tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post1014461657755074264..comments2024-03-28T03:20:15.940-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Working the netEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56600744508853231002014-12-13T07:46:46.401-08:002014-12-13T07:46:46.401-08:00@Anon
Ok. :)@Anon<br /><br />Ok. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-43773773759627654292014-12-12T19:14:42.969-08:002014-12-12T19:14:42.969-08:00Thanks Irish Thomist. No troll, here.
Thanks Irish Thomist. No troll, here.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-54323189415748219662014-12-12T14:38:19.317-08:002014-12-12T14:38:19.317-08:00@Anonymous
Taking for granted you were not trol...@Anonymous <br /><br />Taking for granted you were not trolling maybe this may be of interest http://pmb.jhu.edu/whatismb.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31653975410800439232014-12-12T03:09:12.209-08:002014-12-12T03:09:12.209-08:00@Daniel J,
Yes,my response was a little overly dr...@Daniel J,<br /><br />Yes,my response was a little overly dramatic there I think.<br /><br />I'm not against the central philosophical presumptions of Gilson's realism as much as he and his disciples’ histrionic rhetoric and tendency to scare-monger. I agree with him (and Reid for that matter) that we are warranted to assume a common-sense view of the world as given and only depart from it when subsequent reasons force us to do so - this should in no way be taken as license to villanise those thinkers who attempt to explore the mechanisms of cognition from within such as Bernard Lonergan or the Phenomenologists though. <br /><br />About scare-mongering the Gilsonians had a tendency to imply that Thomas, as interpreted 'existentially', was the only viable option and any other metaphysical theory would fall prey to Kant <i>at a time when Kantianism had been taken to pieces and had practically been abandoned as a positive system in mainstream philosophy</i>. Even the early Russell had a more sensible take on Kant.<br /><br />This was part of their larger aim of promoting Thomas as someone standing out against the previous metaphysical tradition, a lone ‘existentialist’ in a wilderness of ‘essentialism’. Aside from the blatant inaccuracies latent in such a view I find it very hard not to see it as a cynical attempt to highjack the then popular rhetoric of French Existentialism – Gilson’s claims that Kierkegaard and Sartre were still in a sense tainted with ‘essentialism’ does little to give the lie to this. Yet despite all the adoration of <i>esse</i> they, aside from some fruitful interpretations of <i>On Being and Essence</i> did very little hard philosophical graft elaborating on its nature and defending it against modern misinterpretations like the Fregean Existential Quantifier; I can’t imagine them ever turning out something like Barry Millers’ work on the subject for instance. <br /><br />Ultimately that way of talking about existence as opposed to essence was part of a fad and has nothing to offer beyond what was already present in more traditional Thomism. I think his treatment of being as <i>esse</i> is actually less useful that considering being as essence, at least in the case of theory of knowledge; any philosophy that makes statements about the subject will tacitly treat the subject/mind itself as an objective identity, which is why Kantian attempts to separate ontology and epistemology are doomed (Ed touches on this re Kant somewhere I think, and the Austrian phenomenologist Adolf Reinarch wrote multiple essays detailing all the synthetic a priori presumptions in Hume's philosophy).Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-19437438749157697952014-12-11T20:47:05.532-08:002014-12-11T20:47:05.532-08:00@Scott,
Thanks, TOF did link to the site that had...@Scott,<br /><br />Thanks, TOF did link to the site that had all of Lucas' Gödel papers, but I had not read the one to which you linked.Matt Sheeanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06588390859627450858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70154105020024257172014-12-11T20:17:35.000-08:002014-12-11T20:17:35.000-08:00Speaking of the net. I wonder what Dr. Feser and ...Speaking of the net. I wonder what Dr. Feser and the rest of you think of this:<br /><br />http://www.businessinsider.com/groundbreaking-idea-of-lifes-origin-2014-12Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88205143933341729902014-12-11T12:21:20.128-08:002014-12-11T12:21:20.128-08:00(That is, if you haven't already. I didn't...(That is, if you haven't already. I didn't visit TOFspot to see whether it was one of the Lucas papers available there.)Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48928926187097612122014-12-11T12:19:56.455-08:002014-12-11T12:19:56.455-08:00@Matt Sheean:
