Ross Parker's Blog

An insufficient reason to deny PAP

2012-01-28T08:00:00.000-06:00

In her article on "Medieval Theories of Free Will" in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Colleen McClusky makes the following claim about Anselm's account of free will:

Anselm rejects the notion that one must be able to act in ways other than they do in order to be free. If freedom had to be defined in these terms, then God, the good angels, the blessed in heaven, the bad angels, and the damned in hell could not be free since they lack this ability to do otherwise. God, the good angels, and the blessed cannot bring about evil while the bad angels and the damned cannot bring about the good. [Sect. 2.b.]

This seems wrong. The fact that God, the good angels, and the blessed in heaven cannot do evil does not entail that they cannot act in ways other than they do. God cannot do evil - I'm certainly not disputing that. But the tradition affirms that he could choose to create or choose not to create. And it seems likely that when God was deciding to create, he could have created a world with unicorns, or a world with no rational animals. And in this way God can act in a way other than He in fact did. Similarly with the blessed in heaven. That a saint can no longer choose evil does not entail that he no longer can choose to act otherwise than he in fact does. It's perfectly plausible that St. Peter can choose to worship God by praising his goodness or by praising his majesty. St. John may no longer be able to choose to by envious of his brother (for example), but it seems that he can choose to spend some time with St. Paul or St. James.

The problem is that in this passage the ability to do otherwise is equated with the ability to choose good or evil. But while this may be a plausible way to understand moral freedom, but freedom is broader than that.

A letter from C.S. Lewis to Carl F. H. Henry

2012-01-26T17:58:00.003-06:00

I've been reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis off and on now for a couple of years. The letters are great reading for when I don't have a lot of time, and reading his letters has been a great way for me to get to know Lewis better as a thinker, but even more so as a person.

Tonight I came across a letter that was very interesting for me. It was written to Carl F. H. Henry on 9/28/1955. Walter Hooper (the editor of the volumes) says the letter was written in response to Henry's request for Lewis to contribute some articles to Christianity Today. In addition to the letter being interesting because it's written by one hero of evangelicalism to another, it's also interesting because Lewis here states his belief that he can be of more service to the cause of Christ through indirect communication (at this time The Magician's Nephew was about to be published). I wrote a paper a couple of semester's ago on Kierkegaard's and Lewis's use of indirect communication of the Christian faith; I'll have to go back and work this into my paper.

Dear Doctor Henry
Thank you for your letter of Sept. 12th. I wish your project heartily well but can't write you articles. My thought and talent (such as they are) now flow in different, though I think not less Christian, channels, and I do not think I am at all likely to write more directly theological pieces. The last work of that sort which I attempted had to be abandoned. If I am now good for anything it is for catching the reader unawares - thro' fiction and symbol. I have done what I could in the way of frontal attacks, but I now feel quite sure those days are over.
With many thanks.
Yours sincerely
C.S. Lewis

2012-01-03T10:22:00.000-06:00

William James: "If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one." [The Will to Believe, sect. 9]

Relational Ethics

2012-01-01T11:27:00.000-06:00

Christianity.. argues for a powerfully personal understanding of reality, and this necessarily results in a shift when understanding ethics away from a list of rules and toward a relationship with other persons, and ultimately, God Himself.
-- David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God (OUP, 2011), 185.

C.S. Lewis on reason and emotions

2011-12-24T12:26:00.000-06:00

Because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgment: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.
– C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1944; Reprint Touchstone, 1996), p. 31-32

Baggett and Walls on faith and reason

2011-12-21T12:18:00.001-06:00

This seems right to me...

What merely exceeds our reason may be hard to understand, like the Trinity, but it's still perfectly rational to believe in it; what fundamentally violates our reason or nonnegotiable moral intuitions, in contrast, is beyond the pale and so irrational to believe. [Good God (OUP, 2011), 77]

The key question in fleshing out this distinction concerns what one considers his or her nonnegotiable moral intuitions.

E. L. Mascall on Science and Unbelief

2011-12-05T16:46:00.001-06:00

Somewhere along my intellectual journey I came across the name of E. L. Mascall. Last year I read his Boyle Lectures from 1965 entitled The Christian Universe. It's a great book, and because I enjoyed it so much I started looking online for cheap copies of some of his other works.

A couple of nights ago I started reading Christian Theology and Natural Science which is based on his 1956 Bampton Lectures. I'm still working my way through the first chapter, but it has been a great read thus far. Here's a quote that I particularly enjoyed:

On three different questions, then, the nature of matter, the nature of space, and the nature of time, we have seen science quite recently abandoning the views which had prevailed for more than three hundred years and adopting a standpoint more congenial to the outlook of Christian theology. The significance of this fact ought not to be exaggerated, but it is perhaps of interest, and not least for the reason that, when people declare themselves unable to accept the Christian religion because of the outlook of science, the science involved very frequently turns out to be the now largely abandoned science of the nineteenth century. [p. 32]

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T16:43:00.001-06:00

Baylor professor of history Thomas Kidd gives a brief overview of the history of Thanksgiving.

Not All Turkey and Touchdowns

Do Theists and Atheists only disagree on the existence of God?

2011-10-15T16:36:00.002-05:00

"The difference between theism and atheism is... not just a disagreement over whether one entity of a certain description exists or not. It is a disagreement over the origin, and thus the ultimate nature, of everything." - Thomas Morris Our Idea of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 155

C.S. Lewis on moral obligation

2011-08-26T13:46:00.000-05:00

This semester I have the privilege of taking a seminar on moral obligation with C. Stephen Evans, who is currently working on a book arguing that the best account of moral obligation on offer is the Divine Command Theory of moral obligation. In our first class we discussed Elisabeth Anscombe's influential article "Modern Moral Philosophy" [found here online], which argued that without a divine lawgiver, we can't make good sense of the idea of moral obligation.

I'm also serving as a teaching assistant in a class on the thought of C.S. Lewis, and our first assigned book is The Problem of Pain (1940). Interestingly, in the first chapter Lewis makes a similar point to the one Anscombe made 18 years later:

All the human beings that history has heard of acknowledge some kind of morality; that is, they feel towards certain proposed actions the experiences expressed by the words 'I ought' or 'I ought not'. These experiences... cannot be logically deduced from the environment and physical experiences of the man who undergoes them. You can shuffle 'I want' and 'I am forced' and 'I shall be well advised' and 'I dare not' as long as you please without getting out of them the slightest hint of 'ought' and 'ought not'. [The Problem of Pain, (Harper Collins, 2001), p.10]

J. P. Moreland - One sentence quote on happiness

2011-07-24T09:27:00.001-05:00

J. P. Moreland - "Pleasurable satisfaction makes a very poor lifetime goal; it is, however, a wonderful by product of striving after happiness in the classical sense." [The Lost Virtue of Happiness (Navpress, 2006), 17]

The quote was just a bit too long for a twitter post, so I put it here instead.

