Human Nature and Human Technology

We, in the present, are in some sense both our past and our future.  What we have done and what has been done to us contributes to who we are; and what we intend to do, what we are ordered towards doing, instantiates within us anticipatory relations and dispositions.  We resolve--without reducing--past and future into …

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What is Nominalism?

And why is it such a problem? One of the most serious and extensive controversies of the Latin Age of philosophy was that of universals.  The Greek philosophy of antiquity, and its transmission into the Latin Age by Boethius and through the Islamic tradition, had long discussed the question of whether the way in which …

In Protest of Scientism

Late last night, I saw this article on Quillette.com (a locus for generally "centrist" thought--which tends to mean "Enlightenment-thinking Liberal"--in the current rhetorical revolutionary war), "In Defence of Scientism".   My initial reaction--the article being one that is haughty in the extreme, and full of polysyllabic words used incorrectly in painfully contorted syntax--was one of …

Socialism and the Robots

The uncritical use of language frequently effects our thinking in unforeseen ways.  With little exception, our uncritical use stems from appropriating the environmentally-ordinary; in other words, we talk the way others do.  As a consequence, we tend to think the way others do, too.  Unfortunately, the uncritical use of language flows effortlessly, while stopping to …

Natural Personhood

What makes a person, a person?  Of late, as it was in its inception, the term's legal significance has been brought into question.  As it stands in U.S. law, all reality is classified into either that of a person or that of a thing; the former cannot be stripped of its rights' protections without due …

Evolved Inanity

Ronnie de Sousa, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto, penned quite a piece of sophistry for Aeon Magazine.  The title: "Natural-born existentialists"; the by-line, "Ethics cannot be based on human nature because, as evolutionary biology tells us, there is no such thing."  It's unfortunate that de Sousa is a professor, and from …

God and God’s Ways

Last week, I received an email out of the blue from a complete stranger, asking me questions about God.  It was sent with an earnest curiosity, and so I took the time to answer.  Below is an edited version of the conversation, given some literary license and with his identity changed.   -- Dear Professor …

Pride and the Ability to Change

...quia quod quis vehementer desiderat, facile credit. The other day, I saw retweeted into my Twitter timeline an old post on NYMag.com, claiming that with the help of a therapist, anyone can change his or her personality.  Ignoring from the eyeroll-inducing shilling for the psychiatric profession, the article made me think: how popular is the belief …

Sex, Power, and Instinct

Sexual harassment has been a regular in the news cycle for the past twenty-plus years--often but not always as a tool of political exposure.  Powerful men with covered-up but uncurbed desires have been a mainstay of U.S. politics and political news coverage since Anita Hill leveled unproven, but not disproven, accusations against Clarence Thomas in …

Worldviews, Atheist and Theist

I'll be perfectly honest: there are a good many atheists whom I like a great deal better than a good many theists, not just because they are more fun to be around, but because they are genuinely better human beings, in any number of ways.  This has very little if anything to do with their …