Kant said when reason goes into the area of the things in themselves, it gets into self contradictions. So when it comes to religious issues I try to avoid speculation. But I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of Reason that that recognizes universals.
That is a kind of faculty of reason that one knows things to be true as soon as they are understood. And these things are not based on sensory perception.
But also I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of immediate non intuitive knowledge. That was the major point of Leonard Nelson.
I found Leonard Nelson to be very important when I was trying to figure out "things"--I mean world view issues. And his idea of immediate non intuitive knowledge does seem to me to closely connected with faith.
At the same time I was looking at ideas of Nelson [as presented by Dr Kelley Ross] I also found the web site of Michael Huemer. His idea that reason perceives more things than simple contradictions in language was also very helpful. Putting it together you get the synthesis of Faith with Reason -that is the old synthesis from the Middle Ages.
This is not to take totally the Nelson approach totally, --I still think that Hegel had a lot of important points. But Nelson's critique on the Neo Kant School I think was accurate.
[Kelley Ross also made some advances in this Kant Fries Nelson approach.]
I ought to add that the idea of Nelson [coming from Fries] of immediate non-intuitive knowledge is not the exact same thing as Michael Humer's Reason. The function of Reason for Huemer is much wider than what was assumed by Berkeley and Hume. To Huemer, Reason recognizes universals.[Universals are character traits that things have in common. But it also includes laws of nature or morality.] Immediate non intuitive knowledge is the starting points of reason that one knows without thinking about it--the existence of space and time.
That is a kind of faculty of reason that one knows things to be true as soon as they are understood. And these things are not based on sensory perception.
But also I do take it as a fact that there is a kind of immediate non intuitive knowledge. That was the major point of Leonard Nelson.
I found Leonard Nelson to be very important when I was trying to figure out "things"--I mean world view issues. And his idea of immediate non intuitive knowledge does seem to me to closely connected with faith.
At the same time I was looking at ideas of Nelson [as presented by Dr Kelley Ross] I also found the web site of Michael Huemer. His idea that reason perceives more things than simple contradictions in language was also very helpful. Putting it together you get the synthesis of Faith with Reason -that is the old synthesis from the Middle Ages.
This is not to take totally the Nelson approach totally, --I still think that Hegel had a lot of important points. But Nelson's critique on the Neo Kant School I think was accurate.
[Kelley Ross also made some advances in this Kant Fries Nelson approach.]
I ought to add that the idea of Nelson [coming from Fries] of immediate non-intuitive knowledge is not the exact same thing as Michael Humer's Reason. The function of Reason for Huemer is much wider than what was assumed by Berkeley and Hume. To Huemer, Reason recognizes universals.[Universals are character traits that things have in common. But it also includes laws of nature or morality.] Immediate non intuitive knowledge is the starting points of reason that one knows without thinking about it--the existence of space and time.
