tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post8492443623060229553..comments2024-03-28T21:43:44.433-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Five Proofs around the netEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76889285742690115552018-12-03T15:49:23.158-08:002018-12-03T15:49:23.158-08:00Will there be a response post to Bradley Bowen?Will there be a response post to Bradley Bowen?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08821603669461526098noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-59439000571088226992017-11-07T07:17:16.616-08:002017-11-07T07:17:16.616-08:001 fails. Sorry. Next time.
3 is a non sequitur.
5 ...1 fails. Sorry. Next time.<br />3 is a non sequitur.<br />5 is a practical imparative, not a proposition. It has no truth value: it's akin to 'Now bake the pie.'iwpoehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17751879308012191778noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80629490879332914312017-11-06T07:01:34.525-08:002017-11-06T07:01:34.525-08:00true, its only appeal these days is rhetorical. true, its only appeal these days is rhetorical. Just another mad Catholichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10503510474554718305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-58190379910306707512017-11-05T16:20:59.877-08:002017-11-05T16:20:59.877-08:00*delurks*
Former pantheist here, and it really de...*delurks*<br /><br />Former pantheist here, and it really depends on the particular beliefs. Pantheism can range from a sort of spiritualized atheism to the fullblown idealism that you'd find in Hinduism. A pantheism that posits that matter is a manifestation of mind is very different than what you'd see from virtually any atheist. (Though whether this is pantheism or panentheism is probably a conceptual question.)<br /><br />For pantheists who don't take a hard turn straight into Indian philosophy, pantheism and atheism are often two sides of the same coin. I don't think watered down forms of pantheism are really philosophical stances, though. You don't get to necessary being just by mystifying the universe.Silmariennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-34750687058432107022017-11-05T08:14:02.174-08:002017-11-05T08:14:02.174-08:00I never understood a dichotomy between atheism and...I never understood a dichotomy between atheism and pantheism. If everything is God, doesn't that cash out the same as if nothing is God? ficino4mlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00805116221735364590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-39951130679258172422017-11-04T11:55:33.723-07:002017-11-04T11:55:33.723-07:00@Miguel,
The brute fact option is way too proble...@Miguel,<br /><br /><br /><i>The brute fact option is way too problematic: it is destroyed by PSR, by PC, by IBE, all that. </i><br /><br /><br />I actually think it is far worse than that. <br /><br />The idea that the universe is a brute fact is logically impossible if we consider the fact that a brute fact view would require us to accept that being is constantly appearing from non-being, that is, <i> being is created out of nothing </i> because we know that contingent things cannot keep themselves in being by their own nature.<br /><br />However, something coming from nothing, or rather to put it more precisely, being coming from non-being, is logically impossible because it violates the duality of being, describes things (popping out of nothing, appearing out of nothing) which contradict the fact that we are talking about nothing here which means neither popping nor appearing and no existence, and because it is a contradictory statement ("I did nothing" is a negation, so logically "Something appearing / coming from nothing brutely and for no reason" is equally a negation and doesn't describe anything contrary to the way such a sentence is supposed to be understood).<br /><br /><br /><br />JoeDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-79848995296085608672017-11-04T11:47:24.415-07:002017-11-04T11:47:24.415-07:00It is a minority, but the mere fact that it even *...It is a minority, but the mere fact that it even *exists* and finds expression in figures like Dennett and the Churchlands is, by itself, a testament to contemporary philosophical insanity.<br /><br />I don't think reductivism fares much better either, though. To try and reduce something universal and determinate to what is particular and indeterminate, for instance, is like failing to understand what one is talking about. To somehow try to reduce qualia to brain states when the whole problem ACTUALLY IS the fact that we can't do so, is, yet again, to not even understand what one is talking about. Eliminativism only exists because some materialists were capable of at least understanding where the problem lies, but were naïve ("insane"?? Confused??) enough to conclude that therefore there is no consciousness, no reason, no truth, it's all "folk psychology", and SOMEHOW we magically understand the world by doing science even though we do science by making use of our own "folk psychology" assetsAtnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-45526140052084910962017-11-04T11:38:54.119-07:002017-11-04T11:38:54.119-07:00@Miguel,
