Welcome!

Sam266 said:

I don't normally do this, but you accused me of making assertions, as if my assertions lack a formal logical argument. The argument is there, but you don't seem to see it. The following is the logic that follows from my claims.

Deductive argument for hinges

1. A deductive argument for hinges​

Definitions

• A reason is a belief offered in support of another belief.
• A finite reasoner is a thinker with limited time, memory, and attention.
• A hinge commitment is a commitment that is not held on the basis of further reasons, and that functions as part of the background that makes giving and asking for reasons possible.

Argument

1. For any belief held by a finite reasoner as justified, either
   a. there is an infinite chain of supporting reasons, or
   b. the chain of reasons is circular, or
   c. the chain of reasons terminates in one or more commitments that are not themselves held on the basis of further reasons.
2. A finite reasoner cannot in practice have an infinite chain of supporting reasons for any belief.
3. A purely circular chain of reasons does not confer genuine justification on a belief.
4. Therefore, whenever a finite reasoner holds a belief as justified, the chain of supporting reasons must terminate in one or more commitments that are not themselves held on the basis of further reasons.
5. Commitments that are not held on the basis of further reasons and that function as the background for other reasons are what I call hinge commitments.

Conclusion

1. Therefore, any finite reasoner who engages in giving and asking for reasons must have hinge commitments.

This is a straightforward trilemma style argument. Premise 1 is Agrippa or Carroll; premises 2 and 3 rule out the first two horns for finite agents; the conclusion is that something hinge like is inevitable. The controversial bit is not the validity, it is whether you accept 2 and 3, and whether you accept my definition in 5. But as a deductive support for the claim that there must be some non-inferential background commitments, it is quite clean.

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Again, you're assuming that skeptics simply don't exist. There is no need for a hinge commitment, or even any sort of knowledge belief at all, to engage in skeptical inquiry. The skeptic needs make no commitments at all, all they need is to specify rules to the game that they abide by for the sake of the game. So to make assertions about foundationalism simply fails to take the challenge of skepticism seriously. It is quite possible to remain in a state of suspension as a general principle, to maintain that it is yet to be demonstrated that knowledge of any sort is possible.

Sam266 said:

My name is Sam Naccarato. I have a B.A. in philosophy (1981) and I’ve spent over 45 years thinking about philosophical questions. For the past twenty+ years, I've focused on epistemology, the study of knowledge, with a strong Wittgensteinian approach drawn from his later work, especially On Certainty.

My Recent Work:

I recently completed a book titled From Testimony to Knowledge: Evaluating Near-Death Experiences, which applies epistemic standards to testimonial evidence. The book introduces what I call JTB+U (Justified True Belief plus Understanding) and introduces "guardrails" for responsible belief: No False Grounds (NFG), Practice Safety, and Defeater Screening. This framework applies broadly to evaluating knowledge claims, including those based on testimony.

I've also written a paper connecting Wittgenstein's hinge epistemology to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, exploring how both reveal necessary structural limits of formalized systems. I'm also working on a second book, which I'll introduce later.

My Philosophical Approach:

My epistemology is grounded in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, particularly his concept of "hinges," those bedrock certainties that function as preconditions for inquiry rather than conclusions within it. Chapters 6 and 7 of From Testimony to Knowledge develop this Wittgensteinian foundation in detail. I've identified that hinges operate at three levels: prelinguistic (before language acquisition), nonlinguistic (shown in action), and linguistic (expressed propositionally). Some hinges are metaphysically necessary (like "other minds exist"), while others are contingent.

I believe this framework has proven remarkably powerful for distinguishing between genuine foundational certainties and beliefs that require justification but often avoid scrutiny by claiming foundational status.

Why I'm Here:

I'm deeply interested in how we evaluate historical claims, especially those that rest on testimony. What standards should we use? How do we distinguish between strong and weak testimonial evidence? When does testimony rise to the level of knowledge, and when does it remain mere belief?

These questions apply universally, to scientific claims, historical events, legal proceedings, and yes, to religious truth claims as well. I believe the same standards should apply consistently across all domains.