Morgenbesser on the American Pragmatists (Pierce, James, & Dewey)

2011-07-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

Anthony Quinton on Wittgenstein

2011-07-19T08:00:00.001-05:00

Here's another interview on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

John Searle on Wittgenstein

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Bernard Williams on Descartes

2011-07-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ayer on Frege & Russell

2011-07-16T16:14:00.000-05:00

Dreyfus on Husserl & Heidegger

2011-07-16T08:00:00.005-05:00

As this quote pointed out, Heidegger's philosophy is tough to get a handle on. Perhaps this interview will help us make some sense of it.

Peter Singer on Hegel

2011-07-15T08:00:00.006-05:00

Here's another one of Magee's interviews concerning important philosophers. It was helpful for me to post them here in order.

Anthony Quinton on Spinoza & Leibniz

2011-07-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Magee Interview with Geoffrey Warnock on Kant

2011-07-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

Roger Scruton on Heidegger's philosophy

2011-07-07T10:15:00.001-05:00

"It is impossible to summarize Heidegger's work, which no one has claimed to understand completely.... Its language, like that of the later Husserl, is metaphorical and contorted to the point almost of incomprehensibility; the reader has the impression that never before have so many words been invented and tormented in the attempt to express the inexpressible."[1]

[1] Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2001), 270.

Book recommendation - Anthony Kenny's A New History of Western Philosophy

2011-06-30T16:19:00.000-05:00

Hey folks, I just saw that Kenny's four volume history of philosophy has now been released in one volume, and it's only $29 on Amazon. I wish I would have known this was coming before I bought all four volumes last year ;-). Seriously though, it's a good resource if you're looking for a good history of philosophy.

Mill on choice in Education

2011-06-27T10:58:00.000-05:00

I'm finishing up On Liberty this morning, and found this passage particularly interesting, especially coming from one of the fathers of modern political liberalism. Mill has just recommended that the state require parents to provide children with "an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others and towards himself. Here's what he says about how the state should be involved in this education:

Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about education. If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless the government undertook the task: then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils, take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may that of joint stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education under government auspices, the same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with State aid to those unable to defray the expense. [On Liberty, Ch. V]

John Stuart Mill - great one-line quotes on ethics

2011-06-26T17:11:00.000-05:00

I started reading Mill's On Liberty on Saturday. Mill, in my opinion, focuses too much on individuality (I may have a future post on this), but he's a great writer and comes up with some really quotable sayings. Here are a couple I particularly enjoyed.

“The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used.” – On Liberty, Ch. III [p. 133] *
“It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of man they are they do it.” – On Liberty, Ch. III [p. 134]

Page references are to the following edition: Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, ed. Mary Warnock, Wiley-Blackwell: 2003

Kierkegaard - Propositional content and faith

2011-06-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

I started reading Fear and Trembling today for comps, so there will probably be some more Johannes de silentio (Kierkegaard's pseudonym) quotes to follow. Here's a great one from the preface:

"Even if one were able to convert the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that one had comprehended faith, comprehended how one entered into it or how it entered into one." [Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh, (CUP, 2006), 5.]

Kant on belief in free will

2011-06-20T10:27:00.000-05:00

All human beings think of themselves as having free will. From this comes all judgments upon actions as being such that they ought to have been done even though they were not done.

-- Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Cambridge: 1998, p. 59

Kant's Evaluation of the Ontological Argument

2011-06-17T14:04:00.000-05:00

He doesn't think very much of it:

“Thus the famous ontological (Cartesian) proof of the existence of a highest being from concepts is only so much trouble and labor lost, and a human being can no more become richer and insight from mere ideas than a merchant could in resources if he wanted to improve his financial state by adding a few zeros to his cash balance.” [Critique of Pure Reason, B.630]

Locke on Philosophy and ordinary language

2011-05-24T12:02:00.002-05:00

One of the key methodological questions philosophers address is the relationship of philosophy to ordinary language. In the 20th century, there was a school of philosophy - the ordinary language philosophers - that seemed to want to reduce philosophy to the study of the way ordinary people used words. I think this is not all that philosophers should do - philosophers should also be able to instruct folks on better ways to use words, and to point out inconsistencies in usage. But I also think that our analysis of key concepts - knowledge, freedom, good, etc. - should in some way be tethered to the way people use words.

In reading Locke's Essay today I came to his discussion of power in Bk II, Ch. 21. Here Locke looks at human action and freedom. He thinks that the discussion has been in part confused and muddled by the way folks talk about the problem. Here's Locke's view on how philosophers should deal with ordinary language usage:

Nor do I deny that those words, and the like, are to have their place in the common use of languages that have made them current. It looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by: and philosophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet, when it appears in public, must have so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and language of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity. (Bk II, Ch XXI, sect. 20)

Michael Ayers on Locke & Berkeley

2011-05-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Leibniz against Divine voluntarism

2011-05-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

“…it seems to me that in saying that things are good not by some rule of goodness but only by God's will, without realizing it we destroy all God's love and all his glory. For why should we praise what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy for doing quite the opposite? Where would his justice and his wisdom be, if there were only a kind of despotic power, if will took the place of reason, and if, in accordance with the tyrant’s definition, what the most powerful wanted was on that account just? Besides which, it seems that any will implies some reason for willing, that this reason is naturally prior to the will. This is why I also find the claim by some other philosophers completely strange when they say that the eternal truths of metaphysics and the geometry, and therefore also the rules of goodness, justice, and perfection, are only the effects of God’s will. In contrast to this it seems to me that they are the consequences of his understanding, and do not depend at all his will, any more than does his essence.” -- Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, sect 2.

Descartes on the views of philosophers

2011-05-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

I had learned in my college days that one cannot imagine anything so strange and so little believable that it had not been said by one of the philosophers. - Descartes, Discourse on Method, 2.16

Comprehensive Exams

2011-05-16T09:28:00.000-05:00

Today I start on my summer of studying for the second set of comprehensive exams over the history of philosophy. Last summer it was ancient and medieval philosophy; this summer it's modern and contemporary (it's strange to most folks that modern philosophy starts in the early 17th century).

Here's my reading list for the summer. I'm sure that blogging will pick up, as I'll have plenty of interesting quotes to post here over the summer.

C.S. Lewis on why so many folks are practical materialists

2011-04-25T09:54:00.000-05:00

"It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books." -- "Christian Apologetics" in God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper, p. 93

C.S. Lewis on the job for which all others exist

2011-04-22T15:36:00.001-05:00

My wife is a full time homemaker - she sees this as her calling. In our day this may seem to be an unimportant job, but I think her work is very important. And C. S. Lewis agreed. In a letter to a Mrs. Johnson dated March 16, 1955 Lewis writes,

I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife's work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc. exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr. Johnson said, 'To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour'. (1st to be happy, to prepare for being happy in our own real home hereafter: 2nd, in the meantime, to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist. [C. S. Lewis, Letters Vol. III, ed. Walter Hooper, p. 580]

Kierkegaard on despair - the "sickness unto death"

2011-04-20T15:21:00.000-05:00

The last book that we're reading in Dr. Evans' Kierkegaard seminar this semester is The Sickness Unto Death, written under the Christian pseudonym Anti-Climacus. I'm really enjoying the book, and I'm sure that there will be several blog posts quoting from the book.

