Best metaphysics books according to redditors
We found 242 Reddit comments discussing the best metaphysics books. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 242 Reddit comments discussing the best metaphysics books. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I think you will learn the most by reading five textbooks, such as A History of Philosophy, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; or something like Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy.
If what you have in mind is more of a "Great Books" program to get your feet wet with some classic works that are not too difficult, you could do a lot worse than:
You're making an argument for a position known as "anti-natalism" which you can read about further here.
There are arguments to be made against this position but as with all arguments about ethics, it really depends on what your most basic ethical values are or what ethical theory you ascribe to. I'm not sure how 'expert' you are in philosophy so whenever I use a key term or refer to some position, I'll link a relevant article so that you can read more. It seems as though the idea of autonomy is important to you so I'll describe the various positions with regard to that particular issue.
A utilitarian (in the most general sense) is someone who believes that we can identify evil acts with those that create net suffering and that we can identify good acts with those that create net happiness. It's usually pretty hard to define 'happiness' and 'suffering' since they are phenomenological. That is, they refer to 'internal' experiences rather than external phenomena. Given that we understand what these mean and how we can identify them, the simplest argument to be made is that bringing someone into the world exposes them to happiness. To many utilitarians, the idea of autonomy is not fundamentally important. It is only important in that it creates happiness, the core value of the utilitarian. There are reasons that a utilitarian would value autonomy as a general rule, though. If we allow the powerful to compel the weak to do their bidding, it may well harm the weak. And, at a more basic level, people do just like to know that they are free to do as they please.
I would certainly argue that autonomy is not valuable if it causes net suffering. But I'll come back to that in a minute.
There are a couple responses you might make to this position. One is simply to argue that it is wrong to say that life generally creates happiness. This is the most common line of argument I've heard from anti-natalists. They often argue that life is miserable the majority of the time and we kind of kid ourselves into thinking otherwise. Some utilitarians will believe this to be a powerful argument since it's in-line with their basic theory. But the problem now is how do we objectively measure happiness and suffering. One can only really know for sure for themselves how happy they are and if they believe that life is worth living. Even then, people can be deluded. Survivors of suicide attempts often express gratitude towards the people that helped them since they have now come to realise that suicide would have been a mistake. It's not always as simple as "you must find out for yourself".
Another type of utilitarian thinking on the issue might come from preference utilitarianism. Peter Singer was probably the most famous advocate for that position but he has since defected to hedonistic utilitarianism. A preference utilitarian argues that we ought to act in a way that accord with what other sentient beings prefer. And we also ought to think about their preferences as though they are fully informed. That means that if they are about to walk on a land mine, we're justified in pushing them off of it since we might reasonably suspect that, had they known a land mine was in front of them, they would have preferred to not step on it. He often discussed his beliefs about ethics in the context of abortion so it's very relevant to this topic. He believed that the unborn have no preferences and we therefore have no moral obligations towards them. This applies to the unborn in your case also. We need not value the autonomy of something that doesn't exist since something that doesn't exist has no preferences. There are various problems with this position as I can see it (hence why, perhaps, Singer changed his mind).
The nail in the coffin for me is that, I think, autonomy is not the most intrinsically important thing. But even if it is, there is reason to believe that brining someone in to existence is a morally good thing to do in most cases. I say most since, if you know for certain that someone is going to have a miserable life full of suffering, I think you ought not give them that life.
Ultimate autonomy involves being given the choice to begin with. Life or non-life is a forced choice. There is no third option. But at least someone who is born has the choice to then end their life if they later decide it isn't worth it. I am a supporter of assisted suicide. So in cases where people have to live with debilitating illnesses that ruin their quality of life, I think it's important to allow the person the autonomy to end it. That's not to say I think it's always a good idea to off yourself if you feel like it. As I said before, people often change their minds on that topic. Someone who feel suicidal may feel otherwise the next day. So it's not a good idea to make rash decisions without really considering your chances. Anyway, giving birth to someone is the only way to allow them that choice. I believe that you're actually restricting the autonomy of the unborn person (if there is such a thing?) more by not giving birth to them since they never even had the chance to live in the first place. As I said, it's a forced choice it's one or the other.
Birth: You have the option to end your life if it becomes bad enough.
No Birth: You do not have the option to be born in the first place and therefore you have had less of a say in the matter.
​
I hope you find that last argument convincing if autonomy is your concern.
They have absolutely nothing to do with science so they could not even in principle be refuted by science. They are metaphysical demonstrations underlined by the Act/potency distinction, essentialism, principle of causality, deductive reason, ontology, and teleology.
The simplest way then to refute meaningless refutations is to ask if the person stating as such has taken the time to actually understand the arguments and the metaphysics and epistemology they are built on. If not, which in my experience is almost always the case, then their criticism of the five ways is meaningless. If they have, then you can debate epistemic principles, but that is much harder and you’ll probably need to do some additional reading to help work through that.
Paralysis and the Politics of Polio
Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a contagious disease caused by a virus that may attack nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord.
Fever, headache, sore throat, vomiting are some of the milder symptoms, and some victims develop neurological complications and paralysis of one or more limbs or respiratory muscles. In severe cases it can be fatal, due to respiratory paralysis.
Some people mistakenly believe that polio usually leads to paralysis, but this isn't the case.
95% of people exposed to the natural polio virus don't exhibit any symptoms, even under epidemic conditions, according to the Physicians' Desk Reference 2001 and Natural History of Infectious Disease by Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and David O. White.
The Wikipedia article on polio initially cites the figure as 90%, but elsewhere on the page the “asymptomatic” outcome of poliovirus infection is listed as 90%-95%. According to the source used for these statistics, “Up to 95% of all polio infections are inapparent or asymptomatic.”
About 5% of infected people will experience mild symptoms such as a sore throat, stiff neck, headache, and fever—often diagnosed as a cold or flu. Muscular paralysis affects approximately one out of every 1,000 people who contract polio.
>This has lead some scientific researchers to conclude that the small percentage of people who do develop paralytic polio may be anatomically susceptible to the disease. The vast remainder of the population may be naturally immune to the polio virus. [Moskowitz, R. “Immunizations: the other side.” Mothering (Spring 1984):36]
Usually there is a full recovery from paralytic polio—it rarely is permanent. Only a small percentage of cases will experience residual paralysis.
There are many serious questions about what factors contribute to increasing an individual's susceptibility to serious adverse reactions to the polio virus.
Several studies have demonstrated that injections, either for vaccines or antibiotics, increase susceptibility to polio. It's been known since the early 1900s that paralytic poliomyelitis can start at the site of an injection.
>When diphtheria and pertussis vaccines were introduced in the 1940s, cases of paralytic poliomyelitis skyrocketed. This was documented in Lancet and other medical journals.
