Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mysterianism

  • The Mystery of Sentience

    The wonder of it. I stroke the cat. His pleasure is apparent. But where in a physical thing, even a living physical thing, is its pleasure, its surprise, its fear, and the rest of its sentient states? A philosopher is one who is open to the strangeness of the ordinary. The strangeness elicits his lust…

  • Is the Real a Tricycle?

    Had enough of doom and gloom, politics and perfidy? Try this Substack article on for size.  I examine a point of dispute between Alvin Plantinga and John Hick,  two distinguished contributors to the philosophy of religion. The Substack article also relates to my earlier discussion with Tom the Canadian, here. (I am protective of my…

  • Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery

    Bradley Schneider writes, . . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma.  Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true.  Otherwise, if God were composite, He…

  • Rationalistic Fideism, Mysterianism, Misology, and Divine Simplicity

    I want to thank the perspicacious Lukas Novak for helping me in my endless quest to know myself.  Professor Novak comments: Is Bill a Gnostic? Well, I am not sure about the precise meaning of this epithet, but to me Bill appears as a strange amalgam of a rationalist and a fideist. The rationalist comes…

  • Footnote 190 in Vlastimil Vohánka, Modality, Logical Probability, and the Trinity: A Defence of Weak Skepticism

    To put it oxymoronically, I am seriously toying with taking a mysterian line with respect to such Christian dogmas as Trinity and Incarnation.  To this end, I need to come to grips with our Czech friend Vlastimil Vohánka's footnote 190 on pp. 79-80 of his 2011 dissertation.  This subject-matter is difficult, so put on your thinking…

  • Ancora Una Volta: “Reasoned Mysterianism”

    Dr. Vito Caiati writes (minor edits, formatting, and bolding added), I thank you for your online response (Reasoned Mysterianism: A Defense of an Aphoristic Provocation) to my recent email.  In it you offer an impressive, rigorous defense of “reasoned mysterianism” that has impelled me to think more deeply on this subject, so much so, in fact,…

  • A Reasoned Mysterianism? Defense of an Aphoristic Provocation

     This just in from Dr. Vito Caiati: I write because I am confused about yesterday’s short post The Believing Philosopher, in which you state, “The religious belief of a believing philosopher is a reasoned belief, and even if his belief extends to the acceptance of mysteries that to the discursive intellect must appear contradictory, his…

  • Two Senses of ‘Mystery’ and McGinn’s Mysterianism

    Joel Hunter writes, In the context of an exchange between a Catholic and a Protestant, I came across a quote of Gerard Manley Hopkins that reminded me of your posts on mysterianism.   You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing, interest ceases also. This happens…

  • Galen Strawson Versus Nicholas Humphrey on Consciousness

    (This is a repost from February 2013 slightly emended, except for an addendum added today.  Reposts are the reruns of the blogosphere.  You don't watch a Twilight Zone or Seinfeld episode just once do you?)  ………………… A couple of days ago I had Nicholas Humphrey in my sights.  Or, to revert to the metaphor of that…

  • Mysterian Materialism and Mysterian Trinitarianism

    Here are some thoughts that may provoke a fruitful discussion with Vlastimil Vohanka on the topic of mysterianism in the philosophy of mind and in theology.  He kindly sent me his rich and stimulating paper, "Mysterianism about Consciousness and the Trinity."  The paper is available here along with other works of his.  His view is…

  • Patricia Churchland versus Colin McGinn on Mysterianism

    It's a win for McGinn. Here's Churchland: The view for which McGinn is known is a jejune prediction, namely that science cannot ever solve the problem of how the brain produces consciousness. On what does he base his prediction? Flimsy stuff. First, he is pretty sure our brain is not up to the job. Why…

  • Dolezal on Divine Simplicity: Does He Make a Mysterian Move?

    Dr. James Dolezal kindly sent me a copy of his very recent book, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness (Pickwick, 2011).  Herewith, some quick notes and commentary based on a partial reading.  1.  God is an absolute, or rather the absolute.  That is a non-negotiable starting point for both of us. …

  • It’s Nonsense, but it’s True Nonsense!

    Lawrence  Krauss writes: Classical human reason, defined in terms of common sense notions following from our own myopic experience of reality is not sufficient to discern the workings of the Universe. If time begins at the big bang, then we will have to re-explore what we mean by causality, just as the fact that electrons…

  • Malcolm on Mysterianism

    No, not Norman Malcolm, our Malcolm: Re: your recent post on Mysterianism, it seems that the central paragraph is this: And so it is with the mysterian materialist. He bids me accept propositions that as far as I can tell are not propositions at all. A proposition is a sense, but the 'propositions' he bids me…

  • The Mysterian Materialist Speaks

    There are different sorts of materialism about the mind, among them eliminative materialism, identity-materialism, and functionalism.  There is also mysterian materialism. Here is a little speech by a mysterian materialist: Look, we are just complex physical systems, and as such wholly understandable in natural-scientific terms, if not now in full, then in the future.  And yet…