What can we say about eliminativism? H...@Miguel,<br /><br /><br /><i> What can we say about eliminativism? How can they, for the sake of keeping belief materialism and Science!TM, willingly accept that there are no true beliefs, no reasoning, and even no conscious experience? </i><br /><br /><br /><br />Isn't eliminative materialism a minority position even amongst materialists? Reductivism being the majority viewpoint over-and-against eliminativism for rather obvious reasons, that is.JoeDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46161263821295415402017-11-04T11:31:33.638-07:002017-11-04T11:31:33.638-07:00Oh, and of course, I forgot to mention that there&...Oh, and of course, I forgot to mention that there's another problem here: how atheism and naturalism are unnecessary. <br /><br />WHY should we even bother with the idea that "there is no God and there is also nothing divine about the universe!!" as a philosophical thesis? Why should we go to the lengths of actually accepting brute facts, or believing in a necessary being that not personal but is somehow an explanation for the existence of contingent beings, and concoting one failed materialistic theory of mind after another that can never account for reasoning, universal and determinate concepts, intentionality, consciousness, free will and personal identity? Why? Because Science!TM has been successful in discovering certain truths about the natural order???<br /><br />Sorry, but I can't help but conclude that atheism is intellectually bankrupt at this point. It's only being discussed in philosophy because it somehow became a cultural fad from our amazement at technology and natural sciences. Future generations will be horrified at 21st century philosophy.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-83522342173678431102017-11-04T11:14:33.274-07:002017-11-04T11:14:33.274-07:00To be honest, at this point I don't actually s...To be honest, at this point I don't actually see how atheism can be sustained anymore. I also believe their best bet would be on the denial of divine attributes of a necessary being. The brute fact option is way too problematic: it is destroyed by PSR, by PC, by IBE, all that. I believe Pruss and Rasmussen have just finished writing a book that proves the existence of at least one concrete (causally active) necessary being through a multitude of different independent arguments. The insistence on brute contingency is like trying to ride a dead horse. Atheism's best bet would be on denying the divine character of a necessary cause.<br /><br />However, how can atheists accept a necessary being without either committing to 1) theism or 2) pantheism or panentheism? There are many good arguments in favor of option 1: not just what Feser argues in his book, but also the combination of teleology with the arguments, and also the unique character of human beings. More to the point, however, it seems that personal agency is the only way to get a contingent effect/explanandum from a necessary cause/explanans. And there is also the problem that this necessary being can't be material, or a law, and must somehow explain the existence of contingent beings. 1 has many things in its favor.<br /><br />The only option for a non-theist, as I see it, would be to accept some kind of pantheism or panentheism. But that is contrary to atheism and naturalism (at least "naturalism" as understood by modern philosophers). So it's not an option for the atheist at all. Besides, I think spinozism follows directly from pantheism, and that would require someone to accept things such as 1) Spinoza's modes and degrees of existence, 2) necessitarianism, 3) all the rest of Spinoza's prima facie bizarre ideas. <br /><br />And then there is the human mind. I've mentioned this before, but I think it is a huge problem for any atheist and even pantheist. There is no getting around some form of dualism; materialism has seen nothing but the multiplication of anomalies ever since philosophers tried to bet on it. Reason isn't going anywhere and it can't be explained in naturalistic terms, and it quite easily invites the question about its origins,<br /><br />I don't really see much of an option besides