McCloskey, BP. “The relation of prophylactic inoculations to the onset of poliomyelitis.” Lancet (April 18, 1950):659-63
Geffen, DH “The incidence of paralysis occurring in London children within four weeks after immunization.” Med Officer 1950;83:137-40
Martin, JK. “Local paralysis in children after injections.” Arch Dis Child 1950;25:1-14
>In 1949, the Medical Research Council in Great Britain set up a committee to investigate the matter and ultimately concluded that individuals are at increased risk of paralysis for 30 days following injections; injections alter the distribution of paralysis; and it did not matter whether the injections were subcutaneous or intramuscular.
In 1992, a study was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases that again confirmed these results after documenting an outbreak of polio in Oman that was linked to the DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) shot. They concluded that “injections are an important cause of provocative poliomyelitis.”
>In 1995, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that children who received a single injection within one month after receiving a polio vaccine were 8 times more likely to contract polio than children who received no injections.
>The risk jumped 27-fold when children received up to nine injections...and with ten or more injections, the likelihood of developing polio was 182 times greater than expected.
>Why injections increase the risk of polio is unclear. Nevertheless, these studies and others indicate that “injections must be avoided in countries with endemic poliomyelitis.” Health authorities believe that all “unnecessary” injections should be avoided as well.
A poor diet has been shown to raise one's susceptibility to polio.
>In 1948, during the height of the polio epidemics, Dr. Benjamin Sandler, a nutritional expert at the Oteen Veterans' Hospital, documented a link between polio and an excessive use of sugars and starches.
>He compiled records showing that countries with the highest per capita consumption of sugar, such as the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and Sweden (with over 100 pounds per person per year) had the greatest incidence of polio. In contrast, polio was practically unheard of in China (with its sugar use of only 3 pounds per person per year).
Sandler claimed that sugars and starches lower blood sugar levels which leads to hypoglycemia.
>Such food dehydrate the cells and leech calcium from the body. A serious calcium deficiency precedes polio. Researchers have always known that polio strikes with its greatest intensity during the hot summer months.
>Dr. Sandler observed that children consume greater amounts of ice cream, soft drinks, and artificially sweetened products in hot weather. In 1949, before the polio season began, he warned the residents of North Carolina, through the newspapers and radio, to decrease their consumption of these products.
>That summer, North Carolinians reduced their intake of sugar by 90%; polio decreased by the same amount! The North Carolina State Health Department reported 2,498 cases of polio in 1948 and 229 cases in 1949. [Data taken from North Carolina State Health Department figures]
>One manufacturer shipped one million less gallons of ice cream during the first week alone following the publication of Dr. Sandler's anti-polio diet. Soft drink sales were down as well.
>But powerful Rockefeller Milk Trust, which sold frozen products to North Carolinians, combined forces with soft drink business leaders and convinced the public that Sandler's findings were a myth and the polio figures a fluke. By the summer of 1950 sales were back to previous levels and polio cases returned to “normal.” [McBean, E., Allen, H.]
As can be seen by this graph of United States polio rates, polio epidemics became a serious problem in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although it never quite reached the levels of 1916 (when the epicenter of the epidemic was mere miles from a Rockefeller research lab that was experimenting with an extremely virulent strain of the polio virus).
By the early 1950s, Jonas Salk began experimenting with a possible polio vaccine.
>In 1952, Salk combined three types of polio virus grown in cultures made from monkey kidneys. Using formaldehyde, he was able to “kill” or inactivate the viral matter so that it would trigger an antibody response without causing the disease.
In 1955, the first polio immunization campaign was launched in the United States. Almost immediately, it became clear that something was very wrong with the vaccine. In the end, 70,000 school children became seriously ill from Salk's vaccine—the infamous “Cutter Incident.”
>The mistake resulted in the production of 120,000 doses of polio vaccine that contained live polio virus. Of the children who received the vaccine, 40,000 developed abortive poliomyelitis. The Cutter incident was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in U.S. history.
The renowned surgeon Alton Ochsner even gave the vaccine to two of his grandchildren...one died and the other was paralyzed. “Apparently, Salk's killed-virus vaccine was not completely inactivated.”
> God without rational proof.
Take an intro philosophy class (just to get familiar with the basics), and then read this book:
Scholastic Metaphysics by Edward Feser. A very well-written book, explains how neo-atheists misconstrue Saint Thomas Aquinas' 5 ways, re-justifies them, and Mr. Feser, who is essentially a philosopher, came to being forced through philosophy to believe in God (he was formerly an atheist), expanding on Aquinas' 5 ways.
The Last Superstition is also a great book and very well-grounded through Aristotle's Cosmological Argument (different from Kalam's Cosmological Argument).
Here's a short intro to his book at this blog: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.at/2012/07/road-from-atheism.html
It's a really good book -- the first 50 pages are just him explaining metaphysical terms. After that, the actual book begins. As someone studying neuroscience & philosophy, I approve of his book.
>I consider myself a rational person.
Good, then do the above and get back to me. If you don't believe in God by the end of all of that, I expect you to justify your skepticism to me personally.
peace, bro
On several subreddits and on some external websites such as Quora and ilovephilosophy.com.
And on Amazon.
The r/philosophy comments are the most interesting. [link]
In my opinion, OP has an unrealistic view of the significance of his/her "treatise."
Short answer: no. Without reading it (which I haven't done in full), you will be helped very little by synopses. But there are definitely some good reading guides, I found this one interesting, but it's written for a newspaper audience:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jun/05/heidegger-philosophy
Also try Dreyfus's podcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978475
Finally, the most helpful ones are the full-length reading guides. Blattner's is the most recommended, I think: http://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Readers-Guides/dp/0826486096/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1300394473&sr=8-6
Either way, though, I would say, if you want to read it, you're in for a long, tedious trip. And, I think I disagree with you, OP--Heidegger is a lot less clear than Kant, in my opinion.
In this thread: people who have no idea about contemporary issues in analytic philosophy, including (but not limited to)--
This subreddit, I swear...
Bishop Barron would push forward Thomas Aquinas for this, but that is far too extensive to type out his natural theology here. This is an argument from pure philosophy to Catholicism. Not starting with a belief in God, and Catholicism in particular, but building to this truth from philosophy to theology to catholicism.
I would suggest starting with this: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeEnte&Essentia.htm
Then read this: https://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Scholasticae/dp/3868385444
Finally(if you are still with me) there is about 1000 pages of this to go through: http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles.htm
van Inwagen's Metaphysics is often used as a textbook if you're looking for something systematic to work through.
http://www.brainpreservation.org/links/
and as a bonus
https://www.amazon.com/Taxonomy-Metaphysics-Mind-Uploading-Keith-Wiley/dp/0692279849
I think I win
Ed Feser's books are great:
The Last Superstition, or "Why he's wrong."
Aquinas, or "Why we're right."
And Scholastic Metaphysics: An Introduction, or "As close to the truth as we can get without Revelation."
Aristotle was wrong about some of his natural science, but his metaphysics is not necessarily wrong and is defended to the present day (example).
