The Narrowness of Academic Journals

Today, I received a rejection notice from a journal to which I had recently submitted.  In itself, this does not bother me--frankly, after a few years on the job market, I am almost numb to rejection.  Unlike the job market, however, journals tend to give at least some justification, however slight, for rejecting a submission. …

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Interpretation and Traditions: Some Audio

My colloquium given 27 April 2018 at the University of St. Thomas has been uploaded as an audio file in a variety of formats, available here. Or you can just listen to the soundcloud version:

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 …

Interpretation & Traditions: A Sample

The below are introductory remarks to a presentation given on Friday, 27 April 2018, for Center for Thomistic Studies Colloquium at the University of St. Thomas, Houston TX.  An audio recording will be posted in the near future.  I also intend revisions, at some point, for publication. --- Preface [For those of you who don’t …

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 …

The Effort of Effortless Knowledge

Frequently, to illustrate how human beings are or how they act, Thomas Aquinas juxtaposes the human with the angelic.  Specifically, when talking about why human knowledge is seemingly so complex, he makes this keen point: the more perfect a being is in its nature, the fewer actions it needs to achieve its final perfection; and …

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 …

Semiotics and Phenomenology: Preface

Below is the (current draft) preface I wrote for my soon-to-be (please, I hope) accepted Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). --- This book presents a complex argument.  It will likely not convince all who read it.  It probably will not even convince many who read it.  But it …