Thursday, January 15, 2009
Hey Aquinas! Fuck you!
I've had my head buried in much of Thomas Aquinas's work over the last two weeks, and I have to say, he was a moron. Any reasonable person knows you cannot base a theory off of an assumption, as doing so will render the argument circular. Aquinas seems to have a problem dealing with circularity in arguments. One cannot simply state that there is natural, divine, or eternal law and go from there; one must prove that these things exist before basing theorems around them. Aquinas's second faux-pas is equating human behavior and human instinct as fact. Human's are not inherently good, nor are they inherently bad, nor are they inherently anything; human behavior is extremely dynamic is cannot be used as a fixed point in any sort of theorem. Aquinas's last, but most major error is assuming the existence of god. I understand (to a certain degree) that persecution for heresy was an extremely serious matter in the 13th century and feigning religious faith was a fairly common practice (Hobbes did it, hell, even Einstein did it). This religious equivalent of playing dead is understandable, but a Christian ethical/political theorist certainly is not. If the bible or the idea of god were to be removed from Aquinas's work it wouldn't even have enough fiber to stay together. My point is that basing an entire academic framework on a foundation of religion is about as foolish as it gets; at least find something reasonably truthful to work from.
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What? Of course you base an argument off an assumption. ALL logical reasoning proceeds from premises (i.e. assumptions). If nothing can be assumed, there's no basis for a logical proof.
From infidels.org (sorry, I tried to blockquote it but Blogger won't let me:
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A deductive argument always requires a number of core assumptions [emphasis mine]. These are called premises, and are the assumptions the argument is built on; or to look at it another way, the reasons for accepting the argument. Premises are only premises in the context of a particular argument; they might be conclusions in other arguments, for example.
You should always state the premises of the argument explicitly; this is the principle of audiatur et altera pars. Failing to state your assumptions is often viewed as suspicious, and will likely reduce the acceptance of your argument.
The premises of an argument are often introduced with words such as "Assume," "Since," "Obviously," and "Because." It's a good idea to get your opponent to agree with the premises of your argument before proceeding any further.
The word "obviously" is also often viewed with suspicion. It occasionally gets used to persuade people to accept false statements, rather than admit that they don't understand why something is "obvious." So don't be afraid to question statements which people tell you are "obvious"--when you've heard the explanation you can always say something like "You're right, now that I think about it that way, it is obvious."
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It's legitimate to question the validity of Aquinas' premises. It's legitimate to disregard a circular argument. But it's incorrect to say that an argument based on assumptions is by that fact made circular. Again: no assumptions, no argument.
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