Celebrated
writer-artist John Byrne delivers an old school comics last hurrah in X-Men: Elsewhen. Byrne is interviewed by
The New York Times and at
The Hollywood Reporter. Meanwhile, after 90 years in NYC, Marvel
Comics is moving
its headquarters to Los Angeles.
The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews philosopher Alex Byrne about academic freedom, cancellation, and recent debates about sex and gender.
Matthew
Schmitz writes an obituary for
anti-wokeness at First Things. At Skeptic,
Scott Barry Kaufman on two
types of anti-woke intellectuals.
At Boston Review, Michael Harris on the use of AI
in mathematics.
Video
of the 2026 Rolf Schock Prize Symposium on Bas van Fraassen’s philosophy of
science, with van Fraassen, Kyle Stanford, Hans Halvorson, Michela Massimi, and
James Ladyman.
At Thomistica, John Brungardt reviews
two recent books on Thomism and evolution.
Jonathan Marks
looks back
at Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein,
at The Bulwark.
Jobst
Landgrebe and Barry Smith on why reality
cannot be entirely captured by mathematics, at IAI. Landgrebe and Smith’s
book Why Machines Will Never Rule the
World is in its second edition.
At The New Criterion, Harvey Mansfield on Locke
and the American Revolution.
At YouTube,
Eric Claussen and Mark Anderson discuss Plato and Nietzsche.
Roberto de Mattei comments on the SSPX consecrations, at Rorate Caeli.
Before we invest time in reading Oderberg's article, can we get a summary of it? Is he arguing that hylomorphism serves as a "research programme" in the sense that premises about substantial form predict results that can be tested for empirically by scientists? Or is it a "research programme" for metaphysical speculation but not necessarily for experimental confirmation of an empirical claim? If the former, what research remains to be done on AT claims about formal vs material causes?
ReplyDeleteI clicked on the link and there is an abstract. The abstract gives a way better summary than I ever could.
DeleteI always loved these,
ReplyDeleteI saw Prof shared Oderberg's work on twitter, and was wondering if he would share it with his blog audience as well.
It always showed that Prof was very cultured, And someone you could sit down with and have a wide ranging conversation with apart from philosophy.
I can imagine. Prof as a teenager visiting the comic book store.
I wish we were back in 2014-18 when these were more common and Prof would respond to comments. It ocuured to me that Prof never really needed twitter to reach any kind of audiences.
In fact people from twitter would have joined the conversation with the blog.
The 2024 election discussion here at the blog , is still a highlight for me, Dr Janet Smith even praised the discourse.
Anyways have, fun devouring the links everyone !
Dr. Feser
ReplyDeleteInteresting about Marvel Comics. Speaking of comics, can you please tell your readers approximately how many comics you have in your collection?
I think he would have a lot because when Prof was growing up, collecting comic books was just the thing of the day, it might seem ages ago now. But he wasn't collecting it to increase his collection, he was just collecting it to know the next part of the story.
DeleteYep. And Los Angeles has the best comic cons. You can sometimes meet celebreties there. Here's one coming up in the Fall.
Deletehttps://www.comicconla.com/
I enjoyed reading Oderberg's "Turning the Tables" article when you posted it on Twitter the other day. It seems to me that Oderberg is quite clearly correct that there can be no reductionist "scientific" picture of ordinary objects, and this follows inexorably from the nature of reductionism itself.
ReplyDeleteReductionism is an appeal to the objective/subjective distinction. To say that one sort of thing reduces to another is just to assert that only things of the reduced-to category exist in objective reality, and that things of the reduced category only exist subjectively in our minds as a result of how we subjectively experience things of the reduced-to category.
More precisely, it's an assertion that whatever causal properties seem to characterize and define objects of the reduced category as real things distinct from objects of the reduced-to category are objectively unreal, and exist only subjectively in our minds.
Given that, it should be clear from the very claim that "ordinary" objects reduce to microphysical particles *itself* that Oderberg must be correct.
