Logicians also should accept themselves

Decomposition as hindering being “intuitively human”

Or: “Why logic is no valid maxim”. “Maxim”, for the context of this post, shall mean “the single, highest principle that guides all activity of a human being”.

When conducting research in any aspect of analytic anthropology, an anthropological model arises according to which man is composed of components. And the components, the finer we analyse, turn out to be nothing but dumb matter. Elements (in different degrees of granularity) are: neurophysiological correlates of thoughts and emotions, hormons, cells, atoms.

Now this does not mean that natural scientists see themselves as something mechanical, but some of them see themselves as something that should be mechanical. More concretely: in their jobs, they arrive at meaningful results by applying mechanical means and mechanical logic unemotionally and consequently, while in their private lifes, they see rampant emotionality (their own or others) damaging everything. This can make one think that “logic” is better, or higher, than emotion. And then, they might train to act logically instead of emotionally. Until now, not much of a problem. But for these people who think analytically, it can become difficult to accept their “typical human” attributes, those like emotion that are the combined achivevement of the “system human being”. Because: as for themselves, these attributes don’t have something to do with objective reality or truth.

There are, for example, emotions: why should one allow oneself to exert emotionality, if it is neither true nor objective? However, there’s an answer to this. One has to distinguish between the implementation levels and the (abstract) level of what is “meant” by the implementation. It’s like with computer programs: the program is a collection of bits, but it means something different than just to be a collection of bits. So the justification to accept oneself as a human being (with all the “typical human” attributes) and to live as a human being comes from the fact that we’re meant, by God, to be human beings. He wants us to have and exert all these human attributes. And regarding the emotion example: emotion has nothing to do with truth, and it does not have to: it’s meant as a tool for sharing and experiencing love.

Probably, intuitive / “typically human” behavior and logic behavior should be treated as aspects, not levels. Because logic behavior is in itself typically human: animals are not capable of grasping abstract meaning and building logical steps on it. It’s a human noetic attribute. The essence is then: don’t use just logic but also the other typically human attributes.

But then, if logic and intuition are both justified, it’s also correct to say: While it’s ok to use ones intuition to determine interesting hyptheses and good assumptions what might be true, logic (and good observation) must be employed to see if something is true. For religion this means: It’s ok to “feel God at work” in some religion or in people of a specific faith, but this should be nothing more than the motivation to check this hypothesis. It’s not ok to determine truth by way of religious feelings, as done in most religions.

Women as being intuitively humans

The problem that I tried to explain seems to be a male one only. Women generally accept themselves as humans “a priori” (i.e. just based on their intuitive impression and experiences, so even without the desire to justify this acceptance by objective observations). In their eyes, they are humans, so they live as humans, and don’t think about their own decomposition. This is why, for women, emotions and relationship stuff and all that is “more of a direct, objective reality” than for men. Because, men think of matter as being the ultimate, direct, objective reality, and emotions and stuff being just “added” to reality (as something that’s unnecessary in most cases). But: if we’re meant to be humans by the wll of God, the way men think about reality is false! And, by the way, I must admit that this blog post was inspired by women, resp. by observing how women are and behave.

Implications

Implications for the basis of believing resp. my “Second Acts” project: it might be that the Gospel wants to be understood as something that’s dealt with by the humanities (i.e. as something that has to be accepted by exerting “typically human attributes” like faith / believing). This would mean that the Gospel is something that deals with humans on the human level, not on the level that deals with things, atoms, laws, and objective truth. Now while this might be the case, the foundation of a true Gospel is nonetheless the existence of the lower levels … just as there cannot be a human being without atoms, there cannot be a Gospel without the historic events it relates about. And Second Acts is about looking at these basic levels, as giving the justification for accepting the Gospel, then, on the highest (i.e. human) level.

Putting all this another way round: it’s not correct to see logic behavior as the highest goal of human behavior (as I do currently). Because logic means dealing with everything according to objective truth, adequately when just taking into account the material / lower level attributes of things. For example, logic behavior would lead to believe in Christ because of historic facts. This is logically correct.

However, what is missing by behavior that’s guided by the maxime of logic, is human behavior. Because, logic is cold, dealing with everything just according to its material / objective attributes. Logic won’t lead you to love your neighbour, and not at all to love your neighbour emotionally and in a way that’s beautiful to experience.

Therefore, it should be seens as something positive that humans are generally not lead by the maxime of logic. Example: different world religions couldn’t have evolved if people would’ve been logic. However, logic should be the basis of human behavior (so that it becomes true) and upon that, love should be added (so that it is graceful). See what’s said about Jesus: he came ingrace and truth.


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