Category: Metaphilosophy
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On the Obvious
As Hilary Putnam once said, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." Or as I like to say, "One man's datum is another man's theory." But is it obvious that it ain't obvious what's obvious? It looks as if we have a little self-referential puzzle going here. Does the Hilarian dictum apply to itself? An absence of…
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Reification and Hypostatization
My tendency has long been to use 'reification' and 'hypostatization' interchangeably. But a remark by E. J. Lowe has caused me to see the error of my ways. He writes, "Reification is not the same as hypostatisation, but is merely the acknowledgement of some putative entity's real existence." ("Essence and Ontology," in Novak et al.…
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Religion Always Buries its Undertakers
Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over a year now. He will be joined by Dennett and Dawkins, Grayling and Harris, and the rest of the militant atheists. Religion, like philosophy, always buries its undertakers. It was Etienne Gilson who famously remarked that "Philosophy always buries its undertakers." That is the first of his "laws…
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Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology
Skin and seeds are proper parts of a tomato, and the tomato is an improper part of itself. But what about such properties as being red, being ripe, being a tomato? Are they parts of the tomato? The very idea will strike many as born of an elementary confusion, as a sort of Rylean category mistake. "Your…
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Bill O’Reilly: Christianity not a Religion, but a Philosophy
Bill O'Reilly does a lot of good, but he made a fool of himself last night on his O'Reilly Factor. It was painful to watch. In the course of a heated exchange with David Silverman, president of American Atheists, O'Reilly claimed that Christianity is not a religion, but a philosophy. At first I thought I…
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The Insolubility of Philosophical Problems: The Augustine Story Adapted
Long ago I was told the following story by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater. Augustine: "What are you doing?" Child: "I am trying to empty…
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Deus ex Machina Objections in Philosophy: Leibniz contra Malebranche
I have been searching various databases such as JSTOR without success for a good article on deus ex machina objections in philosophy. What exactly is a deus ex machina (DEM)? When one taxes a theory or an explanatory posit with DEM, what exactly is one alleging? How does a DEM differ from a legitimate philosophical…
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A Reader Wants an Introduction to Philosophy
M. T. writes, I've followed your blog for a few months now. I feel compelled to say thank you for the content of your posts. They are usually trenchant, always interesting, and occasionally they lead me to delve into topics and categories that I have never explored previously. Some background: I'm an Arabic linguist for…
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Asceticism
A reader writes, I am a philosopher and a conservative (in many ways) and I enjoy your blog very much. One thing I find rather puzzling (and interesting), though, is your extreme asceticism. Recently, you said: "Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere. But it is at least possible that thinking…
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In the Dark
We are all in the dark, but the philosophers among us know it. The enlightenment they provide is mainly of a negative nature: they cast a bright light on our ignorance. And sometimes they do so willy-nilly, by contradicting each other.
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Permanence and Impermanence
Both worldling and philosopher distinguish between the permanent and the impermanent. How then do they differ? For the philosopher what the worldling calls permanent is impermanent, while for the worldling what the philosopher calls permanent doesn't exist.
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What is Left for Philosophy to Do?
Much of what was once in the province of philosophy now belongs to the sciences. Might it be that eventually everything once claimed by philosophy will be taken over by special sciences? I recently took Lawrence Krauss to task here and here for his latest scientistic outburst according to which philosophical problems, "when the grow up, leave…
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When Philosophical Questions Grow Up Do They Leave Home? Some Bad Arguments of Lawrence Krauss Exposed
A tip of the hat to Professor Joel Hunter for referring me to a recent discussion between philosopher Julian Baggini and physicist Lawrence Krauss. We have come to expect shoddy scientistic reasoning from Professor Krauss (see here) and our expectation is duly fulfilled on this occasion as on the others. The issue under debate is whether…
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Rigor and Cognitivity
Some say philosophy lacks rigor. Well, some does, but the best doesn't. People who bemoan a lack of rigor in philosophy are typically unacquainted with its best authors. The problem with philosophy is not lack of rigor but lack of cognitivity. The lack of cognitivity, however, does not detract from philosophy's value. Is there no…
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Could a Universe of Contingent Beings be Necessary?
If everything in the universe is contingent, does it follow that the universe is contingent? No it doesn't, and to think otherwise would be to commit the fallacy of composition. If the parts of a whole have a certain property, it does not follow that the whole has that property. But it is a simple…