Opinion, Doubt, Knowledge, and Belief (Aquinas 101)
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
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On St. Thomas Aquinas’ account, belief is not simply a sentiment.
Rather, it involves coming into contact with a truth and having the truth come into our minds, even though we have not directly seen or verified the proof of the statement. This is quite common. Students rightly believe what scientists tell them about the experiments that have generated contemporary scientific conclusions. It would be unreasonable for a chemistry student to verify every experiment in his chemistry textbook before accepting them.
Opinion, Doubt, Knowledge, and Belief (Aquinas 101) - Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.
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Go TI. I will keep praying and supporting this content and the provider! I hope to meet some of you guys when I’m up there in January ( DC ) that is! Bless you guys!
Thank you!
Let us know when you're in town!
Thank you father..
a-may-zinggg. Thank you Fr Brent. I was initially confused at first how come the reader becomes the book, but hit it home in the end! Thank you and God bless
Of all the videos from Thomistic Institute that I liked (which is way too much, hogging my "like videos" space), this is the one that should be presented to the modern men (secularist, atheist cartesian etc).
Oh, and Protestant too (since they think that "faith" is "trust" instead of "belief."
Cheers!
@Nama Palsu, I absolutely agree!
What is the difference between faith and belief?
Very rich in knowledge, thank you Thomist Institute 👏👏👏👏👏
Just wanted to comment on the quality of the production of these videos. They are really good. Well done to the team!
Thank you for this video!
May our Lord Jesus Christ bless you!
Very interesting,clear too in delivery.thanks!
Here is a philosophical critique of the video discussing opinion, doubt, knowledge, and belief according to Aquinas:
The video provides a helpful high-level overview of how Aquinas distinguishes between these different epistemic states. However, further philosophical analysis could strengthen the concepts presented.
For example, Aquinas' definition of opinion as involving assent without complete certainty could be compared and contrasted with more modern philosophical definitions of belief versus knowledge. Contemporary understandings of justified true belief could add nuance.
Additionally, the relationship between doubt and opinion requires further exploration. The video defines doubt as suspension of assent rather than dissent, but philosophically parsing the psychological experience of doubt versus tentative opinion would be useful.
The brevity of the video also necessitates glossing over complexities in Aquinas' epistemology. His notions of sense knowledge, intellectual knowledge, and scientia each have technical meanings that influence his theory of human understanding. More detail here would add philosophical depth.
Some reference to competing epistemological frameworks would also be helpful. Aquinas builds on an Aristotelian foundation, but comparing with empiricist, rationalist, and modern perspectives would situate his thought within the broader discourse while highlighting its enduring insights.
Overall, the video succeeds as a very concise introduction to Aquinas' epistemology. But a more robust philosophical exploration of belief formation, degrees of assent, and types of knowledge would substantially strengthen this overview. More critical analysis is needed to demonstrate true philosophical insight.
That was excellent, I was only pondering this very idea for months now, thank you for the clarity 👍
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🤔 Belief is often questioned as irrational, especially when we can't directly observe the truth of what we believe.
00:28 ❓ St. Thomas Aquinas outlines four ways to respond to a statement: opinion (likely true but with doubt), doubt (negation with doubt), certain knowledge (affirmation without doubt), and natural belief (acceptance based on trust).
02:15 👥 Natural belief involves believing another person's word without direct knowledge, and it's a rational act that we engage in regularly.
04:05 🤝 We believe many things based on trust in others, even when direct evidence is unavailable, making belief a reasonable and common aspect of human life.
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wow, greatest video on youtube. thank you so much!!
Almost EVERYTHING we "know" is really only a belief, i.e., something we accept on the basis of trust in the source from which we received it. All history at which we were not present. All natural science that we haven't personally demonstrated, as laid out in the video. Geography. Reported news. Genealogy. Higher math.
The natural analogy is super helpful to show that the paradigm of modern science itself relies upon belief for its well-functioning.
@@chosenskeptic5319 Science is -able-to function as you describe because it rests on philosophical assumptions about the laws of nature being the same yesterday today and tomorrow, holding that the universe is intelligible, etc.
@@chosenskeptic5319 …thus faith.
@@chosenskeptic5319 What is the Bible to you?
@@chosenskeptic5319 I don’t cherry pick. I read (listen) it less the verses. You are corrupted and can’t supply an unbiased opinion.
I think you're pretty great padre!
I noticed that what you cover in the audio lecture for a lesson is, atleast sometimes, the subject of a later video. Is this usually the case? I ask this because the audio lectures tend to be a bit difficult for me to understand (this is to do with me. You all are excellent teachers, period) but the video makes it easy, partly because I can see the face and therefore the visual communication that goes with it and more importantly thanks to the wonderful illustrations you use in the video.
Ashwith, yes, the audio lecture will usually be a more in depth lesson on the specific topic and may touch on topics covered in other lessons.
The video lesson focuses on teaching the fundamentals that you will need to move forward in your study of St. Thomas (and philosophy and theology in general).
@@ThomisticInstitute Thank you so much for your response! So I will proceed with the video lessons even if the audio doesn't make complete sense yet. I will go back to the older audio lessons eventually though. As I watch these later videos, I notice that they clarify many things I didn't understand in the audio lessons.