I'm here to engage in philosophical discussion and welcome serious engagement with these ideas. I'm not interested in dismissing anyone's beliefs, but I am interested in understanding what justifies them and whether those justifications can withstand careful examination.

Looking forward to thoughtful conversations.

Sam

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Welcome!

Hentenza said:

That might be the case now but it was not the case as I was growing up. Many of us agnostics and atheists then would not tolerate it. It was merely something that society then did not embrace.

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Incorrect. Cross dressing as entertainment has been acceptable for ages. Some Like It Hot, Bosom Buddies, Tootsie, Bugs Bunny...shall I go on?

-- A2SG, how about Shakespeare?

The Liturgist said:

It’s clear that the worldly leaders on the far left have identified us now as a threat and are moving to persecute us,...

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When you're getting flak, you know you're over the target.

The Liturgist said:

...by associating us falsely with “white nationalism” (which is absurd as anyone who has visited a typical Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox parish can attest) and sexist, which is even more absurd.

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Agreed. And I have no personal experience with any "Orthobro" problem. Our congregation looks like a meeting of the U.N. We have folks representing every continent and color on Earth. Even Middle Earth (a Kiwi, lol).

Fervent said:

Right off the bat you're just making an assertion.

Yet again denying the reality of skeptical approaches, which require no claim of knowledge.

We'd have to define "belief" in order to evaluate this.

And how do we know that epstemology has any ground to stand on?

Is it a world of things? Or is it a world of ideas? Seems you're already engaged in dogmatics even before we get to the question of hinges.

And the question is, what justifies our trust in such inductive leaps?

We're getting close to a pyrrhonist's approach in treating the whole thing like a game.

"The hidden foundation of knowing"? Other than a claim of necessity, what is supposed to be special about these hinges that allows us to exempt them from ordinary standards of proof?

Again, assertion.

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I don't normally do this, but you accused me of making assertions, as if my assertions lack a formal logical argument. The argument is there, but you don't seem to see it. The following is the logic that follows from my claims.

Deductive argument for hinges

1. A deductive argument for hinges​

Definitions

• A reason is a belief offered in support of another belief.
• A finite reasoner is a thinker with limited time, memory, and attention.
• A hinge commitment is a commitment that is not held on the basis of further reasons, and that functions as part of the background that makes giving and asking for reasons possible.

Argument

1. For any belief held by a finite reasoner as justified, either
   a. there is an infinite chain of supporting reasons, or
   b. the chain of reasons is circular, or
   c. the chain of reasons terminates in one or more commitments that are not themselves held on the basis of further reasons.
2. A finite reasoner cannot in practice have an infinite chain of supporting reasons for any belief.
3. A purely circular chain of reasons does not confer genuine justification on a belief.
4. Therefore, whenever a finite reasoner holds a belief as justified, the chain of supporting reasons must terminate in one or more commitments that are not themselves held on the basis of further reasons.
5. Commitments that are not held on the basis of further reasons and that function as the background for other reasons are what I call hinge commitments.

Conclusion

1. Therefore, any finite reasoner who engages in giving and asking for reasons must have hinge commitments.

This is a straightforward trilemma style argument. Premise 1 is Agrippa or Carroll; premises 2 and 3 rule out the first two horns for finite agents; the conclusion is that something hinge like is inevitable. The controversial bit is not the validity, it is whether you accept 2 and 3, and whether you accept my definition in 5. But as a deductive support for the claim that there must be some non-inferential background commitments, it is quite clean.

If you're familiar with deductive reasoning, then you should follow the argument. This is not just an assertion, it's logic. I could give you the symbolic notation if you want, but I don't think it will help you. I can also give an inductive argument, but it will make things more complicated at this point.

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Claire B. said:

Hi there!

My name is Claire, and I have been a saved, Bible-believing Christian for 24 years now.

I’m 45, a wife, mother of four and Texan.

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Welcome!

One occasion for sorrow by the way is the realization that several glorious martyrs lack a beautiful canon such as that of St. Galacteon and Epistemis.

