On a related note, I came across a great explanation by Rowan Williams of why "love for all men equally" is not something that washes out particularit...
Agreed. I worried about the length of the introduction, but it would be a good place to introduce the similar argument for why freedom should primaril...
There is perhaps a useful analogy here with public policy. In the 2000s and 2010s, there was a huge effort to "bring data to bear," in public administ...
Of course, one area where you get a lot of specificity is in scientific terms and jargon, and a common charge against Continental philosophy is that i...
Ok, I don't think that addresses my point at all though. A bit has to be a 1 or 0. I was just quoting the article. A non-actual difference on the clas...
C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image has some pretty neat stuff on how the Gothic cathedral is an image of the medieval cosmos. But I agree with the bolded...
Oh no, that's literally the definition of the "bad infinite," the infinite that is defined in terms of the finite. And I don't think continual variati...
This topic reminded me of one of the quotes I like on the value of historicism in philosophy, which has tended to play a larger role in Continental th...
When people talk about the death of art I don't think they tend to mean Picasso, but rather stuff like human excrement or menstrual blood thrown at a ...
Consider that "the mind is potentially all things." In this, it is somewhat akin to prime matter (indeed, some commentators speak of "intellectual mat...
IIRC, the term Renaissance is a 19th century invention. I wouldn't deny it as a particular historical moment, but there was definitely a political and...
I don't disagree with the general judgement, there was a very real decline (Europe's population plunged by more than a fifth or even a fourth and stay...
I took a class through Oxford a while back on philosophy of religion. It was entirely focused on analytic philosophy, mostly stuff since 1950. I recal...
Well, first, it resolves the problem of seemingly presupposing giveness as a spontaneous, self-contained movement of potency to act, which would seem ...
I think post-modern man is a myth; a bit like sasquatch. It seems to me that all supposed "post-moderns" achieve is Zygmunt Bauman's "liquid modernity...
I see what you mean. It strikes me that the Five Ways sort of answer this question. There is a good dialogue on them called "Does God Exist?" by Rober...
Is humanity a "part" a of man? Is snub-nosedness a part of Socrates, or paleness? If what Socrates is does not explain that he is, would his existence...
The worst part is, it's all true... Modern man is an inverse Oedipus. He is born free, master of his own fate, and then tears out his own spiritual ey...
Right, but is this even a "grounding" or just mere description, tracing the way reason shows up in experience? How does this justify the authority of ...
But all the best philosophers have "Saint" in front of their name. Verily, if one encounters a new name, looks them up, and they don't look like an ar...
Aquinas has it that angels and demons are composed in a sense. They have both essence (what they are) and an existence given by God (that they are). T...
Yes, that was the point. P V ~P is not a premise and conclusion, but a premise itself, a basic disjunct. Also, might you be confusing the law of the e...
It's "in the air," especially in England, the birthplace of nominalism, as a sort of extension of theological volanturism. Consider Shakespeare's youn...
One of the points here, about the way a lack of clear methodology (or at least an agreement that reason can adjudicate the question) leads towards aut...
Well, this is "contradiction" in the context of Hegelian dialectical, which starts off pretty clear in the Logic with being/nothing -> becoming, but b...
To be determined does not rule out being more or less self-determining and self-governing. To say that freedom requires that our actions are undetermi...
Quite the contrary, you can fit evolution in via the "metaphysics of goodness" in Aristotle, the "Neoplatonic tradition," Thomism, Schelling, and Hege...
Aristotle's Ethics is focused on just this question though, identifying what is sought for its own sake. Wouldn't the anti-realist position rather be ...
Exactly. Gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism, etc. must be what they are at every moment. Right, the examples are just there to show the differe...
Right, and that might certainly be part of it, but does this ground the whole of morality or practical reason? For instance, we feel a strong moral co...
Since this thread seems to be largely acrimonious denunciations, we have decided to close it. Please, let's try to have threads that are not largely a...
Try applying this to theoretical reason. I suppose the analogous statement would be something like: "our senses, reason, and our sense of truth/veraci...
Ideally, there is a via media between dispatching with individual organisms and dissolving them into a universal process (and thus making all predicat...
Yes, and many others. And yes, certainly things can be revised, even radically so. That's why I'd say the difference is methodological. Post-Descatres...
Yes, I think that's a good point. One of the deficits of the empiricist program is that it tended towards (although not always) making all emotion, go...
Yes, you raise a good point. By "skeptical" I think many critics of "skepticism" do mean precisely a methodological skepticism. This move essentially ...
It's too sycophantic is my problem with it. I really think that's one of the bigger risks of the technology. It just affirms whatever you feed to it, ...
It's a very interesting question why radical skepticism existed in the ancient world (and was indeed somewhat popular for the sort of position it is, ...
This is what the eliminativist says about consciousness. Of course there are demonstrations, that's why it was the dominant theory. But if one presupp...
Parts of this do seem consistent with the classical faculty psychology that dominated antiquity through the early-modern period though. The passions a...
That's an interesting point. I'd generally agree. Historians can sometimes absolutize historicism and scientists of a certain persuasion can sometimes...
Well, a person's passions are their passions. They are also something we can have more or less control over, through the cultivation of habits (virtue...
Fair enough, I'd agree in a sense. A principle is something that unifies a diverse number of causes. It is what makes many instances of lift, natural ...
This is something I have noticed too. I'm not totally sure why, since historically arguments for God rely on exactly the opposite sort of pitch, and t...
I am pretty sure I had almost this same conversation re reasons versus causes with , using the stop sign example. Maybe it was a stop light :rofl: . I...
I think it is, strangely, at least partially a problem of too much creativity in academia, which in turn leads to stagnation through a poor signal to ...
Yeah, that's one of the points I wanted to make. There are certain assumptions that need to be made for it to be the case that all general epistemic p...
Sure, in a very broad sense. If epistemology can never identify better or worse ways to achieve knowledge it is useless. Or, if knowledge is always wh...
I think all human beings have experience of knowledge, error, and being aware of one's own ignorance. So, there is already an epistemic orientation. I...
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