If ordinary objects are not objectively real, but exist only subjectively in our minds as a byproduct of how we experience and conceptualize unfathomably vast numbers of unfathomably small particles that we cannot see, then OBVIOUSLY there cannot be any objective fact of the matter about *which* invisible particles compose these only subjectively-existing objects.
If there is *any* objectively real property or factor whatsoever that objectively determines which particles compose a given object, then the object itself is objectively real and reductionism fails.
As you've pointed out before, reductionism collapses into eliminativism when taken to its logical conclusion, and this becomes even more obvious when you consider that the conscious subject HIMSELF is among the ordinary objects that the consistent reductionist must regard as only subjectively real. Of course it's nonsensical to claim that conscious subjects exist only as subjective appearances in the minds of conscious subjects, since conscious subjects must be objectively real to have any subjective experiences. Hence this claim collapses into the eliminativist position that conscious subjects don't exist at all, and hence all the "ordinary objects" that were said to exist only subjectively in their minds can't exist at all either.
I found Matthew Schmitz' article on the decline of the anti-woke movement compelling, as well as his reason for its ultimate futility, but I would like to build on his point.
ReplyDeleteThe reason the anti-woke movement is doomed to failure is that "anti-woke" secular liberals have with very few exceptions (eg. Ayaan Hirsi Ali) refused to recognize the root cause from which wokeness inevitably follows: namely themselves and their own metaphysical views.
Fundamentally, wokeness is a rejection of there being any such thing as objective or universal truth that human minds can grasp, and that in turn is rooted in a radical nominalism that denies that anything in nature, including human beings and our rational faculties, has any essence, natural end, or purpose. From this it follows that our rational faculties cannot have any objectively real purpose of ascertaining truth, and hence there cannot be any objectively "correct" or "incorrect" ways of using them as per the "laws" of logic. All of these things must be subjective social constructs, as per nominalism.
That radical nominalism, in turn, is rooted in and follows inexorably from materialist reductionism, the very "scientific" reductionism that most of the "anti-woke" secular liberals have spent their lives to this day presenting as established by The Science.
The struggle with gender ideology is a good illustration. The "anti-woke" academic liberal defense of the sexual binary has largely been spearheaded by evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, a hardcore Darwinian reductionist and atheist, and (like Dawkins and others) until recently a quite militant one. In accord with his reductionism, he tries to defend the sexual binary as reductively as he can, defining the sexes in terms of the production of "large" (female) versus "small" (male) gametes rather than by their irreducible ends or purposes. But this is a futile task, because gametes themselves cannot be intelligibly defined or understood apart from their purpose in context of reproduction of the whole organisms of which they are a part. Furthermore, any argument about what sports teams or bathrooms a person should be allowed in based purely on their gamete size is an obvious non-sequiter. Indeed, even the relative sizes of male and female gametes are only important by virtue of role they have in the *purpose* that defines those two kinds of gametes.
The only way that Wright (or Dawkins, Harris, etc) can make a coherent and rigorous case for objective truth, reason, and biological realism to counter the woke is to acknowledge and advocate for the reality of objectively and irreducibly real purpose instrinsic to nature and to biological organisms in particular. But that would require them to abandon their materialist, Darwinist, reductionist, atheist orthodoxy, and ultimately embrace theism.
It was very easy for these people to just take the reality of objective truth and of reason for granted when they were still on top of the world of the intelligentsia, and to respond to Christians and other critics who pointed out how their own materialist reductionism fatally undercut them with nothing more than a dismissive sneer and an appeal to The Science. But now that they have been displaced by their own woke intellectual progeny who reject the existence of objective truth and reason, they can no longer take those things for granted, and they have no resources within their worldview to rationally advocate and defend their existence. Hence it comes down to a mere battle of wills, and they are both outnumbered and outmatched in zealotry by the woke, and so doomed to fail.
You are the only person of the many who give differing definitions not woke to define woke in that way.
DeleteJust more proof that conservatives have no universally agreed upon definition of "woke" and appropriate the term outside of nits original meaning in The Civil Rights Movement.