Indeed, I find myself wishing for a gloss for the General Menaion for more specific types of feasts, for example, given the proliferation of married martyrs and of married hieromartyrs and of child martyrs due to Communist, islamic and Papist persecutions joining those persecuted by the Hellenic Pagans of antiquity, for instance, among the latter groups we encounter the great victors St. Alexei and St. Peter the Aleut joining the many martyred children of antiquity.

And here I find myself again pained, because St. Peter the Aleut despite his great importance to Orthodox Christians in North America, especially those of Aleutian or Native American ancestry or those in the OCA, ROCOR, Antioch, and other churches historically connected to the OCA’s Diocese of Sitka and Alaska, we lack a service specifically for St. Peter; we have a Troparion and Kontakion for him, but not a complete canon.

And at that, he is still better treated by our calendar than some young martyrs of antiquity; I was greatly pained to realize that, as far as I can tell, St. Abanoub, a Coptic boy martyred in the Diocletian Persecutions, is not on our calendar; his story is deeply moving and what is more, our Coptic friends report many miracles connected with him in recent years, and due to the strong similarity between the Coptic and Byzantine Rites it would not be difficult to transpose the Coptic propers for St. Abanoub into our liturgy, and either doing that, or writing a new service based on the hagiography of St. Abanoub, which we ostensibly accept, ought not be controversial, particularly since St. Abanoub was a victim of the Diocletian Persecution who died long before the wicked Nestorius set in motion the chain of events that would as a secondary effect cause the tragic alienation between the predominantly Alexandrian Greek Eastern Orthodox Christians of Egypt, and the predominantly Coptic Oriental Orthodox Christians (fortunately, the aforementioned efforts of the Khedive notwithstanding, the Alexandrian and Coptic churches do have arrangements for pastoral care facilitating intermarriage, which has become important due to the tragic decline of the Alexandrian Greek population in Egypt, a distinctive ethnic group increasingly at risk of dying off due to emigration even as the overall Alexandrian church flourishes). Likewise, despite the absence of formal arrangements, Copts frequently make pilgrimages to St. Catharine’s Monastery in Sinai where they are well received by the smallest autonomous Eastern Orthodox Church, which nonetheless has a few laity among the Bedouin tribes it serves (in addition to providing healthcare to all the members of the tribes, creating a symbiotic relationship; there are no parishes of the Church of Sinai but in addition to the Monastery proper it does have a few chapels; given the increased population and tourism of other Orthodox Christians such as Russians to Sinai I pray to see the Church of Sinai grow in size).

At any rate; if we had a gloss for the General Menaion to supplement the standard services with more refined subtypes, for instance, for specific kinds of martyrs, or for icons of the Theotokos (by, for example, taking those portions of the proper services for the various icons and arranging them as a gloss that could be applied to the standard service for feasts of the Theotokos), that would help, and if we had more services in general for important saints who lack their own service, or who only have troparia and kontakia, I would really like that.

I would also lament however that at a great many Orthodox parishes the only propers one might hear would be the troparion and kontakion of the feast, due to poor attendance at Vespers and Orthros and severe cuts. For instance, the AOCNA usually omits most of the canon from Matins and is not alone in this practice.

Thus, part of this thread's raison d'etre is to encourage new parishes and monasteries to seek the blessing of their hierarchs to try to celebrate more of the Menaion than is presently celebrated. And if we had more people writing Canons and other proper hymns, and not just Kontakia and Troparia and Akathists for new saints, that would also help.

Later in the weekend I will likely comment on the Synaxis of St. Michael and All the Angels and the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos, (the former coincided with the afterfeast of the latter on the revised Julian Calendar).

Also while it is the case that I prefer the Julian Calendar (or the Gregorian) due to the Revised Julian causing anomalies like Fasts of the Apostles of negative duration, I am not doctrinaire on this point; I greatly dislike Old Calendarism and I love how in the OCA both calendar systems continue to exist, sometimes in the same parish, for example, Holy Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles, which is an OCA parish which also has a small English speaking service on the Revised Julian Calendar (it is also one of the few Russian Orthodox churches in the US that follows the distinctly Russian practice of changing into red vesments between the conclusion of Paschal Matins and the start of the Paschal Divine Liturgy wearing them until the wekk of the Feast of the Ascension.