theism. But when it comes to atheism and naturalism specifically, I think they are pretty much bankrupt at this point; IF there is any alternative to theism, it would have to be some kind of pantheism or panentheism. <br /><br />And sure, 18th and 19th century philosophy had many problems as well, but at least there was some sanity in their dismissal of metaphysics. What do I mean by that? Of course they were, in a sense, being irrational. But they were casually dismissing metaphysics out of prejudice, they thought (irrationaly) that it was wrong from the start because it would lead us to absurdities (a wrong assumption, but at least one that follows some kind of reductio ad absurdum reasoning). Modern 20th and 21st century philosophers, however, came to see the irrationality of past dismissals of "logic-chopping" and "metaphysics", but instead fell into complete insanity. What can we say about eliminativism? How can they, for the sake of keeping belief materialism and Science!TM, willingly accept that there are no true beliefs, no reasoning, and even no conscious experience? It's a certain kind of insanity; what eliminativists do is pretty much follow the classical arguments from reason and instead turn them on its head and ACCEPT the ABSURD consequence of the reductio arguments. 19th century philosophy never stoop so low, to be fair.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26108069577756683922017-11-04T10:56:02.920-07:002017-11-04T10:56:02.920-07:00Aside from additional fulminations you have done e...<i>Aside from additional fulminations you have done exactly nothing to show that my remarks were ‘obvious nonsense’</i><br /><br />I have pointed out (1) that Baroque scholasticism is notorious among scholars who study it for being the opposite of what you say -- it is notoriously difficult to study it because it is highly diverse and experimental; (2) that the claim doesn't stand examination if you look at particular cases -- there appears to be no sense in which 'narrow' is a legitimate characterization of Caramuel, or the notion that the claim that baroque scholastics are confining themselves to Aristotelian ideas applies to Le Grand or Izquierdo. I also pointed out that your claim is a prior unlikely given the actual historical context in which baroque scholastics found themselves.<br /><br />You, on the other hand, have given literally nothing. I ask <i>yet again</i>. You said, " other than [Divine knowledge and truthmakers] they worked within very narrow parameters". <b>What is your evidence for this claim?</b><br /><br /><i><br />I have not and would not claim Baroque scholasticism was a continuation of Thomism or even that the thinkers involved were predominantly Thomist. My claim was that the family of ‘Broadly Aristotelian’ subjects constituted ‘narrow parameters’. </i><br /><br />Nobody claimed you did; "(say)" in English indicates an example, not a direct assertion. As I have pointed out, baroque scholasticism is well known for being highly experimental and <i>not</i> confining itself to traditionally Aristotelian subjects or methods.<br /><br /><i>What evidence would prove or disprove this for you – surveys of the topics covered by major Baroque Scholastic thinkers? </i><br /><br />This is not difficult. You made the claim; it was an explicit part of your argument. If you did not make it out of ignorance of baroque scholasticism, but out of knowledge of baroque scholasticism, what was the evidence that grounds this claim. Are you getting this from having read Caramuel, Le Grand, Izquierdo, some others (as I noted Caramuel, Le Grand, and Izquierdo are not intuitively characterized the way you have characterized them)? Are you following some scholar of baroque scholasticism in your claim (which would be surprisingAre you getting it from some other baroque scholastics you've read extensively? Are you following the interpretation of some scholar of the field (which would be surprising because all those I've read deny that baroque scholastics confine themselves to Aristotelian ideas)? <br /><br />Historical claims are not things you just make up. They are purely and entirely matters of the evidence behind them, and your opinion, or mine, or anyone else's does not matter in the slightest in comparison. You made the claim; when I said the claim showed you had little acquaintance with the field, you called that a 'personal insult', implying that in fact it was an informed claim; so <b>what evidence was informing it</b>?