42. Do we know objective truth?
42. DO WE KNOW OBJECTIVE TRUTH?
“Dogmatism”—that’s the attitude of the Catholic Church that the modern world simply can’t stomach. How can we justify the claim that we can have knowledge, real knowledge, even certain knowledge, and not just opinion or belief, about objective reality—about any objective reality, much less about God?
This is a religious and practical question as well as a theoretical, philosophical question. For if the standard view among modern academics and intellectuals is true—that we must be tolerant and “non-judgmental” about everything, including religion, because all we can know, really, is our own feelings and opinions—then all religion, especially the Catholic religion, are doomed and dead.
The most controversial specific area of this battle is sex. We used to talk about “natural” vs. “unnatural” sex (e.g., sodomy and contraception) because we assumed that our intellects could know what the nature of things really is. In order to stop this “offensive” and “judgmental” language, typically modern intellectuals are skeptical of all such talk about the “nature of things”.
In the following crucial passage St. Thomas uses the very technical term “the intelligible species” to mean not the real nature of the real thing as it is in reality but the correct concept or image of that nature of the thing. The question is: Do we know real things or only our own concepts? Can we know the real nature of things, or only our own ideas of them, for sure?
Here is St. Thomas’ simple refutation of today’s subjectivism:
Some have asserted that our intellectual faculties know only the impression made on them, as, for example, that sense is cognizant only of the impression made on its own organ. Therefore the intellect knows only the intelligible species which it has received, so that this species is what is understood.
This is, however, manifestly false for two reasons. First, because the things we understand are the objects of science; therefore, if what we understand is merely the intelligible species in the soul, it would follow that every science would not be concerned with objects outside the soul (and thus all sciences would be included under psychology). . . .
Secondly, it is untrue because it would lead to the opinion of the ancients (the Sophists) who maintained that Whatever seems, is true, and that consequently contradictories are true simultaneously. . . . Thus every opinion would be equally true. . . (including the opinion that that opinion was false!) (I,85,2).
St. Thomas’ two arguments are what logicians call a “reduction to absurdity”: if this subjectivist and skeptical theory is true, obviously absurd consequences follow. Alas, the modern mind no longer considers it absurd to reduce all sciences to psychology or to say that truth = nothing more than whatever seems true to you; that appearance cannot be distinguished from reality with certainty, only as an opinion.
This is an extremely useful philosophy for two classes of persons: salesmen and demons. (The Devil invented advertising; he founded the first Apple store back in the Garden of Eden.)
If all we know are our own concepts, we are like prisoners in a cave staring at images on the wall. (Does that sound familiar?) Or like people who watch only TV and media, not the real world. (Does that sound eerily familiar?) And even though we do not usually believe that about the things our senses perceive, if we believe that about the things our mind believes, including religion, then all we can do is to believe in ourselves, hope in ourselves, love ourselves, pray to ourselves, obey ourselves, and trust ourselves for our own salvation. That is a perfect definition of the philosophy of Hell.
Philosophy is important because a really bad philosophy, like subjectivism, can endanger our salvation.