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Illative sense

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Illative sense is an epistemological concept coined by John Henry Newman (1801–1890) in his Grammar of Assent. For him it is the unconscious process of the mind, by which probabilities converge into certainty.

Origin of the term

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Newman wrestled 20 years before he wrote the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. His difficulty was the fact that some people do believe in supernatural agents, and others do not. It is hard to get to the real cause of this difference. And, although supernatural reasons might be given from theology, as a philosopher[1][2] he also looked into ordinary life experiences: when and why do we start or stop believing a person?[3] He discovered that real assent,[4] i.e. firm belief, as opposed to notional assent,[5] comes about, not through ordinary syllogisms,[6] but by a mysterious cumulation of probabilities of lived experience.[7] There must be, therefore, in the mind a power that collects, accumulates, and connects probabilities to a higher degree of certainty. For this power, or inner sense, he uses the neologism "illative sense". The term itself is derived from the Latin verb fero-tuli-latus,[8] meaning "to bring". "Illative" means, then, "to bring in". For Newman it is the automatic data-collecting and -processing capacity in the sub-conscious mind, by which we get to know better or deeper both the content and certainty of the first principles of our knowledge, and of many natural and supernatural (religious) concepts and notional and/or real assents thereof.

Applications

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For Newman the term was a neologism, in order to give a name to the process of acquiring religious assent. But in his Grammar he uses many examples from ordinary life: from travels to military history. Of course, it applied to his own gradual conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism: "For myself, it was not logic, then, that carried me on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it."[9]

Influences and similar concepts

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Some compare Newman's illative sense to Michael Polanyi's Tacit knowledge.[10]

References

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  1. ^ Marchetto, Michele (2011). "The Philosophical Relevance of John Henry Newman". Louvain Studies. 35 (3): 315–335. doi:10.2143/LS.35.3.2157500. ISSN 1783-161X.
  2. ^ Newman, Jay (1986). "Newman as a philosopher". The mental philosophy of John Henry Newman. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. pp. 7–10. ISBN 0-88920-186-2. OCLC 243579499.
  3. ^ Ryan, John David (1959). The Relation of the Illative Sense to the Act of Assent According to J. H. Newman (Master's thesis). Loyola University Chicago.
  4. ^ "Newman Reader - Grammar of Assent - Chapter 4". www.newmanreader.org.
  5. ^ Price, Henry Habberley (1969). "Lecture 5: Newman's Distinction between Real and Notional Assent". Belief. New York: George Allen & Unwin. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Roberts, Lawrence D. (1964). The Nature of Reasoning in John Henry Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent (Master's thesis). Loyola University Chicago.
  7. ^ Hick, John (1988), "Faith and the Illative Sense", Faith and Knowledge, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 69–91, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-19036-2_5, ISBN 978-0-333-41783-6
  8. ^ "Ferre - The Latin Dictionary". latindictionary.wikidot.com.
  9. ^ Apologia pro Vita Sua (2nd ed.). London. 1865. p. 188.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Cfr. Martin X. Moleski, "Illative Sense and Tacit Knowledge: A Comparison of the Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi", in: Allsopp, Michael E., Burke, Ronald R., eds., John Henry Newman, Garland, 1992, p. 189-224

Literature

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