DeleteThese people have no idea what “woke” signifies and were never part of or close to the culture that used it. They were successfully propagandized and now use the bastard term they were sold to spin whatever theories they can on top of it. Ridiculous
Delete“Much of American Christianity is failing the litmus test.” https://www.dannebohm.com/post/07-27-2026
ReplyDeleteA circumspect description of the rot at the heart of American Christianity today.
“Like many far right Christians of our day, Rushdoony was a 'do as I say, not as I do, divorced, racist, Holocaust denier, who claimed to be "pro-life," but advocated for the death penalty. He believed that interracial marriage, which he referred to as "unequal yoking," should be illegal. He opposed "enforced integration," referred to Southern slavery as "benevolent," saying that "some people are by nature slaves.”
Perfectly describes many MAGA Catholics on this very website.
You don't know what you are talking about. Many Catholics here do not align themselves with MAGA. Virtually all Catholics (and others) here are not holocaust deniers. Most are OK with interracial marriage, as that had been practiced widely throughout Christendom until the (largely Protestant) push for specifically racial slavery in the 17th century and imported it to the Americas. Few if any Catholics here view Southern slavery as benevolent, though a few point out that some slave-holding was less evil than evils that were suffered by many released slaves with neither property nor skills nor meaningful protection under the law. Hardly any Catholics - and none here that I have encountered - believe that "some people are by nature slaves", as Catholic philosophy and theology both deny that claim, and for over 100 years no formal US Catholic institution has promoted that idea. You project your own hatred of MAGA ideas onto anyone you identify as having opinions opposed to your own, most of whom aren't even MAGA to begin with, and generally even MAGA promoters don't have the ideas you noted.
DeleteWhat do you think is wrong with the death penalty?
DeleteI doubt there is anybody here with such patently nutty views.
DeleteI’ll post most of the article and citations for you to read.
Delete“Though he passed away in 2001, his rhetoric continues to exert considerable influence over the Christian far right.
Today, most Evangelicals, and a staggering number of Catholic and Orthodox Christians (the bulk of whom are neophyte converts) hold to the belief that those who do not adhere to their respective creeds are not members of the “true faith,” and therefore condemned to Hell, as they espouse several of the same tenets Rushdoony peddled during his lifetime.
In his book, “The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American,” Andrew L. Seidel writes:
Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and mendacity, negative attributes for many voters, poised him perfectly to manipulate the evangelical mind. Like the biblical god evangelicals worship, Trump is a thin-skinned authoritarian with totalitarian tendencies. He craves love and punishes any disloyalty or slight. Evangelicals have been taught to worship and adore that type of being above all others. This strain of religion cultivates a veneration for extreme authority. Studies bear this out: religious fundamentalism and a tendency to submit to authoritarianism are highly correlated. Trump acted like the character evangelicals worship and benefited from their ingrained adulation. Evangelicals were simply seeing in Trump a character they’d been taught to revere. As if to prove the point, Ann Coulter called Trump her “Emperor God.”
Yet, as Brian Zahnd writes in his book, “Postcards from Babylon – The Church In American Exile“:
It’s not the task of the church to “Make America Great Again.” The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of empire, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus’ ideas actually are. Enemies? Love them. Violence? Renounce it. Money? Share it. Foreigners? Welcome them. Sinners? Forgive them. These are the kind of radical ideas that will always be opposed by the principalities and powers, but which the followers of Jesus are called to embrace, announce, and enact. And the degree to which the church is faithful to Jesus and his radical ideas is the degree to which the church embodies a faith that is truly countercultural
Perhaps Walter Brueggemann sums it up best in his book, “A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent“:
I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.
In Isaiah 10: 1-2, the prophet cautions us:
Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the orphan.
Not to mention those pesky verses about welcoming migrants.
If it’s true, as the old hymn goes, that “they’ll know we are Christians by our love,” much of American Christianity is failing the litmus test.”
