Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Faith and Will

Descartes does not test it in his thought experiment.  But that he conceives that Will = Freedom of Choice can choose to affirm some perception without having subjected the latter to the criterion of Doubt, implies that Will is independent of deception, i. e. that I Will is as certain as I Think.  So, given the Kantian undermining of his proofs of the Existence of God, an affirmation of that proposition is still available to him, though it would not qualify as Knowledge.  In other words, affirming that God Exists, with attributions such as Goodness, Omnipotence, etc., is still possible, though without certainty.  But such affirmation is nothing other than Faith, which is thus a simple exercise of Freedom of Choice, that has been dramatized as a 'Leap' and embellished as a 'Will to Believe', for example.  But choosing to affirm that 'God Exists' is structurally no different than choosing to affirm that one is not dreaming that one is sitting in a chair in front of a fire.  Thus, Descartes does not seem to recognize that implicit in his doctrine is that affirming Geocentrism is as sinful as affirming that cold-blooded murder is a means to happiness.  Or, that, therefore, such equivalence is applicable to Theological leaders who have condemned the likes of Galileo on the basis of the former.

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