Different philosophical traditions will approach metaphysics differently. If you're talking about the kind of metaphysics that you would learn about in a philosophy course at most English speaking colleges, then these books might be helpful.
Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Michael J. Loux
Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider
Metaphysics by Peter van Inwagen
Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics edited by John Hawthorne, Theodore Sider, and Dean Zimmerman
The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics edited by Michael J. Loux and Dean Zimmerman
I've known Randal for about 25 years. He reviewed and endorsed my book about Mind Uploading, he and I have published a paper together on how personal identity is affected by mind uploading (or here), and I serve as Communications Director on the Carbon Copies board (also on Facebook), a group he started several years ago to organize and publicize whole brain emulation research. He doesn't reddit too much, but I'd be happy to field any questions.
Cheers!
A recent work by David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God is well worth reading (it is more philosophical than its title lets on).
Ed Feser's The Last Superstition is good and I would also recommend his Scholastic Metaphysics.
Try checking out the Kybalion it's free and I was told it's a great introduction to the occult and it's principles. I'm currently going through it myself. Welcome, brother/sister.
It's very dense, and this is him writing to an untrained audience. Try giving his Scholastic Metaphysics a try sometime.
I haven't read Subahibi, so I'm just going to take your question as "how do I get into philosophy."
Philosophy is one of the most diverse fields that we currently have. Philosophy is more than just pondering the meaning of life, it also is about uncovering the mindsets on discoveries and how people came about the knowledge we have today. You should start more simple over diving into people's work like Nietzsche so you can get the full picture on why they say what they say.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, metaphysics is the study of existence (not to be confused with existentialism, which is even more meta and theoretical), Aesthetics is the study of art, Ethics is the study of morality, and there are philosophies of politics, mind, body, religion, and all sorts.
I would shy away from direct writings from philosophers, as contemporary books are the literal collection of all of their knowledge presented in an easier to digest way.
Scholastic Metaphysics maybe?
This may be well off of base, but you may want to start by looking at neo-Aristotelean accounts of real essences (something which would need to exist for any kind of teleology you are looking for). For example:https:
//www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/041587212X
Here is a littler overview of teleological talk in modernbiology:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/#nat
Ok, this article has convinced me to read a copy of this book. Is there anyone else here who is familiar with this or any other book by Feser?
He has a new book coming out soon - http://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-A-Contemporary-Introduction/dp/3868385444 - so it might be a good opportunity to get people exposed to his work and get those book orders rolling in.
There's lots of them, so I think one should start in the area they're most interested in and then branch from there.
Here' a general survey of the areas of philosophy.
The areas usually have their own articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy with extensive bibliographies (e.g. Modal Logic). Same goes for particular problems from these areas, like Truth, and some of the philosophers themselves (e.g. Bertrand Russell). There's also the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
For less technical and more structured introductions, there are plenty of textbooks, like Logic, This is Philosophy of Mind or The Fundamentals of Ethics. Books from the Very Short Introductions series are sometimes decent (e.g. Metaphysics), and they really are short.
The textbooks usually have further reading recommendations, some of which are compiled readers like The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness or The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems. I think these are good starting points as well.
Most of the books are going to be available on libgen of course.
And then there's of course podcasts. Some of the good ones I like:
Lastly, Gregory B. Sadler is a big guy.
There's actually a rich history of debate in philosophy about the role of intuition generally, and using conceivability as a measure of possibility in particular. (Gendler and Hawthorne edited an excellent volume on the topic.)
There are a few things to say in this particular case. One is that Parfit isn't relying on intuition. He's actually making a stronger claim: that the notion of there being two identical people is logically inconsistent. If that's the case, then either you accept the conclusion that this is impossible, or you reject foundational principles of logic (e.g., non-contradiction). (Graham Priest famously does the latter, though for very different reasons.)
Another point is that thought experiments like this might be thought of as mapping out how we conceive of the world, rather than carving nature at its joints. I'm not sure Parfit would accept this, but it does give him more latitude.
Finally, one might think that these sorts of thought experiments are necessary steps in uncovering the truths about things like personal identity. I'm not sure how, even in principle, one could design an experiment to test any of these hypotheses. But even if there were a way, it seems that thinking through possibilities like Parfit does would help clear the way for designing such experiments.
There are a lot of really, really ignorant posts ITT. This is why you should actually read the various Austrian economists instead of listening to "internet Austrians."
For one thing, the Austrian approach doesn't reject empirical evidence. Look at all the actual Austrian economists and then see what their opinions were. Hayek is best interpreted as a member of the classical British empiricist school of thought, in the vein of Adam Smith, Hume, etc. Even for Mises, who followed Kant, the entire point of theoretical economics was to use it to interpret empirical reality.
For another thing, empirical knowledge simply isn't the only type of knowledge. This isn't even controversial in philosophy. Mises was the most explicit in attempting to ground the fundamental propositions of economics-- the so called "pure logic of choice"-- in neo-Kantian synthetic a priori statements. Kant is one of the most highly respected philosophers in history, so it would be absurd to condemn Mises simply because he took a Kantian approach to the fundamentals of economics.
And for what it's worth, a lot of Mises' views are defensible anyway. He starts with the action axiom, i.e. we engage in purposive behavior. You can agree with this proposition or disagree with it. If you agree with it, that's fine, Mises has his starting point. If you disagree with it, that disagreement itself would have to be categorized as an instance of purposive behavior-- i.e. you're disagreeing with the axiom to prove some purpose, for instance-- and so you've refuted yourself. So the notion that people engage in purposive behavior cannot be coherently denied (not that sincere seekers of truth would deny it in any event).
Mises argues several important implications follow from the action axiom, especially w.r.t. basic propositions of economics, e.g. choice, opportunity cost, uncertainty, and psychological profit / loss. But we can ignore that and focus on another purely philosophical implication to see his methodology. Hopefully this will draw light to the validity of Mises' general method without unduly focusing on purely economic propositions.
Take causality, for instance. Some philosophers-- to be sure, a minority-- would argue causality is an illusion and is merely a function of how we interpret the world. Given the action axiom, though, this cannot possibly be true: as was argued, it's incoherent to deny the fact that people act. But the ability of people to act in some sense presupposes they have some ability to interfere with, or change, the real world. Yet this logically implies they have some causal connection to it, so the a priori of action implies causality. That's a very philosophically significant argument if it works.
Lest anyone thinks this is a mere verbal trick-- or even worse, that Mises was ignorant w.r.t. philosophy-- it's worth pointing out some very respected philosophers today make similar arguments. Take Stephen Mumford, for instance. He's highly regarded as a philosopher of metaphysics and ontology, i.e. the study of being as such, to such a degree that Oxford commissioned him to write their introduction to metaphysics.
Yet, as respected as he is, Mumford gives an a priori argument for causation here that is very similar to the argument implicit in Mises' conception of human action. I think this serves to show Mises was no hack, and he was deeply on to something when he conceived of the a priori of human action as an important starting point.