The central concern of the book is despair, which Kierkegaard thinks is the true "sickness unto death." Despair is a state, not merely a feeling. Here's a key quote about the nature of what is meant by despair:

Every human existence that is not conscious of itself as spirit or conscious of itself before God as spirit, every human existence that does not rest transparently in God but vaguely rests in and merges in some abstract universality (state, nation, etc.) or, in the dark about his self, regards his capacities nearly as powers to produce without becoming deeply aware of their source, regards itself, if it is to have intrinsic meaning, as an indefinable something -- every such existence, whatever it achieves, be it most amazing, whatever it explains, the of the whole of existence, however intensively it enjoys life esthetically -- every such existence is nevertheless despair.[1]

[1] Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition For Upbuilding And Awakening (Kierkegaard’s Writings, Vol 19) (Princeton University Press, 1983), 46.

Kierkegaard's view of the relation of the affective and the cognitive in Christianity

2011-04-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

Christianity presupposes the presence of a certain set of emotional concerns in a person, but transforms those concerns by introducing a new way of thinking. -- C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction, 141

C. S. Lewis on the real problem of human suffering

2011-04-07T08:38:00.001-05:00

From a 1954 letter to Belle Allen:

Do you know, the suffering of the innocent is less of a problem to me v. often than that of the wicked. It sounds absurd: but I've met so many innocent sufferers who seem to be gladly offering their pain to God in Christ as part of the Atonement, so patient, so meek, even so at peace, and so unselfish that we can hardly doubt that are being, as St Paul says, 'made perfect by suffering'. On the other hand I meet selfish egoists in whom suffering seems to produce only resentment, hate, blasphemy, and more egoism. They are the real problem. {Collected Letters, vol III, 520)

More Kierkegaard

2011-04-06T17:25:00.001-05:00

Here's another great quote from Postscript. It comes from Climacus' discussion of guilt-consciousness.

"All comparison delays, and that is why mediocrity likes it so much..." [Postscript, 547]

Kierkegaard on virtue and vice

2011-04-05T12:12:00.000-05:00

A person can be both good and evil, just as it is quite simply said that a human being has a disposition to both good and evil, but one cannot simultaneously become good and evil. [Postscript, p. 420]

Kierkegaard on the passion required to obtain eternal happiness

2011-04-02T12:08:00.000-05:00

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1), Kierkegaard, through the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus, addresses the concern that is required for properly relating to God, through which he believes we can find our eternal happiness. One key point that Climacus makes time and again is that the passion required is total commitment. He says,

The pathos that corresponds to and is adequate to an eternal happiness is the transformation by which the existing person in existing changes everything in his existence in relation to the highest good. (p. 389)

Kierkegaard is a master of humor, and he uses humor to point out the folly of thinking that Christianity is something that one can tack on to the rest of one's life. Kierkegaard has in mind the cultural Christians of his day, who did not want to deny that they were Christians, but saw it as just one more thing to have in a well balanced life. Hear the wit of his critique:

An eternal happiness relates itself with pathos to in essentially existing person, not to a speaker who is courteous enough to include it on the list of the good things for which he supplicates. Usually people abhor denying that such a good exists; so they include it, but by including it, show that they do not include it. I do not know whether one should laugh or weep on hearing the enumeration: a good job, a beautiful wife, health, the rank of a councilor of justice -- and in addition an eternal happiness, which is the same as assuming that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom along with all the other kingdoms on earth and that one would look for information about it in a geography book. (p. 391)

(1) Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

Bonjour on the central question of epistemology

2011-03-31T08:00:00.002-05:00

As I've progressed in my studies, my interests in philosophy have gravitated primarily toward the field of epistemology. Here's a statement from Laurence Bonjour - one of my favorite epistemologists - that gets at the heart of epistemology; it also sums up why I'm so interested in the subject.

The aim of this essay is to investigate one main aspect of what I take to be the central question of epistemology. That question concerns the rational status of our beliefs about the world in relation to the independent world that they purport to describe: Do we have any good reasons for thinking that our beliefs about the world, at least the main ones that we hold most firmly, are true or at least approximately true – any rational basis for thinking that they succeed in describing the world more or less correctly? And if so, what form do these reasons take?
-- Bonjour, Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues (Blackwell: 2003), 5.

Camus on the mind's desire

2011-03-30T10:49:00.000-05:00

The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity."
-- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage Books, 1991) p. 17

A Kierkegaardian argument for the imperfection of the world

2011-03-19T16:01:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend I'm reading about the first third of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. I came across a passage that seems to contain an implicit argument for why God has created an imperfect, rather than a perfect, world. The basic assumption of the argument is that for Climacus (and Kierkegaard), faith is a passion rather than knowledge. Here's the argument:

Whoever believes that there is a God and also a providence has an easier time (in perserving the faith), an easier time in definitely gaining the faith (and not an illusion) in an imperfect world, where passion is kept vigilant, than in an absolutely perfect world. In such a world, faith is indeed inconceivable. [Postscript, Princeton UP, p. 29-30, Hong Translation]

Kierkegaard thinks in a perfect world, there would be no room for faith. And if faith is a great good for individuals, in that it allows them to enter into personal relationship with God, then it is better that the world is imperfect rather than perfect.

Politically correct pronoun usage

2011-03-16T07:54:00.004-05:00

I don't know how it works in other disciplines, but in academic philosophy it is common now to avoid using "him" for the common personal pronoun. Well, a while back I saw this, which made me laugh out loud!

"...Descartes' whole procedure in the Meditations tends to suggest this sort of view, given the meditator's situation as someone contemplating her own ideas, trying to determine whether something external corresponds to them." ("George Berkeley" 2.1.1 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Here's the problem. Descartes' Meditations are autobiographical. And, despite having the first name Rene, Descartes was male!

Sartre on Atheism and Ethics

2011-03-12T14:46:00.001-06:00

I'm fortunate this semester to be working as Stephen Evans' TA for his "Existentialism" class. For Tuesday, the assigned reading is Sartre's essay "Existentialism" (sometimes translated "Existentialism Is a Humanism"). I found the essay a highly readable exposition of Sartre's understanding of existentialism.

I found one passage particularly interesting, as Sartre addresses the relationship between God and ethics. There's been a good bit of back and forth between theists and atheists on whether objective ethics depends on the existence of God. Folks like Paul Copan and William Lane Craig say yes, while folks like Michael Martin and Erik Wielenberg say no. Here's what Sartre has to say...

The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself.

The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.

The full text of the lecture can be found HERE.