There is not much to disagree with here, if you are being honest. Check your voting records and the people you’ve enabled and unleashed, yet again, on this country. Those are your deeds and what you should be judged by, not protestations that ‘in your heart’ you don’t support the evil that you brought onto so many others.
It's a bunch of claptrap and malarkey. It's not the job of the Church to "make Christianity countercultural", it's job is to bring people into union with God and help them get to heaven. In many ways that's now countercultural (though not all), but more than half of the reason for that is liberalism eviscerated the Christian morals of the culture: we are no longer a Christian culture, so of course much of the task will be countercultural - i.e. against the religion of liberalism. It's task is not defined in terms of being "against the culture" but of being for Godliness.
DeleteTrump is merely a symptom of this: he was a Democrat until the Democrats fell off the yardstick moving ever farther left. There might be a few evangelicals who think he's the cat's pajamas, a truly excellent president and man, but it's not many, as most of them recognize he only barely even recognizes Christian thought. By and large he was elected as being less bad for America than the even farther-from-Christian principles candidate the Dems put forward.
The public schools have been busy killing off Christian thought and mores for 70 years: Christ said that the student, when he is finished, will be like the teacher. Well, that's what we have gotten, just as Christ said. What else would you expect?
“We are no longer a Christian culture” says the party closest to Slavers and yearns for a time closer to Slavery. Make America Great Again - you know, when people didn’t have Rights. You have *never* been a Christian culture’ is the more accurate statement and the people you’ve oppressed- and continue to-practice its ethos better than you.
DeleteWe have never been a fully Christian culture, where not only were the institutions imbued with and formulated to promote Christian values, but nearly everyone carried forth in their behavior high levels of the Christian virtues.
DeleteNor has ANY society, ever.
Our society had grave defects. We managed to get rid of some of those grave defects in the 1860s (through the Civil War, our bloodiest war), and then some more in the 1960s (through the Civil Rights Act and other improvements). Yet at the same time we got rid of (some of) institutionalized prevention of blacks being able to vote and enjoy ordinary civil life, we also got rid of all civil recognition of and promotion of Christianity, and lost some of our Christian virtues. The latter loss was not a necessary adjunct of the gains on other avenues. Because those losses were not a necessary feature of making such gains, we should lament those losses. It is ridiculous to propose that a culture that officially abandoned recognition of the Christian virtues, and manifestly lost some of the Christian virtues it had previously had in abundance, is to be congratulated on becoming more Christian as a whole, by reason of abandoning a few of its former vices while wallowing in new ones.
and continue to-practice its ethos better than you
I daresay there probably are people who were oppressed years ago who practice Christianity better than me: I am not a saint. but I daresay also that you don't know what virtues or vices any person commenting here has: an intellectual position is at best only a very slight indicator of moral virtue. There are wholesome, virtuous people who are dead wrong about social and political theory. Their theories and ideas should not be followed.
I’m going to concede that this is reasonable perspective as far as it goes. I would urge you, however, to think through what Christian virtues you think you’ve lost and how it relates to the 80% of Christians that voted for and still support this regime. These are not unrelated and take us right back to the essay.
DeleteAI labs are hiring philosophers!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/06/24/why-big-ai-labs-are-hiring-so-many-philosophers?utm_medium
Barry Smith and Co do emphasize the complexity of our experiences and it's unpredictability as an argument against mathematizing reality,
ReplyDeleteTo build on that
By the way Prof, I hope you have a wonderful summer getting to know your grand daughter. Happy Summer! And thanks for your courage on the war. I keep sharing your posts with all my friends
So Prof, I have been working on a argument or trying to put together an argument from your work against the mathematical reality types,
One is obviously our response on phantasms and the contingency between the phantasm and the meaning it represents, that would be undeniable even in if everything else was completely mathematics, it would always be the case that we could have represented a meaning with different symbols , images etc and that we do depend on those symbols whether they supervene on mathematical structures of physics or not. So I think that contingency is undeniable. Would you say so Prof?