I deliberately choose causation because I feel it's not as controversial on this subreddit as some of the propositions of mainstream economics. Yet it's clearly a solid philosophical argument of the same type Mises uses to justify certain economic propositions, and so it's absurd to say Mises is wrong without actually engaging his arguments. To say Mises' methodology is different from other people and is therefore wrongly simply begs the question, which is a straight up logical fallacy. If you'd like to read more and attempt to understand the Misesean view, see this paper.
I started with a few essays by zizek and like you, started with Puppet and the Dwarf as my first book of his. And I felt like it was slightly over my head.
So I bought Adrian Johnston's book on Zizek's Ontology. Which was more than a simple summary of Zizek's thought. It was complex enough to keep my mind reeling, but less fuzzy than Zizek was to me at the time. Basically it was the base I needed to understand all the terms and philosophers that Zizek uses without explanation.
If I remember Zizek's quote about the book, it was: "This book is more Zizek than myself"
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction will certainly cover it, but from a definitely Thomistic point of view. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy, and don't know much about the argument, save I'll probably agree with Aquinas because he's larger and easier to hide behind.
Well, it depends on what you want to study. If you want to go for religious experience, phenomenology, and epistemology, Yandell's "The Epistemology of Religious Experience", Otto's "The Idea of the Holy", James' "Varieties ...", and Alston's "Perceiving God" would be good.
For Medieval philosophy you really can't beat Aquinas. Since the SCG and ST are pretty hefty, it'd be good to start with Aristotle's metaphysica and physica (late late late edit: not just that, but read his works on souls as well as his other works). McKeon's "The Basic works of Aristotle" is an okay translation. There's a better one, but the name eludes me. After that, Aquinas' "On Being and Essence" is a must-read for metaphysics. Then either flip through the SCG or ST, or even better, find a companion for the two works (Peter Kreeft, Feser, and Sir A. Kenny are all decent). Beyond Aquinas, and a bit earlier than him, are Augustine and the Church fathers. I can't really say much on them because I'm not too familiar-- I fell in love with the Medieval philosopher-theologians before I converted, I didn't really pay much mind to those earlier than them in the Christian tradition. However, Augustine is usually the man I've heard recommended.
Beyond the books, philosophy papers between, say, Bergmann, Pruss, Almeida, et al. are wonderful. Almeida's "On Vague Eschatology", "A New Cosmological Argument Undone" (in response to Pruss), Almeida's refutation of Rowe's new evidentialist argument from evil, and his reply to Alston's skeptical theist response to Rowe's new evidentialist argument. Usually these will be followed by a response, and counter-response, etc.
For Oderberg, and in general for the Neo-Aristotelians, Tahko's collection of essays by varying neo-Aristotelians in "Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics", Oderberg's "Whatever is Changing...", and Oderberg's "Real Essentialism" are not explicitly Christian or related to the philosophy of religion (except the second, that is explicitly about the First Way of St. Thomas Aquinas) but implicitly related via the essentialists (particularly the Aristotelians) in the Christian tradition.
edit: Question for you: Which works of Plantinga? Also, by Zacharias, you mean Ravi Zacharias? I've never read much on him but I've heard he's okay. What is your take on him?
This book is an excellent introduction to contemporary metaphysics. It gives you enough coverage of the history (i.e. the Greeks) and where metaphysics stands in contemporary literature. Highly recommend.
http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199657122/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452885902&sr=1-8&keywords=introduction+to+metaphysics
Two very recent books on this very question, with essays by philosophers:
The Mystery of Existence
The Puzzle of Existence
You should have posted a trigger warning! ;o)
I remember freaking out the first time the all-encompassing self-negating vastness of this question hit me. Nothing is what one should expect, in a manner of speaking. It's the simplest of all possible realities and the only one requiring no explanation. Why anything exists requires an explanation. G‑d's absolute and unparalleled unity is key. The oneness of HaShem means that His existence and essence are the same thing:
> So, whatever else we say about the ultimate cause, source, or explanation of things ... we are going to have to regard it as absolutely simple or non-composite, as pure actuality devoid of potentiality, and as being itself rather than something that merely instantiates being. We are also going to have to regard it as immutable and uncaused, because only what has potentiality capable of being actualized, or parts capable of being combined, can be caused or undergo change, and the source or cause of all things must be devoid of potentiality or parts. Feser, standing on the shoulders of Maimonides
This is a wonderful book on the subject. (No, he doesn't "get" classical theism, but Holt's interviews with different thinkers gives this an existential gonzo feel.)
This one, too, is recommended. (But again, there's an almost a priori dismissal of a straw man version of theism.)
The boy's final question is addressed here. Notice how he starts out with a Cosmological inquiry and shifts to a Teleological (or anthropic) one. I agree with the Rabbi that the latter is harder. Luke Barnes' blog is essential. Fortunately, if the Cosmological Argument works (and it does) you don't need the Teleological one. Thank G-d.
Geez, I was just having a quiet evening until I read a simple comic.
It doesn’t mean we should just give up though. If enough people rallied and fought against these atrocities they could be resolved.
Check out the books The Deaf Phoenicians and The Blackest of All Magic .
I dislike how so many people feel it’s up to others to expose the facts when it’s really up to all of us to continue the work others started. One person can only do so much but many people united can accomplish what many deem impossible.
Also check out Can You Stand the Truth?
I had a comment in here giving a reason for he post, though that's not an explanation.
> Note: may not be the best place to post, but I needed to post somewhere in order to link it in Dr. Feser's open thread today, which he only does a couple of times each year. I've been working through his books since early this year, and developing this concept map as I progress.
By way of explanation, this is a work in progress to visualize the relationships between the concepts brought to bear in the philosophical advances of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Beginning for the fundamental argument for the necessary reality of the distinction between actuality and potentiality, the concept map walks through the conceptual divisions of act and potency. Notably, the divisions of act arrive at a core conception of God as Pure Actuality, Being Itself, utterly devoid of any potentiality or passivity. This is not a proof of God, but rather simply serves to define God's role as the First and Unmoved Mover and Sustainer of all things.
The divisions of act and potency expand to the right of the map, where you see how actuality and potentiality come together as Form and Matter to produce concrete, material things.
Branching off of from the soul (here defined as the substantial form of a living substance), there is a section which details the powers or capacities of the different levels of living substances, which are hierarchically related, with respect to the corporeal order.
For now, the section on the Four Causes is placed on its own, as I still haven't decided where best to tie it in, since many topics make use of this principle. Particularly, Final Causation (defined as the end, goal, purpose, directedness or teleology of a thing) is essential to understanding the concept of objective goodness, which carries into the section on ethics (which, in this view, amounts to an understanding of the directedness of the will).
Also included, but not yet connected as well as it could be, is a section on the divine attributes, along with a brief explanation of how we can know them.
