Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aporetics

  • How Much Time for Philosophy? Part II

    Dear Bill, Thanks for that post! Here are my two simple comments: How much time should one spend on philosophy? "A good chunk of the day," you say; assuming that one is above all else interested in truth (about ultimate issues) and/or in the Absolute. But should one be interested in either of these? That's…

  • Three More Putative Instances of Valid Is-Ought Inferences

    I thank Tully Borland for pushing the discussion in this fascinating direction. A Affirming the Consequent is an invalid argument form.ErgoOne ought not (it is obligatory that one not) give arguments having that form. B Modus Ponens is validErgoOne may (it is permissible to) give arguments having that form. C Correct deductive reasoning is in…

  • Sex, War, and Moral Rigorism: The Aporetics of Moral Evaluation

    Fr. Robert Barron here fruitfully compares the Catholic Church's rigoristic teaching on matters sexual, with its prohibitions of masturbation, artificial contraception, and extramarital sex, with the rigorism of the Church's teaching with respect to just war.  An excellent article. Although Fr. Barron doesn't say it explicitly, he implies that the two topics are on a…

  • *Every Proposition is Affirmative*

    Nicholas Rescher cites this example from Buridan.  The proposition is false, but not self-refuting.  If every proposition is affirmative, then of course *Every proposition is affirmative* is affirmative.  The self-reference seems innocuous, a case of self-instantiation. But *Every proposition is affirmative* has as a logical consequence *No proposition is negative.*  This follows by Obversion, assuming…

  • An Anselmian Antilogism

    Philosophy is its problems, and they are best represented as aporetic polyads.  One sort of aporetic polyad is the antilogism.  An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true.  The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible.  If they are more…

  • A Being-Knowledge Antilogism

    An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true.  The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible.  If they are not merely plausible but self-evident or undeniable, then we are in the presence of an aporia in the strict sense.  (From…

  • Incompleteness, Completeness, and the External World

    David Brightly comments: I appreciate that in discussing these epistemological issues we must use the non-question-begging, existence-neutral sense of 'see'. My point is that for the distinction between 'complete' and 'incomplete' to make any sense, the epistemological question as to whether seeing is existence-entailing has to have already been settled favourably, though with the caveat…

  • Do Merely Intentional Objects Have Being of Their Own? With a Little Help from Ingarden

    WARNING!  Scholastic hairsplitting up ahead!  If you are allergic to this sort of thing, head elsewhere.  My old post, On Hairsplitting, may be of interest. My  Czech colleague Lukas Novak seems to hold that there is no mode of being that is the mode of being of purely or merely intentional objects: . . .…

  • Existence and Essence: An Aporetic Dyad

    This post continues my discussion with Lukas Novak who, so far, as been wiping the floor with me, refuting my arguments for the distinctio realis.  Now I take a different tack.  I want to see if we have a genuine problem here, but one that is simply insoluble.  Such a result would be consistent with…

  • Ontic Versus Alterity Theism

    There is a problem that has occupied me on and off for years. Mikael Stenmark's Prague paper, "Competing Conceptions of God: The Personal God versus the God beyond Being" got me thinking about it again.  What follows, however, is not intended as commentary on Stenmark's paper. One way into the problem as I conceive it…

  • Is Socrates a Substance or a Cross-Categorical Hybrid?

    0. I wanted to explore supposita in their difference from primary substances, but John the Commenter sidetracked me into the aporetics of primary substance.  But it is a sidetrack worth exploring even if it doesn't loop back to the mainline.  For it provides me more grist for my aporetic mill. 1. Metaphysics is a quest…

  • More on Knowledge and Belief

    Here is yesterday's aporetic triad: 1. Knowledge entails belief. 2. Belief is essentially tied to action. 3. There are items of knowledge that are not essentially tied to action. Daniel K comments and I respond in blue: First, as to your aporetic triad: I would like to reject (3) in one sense that I describe…

  • Knowledge and Belief: An Aporetic Triad

    Here is a trio of propositions that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible: 1. Knowledge entails belief. 2. Belief is essentially tied to action. 3. There are items of knowledge that are not essentially tied to action. Clearly, any two of these propositions is logically inconsistent with the remaining one.  Thus the conjunction of (1)…

  • The Aporetics of Existential Meaning

    For present purposes, an aporia is a set of propositions each member of which has a strong claim on our acceptance, but whose members are collectively inconsistent.  Like many a philosophical problem, the philosophical problem of the meaning of life is usefully approached from an aporetic angle.  So consider the following aporetic tetrad: A. If…

  • Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

    For the actualist, the actual alone exists: the unactual, whether merely possible or impossible, does not exist.  The actualist is not pushing platitudes: he is not telling us that the actual alone is actual or that the merely possible is not actual.  'Merely possible' just means 'possible but not actual.' The actualist is saying something non-platitudinous, something…