Why I am Orthodox

When I first began to reconsider the Christian faith, the one thing I accepted without hesitation is the premise that there is something terribly wrong with us, as humans. We are wonderful. And, we are amazingly so. I don’t deny that. And yet, we are capable of horrendous evil. And, the evil we bring into this world is in no way necessary.

A Pre-Socratic Crush

I am fascinated by the Pre-Socratic philosophers. Why the general tendency towards monism? Thales' water, Anaximander's eternal indeterminate, Anaximenes' air, and of course Heraclitus' fire all try to pinpoint the one thing upon which all else depends. What is the one "stuff" from which the multiplicity arises? They were, in general, materialists. Material monists, if you will. The only problem with saying they were materialists is that they had not yet developed the kind of dual (material/spiritual) understanding of reality from which contemporary ideas of materialism have their provenance. Their dualism, if we can say that they had one, was the one and the many.

The Persistence of Evil

I don't hold to a complicated concept of evil. Evil is whatever works against, or seeks to undo, that which is good. Furthermore, that which is good is that which works in favor of flourishing life. And finally, life is not mere existence. Life, if it happens, is meaningful. In this sense, evil is not a mystery. We all know what it is. We look around us and see that we are surrounded by people doing things or saying things that work against meaningful life. Sometimes, we even participate. That's at best. At worst, we continually see those who destroy meaningful life, intentionally and without good reason (see definition of "good" above). In short, evil happens and we all know it. Evil is not a mystery. What is a mystery, however, is that evil continues. Why is that? How is it that evil persists?

Big Brains

“…why should we be troubled by Leibniz’s point that if the brain were blown up to the size of a factory, so that we could stroll through it, we should not see thoughts? If we know enough neural correlations, we shall indeed see thoughts-in the sense that our vision will reveal to us what thoughts the possessor of the brain is having. If we do not, we shall not, but then if we stroll through any factory without having first learned about its parts and their relations to one another, we shall not see what is going on. Further, even if we could find no such neural correlations, even if cerebral localization of thoughts was a complete failure, why would we want to say that a person’s thoughts or mental images were nonphysical simply because we cannot give an account of them in terms of his parts?” Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Thirteenth-Anniversary Edition 2009) 26.

 

Indeed, why should we be troubled by Leibniz’s point? It is only troubling if we want very badly to conflate or reduce the mental to specific neural correlations. And in doing so, discard the ontological reality of our mental experience.

Truth in terms of fit

It used to be fashionable to talk about truth as something almost wholly contingent upon the experience of the subjective self. “Objective truth” was anathema. Truth was pliable, malleable, and subject to perspective. Just the possibility of being able to “create our own truth” was stimulating! But, for better or for worse, those happy days are gone. What was once fashionable and stimulating has become grotesque, frightening, and all too real. People who have power are creating their own truth. Now, we have “alternative facts” and “fake news.” Consequently, what used to be stylish and smart is now out. The conversation is no longer about how wonderful it is that we are free to create our own truth. So, what now? How shall we think and talk about truth, now?

Radical Skepticism

Radical skepticism is a particularly vulgar form of certainty. It is dogmatism without content.

The Value of the Question

Is the question of God’s existence more important than the answers given?

That Which Seems True and the Phenomenology of Belief

In his defense of religious exclusivism, Alvin Plantinga gives a somewhat tangential mention of a phenomenology that attends belief (citation at end). In this post, I am not interested in speaking to Plantinga’s defense of exclusivism, but I do want to consider this phenomenology of belief he mentions. To whit, it seems to me that if we believe something, part of why we believe that something is because it strikes us as true. That is, it seems true to us. This phenomenon of seeming true (or, false, for that matter) is not wholly within our control. Why does that matter? Well, for me, I have struggled to find ways to clarify my understanding of not only the experience of belief, but also the humility that it seems should attend belief. Something Plantinga says in that defense has helped me understand these better.

A Reductio for Eliminative Materialism

Can arguments for eliminative materialism be made without employing some aspects of so-called “folk psychology” and does it matter if they cannot? These are questions I want to explore. 

An Education In Virtue

"But I take it...what we have in mind is education from childhood in virtue, a training which produces a keen desire to become a perfect citizen..." from Plato's Laws I (643e)

Historicism and Literalism: Strange Bedfellows

For some time I have been considering the thesis that both historicism and literalism emphasize the historical in such a way that said emphasis creates a barrier to significance for each, but in different ways. For this post I will limit my considerations to how this common emphasis is exemplified within Christianity; however, a similar critique may be applicable elsewhere.

Christian Epistemic Humility

Christian epistemic humility is easy to come by...

A working word that does no work

"Supervenience" is a fancy way of saying, "I have no idea how the physical and mental are related."