Three Types of Religious Philosophy by Gordon H. Clark

Author:Gordon H. Clark [Clark, Gordon H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Empiricism and Sensation

The discussion on these last few pages has stayed close to theology, but one must probe more deeply. Paley had assumed that he could see a watch. Hume gives the impression that he has perceived a cabbage. And does it not seem to be true that Empiricism cannot get very far without some knowledge of individual objects such as these? Thomas could not begin his argument until he had seen a stone in motion. A century later William of Occam proposed an Empiricism even more rigorous than that of Thomas. He insisted that reality consists only of individual objects, thus removing from the world the few remnants that Thomas had retained from Platonism. Surely Empiricism must have a world of trees and stones.

Yet an empirical account of individual things is more difficult than anyone would at first expect. In the discussion of Thomas’ cosmological argument, above, five criticisms were listed; but the first one, the empirical postulate itself, received no explanation. This was a serious omission, for it is impossible to judge of the complete philosophic situation without a final analysis of experience. Thomas and Hume, for all their differences in conclusions, agreed that all knowledge is based on sensation. Now, if, as most people are unwilling to admit, sensation cannot give rise to any knowledge whatever, if no laws of physics and no events of history can be so determined, if, that is, Empiricism reduces to skepticism, then at least the cosmological argument does not alone crash in ruins. Empiricism as a whole crashes, and in this case Rationalism becomes more plausible. Perhaps even someone might be bold enough to adopt Dogmatism. Surely one cannot judge of the whole situation without a thorough-going examination of Empiricism.

Such an examination is nothing new. Kant in one way and Hegel more definitely came to some negative conclusions about sensation. Malebranche, previously noted, did not neglect the subject. But above all the Greek skeptics have never been surpassed. Therefore it is strange that in this twentieth century those who show some interest in arguing in favor of God’s existence, those who are relatively orthodox, pay little or no attention to theories of sensation. They stand rebuked (inferentially) by a brilliant, non-theological philosopher, Brand Blanshard, who in The Nature of Thought painstakingly works out a detailed theory of sensation and perception. But most conservative theologians pay no attention.

It may be of some historical interest, although his arguments are not the most profound, to see how Malebranche in the seventeenth century treated the matter:

These sensations are so vivid and sharp that the mind can hardly avoid attributing them to itself in some way or other. Therefore it not only concludes that they are in the objects but also that they are in parts of one’s body.... Thus it judges that heat and cold are not only in ice and fire but that they are also in one’s hands. As for weak sensations, they strike the mind so slightly that no one supposes they belong to the mind.

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