As I go over chapter IV more thoroughly, so many avenues of philosophical inquiry open up and I know these would be distractions but I still have to make note of them as I work my way through my “mental furniture.” To mention just one, at the very end of his section on Profession as [more ...]
Philosophy
Are you arguing with me? Good. This is the place for it. Steel sharpens steel, so any corrections you offer to the thoughts on these pages is much appreciated.
Jan 252013
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ray-monk-wittgenstein/ Philosophy, he writes, “is not a theory but an activity.” It strives, not after scientific truth, but after conceptual clarity. How does one demonstrate an understanding of a piece of music? Well, perhaps by playing it expressively, or by using the right sort of metaphors to describe it. And how does one [more ...]
Jan 242013
What is it in us that seeks the truth? Why do we seek the truth? How do we find the truth? What is the truth? … According to the Catholic Church, the search for truth – the desire for truth, beauty, justice – is the very presence of God and this desire is what connects man to God and the things of this world to heaven.
This article (by a biologist) does a good job of rejecting the popular notion (known as scientism) that science can replace philosophy. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism Scientism wrong on metaphysics: –snip– The main fault of these arguments lies in their failure to distinguish between necessary and contingent being. A contingent being is one that might or might not [more ...]
What JPII was explaining was the basic ways that the modern “paradigm” (to use that word, which he didn’t) is different after Descartes – that instead of ipsum esse subsistens, or the absolute transcendent being, we now think in terms of absolute transcendent knowledge. Thought, rather than existence, has become primary in the modern paradigm. Reason itself, instead of a tool, becomes the very ground from which the tower of babel must be built, as I like to say. “I think therefore I am” reverses the order of things in a way. Existence must be measured and judged against the ultimate ground of thought. And if there is a God, this paradigm suggests, then that God is not absolute transcendent love but absolute transcendent mind.
Dec 042012
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1166&fulltext=1 A QUIET REVOLUTION may have taken place over the last three decades in our understanding of the history of Western philosophy. So quiet, in fact, that few have noticed it. Three recent books give us a sense of the significance and extent of this paradigm shift: Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, by James Miller; How [more ...]
Nov 272012
Stoic philosophy is less about the nature of reality (metaphysics) or what can or cannot be known (epistemology) but rather, on how to live (ethics). The focus of these philosophers is to pursue what Aristotle called eudaimonia. Offten translated as “happiness” the meaning of the word is closer in meaning to “human flourishing.” Aristotle believed [more ...]
Nov 182012
There are two types of people. Those who say that the decimal notation 0.999… is not equal to 1, and then there are mathematicians who have proven that 0.999… is equal to 1. The Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan developed a theory of what it means to understand – a theory of knowledge – much like [more ...]
I think I may have said this before, but ultimately, I do not think an argument wins the day for Christianity, simply because Christianity cannot be reduced to an argument. What I hope for is that someone might recognize the presence of something unfamiliar, yet attractive, and compelling in any such argument and thereby be [more ...]
Logical positivism’s position is that the only thing philosophy can concern itself with is propositions. As such, it cuts itself off from the possibility of any encounter with Christ. This type of philosophy deals with “religion” through a method that reduces religion to propositions such as, “God exists” and “X is immoral.” This is how [more ...]
Here is the Atom + Eve website, with links to video and transcripts: http://atompluseve.com/conferences/the-origin-of-the-universe/ Dr. Barr also writes for First Things. His article on Hawking (which he discussed in his lecture at the conference) can be found here: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/much-ado-about-ldquonothingrdquo-stephen-hawking-and-the-self-creating-universe In Dr. Barr’s presentation, and in this article, he pointed out that a younger Hawking stands [more ...]
Aug 242012
I believe that scientists like Sagan, Feynman, Hawking and others who have adopted a positivist outlook on the world make a mistake when they reduce Christianity to a mere philosophy and analyze it purely in that way – which is to say, from the outside (as an idea, merely) – from the position of having [more ...]