Open Access Epistemology Journal - Logos & Episteme

2011-03-11T22:30:00.000-06:00

Academic journal subscriptions are expensive for personal subscriptions, and even more of a financial burden for libraries. It seems to me that in the internet age the way of the future for academic journals is open access. That's why I was excited to hear about Logos & Episteme. There have been 2 issues thus far, and some of the articles look pretty good.

Logos & Episteme

Re-focusing my blog & links purge

2011-03-10T22:47:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking again about my blog. I haven't done much here for quite some time, despite the best of intentions. Recently I've been wondering if the problem is that I've lacked a narrow purpose. Thus far in the several years that I've been blogging I've posted on whatever I've been thinking about, and I've tried to keep the posts limited to stuff that would be of interest to anyone. But being in PhD studies in philosophy what I spend most of my time thinking about is philosophy. So I've decided to start blogging on philosophy, since that's what I'm thinking about most of the day. This means that the posts may be uninteresting to someone who is not studying philosophy, though I hope that anything that I write here will be something that anyone can follow with a little work.

Having decided to refocus a bit, I looked over my links on the sidebar and realized that I had a lot of links. Many I hadn't checked in a long time, and I found several that were dead links. So I decided to delete most of my links, leaving only a few philosophy links.

I hope that this re-focusing will prompt me to become a better blogger. We'll see how it goes...

New addition to the philosophy links

2011-02-23T23:53:00.000-06:00

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews is a great free online source for book reviews of recent philosophical books. You can subscribe via e-mail for future book reviews, and search the database for past reviews.

Logan Gage - Darwin, Design, & Thomas Aquinas

2011-02-02T09:27:00.000-06:00

Here's an article by my good friend Logan Gage (a fellow PhD student here at Baylor) on the relationship between Thomism and Intelligent Design. If you're interested in either subject, read this article.

DARWIN, DESIGN & THOMAS AQUINAS

The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design
byLogan Paul Gage

Dallas Willard on God & evil

2011-01-03T08:58:00.000-06:00

I'm currently re-reading Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart. Here's a quote that I found particularly poignant on God and evil.

...I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond his power for good.

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (Navpress, 2002), p. 110.

John Haldane & Christopher Hitchens - Secularism and Faith in the Public Square

2011-01-01T17:55:00.003-06:00

Here's an interesting discussion between Christian philosopher John Haldane and the "New Atheist" Christopher Hitchens. I haven't made it through the whole thing yet, but it looks interesting...

New Entry Under Philosophers - Trent Dougherty

2010-12-13T16:54:00.003-06:00

I added the homepage of one of my professors - Trent Dougherty - to my "Philosophers" links. Trent's a top-notch epistemologist, and I'm privileged to be studying with him. I took a class with him last spring working through the manuscript of a volume he edited Evidentialism and its Discontents. I'll be taking a seminar with him in the spring on the issue of "Concessive Knowledge Attributions."

Ratzinger on Eternity and Time

2010-12-07T10:48:00.004-06:00

A perennial question in the philosophy of religion is God's relationship to time. Is God everlasting (temporal) or eternal (timeless). A typical strike against God's timelessness is that He would not be able to interact with a temporal creation. I found this passage from Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity (p. 316-317) particularly helpful on this issue.

Modern thinking usually lets itself be guided by the idea that eternity is imprisoned, so to speak, in its unchangeableness; God appears as the prisoner of his eternal plan conceived "before all ages". "Being" and "becoming" do not mingle. Eternity is thus understood in a purely negative sense as timelessness, as the opposite to time, as something that cannot make its influence felt in time for the simple reason that it would thereby cease to be unchangeable and itself become temporal. Fundamentally these ideas remain the products of a pre-Christian mentality that takes no account of a concept of God that finds utterance in a belief in creation and incarnation. At bottom they take for granted the dualism of antiquity --- something that we cannot go into here --- and are signs of an intellectual naïveté that looks at God in human terms. For if one thinks that God cannot alter retrospectively what he planned "before" eternity, then unwittingly one is again conceiving eternity in terms of time, with its distinction between "before" and "after."

But eternity is not the very ancient, which existed before time began, but the entirely other, which is related to every passing age as its today and is really contemporary with it; it is not itself barred off into a "before" and "after"; it is much rather the power of the present in all time. Eternity does not stand by the side of time, quite unrelated to it; it is the creatively supporting power of all time, which encompasses passing time in its own present and thus gives it the ability to be. It is not timelessness but dominion over time. As the Today that is contemporary with all ages, it can also make its influence felt in any age.

The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, by virtue of which the eternal God and temporal man combine in one single person, is nothing else than the last concrete manifestation of God's dominion over time. At this point of Jesus' human existence, God took hold of time and drew it into himself. His power over time stands embodied before us, as it were, in Christ. Christ is really, as St. John's Gospel says, the "door" between God and man (Jn 10:9), the "mediator" (1 Tim 2:5), in whom the Eternal One has time. In Jesus we temporal beings can speak to the temporal one, our contemporary; but in him, who with us is time, we simultaneously make contact with the Eternal One, because with us Jesus is time, and with God he is eternity.

Thanks to my friend Lewis Pearson for sending this my way!

G. E. Moore on Hegel

2010-12-01T14:03:00.004-06:00

I'm reading "The Refutation of Idealism" today in preparation of our discussion in my "Hume, Kant, and Reid" seminar of contemporary versions of idealism.

I know that we should be charitable in our disagreement, but I also think that humor and ridicule can be used to show the error of a position. In this snarky comment on Hegel, Moore uses both...

The principles of organic unity, like that of combined analysis and synthesis, is mainly used to defend the practice of holding both of two contradictory propositions, wherever this may seem convenient. In this, as in other matters, Hegel's main service to philosophy has consisted in giving a name to and erecting into a principle, a type of fallacy to which experience had shown philosophers, along with the rest of mankind, to be addicted. No wonder he has followers and admirers. [Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism" Mind Vol. 12 No. 46 (Oct. 1903) 443.

Kierkegaard on Science and Ethics

2010-11-06T15:00:00.004-05:00

Here's an prescient quote from Soren Kierkegaard regarding the relationship of the scientific method and human moral action. Remember that he was writing in the early to mid 19th century...

All such scientific methods became particularly dangerous and pernicious when they encroach upon the spiritual field. Plants, animals, and stars may be handled in that way, but to handle the spirit of man in such a fashion blasphemy which only weakens moral and religious passion. And so physiology spreads out over the kingdom of plants and animals, showing more and more analogies, which are not really analogies, since man is qualitatively different from plants and animals. Just as metaphysics has supplanted theology, physics will in the end supplant ethics. The whole statistical approach to morality is bent in this direction.

-- From Soren Kierkegaard, "Readings" in Classics of Philosophy, ed. Louis Pojman (OUP, 1998), p. 903

Sorry for the Hiatus

2010-11-06T14:55:00.002-05:00

Sorry I haven't been blogging for a while. Things have been hectic in my life (see our family blog at parkerlife04.blogspot.com)

I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do with this blog. I initially wanted this to be a place where I could write concerning a wide variety of issues. I find, however, that I simply don't have the time to write anything here that I would want available on the internet.

