Sunday, June 27, 2010

Blogging note

Little or no blogging this week, as I’ll be in Prague for a conference on Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. I’ll be presenting a paper there on “Existential inertia.”
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15 comments:

  1. AndreJune 27, 2010 at 7:41 PM

    Show off.

    Have a great (safe) trip.

    (I only got halfway through PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, when I got distracted by John Lukacs's AT THE END OF AN AGE, and then my dad sent me MORE IDEAS FOR PRAYER by Dom Hubert van Zeller. But I promise to get back to MIND next)

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  2. CrudeJune 27, 2010 at 8:59 PM

    Hey Ed! I was wondering if you'd be showing up there. Hope you enjoy it and have good interactions.

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  3. AnonymousJune 30, 2010 at 5:54 AM

    Prague is wonderful, easily my favorite spaghetti sauce. Enjoy the trip!

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  4. AnonymousJune 30, 2010 at 1:33 PM

    I'd hop on a plane and go there too, but I'm suffering from too much existential inertia . . .

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  5. hypeJune 30, 2010 at 1:40 PM

    You know you're reading too much Aquinas when you get annoyed at (and want to correct) someone who declares of her daughter:
    "She's so bright.... she's all potential."

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  6. hypeJuly 1, 2010 at 6:05 AM

    Help a brotha out!!!

    I'm reading up on Efficient and Final Causality and I'm a bit confused because the sound like each other.

    From "Aquinas" (p.38)
    "...efficient causes are directed towards certain effects as their final causes"

    (p.17)
    "final causality or teleology is evident wherever some natural object or process has a tendency to produce some particular effect or range of effects."

    Both are directed towards their effect (or range of effects).



    If anyone can help me better understand the distinction I would greatly appreciate it.

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  7. hypeJuly 1, 2010 at 6:06 AM

    Help a brotha out!!!

    I'm reading up on Efficient and Final Causality and I'm a bit confused because the sound like each other.

    From "Aquinas" (p.38)
    "...efficient causes are directed towards certain effects as their final causes"

    (p.17)
    "final causality or teleology is evident wherever some natural object or process has a tendency to produce some particular effect or range of effects."

    Both are directed towards their effect (or range of effects).



    If anyone can help me better understand the distinction I would greatly appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. George R.July 1, 2010 at 10:27 AM

    Hype,

    Final cause directs the efficient cause toward certain effects. With respect to each other, the former is the directing cause, the latter is the directed cause.

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  9. hypeJuly 1, 2010 at 11:50 AM

    Hi George,
    Thanks for the help.

    So like when Aquinas speaks of Cause and Effect.
    The Cause (striking a match) being an efficient cause is directed at an Effect (the match lighting).
    While the final cause is what keeps that efficient cause directed at that effect.

    I hope this isn't too off.

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  10. George R.July 1, 2010 at 12:28 PM

    hype,
    That's pretty much it. But it may help in order to further clarify the issue to understand that the effect and the final cause are in a way one and the same thing, i.e., the lit match. The difference is that "the lit match" as final cause is that for the sake of which the efficient cause (i.e, the striking of the match) takes place. While "the lit match" as effect is, of course, the effect of striking the match. Thus, the lit match is in a way both the cause and the effect of striking the match.

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  11. John FarrellJuly 1, 2010 at 12:49 PM

    Existential inertia? Have you been reading Wolfhart Pannenberg lately???

    :)

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  12. HypeJuly 1, 2010 at 1:54 PM

    George,

    Again, thank you greatly for taking the time to explain that for me.
    Means alot!!

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  13. AnonymousJuly 1, 2010 at 4:54 PM

    Hey, this might be "off topic," but I was really hoping that I could get an opinion from one of the more philosophically erudite folks that frequent this blog:

    What should the analytic Thomist's stance towards German Idealism (Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, etc.) be, or what is it typically?

    Needless to say, I attend a school where ancient philosophy is rapidly passed over and medieval philosophy is all but nonexistent in the curriculum, so when I wade through these atrocious thickets of impenetrable 19th century prose, I always wonder.....how exactly would an analytic Thomist counter this? Do Thomists (or really anyone sympathetic towards metaphysical realism) believe that that whole 18-19th century tradition continues to present us with legitimate problems for which we should actively seek answers - that the twentieth century deferred rather than resolved the "central problems" that were bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment and that were wrestled with in the 19th century? Thus, should we engage with these problems anew? Or not? Did German Idealism ultimately do nothing more than generate a whole lot of nonsense that is unfortunately still fashionable?

    Honestly, my intuition skews towards the latter, and frankly I'm sorely tempted to write it all off as a bunch of gobbledygook.

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  14. E.R. BourneJuly 2, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    Anon, I do not desire to paint with too broad a brush, but it is certainly good to take a long view of modern philosophy in order to see the many so called traditional problems for what they really are, dogmatic refusals to consider the philosophy of the ancients or medievals. Edward Feser does an excellent job of this in The Last Superstition.

    For instance, if Kant's entire rethinking of metaphysics and epistemology was in large part due to Hume's critique of causation, then it follows that if Hume's critique of causation is actually rather weak then Kant's entire project will be muddled from the start. If this is true of Kant, then the domino effect on the rest of modern philosophy would be quite severe. The same goes for thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Berkley, Spinoza, and even Leibniz to a certain extent. A Thomist would critique not only the attempted answers to the problems posed by these men; they would take issue with the very questions themselves.

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  15. HypeJuly 2, 2010 at 8:15 PM

    Anyone hear of a philosopher by the name of Glenn Peoples?

    http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/

    ReplyDelete

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