Although one think that you sometimes mention in the context of Davidson's argument anamolism is that token token reduction might be possible ,but all the arguments you give seem to prove otherwise that is , there is nothing that ties a particular concept to a certain brain state or image, that relationship is completely contingent, it could have always been otherwise, all your arguments
Another argument I have come up with is that, it is undeniable that abstract structures are just mental at the end of the day, based on the paragraph you quote from Oderberg. That we abstract from concretes, so for there to mathematical structures are by nature "what is known" by a knower.
So if the fundamental reality is mathematical structure and everything else supervenes on it, then it essentially becomes a form of idealism.
Now if someone bites the bullet and excepts this as the ultimate reality or God or whatever.
They would still be wrong.
As you mention in the footnotes offive proofs,
Since it would entail our experience of the world as changing is wrong,
"Since having an illusion entails error and ignorance, nothing which has these illusions could be omniscient."
And thus it would always be the case that our senses have some defect and could always represent reality better.
And our senses are by their nature oriented towards giving us accurate information, if they aren't that would undermine the scientific evidence.
So the interlocutor has to concede that it is a "defect" of our senses
And since our senses could have represented reality accurately in that respect, that entails contingency.
Anyways I have relied a lot on your work here Prof.
It would mean the world to me, if you could look at it and tell me it's good.
Dr Feser
DeleteNorm is a very loyal fan of this blog. I am sure he has bought all your books, and will buy your forthcoming books. Can you please respond to his post?
"t would mean the world to me, if you could look at it and tell me it's good."
Thanks Anon !
DeleteAt this point though, if he notices it and writes about it in a blog post as well , I would be grateful !
I realised that first my thoughts could be all over the place, but of late I have tried to ground my queries in Prof's work, you can look even at the comment below which I made about math determining our experiences, and if they can go wrong , that means we can't trust our senses including the scientific experiments that led to the mathematical world view in the first place. So the person has to concede that our senses could have given us a better view whatever the underlying mathematical structure and that means
I wouldn't mind if Prof commented only on this argument.
DeleteOne is obviously our response on phantasms and the contingency between the phantasm and the meaning it represents, that would be undeniable even in if everything else was completely mathematics, it would always be the case that we could have represented a meaning with different symbols , images etc and that we do depend on those symbols whether they supervene on mathematical structures of physics or not. So I think that contingency is undeniable. Would you say so Prof?
Although one think that you sometimes mention in the context of Davidson's argument anamolism is that token token reduction might be possible ,but all the arguments you give seem to prove otherwise that is , there is nothing that ties a particular concept to a certain brain state or image, that relationship is completely contingent, it could have always been otherwise, all your arguments entail as much.
Also if someone says that our senses couldn't have given us a better picture, because what we saw was determined by the mathematics.
ReplyDeleteSince this entails that mathematics lead to our senses being in error with regards to change, we wouldn't be able to trust it for scientific matters, so it becomes self undermining.
Prof. Feser, I just realized that Mt. Wilson Observatory is located in Pasadena, where you teach. The Bible says the "heavens declare the glory of the lord." Have you been to the Observatory and looked through the telescope?
ReplyDeleteNow, Ed, if you can publish those questions addressed to you, can you take five minutes of your time to answer them? At least answer Norm's question. Please.
ReplyDeleteI can understand the curiosity, but the persistence is starting to sound like nagging to me. I'm sure the professor wants to maintain goodwill but I also assume he doesn't want to get drawn into a long series of back and forth on a subject others have tried to respond to without satisfaction.
DeleteIt's alright Anon ! I appreciate your support, but it will only make Prof more angry, I think. We should at this point just be grateful that Prof keeps a free blog and allows us to comment.
DeleteBut I do appreciate that the questions merit a response in your view.
Hope your summer goes well !
