Monday, May 6, 2019

Rationalism and Deity

In addition to Epistemological Rationalism and Methodological Rationalism, previously discussed, there is Ontological Rationalism, according to which reality is Rational.  That there is more than one variety of Ontological Rationalism is signified by a distinction between Spinoza's version and Leibniz's--between the concept of the identity of Logical Necessity and Causal Necessity, and the concept of a pre-established Harmony.  That distinction can be signified as the difference between Atomist Ontological Rationalism, and Holistic Ontological Rationalism.  Now, there has been some confusion involving Epistemological Rationalism and Ontological Rationalism, as exemplified by a vacillation in the targets of Hume's Skepticism--between the absence of an Empirical ground for the attribution of Necessity to a given sequence of events, e. g. linking the striking of a billiard ball with its subsequent movement, and the taking for granted that a pattern of past sequences is fixed, e. g. that daytime will follow night.  Regardless, Spinoza is plainly an Ontological Rationalist, and a Methodological Rationalist, though, because of the superiority of Intuition to Reason in his doctrine, not clearly an Epistemological Rationalist.  Now, his concept of immanent Pantheism is antithetical to the standard Theological representations of the Abrahamic deity, though he attempts to soften the contrast, perhaps more out of prudence in a hostile atmosphere than as rigorously developed.  But there is one concept of a deity that seems to fit Spinoza's concept of dynamic Substance that is the fundamental principle of his doctrine--the 'Seminal Logos' of some Ancient Stoics, which functions as the immanent generative process in a Rational reality.  However, perhaps out of prudence, Spinoza never explicitly recognizes it as such.  In any case, because only such a deity can be the source of a completely Rational universe, the recognition of any other deity falsifies the classification of a system as Ontological Rationalism.

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