Now that Fall semester grades have been turned in I have a little time to do some blogging before things get really busy with (1) Christmas (12/25), (2) my wife and I bringing home our newborn adopted baby girl (12/26), and (3) my trotting off to the Eastern APA for job interviews (12/27-30). I’d like… Read More »
An “open society”, as I understand the term, is one in which guarantees certain basic rights that promote the free exchange of ideas and information. Rights like freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion are essential to open society. Like many people in the U.S., and in the West generally, I’ve… Read More »
Here is a link to a silly bot that thinks it’s God. My conversation: Me: HelloGod: Hello friend. What is your name?Me: Don’t you know?God: Sure I know. But I cannot tell you right now.Me: Why not?God: Because Myself programmed me for it.Me: Hmmm.God: A lot of people spell HMMM with three mmm’s.Me: Why?God: I… Read More »
My occasional metaphysical sparring partner, Ian Spencer, poses the following objection to presentism – the view that only what exists now exists simpliciter: Here’s a problem for most forms of presentism – on most versions, there’s no good answer to the question of why this time is the present one. That is, why does the… Read More »
First, the position I want to argue against is essential divine timelessness – the idea that, of necessity, God cannot change in any respect or stand in any temporal relations. Second, here is my argument: God is able to exercise providence. God’s exercising providence entails the making of choices on God’s part. A choice is… Read More »
Just a short post, but I’d like to comment on one particular maxim advanced by philosopher Charles S. Peirce, a maxim which I strongly endorse: Do not block the road of inquiry! What Peirce means by this is that we ought never to draw a line in the sand and say that theorizing cannot, must… Read More »
Here’s a nice post by Bill Vallicella arguing, correctly in my opinion, that it can sometimes be morally obligatory for a government to wage war even if doing so brings about the deaths of noncombatants. The key point is that we must not confuse the norms of private morality (the Golden Rule, turning the other… Read More »
A colleague called my attention to this Foxtrot comic (©Bill Amend). It originally appeared October 11, 2006. (HT: Rick Beckman by way of James Woodbridge)
My wife sent me a link to this hilarious story from a parody news website: “Calvinist Church Dumps Free Will Offerings”
In the comments section of a recent post at one of Victor Reppert’s blogs I’ve been engaged in a very interesting and stimulating conversation with a fellow who calls himself ‘exapologist’ about the status of abstract objects (propositions, numbers, sets, etc.). I’m arguing for theistic conceptualism (abstract objects exist necessarily as ideas in the mind… Read More »