Category: Autobiographical

Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief?

I coined the phrase 'ego surfari' some years ago. To go on ego surfari is to type one's name into a search engine in order to see what turns up. The results are often surprising. Today I found Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief? by Sami Pihlström, Helsinki. Excerpt:

One of the few recent contributions in which the combination of (emergentist or supervenientist) physicalism and theism is seriously challenged is William Vallicella’s (1998). [Vallicella, W.F. 1998 “Could a Classical Theist Be a Physicalist?”, Faith and Philosophy 15, 160-180.] He rejects eliminativism, type-type identity theory, supervenientism, emergentism, and ”the constitution view” (i.e., the view that persons are materially constituted beings) as five ”theologically useless physicalisms” (163ff.). The argument is largely based on Kim’s criticism of nonreductive physicalism. Regarding emergentism (167- 170), Vallicella points out that even if the human soul were seen as an emergent substance or as having emergent properties, problems would remain, as neither divine nor angelic consciousness can be understood as emerging from matter, upon any Christian construal: ”It is analytic that emergence is emergence from a physical base, and in the case of God and angels classically conceived there is no physical base. Moreover, it is analytic that to emerge is to come into being, and God’s consciousness does not come into being” (169). Vallicella (170) also argues against Stump’s (1995) Aquinian suggestion of combining materialism and dualism (and the possibility of survival), insisting that an emergent property cannot continue to exist after the physical system whose property it is falls apart.

If a reconciliation of science and theism were possible through emergentism, this would constitute an intellectual breakthrough of enormous magnitude. No doubts about the cultural or generally human significance of the notion of emergence would remain. Unfortunately, the research program run by theistically inclined naturalists seems to me hopeless; as Vallicella (1998, 176) puts it, physicalism and theism are ”competing Weltanschauungen”. One problem with views seeking to reconcile them, and with the on-going discussion of emergence and theism in Zygon (and elsewhere), is – as in the systematically philosophical emergence literature we find elsewhere – an unargued commitment to strong metaphysical realism. It is presupposed that both scientific and religious language purport to refer to a fundamentally concept- and language-independent world and that, therefore, religion and science must be coherently fitted into one grand theory of the world, if we if we want to retain both. Against this assumption, a more Wittgensteinian-oriented thinker may argue that religion and science are different human practices (or groups of practices) with their characteristic normative structures. Quite different ”moves” are allowed in these different (families of) language-games; for example, the ”soul” allegedly rendered ”scientifically acceptable” in emergentism would hardly have a place in religious language-use.

Five Years of Blogging

Actually, my 'blogiversary' was yesterday.  My inaugural post appeared on 4 May 2004.  My mind drifts back to some of my earliest acquaintances in the blogosphere. I am happy to see that most of them are still at it.  Here is a partial list:  Keith Burgess-Jackson; Gates of Vienna; Mangan's; Bill's Comments; Laudator Temporis Acti.

The erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland of Laudator Temporis Acti credits me with getting him going:

I started this blog just over three years ago, on May 10, 2004. Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, was my inspiration. When I look back at my posts for that first day, I see some themes which I have revisited over the years: Luddism, scatology, and solitude.

Like Mike, I am drawn to the callipygian, but have no interest in the scatological as such.  I suppose every man has his wobble.  One might argue that a blog that does not display a bit of a man's wobble is no blog at all.  What we scribble here is loose and chatty and a little confessional.  Ecce homo! warts and all. One debates with oneself as to the proper proportion of the personal to the impersonal.  Mike strikes a nice balance.  But I note yet another excursus into the scatological in his recent post, An Effect of Fear, which he introduces with a quotation from Pseudo-Aristotle.

And now to all and sundry: Blog on!

Life’s Fugacity

Here the point is very cleverly made:

I turned 52 yesterday. The first decade of my life took 20 years. The second decade took 15 years. The third decade took a decade. The fourth decade took five years. The past dozen years took 12 minutes. At this rate, I'll be dead in less than half an hour.

As we age, the passage of time seems to accelerate.  This is a mere seeming since, if time passes at all, which itself may be a mere seeming, time presumably passes at a constant rate.  When we are young, the evanescence of our lives does not strike us.  But to us midstreamers the fluxious fugacity of this life is all too apparent.

Why does time's tempo seem to speed up as the years roll on?  Part of the explanation must be that there is less change and more stasis from decade to decade.  Dramatic changes in body and mind and environment occur in the first two decades of life.  You go from being a helpless infant to a cocky youth.  Your horizon expands from the family circle to the wide world.  In the third decade, biological growth over with,  one typically finishes one's education and gets settled in a career.  But there are still plenty of changes.  From age 20 to 30, I lived in about 15 different places In California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Austria, and Germany, studied at half a dozen universities, and worked as a guitar player, logger, tree planter, furniture mover, factory worker, mailman, taxi driver, exterminator, grave digger, and philosophy professor.  But from 30 to 40, I lived in only five different places with exactly one job, and from 40 to 50 in three places,  and from ages 49 to 59 I have had exactly one permanent address.  And it won't be long, subjectively speaking, before I have exactly one address that is permanent in the absolute as opposed to the relative sense.