The blog has served a purpose that I didn't expect. I have used it to post web links that I have found interesting, as well as posting cool quotes that I come across in my reading. I think that these two kind of posts serve a good purpose, even if it's just organizing things for my own benefit.

David Bentley Hart - Morality Without God?

2010-10-15T08:19:00.001-05:00

David Bentley Hart is one of my favorite current writers. Although he's prone to use words that I've never even seen (much less know what they mean), I've found him to be an insightful and winsome writer.

Over at "On The Square," Hart's essay "The Desirist’s Unsatisfiable Desires" has just been posted. In this essay Hart talks about the relationship of God and morality. It's a great read, especially if you're interested in philosophical ethics.

Berkely on Philosophical Communication

2010-09-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

I introduced George Berkeley's idealism in yesterday's post. Berkeley presented his ideas originally in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710, and then presented them in a more accessible form in Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in 1713. In the dialogue, Hylas believes in the existence of mind-independent matter; Philonous speaks for Berkeley.

In attempting to defend the existence of matter, Hylas resorts to all kinds of arguments, but Philonous shoots them all down. Philonous is mostly patient and kind with Hylas in the dialogue, but at one point Philonous makes the following petualant (but funny) statement.

"I am not for imposing any sense on your words: you are at liberty to explain them as you please. Only I beseech you, make me understand something by them."

You gotta love philosophical cut-downs like this!

Berkeley's Idealism - The Big Idea

2010-09-20T12:49:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow I'm teaching History of Modern European Philosophy while Dr. Evans is out of town. Berkeley was an idealist; he believed that the only things that exist are minds and the perceptions of minds. In other words, he didn't believe in matter.

Here's a great quote that sums up Berkeley's idealism...

“Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit – it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which, the reader need only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived.” [Treatise, #6]

I'm excited to teach tomorrow. Though most folks have a tough time understanding why anyone would be an idealist, I think that there are pretty good arguments for the position, and that Berkeley-type idealism is a coherent view. Don't worry, though; I'm not an idealist, because I think that we do have reasons to believe in the mind-independent existence of matter.

Thomas Reid - The Importance of Testimony in the Formation of Belief

2010-09-14T10:35:00.001-05:00

“It is the intention of nature, that we should be carried in arms before we are able to walk upon our own legs; and it is likewise the intention of nature, that our beliefs should be guided by the authority and reason of others, before it can be guided by our own reason.”

-- Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, ch. 6, sect 24

Interview - John Passmore on Hume

2010-09-08T15:59:00.004-05:00

Here is an interview that I found online where David Hume scholar John Passmore discusses Hume's philosophy.

Thomas Reid - Hume's Skeptical Philosophy is Ridiculous!

2010-09-06T16:57:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in a seminar on Hume, Kant, and Reid where we are looking at the external world skepticism of Hume and the responses made to this skepticism by Immanuel Kant and Thomas Reid.

To give a really brief overview, Hume taught that we have no reason to believe that there is an external world beyond our perceptions. Reid argues against this view by denying a key assumption of Hume's - that all we are ever aware of directly are mental perceptions. But even before developing this critique, Reid has this to say about skeptical philosophy.

Zeno endeavored to demonstrate the impossibility of motion; Hobbes, that there was no difference between right and wrong; and this author [Hume] that no credit is to be given to our senses, to our memory, or even to demonstration. Such philosophy is justly ridiculous, even to those who cannot detect the fallacy of it. It can have no other tendency, than to shew the acuteness of the sophist, at the expense of disgracing reason and human nature, and making mankind Yahoos. [Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. 21]

Why people often have a negative view of philosophers

2010-09-01T10:46:00.004-05:00

I'm reading David Hume's ATreatise of Human Nature, and came across this great quote...

Whatever has the air of paradox, and is contrary to the first and most unprejudiced notions of mankind is often greedily embraced by philosophers, as showing the superiority of their science, which could discover opinions so remote from vulgar* conception. (Book 1, part 2, sect 1)

There is surely a danger here for philosophers. The interesting thing is that it seems that Hume himself, in his views of cause and effect, asserts ideas that are paradoxical and against the unprejudiced notions of mankind.

[vulgar for Hume means common]

Ken Keathley's Website - Theology for the Church

2010-08-23T08:00:00.001-05:00

After updating my links list with J. P. Moreland's new website, I realized that there are several new websites that I had not added to my links list. One of the new links that I've added under "Theologians" is the website of Ken Keathley, who currently is Senior Vice President of Academic Administration & Dean of the Faculty at Southeastern Seminary.

Theology for the Church

While I was at SEBTS I had the joy of studying theology with Dr. Keathley, taking Systematic Theology I and II, as well as an upper level class on Creation and Providence with him. Dr. Keathley also allowed me to serve as his grader/teaching fellow for a time, and through this work my calling to the vocation of teaching was further solidified. I consider Dr. Keathley one of the best contemporary evangelical theologians, especially when it comes to communicating difficult concepts in an accessible way (for example of this, check out his book Salvation and Sovereignty)

So here's another great web resource to add to your favorites page...

J.P. Moreland's website

2010-08-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

One of the most influential men in my intellectual development has been J. P. Moreland. While I have never met Dr. Moreland, his work was a major catalyst spurring me on to study philosophy. I was pleased to see that he has recently launched a website.

http://www.jpmoreland.com/

I've updated my link on the right side of the page, and I'd encourage you to take a look at Dr. Moreland's new sight. There are some great resources already there, and it looks like there are more to come!

Update

2010-08-21T11:20:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. Last week I took my ancient comprehensive exam on Wednesday and medieval on Friday. This week was my week off for the summer. Next week I start seminar work again.

I hope to get a few new posts up today!

Plato on the gods and evil

2010-08-02T09:56:00.001-05:00

* Therefore, since a god is good, he is not — as most people claim — the cause of everything that happens to human beings but of only a few things, for good things are fewer than bad ones in our lives. He alone is responsible for the good things, but we must find some other cause for the bad ones, not a god."

= Plato, The Republic, 379c

Thomas Aquinas on Free Will

2010-07-22T13:54:00.004-05:00

In reading sections of the Summa Theologica in preparation for my Medieval comprehensive exam, I found Aquinas's account of free will to be particularly helpful. Below are some quotes from my notes...

We are masters of our own actions by reason of our being able to choose this or that. But choice regards not the end, but "the means to the end," as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 9). Wherefore the desire of the ultimate end does not regard those actions of which we are masters. [Summa Theologica, 1a., 82, 1, ad. 3.]

The will tends toward nothing except under the notion of the good (sub ratione boni). But because the good is complex (quia bonum est multiplex), the will is not determined by necessity to one alternative (non ex necessitate determinatur ad unum). [1, 82, 2, ad.2 Freddoso translation]

Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature. [Summa Theologica, 1a., 83, 1, ad. 3.]

