{"id":78,"date":"2007-07-31T00:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-31T04:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=78"},"modified":"2007-07-31T00:48:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T04:48:00","slug":"where-i-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2007\/07\/where-i-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Where I Stand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Browsing around the Web I recently came across <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.johndepoe.com\/?p=301\">this post<\/a> at <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Fides Quaerens Intellectum<\/span> and thought I would put together a summary of my current philosophical outlook.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Metaphysics<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trinitarian theism &#8211; God exists and is essentially tri-personal.<\/li>\n<li>A-theory of time &#8211; There is an objective &#8216;now&#8217;. The totality of reality is non-constant.<\/li>\n<li>Presentism &#8211; Whatever exists, exists now. Past things are no more. Future things are not yet.<\/li>\n<li>Indeterminism &#8211; Not all events are determined by prior events + causal laws.<\/li>\n<li>Incompatibilism &#8211; Free will (in a morally significant sense) is incompatible with determinism.<\/li>\n<li>Libertarianism &#8211; Free will (in a morally significant sense) requires that at some point in the aetiology (causal ascestry) of one&#8217;s choices one have had the ability to choose either of two or more incompatible options.<\/li>\n<li>Modal actualism &#8211; Non-actual possibilia do not exist.<\/li>\n<li>Endurantism &#8211; Things persist by being wholly present at each of the several moments at which they exist.<\/li>\n<li>Anti-physicalism\/Anti-reductionism &#8211; The mental cannot be reduced or explained in wholly physical terms. I am more than my body.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Epistemology<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Both internalist and externalist dimensions of justification are essential for knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Degrees of knowledge &#8211; &#8220;Knowledge&#8221; is an analogical concept. One doesn&#8217;t have to have ideal knowledge (infallibility, deductive certainty, omniscience, or what have you) in order to have knowledge of a genuine and important sort.<\/li>\n<li>Fallibilism &#8211; It is conceivable that we are mistaken about <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">nearly <\/span>everything that we think we know.<\/li>\n<li>Personal probability &#8211; For epistemological purposes, the most basic probabilities are credences (personal degrees of belief). There are no such things as Keynesian logical probabilities.<\/li>\n<li>Mental content is internal &#8211; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Pace<\/span> Putnam, meanings are &#8220;in the head&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Commonsensism &#8211; The mere fact that something <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">seems <\/span>to be true is, in the absence of defeaters, adequate justification for believing it to be true.<\/li>\n<li>Foundherentism &#8211; Susan Haack&#8217;s ugly term for a position that combines foundationalism and coherentism. Instead of the pyramid or the raft, her metaphor is the crossword puzzle!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Philosophy of Language<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Propositions are the fundamental truth-bearers, not sentences.<\/li>\n<li>Propositions are abstract, not concrete.<\/li>\n<li>Correspondence theory of truth &#8211; Aristotle put it best: To say of what is that it is, or to say of what is not that it is not, is to speak the truth.<\/li>\n<li>Serious tensing &#8211; I &#8220;take tense seriously&#8221;. Tenseless discourse is parasitic upon tensed discourse.<\/li>\n<li>Conceptual metaphor theory &#8211; According to recent cognitive linguistics, nearly all abstract thought is deeply metaphorical.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Ethics<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Moral realism &#8211; There are mind-independent moral facts. They are non-natural.<\/li>\n<li>Moral objectivism &#8211; Moral facts are not relative either to individuals or to cultures\/societies.<\/li>\n<li>Virtue ethics &#8211; Neither strict utilitarianism nor strict deontologism is correct. Becoming a virtuous person should be the focus, more so than particular actions and choices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Philosophical Style and Method<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Analytic &#8211; Strive for clarity, precision, and rigor.<\/li>\n<li>Systematic &#8211; A philosopher should always keep an eye on the big picture and work towards a comprehensive and unified metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Pragmatic &#8211; From my extensive reading of Peirce I&#8217;ve acquired the habit of asking, with respect to any philosophical concept or distinction, what &#8220;conceivable practical experiences&#8221; could signify that it applies.<\/li>\n<li>Dead philosophical heroes &#8211; Charles S. Peirce, Bernard Lonergan, Thomas Reid, Plato, Aristotle, Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Browsing around the Web I recently came across this post at Fides Quaerens Intellectum and thought I would put together a summary of my current philosophical outlook. Metaphysics Trinitarian theism &#8211; God exists and is essentially tri-personal. A-theory of time &#8211; There is an objective &#8216;now&#8217;. The totality of reality is non-constant. Presentism &#8211; Whatever\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2007\/07\/where-i-stand\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}