<br /><br /><i>provide at least a couple of examples of the innovations in Philosophy of Religion Baroque Scholasticism brought about beyond the aforementioned Aristotelean ‘fine-tunings’. What is it we modern philosophers are missing in our only having read ‘tip-bits’ of Baroque Scholasticism. </i><br /><br />This is, again, a transparent evasion. We are not talking about your partisan advocacies; you made a historical claim, for which you have provided no evidence at all. What was your evidence for the claim that other than on divine knowledge and truthmakers, baroque scholastics "they worked within very narrow parameters", understood in terms of a small set of Aristotelian ideas?Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24382931378799414872017-11-04T09:56:18.742-07:002017-11-04T09:56:18.742-07:00(2) telling you that your obvious nonsense is obvi...<i>(2) telling you that your obvious nonsense is obvious nonsense betraying a lack of reading in the field is not belligerence, but diagnosis, and of a kind fairly common in professional philosophy, at that, even if it gets trimmed out of journals</i><br /><br />Aside from additional fulminations you have done exactly nothing to show that my remarks were ‘obvious nonsense’. <br /><br /><i>this is a pretty impudent claim from someone who has been so aggressive commenting on other people.</i><br /><br />Are you, or is anyone else on this blog one of the 20th century Neo-Thomists? Obviously not. The standard modus here appears to be my criticising Thomism or even just Thomists for some point, someone steaming in and claiming that I don’t understand Thomism and then going away when it becomes evident that I do. <br /><br />As for the Stardusty Psyche types, I make no bones about that – they’re trolls who’ve came here to annoy rather to actual discuss anything substantial.. <br /><br /><i>This simply makes the point more obvious: Baroque scholastics have no unity on any of these topics, and even when they hold (say) a Thomistic position on some of them, they don't necessarily conduct their investigations on that basis. As Caramuel, I think (if I am not conflating his discussion with someone else's), says in his analysis of Kabbalistic claims, one can't presuppose Thomistic claims in a world of atheists and heretics.</i><br /><br />I have not and would not claim Baroque scholasticism was a continuation of Thomism or even that the thinkers involved were predominantly Thomist. My claim was that the family of ‘Broadly Aristotelian’ subjects constituted ‘narrow parameters’. <br /><br /><i>Very, very noticeably, you are evading the call for evidence. I repeat. You claimed, "Baroque Scholasticism had some interesting insights about Divine Knowledge and truthmaker theory but other than that they worked within very narrow parameters." What is your evidence for this claim? </i><br /><br />This remark is fundamentally duplicitous. I defined what the ‘narrow parameters’ in question were in the above paragraph. What evidence would prove or disprove this for you – surveys of the topics covered by major Baroque Scholastic thinkers? Claims that certain modern ideas are in fact traceable or pre-empted by said thinkers? <br /><br />Likewise in regards to ‘evasions of evidence’ refer to my previous post and provide at least a couple of examples of the innovations in Philosophy of Religion Baroque Scholasticism brought about beyond the aforementioned Aristotelean ‘fine-tunings’. What is it we modern philosophers are missing in our only having read ‘tip-bits’ of Baroque Scholasticism. <br />OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-15651660180052722782017-11-04T04:48:39.602-07:002017-11-04T04:48:39.602-07:00No, calling you out is absolutely necessary. Too m...<i>No, calling you out is absolutely necessary. Too many people here are keen to make extravagant claims on behalf of pre-modern philosophy without ever cashing those cheques and respond with belligerence when challenged. </i><br /><br />This is a pointless defense. (1) Belligerence is not equivalent to personal insult; (2) telling you that your obvious nonsense is obvious nonsense betraying a lack of reading in the field is not belligerence, but diagnosis, and of a kind fairly common in professional philosophy, at that, even if it gets trimmed out of journals; and (3) this is a pretty impudent claim from someone who has been so aggressive commenting on other people.<br /><br /><i>Let’s have a broad family grouping: act and potency, four causes, immanent realism to nominalism re universals, an epistemology involving ‘phantasms’, and a mental theory of ‘intelligible species’. </i><br /><br />This simply makes the point more obvious: Baroque scholastics have no unity on any of these topics, and even when they hold (say) a Thomistic position on some of them, they don't necessarily conduct their investigations on that basis. As Caramuel, I think (if I am not conflating his discussion with someone else's), says in his analysis of Kabbalistic claims, one can't presuppose Thomistic claims in a world of atheists and heretics.