I’m coming to the end of this scattered series of essays inspired by Kenneth Minogue’s profound book on modern politics, The Liberal Mind. My thoughts have developed so that my understanding of liberalism has taken on a surprising form, but no form of liberalism seems to me plausible or rational. I’ve taken a position that … [Read more…]
The bishops of the American Catholic Church are upset with President Obama’s mandate that all participants in regulated health-care programs should have coverage for contraceptives, abortions, and perhaps some other services and products considered immoral by Catholics and many others. But this Catholic layman has a question: What right have the bishops to object in … [Read more…]
In an essay I recently posted to this blog, Let’s Hear It for Amateurs, That Is, for Lovers, I used a quote from The Liberal Mind by Kenneth Minogue, to argue along a slightly different line than Professor Minogue had intended. This is the quote from The Liberal Mind which was the beginning of my … [Read more…]
Not one to accept the mishmash of ideas which is the modern worldview, Professor Minogue reminds us: A free State is one in which there is a strong resistance to professionalization; it is marked by that “versatility” which Pericles claimed for Athens. [page 150] This is not to argue that professionalization is bad. Minogue was … [Read more…]
In reading Richard Gregory’s Mind in Science, I find that he raises a seemingly plausible objection to those thinkers who `regress’ to seeing abstractions, including knowledge, in the objective world. He states his objection in a short and loaded way: [The psychologist Kenneth] Craik is suggesting that human inference has its validity and logical power … [Read more…]