Here's a helpful quote from Brian Davies about the concurrence of the divine and human wills in free actions.

Aquinas therefore concludes that people acting freely fall under providence as free agents. But they are not free in the sense of being independent of God’s causal operation, for without this they would not exist and would not be acting. They are free because God is making them free, because he has arranged that they function independently of the determining agency of other created things. [Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 176.]

Dostoevsky, Russell Moore, and Peanuts - Love in the Abstract vs. Loving Actual People

2010-07-17T13:33:00.006-05:00

I just read a great post on Justin Taylor's blog, where he cites three sources for bringing out the distinction between loving "mankind" in the abstract and loving individual people. It was a convicting read...

On Loving Mankind and Loving People in Particular

Anselm - the Delight of Knowing God

2010-07-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

... if there are many great delights in delightful things, of what kind and how great is the delight in Him who made the same delightful things?

= Anselm, Proslogion, 24.

Anselm on Divine Timelessness

2010-07-12T10:14:00.000-05:00

Or is there nothing past in Your eternity, so that it is now no longer; nor anything future, as though it were not already? You were not, therefore, yesterday, nor will You be tomorrow, but yesterday and today and tomorrow You are. Indeed You exist neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow but are absolutely outside all time. For yesterday and today and tomorrow are completely in time; however, You, though nothing can be without You, are nevertheless not in place or time but all things are in You. For nothing contains You, by You contain all things.

= Anselm, Proslogion, 19.

Aquinas on Natural Law

2010-07-09T13:07:00.005-05:00

From ST, I-II. 94. 4 (for the entire question, see here)

...the precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason what the first principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason; because both are self-evident principles...

"good" is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good(or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.

Aquinas on the Imago Dei

2010-07-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm now reading sections of Aquinas' Summa Theologica for comps preparation. I'm sure over the next few days I'll be posting some quotes. Here's Aquinas on what Scripture means when it states that man was created in the image of God.

Man is said to be after the image of God, not as regards his body, but as regards that whereby he excels other animals. Hence, when it is said, "Let us make man to our image and likeness", it is added, "And let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea" (Genesis 1:26). Now man excels all animals by his reason and intelligence; hence it is according to his intelligence and reason, which are incorporeal, that man is said to be according to the image of God.

Aquinas, ST 1.Q3. ad3.

Boethius' Solution to the Foreknowledge Freedom Dilemma

2010-07-05T10:46:00.002-05:00

I finished reading Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy this morning. Here's his classic statement of the "divine timeless" answer to the foreknowledge and freedom problem.

Since... all judgment comprehends those things that are subject to it according to its own nature, and since the state of God is ever that of eternal presence, His knowledge, too, transcends all temporal change and abides in the immediacy of His presence. It's it embraces all the infinite recesses of past and future and use them in the immediacy of its knowing as though they are happening in the present. If you wish to consider, then, the foreknowledge or pre-vision by which He discovers all things, it will be more correct to think of it not as a kind of foreknowledge of the future, but as the knowledge of a never ending presence.

= Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, book V., chapter 6 (Penguin Books, 1999) p. 134

Bonaventure on the path to happiness

2010-07-02T10:34:00.005-05:00

In my last post, I quoted Augustine on the subject of happiness. The ancient and medieval writers have much to say about happiness. As I've indicated before (see the end of this post), these authors meant much more by happiness than a mere "good feeling."

Today I'm reading St. Bonaventure's The Journey of the Mind to God. The book begins with a succinct statement of how we long for happiness, and the only way that it can be achieved.

Since happiness is nothing else than the enjoyment of the Supreme Good, and the Supreme Good is above us, no one can enjoy happiness unless he rise above himself, not, indeed, I a bodily assent, but by an ascent of the heart. But we cannot rise above ourselves unless the superior power raise us. However much, then, the steps of our interior progress may be well-ordered, we can do nothing unless divine aid support us. This divine aid is at hand for all who seek it with a truly humble and devout heart, that is by signing for it in this vale of tears by fervent prayer. Prayer, then, is the mother and origin of every upward striving of the soul.

= Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, Ch. 1.1 (Hackett, 1993), 5.

Augustine on Happiness

2010-06-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

To know and love Him is the happy life which all proclaim they seek, although there are few who may rejoice in having really found it.

= Augustine, On the Teacher, 13.46.25 translated Peter King (Hackett, 1995), p. 146

Mortimer Adler - Philosophy is Everyone's Business

2010-06-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a PhD student in philosophy, and hope to one day teach philosophy to pay the bills. My posts here that have to do with philosophy, however, are not only intended for other "philosophers." Rather, I think that philosophy is something that we all should be interested in. This is because philosophy is (to paint with broad strokes) thinking hard about the "big questions" of life and learning about how we are to live. These are things that everyone needs to think about.

I think that Mortimer Adler, in his Six Great Ideas, gets this right when he states,

...The business of philosophy... is everybody's business not only because nobody can do much thinking, if any at all, without using the great ideas, but also because no special, technical competence of the kind that is required for the particular sciences and other specialized disciplines is required for thinking about the great ideas. Everybody does it, wittingly or unwittingly. I hope I am right in believing that everyone would wish to do it just a little better.
== Mortimer Adler, Six Great Ideas, (Collier Books, 1981), p. 6

To helps folks think about the great ideas a little better is the goal of my blog as well.

C. S. Lewis On Belief

2010-06-20T07:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a excerpt from a great letter written by Lewis to a lady who was struggling with believing that Christ was truly divine. There's great advice here to apply to various different beliefs, especially for someone like myself with a propensity to doubt and second guess...

I think it possible that what is keeping you from belief in Christ's divinity is your apparently strong desire to believe. If you don't think it true why do you want to believe it? If you do think it true, then you believe it already. So I would recommend less anxiety about the whole question. You believe in God and trust Him. Well, you can trust Him about this. If you go on steadily praying and attempting to obey the best light He had given you, can you not rely on him to guide you into any further truth He wishes you to know? Were you if he leaves you all your life in doubt, can't you believe that he sees that to be the best state for you?

I don't mean by this that you should cease to study in make enquiries: but that you should make them not with frantic desire but with cheerful curiosity and a humble readiness to accept whatever conclusions God may lead you to. (But always, all depends on the steady attempt to obey God all the time. ‘He who does the will of the father shall know the doctrine’).

It is only fair to tell you that my impression is that you are in fact very much nearer to believe in Christ and you suppose: and if you really face the opposite view tranquilly (and why be afraid of it unless you already know in your bones that the Christian view is true) you'll find you don't really believe it - i.e. don't really believe that all you have got out of the books you mention is based on an illusion - which, if an illusion at all, must be a most blasphemous and horrible one. Conversions happen in all sorts of different ways: some sharp & catastrophic (like St. Paul, St Augustine, or Bunyan) some very gradual intellectual (like my own). No good predicting how God will deal with one: he has his own way with each of us. So don't worry. Continue all your efforts. You are being steered by another: you've only got to row - and therefore the future journey is behind your back.