<br /><br />Very, very noticeably, you are evading the call for evidence. I repeat. You claimed, "Baroque Scholasticism had some interesting insights about Divine Knowledge and truthmaker theory but other than that they worked within very narrow parameters." What is your evidence for this claim?Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87002386047650196622017-11-04T04:37:07.071-07:002017-11-04T04:37:07.071-07:00If you think pointing out that your claim was obvi...<i>If you think pointing out that your claim was obvious nonsense that could only be based on very little reading of what you were talking about was a 'personal insult', then you need to develop a skin. .</i><br /><br />No, calling you out is absolutely necessary. Too many people here are keen to make extravagant claims on behalf of pre-modern philosophy without ever cashing those cheques and respond with belligerence when challenged. <br /><br /><i>It's absurd to try to defend yourself by an obviously ill-formed question. There is no such thing as a 'broadly Aristotelian perimeter'; there is no natural definition of such a thing, because 'broadly' in this context relaxed the usual scope of the adjective to which it applies, and Aristotelianism doesn't, in any case, identify a 'perimeter', since school-labels of this sort don't indicate boundaries but core ideas.</i><br /><br />Let’s have a broad family grouping: act and potency, four causes, immanent realism to nominalism re universals, an epistemology involving ‘phantasms’, and a mental theory of ‘intelligible species’. The more of these one’s philosophy includes the more one can fill out the Aristotelian bingo card. <br /><br /><i>The baroque scholastics, for instance, had to deal with new scientific discoveries, new political systems, Protestant-Catholic polemic, humanist demands for scholarly rigor in dealing with texts, new kinds of skepticism, etc. It's a priori implausible that intelligent people would have confined themselves to 'narrow parameters' in the face of that; </i><br /><br />Why? Nothing in my claim precludes them from having responded to such challenges and, accepting limitations of the times, done so well – they just didn’t produce anything that innovationary beyond a narrow area in natural theology and ontology. <br /><br />I will give you the points about law and political theory; I had metaphysical stuff in mind when I made the claim about narrow parameters.<br /><br /><i>The only people who think that baroque scholastics were primarily going on about divine knowledge and counterfactuals are analytic philosophers of religion, because they only tidbits of baroque scholasticism they try to read, if they read any, are those broadly related to Molinism about divine knowledge.</i><br /><br />I picked the issues of most relevance to today. They also produced notable work on non-existent entities, ens rationis, privation theory and more general fine-tuning of term-logic. <br /><br />Let’s bring this round – why don’t you point me to some areas were Baroque Scholastic thought would be of great value to contemporary Philosophy of Religion? Of course I would like to be proved wrong.<br /><br />A more specific challenge: what major work did they do developing/improving a theistic proof which was <i>not</i> a version of the Cosmological Argument?OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-45167460396059808622017-11-04T03:56:56.988-07:002017-11-04T03:56:56.988-07:00@Miguel,
Yes, I agree. I often find ironic that I...@Miguel,<br /><br />Yes, I agree. I often find ironic that I could probably defend atheism more competently than 90% of the persons who hold it (likewise I'm sure many others here could too).<br /><br /><i>What can an atheist say, really? Deny PSR, any principle of causation, contingency, or abductive arguments?</i><br /><br />In order to make atheism/naturalism a serious contender I think the atheist needs to twist these round on the theist by arguing the necessary being in question is not God. As long as atheism is wedded to the brute fact claim about the world theism sort of wins by default in virtue of its actually being an explanation. <br /><br /><i>Frankly, it's a bunch of retarded bullshit. A few centuries in the future and humanity will scoff at 20th and 21st century philosophers for holding so many absurd theses ONLY to preserve their beloved pet theory. </i><br /><br />One can only hope, though I would take issues about the 19th, 18th and 20th century being that much better (German Idealism aside). Rather than an attempt to argue materialism one would face a dismissal of substantial