This is due to the similarity of the Russian word “Red” with the Church Slavonic word “Beautiful”, so Red Square originally meant Beautiful Square (this also why the Communists tried to own that color in Russia). I rather like this tradition however; the MP and some OCA parishes use a slightly different liturgical color scheme than ROCOR, the Ukrainians and most American parishes, with purple being used more frequently and outside of Lent, and also more use of green; and no attempt at liturgical color standardization (so the use of green for multiple Sundays after All Saints Day and of red during Advent is not done). It also results in MP parishes changing their vestments and some paraments thrice in 24 hours: from black to white on the morning of Holy Saturday during the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of St. Basil and from white to red shortly after midnight.

I wonder if on a Kyriopascha they throw in the use of blue vestments, for that would be epic; I would love to see a video if anyone is aware of one of of a divine liturgy in a Russian Orthodox church during the last Kyriopascha in 1991.

gzt said:

Well, it's very "Tristram Shandy" so far, so your consultants are at least cribbing from a tried-and-true model.

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Let us love one another, so that with one accord we may confess: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Trinity, one in essence and undivided.

Sam266 said:

This shift changed philosophy itself. It moved the question of knowledge from the search for metaphysical foundations to the study of how meaning, justification, and understanding operate in shared life. To grasp epistemology, Wittgenstein believed, we must first understand language as the medium in which knowing occurs.

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This right here is where the shell game occurs. Because we can't avoid dealing with metaphysical issues when we are dealing with knowledge claims, so the only thing a turn to language does is insulate the metaphysical underpinnings from the possibility of questioning. The hinge concept is little more than a dogmatic turn that shields its metaphysical underpinnings from question by taking them off the board.

Chesterton said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/us/orthodox-christianity.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U8.tEHt.sHm-3DjhuJrH&smid=nytcore-ios-share&fbclid=IwY2xjawOMG6pleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeXw0Nq6khTEVunUPCfFM-zw_L4qqQpjINoYmAu39_G3f749s5w5F09U8VDMs_aem_fai-XDwBv0p71HTZ51XR8Q

Good article, despite a negative focus on "masculinity" and a couple other things.

As far as changes, our priest has done a good job, IMO. A few months ago, he reminded the catechumens that wearing shorts, ragged jeans and t-shirts won't preclude anyone from worship, because we're not legalistic, but c'mon, we represent the cherubim, we should do a little better.

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It’s clear that the worldly leaders on the far left have identified us now as a threat and are moving to persecute us, by associating us falsely with “white nationalism” (which is absurd as anyone who has visited a typical Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox parish can attest) and sexist, which is even more absurd.

Indeed on this very site there is a member who I used to be sympathetic towards, but who has now become openly spiteful towards Eastern Orthodox, and especially Coptic Orthodox, Christians, which saddens me very much; she believes our veneration of the Theotokos is inherently sexist, which represents such a horrible degree of prelest that I would urge members to pray for her.

The NY Times operates on the basis of guilt by association; the article conveniently declined to make it clear that Matthew Heimbach is excommunicate, pending his repentance, from the canonical church, and that the problem of Orthobros is rare even among the schismatic Old Calendarists.

At the same time, we must be careful, because this article underscores the harm that our Orthobro problem could cause the Oriental Orthodox; when the world targets us, the OO churches, who are facing dire persecution and who benefit from majority national governments only in Armenia and Ethiopia, both of which are impoverished and in extreme peril from their Islamic neighbors, will be cut off, will lose sources of funding that have been helping many to deal with the persecution. It is my belief that, if required, EO charities such as the Order of St. Ignatius should be prepared to offer direct financial assistance to their OO counterparts if this transpires, because the fact is, most people are unaware of the EO-OO schism, a schism I believe should end based on the deteriminations of the EO-OO theological conferences and in which I align myself with iOTA (the International Orthodox Theological Asscociation) and support expanding the intercommunion model that unites the Antiochians and Syriac Orthodox in the Middle East, but alas not in North America, on a churchwide basis until such time as full communion can be established without causing a schism or being used by those desiring a schism for other reasons as justification for one.

