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:
Tag: Signs
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 … Continue reading Interpretation & Traditions: A Sample
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 … Continue reading The Effort of Effortless Knowledge
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 … Continue reading Semiotics and Phenomenology: Preface
In an extended (and sometimes heated) discussion with colleagues at the Center for the Study of Digital Life, it was determined that one of the key things needed to advance in our work is a clear understanding of causality. I have, consequently, been at work in attempting to provide a stripped-down, simplified explanation of what … Continue reading Causality: a Rough Draft
Modes: a mode is not a "what", but a "how". Something could exist in different modes without changing its "whats"; for instance, what exists in itself can exist also in the mind while identical in its "what". Esse (existence/modus essendi): this is the mode in which some "what" exists in itself independently of any foreign … Continue reading Modes: essendi, intelligendi, significandi
From the introduction to my medieval philosophy class: There are two methods to study a chronological period of philosophy: one is primarily historical, and engages the thought of the time insofar as it is effected by political or social changes, such as the fall of the Roman Empire (beginning around 376ad with the Gothic invasions) … Continue reading What Makes Philosophy Medieval?
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. -Alexander Pope A word that has been thrown about in academia for as long as I've been involved is "interdisciplinary". On the Thomist side of my experience, the … Continue reading The Allure and the Danger of Interdisciplinary Study
Education, we continually hear, is in a crisis. Not only is this cry overwrought, it is false: the word crisis comes from the Greek (krisis), where it was a medical term meaning the point in an illness where the patient will either recover or become irrevocably worse and inevitably die. Education--by which I mean specifically … Continue reading Education in the Digital Age
In addition to my own work in Thomism, semiotics, and phenomenology, over the summer I became a Fellow with the Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL), where I have been helping in an on-going discussion with many others on the topic of perception. This discussion, carried on via Slack, has covered a wide range … Continue reading Perception
Semiotic Thomist 