philosophical reasoning on the grounds of ‘Eeeek metaphysics’ or ‘scholastic logic-chopping’ and before that the vapid claim that philosophy is futile because = vague Classical reference, usually Sextus Empericus or Cicero. I’d much rather deal with someone like Quine than persons of this nature – the former is doing bad philosophy in great detail; the latter are refusing to engage in serious philosophy at all. <br /><br />@JoeD, I think he is referring to the modal scepticism of early Analytical philosophy. In the case of Russell it was partly due to that individual's over-emphasis on the as yet under-developed predicate logic, but in the case of Quine it was just pure pique (Christopher Hookway, in his overview of Quine, admits that the real reason he rejected essentialism was because he didn't like its metaphysical consequences).OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65101189773649430942017-11-04T02:45:49.066-07:002017-11-04T02:45:49.066-07:00OA Police
No, I mean you should read it. OA Police<br /><br />No, I mean you should read it. Walter Van den Ackerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16101735542155226072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51193000873706019602017-11-04T01:49:51.884-07:002017-11-04T01:49:51.884-07:00@Miguel,
Quote: "some others are about eter...@Miguel,<br /><br /><br />Quote: <i>"some others are about eternal truths and possibilities"</i><br /><br />Quote: <i>possibilities are unintelligible concepts</i><br /><br /><br />Are you by any chance refering to the argument from possibility here?<br />The one that says that all possibilities by nature are grounded in a higher reality, and all logical possibilities must therefore be grounded in an omnipotent pure actuality?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />JoeDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-42801032225673024582017-11-03T21:35:16.005-07:002017-11-03T21:35:16.005-07:00It sounds fairly depressing but most atheists who ...It sounds fairly depressing but most atheists who write on these issues are completely incompetent. And I'm not just talking about your standard new atheist, but atheists in general.<br /><br />Sure, there are some who actually know what they're talking about -- Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, etc. But those are the rare exceptions. <br /><br />I wonder if we can even pretend that atheism is a viable position. It just has so many holes, so many problems that it's quite surprising how most philosophers have yet to see this. In the past few years, we have witnessed the development of hundreds of independent arguments for God's existence from all kinds of principles and assumptions. Some rely on PSR; others on moderate causal principles; others on weaker causal principle; some just use inference to the best explanation; others use Bayesian probability; some deal with the beginning of the universe; others with contingent existence itself; some are about teleology; others are about the soul; some others are about eternal truths and possibilities; others are even about religious experience, and so on.<br /><br />What can an atheist say, really? Deny PSR, any principle of causation, contingency, or abductive arguments?<br /><br />It doesn't help that materialism has been utterly discredited, either. Can't have consciousness, can't have intention, can't have reason, can't have free will, can't have personal identity... Meh. <br /><br />Atheism and materialism were never popular views in antiquity, the middle ages, or even the renaissance. Heck, even Nietzsche doubted that naturalism could account for man's aesthetic sense.<br /><br />It is only in our recent century that we have to take this stuff "seriously". That it could be the case that the universe exists without any explanation whatsoever; that there is order without any transcendent explanation; possibilities are unintelligible concepts; consciousness is an illusion; we don't actually reason or have universal and determinate ideas; etc.<br /><br />Frankly, it's a bunch of retarded bullshit. A few centuries in the future and humanity will scoff at 20th and 21st century philosophers for holding so many absurd theses ONLY to preserve their beloved pet theory.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-14635874893989574092017-11-03T18:33:25.028-07:002017-11-03T18:33:25.028-07:00I'll ignore the personnel insult and simply as...<i>I'll ignore the personnel insult and simply ask: did or did not Baroque Scholasticism operate within a broadly Aristotelean perimeter?</i><br /><br />If you think pointing out that your claim was obvious nonsense that could only be based on very little reading of what you were talking about was a 'personal insult', then you need to develop a skin.