Likewise we should also be enlarging our Western Rite operations. The Antiochian Western Rite Vicarate and the ROCOR Western Rite should inspire a similar vicarate in the OCA; the OCA paradoxically has a monastery dedicated to St. John Maximovitch yet unlike the Antiochians and ROCOR has not moved to implement the Western Orthodoxy he endorsed. This matters, because far-left elements in the Roman Catholic Church are determined to eliminate their traditional liturgy, which has a beauty similar to ours, distorted by various Scholastic era problems and with a depressing lack of parish-level celebration of the Divine Office (the willingness of people to attend Matins and Vespers I regard as a key metric of the health of a liturgical church).

contratodo said:

The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. Psalm 9:17

streams shall become pitch and the dust into brimstone. Isaiah 34:9

Who among us shall dwell with the consuming fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Isaiah 33:14

(The wicked) shall be ashes under your feet in the day that I do this says the Lord. Malachi 4:3-4

If any man will hurt them a fire proceeds out of their mouth... and if any man will hurt them they must in this manner be killed. Revelation 11:15

The beast and false prophet will hurt them and therefore must be killed by the fire that comes out of their mouth. In this we can see the creation of the lake of fire, it is first kindled by the two prophets, then by the Lord when He returns, He also spews fire from His mouth Revelation 19:21, and then the final fire from the Father Revelation 20:9 destroys the whole world, 2 Peter 3:8-12 Rev 21:1 this world becomes hell, the lake of fire, just as the was said in psalms 9:17.

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Malachi 4:3-4 Refers only to a one time event in this world "in that day". It does not refer to eternal punishment.

Sam266 said:

How does that contribute to this thread? What makes you think I don't love God? I haven't made my beliefs about God known to anyone in here. That said, my concept of God is probably much different from yours. I do believe in an afterlife, that we survive death with our identity intact. I also believe that love is at the core of reality. My book From Testimony to Knowledge explains much of my position. I don't hold to any religious belief system.

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Any starting point is based on loving Jesus Christ of Nazareth when speaking of Him. This, at the very least tells me where you are comming from.
I'm sorry this makes you uncomfortable but true transparency may be just that, uncomfortable.
Incidently, love is the initial human contribution He is looking for.

This won't be easy reading. It takes time to explain an epistemological approach. Once I do explain it, I'll give you my thoughts on the evidence for the resurrection.

Wittgenstein’s Toolkit

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy gave us a set of tools for seeing how language and knowledge actually work in life. He believed that many philosophical problems arise not from the world itself but from the ways language misleads us. To understand knowing, we must first understand how meaning and justification take shape within language.

The most important tools in his approach are language-games, grammar, forms of life, rule-following, public criteria, and hinges. Each shows how knowledge depends on shared patterns of use rather than on private insight or abstract theory.

Language-games remind us that words acquire meaning only within human activities. To understand a statement is to understand the context in which it operates, whether in science, conversation, or ordinary life.

Grammar is the structure that determines what counts as sense within a given practice. It does not tell us what is true but what can be meaningfully said.

Forms of life are the shared patterns of action and culture that make language possible. They are the background of agreement that gives justification and understanding their force.

Rule-following and public criteria explain how meaning remains public rather than private. To use a word correctly is not to match an inner image but to act in ways others can recognize as right.

Hinges refer to the basic certainties that make inquiry possible. They are not conclusions but conditions, the stable points that allow doubt and justification to function at all.

Around these main instruments Wittgenstein developed several related ideas. Family resemblance describes how concepts overlap without rigid boundaries. Criteria and symptoms help us distinguish between defining features and mere signs. The beetle in a box image shows the limits of private meaning. The river-bed metaphor describes how our foundational beliefs can shift while still guiding thought. Aspect-seeing illustrates how understanding can change through a shift in perspective. And through all of this runs a single method: clarity. Philosophy’s task is to bring words back to their ordinary use so that confusion dissolves and the grammar of sense become visible again.