I'm pretty sure where you land, myself, and you will then wonder how you ever doubted it. But you needn't keep looking over your shoulder too often. Keep your eye on the Helmsman, keep your conscious bride in your brain clear and believe that you are in good hands. (No one can make himself believe anything in the effort does harm. Nor make himself feel anything, and that effort also does harm. What is under our own control his action and intellectual inquiry. Stick to that).

= C. S. Lewis, to Rhona Bodle (12/31/47) Letters, Volume II, p. 823-824

Frederick Copleston - Philosophers and God

2010-06-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

…the search for truth is ultimately the search for Absolute Truth, God, and even those systems of philosophy which appear to refute this statement, e.g. Historical Materialism, are nevertheless examples of it, for they are all seeking, even if unconsciously, even if they would not recognize the fact, for the ultimate ground, the supreme real.

= Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, I, p. 6

Epicurus on the Life of the Philosopher

2010-06-18T14:36:00.001-05:00

* One must philosophize and at the same time laugh and take case of one’s household and use the rest of one’s personal goods, and never stop proclaiming the utterances of correct philosophy.

= Epicurus, The Vatican Sayings, #41 (in The Epicurus Reader, p. 38)

Copleston on the Inconsistency of Determinism

2010-06-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

…no deterministic system can be consistent in practice, a fact which need cause no surprise, since freedom is an actuality of which we are conscious, and even if it be theoretically denied, it creeps in again through the back door.

= Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. I (1962; repr., Image Books, 1962), 397.

C. S. Lewis on Faith

2010-06-15T07:00:00.001-05:00

Now faith, in the sense in which I am using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes… The rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That’s why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

= C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk III (Christian Behavior), ch. 11

Augustine - Living as a Citizen of the Heavenly City

2010-06-14T07:00:00.001-05:00

In Philippians 3 the Apostle Paul warns of those who live as enemies of Christ.

[17] Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. [18] For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. [19] Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. [20] But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, [21] who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3:17-21 ESV)

The description of these people as those who live worshiping the god of their belly - their bodily desires - makes me think of our own day. But the description was just as applicable in Paul's time as it is in ours. There's nothing new under the sun, and that there has been a sinful tendency in all men born of Eve to live only for life in this world and the temporary pleasures to be had here.

This Pauline distinction between those who are the citizens of this world and those whose "citizenship is in heaven" was the basis for Augustine's great work The City of God (online version HERE). We're not reading this work for our comprehensive exam preparation, but I came across a quote on a quote list that I've been compiling that serves as a commentary on the above passage. Augustine brings out the contrast as follows:

In the earthly city, then, temporal good are to be used with a view to the enjoyment of earthly peace, whereas, in the heavenly city, they are used with a view to the enjoyment of eternal peace. Hence, if we were merely unthinking brutes, we would pursue nothing beyond the orderly interrelationship of our bodily part and the appeasing of our appetites, nothing, that is, beyond the comfort of the flesh and plenty of pleasures…Because, however, man has a rational soul, he makes everything he shares with brutes subserve the peace of his rational soul, so that he first measures things with his mind before he acts, in order to achieve that harmonious correspondence of conduct and conviction which I called the peace of the rational soul.
= Augustine, City of God Bk. XIX, ch. 14

The Letters of C. S. Lewis

2010-06-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

If you're a consistent reader of this blog, you know that I have been for some time, albeit off and on, reading through the three volumes of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. There's so much to enjoy in these volumes!

Today I read an article that praises these works as well. If your a fan of C. S. Lewis, I'd encourage you to read it.

Duty with a Stamp: “Half My Life is Spent Answering Letters”

by Andrew Cuneo

I'm sure I'll have another quote to post from the letters to post here in the next day or two...

Aristotle & Jesus - If You Wanna Be Happy For the Rest of Your Life...

2010-06-11T14:13:00.005-05:00

Contra Jimmy Soul, the key is not "never make a pretty woman your wife."

More importantly, happiness in not found in accumulating lots of money and "stuff" (as many people seem to think). Rather...

"...as we see, a happy life - whether such a life for human beings consists in enjoyment or in virtue or in both - belongs to those who go to extremes in well-ordered character and intellect, but possess a moderate level of external goods, rather than to those who have more external goods than they can use, but are deficient in character and intellect." -- Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1

Christ makes the claim that riches are insufficient for happiness more strongly, saying

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matthew 16:26 ESV)

Terence Irwin on Aristotle's Ethics

2010-06-10T11:27:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, one of the texts that I'm reading for my comprehensive exams is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. If you would like a short introduction to Aristotle's ethical thought, philosophy bites has an interview with Terence Irwin on the subject (it's only 17 minutes long).

Terence Irwin on Aristotle's Ethics

E-mail Subscription

2010-06-09T19:10:00.002-05:00

I am definitely not technically skilled, but today I finally figured out how to set up an e-mail subscription to my blog. So if you would like to receive an e-mail when I post to my blog, you can sign up on the right side toolbar. Enter your e-mail address and get signed up!

Missing Comments

2010-06-09T08:41:00.002-05:00

Hey all,

I was messing around with my blog last night, and changed my blogspot URL. I didn't realize that there wouldn't be a forward to the new address from the old address, so I switched back to the old URL. Somewhere in that process my comments disappeared. I've been reading on Google about the problem, and this has happened to other people as well. Supposedly the old comments will come back after a couple of days. Let's hope that's the case.

I do want to say "thanks" to everyone who has commented here in the past. It's great to see that others are interested in what's being posted here.

-- Ross

Why study the history of philosophy?

2010-06-09T07:00:00.001-05:00

Here's Aristotle's reason for studying what others think about things before making up you own mind. This applies across all intellectual disciplines...

“One is bound to be better equipped for making a judgment if one has previously listened to all the disputing arguments, like different sides presenting their cases.” -- Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. III, Ch. 1

The Importance of the pre-Socratic Philosophers

2010-06-08T13:25:00.000-05:00

The toughest part of my comprehensive exam reading thus far has been the writings of the pre-Socratics. It's tough for me to be excited to read their enigmatic epitaphs, and to really care about whether a thinker thought all reality could be reduced to water, air, or fire.

But these thinkers are important for philosophy, and their importance can be summed up in this quote from Copleston about Thales (the first of the pre-Socratic philosophers):

“…the importance of this early thinker lies in the fact that he raised the question, what is the ultimate nature of the world; and not in the answer that he actually to that question or in his reasons, be they what they may, for giving that answer.” – Copleston, I, 23.

Two Types of Determinism of the Will

2010-06-04T10:52:00.002-05:00

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately…

When non-determinists discuss determinism, they often fail to see that there are two types of determinism with regard to the human will. The first I’ll call physical determinism. This position says that our choices are determined by our brain states (which are physical states), and these states are determined by previous physical states, so on. This type of determinism is the metaphysical implication of physicalism.