You might enjoy this 1990 paper by ...@Matt Sheean:<br /><br />You might enjoy <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/Godel/brighton.html" rel="nofollow">this 1990 paper by Lucas</a>, part of which is a rejoinder to Hofstadter.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31450899894493859782014-12-11T11:02:24.896-08:002014-12-11T11:02:24.896-08:00Quite excited about Foundations getting a tv serie...Quite excited about Foundations getting a tv series. I like Krugmans quote about how he became an economist because it was the closest thing he could find to psycohistoryAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11189663754905839463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74540857516441077652014-12-11T10:14:53.373-08:002014-12-11T10:14:53.373-08:00John West,
Yes! Actually, the very reason Goedel&...John West,<br /><br />Yes! Actually, the very reason Goedel's theorem was in my thoughts had to do with reading <i>Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach</i> and the papers of J. R. Lucas (thanks to reading of them over at tofspot) on applications of the theorem for philosophy of mind (incidentally, is it just me, or does Hofstadter engage in a Dawkins-worthy mangling of Lucas' argument?).<br /><br />Also, incidentally, <a href="http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/godels-theorem.html" rel="nofollow">I came across this</a> whilst reading more about the matter of Goedel's theorem and mind. The author, whoever they are, makes (what I think is) a mistake, an annoying sort of mistake, when they write, "our thinking cannot be adequately represented by a computer or an axiomatic system." As if the trouble was representation! As you say, Goedel himself thought that immaterialism must follow, so it's not as if, as the author also suggests, some jerks came along later and abused the theorem to further their own philosophical interests. I suppose I shouldn't bother being upset much with something I randomly found on the internet, but I've been trying to sympathize with detractors of the immaterialist implications of the theorem. Alas, they always seem to me to misunderstand the arguments.<br /><br />My thought about the second way was just that Goedel's theorem shows something about axiomatic systems that is similar to what 2nd way type arguments show for <i>per se</i> causal series. I am not really sure this is at all interesting, it just occurred to me.Matt Sheeanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06588390859627450858noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52430151700075199582014-12-11T09:51:08.304-08:002014-12-11T09:51:08.304-08:00@Daniel
No disrespect taken. :)
In defense of Gi...@Daniel<br /><br />No disrespect taken. :)<br /><br />In defense of Gilson, the quote is from the summarized foreword by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, and was not intended as him making some stand-alone argument or slogan in itself. I wish to question you about some of your interesting remarks, but have too much of a workload over my head right now to find the references and articulation that you and a good discussion deserve.<br /><br />Until then, an article or a link to some lengthy, substantial criticism of Gilson's style of realism would be interesting and appreciated. I'm always looking. :)<br /><br />I think Ed himself hint towards at least some of your last issue being mostly an issue of wording. E.g. when he refers to Existensialism, in the words of Gilson, pretty much refers to the same thing as Feser and Oderberg's Essentialism. Of course, there could still be some real discrepancies here.Daniel Joachimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10176530490479375672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-47715459092640614832014-12-11T09:33:50.394-08:002014-12-11T09:33:50.394-08:00Matt Sheean,
I'm not sure about the Second Wa...Matt Sheean,<br /><br />I'm not sure about the Second Way. But Godel does seem to have thought his incompleteness theorem proves dualism. In Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics, Mark Balaguer writes:<br /><br />What Godel thought is that immaterialism about the mind follows from his incompleteness theorem. The theorem tells us that for any consistent axiom system, there are propositions that are undecidable in that system. Godel claims, however, that, despite this, there are no mathematical propositions that are absolutely undecidable, that is, "undecidable, not just within some particular axiomatic system, but by any mathematical proof the human mind can conceive".[1] From this, together with the incompleteness theorem, it follows that the set of humanly provable mathematical propositions cannot be recursively axiomatized and, hence, that the human mind cannot be reduced to a Turing Machine. And Godel concludes from this that the human mind cannot be reduced to any sort of machine at all.<br /><br />Balaguer, unsurprisingly, rejects dualism out of hand. It would, however, be interesting to hear what people more savvy than Balaguer in philosophy of mind have to say about it.<br /><br />[1]Godel, K. (1951) "Some Basic Theorems on the Foundations of Mathematics and Their Implications".Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04470664030455998305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2205176236262919822014-12-11T07:26:42.170-08:002014-12-11T07:26:42.170-08:00Anonymous,
