[MD] snippet on rationalism vs. empiricism

[John Carl]

Ok, I came across something in my travels that finally explained what so
many on this forum have been trying to get across about uber-control of
all-knowing mind or whatever...


"If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the
logical relations among propositions-- so here again we depend on a Platonic
harmony.... I call this view alarming... [because] it is hard to know what
world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion
that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious.  Rationalism has
always had a more religious flavor than empiricism.  Even with God, the idea
of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest
layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual
development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at
home in the universe than is secularly comfortable."

The Last Word, Thomas Nagel