Wittgenstein’s toolkit does not form a theory but a way of looking. It teaches that knowledge lives in language, and language lives in the shared practices that make the world intelligible to us.

Wittgenstein never offered a theory of knowledge, but his methods reveal the structure within which any theory must work. He showed that belief, justification, and understanding arise within the shared practices of life, where language and action already fit together. The framework I call JTB+U develops this insight. It keeps the classical idea of justified true belief but strengthens it by grounding both justification and belief in these Wittgensteinian conditions of sense, while making explicit the role of understanding that his work leaves implicit.

Marilyn C said:

Hi Daniel,

Have you ever considered that `Jerusalem` above is made up of two parts - Mount Zion and the city, the New Jerusalem.

`But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,...` (Heb. 12: 22)

Mount Zion is where the Lord Jesus rules from His own throne. His Father has set Him there.

`I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.` (Ps. 2: 6) `...a throne set in heaven, and one sat on the throne..` (Rev. 4: 2)

The city part is for the Old Testament Saints.

`But they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.` (Heb. 11: 16)

So...Mount Zion is the seat of the Lord`s rule and in the highest, with His Body of believers.

`To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne...` (Rev. 3: 21)


Then the city part comes down out of the highest heaven to the universe realm and is the rule over the earth.

`Then I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God,...` (Rev. 21: 2)

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Not really. Because the the New Jerusalem has always illustrated God's OT and NT saints.
The Bride of Christ

Since I'll be mentioning Ludwig Wittgenstein from time-to-time, I thought I'd post something about him.

Why Wittgenstein Matters

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an Austrian philosopher whose work reshaped the study of knowledge and meaning. He began as a student of Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, where early analytic philosophy sought to make thought transparent through logic. His first book, TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS, argued that the structure of language mirrors the structure of reality. For a time, he believed that philosophy’s task was complete: once we mapped what can be said, all that remained was silence.

Years later he returned to philosophy with a radical insight. Language does not mirror life; it is part of life. Words gain meaning through their use in human activity, not by standing for private or abstract entities. In his later work, especially the PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS and ON CERTAINTY, Wittgenstein turned from ideal logical forms to the ordinary ways words function in practice.

This shift changed philosophy itself. It moved the question of knowledge from the search for metaphysical foundations to the study of how meaning, justification, and understanding operate in shared life. To grasp epistemology, Wittgenstein believed, we must first understand language as the medium in which knowing occurs.

Wittgenstein was probably the greatest philosopher since Kant and Hume, but that doesn't mean we should accept every idea he put forth. I disagree with him on the limits of language.

CoreyD said:

The record shows I gave clarification... repeatedly.
The record shows you ignored the posts.

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Listen, you're not going to get anywhere with her. Her belief is that unless you can ALWAYS choose right, you don't have free will. Of course that is a bogus belief, but it's the way she sees it.

A Devil's Advocate said:

When Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees with what is the greatest commandment, as you know He replied with love your God and love your neighbor.

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Loving God above all and loving one’s neighbor as oneself are not easy tasks and imply a struggle to overcome all sinful behavior, since Christ our God specifically identifies the moral instruction of the Law and Prophets, who provide a forensic and qualitative explanation of sin, respectively, as being summarized by the love of God and of one’s neighbor over that of oneself. Thus, all Orthodox saints including the ascetics who struggled against sin, in many cases winning spectacular victories through various forms of martyrdom, are venerated because of their success in these two fields. St. Anthony is a prototypical God-loving saint who managed to overcome the passions after unsuccessfully presenting himself for martyrdom after selling all that he owned and giving it to the poor, and St. Cosimas and Damian, the unmercenary healers, are exemplary at loving their neighbor. St. Nicholas of Myra, whose torture during the Diocletian persecution did not dampen his love, became one of the most venerated hierarchs, especially in the East, and also the only Eastern bishop to be as extensively venerated in the West as is warranted (since the West during the High Middle Ages forgot or discounted the importance of the likes of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Cyril of Alexandria and most other Orthodox bishops; indeed the tragedy now is that many Western Christians are familiar with post-Nicene fathers only through the writings of St. Augustine, who is venerable, to be clear, but also misunderstood, and a saint whose approach to original sin was not the one historically selected by the early church in rejection of the Pelagian heresy, rather the ancestral sin model of another Latin speaking saint, St. John Cassian, was preferred.