Maybe Prof might get one free day and he can respond
Hi Bmiller
DeleteI don't think that we have had a back and forth on the contingency argument against mathematical universe hypothesis
Also @bmiller
DeleteAnd my argument has actually drawn a lot from Prof's work, especially the one regarding the contingency of words and meaning and our reliance on those, So I'd just like him to evaluate that
To echo Anon a bit though,
DeleteSeeing that many other people have asked Prof some questions and this is that open kind of post, it would be nice if Prof could answer some questions.
Even if he doesn't answer mine, but he answers some other ones addressed to him, I would be happy for that commentor like for example the dude who asked Prof how. Many comics he has
I do want to say tho that , I am grateful that Prof keeps the blog free. It's a debt I will never be able to repay. I would have never been able to afford it if there was a subscription fee
ReplyDeleteWell, the Prof wouldn't get that many readers if he charged for his blog. I do think he could answer you. I know he has a lot going on, but he is super-bright and and could type out a quick response. He has done so in the past.
DeleteI wish he would but this is not X unfortunately
DeleteSince we're surfing - and maybe some of us on literal ocean waves - does anyone have a view on this. Aristotle is talking about the prodigal man, i.e. one who overspends and on the wrong things. "... their giving is not liberal; for it is not noble, nor does it aim at nobility, nor is it done in the right way; sometimes they make rich those who should be poor (οὓς δεῖ πένεσθαι) and will give nothing to people of respectable character, and much to flatterers or those who provide them with some other pleasure." EN 1121b3-7.
ReplyDeleteHere Aristotle seems to be saying that it is right or fitting, δεῖ, for some or all people of bad character to be poor. There seem to be many implications of this if taken literally. Should this "some people should be poor" thesis be waved away on some grounds? Aristotle does not seem to have in mind people who have been punished by the state for some other offense, so an example like "he stole and was sent to prison and in prison had no money" doesn't cover the bases, as far as I can see. But where does charity come in? Is Ari just a pagan without charity? Or is it "he who will not work, let him not eat"?
It is my impression that there is almost certainly an element of St. Paul's "he who will not work, let him not eat", but perhaps expanded: he who will waste money, or (even worse) spend it on evil things, let him not have access to it, let him be poor so he does not further harm himself, nor damage the common good by misuse. This seems to be implied in the virtue of prudence, not so as to take away his own money, but at least not to give him the wherewithal to cause harm. (He probably will make himself poor eventually even if he started out well off.)
DeleteAnd I don't think charity properly understood requires us to give money to someone who we know (with reasonable confidence) will spend it in harmful ways, even if that means they remain destitute: for a drug addict who is slowly dying of illnesses compounded of bad choices and few resources, but who would use a gift of money on more drugs rather than on food or medicine, you might give him food and medicine, but you needn't give him money out of a so-called (mis-placed) charity. And even giving him food and medicine is subject to a prudential analysis of deciding to what extent bailing him out of his own bad decisions damages the common good in various ways, and what else the money might be better used for.
But I think it is really true that Ari, being not a Christian, probably did not have a solid grasp of true charity either, nor of the common human family by which we are all (in principle) brothers and sisters, and thus for whom we should have care and concern for all. He believed some are naturally slaves, and this (in his view) was for the good of the race by being good for the best men, so that they could pursue a life of philosophy, the arts, and politics. Hence it is probable that he would say that there are some (natural slaves) who cannot manage their own affairs, and they should not have wealth because they cannot handle it well, they should be (relatively) poor and serve the household of someone truly capable of freedom and high virtue. But this does not mean he should live badly, in grave want of food and medicine, but supplied by the master with adequate basics so he can fully function in service.
As to one born free but has made himself destitute by bad choices, it seems Ari would probably have him suffer the natural consequences - though with some mitigation by the liberal wealthy so as to minimize ill effects to the polity from having such men lie around making things worse (e.g. crime, or breeding grounds for plague).
And it would be different again for those born with adequate wealth and freedom made poor by chance in spite of living virtuously, these would be fitting objects of liberality by those well off, to raise them to living a life of virtue in a fitting manner rather than cut off from the opportunity to pursue truth, beauty, and nobility by mere chance.