The other type of determinism claims that our choices are determined not by our brain states but by our motive states. We can call this type of determinism motive-state determinism. For the motive-state determinist, when an agent makes a choice, the choice is determined by the strongest motive state. This view can either be pretty unsophisticated, as in Hume’s view (as I understand it) where we always act according to our greatest desire (passion). There are more sophisticated versions of this type of determinism, which take into account not only the agent’s desires, but also his beliefs, wishes, previous intentions, and reason. Motive-state determinism is defended by all Christian determinists like Jonathan Edwards (1), as well as some secular thinkers like Susan Wolf. (2)

One place where one can see the failure of non-determinists to make this distinction is in arguments against determinism. Many non-determinist argue against one form of determinism, and think that thereby they have given an argument against determinism of the will. I think specifically of those who say that if we are determined in our beliefs, then the belief that determinism is true is also determined and thereby not reasonable. This may be a good argument against physical determinism, but it doesn’t seem to me to work against motive-state determinism.

(1) See The Freedom of the Will (available online here)

(2) See Freedom Within Reason (OUP, 1993)

C. S. Lewis - Enjoyment Instead of Worry

2010-06-03T21:53:00.006-05:00

With all the posts here at my blog on C. S. Lewis, I wonder if I should make this a C. S. Lewis blog. What can I say - if I could find other writers who could write half as well as Lewis, I'd quote their work here as well. Here's another great Lewis quote, this time from a letter written to Dom Bede Griffiths 12/20/46.

A great many people... do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don't think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we're doing it, I think we're meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.

Aristotle - The study of ethics is practical

2010-06-01T11:05:00.004-05:00

This week I started reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Here's the translation I'm using; an older translation is available for free here. I'm in book II, and it has been a great read so far. As a student of philosophy, I'm becoming more and more interested in the field of ethics, because ethics is so practical.

Here's what Aristotle has to say about the applicability of ethics.

The branch of philosophy we are dealing with at present is not purely theoretical like the others, because it is not in order to acquire knowledge that we are considering what virtue is, but to become good people - otherwise there would be no point in it.

Plato on the Benefit of Punishment

2010-05-26T10:31:00.001-05:00

How can we maintain or argue… that to do injustice without being discovered and having to pay the penalty is profitable? Doesn’t the one who remains undiscovered become even more vicious, while the bestial part of the one who is discovered is calmed and tamed and his gentle part freed, so that his entire soul settles into its best nature, acquires moderation, justice, and reason, and attains a more valuable state than that of having a fine, strong, healthy body, since the soul itself is more valuable than that body?

= Plato, The Republic in Plato Complete Works, ed. John Cooper, 591b / p. 1198

Learning From Non-Christian Philosophers

2010-05-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

I'm enjoying the Plato reading that I've done thus far in preparation for the comps this summer. I especially enjoy what Plato has to say when dealing with ethics (I'm not as impressed with the epistemology and metaphysics).

But it's important to remember that although Christian thinkers can learn much from Plato and Aristotle and other pagan thinkers concerning the morality, there are still great differences between their thought and Christian ethical thought. I was reminded of this today when flipping through Peter Kreeft's Back to Virtue. He says,

Aristotle called it one of the virtues. Christianity calls it the greatest of all vices. Nothing distinguishes Christian morality from pagan morality more sharply than their opposite attitudes toward pride. [Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue (Ignatius, 1992), 97.]

That's a pretty sharp contrast! So in studying Plato, Aristotle, and anyone else, we must heed the Apostle Paul's admonition to "test everything; hold fast to what is good." (1 Thess. 5:21)

THE REPUBLIC - What we should let our children see and hear

2010-05-24T14:42:00.004-05:00

Plato's Republic has much to say about moral formation. Plato, in setting up the just city, lays great stress on how children should be educated, and this education is primarily moral. I thought this exchange was particularly poignant.

Socrates: “You know, don’t you, that the beginning of any process is most important, especially for anything young and tender? It’s at that time that it is most malleable and takes on any pattern one wishes to impress on it."
Adeimantus: “Exactly."
Socrates: “Then shall we just carelessly allow the children to hear any old stories, told by just anyone, and to take beliefsw into their souls that are for the most part opposite to the ones we think they should hold when they are grown up?” (277b).

Socrates - Stay focused!

2010-05-23T19:47:00.003-05:00

"It is better to accomplish a little well than a great deal unsatisfactorily." -- Socrates, Theaetetus, 187e.

THE APOLOGY - Socrates' proposal regarding his punishment

2010-05-19T08:00:00.001-05:00

In The Apology, when Socrates is found guilty of corrupting the youth and denying the gods, he has this to say about what his punishment should be:

“What is suitable for a poor benefactor who needs leisure to exhort you? Nothing is more suitable, gentlemen, than for such a man to be fed in the Prytaneum*, much more suitable for him than for any one of you who has won a victory at Olympia with a pair or team of horses. The Olympian victor makes you think yourself happy; I make you be happy. Besides, he does not need food, but I do. So, if I must make a just assessment of what I deserve, I assess it as this: free meals in the Prytaneum.” [The Prytaneum was the town hall of Athens in which public entertainments were given.]

Isn't this great? Socrates is condemned, and in his irony he claims that he should be given free meals. But beyond the humor of his response, there are a couple of ideas here of note.

First, it is sad that in Athens men were celebrated and rewarded for winning horse races, but not rewarded for spurring others to live a life of virtue. Socrates had reminded his jury earlier that he always strove to push those with whom he talked toward giving thought "to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul." This type of achievement - encouraging virtue and wisdom - should be rewarded more than winning a horse race, but sadly it wasn't. And it's not too hard to realize the parallels with the modern day and our exhalation of movie stars, musicians, and athletes over teachers, ministers, and others who attempt to impart knowledge and virtue.

Second, Socrates makes a distinction between feeling happy and being happy. In modern times we usually talk of happiness as an emotional feeling of bliss or something like this, but happiness can have another meaning. Happiness can also be an objective state of being blessed and virtuous. As J. P. Moreland says, "According to the ancients, happiness is a life well lived, a life of virtue and character, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness. (1) Socrates says that the Olympian winners made folks feel happy, but he attempted to help people be happy. And it's clear, when one stops to think about it, which one is better.

Related post - J. P. Moreland on Happiness

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(1) Moreland, The Lost Virtue of Happiness (Navpress, 2006), 25.

Summer Blogging - Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

2010-05-18T14:52:00.004-05:00

This summer I, along with seven other Baylor PhD students, am preparing for Comprehensive Exams over Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. (You can see the list of the readings required for our Comprehensive Exams here.) Since I'll be spending a good bit of my time this summer reading some of the great works of Western Philosophy, I hope to post some quotes, comments, and thoughts here from time to time.