There is much more that can be included. As mentioned elsewhere, this was posted here so that I could link to the WIP. I had hoped that I could catch Edward Feser's attention in the comments of his open thread, which he posted on his blog site yesterday, and which he does only a couple times per year. This concept map is the result of my learning from his books:
I am still working my way through this last one, and when done I intend also to read:
This Translation is going to become the next translation of record. Also try reading it with the Zollikon Seminars. This is a very different language. Enjoy the reading and remember to ask questions this is a wonderful book to think along with.
I don't think classical metaphysics is that popular today in philosophy at least in analytic philosophy as far as I can tell. I think for the most part this is true because most people don't know what Aquinas said. However, that really shouldn't by itself that classical metaphysics (at least the one that Aquinas argues for) is false. You basically gotta look at the arguments for classical metaphysics written by defenders in the past and today. One good book is called "Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction" by Feser (http://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Scholasticae/dp/3868385444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463600373&sr=8-1&keywords=scholastic+metaphysics). Also the title is a bit misleading and should honestly be renamed Thomistic metaphyics. Not all Scholastics are Thomists and Scholastics in general have a lot of diversity in their views like Scotists, Ockamists, etc.
I finished reading the book, but I plan to go back to it relatively soon and take notes on and really digest it. Honestly I think his arguments are pretty good. He really fleshes out the details and defends many of the background stuff.
A big point about the stuff I read from the book, is that the metaphysics it is arguing for is true primarily because of the existence of change. I'm painting with a very broad brush and ignoring many important details, but basically its 1) Change exists 2) Change can only exist if potentiality and actuality are truly distinct otherwise change would not exist (insert argument by Parmenides for the non-existence of change) 3) the distinction between potentiality and actuality imply much of classical metaphysics like teleology, substance metaphysics, and some other stuff. So basically Feser is saying that classical metaphysics is necessarily true as long as change exists (and I'm not talking about the argument from motion about God).
Edit #1: Also I think most people don't know about Aquinas and other Scholastics, primarily because they just don't read their stuff. Its not that people have rejected classical metaphysics because they investigated. Its like how I have not tasted a meal from certain restaurants. I can't tell the meal is bad because I haven't tasted it. And I in a way "reject" the restaurant because I just ignore or just don't even know it exists.
I should also add that by most people I mean philosophers today.
I don't think that is an especially good definition, since epistemology and metaphysics are separate areas. Though 'first principles of knowing' could refer to questions like "what is truth?" or how the world gives beliefs content, which would be metaphysics. To motivate my point, check out the table of contents of these standard textbooks:
Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction
Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction
You'll note that your first three topics all appear in the former book and not in the latter.
Ask Peter van Inwagen.
If you want a more general introduction into philosophy there's a Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn and the older What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel. A more academic introduction (the last two books are more aimed at a general audience) is Fundamentals of Philosophy edited by John Shand. If you're willing to sit through it there also Russel's classic A History of Western Philosophy, which is a sort of introduction to philosophy through the history of the field (the audiobook is on youtube btw), and there also his Problems of Philosophy
I'm not that familiar with eastern philosophy, but a classic introduction to Existentialism is Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre and it should go nicely with Existentialism is a Humanism.
Hope this helps :)
The Kybalion is a wonderful introduction. (Whatever some people seem to say of it.)
I can also highly recommend a much lesser known work on Egregores by Mark Stavish. This is an extremely important concept that is complementary to what is essentially a master key embodied by the principles elucidated in the Kybalion.
If you are interested in either of these two works and aren't able to peruse of them via Amazon, let me know.
Edit: See my other comment.
Links sourcing everything I posted
http://www.whale.to/v/eddy.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Ratner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyomaviridae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Stewart_%28cancer_researcher%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPV_AIDS_hypothesis
http://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Concerned-Families-Practitioners-Edition/dp/188121737X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367692965&sr=8-1&keywords=parent+vaccine+safety
http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/18g99m/did_a_monkey_virus_contribute_to_emerging_global/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Koprowski
http://www.amazon.com/The-Virus-Vaccine-Contaminated-Government/dp/0312342721/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360772949&sr=8-1&keywords=the+virus+and+the+vaccine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-40
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alton_Ochsner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_incident#The_Cutter_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/8425i20p4w258wzf/images/9-7e65fb9cad.jpg
http://www.amazon.ca/Poisoned-Needle-Eleanora-McBean/dp/0787305944/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398114507&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Stuck-Against-Vaccinations-Injections/dp/0914532332
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1131622
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2892%2993012-C/fulltext#back-BIB7
Study shows kids who received polio vaccine injection were 8 times more likely to contract polio than kids who didn't receive it hmmm
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199502233320804
Study linking cases of polio to DTP shot. Published and peered reviewed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1538150
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15426789
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2892%2993012-C/fulltext#back-BIB7
Paralysis in kids after injections
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21032340
Paralysis in kids four weeks after injections. They knew for a long time this was happening and suppressed it
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=495472
Ooo this is a good one
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2850%2990549-6/fulltext
Several studies showing kids can more easily contract polio after injections
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736%2892%2993012-C/fulltext
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/polio.pdf
Luckily Thomism is on the rise.
I would recommend anything by Edward Feser but specifically this
and I would check out Eleonore Stump on this page [here] (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=eleonore+stump&sprefix=eleonore+stu%2Caps%2C218&crid=1Q51KVUYQ9E1V)
I wish I had more info for you. Hopefully someone else reading this can chime in. I can only recommend the [translation I read.] (https://www.amazon.com/Being-Harper-Perennial-Modern-Thought/dp/0061575593/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8), Macquarrie & Robinson. This is a more recent translation and I don't speak German. The classic version was the [Stambaugh] (https://www.amazon.com/Being-Time-Translation-Contemporary-Continental/dp/1438432763).
Those are the two main ones as far as I know. Once again, I'm sure there are people far better qualified to speak to this than me reading.
The "Very Short Introduction" series is usually high quality stuff. They can all be read in a sitting and are written by different authors who specialize in whatever the topic is. Some authors will skip the details to make it easy to read, others will make it denser than usual to cram everything into a short package. The overview is enough to understand works referencing the topic, while also teaching you enough to know what else to read for a deeper dive.
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Postmodernism
SECTION | CONTENT
:--|:--
Title | Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered? (Closer to Truth - Season 4, Episode 9)
Description | Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision. So is mathematics invented by humans-like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered-always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found? Robert's Book: The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All? https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Existence-Why-There-Anything/dp/0470673559
Length | 0:26:47
****
^(I am a bot, this is an auto-generated reply | )^Info ^| ^Feedback ^| ^(Reply STOP to opt out permanently)
you might be interested in this book https://www.amazon.com/Stand-Truth-Chronicle-Mans-Imprisonment/dp/618802160X
You probably should have a basic background in history of philosophy, and should at least be somewhat familiar with people like Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Husserl. You don't necessarily need to read their work directly, but at least read some overviews and stuff.
