By no means, the supposition that being "the ground of being" makes God irrelevant or impotent or both (or somehow absolutely nothing like "God") was ...
I'm a bit skeptical of narratives that try to pin all these problems on just the (mis)rule of leaders on one side of the political spectrum. The probl...
Modern thought has its genesis in the Reformation, a period in which theology dominated philosophy and science more than in any other epoch, so we sho...
Why would it imply that God cannot act (a sort of impotency?) or would not act? I am not sure the idea of God as Being suggests any particular histori...
Schiller is definitely interesting, going beyond Kant in so.e important ways. Hegel was a great appreciator, and even more of Goethe, who he called hi...
This seems to me to still be a problem of lack of ethical education though. Daily chapel service is not necessarily ethical education. Or, as you desc...
Well, I guess there are two questions here: compatibility and historical influence. "God is love" (1 John 4:8) predates Plotinus by a good deal and li...
I think Hart is pretty great, although I think he sometimes writes at a level that is probably going to be overly abstruse for general audiences, whic...
I think it would be fair to say that this has not been the common reception of Neoplatonism across history. Augustine, the Cappadocians, etc., found a...
It's influential, but the direction of influence goes in both ways. Often, it's assumed that the influence largely goes in the direction of Neoplatoni...
Indeed, you are correct. St. Thomas' theology is no more wholly summed up by "God is being itself," than is the case for Aristotle ("pure act"), Ploti...
In my experience there is great variability in atheists' willingness to countenance radical skepticism, e.g. a denial of the intuitions underwriting l...
For one, that evil is a privation, an absence. It is the slide towards multiplicity and materiality (i.e., mere potency, God being pure actuality). Fo...
It's not incoherent. Ceteris paribus, slapping tariffs of imports will tend to reduce a country's trade deficit. Whether this is a worthy goal is anot...
The tariffs and the return of "industrial policy" that differed radically from the neo-liberal orthodoxy that had dominated the GOP for decades were d...
Grand strategy wise, I suppose there could also be the hope that, given all the rumblings in the Chinese economy, that this will throw them into a muc...
China is certainly an authoritarian regime, and it had a pretty long history of radical policy shifts when it began sucking in trillions of foreign in...
Alternatively, the higher ratio could be indicative of engaging in political bait posts and trolling :naughty: Maybe I'll set up a sticky post demandi...
I'm familiar with the broad critiques of 20th century philosophy. I am not really a fan though. For one, they very often start from the premises of th...
Well, that's how the physicalist likes to present it at least. It makes "all other options" seem to be, at the very least, at least as unappealing or ...
Sure, but it works the other way too. Our ability to communicate in this way also requires an understanding of EM fields, which are universal and not ...
Absolutely. So, discursive justification (proofs, etc.) start from the higher level (understanding at least something) and try to progress back to tha...
Sounds like "smallism" to me. The problem is, there is no prima facie reason for smallism to be true. A sort of "bigism" where parts are only intellig...
Also, "if something is chosen it is choice-worthy" would imply that people are infallible as to what is best for them and can never make "bad choices....
:up: Yes, I agree. The connection only breaks down as we move out of the human ethical sphere. Hence the example of plants. Something might be "good o...
Yes, there is perhaps a useful clarification here. I have been conflating two things: A. The need for any sense knowledge to achieve abstraction and a...
Are you familiar with the work of Jaegwon Kim? He is largely seen as offering a "knock down" argument of emergence vis-a-vis consciousness, given the ...
Yup, and there is Americorps as well (a domestic version of the Peace Corps). Mormons very often do something similar as young adults. And then there ...
:up: I think this is a good way to look at even the "substance" heavy high scholastic metaphysics of St. Thomas (and certainly of the more obviously "...
Then we have no disagreement. I only framed it in that way because, as respects ethical decision-making for finite ends, you can use the two almost in...
Can other animals or babies doubt? I would think not, although it would depend on how we define doubt. I do think they can confused and usure, have mi...
Yes exactly. So, for a concrete example, we give the guy a short story in Chinese and he produces a grammatically correct book report on it, which eve...
Maybe I am misunderstanding the point here. It seems to me that we misunderstand and misuse words all the time. Someone might confuse an uncommon word...
Normally justification is presented in terms of "epistemic warrant," i.e., "good reasons to believe." This goes back to Plato who pointed out that if ...
The 40 Year Old Virgin is an example. At one point, the titular protagonist describes breasts as feeling like "bags of sand." Obviously, simply correc...
I like Joe Sach's translation of the category of substance as "thinghoood," although this is perhaps confusing if one thinks of it in terms of the "pa...
It's fine to ask why a particular thing might be considered healthy, or to inquire into what "health" is. What makes explanation impossible is if we a...
It's worth noting that the dominant view in cosmology is now that the Big Bang was preceded by and caused by a period of "Cosmic Inflation." Now, ther...
The Principle of Non-Contradiction is traditionally formulated as "nothing can both be and not be, in the same way, at the same time, without qualific...
Here is the thread I remember on Conspiracy Against the Human Race. It's obviously not a religion in some sense. But it is very much a "worldview thro...
Well, do you feel the same way about "healthy?" When we say that both lentils and eggs are "healthy" are we making the mistake of Molière's doctor? Sh...
100% agree, but as I tried to point out earlier it's also worth pointing out that the tradition that progresses from Hume seems to largely agree that ...
Well, given the history of the movement I referred to, it seems that the movement has terminated in: A. A denial that we can know much of anything at ...
I don't know what to tell you. The idea that ethics is primarily the study of human well-being and flourishing, and human excellence, is not my invent...
I'm also reminded of an Orthodox catechumenal lecture I attended. It put the Eastern grievance with Western theology like this: Picture God as a sort ...
The human good is not reducible to health, but it involves health. There certainly seem to be facts about what is good for organisms in virtue of thei...
I see. I guess the difference is that I wouldn't grant them the "scientific." On their account, the vast bulk of the social sciences might be seen as ...
Isn't this conclusion you're suggesting, that we allow that we all know almost nothing of consciousness, or some of its most obvious contents (e.g., g...
Yeah, I think it's a similar sort of distinction. Star Wars has a sort of magic for instance, and is generally cited as "soft sci-fi." But soft sci-fi...
He just refers to past tradition, but I think this is a fair move because the essay is focused on ethics rather than aesthetics, and more so on follow...
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