Tempus?  Fugit!

My Cat, My Companion

IMG_0327One can see the Latin panis, bread, lurking within 'companion.' A companion, then, is one with whom one breaks bread or shares a meal. In this root sense, my cat Caissa is undeniably my companion. For after she has enjoyed her Fancy Feast repast, she is by my side eyeing my linguine in clam sauce or sauteed scallops. Gastronomically at least, nothing is too good for her. I acquiesce in her demands. But that is the extent of my humanization of her. She has acquired the human vices of gluttony and sloth but none of the human virtues.

Phantom Runners

I took up running almost 35 years ago in the summer of 1974 in that romantic hub of running, Boston on the Charles, the Athens of America, where Hopkinton is Marathon and the road to Athens traverses Heartbreak Hill. It was a great time and place to be alive, young, studying philosophy, and running down the road. ‘Boston Billy’ Rodgers was in his prime; I lived a couple of blocks from the Boston Marathon course, and my training runs took me around the Chestnut Hill reservoir and past Rodger’s running center at Cleveland Circle. I actually ran abreast of Rodgers once on Commonwealth Avenue. He was headed for the Boston College track, racing flats in his hands, to run intervals. (I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out how I could possibly have been abreast of a marathoner who won Boston one year running at a blistering 4:54 min/mile pace. No, he didn't overtake me, and of course I didn't overtake him.)

Continue reading “Phantom Runners”

Ruminations After a Road Race; Philippians 4:13

The following was written 19 February 2006.  This year I did better, achieving a personal best for this course, completing it in 2:23.  That's nothing to crow about, but without us rank-and-file pavement pounders, the real runners would not shine in all their glory.

………………

This morning I had occasion once again to verify the proposition that the strenuous life is best by test, but also the proposition that I am not much of a runner: it took me 2:26 to jog through the 13.1 mile Lost Dutchman half-marathon course. But we do the best we can with what we've got, and given my age, modest training base, and paucity of fast-twitch fibers, I am more than satisfied. I have never regretted any road race, hike, backpacking trip, or indeed any Jamesian 'strenuosity' whether physical, mental, moral, or spiritual. We are simply not made for sloth but for exertion, with Hegel's Anstrengung des Begriffs as important as any. Whatever the reason, experience teaches that we are most happy when active, or better, when actuating our powers, including our powers of contemplative repose.

Continue reading “Ruminations After a Road Race; Philippians 4:13“

Leon Trotsky, Gabe Kaplan, and Today’s Road Race

I was in Tempe, Arizona a while back for a book fix. At the coffee bar in the Border's Bookstore, the thirty-something counterman remarked that I look like Gabe Kaplan, an observation seconded by some bystanders. Having no idea who Gabe Kaplan is, I commented that some people think I look like Leon Trotsky — which comment elicited a puzzled expression. Turned out the 'tender had never heard of Trotsky. So I asked, "Ever hear of Vladimir Lenin?" That too drew a blank. It wasn't until I worked my way back to Karl Marx that a glimmer of recognition emerged. I tried the experiment on his twenty-something female co-worker. Same result.

Trotsky, Schmotsky. Lenin, Lennon.

Borders is just around the corner from Arizona State University. Draw your own conclusion.

During today's Lost Dutchman Half-Marathon, a woman who looked to be a bit older than me pulled alongside and remarked that I resemble her Salt River kayak instructor.  I mentioned that some think I resemble Leon Trotsky.  She said she didn' know who he was.  Turning to her companion, she asked if she knew who Trotsky was.  She didn't either.  Calling to mind the earlier Tempe experience, I didn't bother to explain.  I ran on with George Santayana's "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" in my head.  (I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that quotation.  I have a number of Santayana's works in my library, but not the The Life of Reason.)

Maverick Philosopher Makes The Times Online 100 Best Blogs List

A tip of the hat to Dave Lull for pointing me to A guide to the 100 best blogs – part I.  Maverick Philosopher makes the cut.  See page 5.  Excerpt:

Two good philosophy blogs make the point that this is a subject made for bloggery. Philosophy is arguing, and arguing is what bloggers and their readers do best — or at least a lot, in an obsessive-compulsive sort of way. Both are highly recommended if you fancy stepping out into an intellectual blizzard with, occasionally, real snow.

I will resist the temptation to comment except to thank Bryan Appleyard for his article and also the MP Commenter Corps.  Without them this site would be much less interesting. I have a half-marathon to run today, but later I hope to respond to at least some of the recent comments.

 

 

Till Eulenspiegel and Heraclitus

What do Till Eulenspiegel and Heraclitus have in common? I thought about them near the end of a recent hike. I am an uphill specialist. I love the upgrade, the pull, gravity's testing of legs and lungs, the depth of breath, the honest sweat. The downclimb is less to my liking. Fearing a fall, I am too cautious to go with the flow.