I'd strongly suggest reading Being and Time alongside some secondary literature. William Blattner's book is very good as a guide. I come from a more analytic background, and I found Mark Okrent's book to be the most clear and helpful presentation of Heidegger's ideas. Hubert Dreyfus also has lectures online. He's hugely influential in contemporary Heidegger scholarship, but I'm honestly not particularly fond of his take on B&T.
http://www.amazon.com/Zizeks-Ontology-Transcendental-Subjectivity-Phenomenology/dp/0810124564
Well, I would really recommend this excellent book by Adrian Johnston, that tries to synthesize and organize Zizek's thought, especially to explain the crux of his theoretical project that consists in the encounter between lacanian psychoanalysis and German idealism (what Johnston names "transcedental materialism") and gives a clear and comprehensive look at its develompment. In a way it's way better then the original, even Žižek admits it:
"It is always difficult to read books about oneself; with Johnston's book, my anxiety was even stronger than usual. While reading it, I often had the uncanny feeling of being confronted by a line of argumentation which fits better than my own texts what I am struggling to formulate--as if he is the original and I am a copy. He certainly knows how to read me. The majority of my critics concentrate on popular culture, politics, and ideology in my work--Johnston goes directly to its transcendental-ontological nucleus. This is not a book on me, but a book, critical of me, on what both Johnston and I consider the core of our philosophical predicament. I thus advise the reader to forget about me and to enjoy the hard work of penetrating the obscure dimension of the philosophical foundations of psychoanalysis."
edit: added Žižek's quote
> Things are made of behaviors that are made of behaviors
Well this claim is disputable. One might simply reply that science only observes behaviors but has a blind spot on ontological reality. This was a criticism even Russel (and others) raised.
.
>I am pointing out that substance and accidents is a terrible way to describe the world
Terrible why? It highlights the world in a very different way... which might not fit the narrow mechanistic vision we all try to fit everything now, but there is no reason to think such mechanistic view is true, in fact there are good reasons to think it's not correct. Thomas Nagel (not a religious guy at all) presents a good case in his book Mind and Cosmos 1
.
>That distinction doesn't exist. There is no such thing a tree with a tendency to grow. The tendency of parts to grow and behave is the tree. The tree is the tendency, the behavior. Trees are the dynamic result of large scale movements that are the result of small scale movements. There are not separately substances and accidents - there is only one thing, not two. This dualistic idea is wrong because reality is mono. We do not have objects over here and properties of them over there. We do not have trees and their color, or the trees and their behavior separately.
Again you seem confused.
First I think it's pretty clear that the distinction between a table and a tree does exist, since tree grow, but tables are something that are necessarily imposed by humans on a tree.
You are trying to see some sort of dualism here which I am not describing, but definitively that "things = behavior" is a doubtful one. This in fact already breakdown if you think of animals and humans - unless you go the "Dennett route" thinking consciousness is just illusion (and that raises a whole lot more problems)
.
>That is why gold as a "collection of particles" is a substance, but gold nuggets isn't.
This is my mistake, I meant a "pile of nuggets" or something imposed on gold
>Again, I think this is a false distinction. If I gave you a chunk of metal, you couldn't cut down a tree with it. The axe's arrangement and the chunk's arrangement are very similar, and so they behave similar, but the axe has some causal powers that a chunk does not, and giving it a wood handle changes those further. An axe is composed of its parts, but it also does not behave as its individual bits would behave. Any unique arrangement of matter has unique causal powers.
We can agree on the last point you make but the difference is that again an axe structure is imposed externally on the substances.
The "behavior" to be an axe, is not something that exists in metal and wood itself, but something that is imposed on them and that's the difference.
.
>Arrangements are a convenient way of talking, but really nothing about that axe is holding still in a static position - the axe is a dance steel, and the steel is a dance of many different elements, that are dances, all the way down. Get enough steel in one place and hot enough, and it will glow and churn and produce a magnetic dynamo and continental plates on its surface. That is a very different set of causal powers of the axe, and yet they are made of the same steel. Get it hot enough, and it fuses into heavier elements. The macroscopic arrangment of things can force changes at smaller levels.
Yes arrangements are a conveninet way of talking, ans substance theory does not deny that.
And yes, again no disagreement here, the axe has many causal powers beyond that of an axe imposed purpose.. .and such causal powers derive from the powers of the substances the axe is made of.
.
>Don't confuse the map for the terrain. Our mathematical constructs of fields is an attempt to describe reality, but it is reality that is real, of course. That said, quantum field theory is a really close fit. A field is just something that can have a wiggle in it. We know there are wiggles, so we give it a field to wiggle in, but we aren't sure if it is even made of anything. Every thing you consider to be stationary and solid is a dance of dances of dances of wiggles.
Well technically a "field" is a mathematical idea.
A field is any set of elements that satisfies the field axioms for both addition and multiplication and is a commutative division algebra.
A field is called such because centuries ago gravity and electromagnetism were described mathematically as vector fields and now they are still described as such (but not mere vector see, gravity for example is a tensor field).
The "field view" seems to reflect what we observe experimentally, but this does not mean necessarily it is ontologically true and more importantly there are some problems (e.g. the Cosmological constant prediction) that clearly indicate that the theory is missing something...
Right about 120 years ago scientists thought their physical view of the world was complete and done - they even told Max Planck he should not get into theoretical physics because there was nothing to do there - but boy they were wrong on so many levels.
I think it's important to realize mathematical descriptions might work even if they do not actually reflect ontological reality.
.......
In any case, we do not have to agree. If you want know more about substance theory and essentualism I'd recommend David S. Oderberg's "Real Essentialism"
In fact Oderberg can explain (and defend) this much better than I could ever do.
I've personally not read much of his direct work, but I do know that a good analysis of the Zizek's core philosophical arguments (and work in general, as it goes over both his early and late writings) is Zizek's Ontology by Adrian Johnston. If what you find there tickles your fancy, then it's likely everything else Zizek has written will too.
Michael Loux has a good introduction to metaphysics: http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Introductions-Philosophy/dp/0415401348
Not exactly an answer to your question, but you may be interested in Prof. Edward Feser's weblog:
He wrote the book/s on A-T for more contemporary audiences:
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser is a great place to start.
You'll have better luck with quality books than youtube videos for the most part. Although iTunes University has free Oxford course lectures. One is "Philosophy for Beginners" and includes a lecture on Metaphysics and Epistemology. That might be a good place to start.
Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction isn't bad, but definitely not detailed enough.
The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics is probably what you're looking for. A good library near you should have it.
Yeah my understanding is that classical theism doesn't hold much truck with ontological arguments either. I once attended a lecture in which a guy tried to defend Anselm's ontological argument to a room full of Aristotelian Thomists, and the ensuing bloodbath was not edifying.
Definitely check out Feser if you have a background in philosophy. He just came out with a new book for the not-so-much-of-a-layman.