At any rate, we can love our neighbor as ourself only through repentance made possible through the grace of the Holy Spirit, a course of action we must willingly take according to the Fathers (Calvinist monergism was unknown in antiquity and those forms of monergism which were known were rejected at the Fifth Ecumenical Synod in the Chalcedonian churches and through equivalent decisions among the Oriental Orthodox).

I don’t understand what would cause you to believe that a focus on loving one’s neighbor above one’s self and loving God above all is anything other than a struggle against the sinful passions. The sinful passions (gluttony, avarice, lust, sloth, pride, especially pride) are sinful precisely because they are by nature self-indulgent.

To quote St. Nikitas Stithatos, in his 100 Texts on the Practice of the Virtues, contained in the Philokalia (compiled in the 18th century by St. NIcodemus the Hagiorite and St. Macarius of Corinth, translated into English by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Mother Mary, may their memories be eternal),

“If you aspire to the spuriousness of human praise as though it were something authentic, wallow in selfindulgence because of your soul's insatiability, and through your greed entwine yourself with avarice, you will either make yourself demonic through self-conceit and arrogance, or degenerate into bestiality through the gratification of belly and genitals, or become savage to others because of your gross inhuman avarice. In this way your faith in God will lapse, as Christ said it would when you accept human praise (cf. John 5:44.); you will abandon self-restraint and purity because your lower organs are unsatedly kindled and succumb to unbridled appetence; and you will be shut out from love because you minister solely to yourself and do not succor your fellow beings when they are in need. Like some polymorphic monster compounded thus out of multifarious self-antagonistic parts, you will be the implacable enemy of God, man and the animals.”

Sam266 said:

Some of the following I've already covered, but it bears repeating. It also adds a little more information.

What Stands Fast: The Hidden Foundation of Knowing

Every act of epistemology has a foundation that is not questioned.

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Right off the bat you're just making an assertion.

Sam266 said:

Beneath every knowledge claim lies something we do not question, an inherited background of belief that makes questioning possible at all.

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Yet again denying the reality of skeptical approaches, which require no claim of knowledge.

Sam266 said:

That background is not a single belief but a layered system of foundational beliefs running through life and language. Some of it is lived without words, shown in action alone. When I open a door, I reveal my belief that the door is there. When I set a glass on a table, I reveal the belief that the table will hold. This kind of belief is not usually expressed in statements. It is a way of acting in a generally stable world.

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We'd have to define "belief" in order to evaluate this.

Sam266 said:

Some of these background beliefs are prelinguistic or nonlinguistic because they can exist apart from language. Others are linguistic, expressed through words themselves. To speak meaningfully already assumes that words keep their sense, that others understand roughly as I do, and that the world provides a shared point of reference. Without that stability, both practical and linguistic, communication would fail and epistemology would have no ground to stand on.

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And how do we know that epstemology has any ground to stand on?

Sam266 said:

Think of chess. To play, we rely on things we never verify: that the board exists, that the pieces keep their identities, and that the rules remain stable. No one checks these with each move; they stand fast. They form the fixed background of the game, the conditions that give every move meaning.

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Sam266 said:

Yet even here, I could still question or change a rule. What I could not question is that there are objects at all: the board, the pieces, the hands that move them. That there is a world of things is not a rule within the game. It is what makes every rule, in any game, possible.

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Is it a world of things? Or is it a world of ideas? Seems you're already engaged in dogmatics even before we get to the question of hinges.

Sam266 said:

When I check a thermometer, I do not also doubt the institution of measurement. When I read a map, I do not test the idea that maps correspond to places. When I say I know my name, I am not waiting for further evidence.

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And the question is, what justifies our trust in such inductive leaps?

