I’ve claimed that the human mind is the sort of entity capable of encapsulating the world though an individual mind isn’t capable of fully understanding so much as a gnat. I’ve also quoted the historian Carroll Quigley about the nature of the traditional Christian philosophy of methodical realism: The truth unfolds in time through a … [Read more…]
Those who’ve read some of the writings on my blogs, Acts of Being and To See a World in a Grain of Sand, will likely realize I’ve been dealing with this project of creating a worldview on a somewhat disorganized basis, that is, I was writing as ideas came to me, sometimes addressing a few … [Read more…]
Once the thought of Plato and Aristotle had a home — the Greek city-state. Once the thought of St. Paul and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas had a home — Western Civilization. The two situations were different because the Greek philosophers struggled to find the best way to inhabit a home built by their … [Read more…]
We do need to pass by those limitations of scientific materialism and to do it without falling into the temptation of dualisms which invoke hand-waving to explain immaterial phenomena. My very working method, as well as my respect for the totality of human experience and human knowledge, rejects any possibility of scientific materialism or reductionistic … [Read more…]
Why do we resist changes in our beliefs about our selves, the world around us, and our relationship to God? Americans in particular, for all our claims to honesty about facts and our claims to have a hardheaded respect for reality, find it difficult to accept empirical evidence that we’re not quite the creatures we … [Read more…]
In the January, 2009 issue of Brain in the news ( The Dana Foundation), there’s an interesting article, In Search of the God Neuron, by Steven Rose which reviews some recent books on the alleged problem of mind and brain. The reviewed books include several that take a materialistic position and one that takes a … [Read more…]
There’s little or no reason to believe there is any ‘mind-stuff’, material or supernatural, unless you simply wish to dogmatically assert that matter isn’t adequate as the foundation of our thoughts and feelings. Brain-scientists, geneticists, and evolutionary theorists are researching the workings of the human mind (and human nature more generally) and are producing remarkable … [Read more…]
This is a summary of my thoughts on dealing with natural law from my viewpoint of updated Thomistic existentialism. There may be some new thoughts in this entry but mostly I’m aiming at two goals: Improving my presentation of my views of a truer natural law, that is, one that corresponds to modern improvements in … [Read more…]
This article, Immaturity Of The Brain May Cause Schizophrenia, talks about one of the possible causes of a disease which may actually be “several biologically distinct heterogeneous populations,” that is, a set of symptoms caused by various diseases. This was the case for ‘consumption’ in the 1800s — TB or lung cancer or some variety … [Read more…]
[This entry has also been posted to my other blog, To See a World in a Grain of Sand.] Those who belong to that school of thought labeled Intelligent Design typically describe themselves as Christian, sometimes Jewish, and sometimes there is only an impression of a vague Theism. In any case, most of these thinkers … [Read more…]