{"id":4264,"date":"2012-08-25T12:45:37","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T16:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=4264"},"modified":"2012-08-25T12:45:37","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T16:45:37","slug":"what-do-natural-lawyers-chase-instead-of-ambulances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/08\/what-do-natural-lawyers-chase-instead-of-ambulances.html","title":{"rendered":"What do natural lawyers chase instead of ambulances?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Look what I found by googling \u201cNewton vs Leibniz\u201d!
(totally becomes relevant farther down the post)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Buried in the (correct<\/em>) thread for discussing meta-questions about that gargantuan thread on natural law<\/a>, Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics<\/a> raised a meta-question about whether he should find natural law plausible enough to raise to the level where he cares about investigating the hypothesis. \u00a0He wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The following is not a critique of natural law but rather a meta-level heuristic concern about it. It seems pretty clear that once one buys into a general Catholic (or a high church Anglican) sort of approach that natural law makes sense. However, other religions with extremely similar baselines have adopted similar premises but don\u2019t have \u201cnatural law\u201d systems. This isn\u2019t strictly speaking true- for example in Judaism the Maimonidean tradition does have some similar ideas, and in certain aspects of Islamic philosophy one gets not too dissimilar ideas. But, if the idea really does rest on very basic notions of teleology that are common enough that they are shared by all the major Abrahamic religions, one has to wonder why similar arguments have evolved among them. Why for example does the Ba\u2019hai philosophy have no similar notion? (Note that while the term \u201cnatural law\u201d is used also in the Enlightenment philosophers to talk about rights they are a) heavily influenced by their European upbringing and b) generally using the term in a very different manner other than essential agreement that some form of natural law exists).<\/p>\n

This ties in with a general heuristic that seems worthwhile. Does a given idea arise independently in multiple cultures? For example, Aristotelian logic looks a lot like Indian logic (although Indian logic arose much later so there is an argument that the Indians may have been influenced by Western logic). Thus, this suggests that Aristotle\u2019s basic ideas about logic are potentially culturally independent. Obviously, such arguments have their limits- multiple cultures came up with a geocentric model of the solar system but hat\u2019s because the naive evidence really does look that way. Moreover, as humanity has advanced, communication between cultures is easier. In an effectively global culture, it is much harder for ideas to arise separately. But despite this, it should be a slight alarm bell that natural law, which by its nature claims to arise at a near universal level in fact only comes out of a single set of theological traditions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re not using the strict rules of the last thread, because I think this points to a more general epistemological question: how suspicious should you be of a culturally-isolated idea? \u00a0Both Leibniz and Newton discovered the calculus, because \u201cwhat\u2019s true is what\u2019s there to be interacted with<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0If we\u2019d shot either of them, the math would have still turned up.<\/p>\n

So, was Aristotle or Aquinas\u00a0indispensable? \u00a0Should truths that require singular insight\u00a0be taken with a much bigger grain of salt? \u00a0I\u2019m still mulling this over, and I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019m going to be returning to it next week at length when I review Gregory Wolfe\u2019s\u00a0Beauty Will Save the World<\/em><\/a>, so I\u2019d like to hear your thoughts now.<\/p>\n

On the factual matter: Does natural law crop up in other traditions?<\/em><\/p>\n

On the epistemological: What do you make of your answer to the above?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

MEANWHILE:<\/strong> Yvain, the one who launched<\/em> that giant thread, has a bunch of follow-up questions\u00a0chez lui<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0He\u2019s been reading\u00a0The Last Superstition<\/em><\/a>, so now he\u2019s asking things like:<\/p>\n

Exactly how many forms do things have? I have the form \u201chuman\u201d, but do I also have the forms \u201cmale\u201d, \u201cwhite person\u201d, \u201cdoctor\u201d, \u201cperson sitting in a motel in Alabama\u201d, \u201cperson whose first name contains a prime number of letters\u201d, and \u201cthing made of mass\u201d? If not, what\u2019s the distinction? If so, how does one figure out which forms are more important than others?<\/p>\n

On the very remote chance that there\u2019s anyone here who is familiar both with Aristotelian forms and with the idea of cluster-structures in thingspace<\/a>, does the latter totally remove the need for the former, do they address different questions, or what?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hie thee hence if you think you can be of help!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buried in the (correct) thread for discussing meta-questions about that gargantuan thread on natural law, Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics raised a meta-question about whether he should find natural law plausible enough to raise to the level where he cares about investigating the hypothesis. \u00a0He wrote: The following is not a critique of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,68],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-4264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-epistemologyphilosophy","tag-natural-law"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat do natural lawyers chase instead of ambulances?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Buried in the (correct) thread for discussing meta-questions about that gargantuan thread on natural law, Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, 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