Sam266 said:

These different levels of stability reach from the bodily to the conceptual. Some are rooted in the simple contact between body and world such as gravity, resistance, and motion. Some are sustained by language and social practice such as meaning, promise, and testimony. Others are shaped within specific fields of thought, the standards that define science, law, or mathematics. Each layer supports the next, and together they form the quiet ground where inquiry gets its meaning.

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We're getting close to a pyrrhonist's approach in treating the whole thing like a game.

Sam266 said:

These ordinary acts rest on what stands fast, beliefs so basic and constant that they give knowledge its footing. They are the background that allows language, doubt, and justification to make sense at all. Philosophers following Ludwig Wittgenstein call these fixed points hinges, things that need no proof because they make proof possible. They mark the hidden foundation of knowing.

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"The hidden foundation of knowing"? Other than a claim of necessity, what is supposed to be special about these hinges that allows us to exempt them from ordinary standards of proof?

Sam266 said:

It is here that epistemology begins, in these arational roots.

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Again, assertion.

Sam266 said:

At times I'll repeat ideas that need repeating, especially for those who don't normally study epistemology or philosophy.

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Maria Billingsley said:

Did you ever love your Creator when you believed He existed? I have read your thorough knowledge, your intense research and your commitment to establish and prove your findings, but that aside, did you ever love Him?

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How does that contribute to this thread? What makes you think I don't love God? I haven't made my beliefs about God known to anyone in here. That said, my concept of God is probably much different from yours. I do believe in an afterlife, that we survive death with our identity intact. I also believe that love is at the core of reality. My book From Testimony to Knowledge explains much of my position. I don't hold to any religious belief system.

Family Guy

Some of the following I've already covered, but it bears repeating. It also adds a little more information.

What Stands Fast: The Hidden Foundation of Knowing

Every act of epistemology has a foundation that is not questioned.

Beneath every knowledge claim lies something we do not question, an inherited background of belief that makes questioning possible at all.

That background is not a single belief but a layered system of foundational beliefs running through life and language. Some of it is lived without words, shown in action alone. When I open a door, I reveal my belief that the door is there. When I set a glass on a table, I reveal the belief that the table will hold. This kind of belief is not usually expressed in statements. It is a way of acting in a generally stable world.

Some of these background beliefs are prelinguistic or nonlinguistic because they can exist apart from language. Others are linguistic, expressed through words themselves. To speak meaningfully already assumes that words keep their sense, that others understand roughly as I do, and that the world provides a shared point of reference. Without that stability, both practical and linguistic, communication would fail and epistemology would have no ground to stand on.

Think of chess. To play, we rely on things we never verify: that the board exists, that the pieces keep their identities, and that the rules remain stable. No one checks these with each move; they stand fast. They form the fixed background of the game, the conditions that give every move meaning.

Yet even here, I could still question or change a rule. What I could not question is that there are objects at all: the board, the pieces, the hands that move them. That there is a world of things is not a rule within the game. It is what makes every rule, in any game, possible.

When I check a thermometer, I do not also doubt the institution of measurement. When I read a map, I do not test the idea that maps correspond to places. When I say I know my name, I am not waiting for further evidence.

These different levels of stability reach from the bodily to the conceptual. Some are rooted in the simple contact between body and world such as gravity, resistance, and motion. Some are sustained by language and social practice such as meaning, promise, and testimony. Others are shaped within specific fields of thought, the standards that define science, law, or mathematics. Each layer supports the next, and together they form the quiet ground where inquiry gets its meaning.

These ordinary acts rest on what stands fast, beliefs so basic and constant that they give knowledge its footing. They are the background that allows language, doubt, and justification to make sense at all. Philosophers following Ludwig Wittgenstein call these fixed points hinges, things that need no proof because they make proof possible. They mark the hidden foundation of knowing.

It is here that epistemology begins, in these arational roots.

At times I'll repeat ideas that need repeating, especially for those who don't normally study epistemology or philosophy.

DaisyDay said:

True, it was simply stated the ICE would be going after criminals, with the unspoken "only" being strongly implied.

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I understood this to mean primarily criminals. Of course non-criminal illegal immigrants will inevitably get caught it the raids as well. They will also have to be deported, because - you know, illegal.