I’m re-reading Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper. As Pieper plausibly, and I think correctly, discusses matters, the loss of leisure and the consequent loss of culture is bound up, at least in this age of men, with the process of proletarianization, that is, the limitation of men to their laboring aspects. Pieper … [Read more…]
I have uploaded another small sampler of essays from my weblog writings. This small collection deals with the subject of the human mind. The new sampler can be downloaded at The Human Mind. I have also made some minor changes to the first sampler: Making Peace With Empirical Reality and consequently uploaded a new file.
One of the problems with a good understanding of some domain is that we adopt such understandings as rigid habits of thought even when they deal with empirical matters and should be rethought as we learn more or as new possibilities emerge as a result of human activities. We forget we’re mortal creatures in a … [Read more…]
Since 2006, I’ve been writing books and essays, nearly all of which are available for free downloading on the Internet. My main theme is simply the need to see our world as being the universe in light of God’s purposes for this concrete realm of Creation, which includes the need to see the entirety of … [Read more…]
Respect for empirical knowledge doesn’t determine if one believes or disbelieves in God, though it has generally forced any believers, pagan and pantheist and Christians and others, to see a God of reason. After all, the very term `empirical knowledge’ is meaningful only if it refers to something, some realm of being subject to perception … [Read more…]
What do you do with a frozen soul? You could lick it because, speaking in general terms, a Popsicle is as much a piece of frozen soul as a human being is. And so are rattlesnakes and monkeys and rocks hurtling through space. You can also saw frozen soul, beginning the process of making a … [Read more…]
I’m finishing up with that profound and profoundly frustrating work by William James, The Meaning of Truth. He claims: It is between the idea and the object that the truth-relation is to be sought and it involves both terms. [page 165] No, but, once again, his error carries more insight than the truest thoughts of … [Read more…]
I’ve written several times about my opinion that William James held back from the full implications of his teachings or, at least, held back from a viewpoint that would have led him to a plausible conjecture of some sort of fullness of knowledge, however impossible the complete realization of that full knowledge. James saw how … [Read more…]
I’ve been reading Serious Art by the philosopher John Passmore. This book has inspired in me some thoughts about what might be called the imagination. I’m especially interested in the relationship of imagination to an allegedly different part of the human mind called reason. It’s possible I’m interested because and not despite my efforts to … [Read more…]
William James made a claim which should be very disturbing to those who hold mainstream views of the nature of truth: The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a … [Read more…]