I hope that William James was his usual good-natured and tolerant self when he wrote: [T]he scholastic philosophy … is only common sense grown pedantic. [The Meaning of Truth, page 44 of the Dover reprint edition] He’s right, in general, but it’s sad that Catholic neo-scholastics in recent centuries seem to be pedantic without having … [Read more…]
I’ve advocated the view that our imaginations can encompass what God has created, what the Almighty has manifested in this Creation, but we need examples and stimuli — in a manner of speaking. We need to be courageous and open-minded in our responses to Creation if we are to learn from God, who has a … [Read more…]
As I prepare to finish a half-written book on the human mind, I’m reviewing some of my earlier writings from my two blogs. I’m posting links to four essays which seem to me to be fundamental to my explanations of how to understand of that strange entity, the human mind. 1. The modern world as … [Read more…]
Near the end of this amusing article, In Physics, Telling Cranks from Experts Ain’t Easy, John Horgan raises an interesting point about theories of physics: Great scientists are great because they discern patterns in the flux of nature that elude us ordinary mortals; we should not be surprised when some patterns turn out to be … [Read more…]
In a faraway region of spacetime, I asked the question: Is this evidence against free-will?, where I start by noting: 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 … [Read more…]
In Do We Survive the Major Transformations of Our Lives?, I wrote: In Rewriting the Soul, the philosopher Ian Hacking had speculated that the multiple personality phenomenon is a largely learned strategy of segregating painful memories. Is our sense of a particular individuality tied that strictly to specific memories? But our memories would not seem … [Read more…]
Mind and body are not separate nor is body for real and mind a mere epiphenomenon. The body is concrete, objective stuff but mind is a set of relationships with both concrete and abstract being. During recent weeks, I picked up links to various articles which reaffirm our embodied natures. From our bodies of physical … [Read more…]
We shape our minds by active responses to our immediate environments and maybe to greater realms of Creation. Even without active responses, something like a flabby mind takes shape. The flabby mind of a modern man is invincibly ignorant in the sense that it’s shaped to what’s pushed into it by the public school system … [Read more…]
In a prior weblog posting, Intentionality as the Guide to Philosophical Thinking, I discussed this quote: I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light. [Sir Isaac Newton] I write often about my efforts to find … [Read more…]
In The Liberal Mind, I think Professor Minogue dismisses the query “What is the essence of Liberalism?” for reasons which are proper, but I’ll discuss it anyway because I think it to be one of those ultimately futile lines of inquiry which can lead us to better ways of understanding human nature, especially in its … [Read more…]