Tag: Philosophy
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2021-12-20
Modernism
I do not want to disown all the good things that come with the modern world, and I don't think that we can turn back the clock. What I want to resist is not modernity but modernism.
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2021-12-11
A Dialogue on Platonic Realism
I had an interesting conversation with a friend on Discord about Platonic realism. So we decided to dress it up as a Platonic dialogue.
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2020-10-14
Logos as Intelligibility and Intelligence Video
New video based on the previous blog post discussing the objective side of logos, intelligibility, and the subjective side, intelligence.
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2020-07-10
Logos as Intelligibility and Intelligence
We continue to explore the meaning of the word Logos by distinguishing the objective side, intelligibility, from the subjective side, intelligence. The latter is a faculty receptive to the former.
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2020-07-05
Cosmos and Logos Video
Here is the video based on the last blog post.
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2020-07-02
Cosmos and Logos
In this post I explore the interesting interplay between the concepts of Logos and Cosmos. A Cosmos is an ordered arrangement of elements, which requires a source or cause for this order. Hence, Logos can be understood as the principle of organization for any Cosmos.
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2020-04-08
Different Meanings of Substance
We should hold carefully apart two meanings of the philosophical term substance. (i) the essence or whatness of a thing and (ii) the real distinct subsistence of a thing.
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2020-01-23
Jordan Peterson and Platonic Realism
Jordan Peterson's use of Jungian archetypes brings him close to the kind of metaphysical realism we see in Christian Platonism---close, but not quite there.
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2019-12-10
Religious Experience and Brain Activity
Even if we could establish a tight connection between religious experience and activity in a certain region of the brain, this would not prove religious experience to be illusory.
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2019-12-03
Guilt by Association
We should not judge philosophical ideas or practices based on a surface similarity to unchristian systems of thought. Rather we should look out for substantive corruptions to the truth.
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2019-10-09
Traditionalism
Traditionalism is best understood as an orientation toward the timeless truth rather than an attachment to old ideas simply because they are old.
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2019-09-04
Two Personalisms
We must distinguish the "Christian personalist" movement from what some philosophers call "theistic personalism" in contrast to "classical theism."
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2019-07-24
What are the Forms?
Following the last post on the meaning of Platonism, I here flesh out the idea of transcendent Forms as intelligible structures that keep showing up again and again in the world of our experience.
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2019-06-27
What I Mean by Platonism
Platonism has come to mean different things to different scholars. When I call myself a Platonist, I mean that I believe in the Forms, that I believe in real, eternal, immaterial, intelligible structures beyond the world of sense.
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2019-06-10
Conservatism and Ideology
Ideologies are overly simplistic views of the world, which support themselves through slogans. While slogans may be practically indispensable in a democracy, conservatism is something more.
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2019-06-04
Know Thyself
The Christian notion of self-knowledge is a long way off from New Age self-realization and not quite the same as the pagan Greek original either.
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2019-05-30
Eros Comes from Beauty Beheld
I often encounter Christians who feel guilty because they seem to lack a certain fire or zeal in their pursuit of what they know to be true. I argue they can remedy this by recognizing a link between the psychology of eros and the time they spend imaginatively beholding the beauty of God.
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2019-05-28
Apparently Anselm is Convincing
Teaching Anselm recently, I discovered that many of my students found the ontological argument very convincing. I think this has to do with the way older authors are presented.
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2018-06-11
No Such Thing As Subjective Truth
Just some casual reflections that I had after a friendly discussion resulted in my arguing that "subjective truth" was an oxymoron.
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2017-11-23
The Logos and Jordan Peterson
Reflection on the difference between my own understanding of the logos and Jordan Petersons.