Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Thought and Reality

  • Does Matter Think?

    I think not. Substack latest.

  • Four Kinds of Ontological Argument

    A Substack typology.

  • Life and Thought

    And their irremediable sublunary tension. Top o' the Stack.

  • Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?

    Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is as old as Aristotle and has been put to use by philosophers as diverse as Transcendental Thomists and Ayn Rand and her followers. Retorsion is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except…

  • Secure Epistemic Foundations, Language, and Reality

    This from Grigory Aleksin: I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and…

  • Life and Thought

    The tension between life and thought is a very old theme of mine, from the painfully intense youthful days when I read Hermann Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolf and all the others. I rehearsed the theme once again the other night in the nocturnal twilight zone between deep sleep and wakefulness. Strange and exasperatingly elusive…

  • Is Everything an Object Among Objects?

    My opponent says Yes; I return a negative answer.  This entry continues the discussion in earlier theological posts, but leaves the simple God out of it, the better to dig down to the bare logical bones of the matter.  Theologians do not have proprietary rights in the Inexpressible and the Ineffable. Argument For The opponent…

  • Can Kant Refer to God?

     Ed Buckner raises this question, and he wants my help with it.  How can I refuse?  I'll say a little now, and perhaps more later. Kant was brought up a rationalist within the Wolffian school, but then along came David Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber.  This awakening begins his Critical period in…

  • Should One Talk with those who Deny the Law of Non-Contradiction?

    A local philosophy professor writes, I often find myself among what might be called postmodern philosophers. They are willing to say things like "I don't accept the law of non-contradiction."  Does this seem to be sufficient enough to say that further conversation is not possible? In general, yes.  Life is short, philosophy is long, and…

  • Reality: Sentence-Like or List-Like?

    Echoing his teacher John Anderson, the late David M. Armstrong maintains that reality is sentence-like rather than list-like. (Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics, Oxford, 2010, p. 34) I would push the thought further, in a direction Armstrong would not approve of: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the…

  • Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

    As a matter of fact, things exist. But suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all.  Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness?  Is this thought thinkable?  Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all?  And if it is, does it show that it is…

  • Is Anything Real Self-Identical?

    I am sometimes tempted by the following line of thought.  But I am also deeply suspicious of it. Are the 'laws of thought' 'laws of reality' as well? Since such laws are necessities of thought, the question can also be put by asking whether or not the necessities of thought are also necessities of being.…