The Advantages of Painting With Broad (Philosophical) Strokes

This weekend I'm working on my final paper for my "Divine Command Theory of Obligation" class With Dr. Stephen Evans. The paper is going well, but, as usual, I think that there are some claims that I should defend more fully. But then I came across this great quote that makes me feel better about what I'm doing. Richard Fumerton, a really sharp epistemologist, says

"My purpose in this paper is to present a kind of overview of what I take to be the main reasons so many epistemologists abandoned classical foundationalism and to sketch the way in which I think one might respond to those concerns. it is always fun to paint with broad strokes. Due solely to space constraints, of course, one gets to ignore all sorts of views one does not like, fail to defend crucial premises on one's own arguments, and assure one's critics that there are replies to well-known objections not discussed."

Fumerton, "Classical Foundationalism," in Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism, ed. Michael R. Depaul, p. 3.

I love this aspect of writing short papers - you can say, "due to space constraints I can't defend my claim that x is true, so I will assume it for the rest of the argument."

OK, that move may be a bit too much...

Using time for study profitably

I have a friend here at Baylor who sends out an e-mail each day with a portion of Sertillanges The Intellectual Life (thanks Lewis!). In today's section Sertillanges writes about the importance of using the time that one sets aside for study well. I think the following quote is particularly helpful, so I include it here.

We come at length, after speaking of the preparation, and the prolongation, and the profitable interruption of work, and of rest in view of work, to the work itself properly so-called, and the time devoted to studious concentration, to full effort. Accordingly, we shall give the name of full moments, moments of plenitude, to these culminating periods of the duration of our intellectual life.

The greater part of this treatise has no other object than to consider how to use that time: here we are speaking only of securing it, putting it on a stable basis, preserving it, guarding the "interior cell" against all that threatens to invade it.

Seeing that the moments of our life have very unequal values, and that for each of us the adjustment of these values obeys different laws, we cannot lay down any absolute rule; but we must insist on this one thing: you must study yourself, consider what your life is, what it enables you to do, what it furthers or excludes, what of itself it suggests for the hours of intense activity...

Whatever decision you have made, the chosen moments must be carefully secured, and you must take all personal precautions so as to use them to the fullest. You must see to it beforehand that nothing happens to crowd up, waste, shorten, or interfere with this precious time. You want it to be a time of plenitude; then shut remote preparation out of it; make all the necessary arrangements beforehand; know what you want to do and how you want to do it; gather your materials, your notes, your books; avoid having to interrupt your work for trifles. (p. 94-95).

Great article on raising Great Commission Christians

I want to recommend an article from Benjamin Quinn* over at Baptist 21 entitled "The Freedom to Go." Benjamin does a great job of calling parents to raise their children to be ready and willing to follow God's calling on their life, whatever that calling might be.

*Benjamin is one of my best friends, but I'd recommend this article even if I didn't really like the guy :-)

Talk to your baby, even before he or she is born!

This is an interesting article.

HT: Dr. Pruss

Kierkegaard on the Battle of Knowledge and Action

Here's another quote from SK's Works of Love. While I find it hard to agree with everything that he says, Kierkegaard really know how to winsomely make a point!

* It is one thing to let ideas strive with ideas; it is another thing to battle and be victorious in a dispute; it is something else to be victorious over one’s own mind when one battles in the reality of life. For however close one battling ideas comes to another in life, however close one combatant comes to another in an argument, all this strife is still at a distance and like shadow-boxing. On the other hand, the measure of a man’s fundamental disposition is this: how far is what he understands from what he does, how great is the distance between his understanding and his action.

= Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, translated by Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2009), 88.

Kierkegaard on Indifferent "Christians"

If anyone thinks he is Christian and yet is indifferent towards his being a Christian, then he is really not one at all. What would we think of a man who affirmed the he was in love and also that it was a matter of indifference to him?

- Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, translated by Howard and Edna Hong (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2009), 42.

C.S. Lewis on Psychoanalysis

With all the philosophical reading that I have to do for classes, I have precious little time for pleasure reading. The one book that I'm reading outside of classwork is the second volume of C. S. Lewis' collected letters. As I was reading tonight from a letter that Lewis wrote on March 26 of 1940 to a former student Mary Neylan, I came across a great passage where Lewis discusses the subject of Psychoanalysis.

"Psychoanalysis: ... No doubt, like every young science, it is full of errors, but so long as it remains a science and doesn't set up to be a philosophy I have no quarrel with it - i.e. as long as people judge whatever it reveals by the best human logic and scheme of values they've got and don't try to derive logic and values from it...

Further, in so far as it attempts to heal, i.e. to make better, every treatment involves value judgment. This could be avoided if the analyst said "tell me what sort of chap you want to be and I'll see how near that I can make you": but of course he really has his own idea of what goodness and happiness consist in and works to that. And his idea is derived not from his science (it couldn't be) but from his age, sex, class, culture, religion and heredity, and is just as much in need of criticism as the patient's."