philosophy

philosophy historically and as distinct from other disciplines

One-sentence summaries

One could use the common one-sentence summary of the Muslim faith to describe other monotheistic faiths and monistic ideologies; for example: There is no God but Yahweh and Moses is his legislator. There is no God but Yahweh and David is his psalmist. There is no God but Deus and the Pope is his bishop. […]

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Belief and knowledge

Knowledge is conditional. Knowledge starts with an antecedent, which is assumed, and proceeds from there. Its consequences are therefore certain, but relative to the antecedent. “If P, then Q” is the form of knowledge. Belief is unconditional. Belief is a beginning; it does not begin from something else. “In the beginning God…” is the form of belief. Belief

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Philosophical realism

Philosophical realism, or simply realism, is a philosophy that begins where we all begin: with our common sense, our common everyday experience. When Samuel Johnson famously dismissed Berkeley’s idealist philosophy with his “I refute Berkeley thus” and then kicked a rock, he was asserting realism in contrast with idealism. There are basically two kinds of anti-realist

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What before how

One way to express realism is that it insists on knowing what before knowing how. Why is that? Because for a realist metaphysics precedes epistemology, which means being precedes knowing. Something is, whether we know it or not. A question students are asked is, If a tree fell in the forest and no one knew

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The necessity of philosophy

The contemporary world is characterized, among other things, by the cult of the expert.  It is widely and officially accepted that the expert and only the expert can speak authoritatively on a given subject.  So extensive is this cult that once someone has become a certified expert in one field, they are often assumed to

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The descent of mind

Darwin initiated a rhetorical strategy of minimizing the difference between species — or what is the same thing, of maximizing the difficulties of delineating one species from another. He made the species concept suspect, although he continued to use it where it suited him. The implication was that larger taxonomic categories were also suspect, and

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Who’s on first?

Before the 19th century natural science was part of philosophy. It was called ‘natural philosophy’ (usually) or ‘experimental philosophy’ (Newton). Philosophy provided the background and justification for the development of empirical methods to study the world. Natural science pre-supposed and depended on philosophy. By the 19th century the discipline matured so that it could be

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Being and becoming

Naturalism is a philosophy that looks to science to fill in the details.  It is based on putting becoming before being, contrary to the classical and Christian assertion that being precedes becoming.  We have to know what or who something is before we can understand how it got that way, or what we’re even talking

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Metaphysics vs. scientism

The “new atheists” have caused a stir but have also shown their ignorance when they step outside their domain of scientific expertise and talk about metaphysics while denigrating philosophy.  One result is that philosophers are now taking them on — and they have come out slugging.  I’m seeing a new generation of philosophers, mostly Christians, who

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