I’ve uploaded an update to the collection of my weblog writings: Acts of Being: Selected Weblog Writings From 2006 to 2019. Here is the text from the Preface for this new edition: I’ve added another 12 or so chapters to this Ninth Edition. All but this chapter are reformatted essays from my writings during 2019 … [Read more…]
If we are flesh-and-blood creatures perceiving only what comes through our eyes and ears, our noses and the nerves on our fingertips and our elbows, how could we ever have transcendental knowledge? How could we know of God as other than a conjecture? Are we even likely to make a conjecture under the dualist assumption … [Read more…]
I’ve uploaded an update to the collection of my weblog writings: Acts of Being: Selected Weblog Writings From 2006 to 2018. Here is the text from the Preface for this new edition: I’ve added another 25 or so chapters to this Eighth Edition. All but this chapter are reformatted essays from my writings during 2018 … [Read more…]
In Romans 9:19-23 (RSV Catholic Edition), we can read: You will say to me then, “Why does he [God] still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me thus?” Has the … [Read more…]
In this second part of this discussion, I’ll be looking at this question from a slightly more abstract or theoretical perspective. That is, do we have reasons to believe that Americans, or the citizens of any nation or federation of nations, have the ability to be a self-governing people in the context of the immense … [Read more…]
Political scientists and political philosophers seem to be fundamentally irrational by way of an excessive faith in rationalistic a priori‘s; in particular, they are almost willfully dense, on the topic of citizenry and have been since the failure, unlike physics and even mathematics, to reconsider their metaphysical assumptions by way of empirical tests—a single case … [Read more…]
The American Mathematical Society has printed a nice, non-technical discussion of some basics of modern topology, necessarily intermingled with a discussion of modern geometry. It’s in the form of a tribute to a highly regarded mathematician who was one of the pioneers of modern topology, William Thurston. The article is found at: Remembering Bill Thurston … [Read more…]
I have revised my book, Four Sorts of Knowledge, in a very minor way as explained in the Preface to the Third Edition: This new edition contains only minor changes to the Preface. I eliminated references to books I’d been planning on writing back in 2010 and didn’t write. The reader might be interested in … [Read more…]
It seems that every day, I read on the Internet that some of the major failures of the United States in international affairs are due to American efforts to introduce democracy in countries which are not suited for such a form of government or are not yet ready for it. There are intelligent books, thousands … [Read more…]
I’ve uploaded an update to the collection of my weblog writings: Acts of Being: Selected Weblog Writings From 2006 to 2016. Here is the text from the Preface for this new edition: I’ve added another 40 or so chapters to this Seventh Edition. All but this chapter are reformatted essays from my writings during 2016 … [Read more…]