And so in her uncertainties, she decided that she would go with science. In this way, her opinions would be based on facts, on knowledge, and not superstition. And so, with a thorough skepticism, she searched her heart for its existing superstitions so she could root them out and replace them with knowledge. She compiled [more ...]
Aug 242012
This debate actually happened to me. It went on for a long time, but here is the heart of it… Me: Some people mistake desire for greed, arguing that desire is bad; others mistake greed for desire and argue that greed is good. Both groups of people make the same mistake in the inverse direction. [more ...]
Jun 192012
http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/ His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts… Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality. The Academy of Dijon posed the question, “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?” Rousseau’s answer to this question [more ...]
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue87/Philosophy_of_Mind_An_Overview
Apr 042012
Bertrand Russell adopted Frege’s predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” has three distinct meanings by predicate logic: For the sentence ‘the cat is asleep’, the is of predication means that “x is P” (denoted as P(x)) For the sentence ‘there is a cat’, [more ...]
Mar 282012
Heidegger, of all the Existentialist philosophers, stands apart in his philosophy of Being, which turns out to be the Western Mind’s analogue of the Eastern Mind’s Zen. Zen is the practice of, or experience of, or awareness of, Heidegger’s Being. Like Zen, it is difficult to think of or state what Being is. For one, [more ...]
Oct 142011
Worldview Naturalism in a Nutshell If you don’t believe in anything supernatural – gods, ghosts, immaterial souls and spirits – then you subscribe to naturalism, the idea that nature is all there is. The reason you’re a naturalist is likely that, wanting not to be deceived, you put stock in empirical, evidence-based ways of justifying [more ...]
Oct 052011
“What we have in this thought-experiment is a place to start thinking about our instinctive moral responses (what philosophers call our ‘moral intuitions’) and the way that these intuitions may or may not cohere together or be capable of any kind of rational justification.”
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue86/How_To_Get_Off_Our_Trolleys
In many ways, Knobe is the closest thing experimental philosophy has to a rock star. Since last year, he’s been an essay contributor to the New York Times. An admirer from Australia maintains a Joshua Knobe fan page on Facebook. And a phenomenon bears his name: The Knobe Effect, derived from an experiment of his, [more ...]
Jun 282011
Philosophy student to professor: Can you prove that I exist? Professor to philosophy student: Who’s asking? I heard Rev. Kevin O’Neil of the Washington Theological Union gave a talk titled, “What am I Free For? Moral Theology in the Catholic Tradition.” The second point of his talk was in identifying “three questions to encompass the [more ...]
Jun 282011
They judge their moral success always by the fate of the world and never by the fate of their marriage. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/03/the-beauty-of-the-ethical
A secular-relativists Critique of the New Atheists ala Sam Harris http://www.thenation.com/article/160236/same-old-new-atheism-sam-harris?page=full “More a habit of mind than a rigorous philosophy, positivism depends on the reductionist belief that the entire universe, including all human conduct, can be explained with reference to precisely measurable, deterministic physical processes. (This strain of positivism is not to be confused with [more ...]
Jun 282011
Martin Buber was a Jewish theologian. He famously distinguishes between what he calls the Ich-Du (I-Thou or I-You) relationship and the Ich-Es (I-It) relationship, and ultimately uses this as a way of describing authentic and non-authentic encounters with God. From wikipedia: Ich-Du is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It [more ...]
Jun 282011
http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/11/30/heidegger-and-postmodernism-ep/ Master Eckhart’s comments on seeing angels as devils when you die comes to mind when reading the conclusions Heidegger comes to. Even if his metaphysics and epistemology are correct, does the dread and anxiety necessarily follow? The following conclusions are taken up by postmodern nihilists, but are also very reminiscent of Eastern Buddhist thinking, [more ...]
Jun 282011
http://www.iep.utm.edu/lonergan/ …there are four questions, as it were, that GEM (generalized empirical method) proposes for anyone seeking to ground the methods of any discipline. (1) A cognitional theory asks, “What do I do when I know?” It encompasses what occurs in our judgments of fact and value. (2) An epistemology asks, “Why is doing that [more ...]
