, the rest will be easy; he will straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind.”
–Chesterton, An Approach to Thomism
Some examples are in order.
The so-called “hard skeptic” says we can’t be sure about anything, or know anything for sure. He says the world is too complex to ever be sure that we really know what the truth is. The problem with his philosophy though is that he is sure that he knows that. We must accept his philosophy’s initial self-refutation(Chesterton would say “paradox”) in order to make the rest of his views work out. The mystery to me is why some people seem to be ok with that. Perpetual skepticism leads to an infinite regress where there is no way to formulate true beliefs. How someone could hold to that view and then drive to the store, the whole time never questioning that they are really driving to the store and really going 45 miles an hour is paradoxical at best. Human intuition tells us that we have to be able to accept certain things as true, even if we don’t know why they are true or else we will never have a place to start grounding a coherent belief system.
A relativist will say that there is no such thing as absolute truth, believing the whole time that, that is absolutely so. This is the “twist”, or the head scratcher that we must accept in order for the rest of his belief system to mesh. Intuition tells us this is wrong however. If an entire belief system is based on a principle that refutes itself, why would anyone believe it. Again, as in the case before, the relativist can’t live in the world his mind has created. As Moreland says, he will happily tell you there are no absolutes until you steal his radio. I have a friend who was challenging a relativist on that very point one day. The guy he was talking to finally said, “Ok. Fine. So I’m not a relativist.” and then continued on with telling my friend how wrong his views were. At least he relented in the face of an obvious crack in his worldview, but I have to question how deep his relativistic commitments were to begin with if the entire philosophy was so easily thrown off.
The naturalist says that science is the only way to obtain truth. That belief is not a scientific one however. It’s a philosophical belief about science. We see that his philosophy is fine as long as you obediently suspend the rules long enough to lay the foundation and then reapply the rules. Intuition and common sense tell us that science is not the only way to understand if something is true or not. I know that I am writing this blog post right now. I don’t need to test that at all. I know it instinctively. I know that rape and murder are wrong. I don’t need to work it out in the form of an argument to demonstrate it. It’s just wrong in and of itself. I know that infinites don’t exist. I can’t explain how I know that and there is no test to prove it, but it’s true and everyone intuitively knows it.
The internal consistency of a worldview or philosophy is crucial. I’m not talking about surface scratches or hypocritical adherents. I’m talking about the core principles of the philosophy itself. If a worldview requires one to suspend belief in it’s own principles in order to believe it’s main thesis then it’s a safe bet that, that philosophy is no good. Francis Scheaffer always said that no matter what a person’s worldview is, they still have to live in the world that God made(i.e. the way the world really is).