<br /><br />It's absurd to try to defend yourself by an obviously ill-formed question. There is no such thing as a 'broadly Aristotelian perimeter'; there is no natural definition of such a thing, because 'broadly' in this context relaxed the usual scope of the adjective to which it applies, and Aristotelianism doesn't, in any case, identify a 'perimeter', since school-labels of this sort don't indicate boundaries but core ideas.<br /><br />If, on the contrary, you simply ask the reasonable question here and ask if baroque scholasticism was fundamentally Aristotelian, the answer is very definitely that it depends. Baroque scholasticism is notoriously difficulty to study precisely because it is extremely diverse; indeed, individual thinkers are often diverse within their oeuvre. It's a period in which people are experimenting widely, and pursuing diverse interests. Calling Caramuel an Aristotelian is misleading at best; the basic parts of his logic are Aristotelian, but even there he is highly revisionary, and he moves with a free hand. Some baroque scholastics are pretty clearly Aristotelian; others are not. None of them are narrow; saying they worked within narrow parameters is like saying Leibniz worked within narrow parameters. (Indeed, Leibniz arguably inherits much of his unruliness from baroque scholasticism.)<br /><br />So let me return with a question: What precisely is your evidence for saying that baroque scholastics like Caramuel "worked within very narrow parameters"? Caramuel is more prolific than most, but his not atypical in terms of his breadth of interest or his willingness to explore different methods. By what conceivable standard of Aristotelianism can you claim that La Grand or Izquierdo are confining themselves to Aristotelian ideas? The baroque scholastics, for instance, had to deal with new scientific discoveries, new political systems, Protestant-Catholic polemic, humanist demands for scholarly rigor in dealing with texts, new kinds of skepticism, etc. It's a priori implausible that intelligent people would have confined themselves to 'narrow parameters' in the face of that; and, indeed, any such claim does not really stand trying to read the overgrown jungle of ideas and factions that is actual baroque scholasticism.<br /><br />The only people who think that baroque scholastics were primarily going on about divine knowledge and counterfactuals are analytic philosophers of religion, because they only tidbits of baroque scholasticism they try to read, if they read any, are those broadly related to Molinism about divine knowledge.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31918679784513275332017-11-03T16:05:50.781-07:002017-11-03T16:05:50.781-07:00So in others words you're saying 'No'....So in others words you're saying 'No'.OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-10099426935049433762017-11-03T13:34:20.446-07:002017-11-03T13:34:20.446-07:00You can only judge it by actually reading it. You can only judge it by actually reading it. Walter Van den Ackerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16101735542155226072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-77159020671079855402017-11-03T09:17:08.253-07:002017-11-03T09:17:08.253-07:00Save my name and blood pressure fellows - is it wo...Save my name and blood pressure fellows - is it worth reading that Secular Outpost fellow's criticisms or not?OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-20526023804534672682017-11-03T07:24:54.529-07:002017-11-03T07:24:54.529-07:00"I wonder why he decided to repeat it as an A..."I wonder why he decided to repeat it as an Anon here."<br /><br />Maybe so someone would read it.<br /><br />By a fortunate coincidence, Dian's and Stardy's avatars look a little a like, making them easier to skip.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-69764393223038017052017-11-03T04:36:34.505-07:002017-11-03T04:36:34.505-07:00Yes, if one endorses a global powers theory one ca...Yes, if one endorses a global powers theory one can generate a powerful argument like this for an omnipoetent being. Pruss scetches the argument out in his book on modal theory and in this essay (the last section):<br /><br />http://alexanderpruss.com/papers/ActualAndPossible.html<br /><br />It's an argument I think very highly of.OA Policenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36257708963130211772017-11-03T04:32:06.329-07:002017-11-03T04:32:06.329-07:00@Brandon,
I'll ignore the personnel insult an...@Brandon,<br /><br />I'll ignore the personnel insult and simply ask: did or did not Baroque Scholasticism operate within a broadly Aristotelean perimeter?OA Policenoreply@blogger.com