@Tony: my earlier question about Aristotle came over as by "Anonymous," don't know why. Anyway, thank you for your thoughts. I agree.
Delete"Ari" huh? Yep, that was the nickname is fellow Greeks gave him.
DeleteIt's better than "Airy", though, isn't it? "Yeah, that guy's airy" doesn't go over very well.
DeleteI don’t know that I’ve come across another person on the internet that conjures up so many different ways to justify his antipathy to the poor and unfortunate. My god man.
DeleteI don’t know that I’ve come across another person
DeleteWho are you talking about?
How the film editors and director saw that scene from Escape from LA and thought "yeah, we're still leaving this in."
ReplyDeleteOdyssey was a good film! Can't wait to hear Prof's thoughts on it
ReplyDeleteHey Prof , I saw your take on Odyssey ! I completely agree, didn't seem woke at all, I found that scene of the pigs to be quite neat, "The way she said go back to your disguises". I also agree with your take on partisanship when it comes to abortion, early term and late term abortions are both extremely grave.
DeleteAnother argument arguing for the reality of contingency in these mathematical universe and Pythagorean type scenarios could also go as follows,
ReplyDeleteThese proponents cannot deny the reality of qualia since that would undermine the evidence on which their theories are based.
As such what they typically do is say that qualia necessarily supervenes on these seperately existing mathematical structures that are ultimately at the foundation of reality. The mathematical structure determines it etc.
However as we noted above,
If these mathematatical structures exist qua mathematical structure at the foundation of reality then that implies idealism, since to quote Prof
"The number five is not an “abstract object” in the Platonic sense of the term common in contemporary philosophy (viz. an object that exists in some third kind of way over and above intellects on the one hand and concrete particulars on the other), and could not be. For what is abstract is, for the Aristotelian, what results from abstraction, and abstraction is a mental activity of considering one aspect of a thing in isolation from other aspects."
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/01/david-foster-wallace-on-abstraction.html?m=1
Now in this idealistic scenario one cannot reasonably claim that qualia "necessarily supervenes" on so and so mathematical structure, because from our own experience we can always bring to mind the mathematical structure without the corresponding qualia.
For example, we can think about the mathematical surface reflectance properties of red without bringing to mind the qualitative sensation of red. A blind person can think about it. As such even in this idealistic world , the relationship would be contingent. Since an intellect could always bring to mind the structure without the quality.
If one wants to avoid this, one would have to conceptualise the qualia and mathematical structure as different aspects of a whole and that would be what we know as red that exists out of our minds. That is basically aristotelian.
And this aristotelian red exists at particular points in space, which would again be a contingent relationship even if one conceived of space as nothing more then three dimensionality
(Assuming for a moment that color can exist even apart from extended surfaces in an eccentric sort of way or perhaps the way in which it exists in our mind, even though that would be located at particular point in space in so far as our brain is at that space)
I invite comments from everyone
Also Prof, if you happen to have some time to kill, do take a look at this. I would be obliged.
DeleteAnd also if you could clarify that when you mention that token token reduction may be possible in the context of Davidson , you don't actually agree that so and so cases are reductions right ?One of the reasons is precisely the contingency that remains between meaning and the symbols we represent them with , and since we are dependent on these symbols, even if all these symbols subsisted on some mathematical structures, that contingency would still remain, since it would be absurd to argue the image and symbols necessary entail the concepts we associate them with.
Norm, Hope everyone is enjoying their summer
Regarding Tabaczek's book about theistic evolution and Thomism, he's trying to find a middle-ground between traditional Thomism and theistic evolution. I don't think that can ever work because within the Thomistic framework are several principles that won't allow it. The principles of proportionate causality, the priority of form over matter, the limited role of secondary causes in educing new essences are too much to overcome.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the book but no matter where you land in the middle-ground area, the choice is binary in the sense that either God is doing the creating of the new thing, or secondary causes are. If secondary causes are creating new things then God is merely a "power supply' of sorts, not really doing much of anything except keeping everything in motion.