After nearly two years of heavy-duty entries exploring ways of updating Thomistic existentialism to account for modern empirical knowledge, I’ve started to move on in some ways, continuing this general task but trying to reach deeper. Specifically, I’m struggling to learn more of modern physics that I might better tackle metaphysical issues of being and … [Read more…]
There’s a short but interesting summary of a survey about the effects of knowledge on the opinions that men and women hold about the moral legitimacy of some controversial medical/scientific procedures such as the use of various sorts of stem-cells. See Scientific Information Largely Ignored When Forming Opinions About Stem Cell Research. In a nutshell, … [Read more…]
I’ve included the entirety of an article from the Vatican Information Service. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken publicly about an important issue he addressed in some of his earlier books: Christian philosophy must respond to modernity and theology must also respond, though he apparently believes — plausibly enough — that theology will respond first to … [Read more…]
An astronomer at the Vatican Observatory has said, in a very confused way so far as I can tell, that the question of extraterrestrial life is an empirical question. (See Could ET be Our Brother?). This is old news. In 1277, in what seems to have been a confused encyclopedia of condemnations, Etienne Tempier — … [Read more…]
In Thomistic thought, the human mind begins to shape itself in response to the immediate environment of that human being. Various perceptual, mental, emotional, and social skills are built to work with that immediate environment. That human being may enter other environments to which he can respond, enriching his mind and even other components of … [Read more…]
Over the past decade or more, neuroscientists have found strong evidence that we start to act before we’re consciously aware of our own actions. This is a problem to those who believe in free-will in the sense of a power of an autonomous agent. It isn’t much of a problem to one who accepts the … [Read more…]
As my allergies ease and I get over a funk about the decrepit state of the ‘Catholic mind’ in recent centuries, I’m starting to clear out some old business and getting ready to move on to new business including regular commentary upon issues being raised by modern researchers in the various fields of empirical knowledge. … [Read more…]
While reading, Ernst Cassirer’s The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, I realized I’ve been guilty of a major oversight in my discussions of ‘hellenistic metaphysics’. Cassirer doesn’t speak much of Christianity or the Church in that book, but he does speak of swings between various forms of Hellenistic metaphysics. And there are indeed … [Read more…]
I have put a completed book, not published in paper, on this website for free downloading. I’ve only put an informal copyright and no legally binding license on the work. See Unpublished Books for Download for details.
Where do I go from here? I probably should go more slowly than I did in my previous entry: Engaging the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: The Ascent of the Human Mind. In that posting, I was unleashing my mind and imagination, trying to map the entire path from here to there in one image. … [Read more…]