(edit: fixed link)
I almost always suggest this one: Michael Loux - Metaphysics
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0415401348
It covers a variety of topics that are laid out in detail and is a good introduction for beginners.
Yes, Thomism has never gone away, it was never successfully argued against, as the major player it was simply abandoned for a mechanical philosophy due to the success of Newtonian/Descartian science which has itself now been abandoned to a certain degree with quantum physics.
Papers and books are still being published from a Thomistic viewpoint.
One example:
http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/0415323649
This is one of the primary reasons I enjoy Edward Feser's writings so much.
I will read that book if you read this book.
>If the computer copy of their mind will be destroyed, they would still exist. Thus, the computer copy of their mind is not actually them--rather, it's merely an exact copy of them.
At the exact time that the mind is copied, then there are two of the minds in the universe.
There's no logical reasons why there can't be two or more exact same minds existing at the same time. "You" exist in both of those states. This is part of the multiverse interpretation of quantum physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse. So your use of the word "thus" does not make sense.
From then on, the two identities branch, and they will never be the same, because of the path dependence of mind states.
I recommend that book first because it is shorter, but there is also a book available: https://www.amazon.com/Taxonomy-Metaphysics-Mind-Uploading-Keith-Wiley/dp/0692279849
>Also, I'll take a look at that article. Thanks for sharing it with me!
Sure thing. =)
I've found an ebook that gives a fitting answer to your inquiry. It's on Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Explanation-Life-Mysterio448-ebook/dp/B01D5HMONK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523213418&sr=8-1&keywords=the+explanation+of+life&dpID=51ORB8HUjCL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch]. The gist of the book is given in the sample.
Just because you have not personally experienced something does not mean it has no epistemic value. It just means it a hypothetical placeholder that you need to verify through testing. I don't think you can verify or discredit the uniform existence of grooming across the population by thinking about articles you've read about one type of grooming.
I think you should read the Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.
You should check out Edward Feser's books. He's a philosopher who specializes in Thomism and he has written several books about Thomist philosophy. His book Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide is a pretty clear introduction to Thomas Aquinas' work. If you're interested in the metaphysical aspects specifically, check out his book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction.
>I understood the comparison you were looking at; my point was that electromagnetism is not the union of two seemingly unrelated things, as one is a direct cause of the other.
>
>i.e.: Space doesn't cause time and time doesn't cause space, but they are connected. Waves don't cause particles and particles don't cause waves, but they are connected. Electricity directly causes magnetism and magnetism directly causes electricity, so they are clearly related.
I fail to understand how electricity and magnetism are not different forms of the same thing if one causes the other. It seems to me that electromagnetism and spacetime are both phenomena with a dual nature, just with a different style of achieving that dual nature.
> You're right in that the 2nd law applies to closed systems, but we can define our closed system as the Universe itself. As a result, the disorder of the universe itself must continue to increase, and we are pretty confident this is correct. A couple of reasons for our confidence in this idea is the existence of black holes, but not white holes. Black holes seem to be relatively common, but if the 2nd law were false, we should see the "inverse black hole" called a white hole. My point is that over the entirety of the universe, chaos is increasing because of the 2nd law. In terms of dissipative systems, I am quite familiar with them; although it appears that entropy decreases in the system, once you include the heat reservoir in the system, you can show that entropy increases in all cases.
I don't know much about black holes and how it relates to the overall entropy of the universe, but as my original post mentioned, black holes themselves, although chaotic, can paradoxically perform orderly tasks such as holding galaxies together and helping to produce new stars. Furthermore, as I define the word "chaos" in my theory, entropy is not synonymous with chaos but is merely one manifestation of it. There is also randomness, unpredictability, variation, etc. Keep in mind that my "chaos" is not really a quantitative phenomenon like entropy but is a purely qualitative phenomenon. So even if entropy itself is increasing across the universe, my "chaos" is not necessarily doing so. Also, because my "chaos" and "order" are qualitative phenomena rather than quantitative, they are not exactly compatible with the concept of things being quantitatively unbalanced or disproportionate.
>cracks knuckles
>
>My belief is that the question of "why are we here" is an inherently flawed question, as there is a major assumption when we ask it: that a reason exists in the first place. In the words of Neil Degrasse Tyson, "the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." While this is, in my opinion, a harsh way to put it, he has a very important point there. Any time we ask this question we assume that an answer is possible, but this does not have to be true. In my opinion, the "answer" is that there is no reason. This may seem a shocking or even depressing idea, but I believe it is actually the opposite; this concept is the most freeing and exciting idea for me.
Instead of worrying about my greater purpose, I have the freedom to do what makes me happy, what makes me feel good. While one may argue that happiness and goodness are points of evidence towards a purpose, I disagree as they are chemical processes that reward behavior that is beneficial towards me and don't reward behavior that is harmful towards me. Yes, you can trick these systems, but that's exactly the point: you're tricking the system by augmenting it with chemicals that simulate the actual ones or by other means. Either way, what is beneficial or harmful towards you is a personal decision; one that only you can truly say. In terms of larger "goodness" and the like, these are concepts that arise from the fact that actions which benefit the species itself will naturally become more important within the evolution of the species. The idea of "help your fellow man" came about because the social groups who worked together were more likely to survive than the loners. Again, there are exceptions, but the ideas of "all or nothing" or "true or false" cannot be applied to everything; the universe doesn't exist in a dichotomy (especially since the fundamental building blocks are not sharply defined, but probabilistic in nature, but all of this is a subject for a much much longer comment). Essentially, by dismissing the question of "why are we here" as unanswerable, rather than spiraling into a depressive state, I feel free as I get to decide what's important to me; I get to decide what I'm doing and, in some ways, why I'm here.
>
>To talk about the "science of how" as you call it: this is dependent on your meaning of "how." In terms of evolution, as you discussed on another column, science as we know it can explain both how and why it occurs. How: by random processes, including UV radiation, nuclear radiation from the world, and inherent instabilities/errors in the processing systems of DNA. Why: because a species which can adapt to changes in its environment is more likely to survive. Diseases are more complex, and this is a long enough reply, so I'm not going to discuss it here; if you want the how and the why then feel free to ask me via PM. But the idea is you are assuming that the how and the why are mutually exclusive questions, which is most definitely not always the case. In many cases, the how and the why are one and the same.
>
>If anything in this is unclear, please feel free to ask for clarification.