One more question that's not related - in the audio lessons, many speakers refer to several philosophers, both who are for and against the Thomistic position. Hegel is one name that keeps coming up. Another is Kant (I'm not sure if I spelled them right). Is there a summary available of what these people taught? I usually don't understand the context when these names come up.
Believing something to be the case, doesn’t make it the case. Beliefs are not infallible. You can still be wrong. Your example also doesn’t address the problem of competing certainties.
Suppose, for example, you came into contact with a second zookeeper, working at the same zoo, who told you that the first zookeeper was mistaken and that what had escaped was not a lion, but a tiger. Which zookeeper would you believe and how would you determine they were right? Simply listening to them and making a decision based solely on their testimony is not a solution that would lead to a “truth”, but only to an opinion. You can believe one of them all you want. There’s still the possibility that the zookeeper you chose to believe is wrong.
Personally, I’d withhold judgment until more evidence was presented.
I have a question though, the use of word “qualifications” seems confusing to me. Does it mean something like a warrant? A ground, a reason to base a belief? In the last example demonstrated, being told by a friend who is a zookeeper is described as “without qualification”, but this seems to me to have the same level of credibility as I assuming the press sending a reporter to investigate(the example of opinion). As you know the history of your friend and he has no record of lying to you. Is it not the same to assuming the reporter has done his investigation and not lie on the newspaper? Thank you for your hard work on these videos, I enjoyed them a lot and got interested in reading more about Aquinas, god bless.
Hello Aquinas 101. I am a Religious Studies Master in China and a Catholic Christian. I wanna add your Videos Chinese Sub, and share them to Chinese people. Can i do that? I mean there maybe some Copyright issues. If you think that is a meaningful thing, could you give me a email so i can contact you. Thank God.
Definitely a good idea to do this if possible.
It all boils down to failt vs. knowledge. If you cannot verify something via sense data, you can only rely on faith and conviction. , unless you trust wha
t others have written. Hence the veracity of the Gospels-: they were clearly written by different people.
O.P. ? Order of the Phoenix?
Would that we were so cool . . . alas, just the Order of Preachers.
@@ThomisticInstitute Dominicans are way cooler than the Order of the Phoenix.
What would happen if you are in wrong place and different than your thought?
I have a question. Could i have certain knowledge the statement is false because i saw the only lion the zoo had still in the cage?
Necessary caveats in place, I think the answer is yes!
@@ThomisticInstitute thanks for the answer!
@@mr.leblanc9902 Cheers!
Even if I saw the lion, I would have to believe my eyes and further believe my interpretation of what they sensed. Perhaps I hallucinated. How do I know for certain I did not?
What would your reason be for doubting your eyes? If it's a good reason (your forgot your glasses), then you would not have certainty. What would your reason be for doubting your interpretation of senses? If it's a good reason (you sometimes misinterpret obvious data), then you would not have certainty.
I am; therefore I think.
I mean, yes, this is a route one could take, but it leads to skepticism. Aquinas would say that our senses do put us into contact with objective reality. He admits that they can be deceived (something hinders our sight, like when a stick looks weird underwater), but for the most part our senses should be trusted, because it is through our senses that we gain knowledge about the world.
@@angelicdoctor8016 You asked what my reason is for doubting my senses. We can also ask what reason I have for trusting them. But the common thread is reason. The senses are just data...its reason that we need to trust to judge. Descartes eyes tell him the sun is small. His reason tells him its much larger than the Earth.
@@reasonforge9997 I think this is true:"The senses are just data...its reason that we need to trust to judge". If you don't trust your senses, though, you would need to say they are not offering reliable data to reason about.
There is no real knowledge without direct experience.
No, lies are not “ nice”.
The acceptance of a claim should be commensurate with with the evidence. If you told me you had a sandwich for lunch, I would most likely take your word for it. If you told me you had a live pet dragon in your garage I would need a much higher level of evidence. If you told me that god appeared to you, I may believe that you are not lying, but without confirming evidence, I would believe that you where mistaken in what you saw. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I think you mean "commensurate" and you haven't really grasped the Catholic understanding of God. You're conceiving of the Christian God as if he could be a member of a pantheon, but happens to be the only one. That is radically and fundamentally removed and different from what the Catholic God is. The Catholic God, in a line, is existence itself, or that which sustains and underpins reality. It's a lot more complicated than that, to be sure, and it's a subtle thing, but once you grasp it you grasp it forever. I was a staunch atheist for years before it really sank in that I'm only positively certain of two things: My own existence, and God's. I'm not even a Catholic; I haven't settled on a faith yet. But the arguments are completely airtight. It is more certain that God exists than the keyboard upon which I'm typing. It's difficult to actually meaningfully put the argument in words, but once the punch of it registers, you'll never be doubtful again.
@@liquidoxygen819 I appreciate your thoughtful response. But it’s difficult to argue against a claim that is so vague. Like saying “god is the mystery”. To me this is an example of the god of the gaps. Anywhere that our understanding of something is not fully complete theists insert god as the explanation. One by one, over time science has provided natural explanations for events (lightning, fire, the seasons, etc...) previously attributed to god. Not once has the explanation been determined to be god.
Poor logic.