I’ve been reading Serious Art by the philosopher John Passmore. This book has inspired in me some thoughts about what might be called the imagination. I’m especially interested in the relationship of imagination to an allegedly different part of the human mind called reason. It’s possible I’m interested because and not despite my efforts to … [Read more…]
William James made a claim which should be very disturbing to those who hold mainstream views of the nature of truth: The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a … [Read more…]
I want to ask a simple question of the bishops of the American Catholic Church: Why is it acceptable for Federal agents to fondle the breasts of American women, probe the genital regions of American children, and publicly remove the diapers of incontinent elderly Americans but beyond the moral pale to force those violated Americans … [Read more…]
This article, One Thing Is Certain: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Is Not Dead, gives an interesting summary of one important aspect of what is called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. [T]he uncertainty principle comes in two superficially similar formulations that even many practicing physicists tend to confuse. Werner Heisenberg’s own version is that in observing the world, we … [Read more…]
I have uploaded a new and relatively short book: Human Rights: An Evolutionary and Christian Perspective. This book is freely downloadable under the Creative Commons license as referenced on the copyright page. It replaces an article I published back in 2007, Natural and Inalienable Rights, which I came to consider very inadequate though not wrong … [Read more…]
I’ve uploaded an update to the collection of my weblog writings: Acts of Being: Selected Weblog Writings From 2006 to 2011. Here is the text from the Preface for this new edition: I’ve added about 70 chapters to this Second Edition. Nearly all of those chapters are reformatted essays from my writings during 2011 which … [Read more…]
By most standards, I have a funny definition of creativity. We shape our minds, our entire persons, by responding actively and properly to what lies around us, below us, above us, and in us, where all prepositions — `around’, `below’, `above’, and `in’ — should be understood in both spatial-temporal terms and also metaphysical terms. … [Read more…]
One of the worst things one generation can do is trap future generations in one specific way of life or one way of solving problems. There is perhaps more than some think to the witticism by someone whose name I can’t recall: “I refused to be a radical when I was young because I didn’t … [Read more…]
I hope that William James was his usual good-natured and tolerant self when he wrote: [T]he scholastic philosophy … is only common sense grown pedantic. [The Meaning of Truth, page 44 of the Dover reprint edition] He’s right, in general, but it’s sad that Catholic neo-scholastics in recent centuries seem to be pedantic without having … [Read more…]