So my mind turned to Till Eulenspiegel, described by Theodor Reik as follows:

German folklore tells many tales of the peculiar behavior of the foolish yet clever lad Till Eulenspiegel. This rogue used to feel dejected on his wanderings whenever he walked downhill striding easily, but he seemed very cheerful when he had to climb uphill laboriously. His explanation of his behavior was that in going downhill he could not help thinking of the effort and toil involved in climbing the next hill. While engaged in the toil of climbing he anticipated and enjoyed in his imagination the approach of his downhill stroll.

The "foolish yet clever lad" put me in mind of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus. Philosophically considered, it matters not at all whether one is climbing or descending. "The way up and the way down are the same." (Fragment 60) The interdependence of opposites is a rich and fascinating topic.  We shall have more to say about it later.

On Forever Putting One’s Tool Kit in Order

I had friends in graduate school who belonged to the class of those we jokingly referred to as graduate student emeriti. They were the perpetual students who were "not hung up on completion," to borrow a memorable line from William Hurt's character Nick in The Big Chill (1983). Free of the discipline of undergraduate school, they took incompletes in their courses and then spent years completing them. Some never completed them. Others finished their course work and actually wrote dissertations and won the degree — some fifteen years after they started. They supported themselves with adjunct teaching and odd jobs, loans and parental hand-outs.

One fellow in particular sticks in my mind. I’ll call him Mel. Mel never finished and dropped out of sight. With Mel, the problem was three-fold: unrealistically high standards, performance anxiety, and an obsession with the board game Go. His performance anxiety manifested itself mainly as an obsessive fixation on getting his tool box in order. What I mean is that he felt he could not get down to the business of writing any good philosophy until all his tools were in place. So he had to have a complete library stocked with all the classics, in the original languages. He once unloaded a copy of Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony on me on the ground that it was in English, when he wanted to read everything in its original language. Many an hour did he spend on foreign languages. But to do philosophy, one has to be able to think correctly, so logic was also on his agenda. Time was spent acquiring an impressive logic library, and somewhat less time on actually reading his acquisitions.

What’s in a Name?

Mike Gilleland's erudite disquisition on crappy names (craptronyms?) put me in mind of a chess opponent I once faced in a Las Vegas tournament. The fellow, a German, rejoiced under the name of David Assman. It would really have been a hoot had the tournament's venue been Fucking, Austria, near Salzburg. (If a major tournament can be held at Lone Pine, little more than a wide spot on old U.S. 395, why not there?) Yes, muchachos, there really is such a place. The name is pronounced 'fooking.' Although I lived as a young man in Salzburg for six months, I never got to Fucking.

Don’t Say ‘Turkey Day’

Say 'Thanksgiving' and give thanks. You don't need to eat turkey to be thankful. Gratitude is a good old conservative virtue. I'd expatiate further, but I've got a race to run. You guessed it: a 'turkey trot.' In Mesa, Arizona, 10 kilometers = 6.2 miles.

With only a couple of exceptions I've run this race every year since 1991.  Today is the first case of cold and rainy weather.  But I am thankful for the rain since it will 'inspire' me to run faster and harder.  I will run as if the Grim Reaper (the ultimate Repo man) is right behind me with the scythe of hypothermia at the ready.

UPDATE (11/28):  The rain let up  before the 9 AM starting gun went off.  My official time: 1:05:15.  A shamefully slow time especially given that I lost 23 lbs for this event.  In mitigation, I plead the fact that I went on a mere 19 training runs in preparation for the race beginning on September 7th.  That, age, and a paucity of fast-twitch fibers add up to my being no favorite of the goddess of running.  Nevertheless, I remain her humble acolyte.

 

He Was a Friend of Mine

John F. Kennedy was assassinated 45 years ago today.  Here is The Byrds' tribute to the slain leader. They took a traditional song and redid the lyrics.  The young Bob Dylan here offers an outstanding interpretation of the old song.

I was in the eighth grade when Kennedy was gunned down. We were assembled in an auditorium for some reason when the principal came in and announced that the president had been shot. The date was November 22, 1963. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seated behind my quondam inamorata, Christine W. My love for her was from afar, like that of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea, but at the moment I was in close physical proximity to her, studying the back of her blouse through which I could make out the strap of her training bra . . . .

By the way, if you want to read a thorough (1,612 pages with notes on a separate CD!) takedown of all the JFK conspiracy speculation, I recommend Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It was a tale of two nonentities, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Both were little men who wanted to be big men. Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy. Ruby, acting alone, shot Oswald. That is the long and the short of it. For details, I refer you to Bugliosi.

Why I am Such a Hot Ticket on the Party Circuit

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, Abrams Image 2007, pp. 183-184:

Contemporary philosopher William Vallicella writes, “Metaphilosophy is the philosophy of philosophy. It is itself a branch of philosophy, unlike the philosophy of science, which is not a branch of science, or the philosophy of religion, which is not a branch of religion.”

It is statements like this that have made Vallicella such a hot ticket on the party circuit.

I haven’t read the book, so I can’t tell you what I think of it. The only reason I know about the above citation is because Dymphna of Gates of Vienna drew it to my attention.