Learning to isolate and focus on speci...Anonymous,<br /><br />Learning to isolate and focus on specifics, as well as fixing my sleep schedule, helped me through similar trouble recently.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04470664030455998305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87611343203140528982014-12-11T07:06:49.914-08:002014-12-11T07:06:49.914-08:00A simpler way: 'the human mind's being inc...A simpler way: 'the human mind's being incapable of capturing reality' is clearly intended to hold of necessity (in older terms 'synthetic a priori') for all human minds, which are themselves part of reality. So we must at least be capable of objective knowledge about some aspects of it. Thus a general formulation of the problem doesn't work in which case it is better to formulate it in regard to specific issues e.g. is there Causation and if so how do we perceive it?Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-84629320297811260152014-12-11T06:22:58.149-08:002014-12-11T06:22:58.149-08:00I'm losing faith in the ability of reason to c...<i>I'm losing faith in the ability of reason to capture reality. What should I do? </i><br /><br />It's impossible to say for sure without knowing the circumstances, but when people have this problem, it seems usually to be due to too much thinking at a very abstract level. The human mind, like a musical instrument, starts mis-playing if put to hard use without proper maintenance. Thus, despite Daniel's criticism of the framing, the advice quoted by Daniel Joachim is probably along the right lines.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22123391943838702512014-12-11T06:07:38.307-08:002014-12-11T06:07:38.307-08:00...obligatory rage and fulmination...
Methinks so...<i>...obligatory rage and fulmination...</i><br /><br />Methinks someone may have forgotten to mention 'vituperation'.Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-10535209852627985712014-12-11T02:46:51.838-08:002014-12-11T02:46:51.838-08:00With all due respect to Daniel J that quote typifi...With all due respect to Daniel J that quote typifies quite nicely nearly all that I loathe about Gilson and co. Effusive anti-intellectual sub-text, vague appeals to ridicule under the rubrics of common-sense and that self-consciously 'earthy' sub-sexual existential rhetoric they favoured.<br /><br /><i>As a man, if he be sane, a philosopher has not the faintest shade of a doubt that he exists in a world of things existing in independence of his cognition</i><br /><br />So he, in other words, he must begin with value judgements and 'custom and habit' and appeal to indignation should he be ever asked to justify them?<br /><br /><i>…he knows all this, not because of some priviliged intuition into a supposedly substantive 'cogito'</i><br /><br />Wow Anti-Cartesianism backed up with insinuations about 'intuition', the word doubtless intended to suggest some supposed infallible, non-empirical ‘mystical’ source of knowledge. No doubt had the writer slightly more knowledge of Anglo-American philosophy this would be accompanied by some handwringing and pontification about 'the ghost in the machine'. It's like Daniel Dennett!<br /><br /><i>as a flesh and blood human being, could not judge otherwise if he tried, unless - and only unless, Gilson insisted - he deliberately isolated his mind from his body."</i><br /><br />Ohh cruel procrustean Dualism always trying to drag us away from our mother the earthy, sensual, ohh so earthy world of sense, the scene for our flesh and blood existence, our dreams and our hopes, our loves and sorrows and hates, our passions, sins and redemption. Stay close to the holy earth my brothers! <br /><br />All it needs is further handwringing over ‘arid, sterile logician’s being; as opposed to earthy virile <i>esse</i> plus the obligatory rage and fulmination over those who committed the unspeakable, abominable crime of trying to derive existence from ‘mere concepts’ (which, ironically, repeats the very worst of the Cartesian ‘way of ideas’ since to confuse concept with essence is to commit a category mistake of the rankest kind - a concept is not an essence, it’s our knowing about an essence, the essence itself is mind-transcendent).Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22831457009958460912014-12-11T00:26:24.195-08:002014-12-11T00:26:24.195-08:00"I'm losing faith in the ability of reaso..."I'm losing faith in the ability of reason to capture reality. What should I do?"<br /><br />Pray.<br /><br />On a more serious note. I find the books of Etienne Gilson on realism very helpful. (Methodological Realism and Thomist Realism)<br /><br />From the foreword of Thomist Realism.<br /><br />"The realist is a philosopher who does not forget that he is a man when beginning to philosophize. As a man, if he be sane, a philosopher has not the faintest shade of a doubt that he exists in a world of things existing in independence of his cognition; even more, the very data of that knowing tell him that knowing is of being and not of knowing; in turn, he knows all this, not because of some priviliged intuition into a supposedly substantive 'cogito', but because he, as a flesh and blood human being, could not judge otherwise if he tried, unless - and only unless, Gilson insisted - he deliberately isolated his mind from his body."Daniel Joachimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10176530490479375672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-82116284696131726212014-12-10T23:51:13.410-08:002014-12-10T23:51:13.410-08:00I'm losing faith in the ability of reason to c...I'm losing faith in the ability of reason to capture reality. What should I do?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-72838470882117514312014-12-10T16:14:13.957-08:002014-12-10T16:14:13.957-08:00"Ellis: You cannot do physics or cosmology wi...<i>"Ellis: You cannot do physics or cosmology without an assumed philosophical basis."</i><br /><br />Thank you! You can't say anything meaningful without an assumed philosophical basis - that's exactly what makes it meaningful. Scientists would not doubt the validity and necessity of philosophy if only they were treated to a crash, 101-course of the first principles.Timocratesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-58384089507180909962014-12-10T12:47:49.079-08:002014-12-10T12:47:49.079-08:00[The above is the only time I'll respond to it...[The above is the only time I'll respond to it.]John Westnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-54001276794493916762014-12-10T12:43:38.619-08:002014-12-10T12:43:38.619-08:00Anonymous writes, "*** The painfully slow pro...Anonymous writes, "*** The painfully slow process of uncovering the child abuse that happened within the Catholic Church continues. <i>The members of the church continue to try and protect the wrong people, at the expense of victims,</i> their families and the American public. ***" (my italics for emphasis)<br /><br />Right, because everyone knows if you want to troll a blog of Catholics, just mention pedophilia. Never mind that you're as or more likely to have such trouble with your hockey coach. <br /><br />How tiresome.John Westnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21331359328667940642014-12-10T12:12:54.941-08:002014-12-10T12:12:54.941-08:00Facts?! Facts?! I don't see Facts all I see is...Facts?! Facts?! I don't see Facts all I see is Values!The Scare-Crownoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-77118243228361491022014-12-10T12:05:46.189-08:002014-12-10T12:05:46.189-08:00@Anonymous
Now THAT was off topic. Care to clari...@Anonymous<br /><br />Now <b>THAT</b> was off topic. Care to clarify???Irish Thomisthttp://irishthomist.blogspot.co.uk/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46580161662817728532014-12-10T10:37:26.833-08:002014-12-10T10:37:26.833-08:00*** The painfully slow process of uncovering the c...*** The painfully slow process of uncovering the child abuse that happened within the Catholic Church continues. The members of the church continue to try and protect the wrong people, at the expense of victims, their families and the American public. ***<br /><br /> The Archdiocese of Chicago has voluntarily released documents related to 36 Archdiocesan priests who have at least one substantiated allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor. These documents are in addition to those released in January on 30 other priests. This release, together with the January release, covers priests who have substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct with minors identified on the Archdiocese's website as of November 2014. Documents pertaining to two priests, former Rev. Daniel J. McCormack and Rev. Edward J. Maloney, are not included, due to ongoing processes that do not permit release.<br /><br /> Inquiries may be directed to the Office of the Protection of Children and Youth, Archdiocese of Chicago, PO Box 1979, Chicago, IL 60690.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com