I think it's important for us to define our terms here. It seems unclear how we are defining the terms "purpose" and "reason". I agree with you that our existence does not have any external purpose, and my philosophy does not claim otherwise. I explain in the introduction chapter to my treatise that having an external purpose would be problematic. If we were given a purpose, who gave it to us? What is the purpose of that purpose, and the purpose before that? What happens if we fulfill our purpose, do we then become useless and superfluous like a used piece of tissue paper or a dirty diaper? No, I don't believe we have an external purpose, per se. Human lives themselves can be a platform for the distinction between order and chaos. Many people live useless lives, a few live meaningful lives. Living a useless life is easy; living a life of purpose and meaning is difficult, takes hard work, and can be dangerous. Even if we did have some external purpose, most would lack the courage to fulfill it. The essence of purpose is usefulness. An automobile that is a lemon has a purpose but is not particularly useful as transportation; a horse or camel has no purpose but can be quite useful as transportation. It doesn't matter what we are supposed to do, it only matters what we do. In a sense, our purpose is a posteriori rather than a priori.
Now, as far as the term "reason" is concerned, that is where I disagree with you. I believe there is a reason for our existence. Although "reason" and "purpose" often coincide in their meaning, I do not believe they mean the same thing. There is a reason for our existence without a purpose for it, just as there is a reason for why tornadoes occur even though they have no purpose. The reason for our existence is the cosmic dynamics underlying our existence. We didn't just happen to evolve by accident; there is a certain logic to why we evolved. In the introduction chapter of my treatise, I mention a biological mechanism in the human body called oxidative phosphorylation. It is a complex and very organized biological machine that provides energy for our bodies. It has a complex protein called ATP synthase which is essentially a mechanical wheel that that turns about an axle, like a rotary machine one might find in a factory. Then I ask "Where did this come from? Why does it exist?" Something this impressive doesn't just pop into existence for no reason, as you would appear to believe. There is a reason it exists.
(You appear to subscribe to what I call in my treatise the "nihilist model". I wrote some more comments about this worldview in the introduction chapter of my treatise. If you want, you can read it in the sample that is provided on my Amazon pageor I can copy and paste it in this thread if you prefer.)
>One could claim that you were also taught to parrot that particular line as part of being Catholic. But that alone isn't grounds for validating/invalidating something, surely?
It's absolutely a justified reason for dismissing an argument if no reasoning is given.
>Also isn't "metaphysical grounding" an oxymoron? Metaphysics is anything but grounded.
I don't think you know what metaphysics is.
Start here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/
Good textbook on contemporary analytic metaphysics: https://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Fundamentals-Philosophy-Robert-Koons/dp/1405195738
Real essentialism is demonstrated through the fixed laws governing the relationships between the sides and angles of a triangle. You can’t “invent” a triangle whose interior angles add up to whatever you want, because the concept of a triangle is something we discover rather than invent. Are you familiar with Oderberg? https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/041587212X
> Where is it?
Essences are immaterial.
> I've read most of it and have a fairly good understanding of what Aquinas says on a lot of important subjects
Im calling bullshit if you aren’t even passably competent in his metaphysics to articulate the difference between essentially and accidentally ordered cause and effect relationships.
> Aquinas believes that people "assent" in faith about propositional objects because their "truth" is directly revealed (obviously divinely) by God. He claims the will disposes the intellect (i.e human reason) in accepting those truth claims, because they come from God. This all relies "the basis of testimony carrying divine authority" to use Aquinas's words.
Not quite correct.
“To be sure, a part of theology (what is generally called “revealed theology”) is based on what Aquinas regards as truths that have been revealed to us by God. To that extent theology is based on faith. But “faith,” for Aquinas, does not mean an irrational will to believe something for which there is no evidence. It is rather a matter of believing something on the basis of divine authority (ST II-II. 4.1), where the fact that it really has been revealed by God can be confirmed by the miracles performed by the one through whom God revealed it (ST II-II. 2.9). In any case, there is another part of theology (known as “natural theology”) that does not depend on faith, but rather concerns truths about God that can be known via reason alone.”
-Ed Feser Aquinas (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O0G3BEW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)
So no, I still don’t think you actually understand what you’re talking about.
>Also, where can I read more about Natural Law?
Edward Feser is very good at explaining it. Here's a blog post to get you started: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html
And if you want to read more, I'd recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Scholasticae/dp/3868385444/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PQZCBY62513VPV3H3SE
/u/Hurrah_for_Karamazov, I'm still following the discussion, and I'm impressed, I'm already looking forward to buy this book to start somewhere on this topic of metaphysics.
Do not feel bad or hurt by the unnecessary and pointless mean things this folk writes in some paragraphs of his replies or get impressed by the things written to play the victim card, as you may know already, it only shows how much he needs Christ in his life (because, some happy person wouldn't use such resources in a discussion; obviously there is something wrong with the anger of this friend). This folk should be keep in our prayers.
Please do not give up! I'm learning a lot of things with this discussion!!
http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Peter-van-Inwagen/dp/0813343569
My suggestion would be to find introductory books to the three main 'branches' of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Here's one: http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199657122
The others are probably searchable as well. My reasoning is that it would be difficult to find one book that 'dips' into each branch of philosophy for the same reasons it would be difficult to find one book that 'dips' into each branch of language. There are books out there, but it's hard to recommend them because they require a strong commitment to the work.
Instead, my suggestion is this: read a short book (under 200 pages?) of each branch of philosophy that interests you, and then let your mind be the 'book' that makes a 'dip' into each branch that you read about.
In reading an excellent thesis on Mind Uploading (https://www.amazon.com/Taxonomy-Metaphysics-Mind-Uploading-Keith-Wiley/dp/0692279849/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501597553&sr=1-1&keywords=mind+uploading), there was an attempt to streamline arguments for and against the possibilities of mind uploading and full brain emulation. The concept that stuck out to me, and that creates a solid counterargument to the one presented in this article, is the idea of a future procedure wherein nanobots are deployed your brain, and bit by bit, replace the original biological structure with a synthetic structure immune to breakdown/degeneration. This cuts out the need for two brains to be existing at the same time/one after the other.
For 1-5, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Edward Feser.
For 6 and anything else related to the basics of the Christian life, Christian history, or the church, I would suggest Introduction to Christianity by Pope Benedict the XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)
Hey, sorry I never replied to this! Aquinas is who I read, primarily. And the philosophers in his tradition who come after him. I think he probably presents the strongest arguments, but to consider them for what they actually are, you have to have a basic understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics. You're probably not looking for this, but I would recommend these books, in this order:
The Last Superstition
Aquinas (A "Beginner's" [quotes mine; not all that beginner-ish imo] Guide)
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction
The first one is a polemic, so beware. But it lays out a pretty decent modern cultural context for Scholastic metaphysics. That last one is especially good if you're interested in how science plays out in Thomism. The second one (and the bulk of the last one) though is kinda meaty technical stuff. But I think that series prepares you to understand the arguments of all different sorts of metaphysicians quite well.
It is a lot of work though. I won't deny that. It sort of pissed me off at first, but truth doesn't necessarily have to be easy to comprehend. Of course that's not to say that the difficulty of all this is meritorious or anything in itself.
Here you go!
Keith I have just read deeper and seen that you have published a book on this subject https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0692279849/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have just ordered a copy of it I will read it as soon as it arrives to gain a deeper understanding of your position.
Steve