The Enchanted Imagination: Part 4, the Value to Fact Shift

The Enchanted Imagination: Part 4, the Value to Fact Shift

Metadata

• Author: experimentaltheology.blogspot.com
• Full Title: The Enchanted Imagination: Part 4, the Value to Fact Shift
• Category: #articles
• URL: http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-enchanted-imagination-part-4-value.html

Highlights

• As I’ve shared before, consider a watch. If you know what a watch is for you can tell if a watch is good. Values (judgments of goodness) flow from facts (observations of material reality) and teleology makes the connection. The telos of a watch is to tell time. That’s what a watch is for, its purpose. So if the watch fails to keep time we call it a “bad” watch. By contrast, a watch that keeps time is a “good” watch. The point is clear: If you know what something is for, you can tell if something is good.
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• Consider a human life. What is the purpose, the telos, of human life? What are we here for? The enchantment imagination, rooted as it was in teleology, had an answer to that question. You existed for a reason, a purpose. Your life had a telos. But when we turned away from teleology toward causality we lost our ability to say if our lives were good or bad. Since we don’t know what life is for anymore, it’s hard to say if our lives are worth living. How do you judge a good life?
• What makes life good?  To answer that question, you have to know what life is for.